Resolution by John Meaney Read Free Book Online Page A

into visibility, drawing closer to the ground by the second. As Tom watched, it decelerated hard, adopted a level attitude and hovered.
     
    ‘Whose is it?’
     
    ‘You haven’t guessed? It’s the Collegium, Tom. That’s a Collegiate shuttle.’
     
    ‘And what do they want with orbital vehicles?’
     
    ‘That, my friend, is what I’m here to show you. For the moment ... just watch.’
     
    The Strontium Dragons, like their peer societies, were capable of formulating game plans that lasted centuries. Tom wondered what part he was playing in their advancement right now.
     
    An area of heathland glimmered beneath the sun, and Tom realized it was a wide patch of membrane, big enough for the shuttle to drop through. As the membrane liquefied it shone more brightly; and Tom could almost hear a wet sucking sound as the shuttle lowered itself through and disappeared from sight, with the membrane re-forming in place above it.
     
    ‘Who’s aboard?’ said Tom.
     
    ‘No-one. D’you expect people to go up in those things?’ Zhao-ji’s grin twisted. ‘We’re not all as mad as you are.’
     
    ‘So it’s AI-controlled. Then what’s the cargo?’
     
    Zhao-ji shook his head.
     
    ‘Why don’t we just go and take a look?’
     
    Then he turned around and headed back towards the hillock, and the concealed drop-shaft which would take them back into the buried safety of the civilized world.
     
    Perhaps it’s not the Strontium Dragons who have something to gain, Tom decided, as he followed Zhao-ji. Perhaps it’s Strostiv who has a goal here.
     
    The grassy doorway opened.
     
    Tom and Zhao-ji entered, then stepped side by side into the viscous metallic gel, and sank down inside the shaft together.
     

     
    They walked into a large bay. The bay adjoined a huge hall shaped like a horizontal cylinder, stretching the best part of a kilometre. A thick transparent view-window separated Tom and Zhao-ji from the interior.
     
    ‘That’s hard vacuum inside,’ said Zhao-ji. ‘We can see everything from out here. Look.’
     
    He pointed. A long balcony, offset from the hall, ran alongside. Like this bay, it was partitioned off by thick windows.
     
    ‘Look at what, exactly?’
     
    ‘Well, this ...’
     
    The shuttle, held in place by great metallic clamps in the body of the hall, was cracking its dorsal doors open.
     
    ‘They’re collecting the harvest,’ added Zhao-ji.
     
    ‘Harvest? What the Fate do you harvest in orbit?’
     
    ‘Something very important. We’ve been doing it for centuries.’
     
    Tom noted the we. Perhaps the collaboration between Collegium and Zhongguo Ren societies went deeper than he had thought. Perhaps the Strontium Dragons’ involvement in the abortive revolution had been more equivocal and manipulative than anyone realized.
     
    ‘All right, Zhao-ji. Show me.’
     
    Shepherded by drones, a misty cloud rose out of the shuttle and hung billowing in the vacuum. Inside it, tiny points of hard white light were shining.
     
    Tom opened his mouth, closed it. Zhao-ji would explain in his own time.
     
    ‘This way, Tom.’
     
    They stepped onto a dark strip that ran along the floor. Zhao-ji gestured, and the strip began to flow. It carried them to the bay’s edge, flowed around a corner, and then followed alongside the vast cylindrical hall.
     
    Inside the hall, the misty cloud was moving along the hall’s central axis, at approximately the same pace.
     

     
    They tracked the cloud’s progress to the far end, where a huge cone formed of magnets collimated the cloud into a narrow beam, pushing it along a solid horizontal shaft that was hidden from sight.
     
    ‘Now what?’ said Tom.
     
    ‘Now you see what this is all about.’ Zhao-ji looked more glum than Tom had ever seen him. ‘And I hope that you don’t hate me for it.’
     
    The moving strip bore them onwards through a dark windowless tunnel, then brought them out into a bright-lit observation chamber where medics in