The Noise Revealed (28 page)

Kyle knew that if he didn't find some way to fix the damage soon Kethi would risk one more jump, back to a base somewhere deep in uncharted space, where
The Rebellion
would be pulled out of the action until her engines were given a full overhaul. Personally, Kyle couldn't have cared less whether that happened or not, but, although he was still new around here, he didn't want to let these people down. They were looking to him, hoping he could pull off some sort of miracle, and if he failed he'd always be remembered for failing, whatever he did after that. Professional pride took care of the rest. One way or another, he was going to fix these damned veils.

If he could fathom how they worked, then at least he'd be in with a shot. He understood engines, always had done, an affinity that enabled him to feel when something was out of kilter and sense what adjustments or repairs were needed. Nothing taught; it was something that went beyond all the training he'd received. There'd never been an engine yet that Kyle couldn't get a handle on. But these were proving elusive.

The ship's database held plenty of explanation and discourse on how the drive units operated and what the veils were, all of which he'd trawled through, yet none of which seemed to really get beneath the surface. The more he studied the information which the habitat's experts had accumulated, the more convinced he became that none of them truly understood what they were playing with here.

There were tools, many of which he recognised, while some were unfamiliar, and these he was highly dubious about. He clasped one of them now, weighing it in his hand and scowling. There was a plasticky feel to the handle that he instantly mistrusted. It seemed more like a toy, something lifted straight out of a child's play kit, totally inadequate for purpose. However, he was new to all this, and willing to put his doubts to one side until they were proven or otherwise. So he took the toy with him as he stepped beyond the drive units and between the energy fields.

Whatever Kyle's reputation might claim, on
The Noise Within
his tinkering had been restricted to the Kaufman units themselves; he'd never needed to interact with the energy veils - a detail he felt it politic not to mention, bearing in mind the trouble everyone had gone through to get him here. This was as much virgin territory for him as it would have been for anyone else on board. And yet there was something here, something he felt drawn to, which he couldn't even begin to explain.

When he'd encountered these veils aboard the pirate ship they had unnerved him. He'd imagined a machine or a presence lurking beyond them, just out of sight. The sense of presence remained, but this time around much of the fear was gone and he felt able to look directly at the veils and where they emerged from. According to the habitat's records, the veils were part of another universe, a completely different state of being. They provided a radically new breed of energy which enabled the habitat ships to punch holes in the fabric of space and initiate jumps without relying on pre-existing wormholes.

All fascinating stuff, but at the same time a little confusing. On New Paris, Kyle had been intrigued by talk of the Byrzaen stardrive, which apparently utilised zero point energy to effect jumps. It promised to open up a whole new avenue of science, but there was no sign of anything like that here, no suggestion of massive energies released by the localised collapse of space from false vacuum to true vacuum, just the siphoning of energies from another brane. Impressive in its own right, no question, but light years away from zero point energy.

Either the habitat were relying on outmoded Byrzaen technology - possible, bearing in mind their drives were based on those of an ancient derelict - a whole form of tech which the Byrzaens had since abandoned, or the aliens were lying through their teeth; assuming they had any. Bearing in mind that what he'd encountered on
The Noise Within
bore such a striking resemblance to what he's found on
The Rebellion
, Kyle's money was on the latter. It seemed to him that the Byrzaens had created a dazzling yet tantalisingly feasible myth about their engines to avoid explaining the true nature of the tech involved. It suggested they had no intention of ever sharing with human kind, which suddenly cast them in a whole new, sinister light.

All of which made Kyle wonder whether the 'false' Byrzaen he'd encountered in Virtuality not long after leaving New Paris might not have been the real thing after all.

Right now, though, he had to focus on repairing these energy fields and saving them all from being stranded in the back of beyond. He could quite go for the idea of becoming part of spacefaring folklore, though preferably not as crew on a vanished ship, thanks all the same.

Kyle squatted down beside one of the veils - minor damage only, a hole towards the top of the flow - no point in tackling one of the big boys until he was confident he could actually achieve something.

The tool was shaped a little like an adjustable wrench, moulded from shiny grey composite as if trying to convince the wielder this really was metal, with two open jaws opposing each other at the business end. The jaws were lined with black spongy pads that looked like rubber but were actually made from a stiffer polymer. Kyle opened the jaws to maximum extension and slowly inserted them into the veil, either side of the hole. He steeled himself, half-expecting to feel a tingle of current or receive a jolt. None came, of course, which was presumably why the tool was cast from non-conductive material rather than metal.

Once in position, he gently closed the jaws, using a ratchet built into the handle. To his surprise and great delight, the pads seemed to catch on the edges of the hole and pull the energy with them, until finally they met. For long seconds he held the tool in place, trying to keep his hand steady, and then he slowly pulled it clear.

Bugger! It worked! Where the jaws had met, the energy now flowed freely, with no indication there had ever been a breach. Typically, he'd gone for the centre of the hole, which was bigger than the jaws, and that now left two smaller gaps, one above and the other below his repair, but they were quickly fixed.

That had been easy. Why couldn't Emily have done this, at least fixing the smaller breaks? Maybe she'd tried and botched the job, or perhaps she'd simply shied away and left it for him to deal with. Much as he liked Emily, she struck him as a reluctant mechanic at best.

Now that he had the knack, Kyle swiftly moved around the veils, forgetting all about their nature, forgetting all about the peculiar otherness that he was working so close to. Before long, he'd fixed all the minor tears that the little wrench - which he now fully accepted as being useful and well designed - was capable of dealing with.

He had no idea what the time was and didn't care; he was buzzing. Yet all the he'd done so far would make only a slight difference. The real problem wasn't these small nicks and holes, but the larger rents. He toyed with the idea of going to bed and tackling the rest in the morning when he was refreshed, but only briefly. Buoyed by success and adrenaline, he determined to try at least one of the bigger bastards now, and that meant using the bow.

Light, moulded from the same composite as the wrench, the bow resembled a large stylised hacksaw but with the blade missing. It looked like some artist's tool rather than anything a mechanic might use. Kyle picked the bow up by its centrally positioned handle and wafted it through the air a few times as if this were some exotically shaped sword.

Unlike the wrench, the bow was powered. Again, he'd seen its use demonstrated via the ship's databank, but was even less convinced than he had been by the wrench. Still, he wasn't proud; he'd be perfectly happy to be proven wrong a second time.

Avoiding the largest rent, he approached one of the other damaged veils, braced himself and switched the bow on. Nothing visible, but in theory energy should have started flowing between the two tips, forming an intangible blade. Trusting that it was, Kyle slowly pushed the open end of the bow into the veil, directly beside the tear. Immediately the 'blade' became visible - a pale bright line within the dark primaries. He very deliberately drew the bow sideways, pulling the blade like a windshield wiper across the tear. As before, the energy moved with it, reaching out to bridge the gap, but just as Kyle dared to hope this was going to work, the solid block of energy following the blade began to fray and tatter, so that only thick strands and threads arrived at the far side. For a second he thought that might be enough, as the strands seemed to bond with the energy as they made contact, but they thinned and weakened almost at once and then snapped back, disappearing all together.

Frustrated, he tried again. Thinking that perhaps the first attempt had failed due to his own unsteadiness, he decided to hold the bow with both hands. He would later blame what happened next on tiredness. He knew there was a sharp, rough bit at the very top of the handle - as if the bow had been connected to some sort of frame or bracket in manufacture and snapped off once completed, the residual bump of the connection still sharp. In order to accommodate the second hand, he adjusted his grip without thinking, dragging the tip of his thumb across the sharp edge. The sudden pain almost made him jerk the bow away from the veil, but somehow he had the presence of mind not to, pulling the injured hand away instead. He couldn't believe how sharp that was, it had cut his thumb.

As his hand jerked away, a drop of blood arced from the injured digit. Kyle watched in frozen fascination as this ruby bead of his own life stuff sailed towards the veil. It struck just behind the blade, which was already partway across the rent.

He had no idea what to expect. The whole area around the impact pulsed. Had he caused some irreparable harm? The drop of blood hadn't sailed through the veil or splattered against it; instead it seemed to have been absorbed, to become part of the energy. A crimson stripe appeared in the wake of the blade as Kyle continued to draw it across the tear, one that flowed outward until it covered most of the energy being pulled by the bow. Surely that wasn't his blood? After all, colours were shifting and swirling the whole time within these energy curtains, and it had only been a single drop. Yet he couldn't escape the feeling that this
was
the result of his blood. The blade completed its journey. No tatters this time, no fraying. The tear had sealed.

Kyle flopped down onto the floor and sat cross-legged, staring at the veil and sucking on his injured thumb. One thing was certain: there'd been nothing about this in the bloody manual! He giggled at his own pun, proof positive that he was overtired.

As he watched, the veil seemed to pulse, very faintly but constantly, like the pumping of blood through veins, and at one point he fancied he could hear something - a multitude of voices all speaking at once; nothing intelligible, just a distant murmur, soothing as the babbling of a mountain brook.

He shook himself, realising that he'd been on the verge of falling asleep. Time for bed. No way was he going to finish this now, much as he'd have liked to. As he took his leave, Kyle stopped and gazed back at the veils. Funny, but as he was drifting off to sleep back there, it had almost seemed to him that these curtains of energy were in some way alive.

Chapter Seventeen

"This is unlike anything I've ever seen before," Lara said. Her attention was focused on the screen suspended in the air before her, rather than on her visitors - real or virtual. Catherine Chzyski provided the former, while Philip and Malcolm constituted the latter.

The room was sparsely furnished - a single black upholstered flexiseat currently configured as an upright office chair sat in an apparently random position on the biscuit coloured carpet; a slick chrome drinks dispenser with twin nozzles, one for ice cold water and the other set for scalding black coffee, stood against a wall; a tall spear-leafed plant emerged from a pebble pot sunk into the floor near the far corner, by the window, with a bubbling water feature beside it which blended seamlessly with the pebbles from the plant pot. Other than these there was a single small glass shelf holding an exquisite statuette of a long-legged woman dancing - one knee crooked, toes pointed, every line sensuous - a pair of academic awards which Philip hadn't even realised Lara had earned, and, even more of a surprise, some sort of trophy for martial arts. The most striking feature of the room, though, stood directly opposite the door: a wall-to-wall, ceiling-to-floor picture window, providing an impressive view of the city's towering skyscrapers and lower rooftops.

Minimalistic, tasteful, but unmistakably an executive's office; sure sign of how much Kaufman Industries valued Lara's capabilities and of how swiftly her star had risen since Philip embarked on his galactic sightseeing jaunt and relinquished control of KI to Catherine. A silent rebuke to him, albeit unintentional. He probably should have acknowledged Lara's worth long before this, but he'd been so caught up in bringing the project to a successful conclusion that perhaps he'd been guilty of taking others involved for granted.

Catherine's presence emphasised that this wasn't merely Lara conspiring with them, that she did so with the backing of Kaufman Industries, which he and Malcolm might have had at their beck and call once, but not any more.

Lara's office boasted plain off-white walls, presumably pattern-free so as not to distract from details on the virtual screens they frequently provided a backdrop for. She stood before the largest stretch of blank wall now and, foregoing the chair, brought another screen into being with deft and precise hand movements - the second screen apparently budding from the primary in response to her gestures, as if it were some tame protozoan.

Once he and Malcolm had told her about their experiences at the Veils club, Lara had a better idea of what to look for and had set about doggedly studying the coding that underpinned that particular corner of Virtuality. She must have discovered something, or at least so Philip presumed. He very much doubted she'd invited them here for the pleasure of their erudite company. At one level, he was impressed at how quickly Lara had found something once they'd narrowed the search for her. At another, he wondered why someone of her much vaunted expertise hadn't spotted it in the first place.