None of it came close.
It stood in the man-made cavern like some vertically stretched vision from the Dimensionalist school, some element out of the nightmare technomilitary landscapes of Mhlongo or Osupile. There was a gaunt foldedness foldedness to the structure, like six or seven ten-metre tall vampire bats crushed back to back in a defensive phalanx. There was none of the pa.s.sive openness that the word "gate" suggested. In the soft light filtering down through c.h.i.n.ks in the rocks above, the whole thing looked hunched and waiting. to the structure, like six or seven ten-metre tall vampire bats crushed back to back in a defensive phalanx. There was none of the pa.s.sive openness that the word "gate" suggested. In the soft light filtering down through c.h.i.n.ks in the rocks above, the whole thing looked hunched and waiting.
The base was triangular, about five metres on a side, though the lower edges bore less resemblance to a geometric shape than to something that had grown down into the ground like tree roots. The material was an alloy I"d seen in Martian architecture before, a dense black-clouded surface that would feel like marble or onyx to the touch but always carried a faint static charge. The technoglyph panelling was dull green and ruby, mapped in odd, irregular waves around the lower section, but never rising higher than a metre and a half from the ground. Towards the top of this limit, the symbols seemed to lose both coherence and strength-they thinned out, grew less well defined and even the style of the engraving seemed more hesitant. It was as if, Sun said later, the Martian technoscribes were afraid to work too close to what they had created on the plinth above.
Above, the structure folded rapidly in on itself as it rose, creating a series of compressed black alloy angles and upward leading edges that ended in a short spire. In the long splits between the folds, the black clouding on the alloy faded to a dirty translucence and inside this, the geometry seemed to continue folding in on itself in some indefinable way which was painful to look at for too long.
"Believe it now?" I asked Sutjiadi, as he stood beside me, staring. He didn"t respond for a moment, and when he did there was the same slight numbness in his voice that I"d heard from Sun Liping over the comlink.
"It is not still," he said quietly. "It feels. In motion. Like turning."
"Maybe it is." Sun had come up with us, leaving the rest of the team down by the Nagini Nagini. No one else seemed overkeen to spend time either in or near the cavern.
"It"s supposed to be a hyperspatial link," I said, moving sideways in an attempt to break the hold the thing"s alien geometry was exerting. "If it maintains a line through to wherever, then maybe it moves in hypers.p.a.ce, even when it"s shut down."
"Or maybe it cycles," Sun suggested. "Like a beacon."
Unease.
I felt it course through me at the same time as I spotted it in the twitch across Sutjiadi"s face. Bad enough that we were pinned down here on this exposed tongue of land without the added thought that the thing we had come to unlock might be sending off "come and get me" signals in a dimension we as a species had only the vaguest of handles on.
"We"re going to need some lights in here," I said.
The spell broke. Sutjiadi blinked hard and looked up at the falling rays of light. They were greying out with perceptible speed as evening advanced across the sky outside.
"We"ll have it blasted out," he said.
I exchanged an alarmed glance with Sun.
"Have what blasted?" I asked cautiously.
Sutjiadi gestured. "The rock. Nagini Nagini runs a front-mounted ultravibe battery for ground a.s.sault. Hansen should be able to clear the whole thing back this far without putting a scratch on the artefact." runs a front-mounted ultravibe battery for ground a.s.sault. Hansen should be able to clear the whole thing back this far without putting a scratch on the artefact."
Sun coughed. "I don"t think Commander Hand will approve that, sir. He ordered me to bring up a set of Angier lamps before dark. And Mistress Wardani has asked for remote monitoring systems to be installed so she can work direct on the gate from-"
"Alright, lieutenant. Thank you." Sutjiadi looked around the cavern once more. "I"ll talk to Commander Hand."
He strode out. I glanced at Sun and winked.
"That"s a conversation I want to hear," I said.
Back at the Nagini Nagini, Hansen, Schneider and Jiang were busy erecting the first of the rapid deployment bubblefabs. Hand was braced in one corner of the a.s.sault ship"s loading hatch, watching a cross-legged Wardani sketch something on a memoryboard. There was an unguarded fascination in his expression that made him look suddenly younger. "Some problem, captain?" he asked, as we came up the ramp.
"I want that thing," said Sutjiadi, jerking a thumb back over his shoulder, "out in the open. Where we can watch it. I"m having Hansen "vibe-blast the rocks out of the way."
"Out of the question." Hand went back to watching what the archaeologue was doing. "We can"t risk exposure at this stage."
"Or damage to the gate," said Wardani sharply.
"Or damage to the gate," agreed the executive. "I"m afraid your team are going to have to work with the cavern as it is, captain. I don"t believe there"s any risk involved. The bracing the previous visitors put in appears to be solid."
"I"ve seen the bracing," said Sutjiadi. "Bonding epoxy is not a subst.i.tute for a permanent structure, but that"s-"
"Sergeant Hansen seemed quite impressed with it," Hand"s urbane tone was edged with irritation. "But if you are concerned, please feel free to reinforce the current arrangement in any way you see fit."
"I was going to say," Sutjiadi said evenly, "That the bracing is beside the point. I am not concerned with the risks of collapse. I am urgently concerned with what is in the cavern."
Wardani looked up from her sketching.
"Well that"s good, captain," she said brightly. "You"ve gone from polite disbelief to urgent concern in less than twenty-four hours real time. What exactly are you concerned about?"
Sutjiadi looked uncomfortable.
"This artefact," he said. "You claim it"s a gate. Can you give me any guarantees that nothing will come through it from the other side?"
"Not really, no."
"Do you have any idea what what might come through?" might come through?"
Wardani smiled. "Not really, no."
"Then I"m sorry, Mistress Wardani. It makes military sense to have the Nagini Nagini"s main weaponry trained on it at all times."
"This is not a military operation, captain." Hand was working on, ostentatiously bored now. "I thought I made that clear during briefing. You are part of a commercial venture, and the specifics of our commerce dictate that the artefact cannot be exposed to aerial view until it is contractually secured. By the terms of the Incorporation Charter, that will not become the case until what is on the other side of the gateway is tagged with a Mandrake ownership buoy."
"And if the gate chooses to open before we are ready, and something hostile comes through it?"
"Something hostile?" Wardani set aside her memoryboard, apparently amused. "Something such as what?"
"You would be in a better position than I to evaluate that, Mistress Wardani," said Sutjiadi stiffly. "My concern is simply for the safety of this expedition."
Wardani sighed.
"They weren"t vampires, captain," she said wearily.
"I"m sorry?"
"The Martians. They weren"t vampires. Or demons. They were just a technologically advanced race with wings. That"s all. There"s nothing on the other side of that thing," she stabbed a finger in the general direction of the rocks, "that we won"t be able to build ourselves in a few thousand years. If we can get a lock on our militaristic tendencies, that is."
"Is that intended as an insult, Mistress Wardani?"
"Take it any way you like, captain. We are, all of us, already, dying slowly of radiation poisoning. A couple of dozen kilometres in that direction a hundred thousand people were vaporised yesterday. By soldiers." Her voice was starting to rise, trembling at base. "Anywhere else on about sixty per cent of this planet"s land ma.s.s, your chances of an early, violent death are excellent. At the hands of soldiers. Elsewhere, the camps will kill you with starvation or beatings if you step out of political line. This service too, brought to us by soldiers. Is there something else I can add to clarify my reading of militarism for you?"
"Mistress Wardani." Hand"s voice held a tight strain I hadn"t heard before. Below the ramp, Hansen, Schneider and Jiang had stopped what they were doing and were looking over towards the raised voices. "I think we"re getting off the point. We were discussing security."
"Were we?" Wardani forced a shaky laugh, and her voice evened out. "Well, captain. Let me put it to you that in the seven decades I have been a qualified archaeologue, I have never come across evidence to suggest that the Martians had anything more unpleasant to offer than what men like you have already unleashed across the face of Sanction IV. Excluding the small matter of the fallout from Sauberville, you are probably safer sitting in front of that gate than anywhere else in the northern hemisphere at the moment."
There was a small silence.
"Maybe you want to train the Nagini Nagini"s main guns on the entrance to the cavern," I suggested. "Same effect. In fact, with the remote monitoring in place, it"ll be better. If the monsters with half-metre fangs turn up, we can collapse the tunnel on them."
"A good point." Seemingly casual, Hand moved to position himself carefully in the hatch between Wardani and Sutjiadi. "That seems the best compromise, does it not, captain?"
Sutjiadi read the executive"s stance and took the hint. He threw a salute and turned on his heel. As he went down the ramp past me, he glanced up. He didn"t quite have his previous immobility of feature down with the new Maori face. He looked betrayed.
You find innocence in the strangest places.
At the base of the ramp he caught one of the gull corpses with his foot and stumbled slightly. He kicked the clump of feathers away from him in a spray of turquoise sand.
"Hansen," he snapped tightly. "Jiang. Get all of this s.h.i.t off the beach. I want it cleared back two hundred metres from the ship on all sides."
Ole Hansen raised an eyebrow and slotted an ironic salute in beside it. Sutjiadi wasn"t looking-he"d already stalked away towards the water"s edge.
Something wasn"t right.
Hansen and Jiang used the drives from two of the expedition"s grav bikes to blow the gull corpses back in a swirling knee-high storm front of feathers and sand. In the s.p.a.ce they cleared around the Nagini Nagini, the encampment took rapid shape, speeded up by the return of Deprez, Vongsavath and Cruickshank from the trawler. By the time it was fully dark, five bubblefabs had sprouted from the sand in a rough circle around the a.s.sault ship. They were uniform in size, chameleochrome-coated and featureless apart from small illuminum numerals above each door. Each "fab was equipped to sleep four in twin bunk rooms, separated by a central living s.p.a.ce but two of the units had been a.s.sembled in a non-standard configuration with half the beds.p.a.ce, one to serve as a general meeting room and the other as Tanya Wardani"s lab.
I found the archaeologue there, still sketching.
The hatch was open, freshly lasered out and hinged back on epoxy welding that still smelled faintly of resin. I touched the chime pad and leaned in.
"What do you want?" she asked, not looking up from what she was doing.
"It"s me."
"I know who it is, Kovacs. What do you want?"
"An invitation over the threshold?"
She stopped sketching and sighed, still not looking up.
"We"re not in virtual any more, Kovacs. I-"
"I wasn"t looking for a f.u.c.k."
She hesitated, then met my gaze levelly. "That"s just as well."
"So do I get to come in?"
"Suit yourself."
I ducked through the entrance and crossed to where she was sitting, picking my way among the litter of hardcopy sheets the memoryboard had churned out. They were all variations on a theme-sequences of technoglyphs with scrawled annotation. As I watched, she put a line through the current sketch.
"Getting anywhere?"
"Slowly." She yawned. "I don"t remember as much as I thought. Going to have to redo some of the secondary configs from scratch again."
I propped myself against a table edge.
"So how long do you reckon?"
She shrugged. "A couple of days. Then there"s testing."
"How long for that?"
"The whole thing, primaries and secondaries? I don"t know. Why? Your bone marrow starting to itch already?"
I glanced through the open door to where the fires in Sauberville cast a dull red glow on the night sky. This soon after the blast, and this close in, the elemental exotics would be out in force. Strontium 90, iodine 131 and all their numerous friends, like a "methed-up party of Harlan family heirs crashing wharfside Millsport with their chittering bright enthusiasm. Wearing their unstable subatomic jackets like swamp panther skin, and wanting into everywhere, every cell they could f.u.c.k up with their heavily jewelled presence.
I twitched despite myself.
"I"m just curious."
"An admirable quality. Must make soldiering difficult for you."
I snapped open one of the camp chairs stacked beside the table and lowered myself into it. "I think you"re confusing curiosity with empathy."
"Really?"
"Yes, really. Curiosity"s a basic monkey trait. Torturers are full of it. Doesn"t make you a better human being."
"Well, I suppose you"d know."
It was an admirable riposte. I didn"t know if she"d been tortured in the camp-in the momentary flare of anger I hadn"t cared-but she never flinched as the words came out.
"Why are you behaving like this, Wardani?"
"I told you we"re not in virtual any more."
"No."
I waited. Eventually she got up and went across to the back wall of the compartment, where a bank of monitors for the remote gear showed the gate from a dozen slightly different angles.
"You"ll have to forgive me, Kovacs," she said heavily. "Today I saw a hundred thousand people murdered to clear the way for our little venture, and I know, I know I know, we didn"t do it, but it"s a little too convenient for me not to feel responsible. If I go for a walk, I know there are little bits of them blowing around in the wind out there. And that"s without those heroes of the revolution you killed so efficiently this morning. I"m sorry, Kovacs. I have no training at this sort of thing."
"You won"t want to talk about the two bodies we fished out of the trawl nets, then."
"Is there something to talk about?" She didn"t look round.
"Deprez and Jiang just got through with the autosurgeon. Still no idea what killed them. No trace of trauma in any of the bone structure, and there"s not a great deal else left to work from." I moved up beside her, closer to the monitors. "I"m told there are tests we can do with bone at cellular level, but I have a feeling they aren"t going to tell us anything either."
That got her looking at me.
"Why?"