Newton's Wake

‘Come out where I can see you, Carlyle,’ said Isaac Shlaim. ‘And bring the copydeck with you.’

H

ow the fuck did you get that gun?’ Lucinda asked. Outside in the chamber, the air smelled like it hadn’t been breathed in a thousand years. The floods cast her shadow long across the glass.

Shlaim smiled. ‘I wish I could say we captured it from your pirates,’ he said, ‘but the truth is even more galling to you—we got it on the authorization of the Joint Chiefs. They authorized me to come here as soon as you admitted, at that amusing gig, to having done a deal with the Returners. I came here weeks ago, as soon as a KE ship could be spared, shortly after the Knights arrived at Eurydice. I hear now that I missed some more of your cataclysmic bungling back there, but all’s well that ends well.’

‘It’s not ended,’ she said.

‘Indeed not,’ said Shlaim. ‘We would in fact be very reluctant to use that gun in here, and there is … something of a standoff outside. But if needs must, we will risk a mutually destructive fight rather than let your gang blunder about in the dataspaces of this fastness. However, there is a more civilised alternative. I understand you have the two musical geniuses on board. Invite them to step out.’

‘They’re backed up,’ said Lucinda, glancing at the Webster in Shlaim’s hand.

Shlaim cast her an impatient glance. ‘I wouldn’t waste a bolt on either of them.’

She walked around the back again and beckoned to Winter and Calder to come out.

‘All right,’ said Shlaim, when the three of them stood facing him. ‘Here’s the deal. I and my colleagues in the Knights have been, as you’ll have noticed, looking in the same place as you have. That’s because we were looking for the same thing. I obtained—again, on the authority of the Joint Chiefs—copies of the backup files of Winter and Calder from the Black Sickle. We’ve used traces within them to run searches for recordings of the two women with whom you, gentlemen, are so obsessed. We’ve found them.’

‘You found Irene and Arlene?’ Winter asked, incredulously.

‘Yes.’

‘Now you’re telling us they really existed?’ Calder sneered.

‘Apparently so,’ said Shlaim. ‘The discrepancies in your biographies and your fans’ recollections and so forth were all based on errors on the other side of the equation, so to speak.’ He shrugged. ‘You, your record companies, or whoever—it doesn’t matter now—put out misinformation about your lives and loved ones, doubtless for reasons that seemed good at the time. So, gentlemen, there was an Irene, there was an Arlene, and they were indeed waiting for you at Fort William.’

‘Which was nuked,’ said Winter. He didn’t sound like he believed Shlaim at all.

‘Later in the war,’ Shlaim pointed out. ‘Perhaps decades later, in the same conflict from which your bodies were recovered. They were there, they were caught up in the Singularity, and we have them here.’

He reached his free hand into his jacket pocket and held out a data card. ‘You can load them straight into that copydeck, and take them away and resurrect them. You can check all you like; and in any case, we have no reason to lie to you. The Knights will vouch for it.’

‘And what do you want in return?’ Lucinda asked.

‘That you go away,’ said Shlaim. ‘Go away and never come back. Tell your Returners that the mission failed. That nothing was retrieved. Irene and Arlene can be resurrected anywhere, far from Eurydice if you wish. Even on Earth, if you prefer to stay here. You’ll have your own Return, all you wanted.’

‘That wasn’t all we wanted,’ said Winter. ‘We wanted them all back.’

‘Come, gentlemen,’ said Shlaim. ‘That is insane and impracticable, as well you know. Even recovering all the recorded minds in this fastness is unthinkable, let alone those all over the Earth and elsewhere. You owe the Returners nothing. All they ever accomplished was to delay and disrupt the project that eventually brought themselves and you and many others to Eurydice.’ He held up the card. ‘In any case, this is all you will ever get. The Knights will not allow further assaults on the fastnesses, and neither will the Eurydicean authorities. The Carlyle pirate gang is finished. Take what you can have, and forget the rest.’

Lucinda looked at Winter and Calder. ‘Your call, guys,’ she said.

The two men looked at each other. Calder’s tongue wetted his lips. ‘You were the Returner,’ he said.

‘It’s this or nothing,’ said Shlaim.

Winter gazed at the ground, then at the card. He didn’t seem to want to look at anybody’s eyes.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘We’ll take it.’

Shlaim smiled, and nodded to Lucinda. ‘The copydeck.’

He touched the card to it.

‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘Winter and Calder, Irene and Arlene, all set to party.’

He handed her the card. ‘Just so you know you have it,’ he said.

‘You will go now,’ said one of the Knights.

The three of them backed off and returned to the search engine. Shlaim followed, covering them with his Webster. He stood just outside the hatch as the two men took their seats.

Lucinda walked up to the front and slammed the copydeck into the slot of the computer, still linked by the needle probe to the virtuality.

‘What!’ shouted Shlaim. ‘Stop—’

Lucinda turned to him. ‘We’re getting them all back,’ she said.

Shlaim stepped inside and strolled up. ‘The hell you are,’ he said. ‘I expected you to do something crazy like this.’ He pointed at where the probe joined the wall. ‘I’m in there already, and I’m waiting.’

CHAPTER 20 No Death Above

They were about twenty kilometres north of Crianlarich when Calder shouted: ‘What the fuck—?’

Winter grabbed the steering wheel just in time. The car swung away from a steep bank down to a loch on the left, narrowly missed an oncoming truck, and continued on up the A82, climbing the high slope between higher hills.

‘Fucking GPS has cut out,’ he said. ‘And the autopilot. Fuck, I’m driving this thing, and I’m driving drunk.’

Calder lifted the open whisky bottle in his hand and closed one eye, checking the level. ‘Only a third between us,’ he said judiciously. ‘You’re not that drunk.’

‘Only because the joint is working against it. Shit, we should get off the road, call the AA or something.’

‘Phone’s out too,’ Calder said.

Winter had a sudden inexplicable feeling that something was seriously wrong. ‘Try the radio,’ he said.

Calder toggled the sound system. Their latest album, the one whose big contract they were celebrating, gave way to a roar of static.

‘Fuck, find the station.’

‘I’m trying, man, I’m trying.’ Calder hit the search button.

They were almost at the summit of Rannoch Moor now. Winter kept the speed down to less than sixty kilometres per hour. He was making a very deliberate effort to concentrate, to fight the effects of the alcohol and the joint. The radio scratched around like nails on a blackboard, searching. The more lucid Winter felt he was becoming, the more uneasy he felt. It wasn’t just their dangerous and illegal driving, it was something deeper, something at the back of his mind. He took the Volvo carefully around the next bend, and almost lost the road himself when he saw a big articulated lorry overturned a few metres off the road and a crashed car beside it.

‘Christ, we’ll have to stop and help—’ He slowed, looking for a safe place to pull off. Half a kilometre ahead, he saw another crashed car.

‘It wasn’t just us that—’

‘Wait,’ said Calder, turning up the volume. ‘Caught something.’

The station, even at full volume, was faint, the midwestern-accented voice strained to breaking point.