Neal Asher - The Departure

He wanted her to tell him that they must die but, even though she knew they did not deserve to live, she could not bring herself to make that pronouncement. In her eyes it wasn’t right. No one should be forced to make such a harsh decision.

‘They will remain in Arcoplex One,’ she pronounced, with as much firmness as she could muster. ‘Their task will be to feed the corpses into the digesters.’

‘And then?’

‘Surely there is a way they can be dealt with?’

‘Yes, I am sure there is a way,’ he said, staring at her while something hardened in his expression. ‘Let’s go.’

‘Food first,’ said Hannah quickly.

He paused. ‘Yes . . . of course.’

Hannah suddenly wanted to rage at the unfairness of it all, but instead she merely turned away. She found a fresh elasticated undersuit in one of the wall-length cupboards, then picked up her discarded one and just stood staring at it helplessly. Saul turned away from the fridge and pointed to a little door set in the same wall. Hannah pulled on the handle, hinged out a hopper, and tossed the soiled undersuit inside.

‘Where does it go?’ she asked, prepared to talk about anything but the previous subject.

‘Ultrasound and gas cleaner,’ he replied succinctly. ‘All clothing worn here is made of material suitable for that kind of cleaning.’

‘One more job the bureacrats can’t do,’ she muttered as she pulled on her VC suit. Meanwhile he placed the two ceramic trays into a microwave cooker, and shortly she joined him to eat bean stew, followed by some sort of treacle pudding. A drinks machine provided frothy coffee and chilled bottles of flavoured water. It all seemed so very domestic, though the coffee had to be sipped through a spout, and the emptied trays went into the ultrasound cleaner, along with their dirty clothes.

‘Now,’ said Saul, leading the way out after they had finished.

A different shift of staff occupied the control room now, though Le Roque remained in charge. Meanwhile, a crew of technicians was gradually replacing the plastic office chairs with the kind of acceleration chairs found aboard space planes.

‘Good thinking,’ observed Saul, as Le Roque wearily turned to face them.

‘We could take more out of the planes, but I wasn’t sure if that’s what you’d want.’

‘The chairs from the one space plane you’ve selected should cover your present needs.’

After a momentary look of surprise at this, Le Roque said, ‘I don’t suppose I’ll be needing to make a further report to you then?’

It was something they would all have to get used to. Saul might stand amongst them like a normal human being, yet his mind could range throughout the Argus Station with the omniscience of a demigod.

‘I can detect what you’ve done so far,’ concurred Saul. ‘All personnel are now aware of the direction of thrust, and where to position themselves, though they’re not yet aware of the duration of thrust, which will be two hours at one-half gravity. You’ve prepared the hospitals, I see, and are presently getting everything loose tied down or securely placed on gecko matting. You should have everything ready within the next thirteen hours. Any additional problems I should know about?’

‘The Arboretum, and hydroponics there and also in the outer ring,’ Le Roque replied.

Saul paused for a moment, tilting his head, then said, ‘The Arboretum topsoil is layered with a mesh into which most of the trees are rooted. That was done so they would not break free of the soil should it be necessary to use the emergency brakes on the cylinder. The mesh should be enough, and the hydroponics there should be fine too. Those troughs situated in the outer ring need to be drained into their cisterns. Do this precisely half an hour before acceleration and, whilst under acceleration, you should set the misters to operate constantly. That treatment should be sufficient to keep the plants alive.’

‘But some will get thrown free?’

Saul shook his head. ‘No, I’m going to use only a gradual increase in thrust. Inside the cylinder there will simply be an increasing fluctuation in apparent gravity, from half a gee to one and a half gees. There’ll inevitably be damage to some plants – an approximate fifteen per cent loss – but we can live with that. Anything else?’

‘That about covers it for now, Dir—’ Le Roque paused, looking uncomfortable.

‘I do not like the title “Director”,’ said Saul, sharply. ‘It’s got too many unpleasant associations.’ Another reflective pause. ‘Call me by my name but, if you’re not comfortable with that, then refer to me as the Owner – because I own this station now.’

Le Roque merely nodded, then watched while Saul led Hannah towards the exit, the spidergun falling in behind them and now moving with a spooky fluidity it had not possessed earlier.

‘Where now?’ Hannah asked.

‘Arcoplex One – I want this resolved before we round the Moon.’

Once out of the control room, she queried, ‘The Owner?’

‘For all our lives, everything we’ve laid hands on has been considered the property of the state. Even our own bodies were considered thus. But no more.’ He turned towards her, his face a mask pinned by weirdly pink eyes. ‘Decisions, power, responsibility, Hannah. I am now the most powerful here and therefore the most free, yet inevitably, I am also the least free because I bear the most responsibility.’

‘That still doesn’t explain it.’

She caught a glimpse of irritation in his expression.

‘I am now in charge and, whether I want it or not, I have the power of life and death over all those here with me, because I physically and mentally own this station, which is the only thing keeping them alive. In fact this entire station now feels to me just like an extension of my own body. It’s something I will not give up, which is something they all need to be reminded of, and the title I’ve chosen does exactly that. I won’t call myself Director, Delegate, Chairman, Governor or King. From now on I’m the Owner – that is enough.’

Arrogance or truth? Perhaps both. Hannah just did not know for sure. Maybe his choice of title incorporated a degree of calculation that went beyond what he could easily express to her. She wondered if the irritation he had just shown was due to her tardy comprehension, though more likely it was because she still refused to sentence seventy-nine people to death.

They collected their helmets at the airlock and were soon back outside in the main station. Here Hannah could see crews busily engaged, welding arcs faring blue light across the lattice walls, work lights glaring white and casting black angular shadows, one-man EVA units moving ponderously here and there amidst the rapid insectile precision of countless robots.

‘This is not going to be a democracy,’ Saul reminded her over com.

‘That’s a political system that probably can’t work satisfactorily out in space,’ Hannah admitted. ‘It has to be a Captain and his crew.’ Then she couldn’t help adding, ‘Or the Owner and the owned.’

Saul merely snorted.

As they reached the base of Arcoplex One, two more spiderguns approached them down the length of the cylinder, like dogs eager to greet their masters, joining them just as Saul and Hannah propelled themselves up towards the endcap. The spiderguns proceeded first through the airlock, but on the other side Hannah saw no one they needed guarding against. She reached up to detach her helmet, but Saul caught her arm.

‘The levels of putrescence in the air here have risen substantially,’ he advised. ‘Better remove it when we are a little further in.’

Only then did Hannah notice the flies gathered around the blood-crusted mouth of a nearby corpse.