Here We Stand, page 58




He couldn’t get to Opis, not yet anyway. How many times had the Nomad people returned to Earth? Were they ever going to risk coming back again? In the medium term, Earth was the only place he could operate. What would bring them back now, and if he could devise another trap, how would he get them to see the bait in the first place?
Of course, it was possible that they’d just moved elsewhere on Earth via that portal. But he had those soil test results. They had access to another planet, and Opis was the obvious candidate.
Maybe he’d missed his only chance.
It was getting late. He needed to find a toilet and get something to eat. The dashboard display mapped restaurants along his route. Once he’d had a decent steak and powdered his nose, he’d be in a better state to think sensibly about all of this. He had the feeling that if he could get in touch with Montello and wound his macho hitman pride, the little shit would bust a gut to get back here and finish the fight they’d started outside Kill Line. Pham quite liked the idea of finishing it too.
How could he locate Montello and make contact? When the rummage team had gone through the Josepha place, there wasn’t a single clue to how the man stayed in contact with Gallagher. It had to be via radio or a phone, but there was nothing, not even a receipt for phone credit.
All Pham had was Barry Cho. He hoped that would be enough of a lure to bring Gallagher back, but it wasn’t a given. He’d even made sure it was easy to find out where Cho was being held, and while he was sure the Brits knew he’d done that, it was still valid intelligence that Gallagher might find hard to ignore.
For no good reason, Pham wondered where Annis Kim was right now. She’d disappeared as soon as she escaped from the Ainatio compound. She might have been dead in a ditch in Dogshitville, Kansas, or she could even have been on Opis. It was at times like this that he missed her. But she’d betrayed him over Ainatio, and that hurt him in a way that Louise never could.
Bitch.
I really need that steak now.
Pham opted for the first restaurant ahead. He could already see the lights of the town, so he didn’t need to stop for a leak at the side of the road. He was debating whether he should find a hotel for the night instead of carrying on to Sydney when the thought struck him.
He was looking at all this portal stuff from the wrong angle. It was bloody obvious now. He didn’t have to worry about space to get hold of that technology.
Nomad was still in touch with Earth, and it was doing that for reasons beyond the welfare of Tev Josepha or Barry Cho. It now had very long-range capability. As the whole project was beyond the scope of a bunch of abandoned scientists and farmers, there was a nation-state involved, and one country’s fingerprints were still all over it, whatever Montello had said. Pham could rule out all the others that were still functioning. He wasn’t sure how Gallagher fitted into this, but Britain was still involved somehow, and any involvement was a potential weak spot to be poked at until the wall came down.
Luckily, Pham was highly qualified at finding weaknesses. He was going to enjoy that steak even more now.
* * *
Teerik compound: 0945 hours, October 31, OC.
It didn’t matter.
It didn’t matter that they’d cut Hredt’s comms access or that he couldn’t get into Curtis. He had work to do, he was making progress, and he didn’t need contact with Earth to do that. He sat at the table, a plate of food beside him and his diagram spread on the table with the calculations he’d usually erase after committing them to memory. He had to finish this while he could.
Something wasn’t quite right with him and he knew it. He could think so much faster and more clearly now, but he was also getting more agitated and less able to hide his mood. It wouldn’t be long before it would be obvious to the rest of the commune that he wasn’t taking his medication. He was sure the humans had noticed already.
Everyone else was calming down to the point of sluggishness as the drug built up in their systems again. That was me. I was like that. It had been three weeks since they’d started taking the tranquilliser and he’d felt the change in his mind within a couple of days. Now the difference between his own mental faculties and the others’ was apparent, and it made him all the more determined to purge the drug completely from his body. Even if he was now deeply unhappy for no good reason and thought of doing terrible things, he wanted to see what he was capable of when he could operate at his best.
And this was his best.
He’d already improved Caisin’s technology by finding a way to generate multiple gates with intersecting paths, but now he was close to adding a refinement that would make it easier to operate in covert military missions. He’d found a way to make the gateway track the person who’d opened it, and even multiple people, without the need to actively point a locator device or find the open portal itself. He recalled the time he’d visited Earth with Ingram and she’d been trying to find the gate again to prove to Marc and Chris that she’d genuinely come from Opis to help the stranded people of Kill Line. With this refinement, they’d never have to worry about losing access. They could activate a control on their body and the gate would snatch them away instantly, with no need to move through it.
At the moment, the portal was generated between fixed points, and the person who’d used it could either return to it or open it at a new location using the handheld device the humans had nicknamed a flashlight. In the middle of a firefight, though, that could be the difference between life and death. When Major Trinder rescued Dieter, he’d had to activate the gate with the locator as well as dragging the wounded man through it while the enemy was an arm’s length away. They were both lucky to survive and one of Tim Pham’s troops had ended up on Opis with them — for a few minutes, anyway.
Hredt needed to do more work on closing the gate so that no enemy could enter or fire through it, but that was relatively straightforward. The important thing was that it could be activated by voice or a touch device worn on the body. Hredt considered what came naturally to humans. His best guess would be that they’d prefer a touch device so they could operate in silence. But he’d ask.
They’re being polite now but they don’t trust me any more. Once they see this, though, they’ll know I’m still their ally.
He knew what they said about him. Maro had come back from his duties on board Elcano and reported he’d overheard one of the humans saying teeriks wanted more humans here to fight their battles, as if they hadn’t had enough trouble of their own on Earth. That had kept him awake wondering if he was really trying to exploit them, or if he was genuinely doing what he thought was best for everyone. If humans wanted to live peacefully in this sector, they had to accept they needed a much larger population to survive.
Did he regret what he’d done? No. The humans would have dithered over it for years because they felt they had to prepare everything for those arriving here later, whether that meant letting them settle on Opis or finding them another unclaimed world to colonise. But they had no obligation to do that at all. The next migration would be able to sort out its own food supply by the time they were ready to launch, because it was clear humans already had the technology to solve those problems, and it wasn’t as if Hredt had given the data to unsuitable people.
It was too late to reverse the course of history now. He had to stop justifying it to himself. From the moment the commune had hijacked the prenu, life had become a stream of risky consequences. He now knew that was what freedom actually was. The alternative was accepting that the safe life they had in Kugad was all they would ever know.
Hredt went back to his calculations. They were spilling out of him so fast now that he could barely write them down. Recording was a bad habit that went against everything he’d learned, because he’d been taught from infancy that holding knowledge and calculations in their heads kept teeriks from harm, but now he realised it wasn’t true. The Kugin foremen might decide it was worth losing some expertise to make an example of a commune that stole a ship.
But we’re not going to get caught. Are we?
I know Ingram and Marc are angry with me, but they won’t harm us. They’ll see that I did the right thing. And it’ll be Marc who’ll make most use of this Caisin enhancement. He’ll be happy again when he tries it out.
This was the eighth day since Hredt had been cut off from the network as well as his social life. The casual contact he’d grown used to with humans had dried up. It was his own fault for staying in the house to complete this job. He had a relatively small circle of human friends compared to the size of the population here, tens of people rather than hundreds, but when he was out walking or flying, humans he didn’t know would say hello or wave to him. After what had happened to Nina, he was surprised that they didn’t treat him any less cordially, but he wasn’t at the centre of things any longer, or seen as the spokesman for the commune. Cosquimaden had stepped seamlessly into that role.
Jeff still visited him daily, and Ingram had paid a couple of visits, but he hadn’t given them reason to stay and chat. He could think of little but his project, and every moment away from it made him anxious. Humans might have used the word possessed. Hredt was completely consumed by the work, even though he wanted to stop to enjoy the fresh air, but whatever it was that drove him wouldn’t let up. He was glad he was doing good work, but his lack of control over his reaction was starting to scare him.
Well, if he couldn’t stop, he’d push through and get this development to the prototype stage. He could have tested it now, but he had no free access to the Caisin gate generator and he couldn’t bring himself to ask for it. What did Ingram think he would do, use it to escape to Earth and give his expertise to this APS empire so they could destroy Nomad? But perhaps Ingram thought exactly that, however tolerant she seemed to be, and he didn’t know how to convince her otherwise.
“Father?”
It was Turisu. She startled him. Hredt had thought she’d left for Elcano by now, but perhaps she had other plans today. He hoped she wasn’t going to stop him working.
“Aren’t you going to work today, Turi?”
“Yes, but they were still loading parts onto the shuttle,” she said. “I’m leaving now.”
“And you’re taking the boys.”
“Yes, of course. They’re learning fast. You should talk to them about what they’re doing. They need encouragement.” Turisu might have calmed down as soon as she’d started taking her medications, but her opinions hadn’t changed. She just expressed her annoyance more quietly. “You were working all night again. You’re too old to do that. For goodness’ sake stop and get some sleep. What’s so urgent if you’re not working on the ships?”
“Things can always be improved. I’m refining the gate.”
“I don’t think we need to.”
“I do.”
“Is this your peace offering to Ingram? You could just apologise, you know.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong. I just did what they were going to do but sooner.”
“You never consult anybody,” Turisu said. “It’s the same every time. You just do the first thing that comes into your head. It’s dangerous.”
“Turi, it hasn’t made the slightest bit of difference. If anything, I did it too late. Ingram’s talking to Nir-Tenbiku and thinking about returning Gan-Pamas’s body to him. The Protectorate will get to hear about it eventually. At least Ingram can now call on her homeworld for reinforcements.”
“It’s going to take them years to build a suitable ship.”
“If the situation’s that serious, Nomad can open the gate for inbound troops.”
Turi made a vague flapping gesture of dismissal. “It’s done and there’s nowhere else to run, even if we had control of a ship. I have to go now. Let’s not talk about it when everyone returns from work, please.”
For Turisu, that was remarkably restrained. Hredt almost preferred her the way she was, because now she sounded as if she’d surrendered. Perhaps the dose she was receiving was too high. He put it out of his mind as best he could while he worked and thought about the initial test of his automatic gate, and how he should offer it to Marc. But not long after Turisu had left, Chief Jeff arrived. He always knocked and asked if he could enter.
“How are you today, Fred?” Jeff sat down cross-legged on the cushions. “Making progress?”
“Yes, thank you. I’ll have something to test very soon.”
“I won’t beat about the bush, mate. I want to talk to you about something you might not want to discuss, but it’s important.”
That sounded ominous. Hredt didn’t look up. “I’m listening.”
“You’ve stopped taking your medication, haven’t you?”
“What makes you think that?”
“You’re not the Fred you were a couple of months ago. And I know you’re dumping your meds down the drain.”
There was no point in denying it. “You all said you’d never force us to do anything. Are you spying on me?”
“It showed up in the sewage system.”
Hredt sat staring at his screen while he worked out what to say. Chief Jeff was his friend, the human he was closest to, and he knew the man wouldn’t do anything to harm him, or lie to him. At the moment, Hredt had some power because his engineering skills couldn’t be matched by the humans or their various AI systems. If he was drugged back into mediocrity, though, he’d lose that advantage. But it was about much more than that.
“Jeff, the drug slows my mind,” he said. “Since we left Kugad, I’ve been able to do things I couldn’t do before. I’ve improved on Caisin’s work. She was the greatest engineer of all. Yet I was able to create a multiple gate network, something I couldn’t have done before. I don’t want to be average. I don’t feel I can stop until I’ve pushed myself as far as I can. I have to do this.”
“Mate, even your average is off the scale for humans.”
“But not for us. I need to be the best I can be. I don’t want to die having achieved too little.”
“Is it worth being miserable to get it, though?”
“Yes. Yes, it is.”
“Is that the compulsion talking, or you?”
Hredt wasn’t sure. At times he felt he was the compulsion, that this was the real him. “We never knew we were medicated. Once we left Kugad, we started changing, but we didn’t notice because it was gradual and we thought it was the stress making us behave this way. We grew more impatient with each other. I started flying, which nature intended us to do. I created better systems. We all learned English fast, possibly faster than we would have done while drugged. I’m now working on an upgrade for the Caisin gate that’ll make it even more useful for your troops. And I think there’s still a lot more good work in me to come. I think I’m becoming the real me, Jeff. But you might not like that person.”
Jeff was listening patiently. If this had been Ingram, she would have been charming and sympathetic, but more focused on putting things right, whereas Jeff actually cared. Hredt knew it. They had things in common that transcended species. They both got things done, and they were both more capable of great things than many of those around them had imagined. They were honest with each other even when it was difficult. Jeff was a true friend.
“Do you ever wonder why the Kugin needed to give you the drugs?” Jeff asked. “I thought it was to stop you escaping.”
“I know what you’re thinking.”
“Yeah?”
“That we needed to be drugged to stop us turning into someone like Lirrel.”
“Well, yeah, that’s one of the concerns.”
“You know, I think Caisin developed her gate technology and got ideas about an independent teerik nation because the medication wasn’t working as well on her,” Hredt said. It was starting to make sense now. It was a horribly bleak thought. Caisin’s mind had been freed by her approaching death. “She was old and becoming unwell. She didn’t eat as much. But because she was old, she was physically weaker and harmless, so perhaps our foremen decided it wasn’t worth increasing the dose.”
“Will you take the meds now?” Jeff asked.
“Not while I’m working on this project. I can’t stop now. I have to finish it.”
Jeff thought in silence for some time. “It’s not all or nothing, Fred,” he said eventually. “You could take the meds and feel better, then stop them when you had a job to do.”
“But how would I know if I had a better idea between projects, a wonderful idea? I wouldn’t think of something better unless the drug was out of my system.”
“True, but at least you’d have a break from being unhappy and you’d know you could go back to that any time.”
“It doesn’t feel like that now.”
“None of us know how bad it’ll get for you if you don’t take it.”
“I wonder what the Jattans did for Lirrel,” Hredt said. “Perhaps they didn’t know about this either.”
“Okay. Can I let you think about it?” Jeff looked distressed. “I’m worried that it’ll get to the stage where people think you’re dangerous and want you locked up.”
“You would tell me the truth, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t want to be forced to have this drug, but I don’t want to be unhappy, and I don’t want people to be afraid of me.”
“I know, mate. You didn’t answer my question, though. Do you think the Kugin kept you on this stuff to make you feel better or to protect themselves? Did they realise it made you less efficient?”
“I don’t think I can even guess the answer any more.”
“Okay.” Jeff stood up and patted him on the back. “I’ll leave you to get on with your work now. But please think about taking the meds for a while just so you can enjoy yourself a bit.”