Chaos Space (Sentients of Orion) Read online

  ‘Tell me again,’ Djeserit whispered. ‘Tell me what is on the other side.’

  ‘If our route is accurate we will see the Tourmaline Islands,’ Trin said. ‘And the holiday palazzo with its medi-facility. And food.’

  She moved closer, not quite touching him. ‘You have led us to safety, Principe.’

  Gratification fluttered in his breast. Her respect never failed to lift his spirits. Djeserit was right: he had saved them.

  Buoyed above his exhaustion by self-belief, Trin gave his order to Joe Scali and Vespa Malocchi.

  ‘Everyone must climb. Now. We must not wait.’

  * * *

  Trin led them over the last line of dunes without once looking back, concentrating on the impossible task of moving his numb legs, thinking ahead to the sight of the palazzo, feeling the cool safety of its interior.

  The world around him dwindled to a single dogged purpose, and he had only a dim recognition of the sounds that he could hear: a shout, and weak cries of despair that could have been people calling his name. But he thought the voices were part of his tortured inner world, or part of his past. The present was the hot sand into which his aching feet scraped transient hollows, and it was the slicing pain across his lower back from muscles pushed beyond their endurance. When his trembling legs threatened to collapse he fell to his knees and crawled.

  Hand, knee, hand, knee...

  Trin reached the crest that way. Then, as he came to the top of the dune, the slap of a cooler wind raised his energy, and he let momentum tumble him down the other side. It rolled him nearly to the edge. With rattling breaths he crawled the final distance and flopped himself into the water, tearing open his fellalo to let the tepid liquid flood inside it. He wallowed and gasped, his mind filled with the cooling feel of it on his skin and the irresistible desire to drink it in. Only the dragging sensation as his robe became waterlogged forced him to retreat to the sand.

  ‘Principe!’

  Trin dashed water from his eyes and sought the source of the voice. Joe Scali. He stared up at his friend. There was no relief in the man’s ravaged face, no celebration of arrival. Joe’s legs shook as if he would fall.

  ‘Djeserit is not here—’

  Trin stumbled to his feet, his heart thumping.

  ‘And the palazzo—’ said Joe hoarsely.

  Trin turned seaward. The Tourmaline Islands were exactly where he had reckoned: a line of flat scrubby land dots so close together that they would have looked like another large land mass if each one had not been divided from its neighbours by narrow channels of foaming water.

  He scanned north, seeking the palazzo’s familiar outline. It too was where it should have been, its imposing column-edges pale against the dawn. Above it, though, flashed the lights of circling AiVs.

  ‘They are there ahead of us.’ Trin turned to Joe. ‘Quickly. Call the men. We must get to the cover of the nearest island before the light is truly upon us.’

  ‘Trinder.’ Joe’s tragic face again. ‘See.’

  With an effort Trin widened the scope of his view, as though his eyes had become a telescope through which he must alter magnifications scanning first along the beach line where he saw Cass Mulravey and her women in the water as he had been; saw Cass herself scooping water over the head of the bambino Vito. The infant hung limply in her arms. ‘Where are the rest?’ he demanded. ‘Why are they taking so long?’

  This time Joe Scali dragged at the front of Trin’s robe, pulling him round to face the dunes. Bodies lay on the ridge and further down the side: men, all of them without robes, fallen from exposure in their final effort.

  ‘Carabinere.’

  ‘St. Some did not make it that far, even.’

  Trin struggled to remember something. Why was it so hard to think, and to see? Then it came back to him. ‘Djes?’

  ‘I saw her helping Seb Malocchi. I-I...’

  Trin strained his eyes again to examine each fallen body, searching out the configuration of the limbs. On the furthest, half buried in the red sand, he thought he saw his pale ensign. He had bound Djes’s leg with it when the Saqr had wounded her and now she wore it, hidden under her clothing. Wrenching free of Joe Scali’s grasp he staggered along the beach, fuelled with emotion.

  As he passed Cass Mulravey he stopped and waded out to her. ‘See what you have done.’ He punched his fist towards his dead Carabinere. ‘See what you have cost me.’

  She didn’t flinch from his anger but held out her hand to the women. ‘And see what you have saved. I’m sorry for your men, Trinder Pellegrini. But you have saved your future. Without these women you are nothing. You cannot even breed.’

  Trin would have hit her then, slapped her down into the water and held her under until all the air left her limp body if he had not needed the last of his strength to reach Djes.

  He left Mulravey and began first to climb, then to crawl up the almost sheer face of the dune, towards his ensign.

  Djes was there, half buried as he had guessed, beside Seb Malocchi’s body. Malocchi was gone, his tongue swollen, his cracked lips coloured with dried blood.

  Trin dug for her underneath the corpse of the Garabinere, shuddering with the effort, unable to cry. He remembered the fire in Loisa. He had saved Seb from it, just so he could die with no less dignity.

  Joe Scali joined him, and Vespa Malocchi, Vespa cradling his fratella’s face while Joe helped Trin pull Djeserit free.

  Trin put his face to her lips but felt no breath. ‘Djes.’

  ‘Principe.’ Joe Scali brushed the sand from her neck. ‘See.’

  Her gills moved sluggishly as if her body was searching for another source of oxygen.

  ‘Quickly. The water.’

  Together they dragged Djeserit down the dune and laid her in the surf. Trin held her body against his, willing oxygen into her blood, muttering senseless words. The water sluiced off the worst of the dirt and the flaking skin, leaving her face hideously raw. But Trin saw only her failing gills.

  The survivors gathered on the water’s edge, watching in silent exhaustion.

  Cass Mulravey pushed to the front of the group. ‘She’s part Mio. Move her through the water,’ said Mulravey. ‘In a circle—to get the water passing through.’

  The cursed woman was right. Trin dug his feet into the sand and began to spin slowly around.

  After a dozen spins Djeserit’s gills started to open and close rhythmically and within a few moments her top eyelids slid open. She stared at Trin through the water and the milky aqua-membrane, orientating herself. She seemed so alien at that moment.

  He continued to spin her until she tapped his arm to tell him to stop. When he let go of her she flipped over and swam in slow circles of her own. Finally she surfaced, taking in great gasps of air as water drained from her gills and they shut.

  Trin wanted to hold her again to reassure himself of the life in her. Instead he moved stiffly away to the water’s edge.

  ‘Principe! The scouts!’ shouted one of the men.

  The lightening sky revealed three flat-yachts sailing in from the north. Trin recognised the type of vessels as those from the Palazzo’s marina, and identified Juno Genarro at the bow of the lead one.

  ‘There is cover amongst the thorn bushes on the closer islands. We must reach there before full light,’ Trin told the survivors. They had clustered into their two distinct groups: Mulravey’s women and the pitiful remainder of Trin’s men.

  ‘What about the palazzo?’ Mulravey asked.

  ‘You can see the AiVs as well as I,’ said Trin.

  ‘Perhaps they are survivors like us.’

  ‘Then you should take your group and find out. Mine will take cover on the islands.’ He swept his glance over her women and the couple of men with them. ‘Those of you who would come with me will have my protection.’

  ‘Protection?’ Mulravey made a dry, disparaging sound.

  Yet as she did so the familia women left her group to stand, heads bowed, among Trinder
’s men.

  Mulravey’s face crumpled with disappointment. ‘You’ve brainwashed your women, Pellegrini, but when Mira Fedor returns things’ll change. They’ll listen to her.’

  ‘Deserters do not earn respect.’

  ‘Mira Fedor is no deserter. Careful whose reputation you dirty.’

  Trin felt his anger rising again. ‘What is your decision, woman? We have no time to waste.’

  One of her group pushed forward to the front; a morose male wearing a cheap envirosuit, threaded at the knees and shoulders. ‘Don’ talk to my sister like that.’

  ‘Lennie, stop!’ hissed Mulravey.

  Trin sneered openly at her. ‘So you would take cooling robes from the backs of soldiers for your women, but leave your brother with one.’

  ‘She wanted me to give it over,’ said her brother. ‘Not that it’s good fer much.’

  Mulravey held her head high but Trin sensed her chagrin. ‘You have not given up yours either, Principe,’ she countered.

  Trin reached inside himself for self-assurance and righteousness. Of course I must be protected. I am Principe.

  He turned to the flat-yachts rolling into shore on the breaking waves. ‘Make your choice.’

  SOLE

  play’m play’m little creatures

  scurry scurry in out ‘round

  scratch’m deep, bleed’m more

  luscious luscious

  TEKTON

  Tekton’s free-mind remained in a bad mood for days after his breakfast with Ra. It shouldn’t have been, really. Ra showed every sign of being rattled by Tekton’s project. Yet Tekton knew that Ra and the others were not to be underestimated.

  Show/beauty had been Sole’s instruction.

  It had taken Tekton so many months to settle on what God might find beautiful that he was not sure how advanced the other tyros’ projects were.

  In truth, beauty had been a puzzle that he’d been unable to unravel. The evening, though, when he had seen Miranda Seeward’s thighs and arms rippling as she wrestled her lawmon colleague in the Melange bar, the answer had come to him: the archiTect’s second creed, beauty is in the eye of the builder. Tekton would create beauty not for Sole, but for himself. And nothing—NOTHING—was more beautiful, more exciting, more ecstasy-beholden to his free-mind than the sight of undulating flesh.

  Now that Tekton had located the exotic and rare mineral amalgam that would turn his vision into reality, he had just to keep it away from prying eyes while it was constructed.

  To process the amalgam he would need a foundry of sorts and warehousing while it was sculpted. Logic-mind warned him that he would need to find a discreet workshop for the sculpting process. Manufacturing large quantities of quixite without OLOSS sanction would likely incur a great penalty, so fearful were they of any material that might be perverted to support the trans-humanesque cause.

  But Tekton did not have time to wait for sanction. That would give Ra and the other tyros more time. He needed a facility now.

  The Entity has requested your presence in the shafting room.

  Now?

  Yes, Godhead.

  Not a little annoyed at the timing, Tekton hastened to the surface building. The Balol matron wasn’t there this time. The attendant was a tall thin Pagoin who looked as if he might implode from sheer fragility.

  Tekton entered the sheer-walled room and stared at the shafting cylinder, remembering his previous experiences with startling clarity.

  ‘This will not be painful or nauseating like the initial procedure. Well... only slightly nauseating, so I’m told,’ said the Pagoin.

  ‘Why do I need to be here at all? I have had my... procedure as you call it.’

  ‘The accentuation facility in this room gives you a more multidimensional and intimate communication experience with Sole. The Entity prefers to use this when it has something important to communicate. The auditory preceptors in your remodelled mind have limitations.’ The attendant blinked several times. ‘Do you mind me asking, Godhead, what is it like to have two separate minds?’

  Tekton thought to ignore the question. Then he reconsidered. ‘It is most... liberating,’ he allowed.

  The Pagoin smiled. ‘That’s what I thought.’

  Tekton climbed into the cylinder field and braced himself. What did the Entity want to show him?

  This time when space fell at him the transition was exhilarating. In an instant he had become an infinitesimal stitch in a majestic tapestry and yet he was also the central knot from which everything else would unravel. He hung in Sole’s eye. In Sole’s mind. In Sole’s heart.

  Humanesque concepts all.

 

  And with that one powerful thought Tekton’s humanesque framework fragmented. Him—the stitch, the mote, the minutest particle of matter—recomposed and he became a bounding, lightless energy shifting and expanding restlessly, thrusting against other equal forces.

  Quintessence.

  He [it] was a burgeoning intransigent, negative pulse. An energy rubbing and pulling. Sophisticated and raw in one cosmic breath. Time irrelevant.

  He [it] was suffused with cold-warmth. And gradually he [it] became more than his [its] senses. A type of cognition formed. Not thinking but knowing. There was a difference. A billion mysteries unlocked and drenched his [its] cold-warmth with their knowledge.

  Phantom Energy had its own sentience: giddy, infantile, wise and wily. Knowing offered everything and he [it] luxuriated in it. He [it] played and romped and fed greedily. Stirred. More answers than questions. A bath of answers.

  But one single question.

  He [it] gorged on answers to reach the question. But bloated knowledge slowed him [it], and he [it] lost purpose or meaning or momentum with the swollen greatness of himself [itself].

  Many, many, many resided in that corpulent space/time: quarrelling and bargaining and gossiping in the manner of all-knowledgers. They had been there since the true for-ever. Unrelated, yet born of the same.

  But he [it] alone retained memory of the question. And when the stirring came again, the itch that gave him [it] purpose, he [it] reached... grasping, grasping...

 

  Imploding/explosion. Collapsing/expansion.

  Separation.

  A final glimpse. For-ever in a moment. Comprehension in emptiness. Ending in a beginning. Life in death, life in death, life in death...

 

  * * *

  Tekton fell painfully back into humanesque thought, as if his body had been compressed into a tiny box.

  He took time to orientate. A straw was forced to his lips. Blood wiped from his nostril. Lotion applied to his face.

  Eventually he was able to focus on the Pagoin who ministered to him.

  ‘Was that liberating?’ the Pagoin asked.

  Tekton shuddered, barely able to reply. ‘No,’ he whispered.

  The Pagoin helped him to the taxi. ‘Do you require medical assistance, Godhead?’

  The Lostol archiTect waved him off and instructed the taxi to leave. Back in his rooms Tekton raised his privacy level and took to his bed. He stayed there for several days, imbibing only fluids while he attempted to assimilate his experience.

  His minds remained quiet, both of them raw and unable to offer elucidation oh the experience; bruised like fruit dropped from a crate. The ‘all-knowing’ sense fell quickly away, so incapable was either mind of sustaining the memory or comprehension of such a torrent.

  What had Sole wished him to know?

  When finally the shock subsided, one overriding thought prevailed. Tekton forced himself to get up and bathe. When he had eaten he sat himself at his bureau.

  Moud, what do you know of Rho Junction?

  That is an exponentially expanding subject, Godhead. Could you be more specific?

  Moud, can the contents of our conversations be monitored, in any way?

  Not that I am aware of, Godhead. Not unless you allow it.

  Then I wish you to provide a lis
t of all the manufacturers on Rho Junction.

  I am prohibited from actively searching for such information, the moud replied primly.

  And what, my incompetent little moud, does actively searching mean? A thick tendril of anger began to uncurl in Tekton’s breast. Had they deliberately engaged the stupidest, most spineless of assistants for him?

  Some information is freely available on Studium Net. However, OLOSS has safeguards in place to prevent unverified information about dubious markets from being accessed by just anyone.

  Just anyone! Are you implying that I fit that description?

  That is their phraseology, Godhead, not mine.

  Tekton made an audible clicking noise with his teeth. Hibernate, he ordered the moud.

  The faint buzzing sound that signified its presence in his mind fell silent immediately.

  Tekton paced the length of his sitting room several times and then ordered honey, bread and mokka to be sent to his quarters. In his present mood he didn’t feel like the company of the other tyros.

  Instead he disrobed and climbed into his lotion sack to try and relax while he waited for the light meal to arrive. What he needed was someone outside OLOSS influence to snoop for him. Jo-Jo Rasterovich would have been the perfect solution but Tekton doubted that he could get compliance from the vagabond mineral scout after their previous encounter.

  In fact, logic-mind urged again, perhaps he should order his moud to add Rasterovich to his list of potentially dangerous personages whose whereabouts he monitored.

  Paranoia! sniffed free-mind. Rasterovich was far too indolent and obtuse to be of any significant threat. And there must be countless Rasterovich types in Orion. Tekton just needed to locate one.

  Logic-mind checked back in. He must verify the Pellegrinis’ delivery dates. While Tekton had enjoyed his brief interlude with Marchella Pellegrini on Araldis, he had no doubts about their efficacy when it came to business. Patriarchal caste societies like the Latinos of