by Neal Asher
‘First left, about half a klom,’ it said.
‘Thank–’
The drone had already flown off.
Cormac soon came to an intersection of four walkways, and took the one on his immediate left in the hope that he was still going in the right direction. If he was, he would reach his destination in five or ten minutes. After only a couple of minutes it came into sight. The hull of the ship was a steel cliff with neither top nor bottom in sight, just a couple of square kilometres of curving hull-metal. The walkway ended in a circular platform before a shimmer-shield curtaining a rectangular hole piercing the hull. Cormac received an impression of scale it was not often possible to find on a world. This ship was awesome, but it surprised him to have not yet encountered any crewmembers. Strangely, it came as no surprise to him to see a familiar figure awaiting him on the platform, silhouetted against the glitter of stars.
‘Now why the hell are you here?’ he asked as he drew closer.
Blegg was utterly silent until Cormac came to stand beside him, then he gestured to the immensity beyond the shimmer-shield. ‘Games,’ he said, while gazing out into the flecked darkness. ‘Human beings playing at silly games and arguing like children over their toys.’ He turned to look at Cormac, and Cormac flinched at what he saw in those eyes: a power there, something ineffable.
Blegg went on, ‘The human race occupies a small fraction of the galaxy, a small sphere at its rim, a hundred star systems at most, but enough that it is beginning to be noticed.’
‘Yes, I’m sure it is,’ Cormac replied, fumbling in his pocket and finding a New Carth shilling – the currency used in Elysium. He held it out and, remembering the briefing from Blegg he had previously received in VR, tipped his hand and exerted his will to stop the shilling in midair. It bounced off the platform then curved spinning into the space beyond – now obviously outside the influence of the grav-plates he was standing on.
‘We are not in VR,’ Blegg told him.
‘Then let me repeat: “Why the hell are you here?” Did you board at Elysium?’
‘The human race is beginning to be noticed, Ian Cormac.’
‘By the likes of the Makers, yes, and we saved the one surviving member of a mission from their race and are now transporting it back. What of that? Its arrival back in its home system is years hence in our terms, and presumably it is now a friend.’
‘Not just the Makers, Ian, but they illustrate a point – the rogue biological machine of theirs, Dragon, has caused the human race many problems.’
Cormac snorted. ‘You talk of the human race as if you are not a member.’
Blegg grinned. ‘Ye doubt me, Ian?’
‘You are capable of things no other human is capable of, at least, to my knowledge.’
Blegg allowed that a derisive grunt. ‘There’re others like me, and there’ll be more.’
Cormac let that ride and instead asked, ‘Who other than the Makers are beginning to notice us?’
Blegg turned back to the shimmer-shield. It was a moment before he replied. Cormac stamped his feet against the deck plates. He had only just started to notice how cold it was on the platform. A chill blast came up from below, and there were gleaming nodules of ice on the rails.
‘They’re out there,’ said Blegg. ‘They were building starships before humans stood upright. There’re star-spanning civilizations that’re millions of years old.’
‘Oh, tell me more, please,’ said Cormac, his breath visible before his face.
Blegg grinned at him. ‘Better,’ he said.
‘So what if they are watching us?’
‘We have to be ready. Simple examination by such as them could destroy us. Levels of technology – like Dragon. Even now, our astronomers still think that all pulsars and black holes are natural phenomena. They also express amazement at how lucky the human race has been: a moon to prevent Earth’s atmosphere becoming as thick as that of Venus, no large asteroid strikes while our kind developed, the aptly timed Ice Age late in our evolution. It also surprises them how abundant are living worlds beyond Earth.’
‘I presume there is a point to all this?’
‘We squabble. We must be unified, strong and as one. Soon we’ll be playing grown-up games. As we are we might not survive.’
‘Masada?’
‘Masada. All of them.’
Cormac stared at him and waited. He was sure Blegg was bullshitting him again for his own obscure purposes or amusement. Give the big picture, fine, but what do I do being only a pixel in that picture? Blegg turned back to watch as a shutter slowly slid down outside the shimmer-shield.
‘Entering underspace,’ said Blegg, and as Cormac felt the strangeness, the dislocation, he saw that for a moment Blegg had gone translucent, flickering like a hologram. He reached out and touched the other man’s shoulder, but he was there. His skin felt hot, fevered. As if he had not noticed the touch, Blegg continued to speak.
‘Masada is not a heavily populated world but, under the Theocracy there, life is very cheap. The majority of the surface population would rebel, but they do not because they live at a perpetually enforced technological disadvantage. A grid of laser projectors hangs geostationary over their heads and, as I said before, the Theocracy are building a kinetic launcher to suppress what rebellion there is in the planet’s Underworld. That religious order controls them all, and most of its members live safely out of the way in satellite cylinder-worlds. The sheep live a hard life on the surface of the planet.’
‘Sounds idyllic. What do you want me to do?’
‘Thirty hours after the Occam Razor takes the position of the Outlink station, it will draw the Line of Polity across the Masadan system. It would be useful if the populace rebelled against oppression, then they could be helped. It would be useful if there was a valid reason for the Occam Razor to enter the Masadan system.’
Cormac noted the sarcasm. ‘Why not just move in and take over anyway?’ he asked, deciding not to make things easy for Blegg.
‘Politics.’
‘Yeah? Explain.’
‘Masada is held up as something of an icon for Separatists across human space. It would be nice if our intervention was on the behalf of the populace – useful if the Theocracy was made to look villainous.’
‘I still don’t get it,’ said Cormac, deliberately stubborn.
‘All-out war costs. You should know that. It has always been your job to prevent it.’
‘How very cynical. I can take the Sparkind down . . . to assist?’
‘Yes.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Two of the landing craft on this ship are carrying cargoes of high-tech weaponry.’
Cormac considered that for a moment.
‘What about the lasers? If they are operating we’ll never get landing craft down.’
‘I am sure you can make a malfunction look plausible.’
‘Fine. So I have my instructions.’ Cormac turned away, then quickly turned back. ‘Before you disappear, tell me, are you human?’
‘I was when the Enola Gay overflew my home city of Hiroshima. I saw my family incinerated about me and I remained untouched. When I walked out of the city I doubted my humanity.’
‘You don’t talk much like a Japanese.’
‘I lived in Japan for ten years. I’ve lived in other places for a lot longer than that.’
‘I’m supposed to believe this?’
‘Look at me. Look at my eyes.’
Cormac did as instructed; saw that they were black, with a pinpoint of red, advancing. It suddenly seemed to him he was standing on the platform, without the body of the ship to protect him from the hard radiation of the stars and the incomprehensible distortions of underspace. The red came out and filled the gap. Cormac found himself in a furnace and he recognized the character of that fire. He also understood what Blegg meant when he said there would be ‘others’.
Curled foetally, cold and shivering, on the deck plates, alone, Cormac believed in
Blegg.
Lying on the surgical table Thorn could not help but cringe as Stanton swung across the autodoc. Though attached to a long jointed arm extending from the pedestal at the head of the table, the doc itself was indistinguishable from the one Lutz had used on him back on the barge.
‘They say travel broadens the mind,’ said Stanton, calling up a program with the touch-console mounted on the pedestal, and initiating the doc. ‘Whoever says that wants to try spending a few months inside a ship of this size . . . We get into the cold-coffins as soon as possible, and thaw up as near to our destination as possible.’
The autodoc hummed as it came towards Thorn’s face, opening out its surgical tools and array of legs like a descending spider. He felt something stab into his face, but before he could react to that his face became like dead meat over his living skull. He attempted to speak, but his mouth just did not work, and all he managed was to issue a few grunting sounds. Seeing bloody implements moving about right over his face, he closed his eyes and tried to ignore the tugging sensations and audible crunching as the doc straightened the cartilage in his nose. Next, he felt a tugging lower down and surmised that the doc was pulling his lips apart so it could get to his broken teeth.
‘It’s measuring up now,’ said Stanton.
Thorn opened his eyes and glanced aside to see the man watching the procedure with obvious fascination.
Stanton went on, ‘You should have hung on to your broken teeth. It could have welded them straight back in. As it is, it has to measure everything and match colour and consistency for the synthebone and enamel. You’re lucky, in a way: the doc on the first Lyric wasn’t anywhere near as sophisticated – you’d have got your teeth back, but they’d probably have been the wrong colour.’
Thorn wanted to make some sarcastic comment about being too preoccupied at the time to pick up his teeth. By Stanton’s grin, he realized that the mercenary probably guessed exactly what he was thinking.
The droning of a cell-welder now ensued as the doc repaired the damage to the soft tissues of his face. While this was done he ruminated on how ‘cell-welder’ was a misnomer, as an autodoc did not actually repair broken, dying, or dead cells – it removed them and reconnected the tissues that had been parted by breaks, splits or cuts. For more substantial damage, the doc used synthetic or regrown tissues to fill in the gaps – in the case of the synthetics, this tissue was subsequently replaced by the natural healing processes of the body. However, he did not think that any such additions, other than his teeth, would be required for him since everything else was still there – if a little squashed.
‘Your face looks like it’s exploded,’ said Stanton. ‘It always fascinates me how they open you up to make even minor internal repairs.’
Thorn reckoned Stanton should have been a surgeon – he seemed to enjoy describing to the patient the processes involved.
Now, as well as that of the cell-welder, came the higher-pitched droning of a bone-welder as the doc fixed into place the teeth it had rapidly manufactured inside itself. There came further tuggings as it checked the security of its welds. With the work of the cell-welder still continuing, Thorn was beginning to wonder just how much damage had been done to his face, when suddenly feeling returned to it and the doc withdrew. He sat up and immediately brought his hand up to his face: he now possessed a new set of front teeth and his nose was back to its customary shape, and all he felt was an ache deep in his gums and his sinuses. He took the mirror Stanton proffered him and inspected the repairs – same old face, but with absolutely no sign that it had been broken.
‘You say that you now have the greatest respect for Ian Cormac, and that after Viridian your perspective changed completely. But I still don’t see why you saved my life. You risked a hell of a lot there,’ said Thorn, handing back the mirror.
‘Haven’t you realized?’ asked the mercenary as he returned the mirror to its rack. ‘I’m one of the good guys now.’
Thorn, who was an expert when it came to ‘evil grins’, felt that Stanton’s took some beating.
It was a huge ship, which was convenient as this meant that there were many places to hide – and right then Skellor wanted to hide. This hold-space was old and obviously had been long unused. The ceramal walls were dull, and on the floor were scattered the wing cases of blade beetles that some time in the past must have briefly infested this area. Many of the wing cases, he noticed, had tiny neat holes punched right through them – a sure sign that small ship drones had used their lasers to clear the infestation.
Skellor dropped down with his back to the cold wall and closed his eyes, connecting himself deep into the Jain substructure and assessing the information presented by the devices it was creating within him. Unconsciously he touched a hand to the woody material that had grown from his collarbone and up the side of his neck to cup his chin and cheek, on the opposite side of his head from his aug. This part of the substructure had grown before he had managed to take control of it, and he had yet to find a way to reverse the process. No matter – he’d find a way.
The detector, which was integral to the entire structure inside him, no longer registered Hawking radiation, and from it he no longer experienced the terrible feeling of threat. As far as he was aware, the Polity had no interstellar ships capable of carrying working runcibles, since the devices conflicted with the function of the underspace engines, yet Hawking radiation was a byproduct of a black hole – and it was damned unlikely one of those was aboard – or of runcible function, so what had occurred?
Almost on an instinctive level Skellor knew that something had recently paid the Occam Razor a visit, and that same something had rung alarm bells in the Jain structure and in himself. That something, he understood, had represented a great danger to him. But fortunately, it had departed the ship shortly after the ship itself had entered underspace, and now it was time for him to make his plans.
He knew that if the AIs that ran the Polity found out about him and what he had achieved, they would not rest until they had tracked him down. How much more severe would their strictures be upon his work now that he had become his work? They would throw him into the deepest hole they could find, and fill it in after him. Now, rather than being a researcher who had found the Separatists convenient allies and generous paymasters, he was essentially a Separatist himself. The Polity was now his enemy – it could be no other way.
So first he needed to know where this ship was heading, how many people there were aboard and who they were – and everything else that he was up against. As yet, he did not have the confidence to attempt gleaning that information directly from the ship AI. Yes, in a very short time he had acquired huge capabilities, but he did not yet think himself ready to go up against an AI of that level. However, there were other ways of getting the information he needed that would not require him venturing too deeply into the ship’s systems: human beings were easily accessible packets of information in themselves. Of course, it would be convenient if, whilst finding out those things he needed to know, he also acquired some allies.
Skellor attempted a smile, but his face felt stiff. Going deeper into his Jain structure he began to build further useful . . . tools.
The corpse was laid out on a table inside the isolation booth while forensic robots, which were complex nearkin of autodocs, swarmed over it like chrome dung beetles as they investigated and catalogued its structure. Cormac observed this process with a feeling of chill that he had brought up with him from the platform on which he had met Blegg. What he had seen down there . . . what had he seen?
‘They were rather touchy, down there,’ said Mika, as she studied screens and, through the touch-consoles below, tapped in further instructions to the robots.
Down there?
After a moment he realized she was referring to Elysium and the difficulties the three Golem had experienced extracting her from that place. He smiled then, remembering her inability to ask direct questions. ‘They thought they were about to suffer a P
olity takeover.’
‘An understandable reaction,’ Mika replied, as he turned. She made a pushing gesture with her hand, exposing the tattoo on her palm that signified her graduation from the Life-Coven on the planet Circe – a secretive place that produced some of the best analytical minds for biosciences in the entire sector. Cormac studied her. She had changed only a little since the last time he had seen her: her orange hair was now shoulder-length rather than the crop it had been, her eyes were still demonic red and her skin pale, but she had acquired some bulk on her diminutive frame that had not been there before.
‘Have you had a chance to look at the artefacts?’ he asked her.
‘Briefly,’ she nodded to the nearby case in which they were contained, ‘but such items require deep and intensive study.’
‘Then they are Jain?’
‘Oh yes, but in all honesty this thing is much more interesting.’ She indicated the creature Shuriken had killed in the Separatist base on Callorum, as some of the forensic robots now burrowed inside it. ‘You realize that this was once a human being?’
‘I saw the similarities, but I assumed it was just some bio-construct of Skellor’s and left it at that. He’s had a tendency to come up with some nasty devices: poisonous snakes directed by microminds, birds with planar explosive packed into their bones, and more recently an organic gun that fires darts which are apparently just grossly enlarged bee stings but can inject the poison or drug of your choice.’
‘It’s surprising he was allowed to remain free,’ Mika opined.
‘We never had anything definite on him until he started taking Separatist pay cheques, so we left him alone in the hope he’d lead us to others, which he did.’ Cormac grimaced. ‘Though now I suspect that maybe we left him to get on with his work for a little too long.’ He gestured to the corpse in the isolation booth. ‘You said this was once a man.’
‘Or woman,’ Mika replied. ‘I’ll have it sexed in a little while, though I can’t see what there is to be gained from that. Essentially what Skellor created here is a melding of calloraptor and human being, but that’s not the most interesting part: this creature has a nanotech structure inside it that worked very quickly to repair its body.’
