by Neal Asher
With one face flat against the deck, the octahedron clunked, separating along the edges of each of its faces. These then folded out and down, gleaming technology revealed within also unfolding, unpacking and expanding, almost like some incredibly complex chrome fruit being turned inside out. Jointed arms stretched, coils of optics and segmented pipes unravelled, short telescopic towers rose and opened brassy tubeworm heads, and a squat tic-like robot unpacked itself and inflated, testing limbs terminating in multi-purpose tool-heads. Next, sliding plane faces across the deck, the whole thing opened out further to leave a space – a space just large enough for a scorpion war drone to walk into.
Amistad hesitated. For over a century he had borne this outer shape and only a slightly adjusted interior. Acquiring more mind had required some swapping about of internal components but little else, since additional processors and memcrystal had taken up very little space. However, over that last century Amistad had reached both physical and mental limits to expansion. His mind was like a much repaired and strengthened wall which now, to be stronger, needed to be torn down and rebuilt. But did Amistad want to go there?
He had been perfectly happy with his investigations of madness and perfectly equipped for the limited tasks he set himself. However, if he was to become the prime authority on all things Atheter, which currently extended far beyond Masada itself and also incorporated the Atheter AI, then he needed to transcend, needed to integrate at a higher level.
‘I am ready,’ the tic-like upgrade robot informed him.
Amistad hesitated for a second longer, then realized it wasn’t fear of the upgrade itself that held him back but, quite simply, fear of the responsibility. Really the time had come for Amistad to stop pissing about out on the periphery of the Polity, to stop playing, to come home and at last grow up. He advanced amidst the complex machines and settled down on his belly plates, extending his limbs and placing his claws tip-down against the deck. A nervous shudder ran through him, then he forced himself into stillness and waited.
‘Close down autodefences,’ the tic instructed.
Amistad began shutting down a weapons system that had nearly acquired a distinct intelligence of its own. Beam weapons, railguns and munitions carousel powered down, whilst his immune system, which would automatically react to computer, microbot and nanite attack, reluctantly went offline.
‘Autorepair too,’ the tic added.
It comforted Amistad to detect a note of nervousness in the upgrade robot’s communications. But, of course, working on something made for total war against an alien race was a risky procedure at best. Amistad offlined all the internal microwelders, recasters, nanoscopic reconstructors and other internal repair bots, shut down the rerouting systems and instructed the nanite armourers all over his outer shell to go on hold. Suddenly, at that point, he felt something he had felt only once before, at his inception aboard the factory station where he had been built: vulnerability.
‘I commence,’ said the tic.
Telescopic tool heads and crane-like mechanisms bowed to the task, closing on Amistad like the spikes in an iron maiden. Cutting lasers began firing up, but merely to soften metal for the hypersonic neutronium cutting discs that followed. Amistad observed armoured shell coming away in sections to expose internal ceramocarbide bones, powerful stepper motors, optics and s-con cables. He felt this happening until shutting down millions of microscopic sensors underlying the departing shell. When his claws went he writhed with the feeling of inconsolable loss, even though he knew these would be returned. And soon he looked nothing like a scorpion, had become almost indistinguishable from the machinery that surrounded him.
Now the tic robot itself moved in close to work on the main internal components of Amistad’s body. A fusion reactor just half a metre across connected up whilst Amistad’s own reactor disconnected and slid away. Upload connections established, one after the other, to each of the previous upgrades to his mind, and data began to slide away in a destructive process that nearly autostarted his immune system until he clamped down on it. Very shortly Amistad forgot things and began to feel less intelligent, only the sensed presence of the quantum protomind offered any reassurance, that being where Amistad was going.
Next the download connection established to Amistad’s main processor, even as the large lozenge of crystal began to disconnect. Consciousness began to fade and he asked the question of himself that many a Human asked when loading to crystal, to a new vessel: ‘Will I die?’
Utter blankness, timeless.
Amistad woke abruptly, now in a place so huge his mind almost diffused away in the first second of consciousness. Also, in that second, he re-engaged his immune system, autorepair and weapons even before his senses. His particle cannon and close antipersonnel lasers briefly flared in response to a perceived attack before he could shut them down, then his senses connected fully in time for him to see the wreckage all around him: tools slagged or chopped into pieces, glowing pools of molten metal, occasional secondary explosions and chunks of hot metal raining down.
‘Damn,’ he said, then, ‘Er . . . sorry about that.’
‘Not unexpected,’ said the tic robot, now climbing back up onto the platform from where it had previously concealed itself. ‘You have sufficient control for me to finish the job now?’
The thing had dragged up with it a cable net bag containing Amistad’s armour, which had yet to be replaced. Amistad grasped at once that in preparation for this moment the upgrade unit had moved its entire mind into the tic robot, which had been provided with the tools to complete its task. Something else occurred to Amistad too: he still had no idea about the purpose of another tool that went under the name of Jeremiah Tombs.
After his first trial runs with the specialist programs, Chanter realized that all physical objects possessed congruent patterns if you broke them down sufficiently for, in the end, they were all made of matter, which at its basis was all the same and in the end broke down into nothingness. The programs here stretched into the territory of various unification and chaos theories, whilst also straying into the perpetual revisions of those theories and incorporating AI solipsism. He found it far too easy to end up losing himself in speculations about the meaning of it all. Perhaps this was because he was distracted. He felt naked and without an escape route now his mudmarine and Mick, under the control of Rodol, had returned to his base to collect his collection of sculptures.
‘Any joy?’ asked Clyde.
Chanter looked up. The man was thoroughly sober now he had found something to interest him. He had explained to Chanter that after his and Shardelle’s depressing discoveries about the gabbleducks and hooders, and his orders to remain here on Masada, he had allowed his addictive personality free rein. But now there was some research he could get his teeth into he had allowed Rodol to suppress that part of him, and the autodocs here to shave the fat from his liver and purge the toxic build-up in his body.
‘I’ve gained some understanding of why some choose the easy escape route called God, but fail to understand how they can’t look beyond that construct.’
Chanter returned his attention to the screens before him. Icons represented each of the sculptures in his collection, whilst bar graphs detailed the performance of the program he was using, each bar representing adjusted data inputs. Thus far he knew that all the sculptures were made of animal bone, that parts of them had been fashioned in shapes similar to structures in creatures on this world and others, but no congruent pattern or order to that. Construction methods were congruent: mortise-and-tenon joints, bone pegs and micro dovetails. One of the searches related to Human woodworking and Human artisans of the past – Gibbons, Boulle and Chippendale – but he doubted that would make anything clearer, for the Technician’s use of such joints just represented the best physical methods of accurately joining cut materials without glue or welding.
Clyde pulled up a chair before the next console along and sat down, elbows on the chair arms and fingers interlace
d before his mouth. He then reached out and waved a hand over the console and the screen before him came on to show the kind of data maps Chanter just couldn’t read.
‘You’re only searching for physical patterns or matches,’ Clyde said. ‘Perhaps you should extend your search outside such limitations?’
‘To where?’
‘Perhaps your concentration on the artistic endeavours of Humans might be a dead end and you should take a look at the Atheter databases and the fauna and flora of this world.’
Chanter repressed the urge to snap at the man. Maybe he was right about what would be the original sources of inspiration, and from them Chanter could run new comparisons with Human art and then find the Technician’s core.
‘Perhaps this.’ Clyde leaned forward and reached out to the screen, directly manipulating the data maps with his fingertips. A new search bar appeared on Chanter’s screen.
‘What’s that?’ he asked.
‘I’m running a comparison program between the structures of your sculptures and the gabble database.’
‘But the gabble is gabble,’ said Chanter. ‘It’s nonsense – your own Shardelle has been unable to make any sense of it.’
‘Let’s just see what happens shall we?’
Chanter was about to protest this foolish use of processing power, for the gabble database was huge, when one of the icons before him flashed and his console chimed. He concentrated fully on the screen and saw a sketch outline of that sculpture descend towards a three-dimensional shape that had appeared on a subscreen. The two shapes melded, turning and twisting, then flashed red and another subscreen appeared. On this a shape slowly sketched out. Chanter could make nothing of it.
‘What have we got?’ he asked.
Clyde stared hard at his data maps. ‘Could be a complete coincidence – the match is not in the main gabble database but in a mindtech research—’
The console made that sound again, another sculpture selected out for comparison with another three-dimensional shape. Again a match was made.
‘Then again, perhaps not,’ said Clyde.
‘Are you going to make yourself clear?’
Clyde pointed at his data maps. ‘The program is finding structures in your sculptures that match the neural structures of a gabbleduck’s mind.’
The console rang again.
‘Really weird,’ Clyde added.
‘In its art,’ said Chanter, feeling a moment of victory, ‘the Technician has been trying to express the minds of its masters.’
Clyde just continued staring at his screen, his expression blank.
‘I rather think,’ he said, ‘that with the limited tools at its disposal, and limited and wholly distorted understanding, it has been trying to rebuild them.’
Jem struggled with the unfamiliar fastenings of the spacesuit, then stopped and looked over his shoulder for expected help, and yet again realized Sanders wasn’t standing there. The feeling of loss, and guilt, surged up again and he just stood, unable to continue. Grant gazed at him for a moment, then abruptly stepped over and helped him. Jem felt a sudden huge gratitude, his throat tightening and tears pricking in his eyes as the soldier demonstrated the simplicity of stick seams and the automatic seals. The suit clung over his clothing, film-thin and terribly insubstantial, a bowl helmet covered his head and just a few discrete packages decorated his belt. How could such a light garment be sufficient to protect him from vacuum? The answer was always the same here: Polity technology. ‘Okay, you’re done,’ said Grant.
Jem felt this warranted some sort of reply, but for a moment didn’t trust himself to speak.
‘You’re ready?’ Grant enquired.
Jem cleared his throat, turned to look at the airlock door so the soldier could not see his face. ‘So . . . what is this monument I must see?’ he asked, not for the first time.
‘You’ll see soon enough,’ said Grant.
Jem glanced at Shree, then away again. ‘Will you tell me?’
‘It might spoil the effect, and effect is what I’m all about,’ she said. ‘But I’d have thought you would have guessed by now.’
Grant turned towards the airlock door – an arched contraption with segments that opened like an iris, disappearing into the surrounding walls. After they stepped inside, the iris closing behind them, Jem saw vaguely familiar text appearing in the glass of his helmet and guessed it indicated pressure and atmospheric readings within the airlock as it drained. About him the suit gained a degree of rigidity, but still did not constrict movement.
‘We’ve arrived on quite a day,’ said Grant. ‘They’ve finished repressurizing and are starting to spin it up again.’
Shree glanced at him sharply. ‘Interesting timing.’
‘Ain’t it just,’ said the soldier. ‘Makes you realize how important the AIs consider what’s rattling round in his skull – they were ready to repressurize over ten years ago.’
‘All for my benefit?’ said Jem, puzzling over why Polity AIs might have such interest in him. Hadn’t Shree mentioned that the Technician had done something to his mind? Hadn’t Sanders once said something . . .
Jem winced, the heavy boot of guilt coming down hard on his chest again. It was unbearable, but he couldn’t see what recompense he could make – beyond acceding to their demands right now. But no one died – they all went to Heaven or Hell, didn’t they? No comfort there either, for his own beliefs damned Sanders to Hell.
The outer door of the lock drew open to reveal a long framework tunnel extending to something looming in the dark of space.
‘Perfect timing right now too,’ said Grant, his voice as clear over suit radio as in the air. ‘Sunrise in about three minutes.’
‘Sunrise?’ asked Shree.
‘When it comes out from behind Calypse.’
Grant stepped into the tunnel first and Jem followed, feeling as if he had stepped from a cliff the moment he moved out of the airlock. Gravplates, he realized, nausea rising in him. The Hierarch Amoloran had spent the entire planetary budget on getting such things smuggled to Masada for his tower and his own ship, yet aboard the Polity ship they were even inside the airlock. A prick in the side of his neck made him jump and his nausea at once began to fade. The suit had doctored him, he understood, dispelled his nausea, looked after him, and that seemed to make the undercurrent of guilt even harder to bear.
Down the length of the tunnel handles were provided with which to propel themselves along. Though clumsy at first, Jem soon got the hang of it, recalling his brief stays offworld during his proctor training. Ahead, the massive object hanging in vacuum was visible only as a blackness blotting out a large portion of the starscape. Jem began to feel an odd familiarity about this thing, then a growing fear of that familiarity.
‘Starting to feel reluctant?’ Shree asked spitefully.
Realizing he had been moving ever and ever slower, Jem picked up his pace, Grant having moved some distance ahead of him. He caught up with the man in time to hear him say, ‘Here it comes.’
Sunlight lit the scene from behind, casting the Polity ship’s shadow directly ahead and blotting out much of what lay there, but off to the right, truncated by perspective, the light revealed a curved surface of bare metal, char, and occasional areas of unburnt vacuum paint. Slowly this shadow slid leftwards, exposing more of that surface and uncovering Theocracy script. When it revealed a few letters Jem finally realized where they had brought him.
‘Faith,’ he said, his voice catching.
‘The laser blast,’ Grant explained, ‘hit the Up Mirror and reflected up inside the cylinder world. The mirror lasted about two seconds before evaporating, but long enough to cause the firestorm that gutted this place.’ The soldier pointed to where the shadow was now sliding aside to reveal the ring-shaped, heat-distorted Down Mirror sitting above an oddly misplaced gothic tower at this hub end of the cylinder, a concentric window around it through which reflected sunlight shone into Faith itself. ‘Amoloran’s Tower has been restor
ed. They found most of it drifting into a decaying orbit around Calypse and towed it back. Some other stuff inside has also been restored.’ Grant fixed Jem in his gaze. ‘The dead, or rather what’s left of them, have not been removed.’
‘Why have the dead remained unburied?’ Jem enquired, his voice at last steadying, a fading and resentful part of himself wondering if the dead had been left visible so the victors could gloat.
‘Effectively they have been – this has been classified as a war grave.’ Grant continued on down the docking tunnel.
‘The Polity is above gloating,’ said Shree, almost as if she could see into Jem’s mind.
He glanced at her, then noted the look Grant flashed back at her. With a sudden cold certainty Jem realized it would take the soldier a while, but eventually he would see through her. Then, as he followed, Jem felt grief nibbling at the edges of his own consciousness, but weak, more like sadness. It seemed for a moment he had managed to step away from it into some other part of himself. He wondered how actually seeing Faith twenty years after the firestorm could be any stronger than feeling the tens of thousands die here over his aug. It hurt him that they thought that whatever horrors awaited beyond that distant airlock would give him ‘sufficient emotional investment’. But that hurt stemmed from the soldier’s opinion of him. Did Grant think Jem so shallow?
Soon they reached the end of the docking tube, passed through the large outer door into Amoloran’s Tower and propelled themselves inside an airlock large enough to hold a Hierarch and his retinue. Jem eyed Satagent script running around the wall, the snouts of two stun blasters peeking from their high alcoves, and lower down the recesses from which tangle wire could be ejected. High security here, this being direct access to the Hierarch’s abode, but it wasn’t lethal security – Amoloran, and then his successor Loman, would certainly have wanted to question any assassins who got this far, prior to sending them to the steamers. Jem winced at the thought of the agony anyone caught here would have endured, then immediately upon that felt surprised at his own empathy.
