More killing.
The thought made him tremble, because killing Mbuli was already hard enough to deal with. But he would do whatever was necessary now.
You need me, my love?
Not yet. Stay up there.
All right.
His ship’s presence, a kilometre overhead, gave him strength, allowing him to centre himself.
‘Look there,’ said Shireen. ‘In the corridor.’
One of the Haxigoji had left the concourse proper, and was pressing his double-thumbed hand against a view window. From here it was impossible to tell what he was seeing.
‘Someone outside,’ said Jed.
‘I’ll call in my team.’
‘Right. You do that.’
He broke away, jogged along the catwalk to the steps, then threw normal behaviour aside, throwing one leg over the rail and commanding his jumpsuit fabric to become friction-less, as far as it was capable. Like a schoolchild, he slid down fast, hopped to the concourse deck, ignoring the reactions of everyone around, and pelted into the corridor, popping blue smartgel into his mouth because the air outside was impossible to breathe unassisted.
There was an emergency exit and it responded to his tu-ring’s signal and then he was in cold air, stumbling across snow, trying to correct his gait and squint against the wind – stronger than before – to make out the man who was staring at him.
Narrow-bodied, brown hair, plain jumpsuit. Nothing special about him – except that when Jed glanced back, two of the Haxigoji were standing in the open exit and pointing. The atmosphere was even less suitable for them, nor were most of them prone to violent behaviour, which was exactly what was needed now.
‘Jed?’ It was Shireen, calling via her tu-ring. ‘Corplane’s dead. We just checked his—’
‘Shit.’
‘I’m triggering the public emergency net.’
The figure ahead was moving away now, his boot-soles elongating to form snow-shoes, moving with an easy-looking gait that drew him further and further away from Jed’s awkward pursuit through ever-deepening snow.
A wail cut through the air behind him, followed by a ripping sound – icequake! – but it was not the ice-mass beneath the snow that was splitting apart: it was the research station behind him, the domes and linking tunnels all cracking into segments, sealing themselves into fifty or more modules; and as Jed watched, they began to slide away from each other, their motive power unclear but visibly accelerating, smoothly moving across snow and heading for the cold ocean, because ice-quakes were not uncommon and this was a viable defensive procedure for most contingencies.
Jed was not sure that an incipient Anomaly was one of them.
It’s more likely a renegade.
An Anomalous component might have tried to initiate absorption, the process obvious because it was accompanied, as far as anyone had ever observed, by a characteristic spillover glow that was a precise shade of blue. This might be one of Schenck’s renegades, but even at this range Jed should have been able to detect the induction neurons and other characteristics of a fellow Pilot. Everything indicated that this was an ordinary man he was chasing.
A man capable of moving faster than Jed, and perhaps heading for a weapons cache or transport, even a submersible flying shuttle, because that was what the researchers used for—
He had stopped, the man, amid falling snow but with an ellipsoidal volume of clear air surrounding him, and it took Jed several stumbling moments to realise what he was looking at: a smartmiasma, no doubt weapon-primed and ready to strike.
I’m dead.
Jed’s tu-ring had weapon capabilities and he even had an old-fashioned knuckleduster with embedded grasers tucked inside a pocket, but they needed human action to initiate a strike while the whole point about smartmiasmas and similar technology was that they operated at a trillion times the speed of thought, because organic brains are slow.
The man smiled and raised his arms.
I’m sorry, my—
Something huge and bronze crashed into existence.
What for, lover?
It was a ship, gleaming and beautiful.
Where did you—? I love you.
And I love you.
Which was why she had taken the risk, not descending through air but transiting via mu-space, such a dangerous transition, perfectly executed, and smashing any matter in the way, say a human body, to misty oblivion.
It was not the icy wind that brought tears to Jed’s eyes.
Before he left Coolth for good, there was one last event to finish off a very odd day. After the all-clear had been sounded, and the research station modules crawled back together and reformed while Jed’s ship hovered overhead, all weapons powered up just in case, Jed had a final meeting with Shireen Singh. Her team had analysed both Corplane’s body and the evaporated remains of the unknown man – a man redolent with the scent of darkness, according to the Haxigoji witnesses – along with Corplane’s business systems.
‘We think Corplane was acting under some kind of compulsion,’ Shireen said. ‘Which is worrying, but not the most interesting thing. I want you to know this as added back-up to my own report, because the Admiralty need to find out.’
Jed looked into her steady faux-brown eyes.
‘Find out what? That I’ve killed again?’
‘It wasn’t exactly you this time. Plus’ – with a smile – ‘the person your ship wiped out was one Petra Helsen, responsible for the Anomaly coming into existence.’
‘That bitch.’
‘Exactly.’
‘But it was a man I—’
‘Autodoc,’ said Shireen, and shrugged. ‘Identity change.’
‘Of course. She did it before, on Molsin. Not to that extent.’
He should have thought of it earlier.
Clara was a boy until she was seventeen. You know that.
I know, I know. I’m glad one of us could think clearly in the moment.
Any time, my love.
Shireen raised an eyebrow, as if aware that he was in thought conjunction with his ship, although of course she could not eavesdrop: no one could.
‘You did good, Pilot Goran.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Give my love to your wife. And belated congratulations to both of you.’
‘Cheers. I’ll do that.’
His ship, who had been hovering high overhead once more, took her time descending, and after taking him on board rose slowly. The team of agents, with Shireen at their centre, watched from the ground. There was no hurry now.
Jed-and-ship could fly home in quiet triumph.
FORTY-ONE
EARTH, 1972 AD
It happened on the morning that, over breakfast, Rupert asked Gavriela where cosmic rays came from, and she told him they came from the cosmos – where did he expect? – then after some badinage she talked about radiation from nebulae where stars were born, and the magnetic bow wave thrown up by the galaxy as it hurtled towards Virgo, at which Rupert raised an ironic eyebrow.
She went in to Imperial late, as was fitting for a retired scientist, but young Geoffrey was equally late, and they entered his office together. The room smelled of cigarette smoke and featured a six-foot vertical strip of computer printout on the back of the door: Ursula Andress, bikini-clad, the shading rendered in alphanumeric characters. Or perhaps it was Raquel Welch, from One Million Years BC. Embarrassed, Geoffrey hung his overcoat from the door hook, obscuring Ursula or Raquel, whichever.