Neal Asher - Zero Point (Owner Trilogy 2)

‘Yes.’

‘But there is no such thing as destiny or fate?’

‘Only probability.’

‘How long?’ Saul asked.

‘We will serve you either until you die, which could be at any moment from now on, or in ten thousand years.’

Even in his enhanced state, and understanding so much beyond this quite opaque exchange of words, Saul felt appalled.

‘One of the penalties of power,’ he remarked, turning away.

Paul’s next words ghosted after him: ‘But only if you have a conscience.’

Alex devoured the tomato, relishing every bite, carefully ensuring that not one drop of its juice escaped him. Next he began eating a handful of beans. He would have liked to see them grow bigger but had been unable to resist the temptation, having already picked them before it even occurred to him to leave them till later. It was worrying how slow his thought processes seemed to have become. It was a fact that sometimes three or four days passed without him remembering much about them. And when he did surface out of his fugue to consider his position, to remember that Messina lay beyond his reach, and that in any case affecting events unfolding beyond this hydroponics unit was impossible for him, the sudden guilt he felt made him once again close down his own thinking.

Perhaps he should take another trip to the food store. His trips there had been stalled by it being moved out of the path of that thing the robots were building in the outer rim, and automatic transport to and from it had only just been reconnected. However, someone must have gone in there between his last two trips because containers of sweetcorn had gone missing. Maybe if he spent more time there he would have a better chance of intercepting someone, and thus obtaining a spacesuit. The big problem was that his visits there were necessarily limited by the cold.

He turned his thoughts again to that object under construction in the outer rim. After Alexandra’s discovery that it was linked in to the station’s astrogation system he understood that it must constitute some way of moving the entire station, but how? Maybe it produced some kind of gyroscopic effect that would enable the station to dodge missiles. That was the only answer he could come up with. They should have sabotaged it while they had the chance.

Alex chewed and swallowed the last bean, but the meagre meal had done nothing to assuage his hunger. Maybe, since the store wasn’t connected up to the automatic distribution system, it hadn’t been connected to the station manifest and therefore no one would notice if he pilfered larger quantities—

Something clonked against the outside of the hydroponics unit, Alex jerked his head up and, in frustration, scanned his surroundings. He had heard sounds like this before but nothing had ever come of them. He assumed they were caused by robots moving past and maybe using the unit to bounce off and change their course through the interior of the station. However, this time another sound ensued that he did not recognize, until after it there came a hissing of air. The airlock was filling. Someone was coming in!

Numb and confused, he gazed at the detritus surrounding him. He had no time to clear up his mess, to conceal that he had been living here. He had no time to empty his own hydroponics trough and pack it away again. Abruptly he realized he must act, he must move. He propelled himself towards the airlock, halting his approach carefully with a foot set against the wall, then pulled himself up among the frameworks extending across the ceiling, and waited.

The inner airlock door opened and someone came through, walking on gecko boots. This figure halted just a metre inside, then reached up to disconnect and take off the helmet of its spacesuit. Alex stared in pure curiosity, long starved of something new to see, and feeling a sudden surge almost of love for this individual – this middle-aged woman, from what Alex could see. Then he threw himself down on top of her, looped his left arm around her neck and locked his right behind it, applying the sleeper lock as she fought to free his hold. They both bounced up against the ceiling framework, then tumbled along through the hydroponics unit.

When she was finally still, Alex quickly set about removing her spacesuit. It wasn’t a VC model but at least it also wasn’t one of the older more bulky suits still much used aboard the station. He removed her undersuit, too, leaving her naked, donned that, then put on the spacesuit itself. He then considered tying her up, but eyeing her flaccid muscles and recalling how ineffectual she had been when he attacked her, he didn’t think there was any need. Instead he settled down to wait until she regained consciousness.

Eventually she shifted position, shuddered then threw up, most of the vomit spattering onto the floor but little globules of it sent tumbling through the air. She raised her head, saw him, then tried to scuttle away from him. But she only managed to propel herself upwards from the floor, and ended up merely drifting, making odd panicked grunting sounds as she tried to grab hold of something. Alex stepped forward and grabbed her, shoving her down beside one of the troughs, to which she clung, cringing, a jet of urine squirting out of her and splashing against the floor.

‘Don’t hit me,’ she babbled. ‘They told me to come here. It’s not my fault.’

There was an odd tone to her voice: here was a fully grown adult, yet speaking like a child caught misbehaving.

‘Why do you always have to hit me?’ she whined.

Alex stepped back, out of range of the spreading cloud of golden globules, and just stared at her, some memory niggling at the back of his mind. Then, causing a lurch in his chest, the memory became clear.

‘What are you doing here, Delegate Vasiliev?’

She stared at him blankly for a moment.

‘Why do you keep calling me that?’ she complained. ‘I’m just here to put on the trough covers and the plant nets.’

It suddenly became clear that she thought he was one of the station personnel. And that ‘you’ she kept mentioning referred to those on the station who hadn’t accepted that little remained of the Committee delegate this woman had once been. But what should he do with her now?

Alex considered killing her. He could clear up the signs of his occupation of the hydroponics unit, then take her body out through the airlock and conceal it somewhere. This would at least delay any searchers from realizing what had really happened. However, the time he would need to expend in doing that would be better spent on him getting away from here and finding somewhere else to conceal himself. He decided to let her live.

‘What’s your name?’ he asked.

‘Janet,’ she replied.

‘I’m sorry to have taken your suit, Janet, but someone will be returning here soon with another one for you. Meanwhile you must continue with your assigned task. Do you understand?’

She nodded sulkily. Alex quickly put on the suit’s helmet to cut out the smell of her vomit and piss, then headed for the airlock.

15

The City Sleeps

In the twenty-first century, the concept of the individual ‘city’ was only just clinging on, as suburbs, industrial complexes and new towns kept spreading and beginning to link up. Already places that were once thus designated had begun dropping the word ‘city’ from their names. As the century progressed, these urban conglomerations absorbed smaller towns and villages, until those living in these areas began to lose any concept of local community. In fact, the ideas of towns and villages were becoming tribal – merely subsets of what was engulfing them. As the Committee – and the nation conglomerates that formed its parts – took a tighter grip on power, it began eliminating old borders and dividing countries up into more easily governed ‘regions’, then arbitrarily dividing those regions up into sectors and areas with numerical designations that nevertheless failed to erase the old names from public consciousness. Such regions were soon appended with the name ‘sprawl’. In high administration this fact was much debated, but in the end simply accepted. It didn’t matter any more: the nation states and national identities were dying, which was the main aim, so a few archaic names surviving gave no cause for concern.