Engineman - Eric Brown [146]
Another Director of a Core organisation said, "You're talking as if the whole business about the continuum being under threat is cut and dried. I think we should begin such fevered speculation only when your theories have been scientifically tested."
Hunter had been fearing such a pragmatic approach. "A scientific investigation of the malaise affecting the nada-continuum might take tens of years, decades we do not have if we are to save the realm. We don't even possess the know-how, much less the technical apparatus, to even begin contemplating such investigations."
"You'd rather we believed the hallucinations brought about by a bunch of alien witch-doctors?" Weiner grunted.
Jose Delgardo said, "Our immediate concern, once we have established the veracity of Hirst's claims, would be less how the free expansion might react, but whether the Danzig Organisation would agree to close down their interfaces."
"They wouldn't!" de Souza said, "Which is why we could not afford to shut down our own portals. Can you imagine the scenario if the Danzig Organisation was the only body with unrestricted access to the interfaces? Preposterous!"
Hunter said, "I wouldn't worry yourselves about the Danzig Organisation. The Disciples have contingency measures to deal with them."
"Meaning?" Weiner asked.
"If need be, we would co-ordinate suicide bombing campaigns to rid the Rim of the interfaces. There are only two hundred interfaces in that sector, and we have more than a hundred thousand willing Disciples capable of taking out more than just the Organisation's portals..."
He allowed his gaze to wonder across the staring faces. Weiner took up his challenge. "You don't mean to say that if we refused to co-operate...?"
Hunter stood his ground. "I mean to say, Herr Weiner, that if the free expansion did not see reason and agree to the closures, then the Disciples would be forced to consider extending their bombing campaign. We have the numbers, the will, and the knowledge that we cannot lose the fight..."
A sudden and profound silence hung over the guests.
"Now," Hunter went on, "if you would care to make your way to the other end of the hangar, I think Dr Chang is ready to show you around the phasing in area."
Muttering, the visitors trudged from the hospitality lounge.
Hunter remained behind, relieved that for the time being the pressure was off. In all his years of preparation, he had underestimated how narrow-minded and pragmatic some people would be when faced with such petty considerations as reduced profits. He tried to look at the situation from their point of view - but that was impossible. He had after all experienced the full and terrible magnitude of the annihilation wrought on the continuum. He tried to convince himself that all, in time, would be well: soon, even the doubters would experience, via the communion chamber, the full horrors of what was happening beyond the illusion of this reality.
And, if all else failed, then the might of the Disciples would succeed.
He left the hangar to get a breath of fresh air and to be alone for a few minutes. He strolled across the tarmac, the weight of his daughter's diary making itself felt in his jacket pocket. The uncertainty of Ella's fate was the most agonising factor in all this: if only he knew, even if she were dead, the truth - then he could begin to grieve, to mourn, and then maybe begin to heal himself. But, knowing nothing, he was in a state of limbo, a void of inertia in which he could do nothing to help himself. There was nothing to grasp and hold onto in this realm of ignorance, nothing on which to gain purchase and orient himself.
He was weeping. Quickly, he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his good eye. He took out a photograph and stared at it. Ella was standing beside a canvas, her expression severe. The painting showed what might have been a flayed corpse, spread-eagled against a backdrop of stars. In its agony, the painting seemed to communicate to Hunter his daughter's own anguish. She