Shadow Of The Scorpion Part 16

"What should I be told?" asked Cormac.

Hannah slammed the joystick forwards, but her shaking hand imparted its motion to the vehicle, which swayed from side to side through the air. Abruptly the safeties cut in, a single tongue of plastic folding out of the seat beside Cormac and closing around his waist, then a voice issued from the console.

"Are you experiencing difficulties, Hannah Lagrange?"

"I am," she replied. "Can you take us on automatic back to our house?"

"Done." The car abruptly stabilized, now controlled by some remote AI, but Hannah kept her hand on the joystick.

"What was the drone talking about?" Cormac persisted.

"Be quiet," she said mildly, reaching into her top pocket to take out her sungla.s.ses and place them over her reddened eyes.

The campsite beside the lake soon came into view and Hannah said to the traffic-control AI, "Okay, I can take it from here."

This time, rather than land the gravcar beside their bubble house she took it into the carport, and upon landing sent the instruction for the floor clamp to engage.

"Are we going?" Cormac asked.

"We certainly are," his mother replied.

As they clambered out of the car he peered at the damage the drone had caused to the door, then hurried after his mother when she shouted for him.

Cormac opened his eyes and immediately it felt to him as if someone was driving a dagger straight through his forehead, so for a little while it was difficult for him to even think about the missing memory he had just experienced. His right eye seemed to be filled with a large black blob and zigzag patterns were flashing in the left peripheral vision of his other eye. He groped to his right for the medical table, couldn't find it so turned to look, feeling something dragging across his left shoulder.

There.

He s.n.a.t.c.hed up a strip of three a.n.a.lgaesic patches, peeled one from its backing and slapped it straight on one temple, then after a moment peeled another one and stuck it on his neck.

"Careful of the optics," s.a.d.i.s.t warned him.

Only then did he remember the optic feed trailing across his shoulder. It had come as a surprise to him that the aug hinged open to reveal numerous optic plugs, that in fact most of its internal s.p.a.ce was taken up with them and the device's computing hardware wasn't much bigger than the tip of his thumb.

"Can you initiate detach?" the ship's AI enquired.

"I don't think so," Cormac managed.

"No problem."

Words blinked fleetingly across his vision but he could identify none of them except "CLOSED," which by some mental quirk went to join the zigzags for a party.

"You may now remove the optics," s.a.d.i.s.t informed him.

He reached up, grabbed the bundle of fibre optic threads plugged into his aug, and pulled. They detached easily and when he released them the device standing on that side, which bore only a pa.s.sing resemblance to a pedestal autodoc, quickly wound them in then retreated across the medbay to its alcove.

"How are you feeling?"

Cormac looked up and saw Gorman standing just inside the door. He hadn't heard him enter.

"Like someone's been sc.r.a.ping out the inside of my skull with a rusty knife."

"Yeah, been there myself."

Cormac gazed at him. "Really?"

"They weren't my memories, but those of someone like Sheen," Gorman replied. "I'm told it made the process easier precisely because they weren't my memories. Didn't feel easy at the time."

The pain was ebbing now, to be replaced by nausea. Cormac glanced at the sick bags on the medical table, took up one and opened it, then eased himself upright, immediately having to make use of the bag. A cool hand rested on the back of his neck as he finished and wiped his mouth with one of the tissues also provided.

"Was it worth it?"

He gazed at Crean in surprise, then looked around for Gorman. Where the h.e.l.l had he gone? Then he remembered s.a.d.i.s.t's explanation of the likely aftereffects, and a particular phrase about "temporal dislocation" came to the forefront of his mind.

"Ask me later," he replied.

She took her hand away and, after what seemed only a moment, he looked up to find she had departed. His back aching, for he had obviously been sitting in the same position for some time, he eased himself back and lay down again.

So, the memory of his mother's encounter with the war drone Amistad had been excised from his mind. It now sat in his skull much clearer than the current memories of his childhood but just was not integrating. He realised, after a moment, that no, this was not a memory of his childhood, rather the memory of very recent experience. And it did not fit because it was out-of-sequence and he was no child. Now he kept feeling that he was just too big; his hands and arms were like great lumps of meat and bone and his t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es felt as if they were made out of lead. Some part of him wanted to cry, but was vetoed by the rest. The only feeling that did not seem contrary was his fascination with that drone, which seemed to have been reinforced.

His mother had removed this memory from his mind for, during that meeting, she had learned from the drone of the death of her husband. Why the machine had travelled many light years to tell her, he could not fathom, nor could he fathom why she had not learned earlier in the conventional manner. Perhaps the death of Cormac's father had not been recorded by ECS and only the drone had known about it?

Reaching out to take up another sick bag, Cormac eased his legs off the surgical table and sat upright. Nausea surged through him, but he managed to hold onto what little was left in his stomach.

What, he wondered, would the other two chapters of excised memories contain? Since all three were about the death of his father and that news had been delivered in this one, were the other two just tidying-up exercises? It occurred to him that maybe he didn't need to experience those other memories and consequently suffer the horrible aftereffects. However, he knew that once he had recovered and this sickness itself had become a memory, he would certainly want to experience those other two chapters.

He stood, a little unsteadily, and headed for the door. His right eye had cleared now and the flashing in the peripheral vision of his left eye broke up into disa.s.sociated dots. His headache, which the patches had driven away, was returning but manageable. Opening the door he turned into the corridor beyond and headed for his cabin, now trying to access his aug and use it to obtain information. First he found out the time, and realised that they must now be approaching their destination-a world called Shaparon that had once supported a small colony of a million. The place was now inhabited by some ten thousand people, most of whom were previous residents but some of whom were those whose dealings were not looked on too kindly in the Polity itself, who mostly kept to the periphery and who often based themselves in places like this or retreated here when things got a bit too hot for them.

"You've got four hours, Cormac, are you up to it?" It seemed Gorman was speaking directly into his ear, but the question came via military comlink channel of his aug.

"I'm up to it."

"Briefing in the gym in half an hour."

"I'll be there."

Entering his cabin, Cormac first noted a large gla.s.s of some muddy orange drink sitting in the mouth of his synthesizer. He didn't recollect ordering anything, but then, there was no guarantee his memory was working properly.

"The drink will help," s.a.d.i.s.t abruptly informed him. "If you can keep it down. It contains everything a growing boy should need, along with stimulants, anti-nausea medicine, anti-inflammatories and a tailored valium."

He picked it up and gulped it, by sheer effort of will keeping it down, then lay down on his bunk, thinking nothing and moving not a muscle for twenty-five minutes, whereupon he heaved himself up again and headed for the gym.

"Our informant on the ground," said Spencer, "positively identified the ship Thrace took pa.s.sage on and positively identified Thrace himself departing from it." She grimaced. "Or rather our informant identified someone with the same appearance as Thrace when he departed that guest house back on Hagren."

"Was he carrying any luggage?" Gorman asked.

Spencer glanced at him, then said, "s.a.d.i.s.t, give me the screen."

A virtual screen abruptly dropped down like a curtain across one side of the gym. It was blank grey at first then flickered on to show a ramshackle s.p.a.ceport consisting only of a clump of low nissen huts beside a couple of large silo-like tanks. The latter, Cormac guessed, probably contained pure water, hydrogen and maybe even deuterium fuel for the aged ships scattered amidst the rest standing on the surrounding dusty white plain. Abruptly the camera view swung up and fixed upon a craft descending on antigravity. The thing looked just like a slab of granite with a framework mounted on its upper surface securing a long cylinder terminating in three evenly s.p.a.ced U-s.p.a.ce nacelles. As it approached the ground it jetted a series of thrusters from its underside to slow its descent and bring it down in the right place-obviously its antigravity system did not possess the required finesse or was not sufficient for the weight of the vessel.

It landed quite heavily, stirring up a cloud of the white dust, which took some time to clear. When the ship finally became visible again, an autohandler-a squat, treaded machine with double grabs to its fore-was carrying a large cylinder down a ramp. Walking down directly behind this were two people with a Loyalty Luggage case like an old sea chest trundling along behind them. One of these was a slim woman with cropped blonde hair, who wore orange overalls cut off at the knee. The other figure was a portly bearded fellow in leather clothing: Carl Thrace. At the bottom of the ramp he stopped to chat with the woman for a while then moved off, the luggage following him. Now the camera swung away to point up at the sky as another vessel descended.

"s.h.i.t," said Gorman. "Why didn't it stay on him?"

"The camera," Spencer replied, "was positioned on a nearby water tower and just following a program to record new arrivals. It picked up this before our informant knew to look out for this ship and Thrace, or rather 'Marcus Spengler.' "

"So, do we know where he is now?" asked Travis.

"Enquiries have been made and are still being made," said Spencer. "He stayed in a local hostelry where he met with the local leading light of the community, then rented a car and headed out of town." With her hands on her hips she gazed round at the three of them. "That same leading light, an unpleasant individual called Tarren, will be our point of entry."

Cormac felt the s.a.d.i.s.t shift underneath him and heard a change in an engine note he had not even been aware of until then, and guessed the ship had now fallen into orbit about Shaparon.

"We can't land this ship," he observed.

Spencer shook her head. "We take a shuttle down-the one aboard is old and battered enough to fit in."

"Well, thank you," said s.a.d.i.s.t.

Spencer continued as if the ship AI had not spoken. "No one will know where it came from since we're now geostat on the other side of the world and running chameleonware." She paused, gazing for a moment at Cormac. "No need for complications on this world, and not much need to use Cormac here as bait. Our informant tells us that Tarren is guarded, but not heavily. We go in, we make a few pertinent queries, then we go find where Carl has gone. Any questions?"

"Do we even have to pretend not to be ECS?" asked Gorman.

"As a precautionary measure, yes. Tarren might be some small-time hoodlum, but Carl Thrace is not. He might have methods in place to warn him should we be too overt. We'll just play the part of bounty hunters who are after Marcus Spengler and are prepared to pay for information. It might even be that we won't have to kill anyone."

"What about scanning for Carl's location?" asked Cormac.

"Double-edged sword," said Spencer. "s.a.d.i.s.t's chameleonware is not the best, hence our present geostat positioning, and using wide-scale active scanning, which will be what's required since he's had over a week now to lose himself down there, further reduces the ware's efficiency, and such scanning might also be detected by Carl."

"If he is even here," Crean observed.

"Yes, if he is even here," Spencer agreed. "All the departures from the s.p.a.ceport, since his arrival, have been uploaded here. If we don't find him down there then it's back to searching. Now get yourselves kitted-out appropriately and get down to the shuttle bay."

As Spencer had opined, the shuttle would certainly not look out of place. It was a battered brick of a vehicle with a bubble c.o.c.kpit to the fore and two ion drive nacelles at the rear which, after a bit of a tweak by s.a.d.i.s.t, immediately started coughing and spluttering and burning dirty. It was also dented, scratched, and there was a large repair patch welded just behind the c.o.c.kpit where, so s.a.d.i.s.t informed them, someone had tried to cut the craft in half with a particle cannon.

Cormac sat back in his seat behind the c.o.c.kpit and tried to feel comfortable in his jeans, enviroboots, sleeveless shirt, weapons harness and a.s.sortment of well-worn armament. He was supposed to look like a bounty hunter but felt more like an extra in some Old West VR fantasy. Crean and Travis wore similar attire and Gorman wore fatigues, a bomber jacket and baseball cap. Spencer, who sat at the shuttle's controls, had not changed her clothing, her cool-killer long leather coat perfect for the role.

The vehicle started rattling the moment it hit atmosphere and flecks of burning matter began shooting up over the chaingla.s.s c.o.c.kpit. Cormac wondered if they might be bits of atmosphere seal, or maybe burning wiring. Shaparon loomed ahead: a white orb streaked with umber and black scars. There were no oceans down there and only nitrogen and a few trace gases comprised the atmosphere, hence the breather mask depending from Cormac's belt attached by a long thin tube to a high-pressure oxygen bottle, and hence the reason the place had never been heavily colonised. Apparently, that had been due to change, for the residents had started building terraforming installations, but then the Prador had attacked.

After a little while the rattling ceased and the world dropped from view as the craft bellied in. Now they were deep in the atmosphere, Spencer engaged antigravity and put them in a spiralling glide down towards the s.p.a.ceport. They descended through darkness then into day as the glare of the white sun broke over the horizon. The day cycle here was just over fifty-two solstan hours and they would be landing five hours after dawn. Peering over Spencer's shoulder, Cormac observed, on a subscreen, the view below of folded gutlike mountains rendered in the colours of cream and b.u.t.terscotch, then all at once the shuttle was over a plain, and when the human settlement slid into view it was a bewildering splash of colour on a white sheet. Spencer banked their craft and brought it steadily lower, and it was only when they were right over the settlement did Cormac recognise the s.p.a.ceport.

"No control tower, then," Gorman observed.

"It's hardly a busy place," Spencer replied.

Their dust-down was suitably b.u.mpy for such a craft and in a moment they were unbuckling their safety harnesses and moving back through the cramped interior to the single door. Cormac donned his mask, as did the others, though of course the two Golem did not require them, then Travis undogged the door and pushed it open.

"Remember," said Spencer over com. "All you've got to do is stand around looking mean unless the s.h.i.t hits."

"Thanks for the detailed briefing," said Gorman.

Spencer shot him a look, but it was difficult to tell what it signified now that she wore a breather mask across her mouth. She stepped outside after Travis and the rest followed, Cormac coming last. He stood there for a moment blinking in the glare, and feeling a momentary stab of pain in his forehead, as if his earlier headache was searching for a way back in.

"Here," said Gorman, handing him something.

Why hadn't he himself thought of that? These completed the image. With some relief he put on the sungla.s.ses, then set out as Spencer, gesturing for them all to follow, moved off. However, the sungla.s.ses didn't help too much as another spear of pain penetrated his forehead and lingered, twisting every now and again.

The s.p.a.ceport was not enclosed and there was no security of any kind, unless you counted the two individuals who stepped out of one of the nissen huts to silently watch them traipse by. Beyond the huts and the fuel silos, on a ridge, stood the water tower upon which the camera must have been positioned. Studying his surroundings, Cormac realised that, though this was an airless world, there was still life here. The ground of the s.p.a.ceport had been mainly compacted white dust, showing here and there chemical spills from the s.p.a.cecraft, and nothing else. Here the ground was scattered with white and grey rocks either formed from that same bland dust or what had been ground up to form it, and lying amidst them were green globules spreading networks of fibrous brown roots or mycelia over the ground about them. There were also arthropods here that looked like large, black four-legged termites, and other things with sh.e.l.ls like terrapins but far too many legs.

Beyond the ridge the track curved down into a town that was an odd mix of atmosphere-sealed buildings and unsealed buildings which were almost lost amidst burgeoning growth, all enclosed in quadrate transparent plastic or chaingla.s.s greenhouses. Every solid building was brightly painted too: individual houses coloured in bright pastel shades. Cormac stared at them for a moment, blinking as a dark spot reappeared in his right eye. Should I tell Gorman that I might be having a problem?

"I guess all that whiteness out there gets wearing," Gorman commented.

"They look like homes here," said Crean.

"Mostly the survivors and their descendents," said Spencer. "Though Graveyard sc.u.m are in charge. You never know, our visit here might benefit the residents."

They moved down into a wide street, whereupon Spencer gestured to one of the "greenhouses" inside which, behind squat palms and bluish cycads that looked like nothing less than giant artichokes, lay a large sprawling flat-roofed building that would not have looked out of place on a Mediterranean coast on Earth. As they drew closer to this, Cormac saw that the building extended out from its greenhouse on either side, to connect to other buildings. Only now was he becoming aware that all the buildings were interconnected in some way, if not b.u.t.ting up against each other then by various above-ground walkways either enclosed in gla.s.s or walled in with plasticrete or the local stone and roofed over with peaked and tiled roofs.

An airlock lay before them, not a pressure lock, for the chaingla.s.s doors were too thin and the seals and fittings too flimsy. Twisting a simple manual handle Spencer opened the first door and they all stepped inside. When Cormac closed that door behind them Spencer then opened the inner door into the interior.

"Slight pressure differential," she said. "Lower inside than out so they don't lose air-contamination with nitrogen is no problem. Okay, we can take off our masks now."

When he took off his mask Cormac immediately felt some relief. Perhaps there had been a bit of a problem with his breather gear? No, he was kidding himself-he was still feeling the aftereffects of recently acquired memory. He took a couple of deep breaths, a moist smell of burgeoning greenery in his nostrils. The pain faded further and the black spot in his eye winked out to leave a vague blurriness. He tried to invest more in what was going on, tried not to focus too much on the dull ache in his head since that seemed to emphasise it.

Glancing around, he realised that, though from the outside the cycads and palms had looked decorative, that was not their purpose. The palms were date palms and the cycads were a splicing that budded pineapple-like fruits along the edges of their thick leaves. Between these were sunflowers and sugar cane, with varieties of climbing beans, peas, tomatoes, squashes and other less easily identifiable fruit vines. The ground was covered with a mix of bra.s.sicas, salad vegetables, and a form of GM Jerusalem artichoke that produced huge, starchy roots and was a staple for food synthesizers everywhere. And scattered throughout all this were slow-moving agrobots like steel harvestman spiders with bodies the size of footb.a.l.l.s with each limb terminating in some useful tool. A whole food-growing ecology was being maintained in this enclosed environment.

"They must have problems with contamination," he said, gesturing back to the airlock, "with anyone wandering in like we just did."

"A year ago," said Spencer, "you needed permission to land and went through a decontamination routine in those huts you saw by the s.p.a.ceport. That all changed when the sc.u.m moved in here. They don't care what dies here-either plants or people." She was fingering the b.u.t.t of a gas-system pulse-gun holstered at her hip, Cormac realised. He also realised that Spencer, under that usually cool facade, was an angry person. This did not bode well for the people they had come here to see.

"We go here," she said, and immediately a schematic of the building ahead arrived in Cormac's aug, with one of its interior rooms highlighted. "Tarren is usually sitting at court in his favourite bar at this time."

"The informant, I take it," said Gorman, "is one of the original inhabitants?"

"You take it correctly," Spencer replied.

The path they traversed, which was made of flakes of red stone-probably the local white stuff dyed for this purpose-wound through the growth to terminate at an arch. As they moved through this Cormac eyed an old-fashioned gimbal-mounted holocam above, turning to track their progress. The short entry tunnel opened into a central courtyard occupied by a series of ponds with water flowing and splashing between them down waterfalls or sprayed up in jets. Within the crystal depths numerous large fish, either trout or salmon, cruised back and forth restlessly. Doubtless these were another food resource.

Now they began to see a few more people. Some were wary and quickly found reasons to be on their way elsewhere. Other armed individuals also began to appear and follow them.

"How many... a.s.sociates does Tarren have?" Gorman enquired.

"Oh, about fifty," said Spencer offhandedly.

"I see."

Pain again stabbed Cormac's forehead, but he could not pull out now.