Gary Gibson - Against Gravity

"There have been difficulties."

"I'm already aware of those." Draeger took his seat across from Smeby and studied him, one hand half-covering his mouth. "How are your treatments progressing?"

That could have been an innocuous question but, in the several months since he had entered Draeger's employ – or, rather, since Draeger had paid the bribes necessary to extricate Smeby from the Chinese jail in which he had been languishing – Smeby had learned to sense the inherent threat in every such discussion they had. Smeby nodded carefully, keeping his features deliberately neutral as he framed his reply.

"The spurts of growth in my augmentations appear to have been stopped, but it may be too early to decide if this is permanent." He swallowed. "I'll need further treatments, further observation, and Dr Xian thinks it'll be a while before they'll know for sure if I'm in the clear."

Draeger nodded. Smeby had fully expected to die in that Chinese jail. He'd had his augmentations surgically implanted only a few years before, in a Bangkok clinic that took only cash – anything but US dollars. For some reason it had felt like a good idea at the time. It had been getting harder, a lot harder, to find mercenary work without possessing that extra edge. And if you didn't take that one vital step further, maybe you'd find yourself caught in a mountain pass while some guy who could see in the dark, and with reflexes three times as fast as your own, crept up behind you with a knife. With odds like that, the surgery had seemed a reasonable gamble – for a while.

Draeger nodded towards the Archimedes image, still hanging in the air. "Tell me, Marlin, what you know about the station."

"Only what I've read up on it over the past several days, sir."

Draeger waved a hand. "So tell me what you've found out."

"The original project was handled by three of your subsidiary orbital development firms, working in tandem with the United States government – while there still was a United States." Smeby shrugged briefly. "The work on it started in the early 2080s, and it was intended to demonstrate the scientific superiority of the United States at a time when it was coming under almost constant attack by unknown forces utilizing biological or genetic weapons. This was at the same time that President Wilber instituted the Emergency Government, suspending the Constitution. And discontinuing the electoral process."

"But there were other reasons too for building the station, Marlin?"

Smeby cast him an appraising look before continuing. "Yes, there were. I am a religious man, Mr Draeger, and I think Wilber was wrong. He believed that he could reach out to God by using the Archimedes – a sin of pride. God sundered the United States and scattered its people with plagues and fire. That was our punishment for our hubris. Now the Archimedes itself is inaccessible."

Draeger's expression remained serene. While Smeby was speaking, he had been staring again out over the treetops rising beyond the ancient temples. "You were there, weren't you, Marlin? At the end?"

"Excuse me, sir?"

Draeger turned back to him. "During Wilber's flight, you were one of his… they called you the God Squad, didn't they?" Smeby could feel his face redden. The term that Draeger had used was uncomplimentary at best. "You were there, trying to smuggle him out of the White House before the Senate could have him arrested." Draeger touched his data bracelet and the edges of the eepsheet flashed again. Smeby could see new information displayed there now, and didn't need to look too close to know what it would be.

Draeger turned the eepsheet around and slid it back over to Smeby, who ignored it. "Don't you remember your old name?" asked Draeger. "Or does that stir up too many bad memories?"

"Lots of bad memories, sir. But what's the point of this? You've already got me working for you."

"I want you to understand how much is at stake here… your plastic surgery is excellent, by the way. What I'm about to tell you is intended for only a few people's ears, so you should feel privileged that I've decided to share it with you. I'm sure you'll appreciate the risks otherwise."

Oh, I do, Smeby thought to himself sourly.

Draeger continued: "Much of the research carried out on board the Archimedes primarily involved molecular engineering. The station itself is partly a result of nanotech, using materials farmed from robot lunar mining operations. Some of that research, particularly into developing bio-organic technologies that could fuse with living bodies, was later developed still further through covert military experimentation." Draeger smiled, but Smeby could see no humour in the other man's eyes. "Research which included experimenting on members of the American public."

Smeby shrugged. "Dissidents, enemies of the state – the kind of people who welcomed our worst enemies inside our borders with open arms."

Draeger cocked his head to one side. "You approve, then?"

"That's beside the point. What's the purpose of all this, sir?"

"What if I told you that Wilber was right to think that he could find God through the Archimedes?"

Smeby was silent for several seconds as he sought an appropriate reply.

Instead, Draeger pre-empted him. "Let me fill in the rest of the details, then. There was a containment breach on board the Archimedes before it was even half completed. Self-organizing molecular machinery invaded the substance of the station, and the Archimedes was subsequently abandoned, under World Court jurisdiction." Draeger smiled, crookedly. "Do you know precisely what went wrong?"

For some reason that he couldn't quite fathom, Smeby's throat had become very dry. "No, I don't, sir."

"Your beloved President wanted to find God. He interpreted my theories in such a way that he believed I could help him in that. The heart of the Archimedes consists of self-learning, self-motivating artificial-intelligence routines embedded in nanite machinery designed to function in cooperative colonies. Hardwired to specific tasks such as decoding the structure of space" – Draeger smiled more broadly – "or finding God."

"You're crazy."

"Quite possibly, yes, but my definition of God is not quite the same as Wilber's was. If there is a God, Mr Smeby, he's not Jehovah or any other of an endless pantheon of crude tribal deities that are still worshipped even today. God is… intelligence seeking to sustain itself. If that intelligence exists it would leave traces, in the structure of our universe itself. The cooperative intelligences on board the Archimedes were designed to find those traces, the evidence."

"And have they?"

"Oh no, Mr Smeby. They've done much, much more than that."

21 April 2093 Venezuela

Kendrick woke again a little while before darkness fell, his mind still half-full of scattered dream-images, to feel a hand brush against his shoulder like the caress of a ghost.

"Jesus!" he yelled, jumping up, suddenly wide awake. Dull red lines of text glowed faintly on his databand, a weather feed detailing the hurricane skirting St Lucia and moving south-west, scattering fishing boats across the northern coast of South America and tearing through villages as it went.

Finding a secure landing spot before the winds really hit hadn't been easy. Then came a lot of waiting, and a growing certainty that Joao wasn't ever going to appear, that they were on some kind of a wild-goose chase that just might get them killed if they weren't careful.

"Sssh, it's me, Joao." He crouched at the entrance to the tent, favouring Kendrick with a wide grin.

Kendrick pulled himself upright and groaned, "Where's Buddy? Have you spoken to him yet?"

"He's outside."

Kendrick stumbled out of the tent and blinked himself awake while fading sunlight skimmed the treetops around them. The skin of Buddy's helicopter flickered with a constantly shifting mirror image of the surrounding trees and bushes, providing it with an effective camouflage.