The Nano Flower Part 67

'We've lost every datalink into the second chamber,' Sean said. 'And that includes the foundry plant. But something is tapping the power lines, the load is one hundred per cent capacity. We're having to powerdown some of Hyde Cavern to cope.'- 'Thank you, Sean,' Julia sang. 'It's important you maintain the power supply. The drain will only be for a few hours.'

Greg couldn't move his attention from the spindle bearing. Intuitive expectation was building up inside him, despite the vestigial neurohormone hangover, the rosy glow before the dawn. Maybe Sinclair wasn't so brain-wrecked after all.

Just outside the spindle bearing ring a small circle of the crater floor cracked open, palpitating like a minor earthquake, then crumbled inwards. Greg's shout died in his throat, his view was inverted, which threw him for a moment; but the floor of the crater was vertical to the asteroid's rotational 541.

gravity. The debris should have rolled down the crater wall and fallen out of the lip, instead it had fallen horizontally.

'It's started,' he said meekly.- 'Where?' Julia hissed.

'Base of the spindle.'

A white worm of alien flesh was rising out of the new hole, waxy and pellucid, its tip swaying slowly, as if it was searching. He thought of a maggot clawing out of an apple, then the scale hit him.

'b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l,' Victor mumbled.

Julia just giggled.

A second hole fell inwards. Cracks were spreading across the crater floor. The worm's tip began to expand, engulfing the nearby section of the ring bearing. More white tips were reaching blindly out of the ruptured rock.

'What's it doing?' Maria asked.

'Finis.h.i.+ng off the second chamber for me,' Julia said. 'That was part of the deal. I'll have to s.h.i.+p up a lot of hydrocarbons to replace what it's soaked up, but I'll be saving money on the mining operation. Swings and roundabouts, it ought to show a profit in the end.'

The white bulk of the alien had completely enveloped the spindle bearing ring. In fact, Greg saw the whole of the crater floor was now a single expanse of undulating white mire. There was no sign of the bracing ribs. A tremor ran up the spindle.

'I hope it won't warp,' Julia said in concern.

Greg thought the alien was flowing up the spindle, until he realized it was the spindle itself which was moving. With a c.u.mbrous inexorability that made him wag his head in disbelief, the girders began to slide past the Falcon's nose. The alien was pus.h.i.+ng the spindle up out of the crater.

Light and shadows s.h.i.+fted round in the cabin as the huge foundry mirror was impelled away from the asteroid. n.o.body had spoken for some time; even Sean Francis had remained quiet. Greg began to relax, soaking it all in; he would never have to buy another round in Hambleton's pub again. I was there.

A white column of alien flesh was mounting below the 548.

base of the spindle, guiding it away. He guessed it was about three hundred metres high when the top peeled open, releasing the gold ring of the bearing. It must have imparted a final shove, because he was sure the spindle picked up speed. The white column sank back into the crater. For a moment the floor of the crater was covered by a lake of white flesh, then a dimple formed at the centre and began to deepen.

'You say it's going to hollow out the second chamber for you?' Rick asked.

'Yes. Mine the rock, and refine it. Exactly what Royan dreamed of. You see, he was right. In the end.' The grin dropped from her face, and she glanced at Victor for rea.s.surance. He gave her a narrow smile.

All that was visible of the alien was a thin white rim around the base of the crater wall, the rest of it had sunk out of sight, leaving a gaping shaft. A dove-grey globe, three hundred metres in diameter, levitated up out of the centre. The scene reminded Greg of an active-hologram poster he'd bought Oliver for his eighth birthday, time-lapse Earthrise from the Moon. Sedate and unstoppable. They watched it in silence.

'I wonder what that one is,' Julia said after the grey globe left the shaft. 'It can't be a metal, not with that albedo.'

The spindle bearing ring had cleared the top of the crater, with the globe a kilometre behind. A second globe emerged from the shaft, a light metallic blue this time.

'You mean they're all going to be different?' Greg asked.

'Absolutely, yes. Minerals and metals all separated out, with a purity our large-scale refineries can't match. That's something else which will save me a bundle.'

A third globe was emerging, another metal one, its mirrorbright surface reflecting warped constellations.

Greg watched the alien disgorging globes for over three hours. Fatigue only affected his body, shutting it down. His mind remained alert, fascinated at the slow carnival of elements riding by outside. The majority of globes were either iron or silica, three hundred metres in diameter. But there were smaller globes, the rarer minerals, dark greens and yellows .549.

and blues. Eight batches of them had emerged in cl.u.s.ters at the same time as the ordinary globes, like satellite moons swarming round a gas giant.

It took a while for the end of the procession to register. The last globe, a brick-red colour, which Julia said was probably zircon, had travelled halfway up the crater before he noticed the alien flesh dilating out from the rim to recover the shaft.

'Is that it?' Maria asked.

'This is the last phase,' Julia said. 'The cells will be regrouping; they've been spread pretty thin around the second chamber for the mining and refining. It's a big area to cover, I'm glad half of it was conwlete before the alien started.'

'Last phase?' Victor queried.

'Departure.'

Greg wondered if it was fate again that put New London over the middle of the Atlantic while Europe was still in darkness, awaiting the dawn. The asteroid would be visible from four continents: Europe, Africa, and North and South America. All of them with perfect viewing conditions.

Did people make the era, or did the necessity of the time throw up the right people? Either way, Greg thought, G.o.d had singled out Julia, and no messing.

They had listened to some of the channels while the globes had risen out of the crater. The whole world knew something was going on up at New London, that the Co-Defence League's geosynchronous Strategic Defence plaiforms had been used for the first time, that Julia Evans herself was up there, that she'd ordered an evacuation.

She told Sean to plug the asteroid back into the coinmunicanons net, mainly to try and rea.s.sure people that the emergency wasn't life-threatening. The Globecast franchise office had been transmitting pictures of the refined globes back to Earth ever since. Greg could taste a sweet irony in that. What would Clifford Jepson be thinking?

Maria turned the Falcon again, pointing its tail at the 550,.

northern hub. Greg could see the seemingly infinite line of sunlit globes stretching towards Polaris, like multicoloured stars raining down from heaven.

A bulge rose in the middle of the alien flesh, quickly distending, lengthening. It formed a conical spike six hundred metres high, then stopped. The tip began to lean over, tracing a widening spiral as the asteroid's rotation carried it round.

Greg could sense the antic.i.p.ation flooding out of the alien, a mix of excitement and fear. Julia's personality had given it emotions, it could feel, and it was scared, nerving itself up.

Nothing lasts for ever, he told it sorrowfully.

The alien jumped. A vast spasm rippled down its flanks, hitting the base of the crater wall, and it let go. It was changing shape almost at once, contracting into a sphere four hundred and fifty metres in diameter.

Greg reckoned it was travelling a lot faster than any of the globes; its trajectory taking it away from New London's rotation axis and the line of globes. When it slipped above the crater rim and into the direct sunlight the flesh changed colour, darkening to ebony.

'Do you want to follow it?' Maria asked.

'No,' Julia said. 'We can see from here.'

New London was seven kilometres behind it when the alien began its metamorphosis. The flesh flowed again, flattening out into a lentoid shape. Greg saw a circular silver stain emerge at the centre and split into six arms, spreading out to the rim.

'That looks like metal,' he said.

'It is,' Julia agreed. 't.i.tanium motes that are only a few atoms in diameter. The cells can manipulate them to form a surface coating quite easily.'

Greg gave her an uneasy glance, wondering again just how much of a union existed between them.

The alien was still expanding, a disk two kilometres wide now, the t.i.tanium completely covering one side, facing the sun full on, painfully bright to look at.

'I did the right thing, didn't I, Greg?' Julia asked.

'Yeah, both ways. I've had to sit back and endure what happened between you and Royan, my friends. That hurt, Julia. And this thing,' he waved a hand at the windscreen. The alien was retreating from New London, still growing, ten - fifteen kilometres across now, at least. That made it hard to believe it was leaving. It was such an overwhelming presence, breaking down his conviction of a neatly completed deal. 'Look at it. We couldn't have let that loose in the solar system. It's too powerful. You can't ignore it; either it would have engulfed us, or we would have abused it, little people twisting it to serve parochial needs. And there are a lot of little people in the world, Julia. Maybe that's why you stand out so much.'

'Maybe.'

Size was the killer, forcing him to accept his own insignificance. New London was big, but the asteroid was something that had been tamed, he could admire that. But now he could finally appreciate Royan's internal defeat, his broken soul. Royan had known what was at stake, that was why he'd been prepared to use the gamma mines.

The alien had become two-dimensional, a veil of t.i.tanium atoms that lacked the substance of a mirage. He guessed there must be a net of cables to support the sail and provide some degree of control. But they were probably no thicker than a gossamer thread. Invisible and irrelevant.

A hundred and twenty kilometres in diameter, and it didn't even seem to be slowing down. A flat white-hole eruption.

Maria backed the Falcon eighty kilometres away, a leisurely thirty-minute manoeuvre. When they stopped, the alien was two hundred and sixty kilometres in diameter.

The measurement had to come from the Falcon's sensors, its dimensions defeated the human eye. Such vastness perturbed his comfortable visual references, cheating him into believing the sail was down. In his mind it had become a featureless silver landscape; not an artifact or a living creature. Logic warring with belief. He was truly in alien country now.

Four hundred kilometres in diameter. The sail engulfed half of the universe; powerful waves of sunlight would roll across it, was.h.i.+ng over the Falcon and dazzling Greg before the windscreen's electrochromic filters cut in.

He experienced the figment kiss as the sail reached five 552hundred kilometres in diameter. A strand of thought spun out from the knot of cells at the centre of the sail, the one he couldn't see, but knew was there. Julia's teasing lips brushed his.

And he was standing on a beach of white sand with the deep blue ocean before him, stretching his arms wide in primal welcome to the rising sun, soaking his naked body with its warmth. He dived cleanly into the water, striking out for the sh.o.r.e beyond the far horizon, abandoning the past with giddy joy.

The ghost haze of solar ions gusted against the alien sail, beginning the long push out to the stars.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO.

T.

he Frankenstein wasp crawled round the metal bar of the conditioning grill, and poised on the cliff-like edge of copper paint facing into the office. Greg could make little sense of what it saw, just smeared outlines, as if he was wearing a glitched photon amp. But the wasp was aware of the empty s.p.a.ce ahead, and somewhere out there were flowers, pollen. Sugar tugged at it like a tidal force.

Greg used his espersense to locate the mind he wanted; four metres from the wasp, slightly below. He pushed the wish into the insect's instinct-governed brain. A need to fly towards the man sitting at the desk. Wings blurred furiously.

'You just want the stinger changed?' Jools the Tool had asked Greg curiously that morning. He was a small man, dressed all in black. Round gold-rimmed gla.s.ses s.h.i.+elded his damp eyes with pink-tinted lenses. His chalk-white skin looked unhealthy, though Greg wrote it off as partly due to the time of day. The sun hadn't risen when he rang the pet shop's bell.

'Yeah,' Greg said. 'That's all.'

'So how are you going to control it?'

'I'm a gland psychic.'

Jools the Tool nodded a grudging acknowledgement, and led him past the cages of sleeping animals to his cubbyhole surgery at the rear of the shop.

The operation hadn't taken long. Greg stood behind the little Frankenstein surgeon, watching the microscope's flatscreen over his shoulder. It showed the wasp, magnified to thirty centimetres long, held down with silk binding sheaths. Micro-surgical instruments delicately amputated its stinger, and st.i.tched in a wicked-looking hollow dagger to replace it. Blades and clamps danced with hypnotic agility around the yellow-and-black striped abdomen, responding to the waldo handles which Jools the Tool was caressing.

'I've primed it with a shot of AMRE7D,' he told Greg as 554.

the artificial stinger was filled with a clear fluid. 'It's a neurotoxin, one of the best. Once it's in the bloodstream, you've got a maximum of twenty seconds before death occurs.'

The back of the man's head was distinguishable now, hair like a logjam, lunar mare of skin. Greg guided the wasp down to the nape of the neck, allowing the insect's own instincts to take over for the landing. When the warmth of the skin ~pressed against its legs, his mind shouted out the compulsion. '~ The wasp thrust its composite stinger into the skin, expelling ~the AMRE7D in a single blast.

Clifford Jepson's hand swatted the wasp, his yell of surprise and pain rattling round the office.

Greg focused himself on the boiling thought currents. I want you to know something before you die, Jepson, his mind Vwhispered. I want you to know why.

Clifford Jepson's muscles had locked rigid, maybe from terror, maybe from the neurotoxin. Greg looked out through bugged eyes, feeling throat muscles like iron bands, hands clawing at the chair's leather arms.

You were offered an honourable chance to end the madness over atomic structuring. You refused it because you thought you could squeeze more money from the deal. You were greedy, Jepson. And that greed killed my friend~ It might have been your psycho-cyborg Reiger who pulled the trigger, but you loaded his program, you ran him. Now you're going to die because of it. I'm glad, and I hate you for that as well.

Greg cancelled the gland's secretion, and opened his eyes. He was sitting in the pa.s.senger seat of a navy-blue Lada Sokol, parked in the shade of a j.a.panese umbrella pine in a big open-air car park. Fifty metres in front of him, the ornate carved stone of the stately home which Globecast used as its European headquarters burned brightly in the mid-morning sun. A flock of white birds were flying through Kent's cloudless azure sky overhead.

'Did you close the deal?' Col Charnwood asked.

'Yeah.'

'Good.' Col Cbarnwood flicked the I.ada Sokol into gear and drove carefully out of the car park.

555.

Some time after midnight Charlotte pulled on a white silk robe and went out on to the balcony to enjoy the cool breeze that blew in from the Fens basin. It was so refres.h.i.+ng after the sweltering heat of the day. She let it ruffle her hair as she gazed up at the night sky. The alien solar sail was definitely smaller tonight. It had been crawling away from New London over the last few days, now it was low in the south-east, while the fuzzy patch of the asteroid's archipelago glowed above the western horizon.

According to the channel newscasts, light pressure from the Sun was constantly accelerating it. She hadn't known that light could exert pressure; apparently it could. A tiny pressure, but the sail's surface area was the size of a small country, making the overall force colossal. In another twenty days it would reach solar escape velocity; after that it could go wherever it chose in the galaxy. Several times since returning from New London, Charlotte had found herself thinking what it must be like having that much freedom. What a wonderful thing to be able to roam the universe at will, searching out wonders and horrors. And to voyage so majestically, sailing on a sunbeam.

She had never seen a star so gloriously radiant. It was probably bright enough to cast a shadow at night; but Peter-borough's permanent light haze made it impossible to know for sure.

They had a good view of the city from their penthouse in the Castlewood condominium, especially the futureopolis of Prior's }~en Atoll. The day they moved in she spent hours on the balcony staring out at the mega-structures that seemed to float on the green-hued swamp.

She thought it strange that she had never visited Peterborough before; after all it was an incredible focal point for wealth. But after she arrived, she realized it ordered a different sort of money to the type she was used to. Peterborough's money was active money, it was finance consortium muscle, corporate power, political influence; the only gambling here was the venture capital backing industrial research lab. n.o.body h.o.a.rded money in Peterborough, they worked it; the 556.

static, emasculated trusts which enabled her patrons to indulgently through life shrank from this city's vitalit~ Prior's Fen epitomized the new culture, bold, purpusemi architecture sticking two defiant fingers up to the dead past. The ant.i.thesis of Monaco.

It had been a long journey between the two cities and the physical distance was the least of the gulf she had bridged. But now she'd found it, she knew she wouldn't be leaving.

There were stockbrokers to see in the morning. A new chapter of life to begin.

Victor Tyo had brought Dmitri Baronski's private memory cores with him when he returned from the Prezda with her furniture and clothes and trinkets. 'I figured you were the best person to sort through the bytes,' he bad told her. 'The rest of Baronski's girls should be told where they stand. And somehow I don't think they'll be too keen on hearing it from me.'

She'd given every piece of that clothing to a charity shop in Stanground, along with the cheaper jewellery. The other girls she had~called one at a time, telling them the way it was now, arranging for them to pick up their cut from Dmitri's Ztlrich account. But the rest of the data, the finance and industry gossip the old man was supposed to squirt over to the Do]goprudnensky, that was interesting. She could see some valuable deals opening up if the knowledge was exploited properly by Fabian's cargo agents.

The breeze was growing chilly now. She went back into the bedroom, sliding the gla.s.s door shut behind her. Fragments of the city's street lighting leaked round the edges of the curtains, giving the room's white furniture a phosph.o.r.escent hue.

Fabian was asleep, sprawled belly down across the double bed where she'd left him. She wondered if it was illegal for a guardian to sleep with her ward. More than likely. If only he wasn't so terribly young. But he was hers for three whole years, until he was eighteen. Nothing in her life had lasted three years before. And after three years, well... Dreams were part of Peterborough too.