Into Everywhere Read Free Page B

and the glinting pyramid of the Faraday cage at the edge of the shallow bay as the ship swung around and dropped lower, hovering on a warp in the planet’s gravity above a calm sweep of ochre water and the pavements and clumps of the stromatolites. Fred Firat and his six acolytes, dressed in uniform blue pressure suits, gathered in a mutinous clot as Tony rode a gyro platform from the ship’s cargo hatch to a slant of black rock at the water’s edge. As soon as he landed, the wizards’ leader stepped smartly forward, Junot Johnson and Lancelot Askai falling in on either side. Their pressure suits were white, like Tony’s, with the red and black triangle of the family’s flag on their shoulders.
    ‘You have compromised the local transmission system with this stupid manoeuvre,’ Fred Firat said. ‘You may have damaged the entire noosphere.’
    Tony ignored him, looked at Junot. ‘Why aren’t these people packing up, as I ordered?’
    He was fizzing with anger. Anger at his uncle’s intervention; anger at his failure to assert himself; anger at the wizards’ insubordination.
    ‘We need more time,’ Fred Firat said, before Junot could answer. ‘We’ve made a good start, but a start is all it is. And now you’ve set us back by bringing the ship here. I realise you are upset by these so-called claim jumpers, Mister Okoye, but you should have known better. You should have thought things through.’
    Tony met Fred Firat’s bright bold gaze. ‘You have isolated some specimens in the Faraday cages, haven’t you?’
    ‘Of course, but that isn’t the point.’
    ‘Didn’t you tell me once that their memory is holographic? Which means, I think, that a small portion will contain everything in the whole.’
    ‘We hadn’t done enough work to prove that it was. And anyway, that’s not really how holograms work,’ Fred Firat said. He was an old man, eighty or ninety, with the squat build of someone born and raised on a heavy planet. He stood foursquare in front of Tony, arms crossed over the chestplate of his pressure suit, the faceted oval of his ancillary eye, socketed in the middle of his forehead, glinting behind his visor like a gunsight.
    ‘Nevertheless, you are done here,’ Tony said. ‘Load those specimens and whatever else you have as quickly as possible. The window for escape is closing fast.’
    ‘You aren’t listening,’ Fred Firat said. ‘I have a plan.’
    ‘It’s you who are not listening,’ Tony said, thrusting his face so close to the wizard’s that their helmets almost kissed. ‘Another ship is coming here. A big ship, well armed, ready to take us prisoner and steal what is rightly ours. We have to boot as quickly as possible. You and your people should be packing up your equipment and your specimens, not quibbling about my orders.’
    ‘I have a better idea,’ Fred Firat said. ‘You can take the specimens and most of my crew. I’ll stay behind with a couple of volunteers. We can hide in the Ghajar ruins – we have mapped a network of voids beneath them. We’ll wait out the claim jumpers, and after they leave we’ll start work again, and you can bring back the rest of my crew.’
    Tony couldn’t believe it. No, he could. Wizards were clever but naive, put their faith in friction-free models of messy reality, and lacked any kind of common sense.
    He said, ‘That isn’t going to happen.’
    ‘If you force me aboard at gunpoint, I’ll sue you and your family for breach of contract,’ Fred Firat said. ‘But if you leave me here to finish my work, I promise that I’ll make all of us rich.’
    ‘It isn’t going to happen because there won’t be any stromatolites left for you or the claim jumpers to exploit,’ Tony said, and ordered the ship’s bridle to implement Plan B.
    A hatch opened amongst the jags and points of the ship’s base and a black cylinder tumbled out, splashing into the shallow water.
    ‘That is a pop-up high-impulse thermobaric bomb packed with powdered