Rubra’s uncorked brigade of descendants had devoted considerable effort into modifying spaceport MSVs into automated sensor platforms. Five of the vehicles had already been launched, their chemical rockets burning steadily as they raced off into the void. Combustion, at least, remained an inter-universal constant. The same could not be said for their electronic components. Only the most basic of systems would function outside the protection of the shell, and even those decayed in proportion to the distance travelled. The power circuits themselves failed at about a hundred kilometres, by which time the amount of information transmitted had fallen to near zero. Which was information in itself. The continuum had an intrinsic damping effect on electromagnetic radiation; presumably accounting for the funereal nature of the nebula. Physicists and the personality speculated that such an effect might be influencing electron orbits, which in turn would explain some of the electrical and biochemical problems they were encountering.
The gigantic web of ebony vapour wouldn’t touch the probes, either, denying them a sample/return mission. Radar was utterly useless. Even laser radar could only just track the modified MSVs. Ten days after the axial light tube was powered up, they were floundering badly. No experiment or observation they’d run had resulted in the acquisition of hard data. Without that, they couldn’t even start to theorize how to get back.
By contrast, life inside the habitat was becoming more ordered, though not necessarily pleasant. Everybody who’d been possessed required medical treatment of some kind. Worst hit were the elderly, whose possessors had quite relentlessly twisted and moulded their flesh into the more vigorous contours sported by youthful bodies. Anyone who’d been overweight was also suffering. As were the thin, the short; anyone with different skin colour to their possessor, different hair. And without exception, everyone’s features had been morphed—that came as naturally as breathing to the possessed.
Valisk didn’t have anything like the number of medical nanonic packages required to treat the population. Those packages that were available operated at a very low efficiency level. Medical staff who could program them correctly shared the same psychologically fragile demeanour as all the recently de-possessed. And Rubra’s descendants were tremendously busy just trying to keep the habitat supplied with power to give much assistance to the sick. Besides, the numbers were stacked hard and high against them.
After the initial burst of optimism at the return of light, a grim resignation settled among the refugees as more and more of their circumstances were revealed to them. An exodus began. They started walking towards the caverns of the northern endcap. Long caravans of people wound their way out from the starscraper lobby parks, trampling down the dainty parkland paths as they set off down the interior. In many cases, it took several days to walk the twenty kilometre length across the scrub desert. They were searching for a haven where the medical packages would work properly, where there was some kind of organized authority, a decent meal, a place where the ghosts didn’t lurk around the boundaries. That grail wasn’t to be found amid the decrepit slums encircling the starscraper lobbies.
I don’t know what the hell they expect me to do for them,the habitat personality complained to Dariat (among others) as the first groups set out. There’s not enough food in the caverns, for a start.
Then you’d better work out how to get hold of some,dariat replied. Because they’ve got the right idea. The starscrapers can’t support them any more.
Power within the towers was as erratic as it had been ever since they arrived in the dark continuum. The lifts didn’t work. Food secretion organs extruded inedible sludge. Digestion organs were unable to process and flush the waste. Air circulation tubules spluttered and wheezed.
If the starscrapers can’t sustain them, then the caverns certainly won’t be able to,the personality replied.
Nonsense. Half the trees in your interior are fruiting varieties.
Barely a quarter. In any case, all the orchards are down at the southern end.
Then get teams organized to pick the fruit, and strip the remaining supplies from the starscrapers. You’d have to do this, anyway. You are the government here, remember. They’ll do as you tell them; they always have. It’ll be a comfort having the old authority figure take charge again.
All right, all right. I don’t need the psychology lectures.
Order, of a kind, was established. The caverns came to resemble a blend of nomad camps and field hospital triage wards. People slumped where they found a spare patch of ground, waiting to be told what to do next. The personality resumed its accustomed role, and started issuing orders. Cancers and aggravated anorexias were assessed and prioritized, the medical packages distributed accordingly. Like the fusion generators and physics lab equipment, they worked best in the deeper caverns. Teams were formed from the healthiest, and assigned to food procurement duties. There were also teams to strip the starscrapers of equipment, clothes, blankets—a broad range of essentials. Transport had to be organized.
The ghosts followed faithfully after their old hosts, of course, flittering across the desert during the twilight hours to skulk about in the hollows and crevices decorating the base of the northern endcap during the day. Naked hostility continued to act as an intangible buffer, preventing them from entering any of the subterranean passages.
It also expelled Dariat. The refugees didn’t distinguish between ghosts. In any case, had they discovered he was the architect of their current status, their antipathy would probably have wiped him out altogether. His one consolation was that the personality was now part self. It wouldn’t disregard him and his needs as an annoying irritation.
In part he was right, though the assumption of privilege was an arrogant one—the pure Dariat of old. However, in these strange, dire times, there were even useful jobs to be had for cooperative ghosts. The personality gave him Tolton as a partner, and detailed the pair of them to take an inventory of the starscrapers.
“Him!” Tolton had exclaimed in dismay when Erentz explained his new duties.
She looked from the shocked and indignant street poet to the fat ghost with his mocking smile. “You worked well together before,” she ventured. “I’m proof of that.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Okay. Most of that row need seeing to.” She gestured at the long line of beds along the polyp wall. It was one of eight similar rows in the vaulting cavern; made up from mattresses or clustered pillows hurriedly shoved into a loose kind of order. The ailing occupants were wrapped in dirty blankets like big shivering pupas. They moaned and drooled and soiled themselves as the nanonic packages sluggishly repaired their damaged cells. Their helpless state meant they needed constant nursing. And there were few enough people left over from the teams prospecting the habitat able to do that.
“Which starscraper do we start with?” Tolton asked.
Each starscraper took at least three days to inventory properly. They’d adopted a comfortable routine by the time they started on their third, the Djerba. The tower had survived Valisk’s recent calamities with minimal damage. Kiera’s wrecking teams hadn’t got round to “reclaiming” it from Rubra’s control. There had been few clashes between possessed and servitors inside before it was abandoned. That meant it should contain plenty of useful items. They just needed cataloguing.
To send the work teams down on a see/grab brief was inefficient, especially as there were so few of them. And the personality’s thought routines had almost been banished from the habitat’s extremities; its memories of room contents were unreliable at best.
“Mostly offices,” Tolton decided as he waved a lightstick around. He was holding one in his hand, with another two slung across his chest on improvised straps. Together, the three units provided almost as much illumination as one working at full efficiency.
“Looks like it,” Dariat said. They were on the twenty-third floor vestibule, where the walls were broken by anonymously identical doors. Tall potted plants in big troughs were wilting, deprived of light their leaves were turning yellow-brown and falling onto the blue and white carpet.
They moved down the vestibule, reading names on the doors. So far offices had resulted in very few worthwhile finds; they’d learned that unless the company was a hardware or medical supplier there was little point in going in and searching. Occasionally the personality’s localized memory would recall a useful item, but the neural strata was becoming more incapable with each floor they descended.
“Thirty years,” Tolton mused. “That’s a long time to hate.” There hadn’t been much else to do except swap life stories.
