Chapter Six

 

Leyton had met many of the most powerful members of the ULAW government in his time, and had stood toe to toe with some of the most dangerous criminals and jumped-up despots in the galaxy. So why was he finding it so difficult to talk to this woman whose face had appeared in his thoughts at some point virtually every day for as long as he could remember?

She stood before him now in a loose fitting pale blue smock, her small frame almost lost within its folds. The garment shouted 'institution,' even though he knew it would be fresh, supplied by habitat personnel after Mya had bathed and rested. A small irregularity at the base of her neck showed where the patch of skinfix was still settling after the removal of the tag ULAW routinely fired into each and every prisoner that came their way - tiny devices that would outlive their hosts and could be used to pinpoint and identify a former offender forever afterwards. The sight brought a subliminal itch to the recently-healed spot where his own tag had been removed. He might never have seen the inside of a ULAW prison but he had been an eyegee, which still qualified him as ULAW property.

"You're looking well," she said, into a silence that was threatening to become awkward. It was a remarkably neutral opening, bearing in mind the passion that suffused his and Mya's history. Disappointment struck like a blow and his spirit sagged under the weight of it.

"And you look beautiful," he countered, determined to up the ante before they became bogged down in a mire of polite inanity.

"Huh!" she barked. "No I don't. I look wasted... gaunt and malnourished... as if I've spent the last few months in prison getting the shit kicked out of me when I wasn't being tortured. Oh, wait a minute, I did, didn't I?"

Her dark skin had lost its lustre, looking almost sallow when compared with the image in his mind; her even darker hair -which he'd seen in so many styles, from cropped and spiky, to bobbed, to long and plaited into a ponytail - was a crudely chopped and tangled mess, the almost chubby cheeks were gone - as sunken as her eyes - while the sensual grace of her movements had been replaced by weary awkwardness... but she was still Mya. "Even so," he said, "you look beautiful."

Her face reflected a range of emotions, disbelief and exasperation chief among them, and for a moment he thought she was about to shout and rail against him, but in the end she laughed. It was a sound that welled up from somewhere deep within and shook her body in its escape. "Good God, Jim, how is it that you manage to perceive the rest of the world so clearly but always see me in pastel shades and soft focus?"

He shrugged. "I'm just talented like that."

She stepped forward, closing the distance between them, and suddenly they were hugging.

"I've missed you," she murmured.

"Me too." The words were wholly inadequate but all he could manage just then. Besides, he noted that her face was pressed to his chest. She didn't look up, didn't leave any opportunity for a kiss.

He still didn't know what had gone wrong between them. At some point the passion they'd shared became something she put up with, until she couldn't anymore. He had never understood why. Nor, deep down, had he ever accepted that she wouldn't return to him some day.

As their embrace lingered, there came a light knock on the door. They stepped back from each other and Leyton was far from surprised to see Kethi standing there. She looked at the two of them with... what? Not disapproval as such, or even surprise, merely with interest.

"Sorry to interrupt," she said, "but Nyles wants to see you, Mya."

Of course he did. Leyton wasn't naïve enough to believe that the habitat had gone to all the trouble of freeing Mya just for his sake. They wanted answers, to the same questions he did. For instance, what had brought about Mya's spectacular fall from grace? One minute a member of the elite eyegee unit, the next a prisoner aboard the orbiting cesspit that was Sheol Station, where ULAW tucked away those people they least wanted to hear from again. Torture wasn't something the government resorted to lightly. There'd be all hell to pay if the media ever got hold of the story, so presumably Mya knew something that ULAW wanted.

The invite hadn't included Leyton, but he was hanged if he was going to miss out on being there; besides, Kethi didn't object when he tagged along. He always had the impression that Nyles tolerated his presence aboard The Rebellion rather than welcomed it, that the habitat's leader put up with him for Kethi's sake and would never fully trust anyone who had spent so long as a ULAW agent. Leyton didn't mind; in fact, he privately applauded Nyles's cautious attitude. After all, at some point he might yet prove the man right.

 

One aspect of Virtuality that would take some getting used to was the silence that reigned over the streets here. They weren't deserted, not quite, but there were many times when he alone, or he and Malcolm, were the only people in sight. On the rare occasions he did encounter others, they were generally in the distance and always in a hurry to be somewhere else. Kyle had yet to see a car.

"Of course," Malcolm replied when he raised the subject. "If you had a finite amount of time to spend in a virtual realm where all sorts of things are possible, would you squander it by piddling around in boring city streets? There will be the odd occasion when an avatar has to resort to the streets, but only in order to get from one place to another, and they won't want to dawdle."

"So why have the streets at all?

"Symmetry, credibility..."

"In other words you don't know."

"Not really, no. I didn't design the place."

Philip looked around. "And are all the streets here as deserted as this?"

"More or less."

Which definitely didn't constitute a 'yes.' "Oh?"

Malcolm sighed. "There is one section where the streets are anything but deserted, especially at night."

"I take it this is another of those places that are 'dangerous, where the kids go wild.'"

Malcolm favoured him with a sour smile, suggesting he was getting a little tired of the reference, but nodded. "And I suppose you want to see it?"

"Of course."

"All right, but there's something we have to do first."

Malcolm led the way through dark corridors that seemed to invite men in long coats with turned-up collars to stand in the shadows and peer at you from beneath the rim of their fedoras. In the event, they passed no one, but Philip found himself treading carefully, as if afraid that the slightest sound might attract unwelcome attention.

The final passageway ended in a plain unassuming door, which Malcolm flung open to reveal... nothing. Philip gazed out into a dark void that reached in every direction. Craning his neck a little, he could see the rough brick wall of the building disappear into the murk above and below; all else was blackness.

"I'm tempted to say the edge of Virtuality," he said slowly, "but it can't be, because Virtuality is continuous, like a Möbius strip. It doesn't have any edges."

"So?"

"This must be a glitch, a topographical bug in the programming."

"Good."

Philip stared for a further second and then felt obliged to shuffle back a step. He had never experienced anything so disturbing, so disorientating as this complete absence. It seemed to pull at him like some kind of black hole, tempting him forward.

Malcolm whistled; not a tune but a mere two notes, as if he were attempting to draw attention.

Incredibly, as in so many childhood stories, the whistle was answered. Not by a faithful hound or some powerful steed with wild eyes and a streaming mane, but by a steel walkway which appeared out of nowhere and extended towards them. It stopped a few metres short of their position and hung bizarrely in the void, as if reluctant to close the final gap.

"We have to leap across," Malcolm explained.

"You're kidding me."

"Not at all. Can't afford to let the walkway actually touch this side or it'll defeat the whole object. Come on, but be careful. There's no gravity in the glitch."

With that, he took a few steps back, ran forward, and flung himself into the darkness, seeming to float across the intervening space to land on the steel walkway with a clatter. It didn't sway, didn't budge. Nor did Philip, who stared after his father but made no move to follow.

"Your turn, Philip. Trust me."

Swallowing his doubts, Philip forced his feet to lift from the solid floor. Three long strides back, then a short run, before he hurled himself into the void. The sense of weightlessness was immediate and disorientating. He wondered fleetingly what would happen if he missed the walkway altogether. Would he be left floating in this topographical non-space for ever, unable to reach the resumption of programming in any direction? He imagined himself stranded for eternity, or until Virtuality collapsed, which might just as well be the same thing. Then it was over. His hand brushed the railing and his feet impacted with metal, leading to a brief stumble forward to where Malcolm was waiting to steady him.

"Thank you," he said automatically.

The walkway was already retracting, carrying them away from the solid reassurance of the wall and into the blackness. He gripped the metal handrail tightly. Malcolm didn't look concerned and Philip resolved that he wouldn't either. He'd trusted the old man this far. Yet as the length of walkway continued to shorten, evidently disappearing into nothing and carrying them ever closer to it, Philip couldn't help wondering what the hell he was doing here. Before he knew it, his toes disappeared, crossing the unseen barrier, and in an instant the rest of him had followed. Weight returned immediately; a welcome touch of normality after the oddness of the space just departed.

He was in a room, stepping off the walkway with Malcolm still beside him.

"And we're now in...?"

"...Virtuality, of course, but a different part," Malcolm explained. "You mustn't keep thinking in linear terms. That was a break in the programming. We've jumped from one section to a completely different one without leaving a continuous history for anyone to follow, should they try to."

"All right, but why?"

"For protection," a new voice said.

Philip spun around, to see the silver haired figure of Kaufman Industries' latest CEO standing there. "Catherine?"

"Cath, Catherine's partial," the newcomer explained, "but close enough."

Of course, amazing how the distinction between person and partial seemed to be so much less important to him these days. His gaze switched between Malcolm and Cath. "Back ups," he guessed, "cloned programmes held in reserve in case one of us gets erased."

"There, you see? I knew some of your brains had to have come across when they uploaded you," his father quipped. "After what happened at Bubbles, there's no way I'm taking you to a street meet without a few precautions. Cath's going to update my own back up and create one of you. If something does ever take either of us out, there'll always be a cloned version stored and dormant, waiting as replacement. If we're taken out by anything malicious, it might be sophisticated enough to trace our back history, to pursue every programming path we've ever followed and erase all trace of us. The break we just leapt across means there's no direct trail leading here, which ought to keep the clones safe."

"Very ingenious," Philip conceded. "Does it work?"

"No idea, never been tested, but it should do."

"If you two have quite finished," Cath interrupted, "I do have other responsibilities. Shall we get this over with?"

Her presence intrigued Philip. He recalled what Malcolm had said about partials seeming incomplete, their personalities limited, but couldn't detect any such shortcomings where Cath was concerned. He wondered to what degree Catherine Chzyski had already enhanced her partial, which led him to ponder exactly what Malcolm might have started here. In another century, would Virtuality be crawling with enhanced transhumans and the avatars find themselves in the minority?

Now there was a prospect to conjure with.

 

The interview with Mya proved something of a disappointment, as Kethi had suspected it might. Leyton tagged along as she'd predicted. Nyles would have preferred to exclude the former government man, fearing his presence might inhibit Mya. Kethi accepted the possibility, but felt it more likely that his being there would reassure the new arrival. As usual, her opinion won the day. Nyles might be stubborn and even arrogant on occasion, but he of all people valued her capabilities.

Throughout the meeting, Nyles adopted what Kethi thought of as his 'professional warmth' persona, in which he smiled a lot and spoke in relaxed, sympathetic tones, while the words themselves were all business. He even managed to avoid anything more than the faintest hint of condescension when explaining to Mya that while he was delighted with her safe extraction from the prison station, he hoped she would repay their efforts by co-operating.

Kethi watched Mya intently, fully aware that, despite her current frail appearance, this was a highly trained government operative they were dealing with, but the woman's gratitude and willingness to help seemed entirely genuine.

"What were you doing there?" Nyles asked.

"Well, Sheol was one holiday destination I hadn't tried yet," Mya replied.

He smiled, though Kethi knew exactly how shallow that expression would be. This flippancy was a trait Leyton and Mya evidently shared. Perhaps it was drilled into ULAW operatives as a defence mechanism. "Did it live up to expectation?" Good grief, Nyles was even playing along. The man might not possess anything recognisable as a sense of humour, but clearly he'd learnt to feign one.

"And some." Mya grimaced and pushed a tense hand through her dark hair. Nyles stayed quiet, letting the silence draw her out. "I stumbled across something," she said at last. "Information I shouldn't have. I reported it. Next thing I knew they took my gun away, slammed me in there, and then set about torturing me to discover how much I knew."

"And did they succeed?"

"Oh, yes, but the problem was they couldn't know that, couldn't be certain I wasn't holding something back, so they kept digging even though there was nothing more to find. If you people hadn't come along, they'd have kept at it until not a scrap of me remained. As it is, I'm not sure how much longer my sanity would have lasted."

Nyles's thin smile came and went in a trice. "What did you find out that had ULAW so concerned?"

She took a deep breath and glanced towards where Leyton stood. "I learned... I suspected from what I uncovered while on a mission that there were elements within the ULAW government working to break up the union."

Really? That was interesting, though Mya seemed genuine enough. Kethi had picked up hints of dissension from time to time, but that was inevitable within a government as vast as ULAW's. She certainly hadn't seen anything on the scale suggested here.

"You mean determined to bring the government down?"

"Yes."

"What did you find?"

"I prevented an assassination. The target had been a woman, a planetary president within the ULAW government. I took the assassin alive. He begged me not to hand him in, claiming that he'd be killed if I did. He said that the man who'd hired him was a high-ranking ULAW official and that this assassination was just one part of a far wider plot. He also said that he could prove it."

"What did you do?"

"Took him in and reported his claims. Next thing I knew I was jumped by a squad of shimmer suited, very professional goons. I woke up in a cell on Sheol."

"Why?" Kethi interjected. "Surely they could simply have told you the assassin was lying and sent you off on the next assignment."

"Because they know me better than that, knew that I wouldn't have let the matter rest, but would have done some digging on my own. Presumably, they were afraid of what I might have found."

"How did these goons jump you?" Nyles wanted to know. "You're an eyegee. Surely your gun would have warned you."

Mya took her time in answering. "The gun stayed quiet," she said finally, mumbling a little, as if she could hardly believe the words herself.

Kethi's attention switched briefly to Leyton, but he showed no sign of reaction. That didn't really matter. She was just glad he'd been there to hear Mya talk of her gun's complicity. It might help him accept the unpalatable truth of where his own weapon's loyalties lay.

"Who did you actually deliver the assassin to?"

"Pavel Benson, my boss, the head of the eyegee unit."

Now there was a name Kethi had heard before. "Wasn't he also the man they put in charge of operations at New Paris?" The man who had been responsible for ULAW's liaison with the Byrzaeans.

Mya merely looked puzzled, possibly she'd been out of the loop by then, but Leyton answered on her behalf, speaking for the first time. "Yes, he was."

Coincidence? An explanation Kethi tended to accept only once every other possibility had been eliminated. She determined to take a closer look at this Pavel Benson.

Mya said nothing else of interest and Nyles soon excused her, with a smile, an apology, and the advice to get some rest and rebuild her strength.

She left trailed by Leyton. Once they were out of the room, Nyles turned to Kethi. "Well?"

"She's holding something back."

"So she's giving us the truth but not necessarily the whole truth." He nodded. "Hardly surprising after all she's been through, I suppose. In her shoes I'd probably do the same, not wanting to reveal my whole hand straight away."

Maybe, but Kethi wasn't convinced it was that simple.

"We'll have to win her trust," Nyles concluded, closing the subject as far as he was concerned. "What do you make of her reaction to Leyton?"

"Interesting. She cares about him deeply."

"But she doesn't love him."

Kethi considered that for a heartbeat before replying, "No."

"That was my impression too. Do you think the rescue was worth it, given the likely cost once ULAW identifies who was responsible?"

"Yes." She answered without hesitation, determined that Nyles should hear no trace of doubt in her voice. She still remembered how crushed and defeated he'd been when they arrived at New Paris too late to influence events. Seeing him like that had been a tremendous shock. The habitat needed this man to be strong. "Planning for the attack on Sheol gave everyone a new impetus," she said. "Pulling off the snatch and grab without any casualties has boosted morale still further, and now Mya has provided us with a lead on a possible split within ULAW. That gives us renewed purpose, and she even provided a name for me to follow up on."

"Pavel Benson."

"Exactly. So, all in all, I'd say the mission was a roaring success."

"I hope you're right. I hope we both still think that when ULAW come knocking." Then he met her gaze and smiled. "Thank you, Kethi. That will be all."

Her thoughts as she left him were troubled. It was the first time she'd analysed the chemistry between Mya and Leyton. She didn't doubt for one minute the truth of what she'd said on the subject, but wasn't yet sure of her own reaction to that particular revelation.

 

After the interview with Nyles, which Leyton had to admit was one of the more congenial debriefings he'd ever witnessed, he escorted Mya back to her quarters. She didn't invite him in, claiming weariness - something he could hardly argue with, given all that she'd been through. There were a hundred things he wanted to say to her, though perhaps they were merely a hundred different ways of saying the same thing. Either way, he felt he'd barely scratched the surface of what he needed to tell her. Mya had always been perceptive. The worry that gnawed at him deep down was that she probably didn't need him to say any of them, yet she hadn't responded as he'd hoped. Oh, there was closeness, they'd always had that, but he didn't sense in Mya anything to mirror what he still felt for her.

The Rebellion boasted a small but well-equipped gym - a sensible provision for any ship with a sizeable crew that was likely to be out of port for an extended period - and it was here that Leyton headed to work out his frustrations. For once, though, exercise wasn't enough, no matter how aggressively he threw himself into it, so he cut his routine short and headed for the rec room in search of more effective distraction.

Here was where the off-duty crew tended to congregate before, after, or instead of sleep. The place was busy without being crowded. Two faces stood out, both because he recognised them and because, well, they were different. Joss and Wicks were spacers recruited at some stage to the habitat's cause, their skin weathered and tanned from exposure to a score of different suns. They lacked the porcelain paleness of those native to the habitat, an environment without any sun.

Wicks beckoned him over, which was all the invitation Leyton needed. He took the empty seat next to Joss.

"Not often we see you in here," she commented.

True enough; he tended to prefer his own company, spending much of his downtime either in the gym or in his own quarters, but not today.

"He's had a busy day, Joss," Wicks suggested, "so feels the need to come and unwind with us commoners."

"You wonder why I don't come in here more often with a greeting like that?"

"Ignore Wicksy," Joss advised. "He's only happy when he's making someone else's life miserable. I hear the raid went well."

"Yes, it did." So much for his attempt to escape the day's events and relax for a while.

"Good, I'm glad. I just hope everyone realises that ULAW aren't going to take this lying down."

Leyton was quite sure that everyone fully appreciated as much. The government were bound to respond. In fact, he had the impression that a desire to be noticed was part of the reason Nyles had sanctioned the rescue in the first place, as if to deliberately tweak ULAW's collective nose. The habitat seemed desperate to be taken seriously. After this, they probably would be - assuming the authorities worked out who was behind the raid, and he was sure they would, eventually. There wouldn't be any half measures; the response would be swift and forceful. Leyton trusted Nyles and Kethi realised what they'd started here. Quite what ULAW would do in the face of such provocation remained to be seen, but he had a feeling his newfound allies' resolve was going to be tested to the limit. Not that this greatly bothered him at that particular moment, nothing did. After all, he had Mya back.

Almost as if she'd heard his thoughts, Kethi appeared, munching on a high energy ration bar and clutching a bulb of chilled water in her free hand. "Mind if I join you?" No one did, though Joss and Wicksy left soon after, leaving him alone with the enigmatic girl who had recruited him to the habitat's cause.

Never one to waste an opportunity, he asked about the men and women who'd founded the habitat, keen to learn more of his newly adopted home.

There was a brief pause while she squeezed some water into her mouth to wash down the ration bar, and then she replied. "William Anderson, the habitat's founder, was a genius and a visionary." Leyton made no comment. This sounded like something learned by rote rather than her own take on things, which didn't preclude its being true. "He attracted men and women of similar capabilities, and it's they and their descendents who form the core of our community."

He decided to change tack and hope for a less formal answer. "What about The Rebellion? Is this the habitat's only significant ship?"

"No, not at all. Four capital ships were built, powered by engines based upon the knowledge gleaned from the derelict alien vessel. Three were, in effect, mothballed - powered down and kept in orbit around the habitat, capable of being brought to full operational status within a matter of days, if not hours. This one, The Rebellion, has always been maintained at constant readiness with a skeleton crew on board, prepared to launch as soon as we received any news that hinted of alien incursion. Everyone in the habitat is trained as crew and between them the four ships have the capacity to carry almost all the habitat's population. Each of the four ships has a specific function. The Rebellion is the vanguard, our rapid response. The Renegade would have been next, brought online as soon as we left. Her job is to carry key personnel including senior scientists to a more secure secondary location..."

"Presumably the site of the alien derelict," Leyton guessed.

Kethi made no comment, but continued. "After that, The Retribution, tasked with providing support for The Rebellion, and finally The Renaissance, which by now would have replaced The Rebellion as the ship at constant readiness, prepared to defend the habitat or evacuate our remaining people, whichever seems the most appropriate."

Leyton was impressed. "Your whole society has been geared towards this, hasn't it?"

"It's why we exist," Kethi confirmed with evident pride. "And this is our time, the day William Anderson always knew would come and which we've been preparing for ever since the habitat was founded."

Leyton nodded. He knew full well that preparing for an event and confronting the reality were two entirely different things. He had to admit, however, from all that he'd seen so far, the habitat's personnel were coping pretty well despite their inexperience. He just hoped that continued to be the case once ULAW had noticed them.