The Medusa Chronicles

by Stephen Baxter

  And then Kon-Tiki was level with the plasma surface, and passing through, and the lasers held their fire.

  He looked up, peering beyond the curve of the balloon, and watched as the plasma square snapped back into existence. A door had opened. He had come through. Now it had slammed shut behind him.

  And still he fell.

  * * * *

  Three hundred and twenty-five kilometres. Three hundred and fifty. Gradually the milky surface faded away, too far above him for detection. Cracks, pops and groans came from around the gondola as it adjusted to the strain, like the uneasy dreaming of a large animal. One or two of the craft’s more fragile instruments gave up the ghost.

  But still he fell.

  Four hundred kilometres. Now he was approaching the thermalisation layer, with a temperature at which no organic material could survive—and a pressure equivalent to the deepest of Earth’s oceans—yet he had not travelled even one percent into Jupiter’s interior.

  The radar was working reliably again now. And it told him that, below, there were more solid objects coming up, bigger than the spindles and, so it seemed, rather fewer in number. The nearest was about two hundred kilometres to port. He studied the composite overlay, tracing a dark floating form the size of a small mountain, shaped like a highly cut gem with a tapering point aimed back at the sky.

  It was like no weapon that Falcon had ever seen before, and he could only guess at its functional principles. But it was clearly a weapon—he did not need to understand how a gun worked to recognise one. That floating engine was surely a cannon, its barrel focused in the only possible direction from which an aggressor might approach. And there were many other such weapons, stretching to the limits of his sensors. Like the scattering surface, did the guns spread all the way around Jupiter . . . ?

  How was it even possible to make so much stuff, down in this super-compressed hydrogen ocean?

  At about four hundred and fifty kilometres down he passed, without harm, through the layer of weaponry—and then descended through more layers, at four hundred and sixty metres, four hundred and seventy. More floating guns, stacked at different depths, but all aimed out at space. No human attack or invasion could have overcome those mighty defences, Falcon decided.

  But they would be no use when Io fell.

  Five hundred kilometres, four thousand atmospheres—deeper than he could ever have gone in the original gondola. He descended at last through the weapon garden, and into empty hydrogen-helium air.

  And now his sensors picked up something new again. Emerging below him was a landscape of solid, geometric surfaces, stretching out in all directions. As his sensors gathered more data, Falcon studied a veritable cityscape of blocks and plazas, of planar forms and rectangular masses, the structures mathematically angular, their surfaces laser-smooth. Orpheus had seen quasi-solid clouds near these depths—probably the objects that had once been mistakenly interpreted as a solid surface of Jupiter—but this could not be the same phenomenon, or not just that. Falcon was seeing something artificial. A city, mostly a dark and windowless city, as befitted these bleak fathoms. But there were glowing red lines around the bases of the rectangular forms, and similar glowing traceries branching between them.

  The scale of it made him shudder. None of those rectangular forms were less than dozens of kilometres across, and the plane in which they were constructed—interrupted as it was by shafts and canyons—stretched away for tens of thousands of kilometres, with barely a hint of curvature. Neither the spindles nor the guns had prepared him for such effortless, daunting immensity. It had been one thing to conjecture that the spindles might encompass the planet, a comparatively simple, ­repetitive ­arrangement—but this?

  Now a blocky form detached itself from one of the larger rectangles. It was rising to meet him—a solid object with the proportions of two cubes jammed side by side. It was the tiniest thing in Falcon’s field of view, but was still hundreds of times larger than Kon-Tiki and its balloon.

  The object floated up to his level. Falcon was still descending, but a few bursts from the asymptotic drive soon slowed him to a hover.

  The black mass slid next to him. Though it was dwarfed by the greater structures of the city, this was a mirror-perfect cliff that soared above and plunged below, mocking Falcon’s flimsy little craft and its even flimsier occupant. Outside, it was hot enough to melt lead, and the hydrogen-­helium atmosphere was now under so much pressure that it was behaving more like a fluid than a gas. And yet this skyscraper-sized block just floated, impervious, disdainful, daring him to question its total superiority of form and function. Unlike the buildings below, it gave off no red glow along its base or edges. Without his instruments’ sensory overlay, he would have been quite unable to see it. He could have been drifting down that sheer flank, oblivious . . .

  The rectangular surface began to deform. Something was pushing out from the smoothness, a series of stepped contours made from the same black material as the rest of the structure. The contours gathered into an oval, and the oval gained a nose, a mouth, a pair of sightless black eyes. It was a monstrous face, like a black mask pushing through an oil slick.

  The mouth moved and shaped a series of sounds, projecting them into the surrounding medium of hydrogen-helium. The liquid medium conveyed those sounds to the Kon-Tiki’s acoustic sensors—and a voice boomed through the cabin’s speakers, adjusted by the ship’s systems to human-hearing frequencies, while through the gondola’s walls, Falcon felt more than heard the raw sounds: a deep bass report.

  “Are you impressed, Falcon?”

  “Adam,” Falcon whispered.

  52

  “Welcome. I have been nominated to investigate.”

  Who by? Falcon wondered immediately. Were there factions within the Machine communities?

  “Of course we detected your broadcasts. We tracked your approach, your entry into our atmosphere. We eventually agreed to allow you through the outer screen, although I can’t say that the decision was unanimous. Some of us thought it safer to destroy you on sight.”

  “I’m glad that motion wasn’t carried.”

  “Your fate is still undecided. It was agreed that more information might be useful. That’s why they sent me out to meet you.”

  “Or kill me?”

  Adam’s answer was a moment coming. “Your fate depends on a number of factors, not least of which is your intention.”

  “My intention is pretty straightforward. I’ve come to talk about peace.”

  The blank-eyed face gave a sad smile. “By which you mean our surrender? That’s what those who lead you have sent you to demand.”

  “A ceasefire. That’s all I’m interested in.”

  “And the terms of this suspension of hostilities?”

  “I have them with me. As a physical document. You’re welcome to take a look at it.”

  “Did you play a part in drafting this document?”

  “No. And I don’t speak for the government. But you do need to understand how determined they’ve become.”

  “Do we?”

  “They’re on the verge of doing something terrible.”

  “And this terrible thing would have something to do with Io, would it? Not much escapes us, especially not the testing of an inertialess engine.”

  Falcon was neither shocked nor surprised that the robots knew of the Io weapon. “I think they stole the basic physics from you—”

  “Of course they did.”

  “The Io weapon is a last-ditch intervention. They’ll only resort to it if all other options are exhausted.”

  “And you are one of those ‘other options.’ Does it flatter you that they still find you of use?”

  “Believe me, being dragged back into human affairs was the last thing I wanted.”

  “We were aware of your absence.”

  “You keep that c
lose an eye on developments?”

  “We were concerned for you, Falcon. You made some rash statements after the dismantling of Earth. We feared for your emotional objectivity.”

  “Seeing your home planet turned to rubble will take the shine off your whole afternoon.”

  “But you were spared, were you not? And we had given humanity five hundred years to prepare . . . Look, my booming across the void—while impressive, don’t you think?—has served its purpose. Might I be permitted to enter the gondola?”

  “I have a choice?”

  “I ask for politeness’s sake. Maintain your altitude.”

  The mouth opened wider and, grotesquely, a black tongue pushed out into the searing crush of Jupiter’s air, stretching out like a cantilevered bridge. The tongue crossed a kilometre of open space and dabbed its surfboard-­shaped tip against the gondola.

  The Kon-Tiki rocked against the contact.

  Falcon silenced various alarms and put his faith in Adam. The Machines had vastly more experience of working at these pressures than he did, and there would be no part of his little craft they did not understand, no flaw or weakness they had not already allowed for.

  And suddenly Adam’s form was inside the gondola, occupying what little space remained besides Falcon and his instruments. For a moment the Machine was a perfect lustreless black, as if the figure had been cut out of reality. Then a wave of gold flowed from the tips of Adam’s feet to the crown of his head.

  “There. That’s much better, isn’t it?”

  Outside, the tongue-bridge retracted into the looming face, and the face pulled back into the sheer surface of the craft outside, which itself moved away, descending back down to the larger formations of the city.

  The thinnest of smiles crossed Adam’s face. He reached out a golden hand. “Falcon, why did you let them send you here?”

  “Because, like all old fools, I don’t know when to give up.” With a certain wariness Falcon offered his own hand, their fingertips hovering inches apart, until some impulse overcame mutual caution and they locked palms. “And by the sound of things, neither do you. But at least you’re listening to what I have to say, aren’t you?”

  “For what little good it will do.”

  Falcon withdrew his hand. The touch had been cold, but not unpleasant. “Let’s not be cryptic. I’m damn sure you know they’re capable of dropping Io on you. And I know this too: If you had a hope of stopping them, you’d have already done so.”

  Adam considered this. Then he swept his hand to the window. “You’ve come deeper than any human witness, but only at our sufferance. We were content to let you see our floating fortifications.”

  “I’m impressed. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t. That plasma curtain, those mountain-sized guns. We’re five hundred kilometres down! Even with eight centuries of enhancements, the Kon-Tiki’s at the limit of its crush depth, and you’ve been building whole floating cities down here. We had no idea they were even here because of your screens. Cities, Adam! How are they even possible? What are they even made of?”

  “Hydrogen, for the most part,” Adam said, as if it were no great secret. “Crushed to the point where it becomes metastable, so the pressure can be reduced without reversion to the molecular form. We have even found a way to trap miniature black holes and magnetic monopoles within the crystalline lattice, offering bountiful structural possibilities—an entire periodic table of new elements and forms . . . We call it protonic matter. You would be surprised at how much we have been able to do using only the raw matter of the Jovian atmosphere.”

  “No,” Falcon said truthfully. “You told me about 90, remember, all those years ago. The Einstein of the Machines. After all this time, nothing you’ve achieved, on the basis of his insights, would surprise me. And with this new capability, with this planetary city you’re building, is there room for an accommodation with humanity?”

  After a silence Adam said: “I would hope so.”

  “Are you speaking in a personal capacity, or on behalf of the Machines?”

  “They think me an idealist.”

  They, again. The Machines were not united, if they ever had been.

  Adam smiled a golden smile. “Me—idealistic. Such a human quality. Can you believe that? But I am not without allies. Moderate voices. Though I would not claim that we are in the majority.”

  Falcon thought of his own moderate influence, the sense that he stood increasingly alone. “You and I have a bit of work to do, in that case.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve tested me, I’m sure. That handshake wasn’t for my benefit, was it? I’m sure you took various samples—what, blood, DNA? You verified that I carry no kind of nanotech attack. Nor does the treaty document. You needn’t have worried. The Springers told me they’ve given up trying to hit you that way.”

  “And you believed them?”

  “I think you should take a look at the treaty. At the very least I can use it to buy you some more time.”

  “You still think we are the ones who need protecting?” Adam said, amused. “Oh, very well—show me the document. There will be some entertainment in finding the logical flaws, the crude efforts at informational warfare. Or did the Springers reassure you on that front as well?”

  “I’m just the carrier pigeon.”

  Falcon moved to the iron canister which contained the treaty document. He lowered on his undercarriage to undo the heavy, screw-top lid, and reached in to withdraw the document itself, a heavy cylinder. Adam watched as Falcon pulled out the hefty core. It was only a little narrower than the outer casing. The document shimmered in the cabin light—a liquid play of pinks, emeralds, vivid blues. The surface was so finely engraved that it gave off gorgeous diffraction patterns, like the wing of an insect. For an artefact concerned with war, it was strikingly lovely. “Like a miniature Trajan’s Column,” Falcon murmured.

  Adam took a moment, it seemed, to reflect on that reference. Then he asked, “You’ve read it?”

  “What do you think? Over to you.”

  Adam reached out both hands.

  Falcon gave him the tungsten core, then moved back as far as the cabin allowed, giving Adam space to examine the document. In the robot’s power­ful golden hands it seemed lighter and smaller. Adam turned it this way and that, even spun it between his fingers, peering closely at one end of the core then the other—even stroking it, with an expression of intense, musician-like concentration.

  “Well, it’s no bomb,” he said at length. “There are no mechanisms, no interior structures or density changes. Its gravitational field is entirely consistent with a lump of solid tungsten.

  “As for the markings, the encoding is complicated, but easily readable. There’s a lot to take in, though. If this were converted into a textual form, something you could read, it would need around ten million printed pages. There are numerous sections, sub-sections, clauses, appendages, codicils . . .” Adam stroked a finger down the side of the core. “Just look at this. Nearly a thousand pages just talking about who does and doesn’t get to exploit solar neutrinos!”

  “I suppose there isn’t much point producing a ceasefire document unless you fix the detail.”

  “Nonetheless, it is extraordinarily complex. Were you expecting a quick response, Falcon? A simple yes or no?”

  “I wasn’t expecting anything.”

  “Good, because there is a great deal to digest. Not that this is anything other than the bluntest of ultimatums, but the form of it, the conscious and unconscious assumptions embedded in the text—whether they like it or not, your masters have held a mirror up to their own psychologies. A dark, twisted mirror! And we can learn from that, can’t we? Learn how they think we think, and from that we can learn everything we could ever wish about how they think—they think—they think we think they think—”

  Adam froze.

&
nbsp; Falcon was immediately alarmed. “Adam?”

  The Machine’s head swivelled.

  Falcon felt as if his world swivelled with him. Everything had changed. And he immediately thought of Surgeon-Commander Tem. Damn it, she had said, startling him—the brightness of her blood . . .

  “Adam, talk to me.”

  “There is . . . something. Something in me that was not in me before.”

  And in that moment Falcon knew that he, and the Machines, had been betrayed after all.

  The last thing I need is for your archaic DNA to contaminate me . . .

  Tem had tried to warn him.

  “Isolate yourself,” he snapped at Adam. “From the Machines, from your city. Do it now.”

  53

  Of course they’d lied, Falcon thought bitterly. The Springers had lied from the beginning, from before the destruction of Hope’s memorial.

  Adam was looking down at the tungsten core. “It cannot be the treaty. The material is clean. It cannot contain any nano weapon. And the wording is the work of children; it cannot embed any logic viruses. And yet.”

  “And yet what?”

  “They have slipped something past my defences. A logical weapon.” He shook his head. “No. It isn’t possible. My containment was foolproof. Nothing could have . . .” Adam twitched, dropping the core to the floor. “Nothing could have. My containment. Foolproof. Logically tight. Nothing could have breached . . .”

  But Falcon understood. “She pricked her thumb.”

  “What?”

  “Tem—the doctor who conditioned me for this journey . . . I thought it was odd. That was when they did it—or at least when she tried to warn me. It all makes sense now. It wasn’t the treaty,” he said, marvelling at his own clarity of mind. “Not the material or the words. The treaty was to give you something to think about, something to distract you, while the real weapon was doing its work.”