Ken MacLeod - Newton's Wake

‘Good morning, gentlemen,’ said Ben-Ami, swooping to the table in the batwinged, knife-pleated gunmetal habit that was the fashion of the day. He poured coffee, sat back and grinned at the musicians. ‘I have news. Very interesting news.’ He paused, as if to tease out the moment.

‘Fire away, mate,’ said Calder, earning a puzzled glance and a confidential hunch.

‘I’ve just been called to a meeting with my MEA. He’s warned me against putting on this production, for fear of—he leaned closer, spoke quieter—‘offending the Knights.’ He sat back and brushed his palms against each other. ‘Worth about a thousand hours of publicity, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Hah!’ said Calder. ‘That’s one way of looking at it, and good for you. But how do you know it isn’t a wise move to keep on the right side of the black-pyjama guys?’

Ben-Ami flapped a sleeve. ‘I don’t care if it is or not. If our so-called security requires self-censorship of artistic work, then frankly we’ve lost the planet already. Genuine military and diplomatic considerations are one thing, and cultural cringing is another entirely. Let the Knights shut the production down themselves, should it come to that. I for one will not shut myself up on the basis of heavy hints dropped on my toe.’ He sipped a little more coffee, and darted a sharp glance at each of them. ‘Are you with me, gentlemen?’

They both nodded. At that Ben-Ami stood up. ‘Excuse me,’ he said. He lifted the crockery and cafetière and laid them carefully on a vacant seat, then jumped up on to the table. The clapping of his cupped hands was like a rattle of stage pistol-shots.

‘Attention, people!’ he shouted. He spun around, cloak swirling and flashing. ‘Listen, everyone!’

He had a fine deep voice and he knew how to project it. Heads turned.

‘For anyone who doesn’t know me—yes, gentlemen of the Knights, that means you—my name is Benjamin Ben-Ami. I am a playwright and promoter, and I intend to produce and have performed a spectacular musical entertainment based upon the history of Eurydice and its glorious precursor states. It will be called … Rebels and Returners , ladies and gentlemen, and it will be performed in the grounds of the Jardin des Étoiles in … four weeks!’

Winter saw Calder put his head in his hands, then look up and mouth silently ‘Four fucking weeks!’

‘All are welcome!’ Ben-Ami shouted. ‘And yes, gentlemen, that very much includes you, the Knights—’

The Knights stood up as one, tipped their heads towards Ben-Ami, and walked off.

A man jumped up, sending his table crashing.

‘Now look what you’ve done, Ben-Ami! You’ve offended them! And I don’t blame them, this is no time for this kind of divisive, contentious stuff!’

‘Who says it’s going to be divisive?’ someone else shouted, and in the subsequent contention had his answer. Ben-Ami jumped down as the first thrown tomato whizzed past his head. More tables went over. Shouts. Winter stood up. Calder was already on his feet, in his forced fighting crouch, hands out, glaring around. Scuffles were breaking out. Out of the corner of his eye Winter saw a blade flash, then heard a grunt. He reached inside his jacket, forgetting that there was no weapon there.

Calder grinned, or maybe just bared his teeth.

‘I hope you’re getting all this, Benjy old boy,’ he said. ‘This is just like it was back on—’

A shoulder hit his hip and he went over.

L

amont stared at the patterns of the gravity-wave display, his mind translating it into a visual image as though it was a stereogram. The resulting magic-eye picture of the starships converging on Eurydice was as disturbing as it was vivid.

Hours passed. The patterns stabilised around the planet.

‘The Knights aren’t fighting them’ he remarked.

‘In part it is a question of the balance of forces,’ said the Hungry Dragon . ‘But more significantly, it is because these are not their enemies. These are not Carlyle family ships.’

‘What are they?’

The Hungry Dragon turned on several comms channels at once. The audio filled with American-accented voices, and the visuals with swift-shifting surveys of Eurydice and what looked like rapid-fire negotiation and exchange of contracts, in which kilohectares of land were being haggled over in acres of small print.

‘What is online,’ said the ship with a rare stab at humour, ‘is America Offline. The farmers that Carlyle mentioned.’

‘They’re selling land to each other!’

‘They are at least staking claims.’

‘But they have no right—this is outrageous—’

The ship lurched. Lamont was thrown back and forth in the webbing. Through the singing cables he felt the additional vibration of a brief burn of the main jet, and a few nudges from the attitude jets.

‘Stop!’ he yelled.

‘I am sorry,’ said the ship. ‘This is not under my control.’

With fierce concentration Lamont eyeballed up some external views just as the retro-rocket jet killed the ship’s forward momentum. Half a dozen gummy cables—extruded from somewhere on the surface between the rows of machinery pods—extended, clung, and contracted, winching the ship back a little to the polar end of the asteroid, where it was further snared and hauled. Within minutes its stern and jets were attached—glued, it seemed—to the rock. It was as though the ship had become the bowsprit of an iceberg. Lamont expected some of the pods to detach from the surface and fasten themselves to the side of the ship, but nothing of the kind happened. Instead, the external cameras showed the transmission dish aerials jerking about. The control board indicated that they were active. The power drain was visible to the naked eye.

‘What are you transmitting?’

‘I do not know,’ said the ship.

Lamont twisted in the webbing, then catapulted himself out of it to a corner of the control board and grabbed a manual control for an external aerial. It was a crude, mechanical contraption to move the dish in a case of power loss. He shifted it until it caught the edge of the beam from one of the transmitters.

‘That was ingenious,’ said the ship.

‘Are you receiving it?’

‘Yes,’ said the ship. ‘It is identical to the transmission that took control of my processes.’

‘Do you have it firewalled?’

‘Yes.’

Lamont relaxed, for a moment. At least the whole business wasn’t about to repeat itself. Then he thought a bit further.

‘Where are these transmissions directed?’

‘Towards Eurydice,’ said the ship.

‘At a wild guess,’ snarled Lamont, ‘they’re aimed at these newly arrived ships. It’s trying its luck to hack into them .’

‘That sounds plausible,’ admitted the ship.

‘Step two,’ said Lamont. ‘That Carlyle woman didn’t seem bothered about war machines. I have the impression these people elsewhere in the galaxy have dealt with them before. They may have firewalls or antidotes to this virus. I don’t expect them to be too kind towards any sources of it.’

The ship’s lights dimmed for a second.

‘The transmissions have ceased,’ the Hungry Dragon reported.

‘That doesn’t change anything. We’re a sitting duck.’

‘We are not,’ said the ship, ‘in the place from which the transmissions originated.’

‘What?’

The ship patched up an image of the stellar background, time-stamped a minute earlier. Then another, shown as current. It repeated this several times. The difference was tiny, but perceptible as the image flicked back and forth.

‘The stars have moved,’ said the ship. ‘Or we have.’