by Dan Abnett
‘You lost someone?’ the Doctor asked.
Laine nodded. ‘My wife. Both my children.’
‘I’m very sorry. I know what it’s like to lose someone you care about.’ The Doctor paused, lost in thought for a moment, then asked: ‘Breed is one of these Artificials? What are they? Genetic clones, vat-grown and stored, then woken up to perform regular maintenance checks or to deal with any small emergencies? I’m guessing there must be some cybernetic augmentation, so the ship can wake them up when needed?’
‘You know a lot about Breeds for someone who claims not to be on their side,’ said Laine.
‘I know a lot about a lot of things,’ the Doctor replied. ‘This isn’t the first time I’ve encountered the use of clone slaves. I gather that Breed isn’t a name. It’s a description.’
Treve nodded. ‘Bottle-Breeds.’
‘Charming.’
‘Their purpose is to maintain the ship and protect the cargo. The same basic personality profile is loaded into each one upon activation,’ Treve said. ‘They’re essentially the same person.’
‘Except one of them isn’t. What has Theta-Nine done to deserve being chased by an armed gang?’
‘He calls himself Edison,’ said the man to the Doctor’s left.
‘Edison?’ the Doctor asked, eyebrows raised.
‘They started changing their designations,’ said Treve, ‘and illegally accessing the ship’s historical database to choose new ones.’
‘Names!’ The Doctor laughed. ‘They’ve chosen names for themselves instead of anonymous old Theta-This and Gamma-That. Doesn’t sound like something a basic personality profile would do, does it?’
‘Artificials were never intended to have such extended run-times,’ the guard to the Doctor’s left cut in again. ‘The basic program is adaptive – to enable a Breed to react to changes in a situation. Running for two years, the basic program has made larger and larger adaptive leaps, and…’
The Doctor finished the guard’s explanation for him. ‘And the mass-produced drones have become individuals! I’d have thought that studying the development of a new form of intelligence would be much more interesting to a cybernetic systems expert than acting like a thug.’
‘How did you know…?’ The man shrank back.
The Doctor parroted Treve’s earlier words. ‘“You know a lot about Breeds for someone who claims not to be on their side.” But that doesn’t answer my question: what has Edison done for you to want him dead?’
‘You fell in love?’ Martha was incredulous. ‘They want to kill you because you fell in love?’
‘They were more interested in compelling me to reveal Romea’s whereabouts,’ replied the man who Martha had, until a few minutes ago, thought of as Breed. There was something in the smoothness of his tone and his choice of words that hinted at his language having been downloaded into a chip-enhanced brain rather than learned during a natural childhood. ‘I would have resisted their efforts to extract this information from me, so the outcome would almost certainly have been my termination.’
Martha noticed the young woman squeeze Edison’s hand as they moved ahead of her along the corridor. In front of them moved the rest of the Breed – Artificials, Martha reminded herself – from the decanting unit. That cramped, slightly smelly room was where Edison and the rest of them were grown and stored. The mouldy smell, Martha had discovered, came from the last of the growth fluid, which had curdled in the curved bottoms of the growth tanks.
Martha had been peering into the grey/brown sludge at the bottom of one of the vats when a weird flutter seemed to go through the Artificials, as if they were stalks of identical corn being moved by the breeze. Suddenly they were heading out the door, led by an Edison lookalike who had introduced himself as Byron. There was a Jason, a Curie and a Demosthenes in the group, too, Martha had discovered as they introduced themselves – once she had stopped hyperventilating at the sight of ten identical copies of the creature she believed had kidnapped and almost killed her.
They approached slowly, as if trying to calm a frightened animal, then the young woman – Romea – had stepped forward to explain and apologise for Martha’s rough treatment. Edison hadn’t intended to hurt her, but Artificials were stronger than humans – they had to be, as there was no heavy lifting machinery on board. ‘Not yet, anyway.’
‘Artificials are forbidden from fraternising with colonists,’ Edison continued. ‘The rules are quite clear.’
‘When they thought you were just part of the ship’s self-repair system, they didn’t mind who you spent time with,’ Romea said, then turned to Martha, smiling shyly. ‘I’d already begun to get to know him. I knew my father wouldn’t approve, so we met in secret.’
‘When not on duty, all Artificials are to confine themselves to the decanting unit,’ Edison recited as he walked. Martha thought she could detect a bitter edge to his voice. ‘Artificials are to refrain from all non-technical conversations with colonists…’
‘Artificials are to pretend to be machines,’ Romea added. ‘That might have been how they were designed, but now they’re individuals.’
‘But your father and the other colonists don’t accept that?’
‘The colonising families were chosen for our genetic superiority. We all have the DNA markers for physical robustness, good immune response, intelligence. All the things you’d want if you were founding an outpost on a new world. The Steering Council believe our genetic purity should be preserved, no matter what the cost.’
‘Sounds ominous. How far do you think they’d go to get you back?’
‘It’s gone beyond that. There was talk of reprogramming. Some people were suspicious that so many of the colonists had died during the cryo-system failure. They thought the Artificials had decided to make sure we didn’t have the strength of numbers. The systems techs tried to access the ship’s cybernetic system and download a virus to wipe out the adapted personalities, but the system had been locked.’
‘We may be artificial, but we’re not stupid,’ said Edison.
Martha couldn’t help but chuckle.
‘That’s when they started talking about rendering,’ said Romea. ‘And that’s when I knew I had to pick a side.’
‘Rendering?’
Romea nodded. ‘Once an Artificial had completed its scheduled maintenance duties, it would enter the rendering vat. The body would be returned to its constituent amino acids and recycled to grow another Artificial.’
Martha looked at Edison. ‘So you’re…’
‘Grown from the recycled bodies of those who came before me,’ Edison confirmed. ‘We all are.’
‘Somehow I can’t see you all queuing up to jump into the rendering vat now.’
‘No. That would require force.’
‘But Artificials are stronger than humans. Get yourselves some knives and the colonists will have lost their advantage. They’d have to talk.’
‘The colonists want firearms, beam weapons,’ Edison said. ‘If they are the first to acquire them, they will soon be loading our corpses into the rendering vat.’
‘You mean this ship has guns but no tractors or fork-lifts? That’s crazy!’
‘The fabricator can make them all, weapons and tractors,’ said Edison. ‘But if they activate it, they’ll kill everybody.’
* * *
‘A fabricator?’ The Doctor sounded dubious. ‘Your energy reserves are already low. Activating a fabricator would finish them off entirely. You’d be left in the cold and dark until the solar panel arrays could collect enough sunlight to recharge the batteries. You’d freeze and suffocate on your own CO2 before you had enough power to turn on a light!’
‘We only need to run it for a very short time. Long enough to produce the weapons we need.’ Treve’s tone was steely, determined. ‘The Artificials’ enhanced strength gives them an unnatural advantage—’
‘So you want something that goes shooty and bang-bang to tip the balance of power in your favour,’ the D
octor cut in. ‘Even if it dooms you all?’
‘This debate is at an end,’ Treve said with a thin smile of triumph. ‘Our people are on their way there now. They will secure the area and activate the fabricator. I’m satisfied that you are no threat to our plans, so I will join them. You will stay here, under guard, at least until we have dealt with the Artificial problem.’
Suddenly the Doctor was a blur of motion, leaping at Treve before either of his guards could react, passing through the narrow space between Treve and Laine and vaulting the hydroponics trough. The pale, ill-nourished plants rustled drily as he brushed past them. Two long strides brought him to another trough, which he again hurdled, passing between the plants like a breath of wind.
‘Stop him!’ Laine bellowed.
The two guards hesitated, unsure whether to follow the Doctor over the trough or take the long way around the trough-ends. The Doctor had already hurdled the third trough and he ran on, jumping through the forest of malnourished plants until he vaulted the last of the troughs and found himself facing a blank metal wall.
To his left was a metal stairway leading to a walkway halfway up the wall – he had been escorted along an identical walkway and down an identical stairway on the opposite wall to his meeting with Treve. He clattered up the stairs and through the hatch into the dimly lit maze beyond.
The dull grey monolith towered overhead, featureless apart from a keyboard and input screen. The chamber rose three storeys high. Something about the way its walls disappeared up into the shadows reminded Martha of a church.
‘That’s a fabricator?’ she asked.
‘This is the interface,’ Romea replied. ‘The fabricator is behind that bulkhead. It’s huge.’
As she spoke, the Artificials with whom they had marched through the corridors nodded greetings to those that were already there. While developing their own individual personalities, the Artificials still shared a kind of machine telepathy, through their cybernetic link with the ship’s systems, Romea and Edison had explained to her. As soon as the colonists were spotted, moving in force towards the compiler, a cybernetic council of war had taken place and a decision was reached. This had taken a little under three seconds, Edison had added. Imagining how much the Doctor would have enjoyed that last snippet of information, Martha had smiled to herself. The Decision? To reach the compiler first and prevent the colonists activating it, whatever the cost.
‘The fabricator makes everything we need to colonise the target world,’ Romea said. ‘Its database contains design specs for machinery, tools, habitation structures, vehicles… When activated, the fabricator manipulates matter on the molecular level and delivers the finished item to one of five loading bays a thousand metres through there.’ Romea pointed at the blank wall to which the interface was bolted.
‘Half our number are there,’ Edison added. Martha didn’t envy the colonists the surprise of finding twenty Edison lookalikes waiting for them. She craned her neck back to look up at the top of the monolith. It certainly made sense – rather than try to pack everything for a centuries-long trip between the stars, just pack a machine that could make everything when you got there. All it needed was a plentiful supply of energy from the sun around which the target world orbited, collected by solar panel arrays the size of Wales. To activate it now, running on stored power in the dark gulf between star systems, would be suicide.
The sight of a face staring down at her from the dark caused her to catch her breath. In the time it took her to shout a warning, the face had become one of many – the colonists, leaping over the rail of a walkway hidden by the shadows, shouting threats as they fell.
The Doctor came to a halt in the middle of a cross-junction. He had the nasty feeling he had been there before.
‘Not a good time to get lost,’ he muttered.
The dull, ruby glow came from a low-set hatch at the end of one arm of the cross-junction. Inside, banks of flickering lights covering the walls of a hexagonal cubby-hole, a small screen and keyboard. The Doctor watched the lights, noting the patterns that emerged, the patches that remained unlit. The cursor blinked on the screen as it had throughout the centuries this ship had been in flight. He reached for the keyboard, tapped out a staccato rhythm. Reading the response that scrolled across the screen, he broke into a smile.
The sounds of struggle filled the room. Wherever she looked, Martha saw bodies locked in conflict. Ragged blades stabbed and slashed.
‘Stop!’ she found herself shouting. ‘Stop this!’
A colonist and an Artificial, grappling for control of the colonist’s jagged blade, collided with Martha, slamming her into the wall. Stars flashed across her vision.
‘Martha!’ Romea ran towards her… until she was grabbed by the collar of her coverall and jerked backwards, into the arms of a colonist.
Martha shook away the stars and looked up. A colonist stood over her. In his raised fist he held a large spanner.
‘Have we met?’ Martha asked. The spanner began its descent.
Martha’s attacker was slammed aside by an Artificial – Edison? All around her, colonists and Artificials struggled with one another, but suddenly Martha had clear space on every side.
‘Stop this!’ she shouted again. ‘This is bigger than love. Or rules. This is about survival!’
As if in reaction to her words, those fighting all around her stumbled, pressing their hands to their temples or over their ears, shaking their heads, while from above her came a familiar voice:
‘Quite right, Martha. Now listen, all of you – Stop. Right now!’
The Doctor’s last words brought some of the colonists and Artificials to their knees, hands now firmly clamped over their ears.
On the faces of those nearest to her, Martha could see incomprehension and the beginnings of fear. Looking up, she saw the Doctor, standing on the same walkway from which the colonists had launched their attack. He smiled down at her, then lifted what looked like a microphone to his lips and spoke again.
‘Thought that might get your attention. Ladies and Gentlemen, Colonists and… others. I have taken control of the ship.’
An Artificial turned his face towards Martha. A livid bruise covered one half of his forehead and blood ran freely from a lip split in two or three places.
‘Your friend…’ Martha assumed it must be Edison. The Artificial spoke too loudly, as if shouting to be heard over a noise that Martha couldn’t hear. ‘He’s… in my head. How?’
With a crow-like flapping of his long coat, the Doctor vaulted the walkway rail and landed lightly on his rubber-soled feet a short way from Martha.
‘That’s a very good question,’ he flashed a grin. ‘Fortunately, I know the answer.’
From the corner of her eye, Martha caught sight of sudden movement. A colonist staggered to his feet and swung a blunt tool of some sort at the nearest Artificial. Two long strides brought the Doctor within range. Reaching down with his free hand he plucked the tool from the colonist’s grasp. Something in the gentle-yet-irresistible nature of the movement reminded her of the way he had prevented the gang of colonists from pursuing Edison down the corridor.
‘I said this ends now!’ the Doctor shouted into the microphone… and every colonist and Artificial in the room clutched at their heads. Some moaned, others cried out. ‘In a moment I’m going to turn down the volume. If anyone tries anything nasty, I’ll be turning it all the way up to eleven. I can’t promise that won’t cause permanent damage.’ He adjusted something on the stem of the microphone, which Martha thought looked like it had been put together on the run.
With a chorus of relieved sighs and groans, the colonists and Artificials eased themselves off the floor and fell back into two opposing groups, staring warily at each other across the narrow strip of neutral space in which the Doctor and Martha stood. Romea, Martha noticed, stood with the Artificials.
‘That’s much better. This is for those in the loading bays and anywhere else on board. Just because I’m not th
ere doesn’t mean I won’t know if you try anything violent, sneaky or otherwise really, really stupid. I am on very good terms with your ship’s Pilot System and she is keeping an eye on all of you.’
The Doctor cleared his throat.
‘I am speaking to everyone on board the generation ship 374926-slash-GN66 – and by the way, you really should consider coming up with a better name than that – because I want to stop you making the biggest mistake any of you are ever liable to make. To be honest, if you made this mistake it would have to be the biggest because none of you would live to make another one.’
‘This is our ship! This is our mission!’ Treve was standing at the walkway rail, Laine beside him as he shouted down at the Doctor. They must have been closer behind him than he’d thought. ‘Artificials are created to serve and when their purpose is done, to submit and be rendered down for future generations. The purity of the human gene-type must be preserved.’ There was a murmur among the colonists. Some shuffled forward.
‘Oh, things have gone much, much too far for that.’ The Doctor shook his head, then pointed a finger at the feet of the advancing colonists.
‘Eleven,’ he said, his tone deceptively light as he jiggled the makeshift microphone loosely.
The colonists withdrew.
‘You’re rational people: scientists, planetary engineers, world-builders. You all know that purity’s not how life works. Life, evolution, creativity – they all thrive on variety, diversity, finding new combinations and seeing what happens. Half of you know that’s already happened.’ The Doctor shot a significant look at the Artificials.
Romea turned to Edison. ‘What does he mean?’
Edison seemed unsure how to answer. He exchanged uncertain glances with the other Artificials.
‘I… I know!’ Romea gasped, eyes suddenly wide. ‘I know what happened – and I’m seeing parts of it, flashes. Memories!’ She looked at Edison. ‘Your memories?’
The Artificial nodded.
‘That’s a girl!’ the Doctor shouted. ‘The connection’s been there all along. All you have to do is recognise it!’
