Resolution (33 page)

Deirdre tapped the desktop. ‘The thing is, I found ways to do something new: to sugar-coat memetic presentations in ways that make them attractive to the most infectious nodes, the trendsetters, which
guarantees the ideas will spread
through the target population.’

‘Oh, shit.’

‘I’m talking propaganda raised to levels no-one’s seen before.’

Super-propaganda. Deirdre’s work wasn’t just brilliant, it was dangerous.

‘Professor Guillermi’s muttering about seconding me to Rand-Miti or UNSA without even finishing my degree. This work would become a dissertation which security-cleared Caltech supervisors would examine. I’d be going straight to Ph.D.!’

‘With a thesis that won’t be made public.’

‘Right.
That
practice has been going for centuries, too. Didn’t you know?’

‘I ... Deirdre? Why UNSA? What’s memetic engineering got to do with them?’

‘So far the offworld settlements are just that... Small settlements. But terraformers are already spreading Terran bacteria. Eventually, some worlds will have habitable regions.’

‘With large populations.’

‘Which UNSA would like to control.’

‘But... They’re going to end up designing entire
societies.’

‘Yeah, well...’ Deirdre clasped her hands on top of her head, leaned back in her chair. ‘They’re gonna try.’

Outside, gentle rain began to patter once more.

‘I’ve an idea,’ said Kian. ‘Let’s go to the boardwalk.’

‘In this—?’ She stopped, nodded. ‘I’ll get my slicker.’

‘Meet you outside in ten.’

Grey waves chopped and swirled beneath the timbers. Kian and Deirdre leaned against a rail with a solitary yellow-billed gull for company, while overhead a camera-drone bearing the SMPD logo struggled to maintain position in the gusty wind.

‘I wonder how long it can stay up.’ Kian was eyeing the drone.

‘Men worry about that, I hear.’

‘Ha. You know,’ Kian said, ‘there are genes that have identical effects in humans and tomatoes, yet the first time they cloned a black cat, the clone turned out tortoiseshell. And the so-called educated public didn’t even pick up on it, much less digest the implications.’

‘Tortoiseshell?’

‘What you call over here, um ... calico, right? It’s not always obvious what’s a fundamental concept. Sex is common—’

‘Yes, darling Kian.’

‘—but if that gull’s a boy, he’s got ZZ chromosomes, not XY Different mechanism.’

‘You still worried about your mechanism?’

‘Yes. No. Jesus ...’

Deirdre laid her hand on his arm. ‘I wrote a paper about gender differentiation when I was twelve. I’ve
always
been different. I just thought... eventually that would be OK, you know?’

‘You’re worried they can bring pressure to bear? The authorities, I mean.’

‘I don’t know, Kian. I don’t know.’

In the air, the camera-drone remained aloft. Perhaps it was surveilling them right now.

‘You think
you’re
different?’ Kian hesitated, then reached up and prised away his contact lenses. ‘Really?’

Deirdre stared at his obsidian eyes and shivered, just as the gull launched itself from the rail and swooped down towards the rushing sea.

‘I’ll show you from different.’ Kian pointed with his chin. ‘See there?’

There was a split second during which the tiniest of golden glimmers inside his eyes caught Deirdre’s attention. Then she looked up at the drone.

Feel it.

Kian focused.

Synchronize.

Subverted.

Now.

Aloft, the drone jerked, then coughed dark smoke. For a few seconds it struggled, then it tilted to one side, hung in place for a moment, then slid sideways and down, towards the waves.

Kian turned away, hearing the splash, cursing himself.

Shit. What have I done?

He began to walk.

Rain and seaspray plastered Deirdre’s hair against her forehead, and she blinked to keep water from her eyes as she followed, caught hold, and tugged Kian’s sleeve, pulling him to a halt.

‘You don’t get rid of me that easily, pal.’

‘I’m sorry, Deirdre. I shouldn’t have done that.’

Gently, she tapped him on the forehead.

‘Bad boy. Now let’s go home.’

‘I don’t... All right.’

Wind whipped around Kian and Deirdre as they left the boardwalk, and they leaned into it, heading towards the battened-down Santa Monica strip, combining their weights against the random buffeting of elements which neither knew nor cared about the existence of two tiny individuals caught inside turbulent patterns they could barely perceive.

<>

~ * ~

22

NULAPEIRON

AD 3423-3426

It was a time of despair; it was a time of tightening resolve.

Two Standard Years passed quickly, though not easily: in planning, drawing together alliances, outmanoeuvring political enemies among the Action Leagues and elsewhere; and in research, as Tom brought the best technicians to his floating home, the kilometre-wide stone sphere once known as Guillaume Globe. From its apex, creamy gases spewed, as it continued its centuries-old terraforming task, one sphere among thousands in Nulapeiron’s skies.

Then there was Fire Watch.

In realm after realm, internal surveillance organizations sprang up, often with remits which hid their true machinations from the Liege Lords and Ladies who approved their creation. Some of those Fire Watch bodies kept to the purpose Tom envisaged: watching for signs of the Anomaly. Others were more inclined to function as instruments of repression, quashing commoners’ movements for emancipation, tightening the punishments for minor infractions of the law.

Tom’s missing left arm hurt as never before.

In all of this, Viscount Trevalkin’s motives were unclear to Tom: Trevalkin was a reactionary, but one who hated the original Blight with a vengeance (the one thing that Tom would accept they had in common). Tom’s head ached when he tried to track the global state of allegiances and betrayals at any time.

And he missed Elva more than he could say.

From the balcony which ringed the sphere close to the apex, Tom would stare down at the slow-passing landscape: quilted patchworks of heaths and meadows; sere blue-grey desert wastes; the blinding Quicksilver Sea.

On occasion, Eemur’s Head ventured out with Tom, lowering her lev-tray to the stone balustrade.
Nice world.
Sometimes Tom could not tell whether a thought was hers or his.
Too bad we don’t know how to save it.

The lev-tray had been Elva’s idea, and she had sent it along with Eemur herself.

Meanwhile, in the core levels of the sphere, techs worked on hyper-dimensional research - a prime goal being to decide whether there were detectable resonances that would reveal the Anomaly’s presence in the world. Other teams attempted to reassemble the near-destroyed cyborg, the Jack known as Axolon.

Strange visions swam through Tom’s nightmares. Increasingly often when he woke, there was blazing sapphire tracery that faded quickly, and was gone.