Zero Point (Owner Trilogy 2)

‘We felt you,’ said the proctor named Judd. ‘Your orders? ’

‘Unchanged by full consciousness,’ Saul replied mentally. ‘You have done well.’

‘There are inefficiencies,’ said the proctor Paul, who was currently with another proctor called David in the Arboretum cylinder world.

‘If you had taken full charge,’ Saul informed the android, ‘station personnel would have rebelled, creating greater inefficiencies.’

‘I understand.’

‘Yes, of course you do.’

These beings were something Saul needed to focus on closely when the opportunity arose, but right now he needed to get moving, to show himself to the people of this station, to optimize their chances of survival. Because, still, the approaching Scourge felt like a hot nail driving towards his eye.

‘I need to run some tests,’ said Hannah, frowning.

‘Only for your own reassurance,’ he answered. ‘I know my condition.’

‘Okay, so let me ask you again,’ she said. ‘How do you feel?’

He allowed the sensation of pain for a second, then quickly shut that down. ‘Like I was shot three times and then operated on. Like my head has been opened up and most of the contents scooped out, and like I’ve been flat on my back for several months.’

‘Then precisely as you should feel.’ Hannah passed him the undersuit, then stooped down again to the container to begin unpacking a VC suit. In merely storing that clothing here, she had obviously tried to remain optimistic. ‘Do you need any help?’

Despite her keeping garments ready for him, her tone told him she didn’t approve of him getting out of bed now without her checking him over. Perhaps she didn’t understand just how irrelevant his body felt to him. It was a much more complicated device than the robots he had earlier controlled and was now reassuming control of, but to him it was still merely a telefactored biological machine.

Considering that, his mind wandered off into some half-fugue state. There, in a strange way, he felt grateful for the shooting for, even though the manner of its occurrence was catastrophic, Saul had been pushed to what seemed like the next stage of his personal evolution: immortal mind – distributed, copied, safe, and his physical body just one of many he now controlled. In that moment he saw a possible future. As his abilities and the technologies he controlled increased, eventually there would come a time when he could grow replacement versions of himself, place within them the minds he required for any particular task and reabsorb that mind into his whole self after it completed that task.

Then reality came back. All that was still for the future, and he had to survive the now.

‘I can manage,’ he replied – the answer intended for her and for something inside him.

Slowly and methodically he eased himself from the bed, pulled the undersuit on over his scarred and tender flesh, then donned the vacuum combat suit, meticulously tightening its concertinaed seams. As he did this, he was also aware that when the alert had been transmitted to Hannah’s fone to bring her here, she had told Rhine what she was responding to. Rhine had quickly taken an almost childlike pleasure, which wasn’t without malice, in telling Le Roque. The technical director froze like a rabbit in the headlights before informing Langstrom, who had looked equally as frightened before getting himself under control and informing his staff. Thereafter the news had spread by fone and computer throughout the station.

‘How do I look?’ he eventually asked.

‘Like something hot from a Transylvanian tomb.’

‘Thank you for your support.’ He paused, now considering whether to answer her earlier question, and decided there would be no advantage in her not knowing.

‘You asked what woke me,’ he said.

‘Yes – you haven’t really explained that.’

‘It was a connection to the outside world, the conscious world, a connection running so deep it could not be ignored,’ he explained. ‘Even in the state I was in, I was still watching this station and still listening. I heard your recent tanglecom exchange with Varalia Delex.’

‘I don’t see any deep connection,’ said Hannah, puzzled.

‘Perhaps you did not notice her reaction when you told her my name. Maybe it’s understandable that you missed it. As for me, I hardly recognized her – since so few of the memories remain.’

‘Memories of what?’

‘Her name is Varalia Delex, but that’s her married name – from her husband, Latham Delex. Her maiden name is Varalia Saul. Hannah, she’s my sister.’

Hannah’s expression registered shock, then all sorts of rapid calculation and reassessment. ‘You knew she was out here?’ she tentatively asked.

‘I knew she was offworld but I had no idea where. Perhaps that knowledge was a subconscious driving force, but I can’t even speculate on how much influence it has had on my actions and decisions since I found myself on the way into the Calais incinerator.’

‘You knew,’ Hannah asserted.

‘I thought you only dealt with empirical fact, Hannah?’