Zero Point (Owner Trilogy 2)

by Neal Asher

  ‘So run through it for me,’ she said. ‘How far along are we?’

  Martinez, chief of construction and buildings maintenance – which, in this environment, was a very important task – gazed at the work in progress. ‘We’re finishing the upper section of the block-work wall and cementing in the ties for the dome. The furnaces are up to speed, I’m told, but best to ask Lopomac about that.’ He gestured to the other man accompanying them.

  Lopomac, who had been one of those who had helped her dispose of Ricard and his crew, nodded sagely. ‘The furnaces are now running and we’re processing the silica sand. We should be able to start pouring the glass panes soon.’

  ‘That’s a lot of power we’re burning,’ she commented. ‘I really hope Gunther knows what he’s talking about.’

  ‘He’s the expert,’ said Lopomac. ‘Relying on experts, as has become quite evident, is how we’re managing to stay alive.’

  Lopomac was referring to another near-disaster when the reactor started to fail. Among the staff here they had managed to find a specialist in powder-cast ceramics who had been mis-assigned, in a typical Committee screw-up, to work in construction under Martinez – epoxy-bonding regolith into building blocks. That man had managed to work out a method of making the reactor components the Committee had perpetually failed to send them. Notable, Var felt, how that same man had been on Ricard’s kill list as a non-essential.

  Var nodded agreement, but her mind started to stray to other concerns. The Argus Station was still on course to reach Mars in just over two years, but whoever was aboard it had not responded to their earlier attempts at communication. Also, she had been unable to find out whether Messina’s Alexander was still under construction, though she did find out that other Earth-orbit stations were still functioning. Another concern was why both Martinez and Lopomac had been keen for them to come out here. She now switched her suit radio to a private band they had selected while suiting up.

  ‘So now we’re out here, let’s talk,’ she said.

  ‘It’s come to our notice that there are those here who are a little unhappy with the power structure,’ said Lopomac. He glanced at Martinez. ‘They’ve been attempting to recruit others who might not be completely loyal to you.’

  ‘I wasn’t aware of that, but I still don’t see why it was necessary for us to come out here.’

  ‘Simple answer,’ Lopomac responded. ‘They’re mostly in Mars Science, and we’ve suspicions that they’ve hacked into Ricard’s security system.’

  ‘Rhone?’

  ‘As far as we know, not him. Delaware and Christen seem to be the ringleaders. They are contending that we should run things here under a scientific meritocratic democracy – the strength of voting being proportional to IQ, which of course would mean more power for Delaware and Christen. It would also mean, Delaware feels, that he would be in with a chance of running this place, since his IQ is only a few points below your own.’

  ‘And yet,’ Var noted, ‘despite such high intelligence, he’s too stupid to realize how any squabbling now has a very high chance of being fatal for us all.’

  ‘What do you want us to do?’ asked Martinez – that question implying much.

  Var considered the first option. Those two scientists could have some unfortunate accident. However, she felt there was no one here they could afford to lose – two first-class minds least of all. So what to do about them?

  ‘Actually, we do have a form of “meritocratic democracy”, in which my chiefs of staff have their say, though of course no vote. I will therefore delegate this to one of those chiefs. Tell Rhone what’s going on and leave it for him to deal with.’ She paused in thought for a moment, recollecting her history class and the phrase, ‘Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?’ and added, ‘Though you should ensure he is aware that we really cannot afford to lose any personnel at all.’

  ‘Will do,’ said Martinez. ‘They tried to recruit me, too, so it’s best coming from me.’

  ‘Any other business?’ she asked.

  ‘Not really,’ said Lopomac.

  As they turned and began heading back towards the central hex, Var felt a sudden surge of disappointment. Humans in adversity could be at their best, but take the pressure off just a little and they resorted to type: squabbling for notice, clawing for power, security, comfort, luxury. She remembered something her brother Alan had once said.

  ‘We are a disappointing species,’ he had noted in his usual flat uninflected tone. She had thoroughly agreed with him but wondered, as ever, if that species included Alan Saul himself.

  2

  ID Implants

  The first large-scale ID implant trial was conducted by one of the forerunners of All Health, EHS (the European Health Service), in an attempt to overcome the difficulties inherent in the highly politicized and unwieldy computer system used for keeping the health records of citizens. The idea was that you could walk into a doctor’s surgery, or be stretchered into a hospital, and implant-readers would immediately update the doctors with all they needed to know about you. The trial was a failure for two reasons: because the data the implants held was just copied from the computer records, so medical fact was difficult to separate from political jargon even when it was correct and uncorrupted, and because of a severe outbreak of MDRSA3 (third-generation multidrug resistant staphylococcus aureus) in the hospitals doing the implants – an outbreak kept under a news blackout – and half of those receiving the implants dying. However, since the political motivation behind the trial remained and politicians are never in a hurry to abandon a bad idea, further trials were conducted and, over a period of twenty years, ‘medplants’ were forced on the population of Europe as a precursor to the ID implant we know today. It is estimated that between two and five million people died during these next trials, but news blackouts were no longer required to suppress the story, since by then no independent media existed.

  Zero Minus Five Days – Argus

  The spidergun crammed itself in the airlock cylinder first, with its oddly shaped limbs raised up and pressed against the walls to make space for Saul. He stepped in, then turned and palmed the control to close the door behind him and activate the elevator. The cylinder entered the central spindle, then travelled down through its curved transport tube to the floor of Arcoplex Two, the spin of the arcoplex impinging more and more to give him the illusion of weight.

  For some days now Saul had not ventured out of his cabin, other than mentally. He had run the station from there, with an optic plugged into his skull as he oversaw the complete reorganization of the hierarchy and set his people and his robots to clear up the mess and make the endless repairs. He had made calculations that extended into highly esoteric maths on how they might survive with the resources they had. As a result of these calculations, he had issued orders that might have seemed nonsensical to some, but which he knew would yield good results later on. Now, he felt, the station was running well and, though reluctant to leave his room in Tech Central, fascination at what had recently been found in Arcoplex Two had lured him out.

  The cylinder airlock doors opened onto a long corridor running through one of the many buildings that crammed Arcoplex Two. The spidergun slid out first, its movements uncannily lifelike and fluid now as, like all the robots aboard Argus, it operated under his new programming. He stepped out after it and studied the reception committee.

  Hannah looked careworn; with the steady destruction of human minds she was performing obviously taking its toll.

  ‘Hannah . . .’ he said, pausing to find the correct words, ‘are you good?’ Being too solicitous was not the way; better to acknowledge that he knew she was experiencing emotional pain, but expect business as usual from her.

  ‘I’ve been better,’ she replied, rubbing at the dressing on her arm where, like many on the station, she’d had her ID implant removed. ‘And I’ve been worse.’

  He dipped his head once, then swung his attention to the others waiting.


  Brigitta and Angela Saberhagen also appeared tired, but seemed to have lost that blank indifference in their expressions: the result of a state of mind that alone enabled many to survive under Committee rule. They, too, had dressings on their arms where their implants had been removed. The station doctors had been very busy for some time: station staff forming queues outside the doctors’ surgeries during their free time. Just over ten per cent of the people here were now without ID implants, including Saul himself, who had had five implants removed from his forearm.

  ‘You have everything ready for me?’ he enquired. He knew precisely what they had to show him – had known for three days – but had realized that his omniscience tended to defuse the enthusiasm of those who worked for him.

  ‘We’re ready. You’ll find the Committee had some interesting projects running here,’ said Brigitta. Angela grimaced, as aware as Brigitta that he had already peered into every nook and cranny of Robotics and knew precisely what was here.

  Langstrom, a wiry black man who was now Saul’s police commander, and Peach, a tall Nordic blonde woman who was one of his officers, also waited here.

  ‘No problems?’ Saul asked.

  ‘None at all,’ said Langstrom warily.

  ‘Then let’s go.’ Saul gestured down the corridor.

  The spidergun went first, now sufficiently independent to need no mental prod from Saul, and he followed. Hannah fell in beside him, and the twins came next, Langstrom and Peach coming up last. There wasn’t really much need for the last two – they were only here because they felt they had to be, and Saul had not ordered them not to be here. He had already checked out any possible dangers in the arcoplex, and his robots were installed all around him.

  ‘What about you?’ Hannah asked.

  ‘I’m good,’ Saul replied.

  He could explain to her about the quantities of information he was able to process. He could explain how he could now individually control hundreds of robots, how he now created programs with a thought, some of them almost operating like independent intelligences. But how to explain the synergy arising from the biological interface she had implanted in his skull? How to explain not so much the growth in his abilities as that implant spread its neural network, but the integration? Then again, perhaps he could explain to Hannah, for she was the one most likely to be able to understand.

  Numerous successive corridors brought them to an elevator which took them up, in two parties, to the robotics factory near to the arcoplex spindle. They stepped out onto a glass-panelled floor, walking lightly and bouncing in the lower spin. Saul peered down at the assembly floor visible below. It was a combination of production line and specialist workshop. Raw components were transported up by cargo elevators from floors below, three partially assembled carcases of construction robots lay directly below him, while a fourth, all but finished, was undergoing trials in a test rig. Twenty people worked on this floor, but most of the assembly directly below was being conducted by the brethren of these robots – the three humans Saul could see working on specialization of the basic construction robot. In the next area various maintenance robots were being put together. Beyond this lay Large Component Construction, where the parts for the bigger station robots were made.

  Brigitta, who had moved up beside him the moment he walked out onto this floor, began a hesitant commentary, with the implication of, of course you know all this, until, from behind, Langstrom interrupted, ‘What about the military stuff?’

  Brigitta had glanced at Saul as if seeking permission and, when he nodded, replied, ‘It was never made here – always transported up from Earth. We’ve got some packaged razorbirds and shepherds, but I’ve no idea why. Shepherds are just too big and the razorbirds would need substantial reprogramming to fly in zero gravity. And the only spiderguns here are those Messina brought with him.’ Thereafter Brigitta continued her commentary with more enthusiasm now she had a more congenial audience.

  During a pause, Saul said, ‘Of course, this is not what I’ve come to see.’

  ‘We go to the end, then down a couple of floors,’ explained Brigitta. ‘I’m not quite sure what the aim was.’

  ‘A police force of unquestioning loyalty, I suspect,’ said Saul, glancing round at Langstrom.

  The man frowned, seemed about to wipe this expression from his face, then stubbornly retained it. He said, ‘It was because of people not asking questions that Earth is like it is today.’

  ‘Precisely,’ said Saul, as he stepped, after his spidergun, into the end elevator.

  The chief of Humanoid Unit Development had been one of the casualties of the recent station conflict. He had not been here in Arcoplex Two when Messina’s forces attacked, but in his executive quarters in the Political Office. He hadn’t been involved in the fighting, but stray rounds had punched through a small section of the PO, including his quarters, and vacuum decompression had killed him some minutes later. That was a loss, for he had been a brilliant man. However, had he survived he would have been considered one of those ‘difficult’ cases: a valuable mind in the skull of a multiple murderer who had experimented on human beings, not because he was forced to by the Committee but because he delighted in it. And here, in the HUD, he had applied some of the results from his research.

  ‘Are they fucking alive?’ asked Langstrom.

  Ten of them stood in a line against one wall, frames supporting them, all sorts of umbilical pipes and cables plugged in. Each stood over two metres tall – big leathery-skinned humanoids, male in body shape but without sexual organs.

  ‘They’re machines,’ Brigitta informed him. ‘The skin is semi-organic and they contain many cross-tech components – quite a lot of what’s inside them being based on human tissue – but these things were assembled, not grown.’ She paused for a moment, forehead wrinkling in a frown. Perhaps such distinctions were not so easy to make in this case.

  ‘Why?’ Langstrom asked. ‘I thought the multi-task idea had gone out the window.’

  For many years it had been the contention among roboticists that the best shape for a robot would be a humanoid one, since the human world had been built to fit humans. However, that was before factories became wholly robotic, and before the reality of specialized robots became apparent. If you wanted to repair a pipe under the sea, for example, better to send a robot with integral welder, with no need to breathe and no likelihood of suffering from the bends. The few humanoid robots still in existence on Earth were kept as quaint affectations of the very rich – which generally meant Committee delegates.

  ‘A result of Chairman Messina’s growing paranoia,’ explained Saul. ‘He wanted to be able to depend completely on his bodyguard.’

  ‘His paranoia is no longer a problem for him,’ said Hannah.

  Saul gazed at her but could not read her expression. Messina himself had been the first to go under her microsurgery, and was now slowly recovering in Arcoplex One. Already, even after this short time, station personnel had a name for people like Messina. They were being called ‘repros’ – the reprogrammed.

  Hannah steadily returned his gaze. ‘What are you going to do with them?’

  ‘These?’ He waved a hand at the racked androids.

  ‘Yes, them.’

  Considering the atrocities committed in the development of these androids, Saul had thought about having them destroyed. But they were just a spit away from being put online, and he was reluctant to waste what could prove valuable assets. When he probed earlier, from Tech Central, he had found a route through to some minds that were complex and strange, ticking over like high-performance cars caught in traffic. They could do things the other station robots could do, and more, and they contained technology the like of which he had never seen before. And, if he was being totally honest, they fascinated him, for he saw potential in their semi-biological brains that no other station robots possessed.

  ‘I’m going to use them,’ he decided. ‘Another pair of hands is still another pair of hands.’
/>   ‘You don’t need any more bodyguards,’ protested Langstrom.

  ‘No, perhaps not.’ Saul turned to Brigitta. ‘You know what’s left to do?’

  Brigitta looked puzzled for a moment, but Angela replied, ‘I know.’

  ‘Do it, then. Get them commissioned and tested.’ He turned away.

  Year Zero – Earth

  Serene closed the door firmly behind her and walked over to her mirror, gazing at her face. She looked as tired as she felt. Ten days of organization, ten days of trying to maximize her resources, gain control, and now this. She’d just returned to Oversight after an inspection tour of the growing town of Administration survivors, and had known, by Anderson’s expression, that something had gone badly wrong.

  Without preamble he had announced, ‘We’ve lost Glasgow HQ – it’s been overrun. Only twenty survivors got out.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Seems the ZAs are getting organized.’

  ‘They had readerguns at Glasgow,’ she said. ‘There were four thousand of them there.’ Then she managed to get herself under control. ‘Our perimeter readerguns?’