“Loren, I want to help, and I’ve been given the authority which will allow me to help. Please listen. Gerald is my patient, I don’t want him harmed. I believe the two of us agree on that.”
“Go to hell, Doctor. Better still, I’ll take you there personally. You damaged my husband’s mind. I’m not going to forget that.”
There were noises in the corridor behind her, soft scraping, clinking sounds. When she focused, she could perceive the minds of the marines closing on her. Cold and anxious, but very determined.
“Gerald was damaged by the possession,” Dobbs said. “I was trying to cure him. I want to continue that process.”
The sparks had begun to swirl around the composite of the airlock tube, penetrating below the surface as if they were swimming through the material.
“Under the muzzle of a gun?” she asked scathingly. “I know they’re behind me.”
“The marines won’t shoot. I promise that, Loren. It would be pointless. Shooting would just cost the life of the person you’ve possessed. Nobody wants that. Please, come and talk to me. I’ve already obtained huge concessions from the authorities. Gerald can be taken down to the planet. He’ll be looked after properly, I’ll continue his therapy. Perhaps someday he can even see Marie again.”
“You mean Kiera. That bitch won’t let my daughter go.”
“Nothing is certain. We can discuss this. Please. You can’t leave on the spaceplane. Even if you get in you can hardly pilot it down through the SD network. The only way Gerald can get down to the planet is if I take him.”
“You won’t touch him again. He’s safe in my hiding place now, and you never found me, not in all the time I was there.”
The airlock walls gave out a small creak. All the sparks had blurred together to form a glowing ring of composite encircling her. She smiled tightly. The subterfuge was nearly complete. Dobbs’s intervention had turned out to be a beautiful bonus.
Loren could sense the marines holding back just past the edge of the airlock tube. She took a deep breath, attempting to deflect the knowledge of what was about to come. White fire burst out of her feet with a terrible screeching sound. It fountained into the corridor and broke apart into an avalanche of individual fireballs which careered into the waiting marines.
“No, Loren, don’t, I can help. Please—”
She exerted herself to the full. Dobbs’s voice fractured into a brassy caterwaul before vanishing altogether as the energistic effect crashed every processor within twenty-five metres.
“Don’t,” Pou Mok pleaded from the heart of Loren’s mind. “I won’t tell them where he is. I promise. They’ll never know. Let me live.”
“I can’t trust the living,” Loren told her.
“Bitch!”
The wall of the airlock tube gleamed brighter than the fireballs, then the composite vaporised. Loren flew out of the widening gap, impelled by the blast of air which stampeded away into the vacuum.
“Dear God,” Admiral Farquar grunted. The spaceport’s external sensors showed him the jet of air diminishing. Three marines had followed Loren Skibbow out into space. Their armour suits would provide some protection against decompression, and they had a small oxygen reserve. The duty officer had already dispatched some MSVs to chase after them.
Loren Skibbow was a different matter. For a while she had glowed from within, a fluorescent figure spinning around and around as she left the ruptured dock behind. Now the glow was fading. After a couple of minutes it winked out. The body exploded far more violently than it should have done.
“Locate as much as you can of her, and bring the pieces back,” Admiral Farquar told the duty officer. “We can take a DNA sample; the ISA ought to be able to identify her for us.”
“But why?” Dr Dobbs asked, mortified. “What the hell made her do that?”
“Perhaps they don’t think quite like us, after all,” the admiral said.
“They do. I know they do.”
“When we find Skibbow, you can ask him.”
It was a task which proved harder than expected. There was no response from his debrief nanonics, so the Royal Navy began a physical search of Guyana, monitored by the AI. No room, no service tunnel, and no storage chamber was overlooked. Any space larger than a cubic metre was examined.
It took two and a half days. Pou Mok’s room was opened and searched thirty-three hours after it began. Because it was listed as being rented (currently unoccupied) by someone on Ombey, and the diligent search turned up nothing, it was closed up and codelocked.
The cabinet meeting which followed the end of the search decided that one missing mental patient could not justify keeping the navy’s premier defence base isolated, nor could Ombey do without the products of Guyana’s industrial stations. The asteroid was stood down to a code three status, and the problem of the woman’s identity and Skibbow’s whereabouts handed over to a joint ISA ESA team.
Three and a half days after its original departure time, the Quadin left for Pinjarra. Gerald Skibbow wasn’t aware of it, he had been in zero-tau an hour before Loren’s final diversion.
Chapter 16
The Bar KF-T wasn’t up to much, but after a fifty-hour trip squashed into the two-deck life support capsule of an inter-orbit cargo tug with just the captain’s family to talk to, Monica Foulkes wasn’t about to closet herself away in a barren hotel room. A drink and some company, that’s what I need. She sat on a stool up at the bar sipping an imported beer while Ayacucho’s meagre nightlife eddied around her. The economic downturn from the quarantine was affecting every aspect of Dorados life, even here. It was ten-thirty P.M. local time and only five couples were braving the dance floor, there were even some tables free. But the young men were still reassuringly on the prowl; she’d already had three offers of a drink.
The only cause for concern was how many of them were wearing red handkerchiefs around their ankles, boys and girls. She couldn’t be entirely sure if they wanted to seduce her or simply convert her. Deadnight was becoming an alarming trend; the ESA’s head of station in Mapire estimated twenty per cent of the Dorados’ teenage population was getting sucked in. Monica would have put it nearer to fifty per cent. Given the blandness of existence among the asteroids she was surprised it wasn’t even higher.
Her extended sensory analysis program plotted the tall man’s approach, only alerting her to his existence when he was two metres away and his destination obvious.
“Can I get you another bottle?”
Her intended reply perished as soon as she saw the too-long greying hair flopping over his brow. “Sure,” she said, grinning whimsically.
He sat on the empty stool beside her and signalled the barmaid for a couple of bottles. “Now this is far more stylish than our last encounter.”
“True. How are you, Samuel?”
“Overworked and underpaid. Government employees get the same deal the Confederation over.”
“You forgot unappreciated.”
“No I didn’t,” he said cheerfully. “That’s the benefit of Edenism, everyone contributes to the greater good, no matter what area we excel in.”
“Oh, God.” She accepted her new beer from the barmaid. “An evangelical Edenist. Just my luck.”
“So, what are you doing here?”
“Negotiating armament manufacturing contracts; it actually says I’m a rep for Octagon Exports on my passport.”
“Could be worse.” Samuel tried his beer, and frowned at the bottle with some dismay. “Take me, I’m supposed to be part of the delegation from this system’s Edenist habitats, discussing mutual defence enhancement arrangements. I specialize in internal security procedures.”
Monica laughed, and tipped her bottle at the middle-aged Edenist. “Good luck.” The humour ended. “You must have seen them?”
“Yes. I’m afraid the possessed are definitely inside the barricades.”