Ibn Qirtaiba

Issue 12 - January 1996

Hot on the heals of Issue 11, Issue 12 of Ibn Qirtaiba hits the net on 15 January 1996. The date was chosen to coincide with the launch of United Zines, a consortium of international Internet magazines. United Zines features one zine from each of 21 different countries of the world. Ibn Qirtaiba is its inaugural Australian member. Auren Hoffman, United Zines' founder, states that "United Zines helps make the Internet a truly global medium. We are bridging the gap between nations and coming together to add value for all World Wide Web surfers."

If you ever find yourself looking for diverse, interesting, current - and, of course, free - reading on the net, I commend United Zines to you as a great place to start. If you've reached Ibn Qirtaiba from the United Zines home page, welcome! - and be sure to return often.

Speaking of diverse and interesting reading, this issue's pick from the Fiction Archives is Quarantine by Western Australian author Greg Egan, which is certain to be viewed as a classic in decades to come. Frederick Rustam's Dune short story The Custodian also concludes in dramatic fashion, and 10 new cool SF sites await your perusal. What do you want to read more of in IQ? Let me know, or contribute your own article, letter or story.

Contents

Fiction Archives: Quarantine by Greg Egan

Letter

Short story: The Custodian by Frederick Rustam, part 2

Coolest 10 SF sites #2

Serial: Other People's Flesh, part 9

Fiction Archives: Quarantine by Greg Egan

"15 November, 2034. The stars went out."

From the blurb on its cover, you might predict the book to be inspired by Arthur C Clarke's The Nine Billion Names of God. The cover art of the edition under review (dominated by a Geisha smiling from a video billboard) screams Blade Runner in no uncertain terms. The title suggests another Ebola-inspired horror story like Outbreak. The first chapter reads like a 21st century detective novel such as Philip Kerr's A Philosophical Investigation. Quarantine is none of these.

What it is is a masterwork of hard SF, and the book that launched Perth author Greg Egan to international prominence. Quarantine was released in 1992 to general critical acclaim, including the 1993 Ditmar for Australian long fiction. It was Egan's second published novel. (His first, An Unusual Angle, was written when he was sixteen, and in his words, "That [it] was published at all was really just a glitch.")

Although Quarantine is not a cyberpunk novel, its future is similar to the cyberpunk vision in many ways. The first few chapters - unrepresentative of the novel as a whole - see the novel's protagonist Nick Stavrianos as a private investigator hired to track down a woman abducted from a mental institution. His search takes him to New Hong Kong, a sprawling city state in Arnhem Land populated largely by refugees from Hong Kong after its return to communism. Stavrianos' tools of trade are typical cyberpunk high nano- and biotechnology.

I drop in at a stall which sells downmarket consumer pharmaceuticals and nanoware: smart cosmetics, active tattoos, "natural" sex aids (meaning, they act on nerves in the genitals, not the brain), muscle "enhancements" (painless short cuts to dysfunctional hypertrophy), and the kind of neural mods that belong in cereal packets.

Neural mods play a critical role in Quarantine's plot. They are essentially software for the brain, ingested by nasal spray, which enhance users' intellects, skills and loyalties. Stavrianos carries one which creates a VR representation of his late wife in his head (his grief and guilt at her death have been surgically removed). Six other mods relied on by Stavrianos in the course of the novel date from his days as a policeman.

P1 can manipulate the user's biochemistry, P2 augments sensory processing, P4 is a collection of physical reflexes, P5 enhances temporal and spacial judgment, P6 is responsible for coding and communications... but P3's role is largely that of a filter, selecting out the optimal mental state from all of the brain's natural possibilities, and inhibiting the intrusion of modes of thought which it judges inappropriate.

Quarantine is set in a world cut off from the rest of the universe, by an impenetrable spherical barrier - the Bubble - that appeared around the solar system one day 33 years ago. The favoured scientific explanation for the Bubble is that humanity has been quarantined by an unknown alien intelligence. Less scientific explanations abound, and it is here that Egan returns to a characteristic theme; the excesses of fundamentalist religion. In his short story The Moral Virologist, Egan lampooned the notion that AIDS is God's judgment on the sexually immoral. In Quarantine the fundamentalists similarly twist the significance of the Bubble to their own theological ends.

It was Judgment Day rewritten by some Bible Belt Chamber of Commerce. TV still worked, and nobody needed the mark of the beast to buy and sell, let alone to give and receive tax-deductible donations. Mainstream churches issued cautious statements which said, in so many words, that the scientists were probably right, but their pews emptied, and the salvation-for-money trade boomed.

A common criticism levelled at Quarantine by reviewers was that the science is too intrusive - being explained in dialogue between two of the characters. The problem is difficult to avoid however, due to the highly technical and counter-intuitive nature of the science of quantum mechanics, on which the novel is based.

"Quantum mechanics describes microscopic systems - subatomic particles, atoms, molecules - with a mathematical formulism called the wave function. From the wave function, you can predict the probabilities of getting various results when you make measurements on the system."

As Egan goes on to explain through the mouth of his dubiously exegetic character, quantum objects do not possess discrete properties such as speed or direction until these properties are measured. Before they are measured, they possess a mixture of all their potential properties. It is seemingly the process of measurement itself that "collapses" the wave function, by reducing the mixture of possibilities to a single possibility. Thus, although it is difficult to comprehend in terms of everyday observable reality, the measurement of a quantum system has a direct effect on its properties. There are numerous competing theories as to what it is in the process of measurement that collapses the wave function. Quarantine takes one of the more creative of these theories and follows it to its logical extreme.

All this may make the book sound a little daunting, but in fact once the basics of the so-called quantum measurement problem are grasped, no further scientific knowledge is required, or would help the reader to follow the novel's conceptual complexities. Indeed, although Egan's premise is based on a published theory of quantum mechanics, it adds a significant dash of artistic licence - primarily by treating macroscopic objects such as human beings as being equally subject to the wave function as sub-atomic particles.

I sit in the train home, staring at the other passengers, daring this contrived vision to decay into surreal anarchy. But the carriage remains solid, the people stare back at me coolly, the stations appear through the windows in just the right order, at just the right times. It's hard to believe that there's room for so much clockwork in my head.

Although it may not be everyone's cup of tea, for my taste Quarantine is the best Australian science fiction novel I have read, and certainly the best of Egan's three published novels. It's not a book to read on the train (unless you wish to miss your stop), or a book from which you should expect realism in characterisation and setting. But if mind-expanding hard science fiction is your bag, Quarantine should be in it.

Back to Contents Back to Index

Letter

Dear Jeremy,

If we learn nothing else from Mensa, surely it is that intelligent people can hold a wide range of, sometimes conflicting, opinions. Mensa shows us that it is silly to make the very common assumption that "anyone who disagrees with me must be stupid".

I am therefore disappointed to find the following on your Web page:

"Another comforting thought, at least to SF fans, is that it takes greater than average intelligence to appreciate their genre of choice, and this is why it is not taken seriously by many of their friends and relatives."

While agreeing that the first part could possibly be true, I believe that the second part is self serving and offensive nonsense.

I read SF myself, but I do not think that anyone else has any obligation to take my interest "seriously". If they are dismissive or rude about my interest, I merely observe that they are ill-mannered, I believe that it is foolish to assume that they are of lower intelligence.

Jeff Whittle
Melbourne

Ed: You make a very good point. However if you read the following paragraphs of the article, you will note that I end up dismissing the statement that I had earlier posited, and to which you took offence:

"Hence I believe that the reason for the non-acceptance of SF by the mainstream lies not in the intelligence required to appreciate it, so much as in the way in which the genre has evolved, as set out in the essay which began this issue."

Indeed, the whole point of the article was to provoke debate, as the editorial to issue 1 indicates:

"As the name Forum implies, this is not intended to be so much an authoritative treatise on the topic, as an attempt to spark thought (whether in agreement or otherwise) on the part of you, the readers."

As the first reaction to the article I have received (two and a half years after it was published!) I appreciate your comments.

Back to Contents Back to Index

Short story: The Custodian, part 2 © 1995 Frederick Rustam

The story so far: On the world of Rakis - after the Tyrant, Leto II's death had made it arid and barren like the Dune of ancient times - the descendants of the Fremen are misruled by the priesthood of the Divided God, as Leto is now known. When Hano was in lower school, the evil priests translated his father to a certain death in the worm-sands for his disbelief in the divinity of the Divided God. Hano swore revenge and began to prepare himself to become a New Fremen. When he grew to young-manhood, he searched the rock outcrops near his village for an ancient Fremen sietch which he had learned was located there. While on a weekend hike, he found a Fremen knife, and its glowing, pulsing blade led him to the rock-door of the sietch. Using his new knife, Hano was able to enter the cave of ancestral sanctuary. There, he hopes to learn the Fremen ways from its relics and to use it as a base of operations against the priests who so cruelly murdered his father.

5

Hano sat in the spice-fabric chair in the study-room of the sietch, reading a large history book. It was printed on ultrathin ridulian crystal sheets because it was a comprehensive history of the people of Hano's world up to the death of Leto II. Beyond that event, the text ceased - as if the people's history, as well, had ended. Perhaps, Hano thought, the Tyrant had commissioned the work and - without his support - the historians had abandoned it.

The book seemed to be result of an ongoing history project. The farther back Hano went, the more archaic the language of the text became. Nonetheless, he had been able to learn much - enough to verify his suspicion that the Atreides were not gods, just men - but natural leaders of the Rakian people in their time of need... Hano had studied the ancient language forms in higher school. The priest-teachers allowed a few bright youths to read selected ancient texts so that they might identify any potential scholars. The best of these students were vetted for the priesthood and sent to the great temple of the Divided God in Keen. Despite his talent for languages, Hano had not been selected. He was the son of a translated heretic, after all... This rejection rankled - as did all the others he had experienced since his father's translation.

Hano had entered the darkened sietch as if he expected someone would be waiting to seize the intruder... Carefully, he examined the rooms of the complex with his flashlight, activating usable glowglobes where he could, and leaving a trail of illumination behind him... Gradually, he became comfortable with his strange, new surroundings. Time passed, as Hano ignored his commitments to family and school to learn all he could about the sietch.

The great artificial cavern was devoid of people, but still had some working equipment and supplies for a population of several hundred. The living quarters had some furnishings and containers of preserved food for emergency use, but it was apparent that the former inhabitants had taken most of their possessions with them when they left - probably during the later reign of the Tyrant, when the benign climatic change had been accelerated. The sietch had been left in good condition, Hano guessed, so the Fremen could return if conditions in the new villages made it necessary to do so.

The history text told it: these new, open Fremen degenerated quickly when the unique harsh environment which had made them such a hardy, formidable people became moist and hospitable, planetwide. Later, as Museum Fremen, these people surrendered their ancient spirit for their easy, predictable life as wards of the Tyrant and his Golden Path: the three-thousand-year period of peace and prosperity. As time-after-time passed, the sietches were forgotten - perhaps, deliberately, so that offworlders could not find them.

At one point in his explorations, Hano stood in the vast room where the sietch's water was stored in a huge catchbasin. The water collectors still functioned - as the drip, drip, dripping sound bespoke. Hano wondered where the overflow went to. Was it discharged to the sands, to be evaporated by the sun and condensed again in the windtraps?... It was just one of the mysteries of this wonderful place - a place Hano didn't want to leave, now.

Hano stopped reading... He thought he heard a sound from... he couldn't tell where. From the rock walls, perhaps, conducted from somewhere distant to the studyroom, but underground. He continued to listen for awhile, but the sound ceased.

He returned to his book. It was early morning, by his watch. He had been underground since his entry several days previous... He would read until it was time for a lunchtime snack of jerked meat and the melange-laced vitacrackers stored in vacuum-tight containers. (Opening one of the containers had released a strong scent of cinnamon.) Hano had some reservations about eating spice- laden food. The priests had long ago made the consumption of spice illegal for Rakian natives. Also, Hano feared that certain irreversible physiological changes would occur within him.

Hano knew that, to become a genuine Fremen, he would have to consume some melange. But, he was uncertain about the permanence of this new life in the sietch, and afraid he might be cut off from a spice diet and suffer withdrawal symptoms. His body was not that of an ancient Fremen, despite his direct ancestry from those people. And, despite his reckless desire to stay here far beyond his usual hiking-weekend, he feared that unforeseen events might cause him to have to return to his village... He would have enough explaining to do, as it was; he didn't want to face the priests with the "eye of ibad" - the melange blue-tint to his dark eyes. That would be surely be the beginning of his end.

Now, in the history book, he read of the Preacher, that enigmatic man whose presence had precipitated the transformation of his son, Leto II to a man-worm. Had he, as some said, really been Paul Muad'Dib - blind, but returned from the deep desert to put things right among his successors?... The story was so fascinating that Hano mused, aloud, "There are so many secrets, here."

"You've learned enough secrets, heretic!"

Hano jumped as he looked up from his book in alarm... Standing in the open doorway to the room was someone he hadn't seen in several years: Guardian Fiulaco. He was pointing a lasgun at Hano and sneering. His face had an expression appropriate to his ratlike visage. His nasalized voice dripped with acid, and he sniffed more frequently than he had during his interrogation of Hano at the lower school.

"Now, it's time to pay for your learning..." Sniff! "...like your heretic father before you." When Hano reached for his crysknife, but didn't find it at his belt, the Priest-Investigator noticed, and his lips curled into a smirk. "Looking for this?..." He held up Hano's knife. Its blade no longer glowed.

Hano remembered... He had been so entranced by the newly-revealed sietch that he had left the knife in the rock-slot, and the door had remained open. Since it was far from the studyroom, he had forgotten to return and close it.

"Come here!... Slowly." Sniff! "And, don't try to run, or I'll burn you down... You've seen your last of this place, boy."

6

"You left a trail of fading footprints behind you - right to the door of this place." Sniff! "Makes you wonder how the Fremen were able to move around safely, doesn't it?"

The thought had occurred to Hano, but he ignored Fiulaco's question to ask one of his own... His hands were manacled behind his back and he faced his captor, who still stood in the doorway, as if he were afraid to enter the studyroom of the ancients.

"How did you know?..."

"That you were searching for a sietch?..." Sniff! "I've had my eye on you for quite a while, heretic. When reports reached Dar-es-Balat that you were spending your weekends `hiking,' I got a silenced glider and followed your footprints." Sniff! "You sure were careless; you never once looked above you, where I was."

"All that effort just for one boy?" Hano inquired, sarcastically.

"For a boy I guessed would find what he - and I - sought." Sniff! "Your teachers have been most cooperative. They've noted everything you've studied." Sniff! "The village Guardians followed you and saw you talking to the old geezers. They lied to us about you, but we found out what it was you were learning from them."

Hano hoped the old men who had helped him hadn't been punished, but he knew they must have been.

"Now, we don't need you, anymore, heretic... Let's go - aggggh!"

His ratface distorted in pain, Guardian Fiulaco felt behind him for the stunner dart he knew had hit him. He pulled it out - but it was too late. He looked around for his attacker, unsteadily wielding his lasgun. Then, he fell to the polished-rock threshold of the doorway, the gun clattering across the floor. He thrashed a little, managed a final sniff, then lay still.

Somewhat fearfully, Hano stepped over him and looked around, into the hallway... Standing nearby, in a dark Fremen robe and holding a dartless stunner, was an old man. His wrinkled face was partly shadowed by his robe's hood... Hano stared at him, muted by the sight, his mouth agape.

"I am the Custodian of Sietch Ghibran." The man's voice crackled with age and disuse. "You will have to carry this out-freyn intruder to the surface. I no longer have the strength to do so."

Hano struggled with the drugged bulk of Fiulaco, but was determined not to show his fatigue. Beside him, slowly, walked his new companion.

"I am Domdruni, of the as-Syr Fremen. This is our ancient place of refuge... Until this day, our sacred ground has never been defiled by an out-freyn." Seeing Hano's expression, he pointed a crooked finger toward Hano's burden. "This mongrel priest of the worm-God, I mean."

"What'll you do with him, sir?..." Hano was genuinely respectful toward the old Fremen, whom he saw as a piece of living history.

"We will `translate' him to the deep desert, young student... You will load him into his glider, and I will fly him - and myself - direct to Shai-Hulud."

("`Student'?") Hano guessed the Custodian, well-hidden, had observed him since the day he entered the sietch... ("Why didn't he stop me?")

"But, sir..."

Domdruni held up a gnarled hand. "I am soon to die, anyway. For many years I have guarded this place of my people. Now a new Custodian is needed... I shall carry the priest and myself into the fiery mouth of Shaitan. You will stay and serve the memory of the as-Syr Fremen as Custodian of Sietch Ghibran." The old man offered no alternatives. "Our sietch may be needed, again."

"Yes, sir," assented Hano. He shifted his burden to hold his shoulders a little higher. That was what he wanted... Wasn't it?

They were at the desert side of the jagged opening where Hano had entered the rock maze and seen the Chimney. They faced the Guardian's spy-flyer, left there on the open sand. On it, was the detested mark of the priesthood of the Divided God. Sand had already begun to cover it.

Hano pushed a tightly-bound Fiulaco into the cargo compartment behind the seats of the powered, but silenced, glider - then helped Domdruni into the pilot's seat. He felt a foolish compulsion to ask, "Are you sure you know how to operate this thing?" But, he knew the old man wouldn't have volunteered for this fatal mission unless he could accomplish it.

Domdruni looked at the young man. "The desert wind is erasing your footprints. Without that trail, the priests will not search for you... This one may not even have told anyone of his own search. His vain desire to apprehend a `special' heretic will die with him. I shall make certain he knows what has occurred before we hear the coming of Shai-Hulud, so that he may meet the maker with the full knowledge of his failure to destroy our sacred sietch."

"Would he really have destroyed it?"

"The vile priests of the worm-God have done so, before... They have no honor... and no appreciation of their own history. Not all of them are out-freyn mongrels like this one - but they are all evil men."

Hano marveled at the knowledge Domdruni seemed to have collected while guarding a remote sietch. He wondered if there were a secret communication system for the neo-Fremen Custodians and their allies among the people.

As if Hano had asked, Domdruni answered his question. "Read the Custodian guidelines and the journals you will find in my quarters. There, you will learn how to communicate with others of your kind." He handed Hano his knife. "This indicator knife will take you to that place within the sietch." Noticing Hano's quizzical expression, he elaborated, "It is not a crysknife. Its blade is a special display material; its handle contains a device to receive hidden beacons... If you desire a real crysknife, you must make one from a worm's tooth, as the ancients did... Where did you find this one?"

Hano told him of his discovery... "A courier must have seen enemies coming and hid the knife in the sand so they couldn't use it to find Sietch Ghibran. He did well - and so did you." He omitted Hano's failure of leaving the knife in the door-slot.

Hano examined the knife closely, for a moment. Then, he looked again at Domdruni of the as-Syr. "Thank you, Master Domdruni. This knife will suffice, I think, unless I find a worm tooth in the sand, too."

The old man acknowledged the honest remark with a a nod and a slight smile. Then, he added, "That knife can be used as an indicator only by a genuine Fremen. To all others, it is just a cutting tool."

Hano swelled, a little, with pride. He was a Fremen, now - a New Fremen - and would be even after he found another to replace him and went off to meet Shai-Hulud, like Domdruni.

"Goodbye, Custodian." The old man closed the glider door, started the muffled propulsor, and leapt into the sky after a short takeoff run.

Hano watched the sky-blue aircraft slowly disappear over the horizon, reddened by the dying light of the setting sun... The wind that cast sand against his boots was growing colder, now. It was time to return to Sietch Ghibran - and to his new duties.

As he passed through the opening in the rock outcrop, Hano had a recurring thought. It was something he should have asked Domdruni about... On reflection, though, he decided it would not have been appropriate to have done so. It was a problem only he could solve.

"How will I find a wife?" he asked the desert, plaintively.

The restless wind brought him no answer.

Back to Contents Back to Index

Coolest 10 SF sites #2

1 Galaxy Magazine One of the best and longest-running sci-fi pulps ever - still around, but now exclusively in electronic form.
2 Plan 9 from Outer Space The worst science fiction movie ever made. Don't believe it? Listen for yourself, with RealAudio.
3 Dune ][ MUSH If you enjoyed reading Frederick Rustam's short story, now you can live it too. (If you happen to meet a character named Tyrmenes, please be kind to him.)
4 Isaac Asimov home page IQ has received a couple of requests to feature Isaac Asimov in the Fiction Archives column. While you're waiting for this to occur, you can find most of his work reviewed here.
5 SF pictures archive Includes Star Wars, Blade Runner, Alien, Star Trek, V, Battlestar Galactica, Doctor Who, Blake's 7, Space 1999, Red Dwarf and many more.
6 SciFaiku "SciFaiku is haiku and it is not kaiku. It is driven by the inspiration and many of the principles of kaiku, but it takes its own direction. It deviates, expands and frees itself of haiku."
7 Australian science fiction Read all about Australian SF authors, fans, fanzines, web sites, awards and conventions.
8 Greg Egan fan page If this issue's review of Quarantine was your introduction to Greg Egan, you can find out more from this site.
9 Sci-Fi WEBzine Yet another brand new science fiction fanzine on the Web. Worth a look, if not a bookmark.
10 Star Trek nudes Forgive the poor taste, but this string of pages documenting the indiscretions of the Star Trek stars is more amusing than arousing.

Back to Contents Back to Index

Serial: Other People's Flesh, part 9

The story so far: Mark Heydon was about to transmat from Perth to Singapore when the operator of the transmat started shooting at him and was killed by Heydon in the ensuing fight. At the same time as he fled from the scene, he appeared to be in Singapore, and was questioned there by police. The two Heydons met and the Heydon from Singapore explained that in a transmat malfunction his body had been transmitted to its destination without the original copy in Perth being destroyed. This Heydon, having been charged with the murder, entreats the first Heydon to surrender. He refuses, and now horrified by transmat technology, tells his tale on current affairs television. A radical anti-technology group takes up Heydon's cause, and he unwittingly joins them in blowing up the transmat terminal. The other Heydon helps the police to find his double, who is wanted for the bombing. This infuriates Heydon, who knocks his double out while they are alone in his police cell, and escapes custody by impersonating his unconscious twin. The police and the other Heydon pursue him the next morning, but are caught in the middle of a anti-transmat demonstration. Assuming that the police are taking Heydon off to jail, the demonstrators free his twin and overturn the police car. Back home with his wife (who believes him to be the twin), Heydon plans to leave town.

"It is believed that the car carried Mark Heydon, an extremist anti-technology activist, who was involved last week in a transmat accident that caused his body to be replicated. Mr Heydon, who is suspected of the bombing of the Perth transmat terminal, was freed from the police car by demonstrators. The car was then overturned and set on fire by the mob. The two police officers inside the car were tragically killed."

As the voice droned on, Heydon was struck with a morbid yet reassuring thought. It was possible - wasn't it? - that the officers who were killed were the only people who knew that the Mark Heydon freed by the demonstrators wasn't actually the one the police had arrested. If so, Penny and he might be safe after all, for a while. The police would concentrate their energies on recapturing the other Heydon (not to mention dispersing the demonstration), which would give him time to finish his work and retreat to safety with his wife. If the police eventually released the other then he was welcome to the house and the job, but he wasn't going to touch Penny again if Heydon had anything to do with it.

"I hope he's all right," Penny said wistfully, staring at the monitor where the video window had just disappeared. Heydon was intrigued by her reaction. He had assumed that Penny would have sided with his other self, who bore him nothing but resentment and suspicion. Even if the other Heydon hadn't influenced her, the media were in no two minds about his guilt.

"Don't you believe what they say about him?" he asked. "That the transmat accident sent him crazy, that he's a terrorist - a murderer?"

"Would I have married him if he was? You may have made up your mind, but if you were him I'm sure you'd want me to trust you. It's not easy for me suddenly having two husbands, one of whom has been on the run for a week, accused of crimes I'm sure he would never commit. I don't want to abandon him now... even if I have got you instead."

She hugged him then, but Heydon wasn't sure whether to be pleased or not.

The mob surged along Wellington Street in the city centre, intoxicated by the blood on its hands. Some of the activists had earlier fled the demonstration in panic or tears, but most stayed; either afraid to abandon their more ardent colleagues, seeking safety from the police in numbers, or revelling in their new-found strength.

Natasha Morris gripped Heydon's left arm, but he had long given up struggling. The best policy for his own survival at present was to play along with the crowd's perception of him - he was the poor man whose life had been ruined by a malevolent transmat machine, and whose double was making out with his wife. The man with the megaphone had lowered it for a moment, and catching Heydon's eye, pushed back through the crowd to greet him.

"My friend and comrade!" Dr Asqui clapped him on the shoulders. "Free at last, eh? You can't say we don't look after our own."

"Julian Asqui," Heydon noted. "I've seen you on TV."

"You've done more than that." Dr Asqui lowered his voice. "You helped me blow up the transmat terminal, remember? Or would you rather forget?"

So, Heydon thought wryly, the LHL had been behind the bombing, despite all their protestations of innocence. And it sounded like his other self had helped them. Until now Heydon had been prepared to assume his innocence of the crime.

The whine of sirens and the buzz of a helicopter signalled the arrival of police reinforcements, which inflamed the ire of the turbulent crowd.

"It's time for our demonstration to move on," Dr Asqui announced at once. He raised his megaphone to address the masses. "Everyone, to the train station! Mr Heydon has decided to teach his soulless brother a lesson, and we're going to help him. We're going to Mark Heydon's house!"

Back to Contents Back to Index