For this paradoxical fact, most people blamed the Eschaton. The Eschaton — the strongly superhuman AI product of a technological singularity that rippled through the quantum computing networks of the late twenty-first century — didn’t like sharing a planet with ten billion future-shocked primates. When it bootstrapped itself to weakly godlike intelligence it deported most of them to other planets, through wormholes generated by means human scientists still could not fathom even centuries later. Not that they’d had much time to analyze its methods in the immediate aftermath — most people had been too busy trying to survive the rigors of the depopulation-induced economic crash. It wasn’t until well over a hundred years later, when the first FTL starships from Earth reached the nearer stars, that they discovered the weirdest aspect of the process. The holes the Eschaton had opened up in space led back in time as well, leading a year into the past for every light year out. And some of the worm-hole tunnels went a very great distance indeed. From the moment of the singularity onward, SETI receivers began picking up strong signals; hitherto silent reaches of space echoed with the chatter and hum of human voices.
By the third century after the immense event, the polities of Earth had largely recovered. The fragmented coalitions and defensive microeconomies left behind by the collapsing wake of the twenty-first century’s global free-trade empire re-formed as a decentralized network able to support an advanced economy. They even managed to sustain the massive burden of the reterraforming projects. Some industries were booming; Earth was rapidly gaining a reputation as the biggest, most open trading hub within a hundred light years. The UN — even more of a deafening echo chamber talking shop than the first organization to bear that name — also included nontribal entities. Restructured to run on profit-making lines, it was amassing a formidable reputation for mercantile diplomacy. Even the most pressing problem of the twenty-second century, the population crash that followed in the wake of the singularity, had been largely averted. Cheap anti-aging hacks and an enlightened emigration policy had stabilized the population at mid-twentieth-century levels, well within the carrying capacity of the planet and in the numbers required to support advanced scientific research again. It was, in short, a time of optimism and expansion: a young, energetic, pluralistic planetary patchwork civilization exploding out into the stellar neighborhood and rediscovering its long-lost children.
None of which made for a bed of roses, as Rachel Mansour — who had been born on this same planet more than a hundred years previously — probably appreciated more than most.
“I’m ready to go in,” she said quietly, leaning against the wall next to the cheap gray aerogel doorslab. She glanced up and down the empty corridor. It smelled damp. The thin carpet was grimy, burdened by more dirt than its self-cleaning system could cope with, and many of the lighting panels were cracked. “Is everyone in position?”
“We’ve got some heavy items still assembling. Try not to call a strike for at least the first ten seconds. After that, we’ll be ready when you need us.”
“Okay. Here goes.” For some reason she found herself wishing she’d brought Madam Chairman along to see the sort of jobs her diplomatic entertainment account got spent on. Rachel shook herself, took a deep breath, and knocked on the door. Madam Chairman could read all about it in the comfort of her committee room when the freelance media caught on. At the moment, it was Rachel’s job, and she needed to keep her attention 101 percent locked on to it.
“Who is that?” boomed a voice from the other side of the partition.
“Police negotiator. You wanted to talk to someone?”
“Why are you waiting then? You better not be armed! Come in and listen to me. Did you bring cameras?”
Uh-oh. “Schwartz is right,” Rachel muttered to her audio monitor. “You going to take off now?”
“Yes. We’re with you.” MacDougal’s voice was tinny and hoarse with tension in her left ear.
Rachel took hold of the doorknob and pushed, slowly. The rentacops had applied for the emergency override, and the management had switched off all the locks. The door opened easily. Rachel stood in the doorway in full view of the living room.
“Can I come in?” she asked, betraying no sign of having noticed the whine of insect wings departing her shoulders as the door swung wide.
The apartment was a one-room dwelling: bed, shower tray, and kitchen fab were built to fold down out of opposite walls of the entertainment room. A picture window facing the front door showed a perpetual view of Jupiter as seen from the crust of smoking, yellow Io. It had once been a cheap refugee housing module (single, adult, for the use of), but subsequent occupants had nested in it, allowing the basic utility structures to wear out and trashing the furnishings. The folding furniture was over-extended, support struts bent and dysfunctional. The wreckage of a hundred ready-meals spilled across the worn-out carpet. The sickly sweet smell of decaying food was almost masked by the stench of cheap tobacco. The room reeked of cigarette smoke — a foul, contaminated blend, if Rachel was any judge, although she’d given up the habit along with her third pair of lungs, many years ago.
The man sprawled in the recliner in the middle of the room made even the mess around him look like an example of good repair. He was nearly two meters tall and built like a tank, but he was also clearly ill. His hair was streaked with white, his naked belly bulged over the stained waistband of his sweats, and his face was lined. He swiveled his chair toward her and beamed widely. “Enter my royal palace!” he declared, gesturing with both hands. Rachel saw the dirty bandage wrapped around his left wrist, trailing a shielded cable in the direction of a large crate behind the chair.
“Okay, I’m coming in,” she said as calmly as she could, and stepped inside the room.
A hoarse robot voice burbled from the crate: “T minus thirty-five minutes and counting. Warning: proximity alert. Unidentified human at three meters. Request permission to accelerate detonation sequence?”
Rachel swallowed. The man in the chair didn’t seem to notice. “Welcome to the presidential palace of the Once and Future Kingdom of Uganda! What’s your name, sweetie? Are you a famous journalist? Did you come here to interview me?”
“Um, yes.” Rachel stopped just inside the doorway, two meters away from the sick man and his pet talking nuke. “I’m Rachel. That’s a very nice bomb you’ve got,” she said carefully.
“Warning: proximity alert. Unidentified human at—”
“Shut the fuck up,” the man said casually, and the bomb stopped in midsentence. “It is a lovely bomb, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Did you make it yourself?” Rachel’s pulse raced. She blipped her endocrine overrides, forcing the sweat ducts on the palms of her hands to stop pumping and her stomach to cease trying to flip out through the nearest window.
“Moi? Do I resemble a weapons scientist? I bought it off the shelf.” He smiled, revealing the glint of a gold tooth — Rachel managed to keep a straight face, but her nostrils flared at the unmistakable odor of dental decay. “Is it not great?” He held up his wrist. “If I die, poof! All funeral expenses included!”
“How big is it?” she ventured.
“Oh, it’s very big!” He grinned wider and spread his legs suggestively, rubbing his crotch with one hand. “The third stage dials all the way to three hundred kilotons.”
Rachel’s stomach turned to ice. This isn’t your run-of-the-mill black-market bomb, she subvocalized, hoping MacDougal would be listening carefully. “That must have cost you a lot of money,” she said slowly.