Nemesis by Alex Lamb

Author:Alex Lamb [Lamb, Alex]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: ORION
Published: 2016-04-21T05:00:00+00:00

13: JUSTIFICATION

13.1: WILL

As the pod doors shut, Will took in his surroundings. He’d been delivered to a garden of sorts – a white-walled space filled with shrubs and trees lit by ceiling-lamps three storeys above. It appeared to be a cross between an experimental botanical garden and a recreation area. Rubberised pathways ran between the trees. Sofas and work tables sat at the intersections. The air smelled of rosemary and carried the soft hiss of air-scrubbers.

From out of the greenery stepped Parisa Voss.

‘Hello, Will,’ she said.

Will stared at her, sick astonishment welling up inside him.

‘You,’ he said.

Exactly what percentage of his life was a lie? he wondered. All of it? Pari had been the most consistent, benign feature of his political life for years. How had she found the time for shit like this?

‘Are you really so surprised?’ she said. ‘Who else would have the political muscle to bring all this together?’ She looked pleased with his reaction, and herself.

‘You …’ Will started. He struggled for adequate words. ‘You disgust me.’

‘I would expect nothing less,’ said Pari, apparently satisfied. ‘Anything else?’

Will could only stare. The man he’d been before his short flight on the Chiyome might have railed at her and shouted out his wrath. Now, he just felt ill.

‘No,’ he said.

She looked slightly disappointed. ‘I imagine you’re probably upset,’ she said, ‘but the only reason you’re here is because you didn’t do your job.’

Will’s anger rumbled back into life. ‘What?’

‘You think we found a weapon to use against Flags,’ she said, ‘but that’s the smallest part of what we found. Before you judge us, look.’

She tapped the jewelled bracelet on her left wrist and a link invitation appeared in Will’s sensorium. Will struggled briefly with the urge to subvert the room’s network, take Pari hostage and bend the entire station to his will. There’d be time for that later, though. He accepted the link.

An image bloomed in his mind of the world situated below them. It looked … odd. It wasn’t just the black continents or mauve seas. The entire world had a curious texture. He zoomed in for a closer look and found a landscape covered with weird linear features tangled across each other, as if the planet had been coated with monstrous spaghetti.

Barring the curious starfish structures, the linear shapes appeared to cover every inch of landmass on the planet, dipping beneath the waves at the coasts. Nowhere could he see the familiar hallmarks of geology, except perhaps in the overall features of the continents themselves.

‘It’s a self-sustaining biosphere,’ she said. ‘Artificial, we believe, and incredibly advanced. It’s unlike any other biosphere world we’ve ever seen. This one tolerates humans without issue.’

Will shot her a look of unalloyed disbelief. She smiled, apparently misinterpreting his scorn for some gentler variety of scepticism.

‘The environment on Snakepit is robust, self-correcting and incredibly stable,’ she said. ‘Every one of those linear formations you can see is a self-contained, self-extending habitat system. A living root, if you like, with usable space inside.’

The display in his sensorium updated to show him schematics and cross sections.

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