Transmission: Ragnarok: Book Two Read online

  Hence the amateur, all alone.

  At an eatery, while he drank daistral, he observed a teacher accompanying fifteen pupils, all young, as they worked a holodisplay above the table they had been eating at.

  ‘There’s our forecast,’ she said, ‘and Jacqui, can you see the numbers?’

  ‘Yes, miss.’

  ‘So if you play with them, just a little, what happens?’

  The forecast views changed in real time with the girl’s manipulations.

  ‘If we change the numbers by a small amount,’ said the teacher, ‘does the forecast change very much?’

  Shakes of young heads all around the table.

  They look really bright.

  Clearly the teacher was going to show them another region where altering parameters by a tiny amount shifted the prediction enormously. In a sky-city in Molsin’s streaming, complex atmospheric system, its flows made visible by predominant orange clouds, this was an everyday example to introduce chaos, the first step in learning about non-linearity and complexity.

  In the holo, an image of what might have been Barbour floated amid cloud-banks, while a pulse of tiny dots streamed out from its aft end.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he said to the teacher. ‘Are those things just markers in the display? Or are they real?’

  ‘Quickbug flyers,’ the teacher said. ‘Children, I think we have an offworld visitor. What do we say?’

  ‘Welcome to Barbour, mister,’ they chanted.

  ‘Would you like to talk to us,’ asked the teacher, ‘about where you—?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry.’ Roger waved at the children. ‘You guys are terrific.’

  He jogged out of the eatery, flushed with the probability of behaving like an idiot, but trusting himself deep down. On this level, he had been the length of the city, from the bow-end of Vertebral Longway to the rear. He had not liked the atmosphere in the aft sections.

  Bad vibes.

  Subliminal hints that he had failed to process consciously? Perhaps the people really had been less friendly there, the decor and underlying architecture less pleasing; or perhaps some other perceptual trace had been attenuated beyond his capacity to detect.

  Tannier’s people would know about the flyers. But if Helsen could avoid security checks, she might reach another sky-city, and maybe another after that. If this privacy culture was global, the further she went, the deeper she could hide.

  Two median strips offered fast-flow transport. Using the public service interfaces displayed above his tu-ring, Roger caused a vortex to form around his feet; then the vortex whirled around his ankles, and twisted him into the main laminar flow.

  He sped along Vertebral Longway, sure he had missed another opportunity.

  If there was security, Roger could not see it, unless it was the two scarlet-uniformed helpers who chatted with people, younger folk in particular, as they prepared to fly outside. That preparation consisted of sitting on an extruded block of orange quickglass – here in this chamber, everything bore the hue of old marmalade – while a thin bubble formed then thickened; and finally the bubble slid across the deck and into the solid hull.

  Through yellow-tinted view windows, you could see the bubbles pop out into the sky, now as teardrop-shapes with stubby wings, all of orange quickglass.

  ‘Are they gliders?’ asked Roger.

  One of the assistants frowned – clearly a blunt question was impolite – but the other answered: ‘Mostly gliders, with arterial fuel for a full-burst emergency return if the winds increase.’

  Even more than on Fulgor, quickglass was filled with intricate structures and systems, threaded through the malleable substrate.

  She’s out there.

  There were dozens of these quickbug flyers, maybe hundreds dipping in and out of cloud banks: an entire flock trailing the city. At some point, Helsen had slipped out in a flyer to join them, perhaps from some lower level where no one would expect a quickbug to form.

  He could not hear the music, not even a fragment; nor could he see darkness twisting through impossible geometric transformations; yet certainty was crystallizing.

  ‘I’d like to take a flight, please.’

  ‘Certainly, sir. The orientation and flightware tutorial takes several—’

  ‘I really need to get out there now.’

  ‘It’s not just the matter of queue-jumping, sir. Your safety is important to us.’

  ‘I … Forgive me. Sorry.’

  ‘That’s quite all right, sir.’

  He shrugged at the waiting people as he left. Once outside, he projected the public interfaces from his tu-ring as before; then he released his burrowers and introspectors, code-forms evolved to infiltrate and unravel, passed into the unsuspecting service operations disguised as innocuous parameters. Besides his secret in Ascension Annexe, this was the other thing he had not mentioned to anyone in Labyrinth, or anywhere else: Dad had bequeathed a copy of all his subversion ware, every covert utility he owned, dumped in a zipblip from tu-ring to tu-ring, father to son.

  It was a simple hack of a public service to descend through the deck to the level below, and pass through the wall into a storage bay half-filled with stacks of penrose containers. Creating the quickbug took another two minutes, due to the amount of security-breaking computation required.

  Then he was sitting inside a hollow sphere sliding towards the metres-thick hull.

  Let’s hope I got this bit right.

  The hollow passed inside solid quickglass. Then the front cleared. Vertigo startled Roger: there was only thin quickglass between him and the long drop to the cloud-banks below. Being a passenger in a mu-space ship had not prepared him for this.

  Behind him, the rear of his quickbug looked darker and more solid: the tail of the teardrop. As the wings extruded on either side, he forced himself to reinterpret his fear as fight preparation, to be grateful for adrenaline that would power him through the hunt.

  The quickbug flyer launched.

  And fell away from the city.

  By the second hour, he was enjoying himself. Dipping in and out of clouds, floating past other flyers – waggling his wings to say hello, all other comms disabled – and the simple process of controlling the glide-configuration with occasional pulses from the drive arteries: it absorbed all his concentration, yet his feeling of freedom bordered on elation. Still with no sign of Helsen, though occasionally he had felt something close by, like sensing thunder before it occurred.

  There.

  And she was on him.

  The other flyer was huge in comparison, shearing overhead, tendrils smashing into his quickglass bubble – tendrils! – because it was configured for attack. There were two figures inside, he was almost sure of it, as the big flyer banked left and down, and he twisted his own quickbug’s wings to follow.

  Diving now.

  They were inside intermittent cloud, all the other flyers lost from sight, and not by accident: that bitch Helsen had set an ambush, and attacked but failed to kill him. He let loose the drive power, accelerating downwards, everything beginning to shake, vision blurring as his eyeballs vibrated.

  I’ll take you down with me if I have to.

  There was someone waiting for him in Ascension Annexe but Helsen was here and now and she had killed everyone on Fulgor including his parents and there was no way she could be allowed to live. The sound inside the quickbug was rising and he wondered if the flyer could shake itself apart but that did not matter because his target was – there, left – and then he was diving even faster: full power, designed for emergency climb, driving him down.

  She pulled aside at the last moment, once more whipping her flyer’s tendrils against his hull.

  Shit shit shit.

  His quickbug flyer was finding it hard to respond, shaking as he tried to pull it level, sudden loss of vision all around as cloud swallowed his quickbug; and then a high, splintering sound cut through the roar, a second before he saw the cause.

&nb
sp; The quickglass was cracking.

  It’s not supposed to do that.

  He spread the wings further, wondering what he had done wrong.

  Venom in the tendrils.

  Helsen was smarter than he was, that was all.

  ‘Bitch bitch bitch.’

  The cockpit was opaque, webbed with cracks, about to fail.

  Shit. No.

  But the rear of the teardrop remained intact, or seemed to, and there were seconds left before the cockpit bubble exploded but Dad’s subversion ware had been the best and he trusted to it now.

  ‘I’m not going to die, you bitch.’

  A hollow opening appeared inside the teardrop tail.

  ‘Not before you.’

  He crawled inside.

  Close up.

  The command was executing, the gap closing to a hand’s width, when the world disappeared in a massive percussive bang.

  Drifting, his sleep so peaceful. Mum and Dad were with him, and all was warm with the soft wind so distant. Wonderful to curl up in here for ever.

  A bump.

  Go away.

  Voices, and then the hands upon him.

  ‘—deprivation, and acid in the lungs.’

  Shaking. Tipping him.

  ‘—bubble aloft so long, he’s lucky.’

  Falling once more.

  SIXTEEN

  EARTH, 777 AD

  The solitary hunt.

  This is where I belong.

  Ulfr hid with Brandr alongside him, man and war-hound sharing body warmth. The landscape was crinkled ice under snow, patches of tough heather and grasses showing through, and the lakes like steel. The deer-herd moved as a compact unit, their deep wordless wisdom protecting them against lone hunters, for they were vulnerable only when split from their fellows.

  Not like me.

  For all Vermundr’s nonsense about Ulfr’s being chieftain one day, this was the best life: just himself and Brandr below the sky, and the immediacy of the Middle World without men: dark-smelling soil, cold purity of air and the skin-toughening breeze, tiny thumps and crunches caused by moving deer, fine detail of their hides, and the lustrous, knowing eyes.

  Ravens, in the distance.

  If you catch a dark poet on his own, can you run him down as you would a deer?

  Not all ravens are Stígr’s.

  But these, but these …

  You are, though. Aren’t you?

  Brandr’s growl was a deep vibration. Two hundred paces away, a stag raised his head to look.

  ‘We hunt.’ Ulfr placed his hand on Brandr’s back, feeling the quiver of muscles lusting to explode with movement. ‘But not the prey we thought.’

  He rose, spear held horizontally at his thigh, and the tableau broke, deer-herd galloping away to the right, maintaining the group formation.

  Live free, until we meet again.

  Then he began to jog along the icy ground, Brandr at his side as always.

  But something attacked Stígr before Ulfr could get there.

  It reared up from the soil, spilling roots and clay and ice. Worms wriggled, exposed to the air. It was the earth moving: swinging a disintegrating limb to hit Stígr’s shoulder as he scrambled back, shouting. The noise of the torn earth drowned out the words. From inside the moving mass came a glimpse of glowing scarlet.

  Stígr pointed his staff at the creature – he moved easily despite earlier wounds and the troll’s impact just now: more dark seithr magic – but the staff’s tip flared with crimson fire, not his doing. He flung it from him as if burned. Ravens whipped down from the sky, attacking the mass; but the mud caught them, enveloped them, then flipped their struggling, mud-soaked forms aside.

  Their intervention was enough: darkness folded around Stígr, then sapphire fire blazed, and as the mud-form lunged, Stígr twisted away – turned impossibly – and was gone: the moving soil passed through air and thumped onto solid ground.

  Thórr’s blood.

  Eira and other volvas could work with men’s spirits and heal broken bodies; but this was the true, dark sorcery of legend. For the second time, Stígr had been rescued by demons, carried away in a manner no man could see or understand. And now the massive, moving soil-creature was turning towards Ulfr.

  ‘Hold, Brandr.’

  The war-hound wanted to attack, but Ulfr would not sacrifice him as Stígr had sacrificed his ravens.

  Soil continued to spill from the thing.

  Is it attacking?

  Roots and stones fell aside, the last dark soil spattered on the earth, and what remained was a tangle of glowing scarlet lines, a complex tracery of light. Before the Thing, when Ulfr had fought the troll, it had been like this: scarlet fire animating a mass of moving stones.

  ‘What are you?’ he said.

  It blazed more strongly.

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  Hanging in place, it neither attacked nor withdrew.

  ‘If you mean the poet Stígr, then yes, he is my enemy.’

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  Ulfr lowered his spear.

  ‘I do not understand, troll-spirit. We fight together against Stígr, yes?’

  But the blazing scarlet twisted, blueness flared around it, then its presence was extinguished: gone, like a snuffed-out flame. Only the spilled earth, and the churned pit from which it came, remained as evidence: this was no dreamworld visitation, but a tangible power in the Middle World.

  In the sagas, when humans tangled with greater powers, it rarely ended well.

  Back in the village, he left Brandr in Steinn’s care. Brandr and Griggr, Steinn’s hound, had played together since they were pups. Now, Steinn clapped Ulfr on the shoulder, grinning and nodding, as if he knew what Ulfr was about and did not wish to say it, but wished him luck.

  Maybe this is madness.

  Outside Eira’s hut, a sheep was hobbled. He wondered why she had it: for wool, some kind of sacrifice, or simply for food.

  ‘If you’re eyeing up my sheep’ – Eira’s voice, from inside the hut – ‘you might as well know, you’re not her type.’

  ‘I’m not that lonely.’

  ‘No, I dare say you’re not. Come in.’

  The interior stank of poultice and potions. Eira was sitting on her low cot, on deerskin stretched across a frame of slender branches. Rune-engraved pots were arrayed before her.

  Her eyes were bright, her neck tense, her smile wide: a tangle of contradictions.

  ‘If you’re mixing concoctions,’ Ulfr said, ‘then I can help with the ingredients. You know, gather water, pick herbs, harvest Vermundr’s testicles. Whatever you want.’

  ‘I’m mixing healing potions, not poisons.’

  ‘Good point.’

  But the poultice-smell came from her, not the pots.

  ‘Ulfr …’

  ‘You’re wounded.’ He crouched down in front of her. ‘Do you want to show me?’

  ‘Mind my pots.’

  ‘Sorry. Can I move them?’

  ‘Yes, if you don’t spill anything.’

  He made room, then knelt on one knee, and dared to take hold of her hand.

  ‘Show me,’ he said.

  Eira stared at him. Her eyes were passages to dreamworld. He wanted to fall inside for ever.

  ‘I’ll have to take my gown off for that.’

  ‘Oh. I’m, er …’

  ‘Give me a hand, then.’

  He helped her remove jewellery and then the robe. Her body was beautiful. Either the poultice or the wound it covered was damp, and he tried to look; but her fingers were at his belt, tugging it open. Pulling off his clothes took an instant, then he was lying alongside her on the cot, pressed against her.

  ‘I had a vision,’ she said, ‘of a great warrior’s spear. And … I think I’ve found it.
’

  ‘Eira. Gods.’

  ‘It’s just you and me, my warrior.’

  Then he was plunging like salmon in a mountain stream, lost in cascades of sensation, everything he wanted now granted to him, because this was Eira, his seeress, his love, and she was all and all was her, while thoughts of scarlet fire and the spirits of trolls, of one-eyed poets and murderous ravens, were banished to Hel’s grey realm.

  For as long as he could keep them there.

  SEVENTEEN

  LABYRINTH, 2603 AD (REALSPACE-EQUIVALENT)

  Clayton was an athlete of the old school, using his battered electromag-banded suit to work his strength in all directions, after a sparring session with combat mannequins set for random bursts of anaerobic violence. Session over, cleansed and refreshed with dodecapear-flavoured carb-ion fluid, he travelled to the Admiralty on foot, taking his time, trying to keep calm, to think of anything other than Darius.

  Shit.

  That was Darius Boyle, his former partner, now home on indefinite leave – his career surely over – from the side-effects induced by that careless cow Sapherson. Working for the intelligence service was far from a sedentary occupation; but you did not expect to be sidelined by your own medics.

  Stupid, moronic cow.

  Except that Sapherson had clearly been under orders to burrow deep. Orders emanating, as far as Clayton could tell, from the desk of Admiral Boris Schenck, chairman of the Admiralty Council, ferociously intelligent, aggressively conservative and proto-isolationist: the biggest asshole in Labyrinth.

  This afternoon’s meeting was with Pavel, the venue a conference chamber deep within the hypergeometric core of HQ complex. After passing through the security levels, Clayton stepped out into the chamber to find Pavel waiting, his face calm. It looked like the calmness of someone exerting conscious neuromuscular control, slowed-down breathing and visualizing kittens, or whatever it took to stave off images of failure.