The Thousand Year Fall E-Book

Conor H. Carton

• Herausgeber: Next Chapter
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

After surviving the encounter in Sickle Quadrant, Shakbout Mansard is certain that the past has been safely locked away. But after being transferred to the PR Agency under Lincoln, he finds out that the past is alive and well, and ready to hunt him down.

Soon, a message from a dead friend turns into a race against time to stop a crazed cult from destroying the inhabited systems. At the same time, Shakbout finds himself a convenient pawn in the game others are playing against Flitton Sedge.

The desire to harvest the power of the Bottle Born will drive some to horrifying actions, and Shakbout will need all the help he can get to survive.

Leseprobe

THE THOUSAND YEAR FALL

SPOILS OF WAR BOOK 2

CONOR H. CARTON

CONTENTS

Preface

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Next in the Series

About the Author

Copyright (C) 2021 Conor H. Carton

Layout design and Copyright (C) 2021 by Next Chapter

Published 2021 by Next Chapter

Edited by Elizabeth N. Love

Cover art by CoverMint

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the author’s permission.

For Helene and Hannah

PREFACE

Time is a hammer. First it shapes and then it breaks.

Plans were composed in the heat of the war when it started to become visible that victory was not possible, and defeat had to be considered. The plans threw a lifeline unimaginably far into the future and required a commitment from generations not born for centuries. The hammer of time beat constantly on the plans, shaping and breaking then shaping and breaking again and again. An organisation that had been singular became a multitude of competing entities all swearing loyalty to the ancient objective and bitterly divided in how to achieve it or what it really meant.

The silent, secret history of the bottle born continued to unfold, the fears and hatred of the natural born increasing as their dependence on the bottle born grew greater and greater. When the very fewest possible bottle born gained the status and rights of free citizens, the fearful shouted for a return to the old ways. The hopeful saw a pressure valve that would stop bloody revolution and retribution with the smallest discomfort or disruption to the status quo. The hammer of time shaped and broke those plans too. The bottle born have taken a place at the table of power and will not be moved.

The spoils of war still wait to be claimed.

1

The journey to work was very frequently the best part of my working day. My default was a public transport. Travelling in my own vehicle would have been faster, which was the reason I did not use it. I used public transport so that I could simply sit and not have to do anything else except let my mind wander as it wanted. We had moved from my hideaway to a space more suited to the three of us, close to the Circle where Asher did most of her work, close to the education centre for Petra, and far enough away from my work to give me a long lead up to the troubles of the day. The transport looped and spiralled across most of Mengchi so I had the pleasant illusion of taking the pulse of the city as I travelled across it.

Mengchi is a vast triangle with the point resting on the sliver of land that had survived the climate control debacle. It was not a high-rise city full of crystal towers like those that made the Penck such a tourist attraction. Mengchi spread out into the space that had been created and maintained by enormous charms that were hidden within other spaces for security reasons. If you approached the land from sea, you would just see a rising spinal of land, step onto the dock and you entered a megalopolis. My daily commute crossed most of the city, jumping from one stretch of rail to another so that it was the best way to get a sense of the city.

The starting point for Mengchi was the Old City, the capital of the Empire when Ingea was carving up the systems like a butchered Clighorn. Now the Old City was a sliver of the Mengchi, happy to be forgotten and keeping its own secrets. While the constantly shifting population on Mengchi sorted themselves by every conceivable criterion, the major ones were the same in every population in the systems: bottle born or natural, rich or poor. It could be as little as a row of public plantings that separated them. It did not matter how physically flimsy the dividing line was, what was important was that it was present and clearly identified by all concerned. The public transport system was one of the few components of the city that served everyone with the same indifferent efficiency. Via an unspoken and unshakable agreement, it was neutral ground for all the residents. Outbreaks did occur; they received swift and nasty summary punishment.

I have spent a great deal of time on public transport, short journeys to get lost as quickly as possible or to lose others. This was the first time I had an extended journey and the chance to look at the city. Gravel is where the bottle farms are, all of them. The track runs through deep canyons with blank walls on either side. This stretch has the most stops on the whole journey, the greatest number of passengers boarding and leaving. Somewhere there is the farm where I was brewed. The jump from Gravel to the bright, open parkland of Hebb is welcome. These are the lungs of the city, there are no stations here. Any lifeform stepping out would be dissolved by the atmosphere and drunk by the plants. Cleaning the air in Mengchi is a harsh task.

A jump through the layered business districts displays and hides the money as required unlike the journey through the residential locations. Here money and the lack of it is prominently on display. Here the rich naturals can be free of the sight of the poor. Poor naturals can be shielded from the presence of the bottle born, and the bottle born can be full citizens, workers, or mistakes, rich or poor, it only matters to them.

Mostly I just spent my time happily lost in fantasies of better lives for Asher, Petra, and myself. A frequent favourite had me as a Tamwal grower out on the Ghtur system, reclaiming a substantial area from the ruins of the war and cultivating the five strains, mashing, and blending them to sell for a happy profit. I could spend a whole journey just deciding how to build a wall or why exactly I had chosen that planting for an area in the first place. The details delighted me; they were so far removed from everything that was actual and were so amenable to my control.

The transport always arrived at the final stop and I left my farms, bridges, houses, space explorations behind me as I exited onto the platform and rode the steps up to the Governing District. The public chamber of the Standing Committee was here. Stacked above it were the individual suites for the committees, stacked below it were the confidential offices for the committee members. Along a wide, crooked street that gave no clean sightlines of the buildings that lined it were the headquarters for various departments, including the Public Relations Agency. Like all the buildings in the area, it had no trace of magic in its construction. It was all built by direct labour, from the carving of the blocks out of seastone quarries to laying the deadwood tiles on the roof, through to all the interior work. Nowhere would provide a possible point of access for someone to trace a path along a trail left by the residual power from the construction. It was as blatant an expression of natural born power as could be publicly made, and it made it loudly and proudly. I was happy to poke it in the eye every day I walked in.

I had returned to my job managing a maintenance section for the Mengchi city sewer system. I had rescued my daughter and stopped a plan to return the Empress Ingea from wherever she had been hiding for the previous two thousand years, and I was really looking forward to the calm boredom of work. Instead, my boss, Allson Gala, was in my office with Rosby, my assistant.

“Shakbout, how are you? I have some news for you. Most unexpected news I have to say. I have been informed that you are being transferred to the PRA effective immediately.” He handed me a small yellow cube. “This is your authorisation. I should be glad that they have heard of the good work you have done here and want you, I am very sorry to lose you.”

Unexpected was an interstellar understatement. The PRA had an informal and strictly enforced policy of employing only naturals, completely illegal, but who was going to take them on. Transferring in a bottle born lifeform was unprecedented, pulling a nobody from the shit pots was ludicrous. Allson Gala showed why he was destined for the heights in the Public Service; he did not question the decision and he was nice to me on my way out. Then he sucker-punched me. “The transfer includes Rosby. Apparently I am to lose on the largest possible scale.” With that, he shook my hand, then Rosby’s, and left.

“What the fuck?” was Rosby’s response as the door closed. I think she saw that my stunned incomprehension was entirely genuine as she then continued, “We best be going. They are not known for being tolerant of latecomers.” With that we headed over to the PRA building where I was shown my space, Rosby was shown to hers, and I was introduced to my new boss, Lincoln.

* * *

Lincoln walked into my workspace and, sitting down in the chair in front of my desk, said, “Come on, Screw Top, time to be going. No time for sitting and thinking about what might have been, wheels to turn.”

Any hopes I had that Lincoln’s deep enjoyment of becoming my direct manager would reduce had finally faded away. Lincoln was wearing her full-dress Public Relations Office agent uniform. It was form-fitting, and it displayed her strong, athletic body and brought out the blue of her skin nicely. It had cost her a lot to have it made exactly to her specifications. She was always meticulous about her weapons. I was wearing my working robes; it was a plains clothes job and I was wearing the plainest clothes I had. They suited me, at a height of two metres, pale skin and dark-red hair, sage-green eyes, and ordinary features.

I stood and followed Lincoln out of the space, and we rode the tube in silence down to the transport bay. A large transport was waiting. Lincoln climbed in and sat at the controls while I sat beside her. Lincoln liked to be in direct control of any transport she was in rather than have a driver. She relished the cut and thrust of the traffic, which Lincoln said was the best strategy school in the systems.

After we had exited into the mainstream, Lincoln, looking straight ahead, spoke, “I am having a bit of an evening tonight at mum’s, and I was wondering if you would like to be there.”

Lincoln’s mother, Hiral Lakeview, was one of my personal heroes as well as being warm and welcoming, and I was always glad to have a chance to meet her. It was the singular invite that alerted me. Lincoln had invited me, not me and Asher, my wife, otherwise she would have said, “You two.”

While I miss considerably more nuance than I capture and misinterpret a lot of what I do, with Lincoln I had enough experience to be able to guess at the context. As far as I was aware, most lifeforms seemed to have distinct preferences for sexual partners and pretty much played within those preferences. Lincoln appeared to have no fixed preferences. I had met a few of her choices and it was always in the context of dinner with her mother. I would sufficiently distract Hiral to let Lincoln fulfil the “meet the parents” social obligation without having too much scrutiny.

Not including Asher could only mean that the choice of the moment was a little more unusual than normal. Asher would cheerfully dive into the tension and ask all the awkward questions that Lincoln wanted to push away, while I would politely be quiet. I was trying to think what could be so unexpected in a lifeform that Lincoln was taking home that she needed cover from me when Lincoln spoke again, “She is a natural.”

There is no legal restriction on intimate or romantic relationships between bottle born and natural citizens, there was thousands of years of disapproval instead. Much more effective in the long run. Lincoln was pushing the limits of everyone’s tolerance with this choice, and her choice was taking a huge social risk as well. Lincoln was not a low-profile lifeform; a bright blue Aquatic Ornamental Lincoln would have stood out even before her personality made her someone hard to ignore. Without mentioning her new role in the PRA.

“Don’t worry. You will like her; she has a great sense of humour,” Lincoln offered.

“It is your mother’s sense of humour that I am concerned about. She will think that I have encouraged you. She has some utterly mad idea that I have some influence over you.” I paused and let the full implications of the situation catch up with me.

“Lanken’s Tears, Hiral will give me the lecture, she will take me aside and give me the fucking lecture. No wonder you’re not including Asher, she would be laughing so hard your mother would come and visit me at work to continue and then she would find you on your own as well. Well played, well fucking played, Lincoln.”

“I’ll take that as yes. Food at eight, please be there for seven-thirty.”

I sat in grumpy silence as we made our way to Security Holding Block 7 where we parked and made our way to the meeting space and waited for Wellsprung Sotash to be delivered. Sotash was a mid-level career criminal who was about to start his indefinite sentence as an Involuntary Public Servant, and we were here to see if he had any last-second revelations to disclose in exchange for a better placement. Sotash was a deeply unpleasant lifeform, a natural who decided at an early age that hurting people and making money for doing so was what he had been born to do. Intelligent enough to ensure that he did his dirty work at one remove, he blighted as many lives as he possibly could before he made a mistake and appeared in person to hurt a decoy set up explicitly to bring him into the light.

The controllers delivered Sotash, and he sat down in the chair opposite us. The controllers stood behind him in case he decided to use his last moments of life trying to damage either of us. He was tall, two and a half meters, and very clearly worked hard on his body. For a big man, he looked supple and fast, his light brown eyes were calculating, and his handsome face was struggling to be blank. He had been expecting PRA agents, not us.

“Welcome, Prisoner Sotash,” Lincoln started. “We are here to talk to you before your lawful sentence is executed. Just to clarify there is zero possibility that your sentence will be rescinded, you are headed for indefinite servitude as an IPS. The only question remaining is the conditions of your service. What I want is some information regarding the Hartigans, information that will lead to a successful prosecution of any member of the top tier. I am not bothered who you decide to offer up, any one of them will do fine. I could wait a little and simply pull the information from you using the implied consent of your IPS status, the problem is that I cannot use this information in a public case. For that I need information provided by a living informant acting under reasonable pressure of circumstance but not direct duress. In short, someone who is about to start their IPS transition and is actively negotiating on their own behalf.”

Lincoln paused to give Sotash a chance to speak. He remained silent. Lincoln continued, “Good, I see from your complete lack of expression that you understand this in full and the record will support this. Now, Prisoner Sotash, I can see that you have no fear of me, and that is good since I am not someone you should be afraid of. My companion here…” Lincoln put her arm across my shoulders in a friendly way, “is a different matter. He does not like you at all and has arranged with the Red Halls that you serve your IPS sentence half-cut. He can do this because he is a fully authorised PR agent and he has been given jurisdiction over your case. He was particularly upset by the way you acted with the Shahama family. He has a daughter and he had to keep her at home with him for two days just to recover.”

Some of this was true, the details of the Shahama family had torn my heart to bits. Sotash had sold the daughter to a Freesian factory and she was beyond recovery when she was reclaimed. I had worked from home for two days while Petra, my daughter, ordered me around like the autocrat she was. I had never suggested that Sotash should be half-cut, not even a lifeform like him deserved to spend an indefinite time with a flickering consciousness of their state. The sole positive aspect to being an IPS was that you did not know it. Still, from the fleeting expression on Sotash’s face, it was clear that he could easily imagine doing it and considered that someone in my position would be willing to do so also.

Lincoln started speaking again, “Now that we are all on the same page, let me give you the rest of the relevant details. If you provide information that leads to the desired result, you will undergo a full transition and be posted to service in the Standing Committee Public Chamber where everyone will be able to see for themselves that you are now out of circulation and stop trying to find you. If you decline to provide the information, you will have a half-cut transition and be posted to the Red Halls where your status as an informer will be confirmed. This will lead to concerned parties conducting a search that will not cease until your replacement body is found and disposed of. You have until they knock on the door to decide.”

Lincoln had left the real squeeze until the end, giving Sotash less time to decide. Half- cut was bad news, but Lincoln knew that it is what you really value that makes you vulnerable. Sotash had taken out an insurance policy, a contract with a body broker somewhere. He would have been sending a steady stream of personal downloads so that if he died ahead of schedule the replacement body would be loaded up with his information. In every system such a replacement was recognised as a legal heir if the contract had been set up carefully enough. The replacement would inherit Sotash’s carefully accumulated stash. This also made Sotash vulnerable to an action against the replacement as Lincoln was making plain. There was a footfall outside the door, and just ahead of the knock, Sotash gave Lincoln the coordinates for an information dump that would give her what she wanted. As the controllers took Sotash away, Lincoln reminded him that if the information was stale then he would lose a lot more than just his life.

Lincoln was jubilant in the transport on the way back to the office. “We needed something to prove our worth and get us some room for manoeuvre, Screw Top, and this will fit perfectly. They have been trying to put a touch on the Hartigans since the dawn of time and no one has been able to deliver. Now they will see that I keep my promises.” When Lincoln said that, something else then made sense to me.

“It was you that pulled me into the PRA, wasn’t it? They would have no use for me, but they really wanted you and the price for you agreeing was taking me. You need a big score to smooth that over and get us properly settled.”

Lincoln made a deal of consulting her time piece, a beautiful antique piece of work that sat quietly on her wrist telling everyone who knew that Lincoln had resources as well as a uniform.

“Well, Screw Top, you are almost on schedule. I had you down to figure this out tomorrow. Yes, the PRA wanted me, they are sure I had something to do with that outburst of trouble a few weeks ago while you were tramping around the shit pots enjoying yourself.”

Lincoln, her mother, and Asher had gone on a rampage that led to a partial mobilisation of the Mengchi Defence Forces to deal with the fallout while I chased the lifeform who had kidnapped my daughter.

“Of course, they cannot prove anything. The easiest way to keep me under scrutiny is to bring me into the fold. I could not leave you where you were, Screw Top, that was too exposed, so I told them it was the two of us or nothing. That had the drawback of bringing their attention to you as well, but I think that the result is worth the risk. You are adjusting better than I expected. Now with this in the bag, we are important to the PRA and they cannot move against us as freely as they hoped. I just need a little freedom of action; I have some plans that need my attention and it is hard to do so and keep my trackers satisfied.”

Now it all made sense and I had to say it, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Remember, food at eight, arrivals at seven-thirty.”

Lincoln had stopped the transport so I could get out and go home while she went to check on the information dump. It would be guarded, and she was happier to deal with that without having to worry about me getting in the way or worse.

Petra was sitting at the kitchen table doing something that might have been educational, so I decided not to pursue it. Instead, I asked, “Where is Mum?”

“She said she needed to go to blow up some sh…stuff and she would be back soon.”

While Asher and I swore like unlicensed revues at a spaceport drink and drop, I was still going to try and prevent Petra from following the same route. Asher is a Tracker and she only takes hot targets because “when I kick in a door and lay down some fire, a civilian will just sue me, the hot ones will fire back and that is when the fun starts.”

“Have you eaten?” I asked Petra who could eat a mountain and still say that she was hungry while looking well-fed rather than overfed. I knew where the energy went and that was another path that I felt best left untrodden.

“Yes,” said my honest daughter. “I would eat whatever you are making though.”

“Ok, I will see what I can do for you. I will not be joining you. I am going over to Lincoln’s for dinner.”

Petra did not comment. She had returned to the task in front of her and stopped only to eat the sandwich I had made for her. She filled me in on her day, and it was wonderfully ordinary: meeting friends, doing assignments, thinking about what to do for a party she was invited to. I had missed the first ten years of Petra’s life, and she happily included me now as naturally as I could ever have hoped for. She was deep in a discussion about whether she should move her desk as part of some schoolroom politics playing out when Asher came into our space. The smell of explosives preceded her into the kitchen, and when she walked in, her suit had a scorch mark running from her right shoulder to her waist. It must have been a ferocious blow up to have even left a mark on the suit. Asher seemed entirely unbothered, and I took my cue from her.

“My loves, how nice. Let me scrub up and you can tell me what you have got up to while I was not here to stop you.” Asher was letting us know that questions about her day would have to wait for a better moment. When she turned and headed for the wet room, Petra rolled her eyes at me with a smile. Asher returned nicely cleaned up I told her about the day leading with the dinner date at Lincoln’s.

“A natural? No wonder she wants a suitable distraction. Hiral dotes on you and will not say anything while you are there, good play.”

“I am going to get the lecture.”

“And you will smile nicely and hug Hiral and make her happy. She trusts you to look out for Lincoln and keep her safe.”

My eyebrows made a desperate attempt to climb into my hairline as I heard this, and I goggled at Asher. Asher simply goggled back at me and said nothing more, choosing to pick up with Petra instead. I washed and put on my best robes for the impending disaster, kissed my family and headed out. At least the journey over was entirely uneventful. The fun started a little after I arrived to find Lincoln and Hiral by themselves. Hiral smiled, hugged me, and we started to chat. Hiral was the closest to a parent I had, I had hero-worshipped her long before I met her and had moved to cherishing her.

The entrance rang and Lincoln went to answer it. From the murmurs it clear that it was her partner of the moment who had arrived. I was expecting a natural; I had never ever imagined or had been expecting the natural who came into the room ahead of Lincoln. It was Reyan whom I had met previously when she was working on the campaign office for the United Platform for Citizen Respect. They were a political party representing bottle born free citizens who had scored a notable success in the recent elections to the Standing Committee. Reyan was taller than I remembered, her long hair was now dark brown, her eyes still grey. She was smiling hugely as she held out her hand to me. Wearing a beautifully and expensively tailored suit that fit her full figure very nicely, she said as we shook hands, “The hero of the revolution himself, the modest hero of the revolution, I should say.”

She touched the version of the Shoshone Circlet that she was wearing, black with silver script on it. “Reclaiming the Power” was the motto of the UPCR that I had devised. I could feel the shadow I shared my body with was amused at what Reyan was wearing. I was wearing the original of the Shoshone Circlet and it was not the manufactured charm that it was always thought to be. It was a lifeform, and ever since the confrontation in the labyrinth it had extended itself into my body lying just under my skin all over my body.

“No modesty,” I said. “I had signed the rights to the UPCR and have a job that keeps me busy. Once the campaign was over, I thought it was easier to simply step back to my life.”

My time delivering almost information at the Mengchi Centre for the Promotion of Historical Knowledge had not been wasted at all. Hiral was standing beside me, and as Reyan tuned to greet her I could see the lines of tension in her posture. I saw them only because I knew what to look for and was looking for them. We went to the food that Hiral had organized. She had quizzed Lincoln earlier about what Reyan would like so her favourites were present along with mine and Lincoln’s. There was silence while we set about eating with a will. Hiral enjoyed seeing her guests eat and be happy doing so; neither Reyan nor myself disappointed her in that.

After sufficient food had been eaten to allow for conversation, Reyan explained that she was a political operative for one of the UPCR members of the Standing Committee. She was really enjoying it; it was very hard work. There was a lot of quiet opposition to the UPCR and her work was to overcome it equally quietly and more effectively. Then she said, “Lincoln, Shakbout, do either of you know Thobald Ivton the Third? I believe that he worked in your area at one point.”

“The Knob?” I asked before I could hold my tongue.

“Is that what he is called?” Reyan laughed, a nice genuine laugh. “That does not surprise me. He is the centre of a knot of difficulties that is proving to be very difficult to resolve. I have had several meetings and no idea how many messages, calls, and updates. Nothing changes but he is very pleasant and polite. Do you have any suggestions how to handle him?”

“The reason nothing has happened is because he does not understand what you want. There is no malice in him, just unplumbed depths of incompetence. The malice was in putting him in the position, he is very effective at ensuring that nothing changes, as he would never take enough coherent action to change anything. Who is his front support? Change them to someone you can rely on and you will get what you want. They will present him with the documents to sign and ensure that he is always happily otherwise occupied when his presence would be a drain on a meeting. You will have to ensure they are paid well above their grade; they will earn it all,” I replied.

“Rosby would be an excellent choice, she has some experience there too,” Lincoln suggested with the merest hint of a sly smile. I barely stopped myself from emptying her food plate onto her lap and ruining the little orange dress that she was wearing.

“No, that would not work,” I said quickly to stop Reyan from pursuing the matter. “I am sure there are other campaign staff who would be much more appropriate.”

Rosby was bred directly for the Public Service and was determined and capable at moving within it. She had been The Knob’s assistant before she arranged for me to replace him. I relied strongly on her to prevent me from being too stupid at work and did not appreciate Lincoln’s intervention. Reyan nodded at my suggestion and said that there was someone now that she had the idea who would be very good and was available right away.

The rest of the dinner was much easier, and at the end of the meal Lincoln announced that she and Reyan had to leave, they had seats at the hot live performance of the moment. After they left, I helped Hiral clear away and waited for what was to come while hoping that it would not arrive. Hiral dashed those hopes when standing in the kitchen, she put a hand on my arm and looking at me said, “She seems very nice,” paused, and then plunged in.

“Lincoln looked so happy at dinner. I hate to be worried, but Reyan is a natural and I am afraid that Lincoln will find herself getting hurt. Shakbout, Lincoln looks up to you, would you talk to her? I would talk to her, only Lincoln would charmingly brush me off, tell me I was right to be worried and she loved me for it, and she would pay no attention to me. She listens to you, if you would just make sure that she understands what she is doing. We stick to our own for good reasons, I have never seen any cross over relationship have a happy ending; the problems are just too great. Lincoln likes to put a hard surface to the air, but she is a soft child inside. Promise me you will speak to her.”

Lincoln looks up to me. Lincoln listens to me? Lincoln a soft child inside? How a smart, sensible woman like Hiral ever got hold of such insane ideas I have no idea. I promised. Fuck.

2

Since I could not run from the inferno, I thought I may as well just jump right into it, so the following day I walked into Lincoln’s office and sat down in the chair in front of her desk.

“Good morning,” I started as Lincoln looked questioningly at me. “You looked very happy last night, and Reyan is very impressive. I am concerned that you will find yourself brutally hurt. Reyan is a professional campaign worker for a political party that specifically represents bottle born, I am concerned that she is using you to brush up her credentials. Having a relationship with a bottle born is a clever way to do this.”

Lincoln had become dangerously alert as I was speaking. I recognized it which means that it was a high threat level.

“…and I solemnly promise to always keep my nose and my prick out of places they should not go. You would slice one off, and Asher the other, then Petra would fry both for breakfast,” I added.

Lincoln waited for a beat or two then smiled at me accepting my abject retreat for what it was as well as, I suspect, understanding she had put me into this position. I had been included the previous night to draw Hiral’s attention, but I think that Lincoln had not expected me to jump so heavily on the source of concern. For myself I had done my duty to Hiral and not blown up my relationship with Lincoln and that was a huge win that I was happy to leave with.

“I am sorting out the Hartigan information. It is quite the stash and will give the department and the two of us a significant public win. What are you up to?” Lincoln was back in boss-mode, which was fine with me.

“I got a tip I would like to follow up.”

“Anything interesting or are you trying to be busy?”

“Possibly very interesting, the source is very reliable and the information is curious.”

Lincoln looked at me for a moment. “Curious?”

“The message said, ‘Harmon Stucco didn’t fall, he was pushed.’”

“That’s the tip? Someone is polishing your scales. Part of the event we were at last night there was a little interval piece, it had a bunch of lifeforms standing around and someone comes over and asks what they are doing. They are told that the crowd is waiting for a lifeform that opened a door a thousand years before to step through it. Then a door appears in the air, it opens and a natural in old-fashioned robes takes a step, trips, falls and breaks his neck. Then one of the lifeforms turns and says to the audience, “Holo Stutter did not fall, he was pushed.” Everyone bows, including the natural who has got up, and they all file off the stage. Someone has captured the line and is using it to fish for…” Lincoln did not complete the sentence which should have ended with “fools”.

I had a different view. I thought that the little scene was a signal that released the message to me. I would tell Lincoln everything when I was sure there was a bit more to this than a message. The systems were crowded out with active dead lifeforms, a lot were delivering messages of some sort at any given time. What made it special was that the dead lifeform was Arran Sindar. Getting a message four years after Arran had died and been disposed of in a Harvester feeding vat as he had requested, direct to my new work account was a cause for worry. Any message from Arran was important. He had followed dark trails and found hidden information. The message was a reminder of a shared past and unfinished business. I could not ignore it.

We all spend much more time worrying and planning for what will happen to us after we die than we do about being alive. It may be the sense of powerlessness that inevitably follows dying, probably it is just naked fear. No one wants to end up being an IPS. That is the actual bottom of the heap. There are other possibilities that are hairsbreadth above it which are, frankly, a lot more palatable for pretty much everyone. If you are short of cash on an ongoing basis or simply making enough without having something to spare the chances are that you will be sold to the Kulvian. They pay a fair price for a non-descript body of any origin and exactly what they do with them is happily out of sight and mind. As far as I am aware, no one has returned to explain what happens, so it is simple and effective.

Moving up the economic scale you can donate your remains to science. This only works if there is a hefty donation to grease the process. The money is spent, the body is subject to a series of non-revival activities related to training and research, and the final leftovers are sold to a compost factory. If you can afford it, you can insure your remains for a disposal. Essentially you are funding the fee for the compost farm to take you. The demand is so great that compost farms can charge what they want and still have a significant oversupply and storage can be expensive. One of the major perks of the Public Relations Office work is that compost insurance cover is included in the benefits package. Finally, if you are insanely rich, you can be buried in the ground and left to compost naturally with a marker to point to the spot where you are being recycled.

With that, I left Lincoln’s office and headed for my own space where I found Rosby and Akion my Information Specialist. They were a hugely incongruous pair even in the Mengchi Public service. Rosby was a tall, olive-skinned, female lifeform with large, working, white feather wings growing from her shoulder blades. Akion was a short, upright, fat, white worm with a round head, round feet, stick arms, and a book bag, which is why they were known as the Bookworms. By accident I had become very important to the Bookworms, which was good and bad depending on the mood I was in at the time. Seeing them together in my office space was unlikely to be good news. Rosby started shooting first.

“I have been contacted by Staff Allocations who tell me that I have been assigned as the front support to the Knob. I was also told that you have agreed to this.” Rosby’s wings had a very faint pink tint to them which indicated that she was in a killing temper and barely holding it in. She would be really upset to think I would do something like this and even more so do it without talking to her first. Akion stood by blinking slowly behind her glasses. I was not entirely sure how they would respond if Rosby did move to kill me.

I held up my hands and said as I moved over and sat at my desk, “No, I have agreed to nothing. As far as I am concerned you are not going anywhere, I need you here. In any event I would never hand you over to the Knob. The Knob has been positioned to block the UPCR and I know they are looking for a way to manage him. You did a very effective job previously and your name must have come up in a review. Staff Allocations and Resource Management will be falling over themselves to ingratiate themselves with their new masters, so they have rushed to this. Please leave this with me and I will stop everything.”

Rosby’s wings became bright white as I spoke, and she listened and settled to give me the time to make good on my promise. She smiled at me which caused a reaction that made me very glad I was sitting down. I was not wholly sure if Rosby knew what she was doing, I strongly suspected she did and used it carefully to remind me that trouble could flow both ways.

“Akion, I have a request…” I trailed off as Akion handed me an info crystal from her book bag and said, “Harmon Stucco information.” Sometimes having your entire life being observed can be useful, other times less so.

“Thank you,” I said.

Akion blinked at me and turned to leave. Rosby considered me for a further moment before nodding and leaving as well. I put the info cube on the desk. I planned on interrogating it later, but first I wanted to have a talk with Starlight. This required a little advance preparation, so I headed for the staff wet rooms where I had a full wash-down and put on neutral deodorant and a freshly laundered set of robes. I slipped on a protective overskin and headed out.

Starlight was the pride and joy of his family. He was fatally allergic to a huge and ever-expanding range of ordinary environmental items, could not walk unaided, and could see and hear only by wearing charms. They could not be embedded in his skull as the bones were too fragile to bear the surgery. All of which proved that his family was 100% natural all the way back to creation. No “back alley editing or enhancement” for them, they were natural lifeform elite because they had demonstrable proof of it. I had asked Starlight what he thought about it and he told me, “Everyone wants me, and no one wants to be me. Being a trophy is a pain at times. Still it is the deal I had been given, and the only thing that I really care about is pushing ahead on my own terms for the life I have.” I understood what he was saying, I had no control over the process that made me. All I could do was push ahead with my own life.

Starlight developed an intense interest in charm fails and their results. He explained his interest saying:

“I am the result of a process failure. No, don’t wave at me, the process is supposed to produce a natural lifeform that can survive in its environment and breed successfully with a compatible lifeform. I cannot do either so therefore I am the result of a process failure. As such I have a strong interest in process failures, their causes and results, and as it would seriously upset my family if I started to investigate my process failure, I have to look elsewhere, and charm fails are a big subject.”

Starlight had spent decades studying and cataloguing charm fails and had the largest reservoir of information in the systems about them, across all the systems. It was very difficult to refuse an information request from an icon like Starlight.

I arrived at his space and entered the airlock where my overskin was sprayed and cleaned before I passed through it. Once through I took the overskin off and hung it up and walked up the stairs to Starlight’s impressive work area. Starlight wore an external metal frame that allowed him full motion in all his limbs. This was covered by an exclusion suit that protected him from the environment. Even so it was polite to bring as few toxic factors as possible with you such as wiping your shoes before entering a private living space. Starlight was standing at the beautiful, wooden desk that had been crafted for him. It was glowing rosewood and simply looking at it rested your eyes. It was tall, Starlight liked to stand up for working, and wide enough to contain the twenty wooden boxes of papers placed on it.

Starlight had a three-meter-high bank of information hubs that were constantly chattering with each other and with other hubs across the systems. They trawled for and freely shared information about confirmed and suspected charm fails. It was his willingness to share freely that gave Starlight the extraordinary access he had over and above what he could command. The walls of the workspace were covered in dark wood panels. The tall units used for storing the boxes of papers not currently in use were metal and stone, products of Stonebeater craft. Everything in the workspace was beautiful and fatal to Starlight. He had decided if he could not touch then he was going to see.

“Ah, Shakbout, hello, lovely to see you. Sludge?” Starlight had turned around at the sound of my climbing the stairs and greeted me with a smile. Inside his exclusion suit and metal frame, he was a meter and a half tall with the pale orange skin of some naturals, bright red eyes, and a skinny body. His legs were out of proportion to his torso. They were too big, laced with fibres rather than muscle.

I accepted his offer with an internal grimace. Sludge was a carefully calculated mixture designed to ensure that he got all his nutritional requirements. It was a chewy, semi-liquid that had a very strange flavour. He told me previously that it was Foamberry, which is a particular favourite of mine. I told him it must be a variety I was not aware of.

Starlight watched me closely while I took a sample of the sludge, and I was very happily surprised, this time it did taste of Foamberry including the slightly bitter aftertaste that tickled the nerves in your mouth so nicely. Starlight read my reaction and laughed out loud, “Ha, I passed on your comments and embarrassed them into making a proper effort. They know I have no idea of what anything tastes like and they were skimping on the flavour work. Not anymore now they know I have a food taster. I know you are here for something more than checking my food, so share away.”

I sat in one of the visitor’s chairs and said, “I am looking for anything you have on Harmon Stucco.”

“Harmon Stucco,” Starlight repeated to himself as he turned back to the table and looked over the papers. “No Harmon Stucco here, so it must be away in the archive. Let me check.” He walked over to the shelves and at a small display panel tapped in some instructions and waited. “No, nothing here either. The search term is correct, Harmon Stucco?”

“Yes, he fell from the sky about forty years ago, a door transport charm fail.”

“OK, that sounds familiar. I did hear about it, so there should be something here. Let me check with the chatterboxes.” Starlight went over to the bank of hubs which fell silent as he stood in front of them and then started chattering much faster after he said “Harmon Stucco” to them. After a few seconds there was a response from one of the hubs that I could not quite hear. I did hear Starlight’s surprised grunt and he turned to speak to me.

“Harmon Stucco was not a charm fail. Whatever he fell through worked exactly as it was designed to. After the incident there was an extensive investigation and screening and no issues were located or found. None of the usual indicators of a failure were present and none have appeared since.”

“The general view is that it was a charm fail. This is strange.” I said my thinking out loud. Starlight came over to me and tapped my forehead with a finger while he grinned at me.