Judas Unchained

Morton never replied. The sneekbot reported it was picking up a transmission based on standard Commonwealth cybersphere protocol. It was a very weak signal; nobody outside the ruined house would be able to detect it. His e-butler printed it across his virtual vision.

I SURRENDER. PLEASE DO NOT SHOOT.

A nasty cold shiver rippled across Morton’s shoulders.

“Oh, my,” the Cat said. “Now what?”

“I have no goddamn idea.” He told his e-butler to use a matching protocol, and used his virtual hand to type out a reply that the sneekbot sent:

WHO ARE YOU?

A FRIEND. AFTER LAST NIGHT, I GUESSED YOU WOULD RETURN. THESE HOUSES OFFER CONSIDERABLE COVER AND ARE CLOSE TO RANDTOWN. IT WAS THE LOGICAL PLACE FOR YOU TO COME. I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR YOU.

WHAT DO YOU WANT?

TO COME WITH YOU.

WHERE DO YOU THINK WE’RE GOING?

BACK TO THE COMMONWEALTH. I HAVE INFORMATION WHICH WILL ASSIST YOUR FIGHT AGAINST MORNINGLIGHTMOUNTAIN.

WHAT IS MORNINGLIGHTMOUNTAIN?

THE PRIME ALIEN.

YOU ARE ONE OF THE ALIENS WE ARE FIGHTING.

I AM NOT. MY MIND IS HUMAN. I AM DUDLEY BOSE.

***

Cressat was beautiful. Mark had been surprised. He’d been expecting something like Elan, a world where the natural landscape of sparse vegetation was slowly being tamed to the human norm of esthetics and practicality. The grand estates would be oases of lush verdure foliage, surrounded by agriculture and forests that were slowly spreading out across the plains, leaving mountains wild.

Instead, he was living in the most perfect manicured parkland. Nigel Sheldon had chosen Cressat for its botany. Its G-class star and lack of a big Earth-style moon gave the planet a passive meteorological environment. It had the standard climate zones and seasons, but storms were rare, and with such a stable atmospheric milieu evolution had produced some spectacular plants. Every tree grew tall, two or three times the size of Earth’s pines and oaks, sporting huge colorful flowers. In midsummer, the native grasses turned from their usual near-terrestrial green to a shimmering swan-white, vast prairies of milky rippling stalks releasing clouds of honey-scented spores that turned the air silvery over entire continents. Vines and creepers ran riot in the forests, their imposing flower cones swelling out to heavy berry clusters.

Biewn, the hurriedly built dormitory village where they were housed, was forty kilometers away from Illanum, the town where the CST wormhole emerged. Nestling in rolling meadowland, with the western horizon bordered by distant snowcapped mountains that reminded all the Vernons of the Dau’sings, it catered solely to the large influx of technicians and experts working on the project.

The forest that formed one side of the village towered over the clutter of single-story houses like arboreal skyscrapers. Streams wound through the undulating land, bridged in several places as the network of roads was steadily expanded. More houses arrived each day, brought in on the back of wide low-loader trucks. They might have been mobile homes, but Biewn hardly qualified as one of the employment-whore trailer parks that sprang up around the CST stations on all new worlds in their early years. It had its own schools, restaurants, bars, shops, and civic center; the pre-equipped unit blocks of the new hospital were locking into place like a wall of massive bricks. Everything was being done to give Biewn the same amenities that Illanum enjoyed.

It was spoiled only by the factories. Long rows of the simple, massive cube structures had been built on the opposite side of Biewn to the forest, their dull brown weather-resistant walls eating into the virgin countryside like an unstoppable mechanical cancer. Still more were being built, their assembly going on around the clock. The cybernetics that filled them were arriving at an equally impressive rate.

As soon as their bus drove around the edge of the forest and started down the last kilometer of the new highway to the village, Mark knew he was going to fit in. It was as if the second chance he’d been given financially had magically been extended to his lifestyle. He imagined Biewn being the kind of place that Randtown would ultimately have evolved into, wealthy and purposeful. It had industry instead of agriculture. And instead of the Trine’ba they had the forest, which the inhabitants were already calling Rainbow Wood after its astonishing flowers. But it retained that small-town community cohesion. Less than an hour after they moved into a house as big as the one in the Ulon Valley, three neighbors had dropped by to introduce themselves and ask if they needed help. Sandy and Barry rushed off with a bunch of other kids to explore.

His one regret was that he hadn’t seen any of the legendary fabulous mansions that the Sheldon Dynasty members had built for themselves. None of their country-sized estates were anywhere near Illanum.