“You’re joking. Bring in over five million people?”
“Yes. It’ll take time, but it can be done.”
“Bringing some people in, yes, but so many . . . Surely our population is going to grow anyway?”
“Not by five million it isn’t. We’d have to make permanent pregnancy compulsory for every female for the next ten years. This council might be in command now, but try implementing that and see how long we last.”
“I’m not talking about right now, I’m talking about after. We’ll have children after we leave.”
“Will we? These aren’t our actual bodies, they’d never be our children. The biological imperative isn’t driving us anymore; these bodies are sensory receptors for our consciousness, nothing else. I certainly don’t intend to have any children.”
“All right, even assuming you’re right, and I’m not saying you are, how are you going to get that kind of influx, launch the hellhawks on pirate flights to capture people?”
“No,” she said confidently. “Invite them. You’ve seen the Starbridge tribes. There are the disaffected just like them in every society throughout the Confederation. I know, one of the charities I used to work for helped rehabilitate youngsters who couldn’t cope with modern life. Gather them all together, and you could fill twenty habitats this size.”
“But how? What’s going to make them want to come here, to Valisk?”
“We just have to find the right message, that’s all.”
Even by day, Burley Palace stood aloof from the city of Atherstone; surrounded by extensive parkland at the top of a small rise, it surveyed the sprawling lower districts with a suitably regal detachment. At night the isolation made it positively imperious. Atherstone’s lights turned the motorways, boulevards, and grand squares into a gaudy mother-of-pearl blaze which shimmered as though it were alive. Right in the centre, however, the palace grounds were a lake of midnight darkness. And in the centre of that, Burley Palace shone brighter than it ever did under the noon sun, illuminated by a bracelet of five hundred spotlights. It was visible from almost anywhere in the city.
Ralph Hiltch observed it through the Royal Navy Marine flyer’s sensor suite as they approached. It was a neoclassic building with innumerable wings slotting together at not quite geometrical angles, and five quadrangles enclosing verdant gardens. Even though it was nearly one o’clock in the morning, there were a lot of cars using the long drive which cut through the parkland, headlights creating a near-constant stream of white light. Although highly ornamental, the palace was the genuine centre of government; so given the planet’s current state of alert, the activity was only to be expected.
The pilot brought the flyer down on one of the discreetly positioned rooftop pads. Roche Skark was waiting for Ralph as he came down the airstairs, two bodyguards standing unobtrusively a few metres behind.
“How are you?” the ESA director asked.
Ralph shook his hand. “Still in one piece, sir. Unlike Mortonridge.”
“That’s a nasty case of guilt you’ve got there, Ralph. I hope it’s not clouding your judgement.”
“No, sir. In any case, it isn’t guilt. Just resentment. We nearly had them, we were so close.”
Roche gave the younger operative a sympathetic look. “I know, Ralph. But you drove them out of Pasto, and that’s got to be a colossal achievement. Just think what would have happened if it had fallen to the likes of Annette Ekelund. Mortonridge multiplied by a hundred. And if they’d possessed that many people they wouldn’t have been content to stay put like they are on the peninsula.”
“Yes, sir.”
They walked into the palace.
“This idea the pair of you came up with. Is it workable?” Roche asked.
“I believe so, sir,” Ralph said. “And I appreciate you allowing me to outline it to the Princess myself.” The notion had evolved from several strategy reviews he and Colonel Palmer had held during the occasional lull in the frantic two days of the Mortonridge evacuation. Ralph knew that it contained suggestions which had to be made to the Princess personally. He feared it being diluted by navy staff analysts and tacticians if he routed it through the correct procedural channels. Smooth minds polishing away the raw substance to present a sleek concept, one that was politically acceptable. And that wouldn’t work, nothing short of hundred per cent adherence to the proposal would produce success.
Sometimes when he stood back and observed this obsessional character he’d become he wondered if he wasn’t simply overdosing on arrogance.
“Given the circumstances, it was the least we could do,” Roche Skark said. “As I told you, your efforts have not gone unnoticed.”
Sylvester Geray was waiting for them in the decagonal reception room with its gleaming gold and platinum pillars. The equerry in his perfect uniform gave Ralph’s borrowed marine fatigues a reluctant appraisal, then opened a set of doors.
After the opulence of the state rooms outside, Princess Kirsten’s private office was almost subdued, the kind of quietly refined study a noble landowner would run an estate from. He couldn’t quite make the leap to accepting that the entire Ombey star system was ruled from this room.
He stepped up to the desk, feeling he ought to salute, but knowing it would appear ridiculous; he wasn’t military. The Princess didn’t look much different from her images on the news, a dignified lady who seemed to be locked in perpetual middle age. No amount of discipline was able to stop him checking her face. Sure enough, there was the classic Saldana nose, slender with a downturned end; which was almost her only delicate feature, she had an all-over robustness of a kind which made it impossible ever to imagine her growing into a frail old grandmother.
Princess Kirsten acknowledged him with a generous nod. “Mr Hiltch. In the flesh at last.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Thank you so much for coming. If you’d like to sit down, we can start.”
Ralph took the chair next to Roche Skark, grateful for the illusion of protection his boss gave him. Jannike Dermot was eyeing him with what was almost a sense of amusement. The only other person in the room, apart from the equerry, was Ryle Thorne, who didn’t appear to care about Ralph’s presence one way or the other.
“We’ll bring in Admiral Farquar now,” Kirsten said. She datavised the desk’s processor for a security level one sensenviron conference. The white bubble room emerged to claim them.
Ralph found he was sitting to the right of the admiral, down at the end of the table away from the Princess.
“If you’d like to summarize the current Mortonridge situation for us, Mr Hiltch,” Kirsten said.
“Ma’am. Our principal evacuation operation is now finished. Thanks to the warnings we broadcast, we managed to lift out over eighteen thousand people with the planes and Royal Navy transport flyers. Another sixty thousand drove up the M6 and got out that way before the motorway failed. The sensor satellites show us that there are about eight hundred boats carrying refugees which are heading up to the main continent. Our priority at the moment is to try and take people off the smaller ones, which are desperately overcrowded.”
“Which leaves us with close to two million people stranded in Mortonridge,” Admiral Farquar said. “And not a damn thing we can do about it.”
“We believe most of them are now possessed,” Ralph said. “After all, Ekelund’s people have had two days. And those that aren’t possessed will be by tomorrow. We keep running into this exponential curve. It’s a frightening equation when it’s translated into real life.”
“You’re absolutely sure they are being possessed?” Princess Kirsten asked.
“I’m afraid so, ma’am. Our satellite images are being fudged, of course, right across the peninsula. But we can still use sections of the communications net. The possessed seem to have forgotten or ignored that. The AIs have been pulling what images they can from sensors and cameras. The overall pattern is constant. Non-possessed are tracked down, then systematically hurt until they submit to possession. They’re fairly ruthless about it, though they do seem to be reticent with children. Most of those reaching the evacuation points now are under sixteen.”