A Night Without Stars (55 page)

“You want to keep it from the PSR?”

“I want to keep it from the Warrior Angel. That's why you and I are here boring ourselves stupid with this cruddy paperwork. Stonal doesn't trust the Port Chana PSR, remember? Tomorrow we make some quiet inquiries. We'll need the
Gothora III
's registry documents from the marine registry, and a listing for Rodriguez Tooling and Katina Precision Milling from the state enterprise office. I also want PSR files on the crew.”

“If they have any,” Jenifa said.

“Route that request through section seven in Varlan. They can pull the information from their central records; that way no one else will know we're asking.”

“All right.”

“Then first thing tomorrow, you and I are going down to the docks and taking a look at the
Gothora III
for ourselves.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

“So we're not doing anything tonight?”

“No more paperwork, no.” He unbuttoned his uniform jacket and slipped it off. The painkillers were dulling the ache in his leg, and interest in the
Gothora III
had banished his lethargy. “But you and I are going to draw up a strategy to monitor this curious ship. And then we're going to bed so I can thank you properly.” He knew he was playing with fire, but he just couldn't stop.

Jenifa bit back on her impatience as they climbed the eternal spiral stairs up the inside of the lighthouse that perched on the end of Port Chana's harbor wall. When they'd arrived at the docks that morning, they'd quickly identified three decent observation points. Two of them they ruled out on grounds of practicality; both were in wharfside buildings with a lot of people. Chaing would always draw attention. So…the lighthouse it was. The keeper was startled when Chaing showed his PSR badge, but smart enough not to complain. As Chaing pointed out, he was the only person who knew they were here, so if that knowledge leaked there would only be one arrest.

Chaing took the stairs so crudding slowly, his crutch clattering on the stone steps, and he had to stop for a rest every couple of circuits. They reached the lantern room seven minutes after they started up.

Jenifa shrugged out of her backpack and started setting up the tripod. Chaing opened a window and trained a powerful pair of binoculars on the
Gothora III,
which was berthed two wharves down the harbor from their position.

“I am crudding shattered,” he complained.

Jenifa nodded as if being sympathetic. She was pleased with herself for containing her hatred last night. But her strength had allowed her to overcome any emotional weakness, so she held her tongue, biding her time as they worked out how best to mount an observation on the
Gothora III.
Thanks to Yaki's skepticism, she still wasn't 100 percent certain about his heritage, which was deeply frustrating. Part of her was so sure. She needed absolute proof, though. It was a real shame the link detector wasn't going to arrive until tonight. Her discovery of the
Gothora III
was exactly the kind of thing he would warn the Warrior Angel about. She'd even considered holding off telling him, but that was an outright dereliction of duty.

She fixed the camera with its huge telephoto lens onto the tripod, and focused it on the
Gothora III.
The mid-deck cranes were off-loading its cargo, winching the heavy wooden crates onto waiting flatbed trucks. She zoomed in on the crew members standing around the open holds, and waited patiently until they were facing her before snapping off several shots.

“Looking pretty normal,” she muttered.

“Our targets aren't going to march on board in broad daylight.”

“You think they're already there?”

“I don't know. I doubt it, though. Not enough escape routes if we do raid the ship.”

“So they'll come aboard last minute?”

“Impossible to say. You told me they all just vanished after Hawley Docks. That kind of target is hard to capture.”

“Then we just give up?” she taunted.

“Not at all. Once we understand them, we'll know how to approach. They must know the PSR is hunting them.”

Jenifa was glad he was still peering through the binoculars so he couldn't see her guilty flush. Castillito had clearly known every aspect of their mission.
But he must know that.
So he's playing a double bluff, right?
“You're probably correct. But you and I are still one step ahead.”

She waited for him to respond. When she looked up from the camera, she saw his back was rigid. His binoculars weren't pointing at the
Gothora III
anymore, either.

“Chaing?”

“We're not alone.”

It was the dead tone he used that sent a chill down her limbs. “What?”

“Warehouse five. Remember it? The one with the offices along the front? We considered it when we arrived.” He handed her the binoculars. “Good vantage point, but too many people would have seen me struggling up to the fifth floor. Take a look.”

With a growing sense of trepidation she swung the binoculars around to warehouse five, concentrating on the highest row of windows. It was a big building with granite walls and a curving corrugated-iron roof. A huge sliding doorway dominated the end, with flatbed trucks and forklifts moving in and out constantly. The opening was framed by offices. She could see through the windows on the three lower floors. People were sitting at desks, answering telephones, calling to one another, hurrying out to the warehouse floor carrying batches of urgent papers. The fourth-floor windows were grimy, the rooms inside given over to storage of some kind, while the fifth was practically deserted. She almost missed it—a single small pane had been removed from one of the iron-framed windows on the fifth floor. Someone was inside, standing a meter or so away from the gap, a pair of binoculars pressed to his face.

“Crudding Uracus,” she hissed. She took a step back, filled with a horrible vision of the other watcher taking a photo of her face.

“So…” Chaing said, “either section seven is running another dark operation just like ours that they haven't told me about, or the Fallers are also curious about the
Gothora III.
And I don't think it's section seven.”

Captain Fajie's office was on the third floor of the PSR offices.
Naturally
, Chaing thought petulantly as he wheezed his way up the final flight of stairs. He'd taken some painkillers on the taxi ride back from the harbor. They didn't seem to make much difference.

Fajie looked up as he limped in. She didn't even bother to put on a pleased-to-see-you expression.

Chaing used his crutch to push the door shut, then sank into the chair. “We have a problem,” he said.

“My team is working as hard as they can, comrade,” Fajie said defensively. “You can't expect instant results, not with this much paperwork involved. They're dedicated people.”

“I'm sure they are,” Chaing said. He took out his small section seven badge and pinned it to his lapel.

Fajie stiffened. “I did wonder,” she said sullenly.

“Relax, I'm not here to deliver a reprimand.”

“Yeah, right.”

“So much cynicism. I need you to arrange a new squad for me.”

“What's the operation?”

“No operation. We're not even having this conversation. There is no paperwork. Do not use the telephones to call people.”

“You want me to run a dark operation? Crud, Chaing, I've got to clear it with Director Husnan.”

“Answer me this: How many nests are active in Port Chana right now?”

“None. We have a good record on that front, at least.”

“Wrong answer. I've just encountered one.”

“You can't…” She looked seriously worried. “There's a nest?”

“Yes. And for one to exist without this office even picking up a hint is something I find deeply disturbing.”

“Right.”

“So no Director Husnan. You will handpick five of your people that you personally can vouch for and allocate them some aspect of the current investigation that requires them to be reassigned outside this building. We will convene in the Decroux Café in two hours, and I will brief them. We're going to run an observation on the nest—follow its members, find out where they're based. Then they will be taken out. I'm calling my director to get a detachment of marines down here.”

“Yes, sir,” Fajie said. “You can depend on me.”

Stonal was hoping for something impressive when he walked into the crypt. New computators, their magnetic spools spinning fast. Big exotic instruments clustered around the Commonwealth machine. Dramatic, dynamic progress. Faustina had certainly sounded animated enough on the phone.

Instead there was the maser, which looked like a fat telescope fixed to the end of a hospital X-ray machine. It wasn't even plugged in; big coils of cable lay on the floor next to its pedestal. Apart from that, all he could see was a small table with what looked like a homebuilt radio sitting on it. There was no casing, just a metal frame supporting naked electrical circuit boards and glowing cathode tubes. Faustina was standing beside it. She was the only person in the crypt.

“Where is everyone?” he asked. The advanced science division normally had about twenty technicians and researchers in the crypt.

“I have them working in our other laboratories this morning.”

“And the reason for that…?”

“Is for
security,
” she said, as if trying out the word for the first time. “This is possibly a little sensitive. Politically, that is. I may be wrong, of course.”

Now Stonal was deeply curious; Faustina simply didn't do
political,
at any level. “When you called me, you said you'd made progress.”

“I said there had been a development,” she countered.

“Please, no semantics. What's happened?”

“We were calibrating the maser when I noticed some interference.”

“From the machine?”

“Yes. The emissions were very fast and very regular, operating in the microwave band, not the link frequencies the Eliters use—which is what we'd expect from Commonwealth technology. I had a theory.” She rested her hand on the newly assembled radio apparatus. With a rather too-knowing smile, she flicked a toggle switch. Cleared her throat portentously and picked up a microphone. “Are you receiving me?”

“I can hear you,” a voice replied from the circular speaker fixed to the contraption's frame.

Stonal gave the Commonwealth machine a shocked look. “Is that…?”

Faustina nodded, her smile insufferably proud. “Oh, yes.” She held out the microphone. “Try it.”

He took the microphone. “Hello?”

“Greetings, human. We come in peace. Take me to your leader so I may serve you.”

“What?”

“Fried or baked?”

“Uh—?”

“Serve, get it? That's a first-contact joke. Mind you, it is several thousand years old, and probably wasn't all that funny back then, either. So I guess the old ones aren't always the best ones after all.”

Stonal gave Faustina a bewildered glance; this was so not part of any scenario he'd rehearsed in his mind.

She just shrugged. “Think of it as a very smart and precocious thirteen-year-old.”

“I heard that.”

He brought the microphone up to his lips. “What are you?”

“You're looking at a custom-built life support pod with enhanced medical capabilities. In other words, I keep people alive in space emergencies.”

“Custom-built? In the human Commonwealth?”

“Correct.”

“Uracus!”

“That's your local bad-god, right?”

“Uracus was…a dangerous part of the Void.”

“Well, thank crap we're not there anymore, huh?”

“Are you alive?”

“Ah, a philosophical question. Okay: I was born human. My thoughts were placed in this machine for safekeeping after my body started to be eggsumed. So you tell me if I'm a living thing. Personally, I think I'd pass the Turing test with ease.”

“The what?”

“It's a test to examine an entity for sentience.”

“Wait—you were eggsumed?”

“Yes, all of us were. Except for Laura, of course. Nigel managed to rescue her.”

“You knew Mother Laura?” he whispered in awe. “Who are you?”

“Joey Stein. Hyperspace theorist, at your service.”

“You were one of Laura's companions in the Forest!”

“Is there an echo in here? Yes. I was trapped in a timeloop for three millennia, then jailbreaked just in time to get the shit kicked out of me by the quantumbuster. If there are any media companies still active back in the Commonwealth, they're gonna be bidding trillions for my story.”

“So you've been watching us from space since the Great Transition?”

“As best I could. Plenty of my sensors were damaged in the blast. Plus, I collided with a Tree, and stuck to it.”

“Thirty-seven-eighty-eight-D,” Stonal said quickly.

“That's the one.”

“It was you. You diverted the Liberty missile.”

“Yep. Got it to strike where it would do the most good. Smashed that fucker apart like it was made of glass.”

“And flew down to Bienvenido afterward.”

“
Flew
is a bit of an exaggeration.
Plummet
is closer. I had a tiny bit of thrust left, so the impact didn't break me apart.”

“And you brought
her
with you,” Stonal said coldly. The wily friendliness of the machine was starting to annoy him.

“Yes.”

“To subvert our whole society. I should have you dropped into the deepest ocean, or buried at the bottom of a mine shaft.”

“Whoa there, big fella. Nobody's subverting anything. I exist to sustain my cargo's life, period.”

“You gave her to an Eliter.”

“You mean young Florian? He was the only human answering my distress beacon. He said this government was a dictatorship, that you persecute anyone with functioning macrocellular clusters.”

“We do not persecute them. We have laws that they constantly challenge. They claim they are better than us. If we drop our guard, they would rule us like the Captains of old.”

“Bad history, huh?”

“Very. Who did you bring to this world? What is her purpose in coming here?”

“Paula? She's a high-ranking Commonwealth diplomat from the alien contact bureau. Nigel brought her along in case he needed her to negotiate with the local government.”

“A diplomat? He should have brought her to life while he was here. His legacy is not favorable.”

“Got you out of the Void, didn't he?”

“Not everyone would agree that is a good thing.”

“You and I are going to have to differ on that.”

“What will she do?”

“Help you. Without prejudice.”

“That bothers me. Can you contact her? She should help the legitimate government, not Eliters. They are radicals.”

“If you took me up to the roof and she was in the city, I could link to her. But apart from that, no.”

“Then what use are you?”

“From a practical standpoint, none at all. However, I do have lots of technical information in my memory. That should be useful to someone.”

“Weapons, you mean?”

“Yes, but I would need guarantees that you'd only use them against Fallers. There are ethical issues to consider before I hand over weapons of mass destruction to people I can't veto.”

“The weapons we have kill Fallers quite effectively already, thank you.”

“Glad to hear it. And congratulations on nuking the Trees. Your spaceships are doing a fine job, there.”

Stonal narrowed his eyes to regard the machine thoughtfully. “I have trouble believing you. You have an answer for everything. You are too glib.”

“Listen, pal, I've waited two hundred and fifty-seven years. I can wait another two fifty, no sweat. This isn't a biological body; I have no time imperative.”

“That means what, exactly?”

“I don't get bored.”

“I am curious now. What are you waiting for?”

“You keep this society static, right, you and your government pals? That makes it easy to control, to maintain your own status.”

Stonal glanced at Faustina, who was frowning as if that was not something she'd considered before. “Our society has evolved to stability,” he said genially. “I believe that to be an achievement that should not be cast aside.”

“But it will be. When all the Trees are gone, blown up by your Liberty missions, you will be free of the Fallers and that will trigger massive change. Trust me: History is littered with revolutionary transformation mechanisms. I can give you the cultural anthropology lectures, if you like.”

“No thank you. Please explain how this will affect you. You are a machine that has fulfilled its function.”

“My primary function, yes. But once Bienvenido regains contact with the Commonwealth, these memories will be re-lifed.”

“What do you mean, re-lifed?”

“They'll grow me a new body and download my memories into it. I'll be born again: re-lifed.”

“Great Giu,” Faustina whispered.

“I'd do it myself,” the machine continued, “except I haven't got my own genome in store. But there are copies back on Earth.”

“You await life, then?” Stonal asked. “I'm talking to an…embryo?”

“Interesting angle, but I'll go with it. And it will happen. After the Fallers are gone, your socioeconomic development will continue along more normal lines. It may take a couple of centuries, but you will have starflight again; hell, I can even supply you with the blueprints. I have all that Commonwealth scientific knowledge in my memory—hyperdrive, immortality, fusion power, neural processors, everything. I can cut the development time from Liberty rockets to transgalactic starships down to a few decades.”

Stonal turned to Faustina. “Please leave.”

“What?”

“Leave.” He didn't elaborate, merely waited for compliance. She gave him an annoyed glance, then walked out. He waited until the door was closed behind her before bringing the microphone up to his face again. “We're not going to win.”

“Excuse me?”

“Against the Fallers. We are not going to win. The Trees are irrelevant now. The nests are too well established down here, and multiplying. You will not be re-lifed in the Commonwealth. Indeed, once they have devoured us, they may break you open and learn how to build your precious starships. They will be able to fly to every galaxy, including the Commonwealth!”

“Nothing can get through this force field.”

“Indeed, but how long will it last? Another thousand years? And after that, what then?”

“I'm a machine. I lack the biological imperative to survive.”

“How nice for you. What does that mean?”

“If it comes to that, I can self-destruct without a qualm. They will never retro-engineer me, or gain access to my files.”

“So you have failed your own Turing test then. You are content to abandon us while we are overrun by aliens. That is not a human trait.”

“No, damnit, that's not what I said!”

“We need help, machine—Joey—whatever you truly are. Urgent help. Paula's arrival may well have triggered our downfall.”

“And I can give you that help. Hell, Paula will be delighted to help you.”

“But it must be on our terms.”

“You want to try that Turing test yourself, buddy?”

“I propose an exchange. You tell me what you want and I'll provide it. In return, you give me access to Commonwealth technology to identify and kill Fallers, but the detector mechanism must be one all humans can use, not just Eliters.”

“What I want is for humans to win. To achieve that, you're going to have to compromise.”

“In what fashion?”

“The kind of sensors you're talking about require knowledge and manufacturing systems that can lead to other devices being built by the same methods. Once the information gets out there, you can't bring it back. Universal law; data wants to be free.”

“Spin-offs,” Stonal said in disapproval.

“You got it. So you're going to have to allow your citizens a little taste of freedom in order for any of you to survive. Best I got.”

“How radical would a viable Faller detector be?”

“I'm not sure. I'd need to give all the data to a group of your scientists and see what actually works in the field. Research and development, we call it.”

“How many scientists?”

“Scientists and the technicians who'd build the equipment—a dozen or so, at least, for a pilot project. Do you have that many you can trust?”

“Possibly.” Stonal let his gaze wander around the crypt with its plethora of ancient Commonwealth machines. The advanced science division had worked out a great many aspects of the technology inside each gadget, and none of their results had ever gotten out. “I need to raise this with the prime minister before we proceed any further.”

“So you've managed to keep buck passing alive these last three thousand years? Well done, you.”

The safe house's living room table had been cleared of all the paperwork from the PSR office. Now it just held files relating to the
Gothora III
—more than a hundred of them, ranging from a four-centimeter-thick folder of official certification from the state maritime office down to single invoices.

Chaing read through them stoically. His eye must be playing up again, because he was having to squint at a lot of the pages.

“Food,” Jenifa said, in a confident tone.

“What about it?”

“They're taking too much.” She patted a pile of files. “Crew of fourteen, right? The amount they've ordered for this voyage will last them a couple of years.”

Chaing stopped trying to read a PSR file on Dransol, the
Gothora III
's engineering chief. “How far can they travel in that time?”

“Anywhere,” she replied simply. “They normally have enough supplies on board for about a month's sailing, and then top up at each port. Sometimes they go as far west as Varlan, though it's rare. Eastward, they don't go beyond Caraltown. They're strictly south coast.”