Ken MacLeod - Newton's Wake

‘Hey, hey,’ said Kevin. ‘Take it easy. This is not your fault. I’m getting things sorted out with the Knights and Armand’s lot. If the Knights and the farmers knew about the DK ships they must at least be keeping an eye on them out there. We cannae dae anything about the war machines in the skein right now, but I reckon they’ll be meeting some pretty tough resistance fae our gang. We’ll find out as soon as messages start tae propagate back, Chronology Protection permitting. And we’re not, you know, being attacked at the minute. We just need tae get our act together, consolidate, and work out what tae dae next.’

‘Great,’ said Lucinda. ‘So what do we do now?’

‘What maist of us need tae dae,’ said Kevin, ‘and you in particular, is sleep .’

L

ater, it seemed to Lucinda incredible that she and almost everybody else had slept, but that was what they did. Emotionally and physically exhausted, with the war machines watchful—and watched, by the short-straw-drawn unsleeping—rather than actively hostile, with too many dead to count except by the Black Sickle girls whose job it was, all of them—Carlyles, Eurydiceans, Knights—except those on guard duty crashed out in whatever shelter and with whatever human companionship they could find.

She woke with synthetic sunlight on her eyes and metal hair between her lips.

‘Oh, sorry,’ she said, disengaging the hair and withdrawing a careless arm from across Higgins’s breasts.

The metal woman smiled. ‘I don’t mind,’ she said. She rolled away, on the yielding turf-like flooring, put her hands behind her head and gazed at the ceiling. ‘I don’t sleep.’

‘How nice for you,’ said Lucinda, straightening limbs and picking salt crystals from the corners of her eyes. She felt sweaty and filthy, as well as obscurely embarrassed. After some foraging she found the nearest bathroom, all low vessels and pebble-shaped steel objects whose functions she discovered by trial and error as she used them. The drexler gave her plain underwear, canvas trousers, and a cotton top and, after some persuasion, a quilted jacket. She wasn’t going to get back into her suit unless she had to, but she poked into the helmet and strung the comms around her brow, neck, and ears like jewellery. There were no calls waiting. She detached the boots and tugged them on; buckled on a belt and weapons.

There: that felt better. She stood and examined herself in the mirror for a minute. Looked better, too.

The room they’d slept in had a low ceiling that mimicked a clear sky, and a small trickling water feature surrounded by plants in a corner, and otherwise no furnishing. As she paused at its open doorway Lucinda formed a vague opinion that it was some kind of retreat, perhaps for meditation. Higgins was still lying on the floor. Her glass gaze tracked Lucinda, who met it, unblinking, as she came over and sat down cross-legged beside her. Higgins sat up with one smooth flexure of the spine.

‘You OK?’ she asked.

Lucinda ran a hand through her damp, still annoying curls. ‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘It’s just, uh, I’m sorry.’

‘For what?’ Higgins asked, in a mildly surprised tone.

‘If I’ve been, like, kind of rude lately.’

Higgins shook her head, metal hair flashing. ‘Not at all.’

Lucinda didn’t know what to say. She would have been ashamed to reveal even the trace of her initial revulsion that had remained, and that she now wanted to vomit out. ‘I like you,’ she said at last. ‘My original liked you, and now I can see why. Last night, in the fighting and in the flying, you were just so fucking great .’

With that she really did find herself wanting to vomit. ‘Excuse me,’ she said. She ran back to the bathroom and spewed, nothing much but acid water and slime, but she felt better for getting rid of it. She washed her face and rinsed out her mouth again and walked shakily to the room. This time Higgins stood up, met her, and put her arms around her for a moment. The metal body felt like flesh.

‘You’re all right,’ Higgins said.

‘So are you.’

Higgins smiled, looked aside awkwardly. ‘Things to do,’ she said. ‘I gottae look around this vehicle.’

‘Sure. Catch you later.’

Leaving Higgins to roam the ship, Lucinda swung out of the hatch to face the day. The early sunlight was dimmer than the diurnal lighting inside. A thin drizzle fell from clouds that concealed all but the first hundred metres of the relic and of the grounded asteroid about half a kilometre to its right. Two other ships hung just below the cloud cover; she presumed they were the two that had nearly clashed during the night. Tiny solar-powered news cameras flitted and drifted, their little wings labouring in the damp air and dim light. Around the bases of the relic and the asteroid war machines patrolled, a dull sheen of condensation from the mist on their jittery shining limbs and swivelling sensory apparatuses. Well away from them, and close to her and the ship, troops stirred from bivouacs, fires and heaters were being lit, somebody was making coffee. She wandered over and cadged some. It was Eurydicean, muddy, and strong. This group were from Armand’s army. Nobody knew what was going on. As she sipped hot black coffee and listened to rumours she saw a figure far outside the camp, walking away from the asteroid and towards them through the mist. Lurking war machines registered his presence, but let him pass unhindered.

Around her and on the perimeter, the grunts saw him too, and guns came up. He must have noticed the glint and the threat, because his hands rose above his head. As he came closer she saw that his hair and beard were long and matted. He was about two metres tall, perhaps more, because he walked as though carrying a heavy pack. His face was lank and pallid, his eyes bright. With his upraised arms he looked like a mad prophet coming out of the wet wilderness. He wore a close-fitting space suit with the raised whorls that covered electromagnetic coils and marked it as Eurydicean long-term microgravity gear. That would account for his peculiar stoop and laboured gait.

‘Cover me, lads and lasses,’ said Lucinda. She put down the mug on the damp moss and walked forward, her hands open at her sides. She and the stranger stopped about three metres apart.

‘Can I take my hands down now?’ he asked. His voice sounded surprised at itself.

Lucinda nodded. He lowered his arms and straightened his back.

‘Who are you?’ she asked.

‘Cyrus Lamont,’ he said. ‘Prospector. Owner and pilot of the Hungry Dragon .’ He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. ‘The ship that’s stuck to the top of yon asteroid. Which I claim, in case there’s still any metal left in it.’

Lucinda had suspected something of the like, but it was still a surprise to her.

‘It was you who flew that? Landed it?’

‘Oh, no,’ Lamont said. ‘It was the ship did all that.’ His eyes closed for a moment. ‘It wasn’t responsible for the war machines,’ he explained. ‘They hacked into it.’

‘Well, I don’t think anyone will blame you for that.’

‘Good,’ he said, sounding relieved.

‘How did you get down?’

‘Climbed.’

‘Climbed down? In the dark?’

‘The dark?’ He looked puzzled. ‘Yes, I suppose it was dark. The ship helped.’ He gazed around, distracted. ‘I need to talk to someone, very urgently. Someone in authority.’

‘That would be Jacques Armand,’ said Lucinda. ‘I can take you to him.’ She stuck out a hand. ‘My name’s—’

‘Lucinda Carlyle,’ he said, shaking her hand firmly. ‘I saw you on television.’

S

he tried raising Kevin and Armand on her comms, but they weren’t taking calls. Annoyed, she sought them out, stalking around the KE camp with Lamont in tow until she found them in a small, open-sided diamond-aerogel shelter, sitting at a table with the leader of the surviving Knights. Sam Yamata turned out to be the very old man Lucinda and Armand had encountered the day the Knights had arrived. Lucinda presumed they’d already discussed what, if anything, could be done about the corrupted DK ships, because when she and Lamont arrived they were talking about the Knights who had not survived, but had been given a chance of resurrection by the Black Sickle.