The Machinery of Light

“The colony ships,” Lynx replies.

“What about them?”

“They’re full of sleepers.”

“That’s why they call them colony ships, Lynx.”

“The ships are a subterfuge. Why not the cargo?”

The Operative addresses Sorenson: “What about the colony ships?”

“Mostly just colonists.”

“But not exclusively.”

“There are a few anomalies here and there.”

“Made by who?”—but even as he asks the question, the Operative realizes its absurdity. Everyone’s been trying to duplicate the Autumn Rain batch ever since it came out of the vat. Every player’s got their own breed of posthuman in the mix. Szilard’s undoubtedly been working his own angles. But no one’s ever been able to attain the breakthroughs that Matthew Sinclair made two decades back. Nobody’s come close to replicating them. Partially that’s because he executed all the scientists.

Except for one.

“I never had the big picture,” mutters Sorenson.

“Who the hell did?” says the Operative.

“That’d be you,” says Lynx.

Flanked by his escorts, the man who’s been charged by the Praesidium with interrogating the most important asset to ever fall into the Coalition’s hands is approaching the section of the Righteous Fire- Dragon that’s been designated as maximum security. All prisoners taken from the L5 fortress have been moved there. There weren’t that many. Most of the garrison was killed subsequent to surrender. But there were a few exceptions …

“He’s in there, alright,” says Spencer.

“At least officially,” says Jarvin.

“And where the hell’s Indigo?” asks Sarmax.

“Right here,” says Spencer—beams the map over to him, showing the holding cells and their denizens. There are only five: Sinclair, and four of the soldiers who were guarding him. And Spencer’s fairly sure not all of those soldiers are who they seem to be.

“When they took the libration point, the Eurasians killed everybody,” says Spencer. “A total massacre. They knew what they were up against. They knew that Sinclair wasn’t an ordinary prisoner, that the Rain might have infected L5. That’s why they took no chances—why the only exceptions were quarantined and put into lockdown—why the only ones getting into this cell-block are—”

“Us,” says Sarmax.

They turn a corner. Guards block the way ahead.

You’re barking up the wrong tree,” says the Operative. “Sinclair kept the whole thing compartmentalized. And only he had insight into the specifics of the core quantum processes—”

“Along with the physicists,” says Sorenson.

“Who were the first to go,” says the Operative.

“Because you killed them,” says Lynx.

“On Sinclair’s orders.”

“But not before you made them talk.”

“Let me assure you that Sinclair had already deprived them of that ability.”

“I was a fucking biogeneticist,” says Sorenson. “I’d heard the stories, sure—of what was really going on at the center of his fucking Manhattan Project. Of tapping into nonlocalized consciousness to tune the mind as a neurotransmitter. Of—”

“Telepathy,” says Lynx.

“—leveraging quantum entanglement to enable remote duplication of matter.”

“Teleportation,” says the Operative.

He and Sorenson look at each other.

“And?” asks the Operative.

Sorenson looks as if he’s about to weep. Lynx looks at the Operative.

“What do you mean, and?”

“You know what I mean,” says the Operative to Sorenson. Sorenson closes his eyes.

“Say it,” says the Operative.

“Something to do with time,” whispers Sorenson.

Careening through a hollow tube beneath the lunar mountains: Haskell’s halfway to Shackleton, and she can only imagine what she’s going to find when she gets there. She feels the South Pole beckoning beyond it—feels it with an intensity that makes the antipodes at the Europa Platform look like the artificial constructs they were. Her awareness is cranking up to new heights. And all the while she’s doing her utmost to dissect the nature of the machinery fading behind her.

Sinclair could see the future,” says Lynx.

“So could the Manilishi,” says Sorenson.

“Only Sinclair’s ability trumped Haskell’s,” says the Operative. “She just had it in flashes. Sinclair’s view was a little more comprehensive, wasn’t it?”

Sorenson shrugs. “But the Manilishi was able to deploy hacks—”

“Don’t play the retard,” snaps the Operative. “This isn’t just about precognition, is it?”

“No,” whispers Sorenson.

For a moment there’s silence. Lynx whistles.

“Fuck,” he says, “if Sinclair can violate causality wholesale—”

“Then we’d know it,” says the Operative. “We’d have already lost.”

“And if one of those teleporters wasn’t really a teleporter,” says Lynx. “And if it got switched on—”

“Like I said,” says the Operative, “we’d know it.”

Running scans, checking readouts: it’s somehow only just beginning to dawn on her that she really is on the Moon—that she’s reached the object that she and Jason set out for so long ago. She feels like she’s stabbed him in the back by arriving up here without him—feels like she’s betrayed him repeatedly ever since. And somehow feels him too, like he’s somewhere out there even now. As if anything’s possible. She watches walls streak past. Shackleton’s drawing ever closer.

Time machines,” says Sorenson. “He was trying to develop time mach—”

“Is,” mutters Lynx. “We need to move—”

“I get that,” says the Operative. He shoves his guns up against Sorenson’s face. “Too bad this goddamn hunk of metal where you and that blowup-bitch of yours have been holed up contains not a single portal of any use whatsoever.”

“God help me it’s true,” says Sorenson. He’s cowering like he knows he’s about to get it any moment—

“And you don’t even know the details of the fucking recipe to cook up some Rain,” says Lynx. “So what the fuck have you been growing here?”

“My best effort,” snaps Sorenson.

“And you were going to activate them when?”

“I figured to use them as a bargaining chip instead.”

“You’ve signed your own death warrant, old man.”

“That happened long ago.”