Except once. And Tatia would never forgive him.
Five minutes later there was a faint whine and the SUT rose slowly into the air and then, unlike city state SUTs, rapidly accelerated.
Cleo moved closer. “I could do with a drink.”
“Wine for explanations?”
“No apologies, Anson. It was necessary.”
He was still watching Kara’s SUT leaving Earth, hoping against hope that Tse had got it right. That this was the only way Earth had a chance, slim but real. And was it too much to hope that Tatia, Kara and Marc would come home safely?. Then realised he hadn’t thought of his dead wife once in the past twelve hours. Was that a good thing?
A last flash in the sunshine and the SUT vanished from sight.
“Do you have any plans?” Cleo asked.
“Back to Berlin. Try to stem the tide. Do we know how this madness happens?”
“The AIs react to a very strong signal originating many light years away.” A signal that was either initiated thousands of Earth years ago, or one that moved at many times light speed, or somehow used netherspace. In any event it was a technology far beyond Earth’s current abilities, even the Wild – and would have made Earth even more dependent on the alien pre-cogs than before. Human civilisation throughout the galaxy was already run by AIs.
Greenaway glanced up at the sky. Maybe Kara and Tatia were better off out of it. No. They weren’t. They were better off with him.
“The Free Spacers will monitor Kara’s SUT. In and out of netherspace. But they’ll only get involved if death is imminent.”
That makes it all so much easier, Greenaway thought. “We’re sure Marc will help? What if he stays unconscious?”
“He’s connected to netherspace more than any other human. It seems to like him. As did the nature entity. Both are inimically opposed to the pre-cog ethos. They’ll protect him and anyone with him.”
“You’ve been dealing with this shit longer than me.”
Almost a hundred years longer. As Kara had sensed, like pre-cogs the Exchange were very long lived, Cleo also belonged to one of the first families to establish trade with aliens. When Michelangelo was doodling on a Vatican ceiling, and Vikings fished the seas of North America, her ancestors were becoming incredibly wealthy – in a very discreet, no flash, no glitter kind of way.
“Does Kara have any inkling?” Cleo asked.
“Of?” But he knew the answer. “She has to. So many deaths have been targeted. She understands how pre-cog works.”
“You’re sure?”
“Of course I’m fucking sure,” he snarled. “Kara has to figure it out herself.” It was integral to the Tse plan. If Kara was told, she’d act differently later. Of course, if she didn’t figure it out, she’d probably end up dead... betrayed by a coward with a kiss.
Cleo looked curiously at the man she’d mentored for thirty years. “Any regrets?”
“What would be the point? There’s no other choice.” And never was.
“That artefact you gave her...”
“Had it for years—” Cleo cut him off.
“I remember you saying how you got it. But why Kara?”
Greenaway half smiled. “It seemed the right thing to do.”
“And now you’ve fallen in love.”
“It’s that obvious?”
Cleo smiled. “As are her feelings for you. Except she hasn’t quite admitted them yet. You’ve come a long way. Both of you.”
“Wasn’t that always the plan?”
“I hoped you’d find happiness. But it wasn’t an imperative. Sorry.”
“Let’s go find that wine.”
They walked back to the mill house in silence, Cleo wondering if she should tell Anson the truth... probably not. These days everyone needed whatever hope they could find. Tse had lied because he’d had to. He and other pre-cogs hadn’t seen Kara, Tatia and Marc defeating the pre-cog empire. All they could do was delay Earth’s absorption. Buy enough time for the Wild to establish human colonies throughout the galaxy, and prepare a resistance movement on Earth.
In military terms, one of those rearguard actions that often ends in death.
Then another thought came into her mind, a familiar and unwelcome question.
Greenaway had been manipulated by Tse and the Exchange. In turn he’d manipulated Kara and Marc. But what if...
Think about it. How human psychic abilities survived to flower when they were most needed. How families like her own had gained so much power over the centuries. All so convenient. Maybe too convenient.
What if the Exchange, all humanity, was manipulated by an unknown group? Perhaps an alien race who were against the pre-cog empire? Or for some other, alien reason that humans would never understand?
What if?
6
The only familiar thing in the Wild SUT was a faint smell of curry. For a moment Kara was reminded of the RIL-FIJDOQ – shipping containers welded together then covered in Gliese foam, her first time in the Up – and a crew space more like the waiting room for an illegal human spare parts dealer. But then the old DOQ was only used on the Earth–Mars run, despite the pretension of its mission manager – was Leeman-Smith still alive somewhere? Still boasting about the grandfather who made first contact with the Gliese? In reality, Smith’s grandfather had been the first (and unwilling) trade between humans and the Gliese, on the moon. He’d been delivered strapped to a girder, in exchange for a star drive and a demonstration of how it worked. Correction: of how humans could use it. How it worked was a different matter.
She remembered sitting at the battered table with Marc, Tse and Tatia. Her people, who she’d promised to bring home. Tse now dead, suicided because the pull of the alien pre-cogs had become too strong. And because he was tired and could find no other way to rest.
Tatia who’d been bred to defeat an enemy yet to be identified or understood... and had gone off on her own to find them.
Only Marc was left, now strapped to a bunk and drooling slightly, here but not here, his mind still connected to netherspace, and how the hell could she ever know or understand what he saw? Back on the DOQ he’d
