Woolf's Hunt

1 The Hopper left the ground ten minutes after the negotiations were
concluded. It was late afternoon and a thin line of clouds could be
seen banking on the horizon out to sea. A cold front was heading this
way and Helena wanted to be away, back to the Amazon Fell before
nightfall. The island was neutral, one of the landing points for
maintenance teams who worked on the solar arrays covering this part of
the pacific. She would be back in Brisbane by this time tomorrow. The
Hopper climbed and as it gained altitude she lent her head against the
window of the passenger seat and watched the sun powering the world.
Beneath her, for more than a dozen kilometres in every direction, like
giant foil tentacles radiating from the island, were solar cells. They
increased in size the farther they were from the island, a giant
snowflake on the surface of the ocean. They were a fraction away from
being Carnot engines, their design as elegant as it was complex.
However, the generation of power is limited by thermodynamics, not
aesthetics. She briefly considered opening her memories on physics but
remembered that even though she had the facts at her fingertips, trying
to understand it, was something that always gave her a headache. The
sea was calm, reflecting something of what she felt about the coming
months. Just as the incoming clouds forewarned that the flattened waves
and swells would soon be tempestuous, she sensed that as a metaphor, it
would serve her conjectures well. Instead she thought about what
Indexiv wanted to do. It was wrong and Euros would not allow them to
act in their own economic activity zones. She thought of Schmerl and
wondered why he would go along with them. He was a better man than
that. She huffed, how could he say what he had said. The words were
filth. Then to invite her to stay with him! Despite herself she was
revolted. Schmerl was second generation like her, but he knew the
history of the nation states as well as any, he knew what they had done
to each other following the same reasoning Indexiv was promulgating
now. These ideologies were the real Virus she thought. "Sorry Lady
Helena, what did you say?" She looked round, the pilot was waiting for
an answer. "Nothing." said Helena. She realised she had been muttering
to herself. The pilot would not contradict her; it was not in his
nature. She looked at him long and hard, taking in the three fingers on
each hand, the slightly larger than natural eyes and flattened nose.
Excellently designed for controlling a Hopper, but still human. He
would have chosen the changes; they were not forced upon him. Across
his eyeballs scrolled data about the flight they were making. He was a
soldier and a wing-jockey and he would not think to contradict her if
she said the sun was violet. For a moment she let her tertiary implants
tune into the Amazon Fell's frequency, but nothing. They weren't
talking to the Hopper. Everything was fine. She thought back to the
diplomacy of the day. Schmerl would have left by now. The room they had
used would already be on its way to so much sand, kelp and air. The
nanomachines that maintained the island's capacitor would be
supercharged for the next couple of hours as they burnt off the excess
energy accrued from dismantling the meeting place. What worried her was
that from Schmerl's point of view even the pilot could be seen as
surplus to requirements. His role was nothing she could not perform
herself if necessary. She had the relevant skills database and the
sensory acceleration required to pilot a Hopper. How long before
Indexiv decided that only the Oligarchies had the right to enjoy the
planet? She turned her head back to the window and watched the last of
the solar cells pass behind them. Their dark silver flashing in the
sunlight, standing out from the aquamarine of the shallow seas in which
they floated. She had visual confirmation of their approach to the
Amazon Fell about half an hour later, a hundred kilometres from the
island, outside the established neutral zone perimeter. The Fell hung
in the air, its flattened, sloping keel fifty metres above the ocean.
It was clear that Euros intended for her to return to Brisbane as soon
as possible. War was coming and sadly it was no real surprise. Even
though the European parliament had been invited by Euros to the
negotiations, there was a persistent feeling that watching it through
someone else's eyes lost something in the translation. Helena's
implants were the latest, the images the members of the Oligarchy and
the Parliament would have seen were crystal clear, but she agreed with
their intuition. The heart of the debate would have passed them right
by. There is more to a dialogue than words. The Hopper hovered near the
ship, waiting for a landing window. Helena resisted the urge to check
on the pilot by tuning into the Helm's frequency, instead she examined
the Amazon. At a little over two hundred metres long it was one of the
smaller destroyers belonging to Euros, currently seconded to the
Pan-European Navy along with the entire 2nd Fleet. The bulk of the
fleet was travelling at a quarter speed towards Australasia, the Amazon
would be able to catch them in less than four hours. The outline of the
keel pulled up towards the bow, pulling a blunted face as the uncovered
decks, those that would remain above water when the ship set down,
dominated the upper part of the design. She could see no one on deck,
no tell tale sign of white shirts and glinting sunglasses. The guns and
rocket launchers were stowed under tarpaulins, protecting them from the
salt as much as indicating that she feared no present danger. It
reminded Helena of a ripe fig or perhaps a floating date. Not something
you'd want to take a bite out of though. As the Hopper docked, the
sides of the ship stretched away above and below, dwarfing the small
personal transporter that they had sent to pick her up. Water was still
shear to the Amazon's sides, cascading from her hull. The ship must
have pulled out of the ocean when the meeting ended. Helena considered
opening the cabin window to grab a lungful of sea spray, but did not
have time. She could hear the soft groaning of the superconductors
which held the ship aloft and underneath that, a deeper resonance, the
liquid hydrogen jets warming up, vibrating through the cabin. The
cruiser was ready to leave as soon as they were aboard. They set down
smoothly and as the pilot shut the ship down, she left him to it, like
always. That was not her job. There was no one to meet her as she
stepped into the bay, just a number of people running this way and
that, securing the Hopper amongst other things. A slight shudder
rumbled through the small hanger and she knew the Amazon had gotten
underway. They are in a hurry she thought. As if to make a point a soft
voice spoke in her ears, "Lady Woolf, your presence is requested at the
helm." She was as much a roleplayer as the pilot and began making her
way up through the insides of the Amazon. She still had time to play
her game, but was disappointed when the first fully human person she
spotted waited for her in the hanger lift. She would have continued
playing but she knew the man. The Amazon's third, Lieutenant James
M'Besi. "Ah, Lady Woolf. Welcome aboard." he said warmly when the cage
doors opened and he saw her waiting to enter. "Going to the bridge?"
she asked, hoping the answer would be a negative. He nodded politely
and she reluctantly stepped in. He was not one of the Oligarchs, but
his family had been closely tied with Euros for more than a hundred
years. Like hers, his implants were hidden, but even with his military
grade nanotech and personal additions he had scraped together himself,
he inhabited another class, a different world. He was far above the
rest of humanity perhaps, but would never have dared to compare himself
with her. She listened to his breathing, it seemed slightly irregular,
he was full of crowded anxiety she realised, recognising the pattern.
"Is there something wrong Lieutenant?" He looked relieved when she
initiated conversation with him. He must have guessed that she would
notice his physical state. She was momentarily impressed that he knew
her well enough to work the situation, and her abilities, to his
advantage. "No ma'am." He said immediately, then "Since the Lady asks I
would admit that I wonder how long this war will last." He gathered his
hands behind his back. Good discipline. "Some months." said Helena
casually. Her discipline was of a different order. He said nothing more
until they stepped from the lift amidships. The docking lifts only rose
as far as crew's quarters. The elevator to the bridge only descended to
this point. Whilst they proceeded to the Bridge lift, he remained
quiet, there were too many people about for him to be seen talking to
her, and vice versa. She would have ignored him entirely unless the
topic were specifically related to the ship. Everyone they passed
saluted, her then him. She was Oligarchy, he was a navel officer. Then
they would move out of her way and continue with their duties once she
had passed. Although ostensibly walking alongside her, M'Besi remained,
at all times, half a step behind. The bridge lift was smaller and
smarter but no less functional for that. M'Besi used his clearance to
activate the elevator and they began to climb the last three decks to
the helm. "Ma'am?" said the lieutenant hesitantly. "Yes James?" said
Helena calmly, he must be upset she thought to risk initiating
conversation with her, he could be court martialled for it. She would
never follow her rights through to that conclusion but others would so
he was right to feel hesitant regardless of what he had to say. She
glanced at him and saw his pupils were dilated. "Do you think that
they'll try to kill us all?" He was a military officer, the euphemisms
she and Schmerl necessarily bandied about during their dialogue had no
place in his lexicon. She did not know how to respond, he identified
himself with those Indexiv wanted to destroy. He had no need to express
any form of solidarity, he had a function, a role. He was productive.
"You are quite safe, it is the Normals they want." she said
dismissively. "Ma'am, my parents are Norms." said M'Besi. That would
have to wait. She had nothing more to say. "Enough lieutenant." The
lift travelled on for another two seconds and came to a halt on the
bridge. The doors sighed apart and a seaman opened the cage. M'Besi did
not move, both rebuked by and deferring to Helena. Helena stepped out
onto the deck expecting to find the captain waiting for her. Instead
she found herself unattended. She looked around as with a cowed head
M'Besi scuttled round her towards his destination. As she scanned the
room looking for the captain she tasted something metallic in the air,
traces of ammonia. Sweat. Nerves. Something was wrong. Perhaps she
would not express her dissatisfaction at being kept waiting. One of the
corporals standing to attention caught her eye and at her questioning
look threw his eyes in the direction of the captain. She hoped. He was
bent over a screen, with his second, Commander Hodges. A buffer
contained them, no one came close. Helena walked up, "Captain Jensen."
there was no need to say anything more. The captain looked round over
his shoulder, his eyes widening as he realised who it was. Both he and
the Commander whipped round to attention. Helena wondered whether they
remembered that it was they who had asked to see her. There was a gap
between their waists and Helena thought she could make out the
Queensland coast on the monitor they were effectively obscuring. "Lady
Woolf." said the Captain. "Captain." The Commander did not need
introducing. "Lady, is it convenient that you see me in my ready room?"
"You requested my presence, here I am." said Helena. Regardless of what
advantages she had there were limits. She could reach the sky but not
catch the stars. The Amazon seemed to be sitting on the edge of its
seat, waiting for something to happen. Almost like it was waiting for a
sign she thought. Now the captain was playing formalities, she itched
to simply hear him explain himself. He did not flicker when she
reminded him that she had come at his request. He simply moved past her
to the back of the bridge and through the hatch to his ready room. The
commander did not follow. He waited at the door, stood slightly behind
it as she entered and then closed it behind her. "What is it Captain?"
she asked almost as soon as he was in front of her again. He did not
sit, even as she made herself comfortable on the leather sofa in his
room. Stood by his small mahogany desk he was only two metres away. The
desk was pushed up against the wall opposite the door leaving just
enough space for him to squeeze in behind. He had no pictures, just a
model of the Amazon on his desk. Apart from that and a wardrobe the
room was sparse, the seat she occupied and an undersized plastic chair,
presumably for balling out officers and seamen. There was a small
porthole in the ceiling, through which an amount of light filtered
through which was so modest the number of photons could probably be
counted. He stood there looking dumb and then twisted to face his desk.
For the first time Helena noticed an envelope on the table, brown
manila. Something for her. "Don't touch it." she said as he reached
forward. He stopped and then, fingers splayed, withdrew his arm to his
side. She got up and in one smooth movement collected it from the desk.
His eyes followed her. She was easily the most beautiful woman he had
ever seen, but then she was an Oligarch, it couldn't have been any
other way. Brilliant blue eyes, hair that virtually shone like the sun
and skin the colour of china. She allowed herself to fold back into the
leather, her long lean legs coming up under her so she could get
comfortable. "That will be all." she said without looking up. She did
not notice the door open and close. She ran her nails across the seal
and the envelope released its lock under her genetic makeup. She looked
inside to find paper. How unusual. Tipping the contents onto the chair
she found another sealed package and a letter. Briefly glancing at the
letter she picked up the package and smelt it, nothing untoward,
nothing familiar either. What did the letter say? Thank you for your
willingness to represent Euros etc. etc. Please find enclosed data on
the boy. She stopped. He was not her jurisdiction, not even something
she had files on. Before she continued to read, without even letting
her eyes glance further down the page she assigned her primary AI to
plot a chaos chart of the implications of being sent this letter.
Specifically she asked it to be mindful of the political parameters
this suggested. Then she went back to Euros' note. Promise to be frank,
war will not be won, boy must be moved to more secure site. The
American Senate is unconvinced of the need to stop Indexiv, you will be
aware of their own experiments with Normals. The Oligarchies are
divided and Indexiv's actions are not predictable. She looked over the
top of the letter and let her eyes unfocus. The AI was reporting back
with conclusions mirroring the explanation in the letter. It suggested
that the most likely reason she would be asked was as a contingency, if
their other plans failed. She was a diplomat, nothing more. The AI went
on to suggest that Indexiv's plans were unpredictable. She asked it
why. It faded away as it thought and then its voice came back. Because
its most likely course of action is too unlikely to be likely. That did
not satisfy her. What is its most likely course of action? Genocide.
She stretched a leg out from under her and massaged it, feeling the
warmth spread back down to her toes she thought again about the AI's
conclusions. Genocide was not unlikely, she could not see what was so
unpredictable about that. She recalled her primary AI and asked it a
negative. Why is genocide so unlikely? To kill all human beings on the
planet would necessarily end Indexiv's existence came the answer. She
swallowed and pushed her head back on her neck, chin touching chest.
Everyone. That kind of genocide. None spared, not even the Oligarchy.
They couldn't possibly. Helena began to ask another question, except
she was thrown from her seat, across the desk and landed with her head
twisted around between the desk and the wall. In her mind a cursor
flashed unanswered. She came too, hands were roughly shaking her. "Lady
Woolf, wake up." It was M'Besi. She groaned and tried to work out where
she was. Trying to open her eyes she found that the left one would not
move. Somewhere inside, beyond the reach of her concentration, her
secondary AI was trying to tell her something. "Lady. You must come
with me." M'Besi had placed her flat on the desk, the sofa was
overturned, stacked up against the wall, its little plastic feet poking
out into the air. Lifting her head she saw his face hovering over hers,
his eyes wide with fear, or was it urgency. She could not summon the
focus to listen to his heart beat or monitor his alpha waves. Her face
was wet. Bringing one hand up to feel the dampness she discovered, as
if at a distance, that the liquid covering her face seemed to be coming
from her right eye. The one that would not open. Her tongue seemed
swollen in her mouth. Blood. She could taste blood. The realisation
brought her round somewhat and she delved into her consciousness. Her
primary AI was offline, as was her tertiary. She must have received a
head wound she thought dazedly. As she was trying to think, Helena felt
hands go underneath her and bring her up. Being placed on her own feet
was a mistake and she was only stopped from falling by those same hands
clasping her tightly. She wanted to be sick. It was not something she
would allow to happen. Nausea, a symptom not a problem. "You must come
with me." said a deep west African voice. M'Besi she thought. How dare
he touch me. "Get your hands off of me." she said violently, trying to
throw them off and nearly collapsing in the process. They did loosen
their grip, only to reapply themselves to supporting her weight as she
succumbed and let herself be taken wherever it was he led. Coming round
she registered the klaxon call of an emergency, heard the shouts and
clattering of feet and bodies in frantic action. "Where is Jensen?" she
said. "Dead ma'am. Commander Hodges is trying to right the ship." came
the reply. Dead. What had happened? She finally found the strength to
initiate communication with her secondary AI and found it was trying to
tell her exactly that. The images of the last few moments were not
appetising and she tried to blank out the near out of body experience
involved in watching the recording in which she had been flung like a
child across the Captain's ready room. She realised the package from
Euros was still in the office. Left behind. "Take me to the commander."
she demanded with as much force as she could muster. "Our orders are to
get you safely to Brisbane Ma'am." came the reply. "I don't care what
the commander thinks, take me to him." she spat. There was no change in
their direction. "M'Besi." she began. "Ma'am, our orders are to get you
to Brisbane." She did not have the energy to break away. Her secondary
AI informed her that the concussion she had suffered would have to be
lived through but the catalogue of other injuries, including a black
eye, would be repaired within forty minutes. Too long she thought.
Ridiculous, the only injury she wanted fixed was her concussion. She
needed to be able to stand on her own two feet and stop this junior
officer from dictating to her what she should do. The siren sounding
were drowned out by a crashing roll of thunder, then the lights went
out. Her eyes immediately changed to lowlight, but M'Besi was left
fumbling, needing to hold her with one arm whilst he tried to find his
way along the corridor. "What is happening?" she thought to ask.
"Incoming." was the reply. "From where?" she asked. There was no
response. A group of young men passed them, she could smell blood and
fear. The floor tilted away from them, the corridor suddenly resembling
a slide. After this sudden tilt she felt a change in the air that
signalled the Amazon was beginning to lose altitude. "Whatever you're
doing, do it now." she said to M'Besi. He said nothing. Emergency
lights came on, flickered red then sputtered out. This was not good.
Her tertiary AI suddenly blinked back into life, she could almost feel
the computer in her brain smiling smugly to itself. Letting M'Besi take
her weight, she tried to log in to the ship's computer. It was dying,
all that she could get out of it was a critical flood of the hydrogen
engines with oxygen. The temperature was rising rapidly, but they were
still here, so it hadn't combusted yet. With that she lost contact. The
Amazon Fell was dead in the air. A hatch opened away from them and she
recognised the landing bay where she come into the ship less than an
hour ago. The Hopper was buzzing, ready to leave the sinking cruiser.
The pilot was back in the cockpit. At least she assumed it was him.
M'Besi put her into the passenger seat and shouted something at the
pilot over the roar of the Hopper's engines and the din of explosions
coming from the world around them. The hanger doors opened behind her
and M'Besi leaned away from her to shut the door. "M'Besi, the Amazon
is dead." she said. "Yes Ma'am." was all he said. She opened her mouth
to say something more but the deck lurched and her breath left her as
she was thrown into her seat. M'Besi held the door in one arm, ready to
slam it shut. "Ma'am, please don't let them kill my parents." was all
he said as the door swung shut. He came close to the window as he
checked it was secure and then banging twice on the metal fuselage
stepped away. "Hold on Ma'am." said the pilot pulling back on the
joystick and the Hooper lifted itself off the hanger deck and began
reversing out of the Amazon in one fluid movement. M'Besi stood at the
entrance to the hanger, watching, making sure, as far as he could, that
they had safely left the cruiser. She could see his eyes in the clouds
of smoke pouring in through the open bay doors. Helena lost sight of
him before he left the hanger. As the Hopper pulled clear of the
Amazon, Helena ran over the meeting again and again in her mind. "They
are vermin, nothing more. Unevolved, a hindrance to the greater good.
Like a virus that mutates before the vaccine takes effect they continue
to infect not only us but the planet we share. Surely you see the logic
of the solution?" Schmerl had said. He sipped at his coffee. The tastes
selected and enhanced for him by a billion nanomachines. Schmerl kept
his eyes on Helena, who was sat across from him. He made a show of
inhaling the coffee, but its aroma was nothing more than background
stimulation. Scentak. The coffee cup was the barest white, translucent
and almost ringing loud its perfect structure. His little finger was
held out in the air, as if seeking to portray grasping the cup as an
acrobatic feat requiring the most exquisite balance. For her part she
said nothing. Steam rose from their drinks, long slow lazy curls which
dissipated in the warm air of the room. "We are nearly done. The boon
to our resources is quite remarkable." "It's a windfall, nothing more."
said Helena. Her hands fiddled. She had an urge to pick her lips. A
bright ring of gold sat on her wedding finger. It glittered regardless
of the lack of sunlight in the room, an inner radiance emboldening the
preciousness of the metal band. "Yes, perhaps." Schmerl shrugged his
shoulders. "If it were the point of the exercise I could understand
your caution about dismantling this means of production, but it is the
dismantling itself we are aiming for." "We know." said Helena. She
looked away, her eyes changing colour as she turned her face to the
window behind the man. Sapphire to navy blue, filtering the whites and
toning down the contrast of the day against the sombre mahoganies of
the room. Her secondary AI worked to ensure she was not dazzled by the
sky beyond the confines of their negotiations. The table thrummed
silently beneath her hands, dissolving the grease from her fingers,
cleaning itself. She folded them into her lap because she felt weak
before him, regardless of the years they had known one another. She
could almost hear the calling of gulls beyond the panes of glass. "We
will not let you have ours. We...wish for them to remain." "Ta. Their
existence is miserable. They are past their sell-by date, they have
nothing left to offer. All they do now is drain our resources. The
planet is only just recovering from their previous excesses." "They
were not to blame..." She waited for his dismissal. "Yes they were,
you've seen the evidence. Besides, our parents were there, they were
among them." said Schmerl. "They were them." said Helena and Schmerl
looked away. She wanted to say more; that he was as much to blame as
anyone else, but the argument was futile. She stood, a sign he had been
waiting for. Smiling to himself as she turned the chair back to face
the table he waited for her to move away. He felt a sense of drama,
wanted to hear the cleaners at the edge of his range before they spoke.
He wanted a backing track. "You won't let us have them?" he asked when
her back was to him. Her shoulder blades were clearly outlined by the
soft white blouse she wore. It clung to her closely, like a second
skin, he saw her muscles tense. He wished for a moment to see more but
contented himself with memories. Picture perfect. "No. We do not agree
with your actions. We do not own them, they are not our resources to do
away with. They are our parents. Our ancestors." "Ancestors should not
be venerated, nor should they continue to walk around with their
descendants. Besides they are a plague, they devour whatever they
touch, they would destroy this world before they even realised what
they were doing." "We respect them, we care." "You don't care or you
would have done something about it." he said flatly. "Perhaps we should
have done something." "Well, like I said we're almost done. Not a lot
of help to give us. Anyway, what are you thinking? We might not own
their minds or their souls, but we might as well. They used to work
where we sent them, now they simply lounge about; consuming. They
consume what we tell them to, grow fat on our discoveries. They are a
Virus that gives nothing to its host except suffering." He stopped,
breathed in, felt his lungs extract barely ten percent of the air he
had drawn and replace it with green house gases. "You know what this
means." said Schmerl pointlessly She rolled her eyes, then focused past
his ranting, "Yes Schmerl, I do. We all do." "You could have avoided
it. You should have listened to us when we first came to you." He
sounded like a father telling a child it had been warned not to play
near the fireplace as he bandaged its burns and wiped away its tears. A
message from the parliament was relayed to her. She worked for Euros,
one of the big five corporations. The parliament was a political
institution, it provided the corporations a neutral meeting ground
within which to do business regardless of their current conflicts.
Right now, for the first time in a century they had sided with one
corporation over another. "We did not agree then, we have not changed
our minds. We remember what went before." Repeated Helena as
instructed. She turned back to him now and saw he had placed his cup on
the tray. Her eyes returned to their sapphiric blaze and she allowed
blood to flow into her cheeks. "We will stop you. We have the child.
The choice is yours." Schmerl sighed. "We know all about this boy. You
don't have the facilities ready to turn him into something that could
threaten us. We've been more efficient than you expected." They held
each others eyes for a moment and then he continued. "Besides, we know
where he is." The surprise of it stunned her for no more than a moment,
but they both understood the impact of his words. "Helena, let them go,
otherwise we shall all suffer." His voice had changed, requesting her
agreement once again. Helena let the blood drain from her cheeks and
returned them to normal, she was done. "Thank you for your time." He
stood now and dashed away from the table at just the right speed to
catch her arm as she made to leave. She looked at his hand then into
his face. "Helena, look at us, I'm touching you." She shook him off.
"My point is that we're real, we're flesh and blood. They think we're
angels, demons. Legends. They have fallen backwards, we failed to bring
them with us and the only humane solution is the one we are enacting.
It is what must be!" "You have forgotten what went before. You have
lost yourselves." She did not bother to translate her words. He stood
looking at her for a moment as he worked on what she had said. "Europe
will not allow it to happen again." There was no discussion of bringing
them on now. "Europe? What a quaint concept." "Parliament has decided,
if you move as intimated by your demands it will be considered an act
of war. We will not stand by." "You know what this means for you, don't
you?" said Schmerl blandly. She refused to dignify his threat with a
response. "It will simply be. We will have our way. The Africans are
hardly in a position to interfere and the Americans, if that title can
be used for them now, well they are true to their history if nothing
more." He clasped his hands together behind his back and rocked on his
heels, like a soldier waiting for inspection. Helena sighed, "Be that
as it may, you will be resisted." "Then we have nothing more to say."
said a voice that was deeper than Schmerl's although it came from his
throat. "This meeting is over. We thank the European Parliament for
their time." The bass of the voice faded away, leaving the room silent.
For a moment neither of the two speakers said a word, then as if by
some internal signal known to none but themselves, they both moved back
to the table. "They are gone." said Schmerl. "General Sutorputri does
so love to have the last word." He seemed resigned to it thought
Helena, he accepts this abhorrent action of his peers with not even a
whimper. Still just a well trained pet, no amount of evolution can
erase that adaptation. "So have mine." she said. "Helena, you know I'm
right, you know that they think of us as superior, almost as another
race to them. They sit there with their DNA going round in circles.
Going nowhere. We are stronger, faster, smarter. We're linked across
continents, we watch them come and go. Their habits have not changed in
two hundred years. "Listen to the room." She waited for him to
continue. "You can hear the nanobots cleaning the table, removing all
trace of our presence. You can see the UV light given off by the
support polymers holding this room above the beach. I bet if you were
to concentrate you could even hear the seagulls wheeling overhead." His
eyes shone, his heartbeat sped, that much at least she could hear.
Blood pulsing through the veins in his neck, oxygen being pushed to his
brain. "Be candid with me, there's no one else to hear us now." She
looked at him, wondering what she might ask. "We are better than them
aren't we, you see that much at least." She stretched her fingers out
horizontally at waist height and took them in. She could see the skin
being reconditioned as she watched, the upper dermal layers being
nourished and removed where they had come to the end of their cycle.
She saw the cuticles being kept a certain distance from the tips of her
fingers by a curtain of machines whose only purpose was to give her
beautiful fingernails. She tried to remember the day they had been
applied, like varnish to her hands and feet. It was a dim memory now,
something she would have to take time to access if she really required
it. She did not. That veil of recall accomplished what she had hoped it
would. "We are not so far removed. We are more than them yes, something
greater, perhaps, but we are not better." He frowned. "Whatever the
means, we are superior to them, they understand that." "No, some accept
it because you gave them no other choice." "Now you sound like your
government." he said. Stepping away from the tables he approached one
of the bookshelves lining the walls of the room. "This will all be gone
tomorrow," he said absently. "Yes, I know." she said quickly, her
patience running. "The bots will have dismantled it, returned it to the
materials it was before we arrived." He ran his hand across the books
in front of him, they had the appearance of great antiquity, withered
and yellowed, the colours of the cracked spines faded greens, reds and
browns. Gold leaf had peeled and just the impression of its presence
remained. "Why do you cling to them?" he asked, turning back to her
with an actual book in his hands. She had assumed everything here was
for appearances only. The walls should have been solid, nothing to be
removed or added. The illusion of age, for the sake of their meeting.
Yet here he was holding an ancient book in his hands, carefully opening
the cover. Delicately turning the pages one by one, using the whole
edge, not simply the corners. "They deserve to exist." "By what scale?
You don't even call it living, you use the same words as us; existence.
You can't bring yourself to think of them as alive anymore than we do."
She tried to speak but he held the book up and she hesitated. "Listen
to this, written by one of them, long years before we," a pause as he
reached for a word, "were born. 'If a man shall not work, he shall not
eat.'" "Is that your argument?" she said, unable to believe the
reasoning. She tried to see the pages, stopping herself short of
standing on tiptoe. Was he reading or quoting? "Part of it. When there
is no work to be done, why should a man eat at all?" He said. "Once
you've finished your work, you put the tools away." "It is easily
countered." replied Helena. "You put tools away, not dismantle them."
"Of course, but that does not change our mind. We still see them as
ours and they are a problem we will solve." He casually closed the book
with a dusty clap. The air shimmered as a billion machines raced to
devour the ancient motes of paper and ink, ravenous for the extra
power. "A nice noise don't you think?" he asked, placing the book onto
the shelf from where it had come. She shrugged, aware that he could not
see her gesture. "The sound of history." He smirked with enjoyment at
his own wit. "What about us?" she asked, folding her arms in front of
her, but letting her hips remain relaxed, protective but not
antagonistic. He raised his eyebrows, his own pupils recolouring from
green to hazel. She waited. He pondered then said, "I should imagine
that this will all be over in a couple of years." His hands cupped
empty space in front of him as he tried to hold the coming conflict in
his palms. "Probably" said Helena. "Until then?" He shoved out a heavy
breath, the portent saying more than the words that followed. "After
leaving here today I doubt Indexiv will be entertaining visas for the
other corporations until we're done. I can't really imagine Euros
giving you one either. War makes visits like this ever so unpopular."
She already knew the answer, but hearing it come from the lips of
another, from Schmerl, made it somehow more real. This settled, there
was not a lot more for her to say. The Oligarchies they represented
would be itching for them to leave the room, for the negotiations to be
over unofficially as well as officially. Then the real business would
begin, the conclusion of what they had thrashed out here today. What
annoyed her was that both sides already knew their positions long
before a meeting like the one she and Schmerl had been asked to host.
Their discussions, watched by the Oligarchies of both Indexiv and
Euros, consisted in presenting what was acceptable to each party. It
was a news call, not a debate. Politely letting the other side know
that conflict was far from avoidable. That settled there was little
more to say. Nostalgia was not a feature she nurtured, she would see
Schmerl again when she saw him. However the next couple of years
unfolded between the Oligarchies, it would not touch them. "Do you have
to leave right away?" said Schmerl. She was amazed, then again she
reflected, Schmerl's incorrigibility was one of his most attractive
features. She came close to him, as if to kiss. Schmerl leant forward
in expectation. Stopping an inch from his softened features she could
feel the change in the air around his body as his capillaries opened
and blood flowed through his body in preparation. It was almost
unconscious, like the opening of a flower when the sun shines. "Yes, I
do." her warm words were welcomed by his open mouth and he closed his
eyes. She leaned back, flattening her feet to the floor. Schmerl shut
his mouth, as if to capture what she had just said. She allowed herself
a small smile and felt the room growing ever so slightly warmer before
Schmerl sighed, opened his eyes and said, "Of course."