Max still could not tell whether Admiral Kaltberg was retiring voluntarily or because she had lost some political game. Either way, there would be furious covert deals playing out right now, as cliques sought to put their own candidate in place, taking Kaltberg’s seat.
This would be interesting.
‘We decided to tell you in person’ - at the head of the table, Schenck gestured around his colleagues - ‘since you deserve to know. I can’t exaggerate how important you are to this Council.’
The statement was ambiguous, causing Max to smile. Schenck was a consummate game-player, and rarely spoke without thought.
‘Thank you for the compliment, sir.’
On one side of the table, two of the younger admirals, Whitwell and Asai, echoed Max’s smile. They were supporters of Kaltberg; and Max thought it might be worthwhile to spend some time with each of them in private, over the next few days.
‘So, that’s probably all we need you for.’ Schenck looked around the table. ‘Unless there’s anything else for Max?’
‘Not really,’ said Turnbull. ‘Oh, I saw you had an old friend visiting, Max.’
Admiral Kaltberg tilted her head. It might have meant nothing; Max took it for a warning.
‘Who was that, sir?’
‘Carl Blackstone and his family. We noted that you took the son - Roger, is it? - on a quick informal tour.’
‘That’s right.’ Max controlled his breathing, aligning all his mental resources. ‘It seemed like a good idea, given his father’s previous capabilities.’
‘You’re not saying you showed him the prisoner?’
There was no need to ask which one; but Turnbull would expect him to deny everything about the trip inside the Annexe.
‘I did in fact, sir. For several minutes.’
So Turnbull’s people - or more likely Schenck’s - had observed him meeting Roger on Borges Boulevard. But they could not have had surveillance inside the cell complex: he had triple-checked.
‘And what happened?’
‘Not a trace of the father’s former ability, I’m afraid.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘I kept him there for long enough. Carl would have started to grow uneasy after about two minutes. By four minutes, his intuition would have told him that something was wrong.’
‘And Roger showed no reaction?’
‘None, sir.’
The admirals were great psychological tacticians. Max had to be better.
‘Disappointing,’ said Admiral Zajac finally, and nodded towards Schenck. ‘Time to press on, Boris, don’t you think?’
‘Yes.’ Schenck raised a hand. ‘Thanks for your time, Max.’
‘Sirs.’
Max nodded, turned to the doors as they curled back, and stepped through, careful to maintain full control of his body language as he walked out.
Then the doors were shut behind him.
Bastards.
On the other hand, how could they possibly be worse than him?
Avril. You’d better come back.
Her ship burst into glorious realspace, amid blazing stars: the heart of the galaxy. All passive sensors were on maximum gain; all active scanning was off. She was in full stealth mode, hanging in the void, surrounding by a billion glorious suns, and the galactic fire produced by the vast black hole that tore stars into incandescence. This was as magnificent as realspace could get.
She continued to float, scanning in all directions, awed by what she saw.
And then, the anomalous data.
‘A jet?’
Was this what Commodore Gould meant by observe, record, bug out? Or should she carry on taking—?
Starlight shimmered, rippling with refraction.
‘That can’t—Ship,
let’s go!
’
But invisible hooks were through her poor ship, holding her in place.
‘Damn you. Damn you.’
She was sobbing as she made the cutting gesture. It was called the
seppuku
command.
Ship, I love you.
I love you, too.
Nova brightness enveloped them, as they blew themselves to oblivion.
In his office, Max waited, hoping for Avril’s return, praying for it, knowing that if she did not come back, he would still have learned what he needed to know.
For that, he hated himself.
TWENTY-SIX
EARTH, 2146 AD
They met at a restaurant specializing in nouveau Nihonjin, though Rekka and Simon planned to stick with traditional fare, perhaps mizo soup and vegetable tempura. Leonora and Alwyn were a couple, Hussein and Peter were colleagues, and they were waiting for Mary Stelanko and her partner Amber Hawke to arrive.
‘It’s good to be back,’ Rekka told them.
After the initial drinks, Alwyn - an artist from the Welsh Republic - restarted his ongoing debate with Simon.
‘See, every one of us is unique—’
‘Especially you,’ murmured Leonora.
‘—so there’s no such thing as numbers. They’re not real, because no two things are identical.’
‘So if you prepared lunch for us, expecting two people,’ said Simon, ‘and we turned up with four hundred of our best friends, it wouldn’t matter that we’re all different. Only that there’s four hundred and two of us.’
‘You’re wilfully missing the—’
And so on, harmlessly and without conclusion.
‘Shall we call them?’ asked Hussein finally. ‘I’m getting hungry, so I think we should—’
But at that moment the hubbub around them died, conversation attenuating to murmurs. This was New Phoenix (the city motto:
We Rise From The Ashes
) with plenty of UNSA personnel resident here, but still the sight of a Pilot caught everyone’s attention.
Amber walked with her arm lightly on Mary’s. UNSA provided guide dogs for Pilots, both for long-term companionship and for short durations; but Amber was not unusual in refusing them.
Highlights glinted off the steel sockets where her eyes had been.
‘Hi everyone,’ said Amber, sitting down. ‘Nice to see you all.’
The words were ordinary conversation, not ordinary. Everyone knew she would never see again, not in this universe. They also knew she experienced wonders in mu-space that they were literally incapable of imagining - or imaging - because their occipital and parietal lobes had not been virally rewired for fractal dimensions.
‘Good to see you, too,’ said Rekka.
‘Hey, congratulations. You bagged yourself a first contact.’
‘Uh-huh. Tell McStuart and the rest how good that was. He asked me what the
pre
in pre-contact might possibly mean, but he supposed they didn’t teach Latin where I come from.’
‘Bastard.’
‘I told him it derived from the preposition
prae
, as in
pretentious
.’
‘Good for you,’ said Hussein. ‘A toast. Congratulations to Rekka.’
‘Congratulations.’
‘Cheers.’
But Simon was looking at Mary.
‘What is it?’ he said. ‘What’s that smile all about?’
Rekka remembered why she had fallen for him. He understood the unspoken in every conversation.
‘I was maybe going to mention it later—’
‘Come on, Mary. Tell us.’
‘But Amber and I are pregnant. Well, she’s the one doing the hard work.’
‘Wow.’
‘Well done, you two.’
Rekka was first in line to hug and kiss them both. There were excited embraces for the next couple of minutes.
Simon asked, ‘Are we hoping for Mary’s beauty and Amber’s brains, or the other way round?’
‘Don’t answer that,’ said Rekka. ‘I’ll punish him later.’
Finally, when the meal was underway, the conversation moved on to topical areas, and Pilots’ education came up. The Higashionnas - Robert and Luisa - were pushing for a new curriculum that emphasised UNSA control and discipline. Since all the youngsters now were natural-born Pilots, carrying the organelles nicknamed fractolons in every cell, their potential for self-determined lives was worrying conservatives.
Rekka noticed how quiet Amber was during the discussion.
After the meal, they said their farewells in the car park behind the restaurant. The night was warm, the desert palms were spiky shadows against dark sky, and the ever-present cicadas sang their insect song.
Mary saw Amber into their car, then walked back to where Rekka was standing. Simon was bantering with Hussein, Peter and Alwyn, while Leonora was trying to get them to call it a night. For the moment, Mary and Rekka were alone.
‘Is everything all right?’ asked Rekka.
‘Sort of. We—We want Amber’s son, our son, to be a Pilot.’
‘It’s a boy?’
‘Yes. But management said no to the treatment.’
‘They can be real bastards.’
Without fractolon insertion and related procedures, the child would be born fully human. Only natural-born Pilots gave birth to their own kind - and even then, the later stages of development had to take place in mu-space.
‘So we went ahead anyway. Don’t ask me how.’
‘Mary! My God.’
‘Exactly.’
‘But how will you—?’
‘That’s going to be the real trick, isn’t it?’
With Amber pregnant, and her an old-school Pilot rather than natural-born, she would be grounded for the duration.
‘What’s the cut-off?’
‘Six months, latest.’
Meaning that the last three months of foetal development, at a minimum, had to take place in mu-space, along with the birth itself.
‘You’ll never manage it.’
‘Some of the younger Pilots are real renegades, you know. Ro herself is.’
Ro McNamara had been the first Pilot born in mu-space. She was maybe twenty-three, twenty-four years old - Rekka wasn’t sure. The others of her kind, all bearing fractolons derived from hers, started to be born about two years after her.
Giving a twenty-year-old Pilot responsibility for a massively expensive spacecraft was a risk. No wonder UNSA were so concerned with education and training.
‘Let me know if I can help,’ said Rekka.
‘Do you really mean that?’
‘Yes. But if McStuart has anything to do with it, I’m grounded forever.’
‘Don’t count on it. Kilborn runs the schedules, and he hates McStuart.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Uh-huh. Plus, your friend Sharp will be flying home in a few months, and you’re to go with him. He wants it, Poliakov recommended it, and Kilborn’s insisting on it.’
‘You’re kidding.’
‘You did good, girl.’ Mary hugged her. ‘A lot of us know it.’
‘Thank you.’
Later, as they drove across desert beneath a spectacular night sky, Simon asked what the private conversation with Mary had been about.