Reality Dysfunction — Emergence

everything that was right and good in the world.”

“Don’t, Quinn.” Her head was spinning, making her dizzy. What he was saying was crazy, he’d never even noticed her when he walked in the Crashed Dumper. It was so hot, the sweat was running down her back. His arm went round her, making her look into fevered eyes.

“And now here you are again. My very own idol. Like God gave me a second chance. And I’m not giving up this chance, Marie. Whatever it takes, I want you. I want you, Marie.” Then his lips were on hers.

She was shaking against him when he finished the kiss. “Quinn no,” she mumbled. He tightened his grip, squashing her against him. His chest felt as though it was carved from rock, every muscle a steel band. She couldn’t understand why she wasn’t pushing him away. But she wasn’t, the thought was inconceivable.

“I’m going to make it so good you’re never going to leave me,” he said in a frantic whisper. “I’m going to make you see I’m the one for you, that there is no one else in the whole galaxy who can replace me. I’m going to take you from this atrocity of a planet when I go; and we’re going to live somewhere sweet and beautiful, where there isn’t any jungle, and people are happy. And I’m going to buy us a big house, and I’m going to make you pregnant, and our children are going to be so lovely it hurts to look at them. You’ll see, Marie. You’ll see what true love can bring when you give yourself up to me.”

There were tears in her eyes at the terrible wonderful words. Words that spoke out every dream she owned. And how could he possibly know? Yet there was only desire and yearning in his face. So maybe—please God—just maybe it was true. Because nobody could be so cruel as to lie about such things.

They leant together as they stumbled out of the Crashed Dumper, the pair of them drunk with their own brand of desire.

The Confederation Navy office on Lalonde was a two-storey structure, an oblong box sixty-five metres broad, twenty deep. The outer walls were blue-silver mirrors, broken by a single black band halfway up, which ran round the entire circumference. The flat roof had seven satellite uplinks covered by geodesic weather casings that resembled particularly virile bright orange toadstools. Only five of them actually housed communication equipment, the other two covered maser cannon which provided a short-range defence capability. The building was situated in the eastern sector of Durringham, five hundred metres from the dumper which housed the Governor’s office.

It was a class 050-6B office, suitable for phase one colonies and non-capital missions (tropical); a programmed silicon structure made by the Lunar SII. It had arrived on Lalonde in a cubic container five metres to a side. The Fleet marine engineers who activated it had to sink corner foundations fifteen metres deep into the loam in order to secure it against the wind. The silicon walls might have been as strong as mayope, but they were only as thick as paper; it was terribly vulnerable to even mild gusts. And given Lalonde’s temperature there was some speculation that warm air accumulating inside might actually provide sufficient lift to get it airborne.

There were fifty Confederation Navy staff assigned to Lalonde: officers, NCOs, and ratings, who ate, worked, and slept inside. The most active department was the recruitment centre, where fifteen permanent staff dealt with youngsters who shared Marie Skibbow’s opinion of their world, but lacked her individual resourcefulness. Enlistment offered a golden ticket offplanet, away from the rain, the heat, and the remorseless physical labour of the farms.

Every time Ralph Hiltch walked through the wide automated entrance doors and breathed in clean, dry, conditioned air he felt just that fraction closer to home. Back in a world of right angles, synthetic materials, uniforms, humming machinery, and government-issue furniture.

A pretty rating barely out of her teens was waiting to escort him from the entrance hall where all the farmboy and —girl hopefuls were queueing in their hand-stitched shirts and mud-stained denim trousers. He opened his lightweight cagoule and shook some of the rain from it as she escorted him up the stairs and into the security zone of the second floor.

Lieutenant-Commander Kelven Solanki was waiting for Ralph Hiltch in his large corner office. A career officer who had left his Polish-ethnic world of Mazowiecki twenty-nine years previously, he was forty-seven: a narrow-faced man with a lean build, several centimetres shorter than Ralph, with thick raven-black hair trimmed to a regular one centimetre. His dark-blue port uniform fitted well, although he’d left the jacket on the back of his desk chair.

Ralph was given a genuinely warm handshake when he came in, and the rating was dismissed. She saluted smartly and closed the door.

Kelven Solanki’s welcoming smile faded considerably as he gestured Ralph to the imitation-leather settee. “Who’s going to start?”

He hung his cagoule on the edge of the settee and leaned back. “We’re on your home territory, so I’ll tell you what I know first.”

“OK.” Kelven sat on the chair opposite.

“First, Joshua Calvert and the Lady Macbeth ; stunning though it appears, he is actually genuine as far as we can make out. I’ve got an inside track: my secretary, Marie, is running a deal for him, so she’s keeping a strong tab on him for me. He’s bought a thousand tonnes of mayope, got himself an export licence, and he’s loading the stuff into his starship as fast as the McBoeing he hired can boost it into orbit. He’s made no attempt to get in touch with any known fence, he didn’t bring any cargo down in his own spaceplane, legal or illegal, and he’ll be gone tomorrow.”

Kelven found he was more interested in the independent trader captain than the situation really required. “He’s genuinely transporting timber to another star?”

“Yes. To Norfolk, apparently. Which, given their import restrictions, isn’t quite as insane as it sounds. They may just have a use for it with their pastoral tech. I haven’t decided if he’s an idiot or a genius. I’d love to know how he gets on.”

“Me too. But he isn’t quite the innocent you think he is. The Lady Macbeth has an antimatter drive unit. And my last general security file update from Avon carried a report that he was intercepted by a navy voidhawk a couple of months back; Fleet Intelligence was convinced he was trying to smuggle proscribed technology. They actually watched the units being loaded into his cargo bay. Yet when the voidhawk captain searched his ship—nothing. So it doesn’t look like he’s an idiot.”

“Interesting. He’s not due to leave until tomorrow, so he might still try something. I’ll keep him under close observation. Will you?”

“I have been keeping a quiet eye on Captain Calvert since his arrival, and I’ll continue to do so. Now, the Quallheim Counties situation. I don’t like it at all. We’ve been reviewing the images the chief sheriff’s observation satellite has been downloading this morning, and the trouble is spreading into Willow West County. There are several burnt-out buildings in the villages, evidence of fighting, and the fields are being ignored.”

“Hell, I didn’t know that.”

“Well, this time Candace Elford has managed to keep it quiet, at least for now. But the sheriffs and supervisors in the Quallheim Counties and Willow West still insist there’s nothing wrong. Those that answer their communication blocks. I think that’s the strangest aspect of this situation; I can’t see the Ivets pointing a laser at their heads all day every day.”

“I find it very hard to believe the Ivets could take over a whole county in the first place, let alone four. Rexrew might be right about an external group being behind it. Were these new Willow West images fuzzed like the last batch from the Quallheim?”

Kelven gave his counterpart a significant look. “Yes, unfortunately they were; and my technical officer can’t work out how it was done. She’s not the greatest electronic warfare expert in the navy, but she says there isn’t even a theory which could account for it. I have to give serious consideration to the fact that Rexrew is right. And there’s something else, too.”

Ralph broke out of his reverie at the tone.

“I have been authorized ”—he emphasized the word—“to tell you that Edenist Intelligence agents believe Laton is still alive, and may be on Lalonde, specifically in Schuster County. They say he contacted them to warn them of some kind of xenoc incursion. They left Durringham three days ago, heading upriver to investigate, but not before they made me contact Aethra to update it on the situation. And, Ralph, they looked worried.”

“Edenist Intelligence is operative here?” Ralph asked. He’d never had the slightest hint.

“Yes.”