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Authors: John Meaney

BOOK: Absorption
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Roger did not like the glance she gave him.
 
She can’t suspect.
 
‘Pilots can’t teleport,’ said Alisha. ‘If they could, there’d be at least a rumour of it by now.’
 
‘Which implies, my dear, that an ability to function in mu-space is not sufficient. But you’re aware of the macroscopic superposition of Zajinet mentality. Parallel identities in every individual.’
 
‘Um, sure.’ Alisha’s eyelids flickered as she accessed data. ‘Very . . . different.’
 
‘If Pilots had minds like that’ - Weissmann smiled at Roger - ‘perhaps they could do the same. Or perhaps they couldn’t. We truly don’t know.’
 
‘But the Zajinets transport themselves among the Calabi-Yau dimensions?’
 
‘It’s the only hypothesis that remains. They don’t leave our universe, they don’t travel through the four dimensions we perceive, so it’s only the hyperdimensions that are left to them.’
 
‘If we could do the same—’
 
‘Wouldn’t that be wonderful? But there’s no hope of that, not for many centuries. The research is far beyond us.’
 
‘Well . . . Thank you for your time, ma’am. Thank you so much.’
 
‘Just a moment. Here.’ Weissmann gestured, and Alisha’s eyes widened. ‘Those are monographs that we’ve written here in the Institute. Feel free to quote from them. With attribution, naturally.’
 
‘Oh, gosh. Ms Weissmann, this is far more than I expected.’
 
‘Well, I like you.’ She stood up behind her desk. ‘Let me know how you get on.’
 
‘Sure.’
 
‘Thank you,’ said Roger.
 
‘I’ll see you both out.’
 
Partway along the corridor, Weissmann paused before a display case.
 
‘Fragments of a mu-space ship. Part of the hull.’
 
‘A Zajinet ship?’ asked Alisha.
 
Roger already knew the answer - to him, the material clearly did not come from a Pilots’ vessel.
 
‘Absolutely,’ said Weissmann. ‘The poor thing crash-landed in a hypozone, nearly twenty years ago, just after it departed from the Zajinet embassy.’
 
‘Of course. Was that when they withdrew their delegation?’
 
‘Embarrassing, but yes. They thought we could not guarantee their safety, which perhaps the accident demonstrated, but it was their ship that malfunctioned. It’s also why our little institute is such a quiet backwater. Since their species stopped visiting Fulgor, people’s interest has waned.’
 
Roger pointed to the next display case.
 
‘Is that from the same ship? It looks different.’
 
‘Ah, you have sharp eyes.’ Weissmann smiled at him for a little too long. ‘This is a much older sample, from Earth.’
 
‘How old?’ asked Alisha.
 
‘Let me just say . . . Rather older than you might think. But we’re still working on that.’
 
Alisha touched Weissmann’s fist, all very formal.
 
‘That’s our cue to leave. Thank you so much again.’
 
‘You’re welcome.’ Weissmann looked at Roger. ‘Do come back, whenever you like.’
 
Roger followed Alisha out of the building.
 
I need to talk to Dad.
 
Then he half-tripped, managing to right himself.
 
‘You look exhausted, Roger.’
 
‘Only because I am.’
 
‘So here’s an aircab.’ Alisha pointed at a descending vehicle. ‘Let’s get straight back to the house.’
 
Sleep would be good. He could talk to Dad in the morning.
 
‘Let’s do that.’
 
They climbed inside, the aircab ascended, and Roger closed his eyes.
 
Alisha had to wake him when they reached the student house.
 
THIRTY
 
FULGOR, 2603 AD
 
Stella Weissmann, seated behind her desk, looked at the four holo images surrounding her in Skein. Their communication was realtime, using ordinary speech - enciphered, but able to be replayed to non-Luculenti should the need arise.
 
Superintendent Sunadomari said: ‘
You agree Roger Blackstone is a Pilot?
’
 
‘From his reaction to my words,’ Weissmann replied, ‘I give it a ninety-seven per cent near certainty. He recognized the Siberian fragment was different from the other.’
 
The building’s memory contained full recordings. If necessary, anyone with sufficient authority could browse them to check her conclusions.
 
Commander Maria Petrova said: ‘
I’m checking the father’s activities right now. He’s been in place for such a long time. If he’s a Pilot, he’s no ordinary one.
’
 
‘A sleeper agent?’
 
‘
No, a fully active agent-in-place, in my opinion
.’
 
‘
So what we’re conducting is a counterintelligence operation.
’ Sunadomari was frowning. ‘
How does this fit with the murders?
’
 
‘Perhaps they compromised Blackstone’s cover.’
 
‘
Unlikely.
’ This was Luculentus Harvey Bashir. ‘
It’s a rather noticeable way of maintaining a low profile
.’
 
‘The deaths are almost unreported in Skein’ - Weissmann nodded towards Sunadomari - ‘thanks to Keinosuke here.’
 
‘
Agreed,
’ said Bashir. ‘
But the killers could not have counted on that.
’
 
‘
You still think it’s a group?
’ asked Sunadomari.
 
‘
Eight of the victims died at the same instant, pretty much,
’ said Colonel Keller.
‘Think how much more capability that implies, taking them down at the same time, compared to eight or more killers working in coordination.
’
 
‘The thought of eight people able to strike through Skein is pretty awful.’
 
‘
We don’t ignore a scenario just because we don’t like it.
’
 
‘True. So what happens next?’
 
Bashir’s image turned towards Sunadomari’s.
 
‘
You’ve got full surveillance on the boy?
’
 
‘
SatScan, building systems, and watch teams on the whole family.
’
 
‘And this Rafaella Stargonier?’ asked Weissmann.
 
Commander Maria Petrova was frowning.
 
‘
We don’t know where she is.
’
 
‘Excuse me?’
 
‘
She’s dropped out of surveillance entirely.
’
 
‘How can she do that?’
 
‘
If we knew, maybe we could find her.
’
 
‘Damn it. So, everyone, presumably we’re done for now. When do we hook up again?’
 
All eyes, real and holo, turned towards Colonel Keller’s image.
 
‘
Oh-nine-hundred, or when something significant happens. Agreed ?
’
 
There were four nods.
 
‘
Then out.
’
 
Stella Weissmann was alone in her office. She lowered her chin, closed her eyes, and relaxed into trance, letting herself go deep, allowing the submerged parts of her extended mind to integrate all her perceptions, to allow new insights to arise.
 
Five minutes later, she looked up.
 
‘Hello, Stella Weissmann. Or should I say—’
 
A tall Luculenta with black hair was standing on the threshold.
 
‘—
Luculenta
Stella Weissmann?’
 
The stranger was Rafaella Stargonier.
 
No!
 
Weissmann tried to form the trigger thought activating defenceware inside her plexweb and the room’s inbuilt weaponry. But it was too late, as vampire code burst through her interfaces, ravened through her nervous system, and heisenberged her mind to destruction.
 
Her universe was set to null.
 
 
Rafaella knelt down beside the corpse and turned the head. No trace remained of studs or wires, the normal signs of upraise. Either someone had performed excellent surgery, or Weissmann had been upraised with this appearance all along, meaning she had planned a career in the intelligence services even then, with the collusion of the Via Lucis Institute.
 
The woman’s torn, fragmented memories would tell everything; but for now, Rafaella needed to keep them brimming inside her internal cache, sandboxed from the rest of her mind, because for several seconds during integration with another persona, she was vulnerable to attack.
 
Soon, even that limitation would be gone.
 
But at least she had newness waiting to suck into her. She had been so hungry, after relinquishing her opportunity in Parallaville, knowing her current configuration was almost full. She needed more plexnodes, to increase her capacity to absorb new minds.
 
Preferably without the limitations that had led to her predecessor’s demise.
 
‘Stella Weissmann, you were a
bad
girl. Keeping secrets.’
 
During the transfer, she had picked up that much.
 
‘Let’s see where you’ve kept it, the poor thing.’
 
She went out to the corridor, looked at the flagstones one by one, then formed a command. The floor swirled like a whirlpool, and she stepped into the disturbance.
 
‘Clever.’
 
Closing her eyes, she let the quickstone take her down - three metres, five, an estimated ten metres before it lowered her into clear space. The material sucked back into the ceiling.
 
She was in a subterranean chamber, far larger than she had expected. But then half of it was walled off, divided by a massive transparent barrier. And beyond it—
 
‘Well, look at you.’
 
—floated a lattice of crimson light, darkened here and there by two decades of torture, interrogation that had failed to yield anything about the matter she was interested in.
 
‘Weissmann and her little pals understood enough to cripple you, didn’t they? To keep you from teleporting out?’
 
The Zajinet prisoner twisted and roiled, backing away in its cell.
 
‘That’s right. I’m interested in Calabi-Yau dimensions, and how to send energy along them.’
 
Now, the Zajinet was blazing with desperate light.
 
‘Twenty years of torture, and they got nothing from you.’
 
The alien’s spilled light turned Rafaella’s face the colour of blood.
 
‘Amateurs,’ she said.
 
THIRTY-ONE
 
EARTH, 1927-1930 A.D.
 
Gavriela immersed herself in studying. By the time she graduated, her brother Erik had married Ilse and moved to Amsterdam; but Father and Mother resisted her cajoling, and remained in Berlin. She could stare at the complex dots and smears of an X-ray diffraction image, and from it deduce a crystal’s structure without working through the maths. But deciphering her parents’ thoughts and motivation were of another order of difficulty, and far beyond her.
 
You would think that the older a person was, the more they would recognize that the world could change, and sometimes very fast.
 
She began to teach students privately, as she worked for her doctorate. The atomic theory that owed so much to Einstein - who remained her hero - was one of the great intellectual achievements of humanity. What she wanted was to learn the secrets of the universe.

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