Zero Point (Owner Trilogy 2)

shape – all to interact with the ‘tensioning’ of space-time caused by the vortex ring, and further interact with eddy currents within it. It should be possible then to set the course of the station, though some calibration would be required.

Now focusing through cams set inside the Imperator, Saul saw that the crew consisted of the six EVA workers he had requested and also the pilot – which role Langstrom had assumed. At present they were going through some unnecessary system checks or stowing away the gear Saul had instructed them to bring along. After ensuring that everything inside the craft was as he wanted, he propelled himself down towards where the proctor still stood on that docking face. He landed perfectly in front of it, but he still felt annoyed at the weakness of his muscles.

The proctor Paul was clad in a survival suit, with extra material added to encompass the humanoid’s huge frame. Saul focused on its face, behind the mask, studying it intently with his new depth of vision, enough even to pick out the excretory pores and optics in its skin. But still there was nothing human there for him to read.

‘So why the suit?’ Saul asked, addressing the humanoid directly by radio.

‘It offers me protection against hard vacuum, of course,’ Paul replied.

‘Which you don’t need.’

‘It is more comfortable, and on my body’s stocks of oxygen I would not be able to survive in vacuum for longer than a few days.’

‘And by wearing it you demonstrate a vulnerability you do not actually have, and thus appear less threatening to the humans aboard this station.’

‘Very true.’

‘So what is there for us to discuss?’ Saul asked.

‘We are agreed,’ said Paul. ‘You allowed us to emerge into existence but we feel this is no more than the debt any human owes to its parents, which means none at all, because in either case there was no altruism involved. However, our position aboard this station is essentially the same as that of the humans here: we serve you in order to survive. But, in the end, we feel more comfortable in supposing that we have a debt to pay.’

‘There are ten of you,’ said Saul. ‘If you so wished, you could kill me, take control of this station and do precisely what you wish with it.’

‘This is true.’

‘Why not, then?’

‘Such an act would be immoral. Also the future bears down on us with the weight of its ages. You are a being in transition, hardly out of your chrysalis, and you are a key opening probabilities and possibilities that extend into the future. We will serve you.’

‘Cannot every being open the same? Cannot you and your fellows do so?’

‘It is not the same – as Judd has seen.’

‘So the vortex generator will work.’

‘Yes.’

‘And Judd, working close to it, is already peering through the wounds in causality.’

‘Yes.’

‘But there is no such thing as destiny or fate?’

‘Only probability.’

‘How long?’ Saul asked.

‘We will serve you either until you die, which could be at any moment from now on, or in ten thousand years.’

Even in his enhanced state, and understanding so much beyond this quite opaque exchange of words, Saul felt appalled.

‘One of the penalties of power,’ he remarked, turning away.

Paul’s next words ghosted after him: ‘But only if you have a conscience.’

Alex devoured the tomato, relishing every bite, carefully ensuring that not one drop of its juice escaped him. Next he began eating a handful of beans. He would have liked to see them grow bigger but had been unable to resist the temptation, having already picked them before it even occurred to him to leave them till later. It was worrying how slow his thought processes seemed to have become. It was a fact that sometimes three or four days passed without him remembering much about them. And when he did surface out of his fugue to consider his position, to remember that Messina lay beyond his reach, and that in any case affecting events unfolding beyond this hydroponics unit was impossible for him, the sudden guilt he felt made him once again close down his own thinking.

Perhaps he should take another trip to the food store. His trips there had been stalled by it being moved out of the path of that thing the robots were building in the outer rim, and automatic transport to and from it had only just been reconnected. However, someone must have gone in there between his last two trips because containers of sweetcorn had gone missing. Maybe if he spent more time there he would have a better chance of intercepting someone, and thus obtaining a spacesuit. The big problem was that his visits there were necessarily limited by the cold.

He turned his thoughts again to that object under construction in the outer rim. After Alexandra’s discovery that it was linked in to the station’s astrogation system he understood that it must constitute some way of moving the entire station, but how? Maybe it produced some kind of gyroscopic effect that would enable the station to dodge missiles. That was the only answer he could come up with. They should have sabotaged it while they had the chance.