by Neal Asher
"I give you my permission to load them." He paused. "But for the last one—you can load that only when I do."
"Thank you," said the ship AI, then, "Done."
Cormac was only momentarily surprised; of course an AI could encompass those memories in a moment, it was a reminder of the difference between himself and the intelligences that ran the Polity, between himself and the likes of Crean too.
"I note that each chapter also has attachments and you have only been loading the chapters themselves," Sadist added.
"Attachments?"
"They are incompatible with your mind, apparently." Sadist paused. "They are cleaning-up exercises. It seems apparent to me that your mother at first did not think your initial encounter with the drone, out in Montana, of any significance, though she did think your more traumatic encounter with it outside your school should be edited out at once. After seeing Dax's problem with not fully editing his mind, she then decided to remove that earlier encounter from your mind as well."
"Cleaning-up exercises?" Cormac asked, though he had some intimation of what the ship AI was talking about.
"All those times you thought deeply about that encounter with the drone out in Montana, all those times you talked about it to others. Other less formative occasions were not removed, but the human mind tends to self-edit those memories that do not match up with the life's narrative."
Now that was a statement that would require some thought, and he wondered just how much that lay between his ears truly reflected reality even had it not been deliberately tampered with. But his head was aching, he again felt nauseous, and what had once been shock at the loss of his friends was turning to a deep sadness. Was it grief? he wondered. He did not know if it was, for «grief» was such a vague term. Did it require howling tears from him, irrational behaviour? He didn't know. But certainly he did know the feeling of betrayal.
"As you saw, she drugged me," he said.
"It seems extreme to have done so, just as it seems extreme to edit the mind of a child to prevent him knowing about the death of his father, but it was not so uncommon," said Sadist. "During the war, when pain was a frequent companion of many, many took the easy route of excising it from their minds."
Cormac sat upright, tightly clutching the sick bag. This time there seemed to be no visual effects, and despite the sudden surge in his nausea he did not vomit, but maybe that was because he had deliberately forgone eating anything for a day before doing this.
"But was it right?" he wondered.
"In itself there is nothing uplifting or virtuous about suffering," Sadist stated. "Whether it makes its recipient a better person often depends upon whether that person has the ability to change that way. There were those during the war who were turned into monsters by it."
"Do you think she did the right thing?"
"No, I cannot see how the death of a father you had not seen since you were five years old would be so damaging. Rather, I think she was transferring her own grief onto you. I also think that there is more involved here than mere death."
"What do you mean?"
"Her last statements to you, before you blacked out, seem to indicate this," said the AI. "If forced to guess, without seeing the last chapter of these mem-loads, I would say there is something about the manner of your father's death that is being concealed."
Cormac swung his legs off the surgical table and stood. He seemed to have gained some control over his insides and so discarded the sick bag before leaving the room. He would have liked to have taken on the next mem-load, but knew Sadist would not allow it. Walking slowly he returned to his cabin, lay down on his bunk.
The attack ship had left the orbit of that ruined world over twenty hours ago now, and struggling to mesh with the ship server he discovered that they were in transit through U-space, though where to, he had no idea. Doubtless, information would become available.
Cormac abruptly glanced towards his cabin door, feeling the oddest sensation that Gorman had just stepped inside to chivvy him out of bed. No one there. Phantom presences of the dead—a sign of grief. Cormac could feel something leaden in his chest and tight in his throat. He felt on the edge of tears yet, as had occurred two or three times before, they just did not surface and ebbed into a cold and distant sorrow. His headache was definitely fading now and he wondered if his mind was becoming accustomed to the mem-loading process. He sat upright.
"I've been mooning around in this ship so wrapped up in my own concerns," he said abruptly. "How is Crean now?"
"Crean has ceased to communicate," Sadist replied. "As is her right."
"Where are we going now?"
"I am to deliver you both to the nearest Polity world, where you are to rest and recuperate for a period not less that three months, after which you will be reassigned."
"What?"
"Was that not sufficiently clear for you?"
"What about Carl Thrace?"
"Did you think ECS would allow you, a new recruit to the Sparkind who has just lost most of his unit, and a Golem that looks likely to self-destruct, to continue the pursuit of this criminal?"
"I… don't know."
Sadist continued, "For you, the trail after Carl Thrace ended with that explosion. It is possible he is still hiding on that world but, if so, it would take a massive search to find him—one that ECS AIs consider a waste of resources. It is more likely he boarded one of the seven ships departing that world during the time between his and our arrival there."
"Do we… does ECS know the destinations of those ships?"
"It is understood, from information obtained by Adsel, that two of the ships are heading for unknown destinations within the Graveyard and five are heading to a selection of three Polity worlds. Carl could be on any one of them, and there is no guarantee that their intended destinations are their actual ones. ECS personnel are watching for those ships, and for Carl. Your involvement in this is now at an end."
Cormac felt a sudden obstinate anger at this decision, despite the fact that it was perfectly logical.
"I am presuming," he said, "that the nearest Polity world might also be one of the three that Carl is heading for?"
"The likelihood that Carl has not headed off into the Graveyard is considered low. The likelihood of you encountering him on one of those three worlds, each of which is moderately to heavily populated, is nanoscopic. Also, Cormac, if it came to the attention of ECS that you were making personal enquiries about this, you would be disobeying a direct order to rest and recuperate, and so apprehended and sent out of this sector. This is now out of your hands."
"So what are the names of these three worlds?"
After a long pause his room screen blinked on to show three planets, with their names printed below them. One world was called Tanith, which he knew: a terraformed place of damp moors, dark forests and ersatz gothic castles. It was a tourist place for those with an inclination for such things. The one called Borandel he had never heard of, though wondered if he should have, it being so close to the border with the Prador Kingdom. But it was the last world that riveted his attention: it was called Patience.
He whispered the name to himself, then aug-linked to the room screen to take control of this access to information about that world. First to come up was news on current events there, which he quickly scanned through. Areas denuded of life during the war were recovering well and other areas rendered highly radioactive by bombardment, or unsafe because of the possible existence of human-specific engineered viruses, had been declared safe after many years of decontamination. The building of a massive city, upon mile-high stilts, was nearing completion in the Cavander mountains located in Hessick County, which eventually terminated in the Olston Peninsular; such a project apparently being an assertive declaration of the new optimism on this world, as was the arrival of the supposedly famous Thander Weapons Exhibition—something he had heard of before. But they needed to be forward looking and optimistic here, they needed to put behind them the memori
es of bitter battles fought against the Prador. Battles like the Hessick Campaign, in which Cormac's father had died.
"Crean wants to see you," Sadist unexpectedly announced.
Cormac continued staring at the screen, the skin on his back crawling. Of course he had known this world lay out this way, and of course he knew that odd and mysterious coincidences were an inevitability when billions of humans occupied so many worlds, but seeing this was creepy.
"What does she want?" he asked, perhaps rather too abruptly.
"She has come to a decision," Sadist replied, "and wants to acquaint you with it."
With a thought, Cormac shut off the screen, then sat staring at the blank surface for a long moment. He recalled now where he had heard of the Thander Weapons Exhibition. It was during his basic training, from Carl Thrace. Cormac stood and headed for the door. For now he would keep that particular bit of information to himself, though it was essential he get Crean to agree that they should head for the world called Patience.
Shortly he had reached the door to Crean's cabin, rapped his knuckles against it and waited. After a moment the lock in the frame clunked, and he pushed the door open.
Crean sat on her bed, utterly motionless. She was clad in a white disposable ship-suit, and with syntheskin and synthetic hair replaced, her appearance was much improved. Last time he had seen her she had been sitting in precisely the same position, but still skeletal and charred from the CTD blast, still minus one arm. Glancing round he noted burned remnants still strewn on the floor and over the bed sheets. Why she possessed a cabin and a bed was a mystery to Cormac, since she required no human comforts or even essentials like food or sleep. He guessed it was all about emulation—everything was with Golem. However, he did notice that her ship-suit hung loose and baggy and that her hands, though clear of burnt matter, were still bare of syntheflesh. The bones of her hands gleamed in her lap like steel spiders.
"How are you?" Cormac asked, irritated by the politenesses. Why should Golem have any problems related to flesh they could replace and minds they could reformat like the drives on primitive computers? Why was he playing the emulation game with her?
She looked up, and once again seeing her face reminded him how he had very much reacted to her on a human level. Remembering their erotic encounters here and in his own cabin irritated him too, for after recent tragic events, that now all seemed a childish game.
"I am what I am," she said, "and to be better, to be recovered, it would be necessary for me to cease to be what I am."
"I don't understand."
"Of course you don't," she said. "You still think that Golem are something less than human. You still view Golem as mere machines. You still retain a primitive archaic belief that the mind produced in flesh is something more. It's almost like a religious belief in souls. You cannot seem to accept that we are as complex as you, if not more so. Nor can you accept that you are merely a machine made out of different materials."
He wanted to argue, but she had nailed it. He did feel that way, no matter how foolish it might seem. It was all about emulation, he guessed. What use is emotion if it is something you could turn on and off? What is the use of ersatz humanity when it is something you can dispense with? It is a falsity. Yet, in humans, it had become possible to edit the mind and as a corollary, the emotions. Even now it was becoming possible to turn on and off the emotions in creatures of flesh; and soon memcording of all the data in that lump of flesh enclosing bone would be refined enough for humans, if they so choose, to become something else.
He shrugged, embarrassed. "I will learn."
Crean gazed at him for a long moment, said, "Perhaps I can help you." Then she smiled, closed her eyes and bowed forwards, once again freezing into immobility.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
No response.
"Crean?"
"She will not reply," Sadist informed him.
"What?"
"Crean has chosen to erase herself rather than reformat herself to a condition in which she could bear to be without her companions."
Cormac found himself backing towards the door. "What?"
"She has suicided."
He stumbled out into the corridor, the nausea earlier generated by the mem-load, returning in spades. Going down on his knees he vomited, then rested his head against the wall and wished he could cry. But something in him wouldn't permit that, and he wondered if those early edits of his mind had damaged it. He remained in the same position for some time, then slowly eased himself to his feet as a beetlebot peaked out of its home low in the wall.
"Do you want me to move her?" Cormac asked the AI.
"I will send one of my telefactors to deal with her," Sadist replied.
Cormac gazed down at the beetlebot as it hoovered up the thin bile he had spewed, erasing it to leave clean carpet behind. Wipe these things out, clear the slate, leave it clean and ready to be written on again. He understood his mother now, but refused to choose her course.
It was different this time. He felt no sense of being a child and, though he recognised his surroundings as his mother's home, the place had been redecorated and modernized. He walked into the living room and sprawled in one of the armchairs, just like Dax used to do, and even reached over to take up the conveniently placed bottle of whisky and glass, and pour himself a drink. When his mother walked in, she studied him for a moment before seating herself in the sofa adjacent, her legs crossed and her fingers interlaced over one knee.
"I don't know how you commenced loading your edited-out memories back into your mind, Cormac," she began, "but it is certain that the mem-file I provided was broken into three chapters, since there is not yet the means to load a file of that size without causing brain damage."
Cormac sipped the whisky, and found it fiery and good, yet he had only tried whisky once before and found he disliked its medicinal taste, and the way it ate into his self-control.
"You are therefore," Hannah continued, "on to the third and final chapter after having discovered some things about your past."
Cormac wanted to reply, but though he placed the glass down on the table beside him and returned his hand to the chair arm, he possessed no control over his movements. His present mind was here, and aware, but he could no more change what played out here than he could have while experiencing his childhood memories.
"You have discovered that I edited your mind twice… only twice." Hannah frowned. "The first time was when that drone tried to speak to you while you walked home from school. The second time was when I realised how unstable so limited an editing could be and had our encounter with the drone in Montana edited out in Tritonia."
So, Sadist had been exactly right about that.
"I have to say that on the second occasion I thought Amistad had told you everything, but the AI who conducted the editing process informed me otherwise."
Everything? Cormac wondered. What else was there to know?
"The drone of course told you enough for you to infer that David—your father—was dead, apparently." She now paused, a strange unreadable twist to her expression, which she concealed by looking down at her hands. "Amistad did not really understand much about human affairs and human emotion, but perhaps he did understand that what I was doing was wrong. It remained my choice, however, and Amistad had no right to go against my wishes in this matter."
Why did you do it, Mother? Was it because you controlled so much in your life and his death lay out of your control? Was it the past you really wanted to edit?
"However, your father's death was by no means the whole story. It was only when Amistad tried again to get to you while we were in Tritonia that I managed to confront him and persuade him to leave you alone, though only with the direct intervention of the AI running Tritonia and the near shores of Callais." She looked up. "There is much more you need to know about what happened to your father, but you were never told, so that story is not contained in these pieces excised from your memory. You deserve to
know, I guess, and if you are anything like David I imagine you will not rest until you do know. But I am not going to tell you. I'm sorry, but I feel another has earned that right."
Again a long pause, while she stared directly at him. How, he wondered, had this mem-load been put together? Had she sat someone down before her and told him this story, then had it edited out of that other one's mind to be sent to him? Was the person who had sat here Dax?
"You are out in a particular area of space I have not wanted to visit, ever since the end of the war. I don't believe in fate, destiny or any of that rubbish, but the workings of coincidence can sometimes be frightening. Amistad has been lurking out that way for many years, for reasons I… know. He learned of your presence out there and, I understand, managed to intervene in some small way during a military operation you were involved in? Whatever…"
Cormac felt a momentary huge amusement: it seemed the drone had at last learned to be diplomatic and had not gone into detail about that particular operation. But why had it contacted his mother?
"You told me you discovered that your mind had been edited when you were fitted for an aug, but I have to wonder if the drone's presence is really what set you to wondering… and perhaps checking." She shook her head, and he noticed that her eyes were glistening with tears.
"Cormac, you are near the world called Patience, where the Hessick Campaign was fought and where your father… died. Amistad never managed to tell you the truth, so I will let him do so. He wants to tell you the truth there, on that world. I am sure, given the circumstances, you can ask for a leave of absence… Attached to this mem-load is a net address via which the drone can be contacted. Just call for Amistad, and he will find you on Patience… And please forgive me."
