House of Suns

by Alastair Reynolds

  The silver machinery pushed itself further from her stump. It formed a tendril, a single bright filament, which oozed out until it touched the floor. The tendril kept growing, inching its way from the body. At first I thought she was going to reach for Hesperus and do something to him - administer the robot equivalent of a poison kiss, perhaps - but then I realised that the tendril was skirting around him, with the intention of reaching the severed arm.

  ‘Hesperus,’ I said again, ‘wake up. Please.’ I wanted to shout, but the detached part of my mind told me there was no point. If he could not already hear me, nothing I could do would make any difference.

  The tendril completed its journey. Reaching the arm, it curled around it slowly, the way a vine might wrap around the fallen limb of a tree. Then it began to retract, slowly but steadily, dragging the weapon arm with it.

  ‘Hesperus, please,’ I said.

  Something got through. The lights flashed in his head, once. The tendril had already dragged the arm a quarter of the distance back to Cadence.

  ‘She’s still alive. Cadence is still alive.’

  Squealing, garbled sounds exploded from the door - it was like a hundred people shouting at the same time, in a hundred different languages. If that was Hesperus trying to talk to me, something was very, very wrong with him. But then I already knew that.

  ‘Stand up,’ I said, more forcefully now. ‘There isn’t much time. You either stand up now or we’re both dead. Listen to me, robot!’

  He moved. It was a lazy yawn of his entire body. Then he was still again.

  ‘Cadence is putting herself back together,’ I said. ‘If you don’t stop her—’

  ‘Slain,’ he said, either attempting to pronounce my name, or describing his predicament.

  ‘Move, golden boy. I need you here.’

  He shifted again - the motion more coordinated this time. With a single convulsive spasm he rolled onto his side. He seemed to be looking directly at the other robot. The arm was scraping its way past the midline between them, half of its journey now complete. Hesperus lifted an arm, spread his fingers and placed his palm on the floor. He pushed against it and began to lever himself up, until he could get his other elbow under his torso for support. Then his legs twitched and he began to ease himself into a position halfway between lying and sitting. The effort must have cost him, because for several seconds he was motionless. The arm now had only a few metres to go before it was reunited with Cadence. She must have been immobilised somehow, but as soon as she had the arm back she would have a weapon she could aim and fire. Even as I was thinking that, consoling myself that at least she was paralysed, Cadence twitched again and started to sit up. She was regaining mobility by the second, just as Hesperus had done. The robots had formidable powers of self-recovery.

  ‘Hesperus!’ I yelled, all logic now departed.

  He broke out of his temporary stasis and climbed unsteadily to his feet. I could see the full extent of his damage now - a hole big enough to put a fist and an arm through, cutting right through him. The walls of the wound glistened with silver gore, bleeding mercury and strobing pulses of hard blue light. One of his legs was stiffer than the other. He turned awkwardly and surveyed the scene before him: Cadence and her severed arm, now only a metre from being reattached.

  He stepped across to her, walking like a man with one leg in a calliper. Cadence flinched back, raising her good arm as a shield. Hesperus planted his left foot on the silvery tendril. Still with great stiffness, he knelt down until he could reach the weapon arm with his right hand. He pulled it from the floor, the tendril stretching like hot cheese as he rose to his full height. His fist closed around the silver flesh of the severed arm, crimping it with appalling force. Then - with a single jerky motion - he flung the mangled arm into the darkness. I expected to hear it clatter in the distance, but of course no sound attended its impact.

  ‘Hesperus,’ I said, ‘can you hear me?’

  He said nothing, but took another step closer to the other robot. He kicked her until she rolled onto her back, then lowered his left foot onto her abdomen. Beneath him, Cadence thrashed with increasing strength. Hesperus lowered himself slowly until he was kneeling on her. Then he reached out with both hands and took a firm hold of her remaining arm. His shoulders moved with massive, gorilla-like effort and the arm came loose. He flung it aside, but with an almost disdainful effort, so that it came to rest only a few metres away. Then he swung around, adjusting his hold on her until he faced her legs, and took them off piece by piece. All the while Cadence squirmed and convulsed, but her efforts achieved nothing.

  In a short while Hesperus had dismembered the other robot completely, leaving only her head still attached to her torso. He stood up, clutching Cadence’s palsying remains to his chest. Still stiff in one leg, he made his way to the door. My heart racing, the energy-pistol still gripped in my hand, I allowed him into the lock. Air cycled in. The inner door opened and Hesperus almost fell out, dragging the head and torso behind him. His movements were still very sluggish and uncoordinated. The air smelled of burned metal and there was a hissing, fizzing sound coming from his open wound.

  ‘I am damaged,’ he said, quite clearly.

  ‘Take this,’ I said, offering him the energy-pistol. ‘You can finish her off.’

  ‘I don’t want to finish her off. She can still be of use to us.’ The discrepancy between the calmness of his voice and the shuffling, punctured figure before me was unsettling. It was like having a corpse talk back to me.

  ‘Are you going to be all right?’

  ‘I can repair myself, given time. Help me to the bridge. We will be safer there.’

  With Hesperus still cradling the other robot, leaning as much of his weight against me as I could bear, we shuffled our awkward way through the ark until we reached the white womb of the control centre. All was as we had left it.

  ‘I should contact Campion.’

  ‘That can wait. Find me aspic-of-machines.’

  ‘What kind?’

  ‘Any kind. It doesn’t matter.’ He let the torso clatter to his feet. Cadence was still watching his every move, like a viper looking for its chance to strike.

  ‘He is lying,’ she said, her own voice just as unchanged. ’The damage he has suffered is not repairable. He is in the process of terminal system shutdown.’

  I waved the energy-pistol at her. ‘We could just kill her now.’

  ‘The aspic, please.’ Hesperus extended a trembling hand and took the weapon from me at last. ‘I will keep watch on her. Find Synchromesh for yourself.’

  ‘Why Synchromesh?’

  ‘Just find it.’

  It was the first time I had heard irritation in his voice. The human part of him must have been pulling the strings.

  In an adjoining chamber I found several tubes of multi-purpose aspic-of-machines. I was already carrying an eye-dropper of Synchromesh. I returned to the command room to find Hesperus still keeping guard on the twitching silver torso.

  ‘What about the bits of her you left outside?’

  ‘They can’t hurt us now. They’ll attempt to reconvene, but provided her head and torso remain here, that won’t happen.’ He passed me back the energy-pistol and took the tubes of aspic. ‘As I said, I am damaged. But I can repair myself, given an infusion of raw materials.’ He took one of the tubes and squeezed a dollop of quivering black aspic into his palm. The material organised itself into various geometric shapes, indicating its readiness.

  ‘Will that ... work with you?’ I knelt down, my back against the wall, resting on my haunches with the energy-pistol aimed at Cadence. ‘It’s human machinery. I didn’t think it had anything to do with the stuff inside you.’

  ‘It doesn’t.’ His mask formed an exhausted smile. ‘But it can be made to. It’s very simple, really.’ He smeared the black dollop into his wound, caking it around the silvery lining of the tunnel Cascade had blasted through him. As he did so, Hesperus made an involuntary sound, a kind o
f synthetic howl like a radio picking up too many channels at the same time. ‘I am not in pain,’ he said, when the moment had passed. ‘But there is ... confusion. The aspic will help me repair myself. But it will take time.’ He squeezed another mound into his palm and applied it to the wound, over the material he had already administered. Now he convulsed, as if a bolt of electricity had just surged through him.

  ‘Hesperus?’

  ‘Keep your eye on Cascade.’ He spread more of the black paste into his chest. ‘I must enter a state of reduced consciousness while these repairs are effected. I may be incommunicado for several hours, possibly longer.’

  ‘I’m worried. She’s a robot, Hesperus - I’ve already seen how fast you can move.’

  ‘She can’t do anything quickly now. It will be safe to use the Synchromesh on a low ratio.’

  ‘I don’t like this.’

  ‘I don’t like it either, but I’m useless to us both unless I can heal myself.’ He pushed a final dollop of machinery into his wound - which now resembled a steep-sided black crater more than a tunnel - and slumped back against the wall. Then his lights flickered once and died completely. I could only trust that, somewhere inside that golden body, something was still alive, putting itself right.

  ‘Go ahead,’ Cadence said sweetly. ‘Use the Synchromesh. I promise I won’t try anything.’

  That was when the ark started shaking, the vibration nearly knocking me off my feet.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Charlock’s ship was the first to move within attack range of Silver Wings of Morning. With light-minutes of communications lag between Dalliance and the three ships of the lead squadron, there was nothing to do but gather around the holographic volume and watch the playing out of a series of events that had already unfolded. Powerless as we were to change the outcome, we still felt as if it should be possible to reach into the blue-gridded space and move the pieces around, as if they were no more than icons in a game of strategy. My mind veered between the conviction that this was the only course of action open to us, and the bitter certainty that I was about to play spectator to the death of my lover and closest friend, fully complicit in the decision to kill her.

  ‘You don’t have to watch any of this,’ Betony said. ‘Go and wait somewhere else. We’ll let you know when it’s over.’

  ‘I’ll sit it out, if that’s all right with you.’

  ‘Of course. As long as you understand that none of us would have held it against you.’

  Orache’s imago reached to touch her nonexistent hand against mine. ‘This is difficult for all of us: she’s our sister. But I can’t imagine what you’re going through.’

  ‘Purslane can take care of herself,’ I said, but the words rang hollow, as if I was the one who needed convincing.

  ‘Silver Wings is strobing her impasse,’ Charlock said. ‘Pseudo-thrust is falling, as we’d expect.’

  Strobing gave Silver Wings a measure of defence, but there were gaps in that armour, spaces between the time-phased ribs through which a well-aimed rapier might slip.

  Charlock’s ship was Steel Breeze. In the battle volume she was a blunt-tipped yellow arrow closing on Silver Wings, narrowing the distance from tens of thousands to mere thousands of kilometres. ‘She’s phasing her weapons,’ he said, eyeing the banner of icons and numbers accompanying his ship. ‘Synching her gamma-cannon to punch through Purslane’s impasse.’ He turned to face us with pride in his expression. ‘She’s learned well: it’s exactly what I’d do if I was there, controlling her in realtime.’

  ‘A broadside hit,’ Agrimony announced, as the numbers tagging Silver Wings changed abruptly. ‘Significant hull ablation and ionisation ... I think you got through, Charlock.’

  He grinned. ‘Gamma-cannon cycling for another discharge. Holding sync-lock with the impasse. Firing.’

  ‘Secondary ionisation focus, three kilometres astern of the first. Two palpable hits.’ Agrimony looked excitedly at the rest of us, raising a clenched fist. ‘We’re getting through. She’s not putting up any kind of defence. The robots obviously don’t have sufficient control.’

  ‘Don’t count on it,’ I said under my breath. Steel Breeze might have punched a couple of craters in Silver Wings’ hull, but the numbers next to her revealed no drop in acceleration or impasse effectiveness, compared to before the assault.

  ‘Cannon cycling,’ Charlock said. ‘Maintaining sync-lock. Retargeting on drive epicentre. Firing ...’

  After a few seconds Agrimony said, ‘Zero ablation. No damage beyond the first two impact sites.’

  ‘She must have shifted to a different field phase,’ Betony said. ‘Compensate and adjust.’

  ‘Give her time,’ Charlock said. ‘She’s dealt with this kind of thing before. It’ll just take her a few moments to assemble a predictive model for the phase and frequency shifts, then she’ll be able to punch through again. Gamma-cannon recharging. Firing ...’

  ‘No change in damage status,’ Betony said. ‘She must be phasing faster than you can sync-lock.’

  ‘Give her time. She just needs to refine her model.’

  But when Steel Breeze fired again, there was still no sign that she had found a way through to Silver Wings’ hull. The impasse soaked up the gamma-rays effortlessly, using some of that energy for its own purposes and re-radiating the rest to space in a long, simmering cymbal-crash of downshifted X-rays.

  I tightened my handhold as an acceleration surge washed over me. ‘We should move the other ships in. One might not be able to cut through, but if they all run different phases and frequencies, Silver Wings might not be able to block them all at the same time.’

  ‘That’s not the strategy we agreed on,’ said Sorrel.

  ‘The one we agreed on isn’t working. All it’s doing is slowing Silver Wings by a tiny amount. Time we moved to a new script, before we play ourselves out.’

  Betony wavered for a moment, then nodded. ‘Orache, Agrimony: instruct your ships to move into immediate attack range. Coordinate with Steel Breeze to find a gap in her coverage.’

  With the ships still three minutes ahead of us, it would take that long for the new battle plan to reach them, and just as long again before we saw the results of our change of approach. Until then all we could do was watch Charlock’s ship continue her engagement. Steel Breeze attempted another two discharges from her gamma-cannon, then spun around, strobed her impasse and applied pseudo-thrust.

  ‘She’s not retreating,’ Charlock said, as if that was ever in our minds. ‘She’s clever - she’s realised that she can’t get through that way. Now she’ll do exactly what I’d do in the circumstances - switch to lampreys.’

  ‘How many are you carrying?’ I asked.

  ‘Fifty-two. Mid-range gamma-cannons and high-hysteresis skein-drives. Let’s see how Silver Wings deals with those, shall we?’

  ‘Don’t count your chickens,’ I murmured. Lampreys were fast and agile, but they could never compare with the potency of a ship-mounted weapon. Nor did they have the ability to adjust beam properties to deal with a rapidly strobing and phase-shifting impasse.

  In the battle volume, the lampreys were a spray of yellow dandelion seeds erupting from Steel Breeze. They split into two formations - twelve forming a cordon around Charlock’s ship, the other forty diving for the much larger target of Silver Wings. With their skein-drives applying pseudo-thrust, the lampreys could push against Steel Breeze’s field boundary, enabling her to hold her position relative to Silver Wings even while maintaining full impasse. That was the one trick Purslane’s ship could not emulate: it would have taken thousands of lampreys to overcome the mountainous inertia of Silver Wings, and I knew she did not carry that many.

  The forty attacking lampreys broke into sub-squadrons and began concentrating their fire on the areas of vulnerability we had already identified. Occasionally one managed to punch through the strobing field, but I knew that it was more by luck than judgement, and even when the gamma-rays touched naked hull,
they did no more than scuff against that armour. But perhaps it could work, given time - the death of a thousand cuts, rather than a single, decisive wound. I allowed myself a flicker of encouragement from the fact that Silver Wings had yet to respond in kind. Perhaps the robots really were struggling to control all her systems.

  Six minutes after the transmission of the new battle orders, Orache and Agrimony’s ships - Mystery Wind and Yellow Jester - moved into attack range, strobing their fields and coordinating the use of their shipboard gamma-cannons with Steel Breeze. The lampreys continued their needling assault.

  The new ships dropped impasse long enough to release lampreys of their own.

  Cannons loosed.

  ‘Impact!’ shouted Agrimony. ‘Ablation and ionisation, kilotonnes of hull plating! We’re getting through!’

  ‘Impassor instability,’ Henbane said, catching some of Agrimony’s excitement. ‘By God, she’s hurting. Field dropped to zero for two point eight milliseconds! Four lampreys now inside Silver Wings’ impasse. Field drop again - make that nine lampreys. Moving to firing positions. We’re inside the moat.’

  ‘Main cannons cycling,’ Charlock said. ‘One clean hit is all we need. I’m starting to think we can actually do this—’

  Then he stopped talking. The blunt arrow that was the icon for Steel Breeze was flashing on and off, signalling something catastrophic. The banner of numbers and symbols next to the pulsing icon updated rapidly.

  Our attention flicked to the realtime image of his ship, captured from the other two vehicles. They were looking through the battle volume, hazed by savage energies, the intervening space roiled by impassor and drive distortion, awash with gas and debris. But even an imperfect view was enough to tell us that something was very wrong with Steel Breeze. Charlock’s ship was pulsing with miniature explosions, ripping along the raked edge of her flanks like a spectacularly choreographed fireworks display. The arrowhead craft began to tumble, the sequenced pink stutter of real-thrust engines signifying desperate attempts to regain lateral control. It was to no avail. Somewhere inside, the inertia-compensating machinery lost its hold on the ship. As several hundred brute gravities sank their teeth into the fabric of her hull, she tore open like a carcass. An instant later came the fierce light of her dying engine, a growing white sphere dulling to purple and then black along its perfect boundary. The sphere swelled to the size of the impasse quicker than the eye could track. For a delirious moment the impasse held it in check, even though the impassor that had woven that field was now no more than a cloud of fundamental particles at the heart of the explosion. The sphere turned a more furious kind of white, a white that burned into the eye like a hot lance, dappled with the negative specks of the lampreys still gathered around it, and then broke through that final, failing barricade, into open space.