by Neal Aher
Thus far, there were twenty-eight fatalities. Seven had died after fights for dominance before Riss could inject them. Thirteen had altered themselves too radically to survive—one had even been attempting to turn his human brain into a ring-shaped prador ganglion. The Golem, which still squatted inside the sanctum of its last victim, had killed the remaining eight. I wondered if it had known about their recordings in the spine, or if it just hadn’t cared.
“Thank you,” said Trent.
“There’s still a lot to do,” I replied, uncomfortable with his gratitude. “They’ll need physical support, but what about later?”
“What do you mean?”
“If they were normal victims of accidents or combat they could be supplied with prosthetics or tank-grown limbs. And some could transfer to another medium like the Soul Bank, a Golem chassis or some other form of AI. But they’re not normal and their problems extend somewhat beyond the merely physical.”
“We need a mind-tech,” he said, looking thoughtful.
I stared at him. “A while ago I was talking to Sverl and the subject of free will came up. That applies here. We saved their lives but we’ve changed nothing. Once they’re conscious again they may choose to start turning themselves back into what they were before.”
“Why?” Trent looked desperately puzzled.
“I don’t know. People change themselves for all sorts of reasons. Some do it just for the novelty of being different and some because they simply hate what they are. All sorts of psychological motivations can be involved.” I paused for a moment of reflection, then said, “You should understand this. Isobel Satomi’s later changes might have been involuntary but the things she did to herself before weren’t.”
“It’s crazy,” he said, gazing at the bodies on the grav-sleds. “They need an AI mind-tech to straighten them out . . . mental editing, erasure . . . cutting and pasting.”
As he spoke I considered Sverl, the spine, what had just happened to Riss and what had happened to me. But I replied, “In your past, Trent, you forced people to obey your will, or the will of Isobel Satomi, but now you are a good person?”
He turned and glared at me.
I continued, “And now, as a good person, you again want to force people to your will?”
“I feel responsible.”
“It’s a novelty that wears off,” I replied, and turned to head away.
“What would you do?” he asked.
I turned back. “Ultimately what you can do depends on Sverl, and depends on what happens next with Cvorn—who as you well know is in pursuit of us. Perhaps you won’t have to worry about these people for long.”
“We could end up dead . . .”
“Yes, so if I were you, and felt responsibility beyond saving lives, I would talk to Sverl. Find some way of putting these people on ice. If I made it out alive, I’d then take them back to the Polity and hand them over to the AIs.”
“You’d boot the problem higher up the chain.”
“Yes. I might save the life of a man whom I found shot through the head. However, I wouldn’t stop him if I saw him take up the same gun and apply it to his temple.” I gestured to the former shell people all around. “Most of these are Polity citizens and are well educated, intelligent and technically adroit enough to alter their own bodies radically. But, having studied what they were doing, I know that the alterations they were making, even with constant maintenance, were steadily killing them. And they had to know that. It seems to me that most of them are like that man with the gun.”
“They were committing suicide.”
“Yes.”
“Maybe it was a cry for help?”
“Maybe, but they were making it a long way from any help.”
“Group psychosis?”
“Maybe that too . . .” I paused to reflect on some other data I’d found in Taiken’s files. “Did you know that most of them are very old?”
“No.” He gave me a puzzled look.
“Most of them are of that age when ennui can become a fatal problem.”
“Ah.”
I turned away again, noting Riss rounding the grav-sled and heading towards me. It was time, I felt, to return to my own concerns. I wanted to see my ship, but first I wanted to retrieve the spine from Sverl. And I wanted to put some distance between a certain catadapt and myself.
“I’m not going to let them die,” said Trent.
I nodded once. Here was a man discovering how, sometimes, conscience and empathy could be a form of damnation.
CVORN
Cvorn was attempting to deal with his sickness, any way he knew how. He opened his mandibles and lowered his mouth to the tube sticking up from the container, pressed his claw down on the plunger beside the tube and squirted another gallon of the white fluid dispensed by his surgical telefactor into his gullet. It was simple calcium carbonate to negate the excess of acid in his digestive system, a cellular suspension to reline it, and drugs conveyed by nano-machines to his bile nodes to kill their frenetic activity. He swallowed reflexively, and some of the pain in his first stomach eased. It was best to tube this stuff inside past the taste buds around the edge of his mouth, because it was the foulest thing he had ever tasted. Slowly he was recovering, but had found that he could not yet sate his growing hunger. An earlier attempt to eat some jellied mudfish had resulted in another session of projectile vomiting and uncontrollable diarrhoea. Also, though his visual turret eyes were as good as before, he could only see a blur through his palp eyes and they ached abominably around their bases.
“The screens first,” he said, once he felt able to speak without dribbling.
The sanctum was scattered with half-digested chunks of reaverfish that Cvorn’s blanks were steadily collecting in large sacks. Cvorn just waited until Vrom had finished cleaning the vomit-spattered screens and the pit-control console. He was still feeling too ill to have any inclination to aug into his ship’s system. Vrom then moved back to clean off the saddle control, and as he did this, Cvorn remembered how he himself had ceased to use it many years ago when he lost his last manipulatory limb. Perhaps he should finally replace them with prosthetics? No—right then he’d lost any inclination to return himself to a more youthful form.
As Vrom set to work on the floor, Cvorn lowered himself onto the control saddle. He knew the leaden feeling in his legs was psychosomatic. Stepper motors actually drove them, supplied with power from internal laminar storage. But it was still a relief to take the weight off his feet. He then inserted his claws into two pit controls. Despite his claws having nowhere near as much dexterity as manipulatory hands, the pit controls were good enough for some complex work. Flexing his claws open and closed on sliding scales pulled up numerous prador menus and options on his screens. First, he checked up on the state of his ship’s weapons and found that everything he had wanted done was complete. Fifteen hours from now, he would drop into realspace with his railguns and energy weapons fully operational. And he’d immediately go in pursuit of Sverl.
Next, he checked up on his old destroyer, now filling one of this ST dreadnought’s huge docking bays. He’d ordered a second-child aboard, in the expectation that he would not be seeing either it or his old ship again; the child was still in his old sanctum, squatting over the tail portion of a mudfish, steadily snipping off its proto-limbs and feeding them into its mandibles. It looked perfectly contented and seemed to be enjoying its repast, but then it was out of the way of competition with its fellows or from any likelihood of getting its shell cracked by Vrom. Cvorn envied its digestion and now resented the creature itself.
“Child,” he said, speaking through the intercom in that sanctum.
The second-child leapt up and away from its meal, dropping the proto-limb it had been chewing on and cowering.
“Child,” Cvorn repeated, then was momentarily at a loss as to how to continue. However, remembering the preparation he had made for his attack on Sverl, he began to think about his old destroyer, and anoth
er angle of attack occurred to him. Dividing Sverl’s attention might be a good idea. He found himself instinctively processing relevant tactical data in his aug and realized he was now starting to feel better.
“When we arrive in realspace, you will launch,” he continued, now thinking and planning as he spoke. “You will head out on a course, relative to mine and Sverl’s position as detailed in your system.” He sent the data by aug, but kept a link open to the child, ready for updates.
“Yes, Father,” said the second-child, its clattering speech muffled by the flesh still sticking to its mandibles.
Yes, if he sent his destroyer out it could flank Sverl and at least limit the number of courses he could take while fleeing. In addition, Sverl would necessarily be concentrating most of his resources on defending himself from Cvorn’s attack. Cvorn checked figures and analysed tactics. The destroyer carried some serious weaponry but, for the task in hand, perhaps something else . . .
Cvorn rose up off the saddle control as he considered this, the leaden feeling in his prosthetic limbs dissipating. Via aug through his ship’s system, he sent requisition orders to numerous arms caches, where robots immediately began loading various items into internal transport tubes or onto grav-sleds. Like most prador, he felt uncomfortable watching machines show even meagre intelligence, but he couldn’t deny that it was useful. The exigencies of the war had resulted in more and more robots aboard prador ships—the kind of concession that led eventually to artificial intelligence, and then to the likes of Sverl.
As he watched the robot preparations, he considered how he would change things for the prador race. The king would inevitably take a final trip out on the ocean of the prador home world, hydrofluoric acid eating his insides. Cvorn would usher in a new age. Perhaps he could institute some new form of technology based on the old ways, with more ganglions taken from prador children running such automated systems. Robot limbs like the ones he had just watched could be controlled directly by prador, just as he controlled his prosthetics. Of course, this would require more children. Rather than take the ganglions from second- and first-children that had ceased to be useful in their normal form, he could breed children especially for the chore.
Third-children were an option too. Prador fathers had never used them before. They left them much to themselves in their crèches to fight for dominance. Only the survivors made the transition to second-children. Chemical reactions in their bodies, caused by them dining on numbers of their fellows, drove that change. But, yes, he could use them before that happened.
Future possibilities looked good, and they looked good for the prador, but first he needed to get some things done. He issued further instructions and watched as his destroyer opened a munitions bay door. A short while later, second-children turned up with grav-sleds loaded with robot missiles. But before loading them, they began manually extracting drum belts of inert railgun slugs to make room.
“You will flank Sverl,” he said to the second-child. “You will sow minefields in his path and fire missiles to the locations I designate.”
“Yes, Father.”
Those missiles were a perfect example of where the prador had gone wrong. They contained semi-intelligent computing, though at a level way below both the prador and Polity definition of AI. Surely he could install third-child ganglions in such weapons, in much the same way as the ganglions of their older brethren were installed in planet-busting kamikazes.
“Your munitions are being loaded now,” said Cvorn. “Oversee this operation and ensure you are ready.”
“Yes, Father,” repeated the second-child, casting a glance at its unfinished dinner, then heading over to the destroyer’s controls. Cvorn watched it climb onto the saddle control and insert dextrous manipulatory limbs, and felt a moment of peevishness. He decided that if it survived the coming encounter, its next encounter would be with a surgical telefactor. He would then use its ganglion, supplanting the sub-AI computing running this ship’s weapons caches.
Having thought about children—their present utility and future uses—Cvorn now turned his attention to the mating pool. The female he had fertilized was squatting by the food pillar, the other two just out from it, protectively on guard. This was nothing to do with instinct—just filial loyalty. Before prador first began banging lumps of diamond slate together and thinking about how much more protection it offered when stuck to their carapaces with wrack resin, competition for mates and for the production of children had been fierce. A female already fertilized by one male was just as much a target for mating as an unfertilized female—even though they tended to fight harder. If a male managed to subdue her and mate with her, he used his prongs first to extract the already fertilized eggs before injecting his own seed. This then stimulated the production of more unfertilized eggs. The other two females must have been fighting their instinct to head to the surface to protect their fellow.
As expected, the female was gravid and ready, the blush and swelling around the base of her ovipositor being clear indicators. Cvorn now checked surrounding sub-systems and found the annex reaverfish tank. There were twenty of the big piscines swimming around in there, perpetually checking on their own feeding pillar, occasionally snapping at each other in irritation. Vlern’s children had clearly been thinking for the future, because all three sexes were present. And chains of reaverfish egg cases drifted amidst kelp trees growing in niches all around. Some of these had split open and fish fry shoaled under the spread of the thick pulpy leaves. Because so many adults and fry were present, it didn’t matter which one Cvorn selected, so he just opened the series of doors in the tunnel leading between tanks.
Immediately one of the fish swam over to investigate, but then quickly turned away, perhaps detecting something in the water it didn’t like. A second and a third fish did the same, then Cvorn found the virtual control to release a blood concentrate into the tunnel. The moment he did this, fish after fish headed directly for it. Cvorn discovered the necessity for that series of doors, when he finally managed to slam one shut behind the leading fish. It swam eagerly into the mating pool, the last door closing behind it, then it became more hesitant. It swam out, its head swinging from side to side as it tried to pick up more of the taste that had brought it here. It detected a taste it did not like at all, and shot back once more towards the tunnel. There it tried to slam its head through the closed door.
Now the two unfertilized prador females began cracking their mandibles together, sending out sonic shocks. The fish moved away from the door, searching for another escape route, but with the shocks slamming through its body it became steadily more confused. The fertilized female scuttled out at high speed, leapt off the floor and began propelling herself with her blade-section limbs. Swiftly closing on the reaverfish, she cracked her mandibles together, repeatedly punching in sonic shocks at closer and closer range. She then grabbed the fish in her mandibles and dragged it down to the bottom. There the female humped her back and drove her ovipositor deep inside it. The injection was over in a moment and the female released the fish, which moved away, and headed back to her companions.
Ever so slowly the fish recovered and just circled around in the mating pool. Cvorn now opened another hatch to another annex pool. The fish was a large lump of meat and, though it was now issuing the chemical signature that prevented the injecting female from attacking it, the other females would soon forget and go after it. Cvorn released blood concentrate in the new tunnel and the reaverfish went through. It headed straight over to patrol round, where it expected to find another feeding pillar, but it found nothing. In a few hours the prador nymphs would start hatching out, and would begin eating it from the inside out. Like the parasites the Polity had resurrected during the war, they would first avoid eating any organ that would kill their host quickly. However, as they grew into what some prador described as fourth-children, their appetites would change.
Eventually the fish would die and be consumed, whereupon the fourth-children would tu
rn on their weaker brethren and eat them, in turn. With lungs wholly displacing their gill systems, the males would head for the surface via a ramp that led into a third-child crèche and to yet another feeding pillar. There they would viciously compete while their ganglions expanded and they steadily turned from savage mindless predators into savage predators with brains. Older prador would then take these male third-children from the crèche to begin the next stage of their education. This, as Cvorn well remembered, usually began with a beating from a second-child. Education thereafter was a weeding-out process. Those that didn’t learn quickly enough became lunch for their older brethren.
BLITE
Blite jerked into wakefulness and rolled out of bed, trying to figure out if he had been dreaming it, or if the Black Rose had really submerged into U-space. He felt bleary and nauseous. All the waiting around at Penny Royal’s command, for who knew what, had made him delve into his liquor supply more than was his custom. He sat on the edge of his bed, rubbing his face, and reached over to the drawers set in the wall beside it, opened one and took out a small bottle. He eyed the dwindling contents, then tipped out two aldetox tablets and dry swallowed them. As he stood up and walked over to his cabin dispenser, he realized that, yes, he could feel the almost subliminal hum of the U-space engines. On autopilot, he used the touchscreen to order a pint of black tea sweetened with honey—aldetox worked better with some liquid in your stomach.
“Seems we left a little early,” he said, expecting either no reply or a terse and dismissive comment to issue from the air. Surprisingly, a tinkling sound came from behind him and he turned to see a black dot heading towards him from an impossible distance to grow into one of Penny Royal’s black diamonds. It hung there, with the air distorting about it; the captain, just for a moment, sensed vast amusement and a kind of joy.
