Nights Dawn (№1) - Reality Dysfunction — Emergence

The voidhawk was still conversing eagerly with its fellows when Syrinx, Ruben, Oxley, and Tula took the ion-field flyer down to Kesteven, one of the larger islands seven hundred kilometres south of the equator. Its capital was Boston, a trade centre of some hundred and twenty thousand souls, nestling in the intersection of two gentle valleys. The area was heavily forested, and the inhabitants had only thinned the trees out to make room for their houses, almost camouflaging the city from the air. Syrinx could see some parks, and several grey church spires rising up above the trees. The city’s aerodrome was a broad greensward set aside a mile and a half (Norfolk refused to use metric measurements) to the north of its winding leafy boulevards.

Oxley brought the craft in from the north-west, careful not to overfly the city itself. Aircraft were banned on Norfolk, except for a small ambulance and flying doctor service, and ninety per cent of its interstellar trade was conducted at midsummer, which was the only time the planet ever really saw spaceplanes. Consequently, Norfolk’s population were a little sensitive to twenty-five-tonne objects shooting through the sky over their rooftops.

There were over three hundred spaceplanes and ion-field flyers already sitting on the grassy aerodrome when they arrived. Oxley settled three-quarters of a mile from the small cluster of buildings that housed the control tower and aerodrome administration.

The airlock stairs unfolded in front of Syrinx revealing the distant verdant wall of trees, and she saw someone pedalling a bicycle along the long rank of spaceplanes, with a dog running alongside. She breathed in, tasting dry, slightly dusty air with a distinct coppery tang of pollen.

The city’s larger than I remember,ruben said, with a mild sense of perplexity jumbled in with his thoughts.

What I saw looked very orderly, quaint almost. I love the way they’ve incorporated the forest rather than obliterated it.

He raised his eyebrows in dismay. Quaint, she says. Well, don’t tell the natives that.he cleared his throat. “And don’t use affinity too much while you’re around them, they consider it very impolite.”

Syrinx eyed the approaching cyclist. It was a boy no more than fourteen years old, with a satchel slung over his shoulder. I’ll remember.

“They are fairly strict Christians, after all. And our facial expressions give us away.”

“I suppose they do. Does the religious factor affect our chances of getting a cargo?”

“Definitely not, they’re English-ethnic, far too polite to be prejudiced, at least in public.” And while we’re on the subject,he broadcast to his three shipmates, no passes, please. They like to maintain the illusion they have high moral standards. Let them make the running, they invariably do.

“Who, me?” Syrinx asked in mock horror.

Andrew Unwin rode his bicycle up to the group of people standing beside the gleaming purple flyer and braked to a halt, rear wheel squeaking loudly. He had gingerish hair and a sunny face swamped by freckles. His shirt was simple white cotton, with buttons down the front and the arms rolled up to his elbows; his green shorts were held up by a thick black leather belt with an ornate brass buckle. There wasn’t a modern fabric seal anywhere in sight. He glanced at Syrinx’s smart blue ship-tunic with its single silver epaulette star, and stiffened slightly. “Captain, ma’am?”

“That’s me.” She smiled.

Andrew Unwin couldn’t quite keep his formal attitude going, and the corners of his mouth twitched up towards a grin. “Aerodrome Manager’s compliments, Captain, ma’am. He apologizes for not meeting you in person, but we’re chocker busy right now.”

“Yes, I can see that. It’s very kind of him to send you.”

“Oh, Dad didn’t send me. I’m the Acting Passport Officer,” he said proudly, and drew himself up. “Have you got yours, please? I’ve got my processor block.” He dived into his satchel, which excited the dog, who started barking and jumping about. “Stop it, Mel!” he shouted.

Syrinx found she rather liked the idea of a boy helping out like this, walking up to utter strangers with curiosity and awe, obviously never thinking they might be dangerous. It spoke of an easy-going world which had few cares, and trust was prevalent. Perhaps the Adamists could get things right occasionally.

They handed their passport fleks over one at a time for Andrew to slot into his processor block. The unit looked terribly obsolete to Syrinx, fifty years out of date at least.

“Is Drayton’s Import business in Penn Street still going strong?” Ruben asked Andrew Unwin, overdoing his wide I-want-to-be-friends smile.

Andrew gave him a blank stare, then his pixie face was alive with mirth. “Yes, it’s still there. Why, have you been to Norfolk before?”

“Yes, it was a few years ago now, though,” Ruben said.

“All right!” Andrew handed Syrinx her passport flek as his dog sniffed round her feet. “Thank you, Captain, ma’am. Welcome to Norfolk. I hope you find a cargo.”

“That’s very kind of you.” Syrinx sent a silent affinity command to the dog to desist, only to feel foolish when it ignored her.

Andrew Unwin was looking up expectantly.

“For your trouble,” Ruben murmured, and his hand passed over Andrew’s.

“Thank you, sir!” There was a silver flash as he pocketed the coin.

“Where can we get a ride into town?” Ruben asked.

“Over by the tower, there’s lots of taxi cabs. Don’t take one that asks for more than five guineas. You can get your money changed in the Admin block after you get through Customs, as well.” A small delta spaceplane flew low overhead, compressors whistling as the nozzles started to rotate to the vertical, already deploying its undercarriage. Andrew turned to watch it. “I think there’s still some rooms at the Wheatsheaf if you’re looking for lodgings.” He hopped back on his bicycle and pedalled off towards the spaceplane that was landing, the dog chasing after him.

Syrinx watched him go in amusement. Passport control was obviously a serious business on Norfolk.

“But how do we get to the tower?” Tula asked querulously. Her hand was shielding her eyes from the Duke’s golden radiance.

“One guess,” Ruben said happily.

“We walk,” Syrinx said.

“That’s my girl.”

Oxley went back into the spaceplane to collect the cool-box loaded with samples of food from Atlantis, and then rummaged through the lockers for their personal shoulder-bags. He sent a coded order to the flyer’s bitek processor as he came out, and the stairs folded away, the airlock closing silently. Tula picked up the coolbox, and they started off towards the white control tower that was wobbling in the heat shimmer.

“What did he mean about overpaying the taxis?” Syrinx asked Ruben. “Surely they have a standard tariff metre?”

Ruben started chuckling, He slipped Syrinx’s arm through his. “When you say taxi, I suppose you mean one of those neat little cars Adamists always use on developed planets, with magnetic suspension, and maybe air-conditioning?”

Syrinx nearly said: “Well of course.” But the gleam in his eyes cautioned her. “No . . . What do they use here?”

He just pulled her closer and laughed.

The bridge of heaven had returned to the skies. Louise Kavanagh wandered across Cricklade Manor’s paddock with her sister Genevieve, the two of them craning their necks to look up at it. They had come out early every Duke-day morning for the past week to see how it had grown during Duchess-night.

The western horizon was suffused with a huge deep-red corona thrown out by the Duchess as she sank below the wolds, but in the northern quadrant orbiting starships sparkled and shone. Glint-specks of vivid ruby light that raced through the sky, strung together so tightly they formed a near-solid band, like a rainbow of red sequins. The western horizon, where the Duke was rising, had a similar arc, one of pure gold. Directly to the north, the band hung low over the rolling dales of Stoke County, lacking the brightness of the two horizon arcs where the reflection angle was most favourable, but still visible by Duke-day.

“I wish they’d stay for ever,” Genevieve said forlornly. “Summer is a truly lovely time.” She was twelve (Earth) years old, a tall, spindly girl with an oval face and inquisitive brown eyes; she had inherited her mother’s dark hair, which hung halfway down her back in the appropriate style for a member of the land-owning class. Her dress was a pale blue with tiny white dots and a broad lacework collar, complemented with long white socks, and polished navy-blue leather sandals.

“Without winter, summer would never come,” Louise said. “Everything would be the same all year round, and we’d have nothing to look forward to. There are lots of worlds like that out there.” They looked up together at the ribbon of starships.

Louise was the elder of the two sisters, sixteen years old, the heir to the Cricklade estate which was their home, and an easy fifteen inches taller than Genevieve, with hair a shade lighter and long enough to reach her hips when it was unbound. They shared the same facial features, with small noses and narrow eyes, although Louise’s cheeks were now more pronounced as her puppy fat burned away. Her skin boasted a clear complexion though to her dismay her cheeks remained obstinately rosy—just like a fieldworker.

This morning she was wearing a plain canary-yellow summer dress; and, wonder of all, this was the year Mother had finally allowed her to have a square-cut neck on some of her clothes, although her skirt hems had to remain well below her knees. The audacious necks allowed her to show how she was blossoming into womanhood. This summer there wasn’t a young male in Stoke County who didn’t look twice as she walked past.

But Louise was quite used to being the centre of attention. She had been since the day she was born. The Kavanaghs were Kesteven’s premier family; one of the clanlike network of large rich land-owner families who when acting in concert exerted more influence than any of the regional island councils, simply because of their wealth. Louise and Genevieve were members of an army of relatives who ran Kesteven virtually as a private fiefdom. And the Kavanaghs also had strong blood ties with the royal Mountbattens, a family descended from the original British Windsor monarchy, whose prince undertook the role of planetary constitutional guardian. Norfolk might have been English-ethnic, but it owed its social structure to an idealized version of sixteenth-century Britain rather than the federal republic state of Govcentral which had founded the original colony four centuries ago.

Louise’s uncle Roland, the senior of her grandfather’s six children, owned nearly ten per cent of the island’s arable land. Cricklade Manor’s estate itself sprawled over a hundred and fifty thousand acres, incorporating forests and farmland and parkland, even whole villages, providing employment to thousands of labourers who toiled in its fields and woods and rosegroves, as well as tending to its herds and flocks. Another three hundred families farmed tithed crofts within its capacious boundaries. Craftsmen right across Stoke County were dependent on the industry it generated for their livelihood. And, of course, the estate owned a majority share in the county roseyard.

Louise was the most eligible heiress on Kesteven island. And she adored the position, people showed her nothing but respect, and willingly extended favours without expecting any return other than her patronage.

Cricklade Manor itself was a resplendent three-storey grey-stone building with a hundred-yard frontage. Its long stone-mullioned windows gazed out across a vast expanse of lawns and spinneys and walled orchards. An avenue of terrestrial cedars had been set out to mark out the perimeter of the grounds, geneered to endure Norfolk’s long year and peculiar dual bombardment of photons. They had been planted three hundred years ago, and were now several hundred feet in height. Louise adored the stately ancient trees; their graceful layered boughs possessed a mystique which the smaller aboriginal pine-analogues could never hope to match. They were a part of her heritage that was for ever lost among the stars, alluding to a romantic past.

The paddock the sisters were walking through lay beyond the cedars on the western side of the manor, taking up most of a gentle slope that led down to a stream which fed the trout lake. Jumps for their horses were scattered around, unused for weeks in the excitement of the approaching rose crop. Midsummer was always a fraught time for Norfolk, and Cricklade seemed to be at the centre of a small cyclone of activity as the estate geared itself up for the roses when they ripened.

When they tired of the starships’ grandeur, Louise and Genevieve carried on down to the water. Several horses with rust-red coats were wandering round the paddock, nuzzling amongst the tufty grass. Norfolk’s grass-analogue was reasonably similar to Earth’s, the blades were all tubular, and throughout the summer conjunction they produced minute white flowers at their tips. Starcrowns, Louise had called them when she was much younger.

“Father says he’s thinking of inviting William Elphinstone to act as an assistant estate manager to Mr Butterworth,” Genevieve said slyly as they approached the mouldering wooden bar fence at the foot of the paddock.

“That was clever of Father,” Louise replied, straight faced.

“How so?”

“William will need to learn the practicalities of estate management if he is to take over Glassmoor Hall, and he could have nobody finer than Mr Butterworth to tutor him. That puts the Elphinstones under obligation to Father, and they have powerful connections among Kesteven’s farm merchants.”

“And William will be here for two midsummers, that’s the usual period of tutelage.”

“Indeed he will.”

“And you’ll be here as well.”

“Genevieve Kavanagh, silence that evil tongue this instant.”

Genevieve danced across the grass. “He’s handsome, he’s handsome!” she laughed. “I’ve seen the way he looks at you, especially in those dresses you wear for the dances.” Her hands traced imaginary breasts over her chest.

Louise giggled. “Devil child, you have a faulty brain. I’m not interested in William.”

“You’re not?”

“No. Oh, I like him, and I hope we can be friends. But that’s all. In any case, he’s five years older than me.”

“I think he’s gorgeous.”

“Then you can have him.”

Genevieve’s face fell. “I’ll not be offered anyone so grand. You’re the heiress, after all. Mother will make me marry some troll from a minor family, I’m sure of it.”

“Mother won’t make us marry anyone. Honest to goodness, Genny, she won’t.”

“Really truly?”

“Really truly,” Louise said, even though she couldn’t quite bring herself to believe it. Truth to be told, there weren’t that many eligible suitors for her on Kesteven. Hers was an invidious position: a husband should hold equal status, but someone of equal wealth would have his own estate and she would be expected to live there. Yet Cricklade was her life, it was beautiful even in midwinter’s long barren months when yards of snow covered the ground, the pine trees on the surrounding wolds were denuded, and the birds buried themselves below the frostline. She couldn’t bear the thought of leaving it. So who could she marry? It was probably something her parents had discussed; her uncles and aunts too, most likely.

She didn’t like to think about what the outcome would be. At the very least she hoped they would give her a list rather than an ultimatum.

One of the butterflies caught her eye, a geneered red admiral sunning itself on one of the grass blades. It was freer than she was, she realized miserably.

“Will you marry for love, then?” Genevieve asked, all dewy eyed.

“Yes, I’ll marry for love.”

“That’s super. I wish I were as bold.”

Louise put her hands on the top rail of the fence, looking across the gurgling stream. Forget-me-nots had run wild on the banks, their blue flowers attracting hordes of butterflies. Some time-distant master of Cricklade had released hundreds of species across the grounds. Every year they flourished, invading the orchards and gardens with their fluttering harlequin colours. “I’m not bold, I’m a dithery dreamer. Do you know what I dream?”

“No.” Genevieve shook her head, her face rapt.

“I dream that Father lets me travel before I have to take on any of my family responsibilities.”

“To Norwich?”

“No, not the capital, that’s just like Boston only bigger, and I’ll be going there anyway for finishing school. I want to travel to other worlds and see how their people live.”

“Gosh! Travel on a starship, that’s stupendously wonderful. Can I come too? Please!”

“If I go, then I suppose Father will have to let you go when you reach your age. Fair’s fair.”

“He’ll never let me go. I’m not even allowed to go to the dances.”

“But you sneak past Nanny and watch them anyway.”

“Yes!”

“Well, then.”

“He won’t let me go.”

Louise grinned down at her sister’s petulant tone. “It is only a dream.”

“You always make your dreams come real. You’re so clever, Louise.”

“I don’t want to change this world with new ideas,” she said, half to herself. “I just want to be allowed out, just once. Everything here is so duty-bound, so regimented. Some days I feel as though I’ve already lived my life.”

“William could get you away from here. He could ask for a star voyage as a honeymoon; Father could never refuse that.”

“Oh! You impudent baby ogress!” She aimed a lazy swipe at her sister’s head, but Genevieve had already skipped out of range.

“Honeymoon, honeymoon,” Genevieve chanted so loudly that even the nearby horses looked up. “Louise is going on honeymoon!” She picked up her skirts and ran, long slender legs flying over the flower-laden grass.

Louise gave chase, the two of them giggling and squealing in delight as they gallivanted about, scattering the butterflies before them.

Lady Macbeth emerged from her final jump insystem, and Joshua allowed himself a breath of silent relief that they were still intact. The trip from Lalonde had been an utter bitch.

For a start Joshua found he neither liked nor trusted Quinn Dexter. His intuition told him there was something desperately wrong about him. Wrong in a way he couldn’t define, but Dexter seemed to drain life from a cabin when he entered. And his behaviour was weird, too; he had no instinct, no natural rhythm for events or conversation, as though he was working on a two-second time-delay to reality.

In fact, if Joshua had met him in the flesh back down on Lalonde’s spaceport he probably wouldn’t have accepted him as a passenger no matter how much money was stashed in his credit disk. Too late now. Although, thankfully, Dexter had spent most of his time alone in his cabin down in capsule C, venturing out only for meals and the bathroom.

That was one of his more rational quirks. After he’d come on board, he had given the compact bulkheads a quick suspicious look, and said: “I’d forgotten how much mechanization there is on a starship.”

Forgotten? Joshua couldn’t work that one out at all. How could you forget the way a starship looked?

Yet the oddest thing of all was how inept Dexter was at free-fall manoeuvring. Had he been asked, Joshua would have said that the man had never been in space before. Which was ridiculous, because he was a travelling sales manager. One who didn’t have neural nanonics. And one who wore a frightened expression the whole time. There had even been occasions when Joshua had caught him flinching from some sudden metallic sound rattling out of the capsule systems, or the creak of the stress structure as they were under acceleration.

Of course, given Lady Mac ’s performance during the voyage, that part of Dexter’s behaviour was almost understandable. Joshua had experienced enough nasty moments on the flight himself. It seemed like there wasn’t a system on board that hadn’t suffered from some kind of glitch since they boosted out of Lalonde’s orbit. What should have been a simple four-day trip had stretched out to nearly a week as the crew tackled power surges, data drop-outs, actuator failures, and dozens of smaller niggling malfunctions. Joshua hated to think what was going to happen when he handed over the maintenance log to the Confederation Astronautics Board’s inspectors, they’d probably insist on a complete overhaul. At least the jump nodes had functioned, though he’d even begun to have his doubts about them.

He datavised the flight computer to unfold the thermo-dump panels and extend the sensor booms. Fault alerts jangled in his mind; one of the thermo-dump panels refused to open past halfway, and three booms were jammed in their recesses.

“Jesus!” he snarled.

There were mutters from the rest of the crew strapped into their bridge couches on either side of him.

“I thought you fixed that fucking panel,” Joshua shouted at Warlow.

“I did!” the answer thumped back. “If you think you can do any better, put on a suit and get out there yourself.”

Joshua ran a hand over his brow. “See what you can do,” he said sullenly. Warlow grunted something unintelligible, and ordered the couch’s straps to release him. He pushed himself towards the open hatchway. Ashly Hanson freed himself, too, and went after the cosmonik to help.

Sensor data was coming in from the booms which were functional. The flight computer started tracking nearby stars to produce an accurate astrogration fix. Norfolk with its divergent illumination looked unusually small for a terracompatible planet. Joshua didn’t have time to puzzle that, the sensors reported laser radar pulses were bouncing off the hull, and a voidhawk distortion field had locked on.

“Jesus, now what?” Joshua asked even as the astrogration fix slipped into his mind. Lady Mac had translated two hundred and ninety thousand kilometres above Norfolk, way outside the planet’s designated emergence zone. He groaned out loud and hurriedly datavised the communication dish to transmit their identification code. The Confederation Navy ships patrolling Norfolk would start using Lady Mac for target practice soon.

Norfolk was almost unique among the Confederation’s terracompatible planets in that it didn’t have a strategic-defence network. There was no high-technology industry, no asteroid settlements in orbit, and consequently there was nothing worth stealing. Protection from mercenaries and pirate ships wasn’t needed; except for the two weeks every season when the starships came to collect their cargoes of Norfolk Tears.

As the planet moved towards midsummer a squadron from the Confederation Navy’s 6th Fleet was assigned to protection duties, paid for by the planetary government. It was a popular duty with the crews; after the cargo starships departed they were allowed shore leave, where they were entertained in grand style, and all the crews were presented with a special half-sized bottle of Norfolk Tears by the grateful government.

The Lady Macbeth ’s main communication dish servos spun round once, then packed up. Power-loss signals appeared across the schematic the flight computer was datavising into Joshua’s brain. “I don’t fucking believe it. Sarha, get that bastard dish sorted out!” Out of the corner of his eye he saw her activate the console by her couch. He routed the Lady Mac ’s identification code through her omnidirectional antenna.

An inter-ship radio channel came alive, and the communication console routed the datavise into Joshua’s neural nanonics. “Starship Lady Macbeth , this is Confederation Navy ship Pestravka . You have emerged outside this planet’s designated starship emergence zones, are you in trouble?”

“Thank you, Pestravka ,” Joshua datavised in reply. “We’ve been having some system malfunctions, my apologies for causing any panic.”

“What is the nature of your malfunction?”

“Sensor error.”

“That’s simple enough to sort out; you should know better than to jump insystem with inaccurate guidance information.”

“Up yours,” Melvin Ducharme grumbled from his couch.

“The error percentage has only just become apparent,” Joshua said. “We’re updating now.”

“What’s wrong with your main communications dish?”

“Overloaded servo, it’s scheduled for replacement.”

“Well, activate your back-up.”

Sarha let out an indignant snort. “I’ll point one of the masers at him if he likes. They’ll receive that blast loud and bloody clear.”

“Complying now, Pestravka .” Joshua glared at Sarha.

He launched a quiet prayer as the ribbed silver pencil of the second dish slid out of Lady Macbeth ’s dark silicon hull, and opened like a flower. It tracked round to point at the Pestravka .

“I’m datavising a copy of this incident to the Confederation Astronautics Board office on Norfolk,” the Pestravka ’s officer continued. “And I’ll add a strong recommendation that they inspect your spaceworthiness certificate.”

“Thank you so much, Pestravka . Are we now cleared to contact civil flight control for an approach vector? I’d hate to be shot at for not asking your permission first.”

“Don’t push your luck, Calvert. I can easily take a fortnight searching your cargo holds.”

“Looks like your reputation’s preceding you, Joshua,” Dahybi Yadev said after the Pestravka cut the link.

“Let’s hope it hasn’t reached the planet’s surface yet,” Sarha said.

Joshua aligned the secondary dish on the civil flight control’s communication satellite, and received permission to enter a parking orbit. Lady Mac ’s three fusion tubes came alive, sending out long rivers of hazy plasma, and the starship accelerated in towards the gaudy planet at a tenth of a gee.

Chinks of light were glinting down into Quinn Dexter’s vacant world, accompanied by faint scratchy sounds. It was like intermittent squalls of luminous rain falling through fissures from an external universe. Some beams of light flickered in the far distance, others splashed across him. When they did, he saw the images they carried.

A boat. One of the grotty traders on the Quallheim, little more than a bodged-together raft. Speeding downriver.

A town of wooden buildings. Durringham in the rain.

A girl.

He knew her. Marie Skibbow, naked, tied to a bed with rope.

His heartbeat thudded in the silence.

“Yes,” said the voice he knew from before, from the clearing in the jungle, the voice which came out of Night. “I thought you’d like this.”

Marie was tugging frantically at her bonds, her figure every bit as lush as his imagination had once conceived it.

“What would you do with her, Quinn?”

What would he do? What couldn’t he do with such an exquisite body. How oh how she would suffer beneath him.

“You are bloody repugnant, Quinn. But so terribly useful.”

Energy twisted eagerly inside his body, and a phantasm come forth to overlay reality. Quinn’s interpretation of the physical form which God’s Brother might assume should He ever choose to manifest Himself in the flesh. And what flesh. Capable of the most wondrous assaults, amplifying every degradation the sect had ever taught him.

The flux of sorcerous power reached a triumphal peak, opening a rift into the terrible empty beyond, and so another emerged to take possession as Marie pleaded and wept.

“Back you go, Quinn.”

And the images shrank back to the dry wispy beams of flickering light. “You’re not the Light Brother!” Quinn shouted into the nothingness. Fury at the acknowledgement of betrayal heightened his perception, the light became brighter, sound louder.

“Of course not, Quinn. I’m worse than that, worse than any mythical devil. All of us are.”

Laughter echoed through the prison universe, tormenting him.

Time was so different in here . . .

A spaceplane.

A starship.

Uncertainty. Quinn felt it run through him like a hormonal surge. The electrical machinery upon which he was now dependent recoiled from his estranged body, which made his dependence still deeper as the delicate apparatuses broke down one by one. Uncertainty gave way to fear. His body trembled as it tried desperately to quieten the currents of exotic energy which infiltrated every cell.

It wasn’t omnipotent, Quinn realized, this thing which controlled his body, it had limits. He let the dribs and drabs of light soak into what was left of his mind, concentrating on what he saw, the words he heard. Watching, waiting. Trying to understand.

Syrinx thought Boston was the most delightful city she had seen in fourteen years of travelling about the Confederation, and that included the sheltered enclaves of houses in the Saturn-orbiting habitats of her birth. Every house was built from stone, with thick walls to keep the heat out during the long summer, then keep it in for the equally long winter. Most of them were two storeys high, with some of the larger ones having three; they had small railed gardens at the front, and rows of stables along the back.