The Line of Polity

by Neal Asher

  ‘They had some at the orphanage,’ Eldene said.

  ‘Then they are probably a well-kept secret which, if revealed, would get someone into a lot of trouble,’ Fethan replied. Then, as if this had only just occurred to him: ‘Were these paper books?’

  Eldene stared at him in confusion. ‘Paper books? They were memory fabric, just like any other book.’

  Fethan shook his head. ‘Damn, I’m getting old.’

  Soon they were high enough to look back across the sweep of grasslands, and the settlement areas beyond. Through the mist of distance, Eldene could just make out the city and, still further, something glinting in the sunlight as it rose from the spaceport. She gazed up at the stations silhouetted against the face of Calypse, and supposed that what she had witnessed was either a trader’s ship taking essence of squerm to some faraway port, or a Theocracy transport taking the same luxury protein, in its unrefined form, to the tables of the Theocracy. Much, she knew, was grown up there, in crop cylinders, but the religious hierarchy that ruled their lives had a special taste for such products resulting from the killing labour of the surface dwellers.

  ‘I’ve often wondered what kind of lives they lead up there,’ Eldene said.

  ‘Oh, they do very nicely. They wear the trappings of theism and they violently debate the tenets of their faith, but meanwhile they live like primitive kings.’ Fethan turned to her. ‘Do you believe in this god your Theocracy has you worship?’

  Eldene nearly gave the automatic: ‘I believe in the one true God whose prophet is Zelda Smythe. I believe in the Creation and the truth of Human Ascendance. I believe . . .’ The entire list usually took fifteen minutes to recite, and Eldene remembered how on only one or two occasions had she been made to go right the way through it. Anyway, a proctor usually demanded such recitations as a prelude to some punishment, and would usually find a mistake within the first twenty lines as an excuse to inflict a beating. For the first time Eldene actually stopped to consider her own belief. All it had ever been to her was the memorizing of religious texts, morning and evening prayers recited below the Theocracy cameras, beatings for infringements she did not understand: all a framework that tied her to the grinding toil and misery of her life.

  ‘Yes, I do,’ she replied, because she could think of no other answer.

  ‘Of course you do – it’s been ground into you since you were born. But do you then believe in the god-given right of the Theocracy to rule your life?’

  After a pause Eldene replied, ‘No, I do not. There has to be something better.’

  ‘Yeah, there is,’ said Fethan, turning to continue climbing the slope.

  ‘Do you believe?’ Eldene asked, following him.

  ‘I believe only in those things that can be proven empirically. There has never been any proof that a god exists, and if such proof was found why the hell should we worship him? Organized religions are just elaborate con-tricks. Take the Christian religion from which yours is an offshoot: “Obey me throughout your life, give me the product of your labour, and you will go to Paradise when you die. Disobey me and you will go to Hell and burn forever. Of course I cannot prove that this is what will actually happen – you just have to have faith.” That was a good one, and it worked well enough in a society that still believed the Earth was flat.’

  ‘But . . . what happened here?’

  ‘An isolated group of fanatics, with sophisticated psychological programming techniques . . . This place would never have survived in the Polity, and it is breaking down even now as the Polity gets closer and information filters through.’

  ‘But the universe . . . how do you explain it? When did it begin? What existed before it? Where does it end, and what lies beyond it?’

  Fethan glanced at her. ‘Questions that might similarly be asked about this god of yours?’

  Eldene considered that. Of course: what was before God and what lies beyond God?

  Fethan continued, ‘The greatest admission a human can make is that perhaps he does not have the intelligence, the vision, the grasp to fully understand the universe, and that perhaps no human ever will. To put it all down to some omnipotent deity is a cop-out. Factor in fairy tales of an afterlife and it becomes a comforting cop-out.’

  Eldene had always been clever – it had been her ability to memorize and understand things that had enabled her to avoid many of the punishments her fellow workers had received, except when that punishment came from a proctor or orphanage administrator who had taken exception to her very cleverness. Now she sank into deep contemplation of the issues raised. Fethan had quite bluntly just stated things that she had never before heard stated. Surface dwellers hated the Theocracy and the yoke they laboured under with vehemence, but belief in God or the necessity of worship never came into question. With discomfort she realized that since their escape she had not prayed once, nor thought about God, and that discomfort increased when it struck her she had never felt happier. She was deep in thought when Fethan gripped her arm.

  ‘Believe what you want, girl,’ said the old man, ‘but don’t let it master your life. Do you think that if there is a god who created the universe he would be the petty vindictive god of your Theocracy? They’re just people like you or me. Life’s precious and short, girl. Just enjoy it.’

  Eldene looked around at the weird plants, the molluscs clinging to the rocks. She thought about the heroyne and gabbleduck she had seen in the night. Halting, she pointed at a hemispherical shell patterned with beautiful green, yellow, and white geometric shapes.

  ‘Life,’ she said, ‘it’s so complex – someone must have made it?’

  ‘Ah, Creationism,’ said Fethan. ‘Let me tell you about evolution and a blind watchmaker . . .’

  Eldene listened and grew angry. It seemed that everything Fethan said was empirically true, yet that all that had been beaten into her was also true – if you had faith. She grew angry because at her core she did have faith, and she was coming to realize just how that crippled her, and she envied Fethan’s freedom of thought.

  For a moment the grav in Medical went off, then it came back on and climbed to what felt to Cormac about one and a half gees, before dropping back down to about half a gee.

  ‘What the hell?’ he asked of the air. ‘Tomalon?’

  He looked around at the others and saw that both Aiden and Cento had collapsed, and were showing no sign of getting up. Stepping over to Aiden, he looked down and saw that something had charred the syntheflesh of the Golem’s forehead, burning and blistering it away to expose heat-tarnished metal. Gant quickly joined him in a crouch and helped him turn Cento over onto his back – the same was found there.

  Gant gazed at him in bewilderment. ‘They just went out. I felt them go out.’

  ‘Tomalon!’ Cormac bellowed.

  In answer, Tomalon’s hologram appeared in the middle of the room, cut in half by a surgical table, faint images of complex systems etching the air all around it. ‘This is recorded, so attempt no communication,’ said the Captain’s voice.

  Cormac buttoned down the question he had been about to ask.

  The Captain went on, ‘Skellor is subverting the Occam Razor with Jain technology. It is an old ship and, in the event of attempted AI takeover, has the system facility for complete AI burn, which I initiated. This burn has not been wholly successful and he now has control of twenty-two ship’s Golem, as well as life-support and the U-space engines.’

  To malon’s mouth opened as if he was screaming, but no sound could be heard. His eyes suddenly became blackened pits and a complex grid-work of black lines traversed his holographic body from head to foot. ‘You must escape. You must escape,’ came his grating whisper. Then, ‘Occam . . . Occam . . . Occam . . .’

  The Captain flickered and went out.

  ‘What’s happening? What’s going on?’ asked the Out-linker boy as Mika assisted him to his feet.

  Cormac stared at Gant, then nodded towards the fallen Golem. ‘They were all downloaded, but their
bodies were ship Golem so the burn program would have been hard-wired. They’re dead,’ he said, wondering if it was correct to have described those two recordings of Aiden and Cento as alive, but deciding that would not be the best thing to say to Gant. Standing up again, he went on, ‘Well, you heard the man: let’s get the hell out of here.’

  Standing also, Gant said, ‘All the Occam’s shuttles will be in storage, and it takes the ship AI to get them out of it.’

  ‘Fuck,’ said Cormac.

  Relentlessly Gant went on, ‘They’ll also be mindless. You’d have manual control, but no automated systems.’

  ‘Your point, if one needs to be made?’ said Cormac.

  ‘No navigation,’ Gant replied.

  ‘Double fuck,’ said Cormac succinctly. He considered for a moment, then gazed at Apis. ‘The Masadan landing craft. It’s our only option.’

  ‘No U-space engines,’ said Gant. ‘It’d be years before we reached anywhere.’

  ‘Our main concern at present is staying alive,’ Cormac replied.

  ‘Perhaps we should pay the bridge pod a visit?’ suggested Gant.

  ‘Much as I feel that we have made a most effective team,’ said Cormac, gesturing to include Scar in this statement, ‘I do not think we stand much chance against twenty-two Golem. We go, now.’ He headed for the door.

  ‘Wait!’ Mika yelled, grabbing up some equipment and throwing it into a case.

  Turning, Cormac said, ‘Is that irreplaceable?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said firmly, knowing precisely what he would have said next if she’d said otherwise.

  Cormac turned to Gant. ‘How long would it take the Golem to get here from the bridge pod?’ he asked, Gant being an expert on Golem capabilities.

  ‘Ten minutes if the drop-shafts are working.’ Gant shrugged. ‘Ten to fifteen minutes longer if they’re not.’

  Cormac stomped a foot against the floor. ‘Well, if the shafts are operating as well as these grav-plates, it’s more likely the latter – the safeties would have cut in. I want you to hit the weapons locker on this level, then join us by my own and Mika’s cabins. Bring as much armament as you can, and make sure that includes APWs. Go!’ Only anti-photon weapons were truly effective against Golem – so at least they would have that edge.

  Gant proceeded to demonstrate just how fast a Golem could move.

  ‘You ready?’ Cormac asked Mika.

  She nodded, dragging a heavy case along the floor until Scar very kindly took it off her and tucked it under his arm as if it weighed no more than a polystyrene block.

  Cormac studied Apis. The boy looked bewildered – no sooner had he learnt that his mother was dead than this chaos had hit.

  ‘You have to stay with us, Apis,’ said Cormac. ‘We have to get off this ship, otherwise we’re dead. I have no time to explain to you what is happening now.’

  Apis nodded. ‘Yes, I understand,’ he said, which was the best Cormac could hope for.

  The grav-plates outside Medical were fluxing, and navigating their way down the corridor was no easy task, but this made it more likely the drop-shafts were in fact out. The drop-shaft at the end of this corridor confirmed Cormac’s supposition, so they climbed a side ladder leading up to the residential level. It was only as they were exiting this that Cormac wondered how Scar was managing with that case tucked under his arm. Glancing down he saw that the dracoman was managing just fine one-handed – with his legs hingeing in the opposite direction to humans, he almost did not need to use hands at all. Within a few minutes, they reached their first intended destination, and soon Gant was hurtling towards them loaded down with an assortment of weaponry, and concomitant power packs and other consumables. He skidded to a halt and dumped the weapons on the floor.

  As Cormac stooped to see what had been acquired, he was annoyed to see Mika diving into her cabin – no doubt to collect more essential items. He handed Apis one of the APWs, and was about to point out to him how to operate the weapon when Apis shook his head.

  ‘I know how this works,’ the boy informed him. ‘Are those who are coming against us responsible for my mother’s death?’

  ‘Sort of,’ Cormac replied, realizing the boy had obviously not taken in much of what had occurred so far.

  Apis’s expression hardened and Cormac was gratified to see that though the lad might be a physically weak Outlinker, he had some steel in him. Glancing over to Scar, he saw that the dracoman had managed to find a pull-out strap on Mika’s large case and had now slung it across his back. The dracoman was stooping to make his selection from the mound of weapons.

  Gant handed Cormac a pack. ‘I brought these along too. I can’t use them myself as they’re coded, but you’re an ECS agent.’

  Cormac opened the pack and grinned. Inside, along with extra power cells for the weapons, were two small polished cylinders with twist timers set into the touch-consoles affixed to their ends. He took one out, pressed his thumb against the largest touch-pad, and a micro-screen lit up displaying seven zeros. Using two further touch-pads – one to advance each digit and one to move that control on to the next – he punched in a seven-digit number, then pressed once more with his thumb. The screen now displayed ‘PRIMED’.

  ‘Probably take them about ten minutes to get here. It’s only a demolition charge but that should be enough to gut this part of the ship – should slow them up a little.’ He twisted the dial round then tossed the cylinder past Mika into her cabin, as she stepped out with a carry-pack slung over her shoulder. ‘Let’s go,’ he said, as the door slid shut.

  Now, as they travelled the convoluted corridors through the ship, they heard sounds as of distant objects falling, the drone of motors starting intermittently, and an occasional resounding boom that shook the vessel’s entire structure. At the next shaft that would take them up towards the shuttle bay that contained the landing craft, Cormac held out his hand to Gant. ‘APW,’ he demanded.

  Gant unslung one of the weapons and handed it across.

  Cormac inspected the weapon. The APW had a folding stock of some light plastic, and a wide but short barrel with a polished interior. Its main body was fashioned of chainglass, and inside it gleamed pinhead green lights and a chamber apparently filled with swirling fire.

  ‘One G canister,’ Cormac now demanded, holding out his hand again.

  Gant rooted around in the pack and handed across a squat cylinder the size of a coffee mug, which Cormac screwed into place just before the two triggers. Manipulating switches and buttons on the side of the weapon – touch-pads were not an option on a weapon that might require resetting in darkness – he switched it to stealth mode, thus darkening the glass to hide the gleam of its lights. Further manipulation caused the weapon to emit a cycling whine.

  ‘That a good idea?’ asked Gant.

  ‘Yeah,’ Cormac replied. ‘I’ll save the other CTD for the shuttle bay.’ He tossed the weapon into the shaft and it dropped out of sight. As he stepped in after it and began to climb the side ladder, he heard the boy Apis ask, ‘What did he do?’

  Gant’s reply was a terse, ‘Set it to dump its load. Should take out most of this shaft.’

  They climbed quickly, gravity waves fluxing up and down the shaft so that one moment they weighed nothing and the next they were hanging on under two gees. Cormac glanced down to see how Apis was handling this and saw that the boy, in his exoskeletal suit, was perhaps doing better than the rest of them. Moving into a wide service area, Cormac checked the time on his wristcom and hurried the others out of the shaft.

  ‘Back against the wall,’ he ordered, as soon as they were all out. He was about to check the time again, but there was no need. From below, there came a hollow roar, then a sudden rushing sound. The blast wave came up out of the drop-shaft, carrying with it glittering metallic fragments and a smell like that from a forge.

  ‘That was the CTD,’ he said. ‘Come on, the APW will go soon and we don’t want to be here then.’

  They hurried through the maint
enance area where various shuttle engines and other heavy equipment were awaiting repair. Halfway through they had to pull themselves along wall bars, where a huge thruster motor was dangerously drifting above negated grav-plates. Soon they reached the end of this area, then entered a tunnel that led to the shuttle bay. The tunnel was wide – for the transportation of engine parts – with sealed double doors at its end. Reaching these, Cormac thumped the palm lock, but nothing happened.

  He glanced at Gant. ‘Vacuum?’

  Gant stepped close to the edge of the doors and peered closely at where they met the jamb. After a moment, he stepped back shaking his head. ‘No, the seals aren’t down.’ Then he turned and faced back the way they had come, and tilted his head to listen. ‘They’re coming,’ he said. Just then, there was another explosion behind them as the APW dumped its load.

  Cormac stepped back. ‘Scar, the door!’

  With the others hurrying to get safely behind him, the dracoman moved back from the doors and fired. Purple flame ignited the air between his weapon and the obdurate surface. The explosion was deafening and blasted a hole perhaps a metre across. The second explosion took out a similar amount of material above this, blasting metallic smoke and fragments into the shuttle bay beyond.

  Meanwhile, with cold precision, Cormac primed the second CTD and set the timer for five minutes. Then came further flashes and explosions as Gant fired back the way they had come. Cormac glanced in that direction as he propped the CTD above a console set into the wall. Back at the further edge of the maintenance bay a gleaming skeletal shape flew apart in proton fire – gleaming bones and a polished skull clanging across the floor plates – just as another one came swiftly in behind it. Himself firing in short bursts, Cormac glanced to the doors and saw that Mika and Apis were through them and that Scar was on his way.