The Night's Dawn Trilogy (331 page)

Ah well, something to remember.

Thick security doors were rumbling across the end of the corridor, trapping stragglers among the passengers. Quinn walked
past them, and reached the door. It put up a token resistance as he pushed himself through, as if it were nothing more than
a vertical sheet of water.

The arrivals complex on the other side was made up from a series of grandiose multi-level reception halls, stitched together
by wave stairs and open-shaft lifts. It could cope with seventy passenger lift capsules disembarking at once; a capacity which
had been operating at barely twenty-five per cent since the start of the crisis. As Quinn made his way out from the sealed
admission chamber at the end of the corridor, his first impression was that the air-conditioning grilles were pumping out
adrenaline gas.

Down below on the main concourse, a huge flock of people was running for cover. They didn’t know where they were going, the
exits were all closed, but they knew where they didn’t want to be, and that was anywhere near a lift capsule that was crammed
full of possessed. They were damn sure there was no other reason for a security alert of such magnitude. Up on Quinn’s level,
badly hyped security guards in bulky kinetic armour were racing for the admission chamber. Officers were screaming orders.
All the passengers from the lift capsule were being rounded up at gunpoint and being made to assume the position. Anyone who
protested was given a sharp jab with a shock rod. Three stunned bodies were already sprawled on the floor, twitching helplessly.
It encouraged healthy cooperation among the remainder.

Quinn went over to the rank of guards who were forming a semicircle around the door to the admission chamber. Eighteen of
the stubby rifles were lined up on it. He walked round one guard to get a closer look at the weapon. The guard shivered slightly,
as if a chilly breeze was finding its way through the joint overlaps of her armour. Her weapon was some kind of machine pistol.
Quinn knew enough about munitions to recognise it as employing chemical bullets. There were several grenades hanging from
her belt.

Even though God’s Brother had granted him a much greater energistic strength than the average possessed, he would be very
hard pressed to defend himself against all eighteen of them firing at him. Earth was obviously taking the threat of possession
very seriously indeed.

A new group of people had arrived to move methodically among the whimpering passengers. They weren’t in uniforms, just ordinary
blue business suits, but the security officers deferred to them. Quinn could sense their thoughts, very calm and focused in
comparison to everyone else. Intelligence operatives, most likely.

Quinn decided not to wait and find out. He retreated from the semicircle of guards as an officer was ordering them to open
the admission chamber door. The wave stair down to the main concourse had been switched off; so he climbed the frozen steps
of silicon two at a time.

People huddled round the barricaded exits felt his passage as a swift ripple of cool air, gone almost as it started. On the
plaza outside, more squads of security guards were setting up; two groups were busy mounting heavy-calibre Bradfield rifles
on tripods. Quinn shook his head in a kind of bemused admiration, then carefully walked round them. The long row of lifts
down to the vac-train station was still working, though there were few people left on the arrivals complex storey to use them.
He hopped in to one with a group of frightened-looking business executives just back from a trip to Cavius city on the moon.

The lift took them a kilometre and a half straight down, opening into a circular chamber three hundred metres across. The
station’s floor was divided up by concentric rows of turnstiles, channelling passengers into the cluster of wave stairs occupying
the centre. Information columns of jet-black glass formed a picket line around the outside, knots of fluorescent icons twirling
around them like electronic fish. Lines of holographic symbols slithered through the air overhead, weaving sinuously around
each other as they guided passengers to the wave stair which led down to their platform.

Quinn sauntered idly round the outside of the information columns for a while, watching the contortions of the holograms overhead.
The bustling crowd (all averting their eyes from each other), the confined walls and ceiling, wheezing air conditioners pouring
out gritty air, small mechanoids being kicked as they attempted to clean up rubbish—he welcomed them all back into his life.
Even though he was going to destroy this world and despoil its people, for a brief interlude it remained the old home. His
satisfaction came to a cold halt; the name EDMONTON, in vibrant red letters, trickled over his head, riding along a curving
convey of translucent blue arrowheads towards one of the wave stairs. The vac-train was departing in eleven minutes. It was
so tempting. Banneth, at last. To see that face stricken with fear, then suffering—for a long
long
time, the suffering—before the final ignominy of empty-headed imbecility. There were so many stages of torment to inflict
on Banneth, so much he wanted to do to her now he had the power; intricate, malicious applications of pain, psychological
as well as physical. But the needs of God’s Brother came first, even before the near-sexual urgings of his own serpent beast.
Quinn turned away from the glowing invitation in disgust, and went to find a vac-train which would take him direct to New
York.

People were starting to congregate around the windows of the bars and fast-food outlets which made up the perimeter wall of
the station. Kids stared with intrigued expressions at the images coming at them from newschannel AV projectors, while adults
achieved the blank-faced otherwhereness which showed they were receiving sensevises. As he passed a pasta stall, Quinn caught
a brief glimpse of the image inside a holoscreen above the sweating cook. Jupiter’s cloudscape formed an effervescent ginger
backdrop to a habitat; dozens of spaceships were swirling round it in what could almost be read as a state of high excitement.

It wasn’t relevant to him, so he walked on.

______

Ione had gone straight to De Beauvoir palace after Tranquillity emerged above Jupiter, coordinating the habitat’s maintenance
crews and making a public sensevise to reassure people and tell them what to do. The formal reception room was a more appropriate
setting for such a broadcast than her private apartment. Now with the immediate crisis over, she was snuggled back in the
big chair behind her desk and using Tranquillity’s sensitive cells to observe the last of the voidhawks assigned to implement
the aid response settle on its docking ledge pedestal. A procession of vehicles trundled over the polyp towards it, cargo
flatbed lorries and heavy-lift trucks eager to unload the large fusion generator clamped awkwardly in the voidhawk’s cargo
cradles.

The generator had come from one of the industrial stations of the nearest Edenist habitat, Lycoris; hurriedly ferried over
by Consensus as soon as Tranquillity’s status was established. There were currently fifteen technical crews working on similar
generators around the docking ledge, powering them up and wiring them in to the habitat’s power grid.

When she sank her mentality deeper into the neural strata and the autonomic monitor routines which operated there, Ione could
feel the electricity flowing back into the star-scrapers through the organic conductors, their mechanical systems gradually
coming back on line. The habitat’s girdling city had been in emergency powerdown mode since the swallow manoeuvre, along with
other non-essential functions. Grandfather Michael’s precautions hadn’t been perfect after all. She grinned to herself; pretty
damn good, though. And even without the Jovian Consensus on hand to help with all its resources, they had the smaller fusion
generators in the non-rotating spaceport.

We would have been okay.

Of course we would,
Tranquillity said. It managed a mildly chastising tone, surprised at her doubt.

Obviously, nobody had fully thought through the implications of the swallow manoeuvre for Tranquillity. When it entered the
wormhole, the hundreds of induction cables radiating out from the endcap rims had been sliced off, eliminating nearly all
of the habitat’s natural energy generation capability. It would take their extrusion glands several months to grow new ones
out to full length. By which time they might have to move again.

Let’s not worry about that right now,
Tranquillity said.
We’re in the safest orbit in the Confederation; even I was surprised by the amount of fire-power Consensus has amassed here
to protect itself. Be content.

I wasn’t complaining.

Nor are our inhabitants.

Ione felt her attention being focused inside the shell.

It was party time in Tranquillity. The whole population had come up out of the starscrapers to wait in the parkland around
the lobbies until the electricity was restored. Elderly plutocrats sat on the grass next to students, waitresses shared the
queue to the toilets with corporate presidents, Laymil project researchers mingled with society vacuum-heads. Everybody had
grabbed a bottle on the way out of their apartment, and the galaxy’s biggest mass picnic had erupted spontaneously. Dawn was
now five hours late, but the moonlight silver light-tube only enhanced the ambience. People drank, and ran stim programs,
and laughed with their neighbour as they told and retold their personal tale of combat-wasp-swarms-I-have-seen-hurtling-towards-me.
They thanked God but principally Ione Saldana for rescuing them, and declared their undying love for her, that goddamn beautiful,
brilliant, canny, gorgeous girl in whose habitat they were blessed to live. And, hey, Capone; how does it feel, loser? Your
almighty Confederation-challenging fleet screwed by a single non-military habitat; everything you could throw at us, and we
beat you. Still happy you came back to the wonders of this century?

The residents from the two starscrapers closest to De Beauvoir palace walked over the vales and round the spinnies to pay
their respects and voice their gratitude. A huge crowd was singing and chanting outside the gates, calling, pleading for their
heroine to appear. Ione slid the focus over them, smiling when she saw Dominique and Clement in the throng, as well as a wildly
drunk Kempster Getchell. There were others she knew, too, directors and managers of multistellar companies and finance institutions,
all swept along with the tide of emotion. Red-faced, exhilarated, and calling her name with hoarse throats. She let the focus
float back to Clement.

Invite him in,
Tranquillity urged warmly.

Maybe.

Survival of dangerous events is a sexual trigger for humans. You should indulge your instincts. He will make you happy, and
you deserve that more than anything.

Romantically put.

Romance has nothing to do with this. Enjoy the release he will bring.

What about you? You performed the swallow manoeuvre.

When you are happy, I am happy.

She laughed out loud. “Oh what the hell, why not.”

That is good. But I think you will have to make a public appearance first. This crowd is good-natured, but quite determined
to thank you.

Yes.
She sobered.
But there is one last official duty.

Indeed.
Tranquillity’s tone matched her disposition.

Ione felt the mental conversation widen to incorporate the Jovian Consensus. Armira, the Kiint ambassador to Jupiter, was
formally invited to converse with them.

Our swallow manoeuvre has produced an unexpected event,
Ione said.
We are hopeful that you can clarify it for us.

Armira injected a sensation of stately amusement into the affinity band.
I would suggest, Ione Saldana and Tranquillity, that your entire swallow manoeuvre was an unexpected event.

It certainly surprised the Kiint we were host to, she said. They all left, very suddenly.

I see.
Armira’s thoughts hardened, denying them any hint of his emotional content.

Tranquillity replayed the memory it had from the time of the attack, showing all the Kiint vanishing inside event horizons.

What you have seen demonstrated is an old ability,
Armira responded dispassionately.
We developed the emergency exodus facility during the era when we were engaged in interstellar travel. It is merely a sophisticated
application of your distortion field systems. My colleagues helping with your Laymil research project would have used it instinctively
when they believed they were threatened.

We’re sure they would,
Consensus said.
And who can blame them? That’s not the point. The fact that you have this ability is most enlightening to us. We have always
regarded as somewhat fanciful your claim that your race’s interest in star travel is now over. Although the fact that you
had no starships added undeniable weight to the argument. Now we have seen your personal teleport ability, the original claim
is exposed as a complete fallacy.

We do not have the same level of interest in travelling to different worlds that you do,
Armira said.

Of course not. Our starships are principally concerned with commercial and colonization flights, and an unfortunate amount
of military activity. Your technological level would preclude anything as simple as commercial activity. We also believe that
you are peaceful, although you must have considerable knowledge of advanced weapons. That leaves colonization and exploration.

A correct analysis.

Are you still conducting these activities?