Nemesis (72 page)
Authors: Alex Lamb
‘Take care of Will,’ Ira said softly. ‘I’ve been trying to do that for most of my life. It’s your job now.’
‘I will,’ said Ann.
Unexpectedly, he hugged her.
‘Now get out of here before I start crying,’ he said. ‘And bring that miserable fucker back to me in one piece.’
22.3: MARK
Mark and Zoe sat together in the
Gulliver
’s lounge watching the carrier loading around them. Their cargo this time was the same as it had been a month ago: battleships, construction equipment and entire orbital habitats jammed full with people. This time, they’d been ordered to Wheeler, a colony close to New Panama desperately in need of defensive support. Within days of their arrival, Wheeler would have a higher population and better defences than New Panama boasted in its heyday.
Aboard one of the habitats, Mark noted, was the entire population of New York Tower Three, his former home. That realisation struck a curious nostalgic chord in him. All those people who’d been a part of his life hung just twenty kilometres away from him and didn’t even know he was there. They’d sat in the same meetings with him, looked out at the same dead water and woken to the smell of the same badly filtered air. None of them would ever set eyes on the Hudson again.
What would happen to the members of groups like Shamokin Justice? he wondered. Would they agree to leave their underground warrens and come peacefully? He doubted it. So maybe they’d inherit the Earth after all. And what about the New Yorkers – would they get along with the famously sanctimonious Wheeler colonists? He winced at the thought.
‘Containment is complete,’ said Zoe. ‘We’re ready to spin up.’
She floated over to his couch and curled up next to him as close as zero-gee would allow. He put his arm around her and smelled her hair. He still felt uncertain about their relationship. He savoured it but couldn’t trust it to persist yet. It was a thing born of adversity. As the pressure of events slowly subsided, would she still want to be with him?
He hoped so. When he was with her, he didn’t feel alone any more. He felt understood and accepted for the first time in his life. And that was so intoxicating he couldn’t have helped falling in love with her if he’d tried. But there was more to it than that. In retrospect, he knew he’d fallen irreversibly for Zoe in that moment outside of Britehaven when she’d shut down Sam’s plan from the cabin of the constructorbot. Her intelligence had been fierce and bright. Her rage had matched his perfectly. In the wake of the penitence boxes they weren’t likely to be a good fit for anyone but each other. And that suited him fine.
‘Do you think it’ll work – moving people around like this?’ he said.
‘I think it’s what we’re supposed to do,’ she replied, snuggling closer.
‘
Supposed
to? Is this part of your big Transcended theory?’
Zoe’s favourite topic of conversation since The Harvesting had been the Transcended and why they hadn’t directly intervened already. She still believed them responsible for everything the swarm had done. Mark wasn’t so sure.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That’s why they gave us all this stuff. The vacuum-drive, self-building habitats, all of it. It’s too much of a coincidence otherwise. To get so many useful technologies at once, just when we need them?’
Mark snorted. ‘I still say it’s a pretty funny way of trying to help. We might all be dead by next year.’
‘We won’t,’ she said. ‘There’s a plan to all of this. You’ll see. There’s a reason the Photurians haven’t attacked again. Just like there’s a reason their code was so weirdly easy to hack.’
‘Which is?’
Zoe shrugged. ‘No idea. I’m just sure it’ll be a good one.’
‘This is quite the religious conversion for a paranoid Vartian Institute agent, you realise.’
‘You always say that, but you can be optimistic and paranoid at the same time, you know. Just because they’re out to get you doesn’t mean they want you dead.’
Mark laughed.
Ash pinged them from the bridge. ‘Are we ready?’ he said. ‘I’m getting queries from the battle cruisers.’
‘Let’s go,’ said Zoe. ‘We have a future to build.’
Mark nodded and spread his mind out into the machinery of the carrier. The field built as they spun. The curious vacuum-envelope slid down. And on wings of liquid night, he lifted up his precious cargo and whisked it away to the stars.
23.1: WILL
Will woke on a bed of scarlet moss near a trickling stream. A thousand fairy chandeliers lit the roof far overhead. A soft, moist breeze tickled his skin. He sat up and rubbed his head. He felt fuzzy. There was something important he was supposed to remember, but he couldn’t recall what it was. He’d been angry. He’d made some kind of discovery that he had to share. He blinked. He couldn’t place it now.
Another Will walked up to him and peered down into his face. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Weird,’ said Will. ‘My memories are kind of messy. My interface doesn’t feel right.’
‘Do you remember the important thing?’ said the roboteer standing over him.
Will shook his head. ‘I can’t get it straight. Something about the planet, perhaps. Or how we got here.’
The standing Will smiled awkwardly at that. Because obviously they’d always been there.
Will peered up at the other version of himself. ‘Are there supposed to be two of us?’ he said.
Will Two gestured with open hands. ‘I’m not sure. I admit it was unexpected.’ He pointed across the meadow, towards the nearest junction. ‘Maybe we should go and ask them,’ he said.
Will sat up straight and squinted into the distance.
About half a kilometre away, a crowd of Wills had come together to talk.
‘They’re sharing memories, I think,’ said Will Two. ‘Trying to get this all sorted out.’
‘I guess there are a lot of us,’ said Will One.
‘It looks that way. A whole planetful, maybe. I’m pretty sure we’ll be able to solve it together.’
Will One nodded. ‘Makes sense.’
His doppelgänger gave him a hand up and together they walked down to join the waking throng.
Special thanks to Graham Lamb, Sarah Pinborough, my agent John Jarrold, the fantastic team at Gollancz, and to those generous insightful friends who helped me debug it all: Dave G, Kate, DeeDee, K, Shayla, James, Maciek, Tony and Dave S.
Also by Alex Lamb from Gollancz:
Roboteer
Copyright © Alex Lamb 2016
All rights reserved.
The right of Alex Lamb to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by 2016 in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in Great Britain in 2016 by
Gollancz
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
London, EC4Y 0DZ
An Hachette UK Company
This eBook first published in 2016 by Gollancz.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 1 473 20613 7
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.