by Neal Asher
‘Understood,’ Cheanil replied, but now found herself talking to a blank screen.
McCrooger
I waited with a degree of trepidation, but that didn’t last, and soon all the effort of the last few days came down on me and I closed my eyes. Some hours later the sound of the airlock opening jerked me out of a deep sleep, as Rhodane entered.
‘How did it go?’ I asked.
She shrugged. ‘They asked the questions and you replied.’
‘But what is their response to my replies?’
‘It will take some time for it all to be processed by Consensus, but there are no quofarl standing guard outside, so it seems you are not considered a threat.’
‘I see.’ I sat upright, trying to clear my mind. ‘You told me earlier there is something I should see?’
‘Yes, there is.’
‘Then perhaps I should see it now, before any quofarl do come to guard me.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed, with some reluctance, I thought.
She led the way back out into the Brumallian city, turning to the right along the main corridor, then into a side corridor terminating against another spiral stair. Here I noticed the stone was coated with a fine lattice of something like lichen, and saw how the stair was eerily lit by those insectile biolights. Climbing ahead of me, Rhodane began to speak.
‘When depression controls the mind, its power increases when the mind remains inactive. It is like a computer virus spreading to occupy unused processing space. You can fight it by keeping busy. There are other ways to fight it: exercising releases endorphins to counter it, or manufactured drugs can be used. Those who suffer learn many such techniques to defeat it, or they go under.’
I could not see her face but understood she was using some rather oblique analogy about her own condition, about what she was. I told her, ‘In the Polity, few suffer from depression, having had the original genetic fault corrected. Whenever it stems from a later physical or mental problem, microsurgery and nanoscopic techniques can be used to correct it.’
I don’t know how high we had climbed by then, but I noticed now a lack of any corridors branching off from this stair, and also a lack of pherophones on the walls.
‘So it is always organic?’ she asked.
‘Usually, yes, though otherwise reprogramming and memory adjustment can be used.’
She halted for a moment. ‘We don’t have the benefit of such technologies.’
The stair finally ended under a cramped dome, where we entered a long cold tunnel running through damp clay that was braced with numerous beams and with sheets of mesh.
‘We’re not talking about depression, here, are we?’ I asked as we strode along.
Ignoring my question she continued, ‘I suffered from the black pit all my life. Whenever I slowed down, relaxed or stopped, the pit opened and I began my descent. It was related to and part of my other condition, and is an affliction from which neither Yishna nor Harald suffer. It drove me. Orduval was likewise driven and suffered a similar malady, though his problem lay in some other part of his psyche. In his case he just kept overloading and crashing like a computer asked to do too much.’
‘It drove you to what?’
‘Carnage,’ she replied succinctly.
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know . . . or I am unable to let myself know.’
The tunnel terminated at a single exit door, which was secured by a pherophone and keypad lock. Rhodane stooped for a moment before the pherophone, before inputting some code into the keypad. She then spun a wheel positioned centrally on the door, to admit us to a warmer place, but with air just as lethal to normal humans as that left behind us.
We stepped out on a balcony overlooking an immense dark hall. How far it extended I could not say, since before me the curved surface of some giant object rose to the ceiling, its skin hexagon-patterned over shifting veins, and scaffolds laced all over it. I could, however, see that another of its kind lay beyond it, and more beyond that, until the curve of the side wall concealed all further on. I realized we were just below the planet’s surface now, for ceiling panels admitted a glimpse of night sky. ‘Let’s go down.’ She pointed to a nearby stair of prosaic metal, bolted to stone.
‘What is this?’
‘When I came here I knew only how to sign-speak. They did not allow me down into one of their cities until I could understand their vocal language as well. Their language underlies everything that they are – how their minds develop, and how their society has developed. I didn’t realize until recently how language underlies everything that I am.’
‘As with us all,’ I replied. ‘How we describe our world informs our perception of it – but I again sense you are hedging around the point.’
She ignored that, continuing with, ‘Have you read Uskaron’s book?’
‘I have.’
‘I did not really need to read it, because I felt immediately sympathetic to the Brumallians and came to value them more than my own people. What the hilldiggers did to this place angered me, that hideous loss of life angered me. I wanted vengeance.’ She turned and looked at me. ‘But as you must realize, David McCrooger, what I want is not necessarily what I want.’
We had by now reached the floor. I gazed at dormant biomechanisms clustered like huge iridescent beetles about the base of the nearest of the huge objects, all of which I now saw bore a teardrop shape. The pumps sounded louder here and I could feel their titanic vibration through the floor. Reams of peristaltic pipes entered the base of each object – forcing in nutrients and evacuating waste. To one side, on a large trailer, rested a mechanism consisting both of some biofactured and some plainly manufactured components. It took me only a moment to realize this was a fusion engine, though one of esoteric design. I began to understand what this place was, and wondered what my chances were of getting out alive if we were discovered here.
‘When I originally found this, they had no interest in it at all,’ Rhodane told me. She smiled and gestured for us to move on down the lengthy hall. We walked in silence for a while, finally coming athwart a side cavern in which squatted something I could only assume to be some kind of cannon.
‘They abandoned this place after the hilldiggers struck. When I asked about the weapons they used during the War, a Speaker directed me here. No attempt was made at concealment, and clearly no Brumallians had come here in a long while. I knew that to get things running again, to be able to right the terrible wrong done to the Brumallians, I needed them to feel the same way as I did and for that I needed to become more like them.’
‘They had sufficient expertise left to physically change you?’
‘I found it in their records, but it took me some time to create the recombinant viruses. They watched my work with some interest, and sometimes they even helped.’
I looked at her and tapped a finger either side of my face where the fibrous patches were positioned on hers. ‘Those are for the pheromones?’
‘To emit them, yes. My sense of smell increased till I could read them just like any other Brumallian.’
I studied the weapon and the other things surrounding me. The teardrop objects were evidently biofactured spaceships – warships – and though there seemed little activity here now, there had definitely been much recent activity.
‘You persuaded them,’ I suggested.
‘I became part of the Consensus, but a rogue part. I could influence it and yet not be influenced myself, or so I thought. I stated my opinions again and again. At first nothing much happened, then slowly one or two of them came to help me. After a year I had a thousand Brumallians working here, and the meme I had sown began to spread.’
I guessed what was coming next. ‘But the language?’
‘Yes . . . filling up my mind with its intricacies. Communication itself slowly becoming more important than what I was communicating. The Brumallians began to trickle away, lose interest, and their lack of interest began to affect me. Perhaps by changing myself I h
ave overwritten basic codes implanted into my original DNA at the moment of my conception. One day I just walked out of this place and knew I was free.’
As I studied her for a long moment, the spectre of the war she had tried to resurrect seemed to crouch in the shadows here. I shivered, now knowing the frightening efficacy of Rhodane, and by extension that of Yishna and Harald.
I asked, ‘Will you eventually grow mandibles?’
She did not reply, because just then came the racket of heavy feet descending on the stair far behind us. I glanced back to see many quofarl and other Brumallians charging down, armed, and looking none too happy.
– RETROACT 14 –
Orduval – in the Desert
He counted thirty-two fits occurring since his first meeting with Tigger, each much weaker than the preceding one, the most recent causing a mere thirty-second stutter in his life. With the anticonvulsives no longer impeding him he felt healthier and much more alert than at any time since he had walked into the Ruberne Institute as a child. Sometimes he questioned his choice of remaining out here in the Komarl, but never for long. The information Tigger imparted to him each time it came here kept him hanging on eagerly for the drone’s next visit. He also realized that a large proportion of his life had been a kind of aversion therapy and that, illogically, he felt a return to civilization somehow related to a return to his previous mental and physical state. He stayed. And he loved the desert.
On his twentieth day he found a metallic sphere resting in the clearing outside the cave. Recognizing it as being fashioned of the same metal as Tigger, he felt no fear as he stepped out to inspect it. However, he did jump when it addressed him.
‘Let me introduce you to my other half,’ said Tigger’s voice.
Orduval stared at the sphere and considered for a moment, quickly working out what the drone meant. It then occurred to him that this fast grasp of meaning was a complete conversation killer, so decided to ask the obvious question: ‘What do you mean “your other half”?’
‘I reckon you understand perfectly, Orduval, but I’ll tell you anyway,’ Tigger replied. ‘Being a manufactured entity, it’s not necessary for me to have a discrete body. I consist of two parts: the tiger part which I use for planetary environments and to chat with the likes of you, and this sphere which, on the whole, I use extraplanetary. It’s the larger part of me, in that it contains the most memory and other resources – tools and the like.’
‘Weapons?’ Orduval suggested.
‘Those too. They’re only a kind of tool.’
‘So why have you brought your other half here?’
‘To use the more prosaic tools,’ Tigger replied. ‘Your accommodation here is merely one-star and I intend to correct that. Why don’t you pack some supplies and take a walk for the rest of the day? I’ve got work to do here.’
Orduval returned to the cave, filled a backpack with a water container, some food and a small console – which also contained a direction finder – and then did as suggested. Under the pounding sun he chose the desert outpost as his vague destination, but did not expect to reach it. As he tramped across boiling sand, he considered all Tigger had told him about the Polity; he similarly considered his own world, and compared philosophies. At one point he sat on the ridge of a dune and gazed across the shimmering sea of sand before him. Those dunes, stacked up by the wind and driven across the landscape, were like waves, maybe ripples on a pool? Each wave of colonization from the Sol system was just like such a ripple, the cast stone that formed them being human sentience centred on Earth. He made some notes in the console about this, and considered other analogies: humans like grains of sand; swirl patterns of dust storms compared to the turmoil of newly forming societies. It was a game, a game of analogy, and one he knew had been played many times before.
Surprisingly, he reached the outpost station before the morning was done and before consuming even half of his water. By this feat he realized just how unfit he had been when first setting out from this place. After wandering around the dusty buildings, he went to gaze at the maglev road – his link back to civilization – and watched one train shoot past raising a dust cloud, before turning to head back towards what had begun to feel like home to him.
Only now he could not find it.
Climbing the mount to reach the place where he first saw Tigger, Orduval found no cave entrance behind the familiar clearing. For a moment he thought the drone had sealed up the cave with the intent of driving him out into the desert to die, but quickly rejected the idea.
‘Tigger,’ he called.
A stone door hinged silently open and the drone sphere floated out.
‘I think you’ll like it once I’m done.’
When Orduval entered the cave he wondered at the power and efficiency of the tools the drone employed. It had carved out branching rooms, with no sign of the stone debris removed, had smoothed walls and cut shelves, levelled the floor and installed lights. Everywhere protruded wiring and pipework, ready to be connected to familiar domestic appliances.
‘Where will the power and water come from?’ Orduval asked, as he inspected his newly fashioned abode.
‘I have drilled down to ground water, and behind the rear wall I have installed a small fusion reactor – enough for your needs.’
Over the ensuing months the drone brought in appliances, furniture, carpets, installed sanitary facilities, filled a food store and cooler. When it brought him a desk and a chair, Orduval sat down, opened his console and typed The Desert of the Mind: A History, and appended his own name to it. After a moment of consideration he deleted his name. Then, remembering stories of one of the early colonists, he appended the pseudonym Uskaron and began to write.
– Retroact 14 Ends –
Harald
Harald felt the vibration of the Ironfist’s drive through his chair. It was not leaving orbit, merely repositioning to deliver Fleet’s violent reply to the attack on Inigis’s ship. Right now Fleet surface installations were being abandoned, and communications with the Brumallians being cut. Harald smiled coldly and returned his attention to the Lieutenant seated opposite him.
‘A detailed and extensive report,’ he pronounced, then closed off the segment of eye-screen that had displayed it. ‘Now you must give me your conclusions.’
‘With respect, Tacom, it is not within my remit to come to conclusions,’ Lieutenant Alun replied.
Harald grimaced. ‘And those who stick too diligently to their remit are doomed to languish in the same rank in Fleet until they retire. Let me put it another way, I would be most interested in hearing your opinion on this matter.’
‘Which I should append to this report?’
‘If you so wish.’
Alun stabbed a finger down onto the deck between them. ‘The launcher was of wartime Brumallian construction; the dead were certainly Brumallians, and those available satellite pictures of the action seem to indicate they did fire the missile that struck Inigis’s ship. This being so, to have remained undetected the launcher must have come up through BC32 – the small underground city they call Vertical Vienna – which lies only twenty miles away.’
‘But?’ suggested Harald.
‘Some believe this was a preliminary strike preparatory to full conflict. I cannot see how this could be true, since we know they hardly possess the ability now to even get into space, and there has been no follow-up aggression from them. Had the attackers been Sudorians, we could have supposed them to be renegades, but Brumallian society acts in consensus, so there are no renegades there. I can only suppose that they felt the Consul Assessor himself to be a threat or . . . this was not an attack by the Brumallians.’
Harald leant back. ‘Interesting theory. Who then?’
Alun kept his voice bland as he explained, ‘There are elements here in Fleet who considered the Consul Assessor much more of a threat than the Brumallians.’
‘That is a very serious accusation.’
‘Opinion merely,’ insi
sted Alun.
‘Which you will append to the report?’
‘I shall append an opinion,’ said Alun carefully. ‘It seems to me that elements as yet unidentified intended this action to be blamed on Fleet – suggesting that we used some Special Operations team to set it up, in our usual warmongering manner. The implicit sophistication of the action leads me to suppose that some powerful organization has used one of its own Special Operations teams – meaning a Sudorian organization . . . perhaps one even as powerful as Orbital Combine?’
Harald studied Alun. ‘I think you can neglect to mention Fleet Special Operations teams, but I would agree with the theory that some Sudorian organization plotted with the Brumallians of BC32 on this. Evidence has since become available indicating a schism in Brumallian society, centring on that city, and that Sudorian agents of the aforementioned organization are active there.’
‘Evidence?’
‘Oh yes, plenty of incontrovertible evidence.’
Alun just stared at him for a long moment, then shrugged.
Harald continued, ‘Both parties would benefit from smearing Fleet and thereby reducing its power. The Brumallians would benefit from our reduced vigilance, and others would be able to seize some of our prerogatives in controlling the defence of Sudoria.’
‘Yes, that seems reasonable,’ said the Lieutenant.
‘Thank you, Alun. I look forward to the additions you will make to your report, and will watch with interest your advancing career.’ Harald gestured to the door.
Alun stood up, saluted with his closed fist over his side arm, and moved to depart. However, he halted at the door and turned back. ‘May I ask a very direct question, Commander?’
‘You may. I think you have earned the right.’
‘It was one of our teams down there, wasn’t it?’
Harald smiled. ‘I don’t think Orbital Combine or any other organization possess the professionalism – so of course it was our men.’
