Dark Tempest (12 page)

He selected the left door and his guess was right. The door opened into a small chamber, with cases stacked against the far wall. Crouching before the pile, he lifted the catch on the top case and raised the lid. Its contents had gone, but a vestige remained of a bitter, desiccated smell that burnt the membranes of his nostrils, and a few small, uneven lumps of a chalky material hid in the crevices of its lining. Moving it aside, he opened one of the lower cases. This one was not empty. The smell was stronger, and the box was half filled with paper-wrapped half-inch cubes. Cubes from the right side of the case were missing, its levels eaten down into in square graduations. Wolff smiled to himself. How easy was it to obtain conurin on demand? Not likely very easy. This drug was expensive. Archers and people such as the Castellan Viprion were among the few able to afford it. Jed was addicted to it, would kill for it, or would turn to killing in order to obtain it. Examining the other cases, he found one more empty and three full.

Wolff dragged the four cases back down the corridor. He hid the three full ones behind an esculent canister crate, wedging them in against the wall. It didn’t matter where they were. As long as they were all missing she would assume he had taken them, and as long as he had one in his possession when the time came for him to return, that would be incentive enough for her.

He turned back to the door-locking mechanism, pulling the short circuit away from the contacts. Using a bottle with a nib attached, he joined the broken circuits with two blobs of a blue ionic solution. Wolff took a step back, shaking an aerosol can, and sprayed the panel. As soon as the solution came into contact with the spray, a redox reaction started up, fizzling and smoking. The solvent and byproducts evaporated away, leaving a solid deposit of copper to complete the circuit. The door slid shut and Wolff melted the cover back on with a wide laser setting.

Gathering the case and his jacket, he headed back to the airlock.

Wolff leant into the chill air of the docking pipe. “Morran?”

With the assistance of his vision-enchancing spectacles, Rh’Arrol’s warm shape resolved, crouched on the floor with aer knees bent over aer back and appearing to be asleep below the lip of the docking aperture.

“Awaken, mistress of foul,” Wolff taunted, reaching down and touching the furry skin beneath the jointed neck armour. The morran recoiled and shrieked at the touch.

“Don’t touch my neck!” Rh’Arrol warbled. “Never!” The echoes of the scream were still dying away along the length of the dendrite.

“I wanted to ask you if you would consider looking after this case.”

Rh’Arrol’s cilia flushed scarlet, and their beating lines were a strange spectacle to behold in the darkness. “I might.”

“It is a drug. If I don’t come back within the hour, you may sell it for profit.”

“You wishes it returned afterward? And how might you encourages me not to sell it before the hour is up?”

“You don’t like it here, do you, Rh’Arrol?” Wolff struggled to pronounce the first consonant. “I give you my word that I will secure your access off this station and your safe journey to a location of your choosing.”

Rh’Arrol’s cilia beat more rapidly, and took on a lime-green hue. The transition was quite beautiful to watch. “That offer is acceptable.” Ae reached out with two tentacles and coiled them around the handle of the case. Wolff released it, and the morran dragged it back against the opposite wall and sat on it.

“Within the hour, Arrol.” Wolff checked his clock and went back into the
Shamrock
. He switched off his disruptor device as he entered the corridor.

He found Jed sitting back on the bridge in her more familiar immaculate and fully clothed state. She’d changed her attire from the ornate black tunic patterned with red to a very similar saffron-yellow patterned one. Fringes of fine gold tassels hung from the hems and elbow-length sleeves over the thicker, tight-fitting black fabric of her trousers and shirt, and from the sash around her waist. An IR-UV mono-visor was fixed to one side of her cranial band, and her symmetrical heat-styled hair stood out bushily beneath the skullcap where it terminated just above her ears, and protruded on either side of her forehead where the cap came to a point and connected with the band above her eyebrows. The impression was one of thin severity.

She looked at him for a moment—with a disgusted sort of expression, he thought—but said nothing then looked away.

Wolff felt a sudden fear–he might well smell of conurin. Jed had a very salient sense of smell, as he’d noticed already. He hadn’t touched any of the stuff, but that wasn’t to say that dust carried on the air hadn’t permeated his clothing.

His fears were dispelled when the Archer spoke. “Your enquiries bear fruit?”

“No, I could learn nothing. The potentate of this station is a despotic fool.”

“I would not know. I trade not in this part of the system, but in the Kuiper stations where the raw ores are mined and the ships assembled.”

“He controls his subjects.” Wolff paused, trying to find a lucid way to express what he’d seen. “He inflicts terrible pain on those who cross him, a pain in the mind, as if he’s psychic.”

Jed turned to look at him, and he was delighted by her expression of disgust and the foolish disgrace he’d made of himself before her. “Are you not aware of the Pagan Atheism doctrine of Steel and Flame?”

“That was what I told him, but I have seen it with my own eyes. I have felt it. He unleashed his power on me when I dismissed what I saw as illusion.”

“The Universe is a rational place governed by cardinal law. All force comprises energy or matter, flame and steel. There are no psychic, no telepathic, no omniscient, nor magic. Such are the drivel of imbeciles.”

“I myself refute such idiocy, but I saw what could only contradict logic.”

“What did you see, Gerald Wolff? What precisely?”

“He had a Lunatic on the ground in agony with one glance, myself and the—morrans—untouched, then I, crippled by a blinding, deafening pain. And then the morrans.”

Jed took only a second to compose herself and her reply. “The subjects can be explained quite simply. A small circuit is implanted into the brainstem. It can be operated remotely, and when it is it discharges a current into the central nervous system—an effective neural whip. You do not have such a chip, and this also explains how they were affected while you were left untouched. I imagine the pain that afflicted you was caused by ultrasound of a particular frequency, which disrupted your brain function. The morrans either have circuitry implants operating on a separate signal or their brains require a different frequency to cease proper function.”

Wolff looked at her levelly. “Oh.”

Jed stared straight back into his eyes. “See that it is perfectly simple, Gerald Wolff, if you are prepared to apply some lateral thought.”

Wolff stood and turned his back on her, standing before the viewport and staring out at the inside of the shield. She was laughing at him, inwardly. Good. He’d given her a false sense of security. After all, he had her conurin.

His glance lit upon some objects lying on the console. He recognised some of them as belonging to Taggart. Jed was doing something behind the seating. Slowly, so as not to alert the
Shamrock
, he reached out with the fingers of his left hand, and swept one of the small devices from the console into his jacket pocket.

“Have you seen this book before?” she said when he turned.

Wolff looked at the small tome, bound in a dark and worn cover engraved with a stylistic image of an owl in a flowering tree. “It’s the Teachings of the Pagan Atheist, is it not?”

“You might do well to read it!” Jed snapped, and she threw it onto the bridge seating.

“I cannot read.”

Jed’s face took on the twisted expression of incredulity. “How can one not read? You can speak, can you not?” Her voice was filled with derision.

“I can’t recognise the symbols and relate them to spoken words. I was never taught.”

“But the computers! Computers use syntax based on words! How is it that computers will obey your commands? How do you even input those commands into a computer when you cannot read or understand them?”

Wolff shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“You are an irrational idiot,” Jed dismissed him, as though being an irrational idiot was some kind of constant that should be applied where Cardinal Laws and Steel and Flame did not provide adequate explanation.

Wolff glanced at the book again. “So who was the Pagan Atheist, and what does he or she say?”

“Nobody knows who the Pagan Atheist was.” Jed sneered. “Only that it existed more than four thousand years ago.”

“
It existed
?”

“It need not have been a man.”

“A morran, then?”

“Fool! Morrans were not known to man four thousand years ago! A computer!”

“I know computers,” said Wolff, “and computers do not write religions.”

“It is not a religion! Sit you here, oaf!” Jed pointed vehemently at the seating and picked up the book. “Look here,” she continued, opening the book at the first page. “These words do say,
One cannot live honourably by a Code, unless the code was derived and written by oneself
.”

“And that’s the first line of the book?”

“Yes! Can you not see that is what is written here?”

“I can see only lines and marks upon a page. One cannot live honourably by a code unless the code was derived and written by oneself? But doesn’t that mean ‘heed not what I have to say, and make up your own instead?’”

“Yes, it does! That’s the point of it! I see you are not completely stupid!”

“But isn’t it supposed to be about Steel and Flame and all of that? Isn’t that a bit contradictory? It’s like a disclaimer stating the whole book’s duff.”

“Pagan Atheism is oxymoronic. That’s the very root of it. The whole point of Pagan Atheism is to be rational and to believe only what you know and have proven to be true. Steel and Flame is the next line.” Jed leant over Wolff to read it, and ran her finger patronisingly under the words. “
I will not be deceived and corrupted by His lies. I will be of Steel and Flame, of all logic in its purity, and He cannot touch me with his feeble words and sentiments
.”

“Who is he? And what does that mean?”

“He is never named in the book and is always called the Antagonist by those who read the Teachings. The Antagonist is just someone who tried to deceive the Pagan Atheist with His words and illusions, things that are not real proven truths. The Pagan Atheist believed only what he or she knew to be true and what he or she knew was just and was right, and He could not corrupt the Pagan Atheist.”

“So Steel and Flame means to believe nothing unless you see proof?”

“Steel and Flame means matter and energy. It is the central tenet. The universe is made of matter and energy, nothing more, and is thus rational. To be of Steel and Flame means to be incorruptible of mind. To be of Steel and Flame is to evaluate objectively, to question everything, to know only reason, and through reason, to see truth.”

Jed’s finger rested at the bottom of the second block of writing, above one final block. “That’s two. There’s a third one here.”

“They’re called paragraphs,” said Jed. “They are this first, second and third great quotes of the Pagan Atheist. The Third Quote says,
Humanity is Nature’s pinnacle. Knowledge is the one true ambition, Equilibrium the one true harmony
. It means that through knowledge, questioning and understanding, the Pagan Atheist achieves absolution. Through reflection, meditation, understanding and acceptance, the spiritual aspects of Pagan Atheism are attained. A respect for scientific discipline, the forces of the Universe both living and inert, and the acceptance and understanding of Equilibrium.”

“What’s Equilibrium?”

Jed’s eyes widened. “Surely you are not so uneducated that you know not Equilibrium?”

Wolff shrugged. “I must be.”

Jed sighed, dropping the book back on the seat. “Everything in the Universe is in equilibrium. Equilibrium keeps this circumfercirc from disintegrating and crashing into Satigenaria. Equilibrium keeps stars burning and ecosystems in balance. Equilibria keep you and me alive. Equilibrium is the state of balance in the mind of man and probably something you have yet to experience.”

Wolff stretched out his legs and sighed. “Well, thank you for that insight, Jed.” He turned back and indicated to the door to the main corridor. “I’m going back out. I’ll see you later.”

* * * *

Jed stood as he left the bridge, watching him retreat into the corridor while feeling a satisfying disdain.

I think not.

Chapter 7

Confrontation

Thee who purges strength from the stronger,

He who bites the hand that feeds him,

Might tarry, beggar, a little longer,

And face the wrath that speeds him.

“You said you were going to get me a ride out of here,” Rh’Arrol complained as ae followed Wolff down one of Carck-Westmathlon’s corridors.