Звезда Пандоры

“It would appear to be an external event. The recorded effect was similar to an em pulse.”

Justine glanced around in shock, a chocolate strawberry half eaten. “Someone was shooting at me?”

“That is unknown.”

“Could it have been a natural phenomenon?”

“That is unknown.”

“But is it possible?”

“This array does not have any data on possible natural causes.”

“Can you sense any em activity?”

“No.”

Justine gave the trees surrounding the open space a more careful look. She wasn’t frightened, more like irritated. She simply wasn’t used to not getting a definitive answer from her e-butler, when all of human knowledge was available in real-time anywhere within the Commonwealth. But here, cut off from the unisphere, data was a rarer, more precious commodity. And being shot at was a possibility, albeit remote.

Firstly, there were the Guardians of Selfhood, who roamed the planet at will. As everyone knew, they were well armed and prone to violence. Then there were other people, locals, who could make a great deal of money out of recovering a dead pilot’s memorycell insert. Families would pay a big finder’s fee to insure their lost loved one’s conscious-continuity when growing a re-life clone. Hypergliding was uniquely dangerous, dozens of pilots were killed each year. Most were recovered by the tour operator, and their memorycells returned home. But any whose flight was flung dramatically off course before crashing risked being lost for a very long time. Locals who came across the crash site were in for a bountiful time once they’d finished the gruesome task of cutting the memorycell free of the corpse. So it certainly wasn’t beyond possibility that there were groups who facilitated a few crashes.

If the em pulse truly had been an attempt to crash her, they were piss-poor at their job, she thought.

Right at the back of the cargo compartment was a small ion pistol for her “personal safety” should the landing site prove hostile. Nobody in the caravan had ever really defined hostile for her, the unspoken implication being wild animals. She gave the secure alcove a thoughtful look, then ordered the compartment to close and lock. If it was a criminal gang hunting her, she wouldn’t stand a chance, armed or not.

“Time to find out,” Justine told the hyperglider. Her voice sounded very loud in the long, tranquil clearing.

She filled her water bottle from the stream, the semiorganic top sucking up the slightly muddy liquid, immediately filtering and cooling it. Then she set off into the trees, using the wrist array’s inertial guidance function.

It took her quite a while to backtrack the thousand or so meters where she’d roughly estimated the interference came from. The undergrowth could be vigorous in places, and where it was low, the vines and creepers filled the gaps between tree trunks. Her whole route seemed to be one giant detour. There was certainly no sign of any track, animal or human. Nor could she hear any voices.

As she approached the general area, she began to feel sheepish. She’d jumped to a lot of conclusions very quickly. Pirates and conspiracies just seemed to fill her adrenaline-pumped mood. Now she was back to mundane reality. Hot, sweaty, having to swat creeper leaves out of her face the whole time, boots sinking into the damp peaty soil. The one blessing of tramping through this jungle was the lack of insects, at least any of the varieties that feasted on humans; the revitalization team hadn’t introduced any. Though there were plenty of tiny multilegged beetles roving around her feet, a great many of which looked alien to her. A lot of the plant species were certainly nonterrestrial.

After about twenty minutes, Justine simply stopped. She was feeling ridiculous now. There was no sign of any human activity. And if there was a band of hunter pirates creeping down to the landing site through the trees, they were crap at tracking her when she was walking straight at them.

“Can you sense anything?” she asked her e-butler.

“This unit’s sensors are registering some weak electromagnetic activity,” it replied. “It is difficult to locate an origin point. It appears to be operating on a regular cycle.”

“Some kind of radio signal?”

“No. It is a multiband emission, there is no identifiable modulation.”

“A powerburst, then?”

“That is a source which would fit the sensor data.”

“What kind of equipment would generate that?”

“That is unknown.”

“Okay, which direction is it coming from? Give me a graphic.”

The e-butler expanded a simple map into her virtual vision. Justine started walking, pushing the vines apart.

“The emission just repeated,” her e-butler said after she’d gone about fifty meters. “It was much stronger. The sensors are registering a degree of residual activity. There is no pattern to it.”

“Am I still going in the right direction?”

“Yes.”

“What about the pulse duration? Does that correspond to the one which hit the hyperglider?”

“It is very close.”