by Neal Asher
‘If she’s going to be of any use we have to first get her out of here,’ Blitz noted.
Ripple-John leant across the bed and picked up a remote control, studied the touch pads for a short while then pointed it at the trunk presently sitting in the middle of the floor. Humming to itself the piece of luggage rose up a short way, then turned to face the door.
‘And here’s our solution to that,’ he said.
Taxi-driver again, Chanter thought to himself as he studied the seismic images on his subscreen. In the mud down here he could see some remains that twenty years of tricone attrition had failed to obliterate. There a wormish scrawl half a kilometre long; scattered around it, curved fragments of eggshell, but from eggs big enough to contain creatures the same size as a Human. Chanter did not like being here at all, in fact he had avoided being here ever since that first time, because his distrust of and doubts about Dragon had carried over to that entity’s offspring.
‘This is it, isn’t it?’ Tombs asked, peering up at the screen from his position seated on the floor.
The man either knew how to read seismic maps or recognized the images on the screen, which made no sense. He had been a Theocracy proctor prior to the rebellion, then bat-shit mad ever since. He should have no knowledge of anything he was seeing here.
‘Yes, this is it,’ Chanter replied, reluctantly angling the mudmarine up towards coordinates provided by Rodol.
‘Some of it remaining,’ said Grant from the fold-down bed. ‘It must be tough material. I thought Polity researchers dug it all up.’
‘They dug most of it up,’ said Shree from beside him, ‘but dumped the project as the dracomen established their town.’
‘Maybe the dracomen objected – felt a grave was being disturbed,’ Grant suggested.
Shree only snorted at that.
Chanter had been strongly requested to bring the three here to Dragon Down. He understood the tactical reasoning behind this, since whoever had set the hooders on Bradacken had not been captured and might still be in the area. But there was more to it than that. As a sweetener, Amistad, in a very brief exchange, had informed him that the dracomen possessed information concerning the Technician – something he might be interested in. He felt the AIs wanted him here, though why wasn’t really clear, but was it ever?
Within a few minutes the marine surfaced, and Chanter noted a lack of resistance indicating either a thin or non-existent rhizome mat up here. The frictionless viewscreen cleared to show Dragon Down off to the left, and an ATV heading away far to the right.
Next a subscreen flickered on to show a draconic visage. Chanter reached out to check the settings of the transmission, contrast and colour – one finger-touch on the keypad running an instant diagnostic. Nothing wrong. This dracoman female – there an odd contradiction – was actually as blue as she looked.
‘Chanter,’ said the creature before him.
‘You know me?’ Chanter replied.
‘I’ve known of you for a long time,’ she said. ‘Let me introduce myself: my name is Blue, for evident reasons – one of twins as it happens. My brother sacrificed himself to the Technician even before the Theocracy died.’
The company of these three over the last six hours had been enough to grate on Chanter’s nerves, and now he felt something creeping up his back. He wanted to get the hell away from here just as fast as possible but still, information about the Technician . . . This Blue, it seemed, might be the source.
Why had the Technician stopped making sculptures? Its last new one Chanter had found some years before the rebellion, and from what he had recently learned, they were supposedly the product of a dysfunctional war machine. It had been mooted that the Technician lost its dysfunction itself, but how coincidental: a million years of madness followed by some Atheter machine definition of sanity now, with Humans and others here. And hadn’t Dragon known things? Known where Chanter could find that oldest sculpture?
‘I’m here to deliver a visitor for you,’ he said, noncommittal.
‘And visit for a while yourself, I hope?’
‘I’m told you have something for me.’
‘Certainly – please come and join me.’
‘Yeah, sure.’ Chanter clicked off the screen then sat staring at it pensively.
‘Dracomen here before the rebellion?’ Grant said wonderingly.
‘Dragon was interfering here for years,’ said Shree. ‘Does it surprise you it had its agents down on the surface?’
‘Yes, it does. Even though the brotherhood had Dracocorp augs I thought Dragon only came here itself the once.’
Chanter considered that. Had it been here before, or had it obtained that information through its agents? He stood up and turned to find himself nose to nose with Tombs. ‘A little space here please.’
Tombs did not move. He had one of those weird looks on his face again.
‘Intricate weave,’ he said. ‘Now it comes clearer to me. The mechanism did not fail. The Technician was consigned to a Hell it could not escape alone.’
‘Are you going to get out of my fucking way?’
Tombs blinked, regained some Human expression, stepped aside.
The door opening ahead of him, Chanter stomped outside, then glanced back as the other three followed. When the door closed behind them with a satisfying thunk, he decided then that enough was enough – after this he would be returning to his mudmarine alone and be damned to any requests from Amistad. Heading across soft mud towards the dracoman town he didn’t care whether his passengers followed him or not. He gazed ahead, noted the greenish-yellow hue of dracomen, the occasional Human, then one that stood out as it walked from the town towards them. Finally, after crossing ten metres of rhizome-netted mud, he checked back on the other three. Grant and Shree were only a couple of paces behind, but Tombs was hopping oddly along some metres behind them, trying to step from thick rhizome island to island, obviously scared of sinking into ground insufficiently boggy to swallow a lead coffin.
‘Blue, I presume,’ said Chanter, stepping up onto one of the gridded walkways spearing out from the town. The words aped something historical, he was sure, and felt he had chosen them because something historical, for him, was about to occur here.
‘That I am. Pleased to meet you at last, Chanter.’ The draconic female gestured to the walkway beside her and, when Chanter joined her, gazed beyond him.
‘Leif Grant and Shree Enkara,’ she said. ‘You have both been here before and know we have accommodation where you can rest and get something to eat.’
‘But you’ll be looking after Tombs and Chanter for a little while,’ said Grant, obviously having been so informed by Amistad.
‘What’s this all about?’ asked Shree.
Grant turned to her. ‘Blue has something to show them, but it’s not for us to see.’
Chanter noted the brief flash of rage in her expression.
‘I don’t agree with that,’ she said.
‘So you’re going to argue with dracomen, here?’ Grant enquired.
‘Why wasn’t I told?’
‘Why should you be told?’
She abruptly stepped up onto the walkway and marched in towards the town. Grant watched her go for a moment then said, ‘I don’t like this myself, dracowoman Blue.’
‘It’s nothing you need concern yourself with, Leif Grant,’ said Blue. ‘Nobody will be able to harm Tombs here.’
‘Still,’ said Grant.
‘Though what happens next will have its effect on Tombs’s mental condition, it is more a resolution of a personal nature than something that might concern you.’
‘Yeah, whatever.’ Grant marched off after Shree.
‘Jeremiah Tombs,’ Blue said, now turning to the ex-proctor as he finally approached the walkway.
‘Nominally,’ he replied, concentrating on his footing.
‘Of course.’
Tombs reached the walkway, relief evident in his expression.
‘Resolution of a
personal nature?’ Chanter queried.
‘Isn’t art personal?’ Blue shot back.
‘What’s this all about, Blue?’
‘Follow me and find out.’
Chanter did so, annoyed but curious. Blue had mentioned art, which was a lure he could not ignore, perhaps foolishly.
As they walked in it seemed to him almost as if the town reached out to engulf them like some white leviathan, and in doing so constrained his freedom to act. He shuddered on seeing how perfectly the colour of the bulbous buildings around him matched that of the Technician’s carapace. They wended their way to the centre, through the strange little park there, where Chanter saw Shree and Grant disappearing into a large oblate building – the only one here with windows – then moved beyond through a gap between walls that seemed to threaten to roll in and crush them, finally to a small spherical house with a single door that opened as Blue approached on hinges of muscle like a clamshell.
‘After we have finished here you can rejoin your fellows.’ Blue gestured back the way they had come, then ducked inside.
Despite the odd feeling he got upon entering Dragon Down, Chanter followed her quickly as his usual agoraphobia began reasserting itself. Once inside he looked back towards the door, where Tombs was hesitating, ducking down and peering inside.
‘Yes,’ said Chanter, irritated. ‘You’re not a gabbleduck and you can get through the door.’
Tombs entered, whereupon Chanter ignored him and studied his surroundings.
The floor drew his attention first. It consisted of differently shaped glass tanks all perfectly interlocking and smooth underfoot. Within many of these, curious forms of fauna squirmed or hopped. In others flora grew beautiful or grotesque, whilst in others still, resided things that were either both, or neither. Flat surfaces, crammed with equipment both mechanical and biological, sprouted like mushrooms from the floor. Beside one of these stood a saddle-like dracoman stool, and next to this rested two chairs for Humans, one looking quite old, the other new enough to still have its scales. A round film screen rose from the mushroom table, below which rested things like leather flying helmets sitting at the end of snakelike tubes, the insides of the helmets uncomfortably like the inside of a reptile’s gullet.
‘Please, be seated,’ said Blue.
Chanter seriously considered just turning, shouldering open that clamshell door behind, then running for his mudmarine, but something beyond this little diorama riveted his attention. Numerous alcoves had been cut into the walls all around, some of them containing objects he could not identify and others that he could, like the Human skull with a proctor’s dress cap perched upon it. The alcove nearest the three chairs, however, contained something that had been the focus of his life for so long, for there resided one of the Technician’s sculptures.
For a moment, Chanter had no idea what to say for, reviewing his previous exchanges with this dracowoman, he knew more about the sculpture here than he really wanted to. He cleared his throat, held up his hand, the webs between his fingers stretched taut, peered through the infrared-sensitive skin and saw nothing unexpected, but through the skin that rendered ultraviolet saw the sculpture etched in an eerie glow.
‘So,’ he said, lowering his hand, ‘you’re blue right to the bones?’
‘Certainly – it is a pigment I use in bodily functions similar to breathing, and permeates me through and through.’
‘What was your twin brother’s name, Azure, Cerulean, maybe Lapis Lazuli?’
She turned to gaze at the sculpture. ‘He had no name, for he possessed no identity and no recognizably individual mind.’ She made a graceful gesture towards the sculpture. ‘I like to think of this as the Technician’s tribute to him.’
‘The only tribute it could make,’ said Tombs, voice flat, less Human even than Blue’s. ‘And the last sculpture it ever made.’
Chanter swallowed drily. Though in one part of his being he wanted to be anywhere but here, at his core he knew he simply could not be elsewhere. So, at least two dracomen were here on Masada before Dragon sacrificed itself and was reborn. One of them stood nearby, whilst the remains of the other resided over in that alcove.
‘So you’re going to tell me about all this?’ he asked.
Blue gestured towards the two weird organic-looking helmets. Chanter had rather hoped she wouldn’t do that, but wasn’t really surprised. He walked over to them, picked one up, slightly revolted at its warmth, stepped over to a chair and plumped himself down in it then, gazing at Blue defiantly, thrust the helmet down on his head. Something stung him, almost at once, then needles began burying themselves into his scalp and things started to get a little strange. He had time only to see Tombs taking up the other helmet, before the particular reality he occupied shattered and dissolved, revealing some underlying stratum. The memories of Dragon, and its children, began downloading into his skull:
. . .
The Theocracy lay ahead, nearly ready for change and joyous manipulation. Already a large proportion of the upper Theocrats were using the dracocorp augs supplied to them by Cheyne III separatists, and as Dragon approached, it sensed the growing network. However, that network had not yet reached full ripeness with someone taking an ascendant position in it; someone Dragon could then seize control of and through them manipulate everyone else. In fact, it seemed that a large proportion of aug network channels was being taken up by prayer from some group called the Septarchy Friars – something that could slow the whole process.
Cherry-picking information as it slid into the Masadan system, camouflaged electronically from the Theocracy’s primitive sensors, Dragon noted that the Theocrats were aware of the original source of their augmentations and, possessing minds twisted by religion, had created a mythology about them. This it seemed enabled them to accept something which, up to this time, did not fit doctrine.
They had named Dragon Behemoth and distorted that label to their purpose. Behemoth, it seemed, was an angel only half-fallen, a renegade and a rogue, but not entirely evil. The augs were a gift from this entity, a powerful tool of seraphic origin that could lead them to damnation if they weren’t sufficiently strong and did not adhere sufficiently to the tenets of their faith. Dragon loved this thing about Humans: how they lied even to themselves for their own advantage. Then something else, coming in through the sensor cloud it had distributed ahead of it, riveted its attention.
Masada.
They’d named their world after the Jewish fortress zealots suicided in rather than be captured by the Romans who had it under siege, yet they had not made it their own fortress, rather keeping their powerbase offworld, in the cylinder worlds presently under construction, and in their growing fleet. Did their reluctance stem from some sense of what this world had been; that they would have been building down there on the rotten foundations of an even older fortress?
As the sensor bees settled through the atmosphere they relayed enough data for Dragon to see the vague shape of it all. As they either hit the ground and began sucking up and analysing genetic material or sank into the ground for deeper scans, that shape hardened into visibility. The tricones for this, the hooders for that, the Atheter themselves now just animals but with a potential that had to have been held in check in some other . . .
There.
A brief glimpse of some alien eye peeking out from underspace to check all was well, the patterns of that continuum indicating an evident link back to something with the power to act, with the power to ensure its masters remained animals. Dragon of course perfectly understood the despair, driven by Jain technology, which could lead to such racial suicide. Had it not seen something similar in the kind that had sent it to the Humans in the first place? Wasn’t that kind of madness why it had gone rogue?
So very very interesting, and with all sorts of ramifications. Certainly, even with Dracocorp augs and Separatist technological assistance the Theocracy could never survive the Polity steamroller. And the status of this world, once the Polity saw i
t, absolutely ensured that the Theocracy would be crushed.
But the Polity, whilst it crushed up and absorbed stray Human civilizations as it perpetually extended its border, moved too slowly and too cautiously. Its AIs did not yet understand what danger they were in. Yes, Dragon’s own games and manipulations kept them alert, but not sufficiently so, for they had a big tendency towards complacency. They needed to see Masada, they needed to understand what had happened to the Atheter and they needed to do both very soon, because the ever-growing span of the Polity was fertile ground for a Jain node, and that lethal technology would sprout once again.
Time to hurry things along.
‘Hierarch Amoloran!’ Dragon boomed through the aug network whilst, inside itself, it tapped off some of a lethal metal-eating mycelium from a hidden cache, and sealed it in a small container.
The Hierarch’s reply was instant and somewhat worrying in its perspicacity. ‘You are the creature called Behemoth. Are you here in the Braemar system?’
‘I am everywhere and nowhere,’ Dragon replied. ‘But here is something you will need to bring your dreams to fruition.’ Dragon sent coordinates of a point in orbit over Calypse, simultaneously ejecting the small vessel from inside its body and setting it on a course to that point.
‘Another gift?’ Amoloran enquired.
Rather than reply, Dragon sent a data packet containing instructions for how the mycelium should be used.
‘We understand the nature of your gifts, Behemoth: sufficiently attractive for us to want them, but dangerous to everything we hold dear.’
