Neal Asher - Zero Point (Owner Trilogy 2)

‘What other options do we have?’ asked Rhone, and for the first time she saw fear in his eyes. Maybe until now it had all been just an intellectual exercise for him.

Var gazed steadily ahead, while considering how close Shankil’s Butte stood to their rabbit hole. Perhaps there were some further options . . .

‘We’ll go with what we have now,’ she decided, ‘but maybe we should consider laying some of the new explosive around the butte. A series of properly placed charges might be our last option. You’re the geologist – you tell me.’

‘What do you mean?’ Rhone asked.

‘I mean, would it be possible to drop a few million tonnes of stone into that hole to plug it up?’

‘Yes, it’s possible.’ Rhone seemed a little nauseated at the prospect.

Var recalled how, upon seeing the shepherd that Ricard had sent striding after her across the Martian landscape, she had thought it looked like something out of H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds. Future Martians, she felt, only stood a chance of remaining free and surviving the dictatorship of Earth if they took the route of another such Wellsian creation.

‘A future branch of the human race,’ she said idly.

It seemed that Lopomac, who had been in the cargo compartment behind, with two recruits from Martinez’s men, had been reading her mind. ‘We become morlocks,’ he said, leaning through into the cockpit, and seemingly amused by the whole idea. ‘Historically, it’s not unusual for rebels or freedom fighters to go literally underground.’

‘And that will be our future?’ said Rhone. ‘Always under the ground and skulking in shadows?’

‘I’d rather skulk in shadows that spend any time in a nicely well-lit adjustment cell.’

Rhone seemed to have no answer to that, and Var wondered if his problem was actually accepting that there was no way back to Earth for them. If that was the case, then he would be completely the wrong person to be leader of Antares Base. He would merely get them all killed.

Var pointed ahead to a distant structure now becoming visible and changed the subject. ‘So, how much cable are we talking about?’

Rhone seemed happier with this question. ‘The cliff that the lift was positioned above is nearly a kilometre high, and the cradle ran up and down between two cables, so at a minimum there’s two thousand metres of it.’

‘More than enough,’ opined Lopomac.

The distant object was now clearer: a kind of frame around some sort of bulky object, probably a motor or cable drum, though much of it was concealed behind the line of the horizon. Maybe just another half-hour would bring them there and since, throughout the hours of driving, she had gained no further insight into Rhone’s motivations, she decided it was time to be less circumspect.

‘Tell me, Rhone,’ she finally said, ‘if you were in charge, what would you do?’

Rhone stared at her but, as ever, she could read nothing in his expression, so she returned to concentrating on where she was driving.

‘There are so many variables,’ he said, then seemed at a complete loss. Maybe he had never really thought about this too deeply. She felt certain he wanted her position but now wondered if that was actually not based on some deep conviction that he could do better, but simply stemmed from the kind of ladder-climbing found in any organization. It frightened her to realize quite how incompetent and vaguely motivated an enemy could be.

‘We know some things for certain,’ he continued. ‘Serene Galahad will never leave us alone. We must either be punished or made to submit to her.’

After that, he said nothing for a long minute, so Var prodded him. ‘Those are facts evident to anyone. I asked you how you would react to them.’

‘If we stay on the surface, we’ll be taken,’ he affirmed. ‘That’s certain.’

‘And?’ Var turned to study him again.

He gazed back at her, puzzled. ‘If you’re asking me what I think I would do, in your position, I think the best answer would be that I’d faff about and be frightened of making such a drastic decision as your one to take us underground, and would probably end up getting us all killed.’ He paused reflectively. ‘And, in an attempt to be liked, I probably wouldn’t push people as hard.’

He sounded so utterly plausible; every time she encountered a response like this from him, she found herself questioning her own sanity. Perhaps her paranoia was more evident to others than she supposed, and it was that which was driving them away from her. Even so, she could not ignore it; she could not afford to put such paranoia aside. Her own life and the lives of everyone at Antares Base depended on her judgement.

She now concentrated on the structure ahead, which had risen higher and was much more visible. It looked like the elevator equipment that would be found at the pithead of an ancient coal mine. From this oblique angle, it wasn’t possible to see it clearly, but it appeared to be a framework in the shape of a pushed-over triangle, supporting a big wheel at its tip, right over the drop into Coprates Chasma. In the base of the triangle was a big drum and motor set-up, along with a small windowed cabin. However, they weren’t close enough yet to see if any cable was available.

‘I understand your anxiety,’ Rhone continued abruptly. ‘There’s an awful lot of pressure on you, and perhaps too much responsibility.’

Patronizing prick . . .

‘Var chose to take it,’ said Lopomac from behind, ‘and we agreed she should take it.’ He paused for a moment, then continued, ‘Power should always come with responsibility, and they should be equivalent. You get big problems when those who want power then renege on the responsibility.’

Was that it? Was it just Rhone trying to scrabble higher but not wanting the responsibility of the top job? Var chewed that one over in her mind as passing over another ridge brought the lifting gear ahead into full view. Now, seeing cables hanging from the wheel, dispelled such speculation from her mind. They had a job to do.

Argus

Obeying Hannah’s instructions, Paul had arrived in Jasper Rhine’s laboratory ahead of her and stood waiting as she stepped through the door, with Brigitta and Pike just a few paces behind her. She looked around, noticing how much things had changed here. The laboratory had been extended on one side to incorporate larger machines for the production of rectifier Casimir batteries, which were now steadily replacing every other battery used in every handheld device aboard the station. An adapted construction robot worked there, too, tending to the machines, packing batteries to be dispatched to station stores and, as a sideline, making stacked arrays of these same batteries to be used in some of the larger devices in the station, even in robots like itself.

Rhine himself was seated on a revolving chair encircled by a ring of benches, though he was almost concealed by the laboratory machines and the computer hardware stacked on their surfaces. Currently he sat before a scanning-electron microscope, eyeing its screen when not casting nervous glances towards Paul. Hannah strode further into the room, flicked her gaze towards a couple of screens up against one wall cycling grotesque images evidently from Earth, then averted her eyes, placed her hands on her hips, and gazed up at Paul speculatively.

‘ADAR 45A,’ she said succinctly.

Paul waved one of his big long-fingered hands in a curiously graceful gesture towards Rhine. ‘The rough schematic supplied by Jasper Rhine was approved by the Owner. After the completion of the enclosure, work then commenced upon it.’

Hannah felt suddenly confused. She had expected lies, guilt, something human but got none of those. ‘Why wasn’t I told?’