by Neal Asher
Machines like the Technician had been the pinnacle of war technology and had subsequently been used to obliterate both those Atheter and their own machines that had resisted the enforced return to the Homeworld. And just now such a machine had come close to killing the mechanism. It had resisted every warfare technique at the mechanism’s disposal, managing to actually penetrate right down the core. Only there had the mechanism contrived to bring to bear the full force of its field technology to tear the thing apart and eject it, and even now it continued to search out fragments of the shattered device and eject them. Everything about the Technician was dangerous: nanotech spreading from its physical parts, computer warfare programs downloading from the smallest fragments, modulated fields spreading infection . . .
Nearly all gone now, nearly all . . .
There.
The mechanism found something alien stuck like a caddis-fly larva case to one of its internal units. This wasn’t part of the Technician – analysis revealed metals and field containment similar to those used by the aliens here. It didn’t seem to be dangerous, so why was it here? Closer study revealed that the end of the glassy cylinder lay open, the field generators within shut down, and whatever they had contained was gone. A metallic smear spread from the open end across the surface it was stuck to. The super-dense metal there possessed a strangely uniform crystalline structure and, even as the Mechanism directed sensors to study this more closely, the metal fractured into even hexagonal chunks that swirled away.
The enormous dodecahedral unit, two kilometres across at its widest point and one of hundreds within the mechanism’s horn-shaped body, shuddered as it tumbled, went out of pattern and bounced off its nearest neighbour. A signal generated from it, routed though its U-space transmitters and down to the planet. There, a disruptor abruptly began to rise into the sky as its holding position adjusted. This made no sense. The mechanism tried to isolate the unit, managed to shut down all EM and U-space transmission and reception around the thing, but could not halt its physical movement.
They were going out of pattern – it had to be one of the worms or viruses sent by Penny Royal all those years ago . . . no, no they were gone. Something else was attacking, subverting. The mechanism used a complex field grab to seize hold of one of the floating fragments of metal, meanwhile diverting its other units away from the infected one. Using a deep-scan nanoscope it focused on the structures in the dense metal, recognizable structures, but still room for doubt.
Fear again.
The mechanism immediately wanted to eject the unit and destroy it. It also wanted to send a destruct signal to the disruptors that had also been affected by it, but there was no way round the deep hard-wired programming now coming online. Unable to stop itself, the mechanism summoned the disruptors back, back through U-space and thumping down in its core, pitiful diseased children called back to be free of their misery. It felt them there, felt patterns generating from them. The painful reality was that there was nothing threatening about those patterns. Yet.
Like with Penny Royal . . .
Still it could eject its infected parts, still it could destroy them.
Another unit fell, briefly touched by the rogue. The mechanism gazed inside, trying with all its will to deny what it was seeing. Matter and energy were being reordered inside and such now was the mass of data accumulating about that process, it could no longer be denied. It tried, but its orders crippled it.
Here then was Jain technology – the one thing the mechanism could never allow within itself, the thing it had been built to free its masters from, by destroying them, their own self-destructive fear of it the utter basis of the mechanism’s programming. The mechanism fought the inevitability of the oblivion, fought its hard wiring, but so deeply ingrained were the orders that they rooted to the core of its being. They took over, carrying through the inevitability of the Atheter’s self-destructive fear. Suddenly this Jain tech felt like infection, filthy life occupying pristine technology, and there was only one way to be free of it, one way to be clean.
Its mind in the grip of the same madness that killed a race, the mechanism reached for the succour of cleansing fire, stretched half in and half out of the real, out and down, millions of kilometres drawn thread-thin, finally snapping fully into the real in a place where matter itself burned, and immolated itself in Masada’s sun.
Amistad hit the ocean hard, speared down in a tube of superheated steam that slammed shut after half a kilometre, then angled his claws and body to curve his course upwards. Most of the drone’s components remained undamaged by the sudden cooling, designed for even harsher conditions, but those already damaged by the mechanism’s gravity-wave weapon failed, some shattering. Even so, the reduction in temperature accelerated internal repairs: information processing speeded up, some nano-machines forced into somnolence by the heat woke and set to work; microbots, their joints seized by thermal expansion, stretched like arthritic fleas and returned to the job in hand. Then, with one further fusion blast creating a high-pressure steam bubble behind, the drone shot to the surface.
Penny Royal wasn’t down below now, nor was the armoured sphere containing Eight – Amistad had seen that on the way in. Exploding from the surface, he planed out, gravmotor functioning intermittently, its fault returning. Ahead, smoke and steam boiled into the sky, a harsh red glow at its base. Huge waves heaved below, their forerunners already hitting the coast two hundred kilometres behind.
‘Update,’ the drone requested.
‘It seems the mechanism reacted to a Jain technology infection just as its masters programmed,’ Ergatis replied.
An image feed opened and Amistad watched the mechanism’s last moments, stretching to an all but invisible line straight into Masada’s sun. Next came a view, and data, from one of the close-watch solar satellites. Readings indicated that the thing materialized deep in the radiative zone of the sun, and above that a sunspot slowly appeared, a hundred thousand kilometres across. The outpouring of radiation forced the satellite to shut down most of its receivers, batten down its hatches against the solar storm. But the meagre sensor data available revealed regular hexagonal structures all across the sun spot. They lasted for ten minutes before dissipating. This had been seen before: the massive energy-fed growth of Jain-tech in that environment, before its eventual destruction.
‘And here?’ asked Amistad, whilst concentrating on internal repairs. Connections made, and all of a sudden all his legs were working. Shame that only a few of his weapons were available, since he felt certain he would soon be needing them.
‘North and south coast tsunamis. Greenport is gone.’
Images now of the harbour there, drained of water to feed an approaching wall of it three hundred metres high. The buildings of Greenport stood against this, but the city raft upended and tumbled, then all disappeared in a maelstrom that travelled many kilometres inland.
‘Casualties?’
‘Thankfully few, since we evacuated the place and most of the residents were either inland or out at sea on the ships.’
‘The north?’
The wave here crashed against rocky coast, clawed up mountain slopes and then receded. Along less mountainous strips of coast it surged inland, but there were few habitations there. Amistad did, however, spot a hooder writhing in white water that swept it out to sea.
‘Rescue ships are on the way, and we’re getting supplies and rescue personnel through the Flint runcible.’
All this was out of Amistad’s remit, really, but what lay ahead remained the drone’s responsibility.
A small island had risen out of the sea, a caldera at its centre shaped like a gibbous moon, cooling magma steaming from a slope extending down from its horns side. Visibility wasn’t great, but enough for Amistad to see something black on the upper part of the slope, where the outpouring had formed a solid crust, something like a sea urchin clinging to its undersea rock.
‘Penny Royal?’ Amistad queried, but with every defence up and read
y for anything that might accompany a reply.
Nothing.
The drone used steering thrusters to slow, but with his gravmotor malfunctioning, came down hard on the lower part of the slope. He stumbled through lava with the consistency of stiff porridge, clambered onto hardening crust, felt that break, clambered further until on secure ground, then stood there shaking each leg in turn to flick away hardening rock.
Up above Penny Royal had changed, spreading out into a triangular mat of spines and gradually flowing up the slope towards the caldera lip. Amistad stalked after the black AI, frantically checking through his supply of weapons. Some missiles could certainly be fired, and his particle cannon had just come back online. Would these be enough? Perhaps it would be better to just keep the AI in sight until reinforcements could be summoned? No. If Penny Royal had reloaded the eighth part of its consciousness it might take some time to incorporate it, so there was a good chance the AI would be vulnerable right now.
‘Penny Royal!’ Amistad called, and scrambled up the slope. Progress was slow with his legs perpetually puncturing the crust of hardening rock.
Ahead, the black AI reached the rim, mounded together then stretched upwards into a tree of thorns. Perhaps good positioning: one missile now and the thing would be inside the caldera. Maybe that’s what it wanted, maybe it still retained enough sanity to know it did not want to be what it had once been?
‘You lied,’ whispered Penny Royal, swinging towards Amis-tad an array of spines unnervingly like icicle eyes.
‘Is that so unusual?’ Amistad replied, now edging round, up to the caldera rim just ten metres away. He took a quick peek over the edge. The magma down there was plenty hot, but it would probably take everything in his armoury to keep Penny Royal in it for long enough.
‘Am angry . . . concerned.’
Uh?
‘Why did you keep it?’
‘Scientific interest.’
The spines abruptly surged closer, extending on necks of plaited tentacle. Did Penny Royal want a physical fight here and some Holmes and Moriarty ending in the fire below? Amistad targeted the rock below where the AI had rooted itself, selected a chemical missile and loaded it.
‘Interest is finished,’ said Penny Royal.
The black AI shifted, spines rippling, slid to one side to reveal what it had been squatting over. There lay the armoured sphere that contained Eight, unopened.
Like some child’s model of a hand, four spines folded out on corded tentacle, swung to one side, paused for a moment, then swung back, slapping into the sphere. It tumbled over the edge, bounced on the slope below then splashed into boiling magma. It wouldn’t be destroyed, not yet; it would take ages for the heat to do any damage. Amistad shifted right to the edge, almost went over, rocks dislodged and tumbling down, but then scrabbled back. What did he really want that thing for? Was he keeping it because of his attraction to madness – a prime sample for some collection? A missile spat down, hit with a sharp detonation like some massive fuse blowing. The side of the sphere peeled open on arc fire and it turned over, began to sink.
For a moment Amistad thought he had fired the missile himself, but no, Penny Royal had just killed part of itself.
‘We have things to do,’ said the AI.
‘Quite,’ Amistad agreed. ‘Quite right.’
The analgesic cream Sanders had provided was working now, and his face no longer felt like someone had taken a bead blaster to it. However, he did feel as if something had scooped out a huge part of his mind and left an aching blankness inside, which was essentially what had happened.
The Weaver’s memories were no longer available to him, just memories of memories which, as time passed, grew increasingly strange to him. Yet it wasn’t the deep stuff he found himself becoming disconnected from, not the attitude, the wisdom, the inner thoughts, but all those memories of the Atheter’s direct interaction with the world around it, which in the end were the larger portion of its mind.
‘Is there a problem?’ Sanders asked.
The gravan had begun making a horrible rattling sound the moment they took off, and had got worse ever since.
‘No problem,’ Grant replied from the controls. He reached out and tapped something on the computer screen before him. ‘Just damage to the bodywork – I’m getting a safety warning but only because bits might fall off and hit someone.’
Jem eased himself to his feet and moved forward to stand behind the two of them, only realizing why he had moved when he saw the barrier lying ahead.
‘Ripple-John’s sons might still be alive,’ he said.
Grant glanced up at him. ‘And?’
Jem could find no answer to that. He had changed, but those who had tried to kill him would not have changed at all. There would be no truce with them, no meeting of minds or any peaceful resolution of their differences.
‘And nothing, I guess,’ Jem replied.
They slid over the barrier and, because all the flute grasses in the area had been flattened by the recent blasts, the remains of Ripple-John’s ATV were clearly visible. It lay on its side, but had been partially dismembered, many of its component parts stacked in a neat pile. Between the vehicle and this stack of parts squatted the enormous gabbleduck Jem had seen out here earlier.
‘What’s it doing?’
‘We can take a look,’ Grant suggested, ‘but I don’t want to get too close.’
The gabbleduck tilted its head and watched them descend. Grant brought the gravan down a good twenty metres away from the creature, which would give him time to take off again if it decided to take too close an interest in the vehicle. The creature peered at them for a further moment, then returned to the task in hand. It seemed it had dismembered the ATV so as to strip out all the optics and the superconductive wiring, which lay in neat coils on the ground before it. However, it had evidently lost interest in them upon unearthing the electric engine. Presently the armature of the motor lay on the ground beside it, the wire from it steadily being unravelled as it wove the wire into something.
‘I’ve never seen them do that before,’ said Sanders.
‘They never have,’ said Grant.
‘Something we will have to get used to,’ said Jem.
They both turned and looked at him questioningly.
‘Jeremiah, what do you mean?’ Sanders asked.
What did he mean? Just because one Atheter had resurrected itself in the body of a gabbleduck did not mean that all gabbleducks would cease to be animals, did it? He riffled through those memories of memories. The Atheter had possessed their equivalent to Human augmentations, but had gone further, incorporating them into their bodies. They shared information via those organic transceivers in their skulls, processed information in other organs, absorbed it almost unconsciously. Inside their skulls they possessed permanent links to the Atheter virtual world, and that ability had not been erased by the mechanism, in fact the Atheter themselves hadn’t seen this ability as something separate from their evolved form, nor as something to be disrupted, erased.
‘Gabbleducks speak nonsense,’ he said, ‘but why do they use our words to speak it?’
Grant and Sanders continued gazing at him, now puzzled. They couldn’t see it and, at that moment, Jem realized that no one had seen it before.
‘A gabbleduck found far out in the wilderness, one never having come into contact with humans throughout its life, will speak our words.’
‘That’s . . . true,’ said Sanders.
He realized by her expression that she had begun to understand.
‘They’re like Humans in an aug network, but with the augs an organic part of their brains,’ Jem explained. ‘For two million years that network consisted of nothing but the minds of animals, then Humans arrived. Who knows what radio or microwave channels open into the mind of a gabbleduck? But certainly all of Masada became swamped with signals when we arrived here. They probably listened to us speaking the moment the first Human radio transmitter was used on thi
s world.’
Grant nodded acceptance of that, then pointed at the big gabbleduck. ‘But that?’
‘Now there’s a real Atheter mind in the network either consciously or unconsciously broadcasting stuff for which the receivers were made. I would guess that what we’re seeing with our friend out there is being repeated all across the continent.’
The gabbleduck abruptly put aside the thing it was working on, and began to heave itself to its feet, seemingly gazing towards them with predatory intensity. But it was not them who had drawn its attention, but Blitz, who now slammed open the side door of the gravan and stepped inside, pointing his father’s flack gun straight into the cockpit.
Time slowed for Jem. In the background he could see the gabbleduck, now on all fours, hurtling massively towards them, kicking up great clogs of rhizome-bound earth, whilst close too, Grant was slipping a hand down towards his holstered disc gun. Outside, Sharn was dragging himself to the door, his clothing soaked with blood and his legs dead behind him. Obviously, along with Ripple-John, it was the brother Kalash who had died.
Jem moved.
He crossed the intervening space in a second, aware throughout every fraction of that second of Blitz’s finger tightening on the trigger. He slapped at the barrel of the weapon, the shot slammed a hole through the side of the gravan, pieces of metal ricocheted. He then forced the barrel up, chopped down with his other hand, breaking Blitz’s hold, drove his elbow back into the man’s sternum and shoved him away, stumbling and falling. Still moving, Jem stooped through the door, slapped away the weapon Sharn had just drawn, caught his collar and dragged him inside.
‘Get us out of here, now!’ he snapped, turning.
By now Grant had drawn his disc gun, but just stared, his mouth hanging open.
‘Now, I said,’ Jem added.
Grant dropped his weapon in his lap, took the gravan up off the ground. ‘Move fast,’ he said, it not entirely clear who or what he was referring to.
