Orbus

by Neal Asher

  ‘Not quite like that, in what way?’ Vrell enquires.

  ‘My relationship with Oberon is complex.’

  ‘I would have thought it quite simple: you escaped and have remained an embarrassment to him for centuries. I imagine he has a heated spike prepared especially for you.’

  ‘Only the King and a select few others know about me.’

  ‘The King knows about you, and that’s all that matters.’

  ‘That is a rather crude attempt at manipulation.’

  ‘The truth tends to be crude–not complex.’

  Such a poor showing from the young mutant, and yet the King is indeed a complex being, who might have been able to fool even the Golgoloth over the years. What use exactly is the Golgoloth to the King? Even here, in the Graveyard, the old hermaphrodite has essentially failed. Yes, Vrell is now a captive, but the real danger that needed countering has since manifested, and now the King feels the need to break numerous treaties with the Polity so as to come into the Graveyard to deal with the matter. Slightly troubled by this line of thought, the Golgoloth returns its attention to the planetoid.

  ‘I recollect an obscure reference to the Golgoloth as a “kingmaker”,’ says Vrell suddenly. ‘You were the true power in the Second Kingdom.’

  Astounding: Vrell has just made a quite correct assessment based on very little data.

  ‘You are correct,’ the Golgoloth allows.

  ‘You escaped with your life before Oberon even knew you existed.’

  Another incredible, and correct, leap.

  ‘Just so.’

  ‘King Oberon,’ Vrell continues, ‘does not want any knowledge of what kind of creature he is to reach the Kingdom, for possessing that knowledge means power. Do you think for one moment he will allow someone who is not utterly loyal to him, that is, a member of his family, to gain that kind of power over him? Do you think Oberon will want, inside the Kingdom, that power to be in the hands of a creature who once controlled that same Kingdom?’

  This observation goes like a needle straight through the Gol-goloth’s mind. Foolish creature, it chides itself. You have not been paying attention. Is it loneliness, it wonders, that has led it into such straits? The Golgoloth wants to live for ever but is not prepared to risk using the Spatterjay virus to extend its life, even though the virus demonstrably works, yet it is prepared to risk trusting a Prador King with its life? Stupidity. The moment it seized Vrell, it should have fled and not concerned itself with those strange creatures down below.

  Focusing back on its screens, the Golgoloth sees that the missile is nearly ready to launch. This could all be over long before the King arrives, and the Golgoloth can then remove itself far from here. But why even launch the missile? Those creatures down there might be dangerous, but are not necessarily the Golgoloth’s concern. The King will doubtless arrive here with massive forces at his command, in order to solve this problem–and, if it remains here, to simultaneously remove the Golgoloth from all further equations. That most certainly must not be allowed to happen.

  The murk below continues to roll away, revealing a churned-up landscape and utterly no sign of the dreadnought, as is only to be expected if the ship is using chameleonware. However, the Golgoloth did not expect to see that a great tunnel, precisely the girth of the dreadnought, has been bored down into the ice and rock, and so realizes that chameleonware is not involved. The Jain obviously moved the dreadnought shortly after that murk concealed it, using some sort of disintegrator technology, perhaps.

  ‘You are, of course, correct, Vrell,’ says the Golgoloth. ‘Remaining here might be unhealthy for me, so I shall remove myself at once.’

  ‘What about us?’ asks Orbus.

  ‘You will come with me, of course. I still have much to learn from you.’

  The ship splinter is now sliding back towards its docking cavity, but it is travelling too fast. The Golgoloth sends orders to slow it, but the ten-thousand-ton splinter slows not at all. Something very badly wrong here. The ganglia within the errant vessel fall out of contact, and the other systems the Golgoloth uses to access it abruptly close off. The Golgoloth quickly instructs the ganglia aboard the father ship to prepare, and numerous force-fields spring into being, clawing at the surface of the fast-approaching splinter, but their power simply is not enough to cancel out that level of momentum, and even as they grope for purchase, informational life begins feeding back through them. The Golgoloth understands at once that, whilst it was concerning itself with the Jain down on the planet, they themselves were thinking ahead, and formulating an attack up here. The splinter is now theirs.

  Launching counter-programs throughout its systems, the Golgoloth soon realizes that only one option now remains. It simply cannot allow this vessel to dock. Action follows upon thought, with massive steering jets exploding to life about the father ship. It begins turning immediately, thus swinging the splinter’s docking cavity away from it. However, the Golgoloth at once discovers huge resistance to this ploy, and finds that many force-field generators have been hijacked and now aren’t trying to push the splinter away but clinging to it. The thing swings along with the main vessel, explosions lighting giant flashbulbs in the father ship’s structure and hurling chunks of ceramic out into space as force-field generators exceed their loading limits. Tracking down the hijacked generators, the Golgoloth isolates and shuts them down. But still this simply isn’t enough.

  The narrow nose of the splinter enters its docking hole, though off-centre, then the first thousand feet of the rogue craft penetrate the father ship before it hits the side of the cavity. The father ship shudders as the splinter peels up superstructure, and chunks of its own hull tear away. Debris fountains from the contact point, as from a knife shaving across ice. Internally, fire rolls through long-abandoned corridors, ancient safety systems cut in, swiftly evacuating air. Inner wall plates flex and break away from surrounding structure, pipes rupture spilling water and other fluids, oxygen and other gases. Further explosions ensue, along with violent chemical reactions, and corridors evacuated of breathable air now evacuate poisonous clouds. Then finally, with a crash that sends the Golgoloth staggering to the edge of its support platform, the splinter slams entirely home.

  The real attack begins.

  The frame keeps the first-child’s muscles in prime condition, while the screens and punishment shocks keep its other muscle, its major ganglion, its brain, in prime condition too. Like all the father-mother’s children confined here, it is highly intelligent and absorbs enough of the wide, eclectic mix of educational data presented by the screens for it to understand its position in the world. Just swinging one palp-eye to look at the slightly older first-child beside it, and remembering what happened to the one that occupied the empty frame beyond, provides it with enough information for it to foresee its future. The nearby child is now without legs, without a claw, and it is also missing parts of its internal organs. Such harvesting will continue until the damage becomes too much for it to sustain, then its major ganglion will be removed for installation in one of the father-mother’s machines, the rest discarded. There is no escape, and the horror for each child here is that it perfectly understands this.

  The movement of the ship and its recent occasional shaking signify that the father-mother might be involved in some sort of conflict, which has given it brief hope that it instantly suppresses. It knows where such hope leads: to the mind-breaking and the punishment shocks increasing, finally being pushed up to lethal levels by the father-mother as it makes its regular rounds. When the screens blank out the first-child briefly hopes for a respite; some time to apply its mind to trying to find some way–any way–for it to escape. However, the screens come back on again, running strange and alluring patterns, then filling with data it does not recognize. The child feels itself becoming angry and frustrated as those odd patterns implant themselves into its major ganglion, and there propagate, seemingly riffling through its mind. Then it experiences a sudden euphoria, as its mind
explodes with light, with clarity, with coherence.

  Next comes data it recognizes: the schematics of the father-mother’s vessel, the onboard locations of weapons, power supplies, main conduits, generators–everything a neophyte saboteur might need–and finally the location of the father-mother itself. Then the clamps that have held it in place since its limbs grew big enough to be manacled suddenly open, and it drops to the floor. Throughout the nursery, it hears the sound of deformed young Prador hitting the floor similarly, and glances across at them as they shake themselves experimentally and test their limbs. The liberated first-child heads for the nearest door, determined to arm itself and go after its tormentor, the father-mother…determined never to be confined again.

  In defiance of treaties with the Polity, King Oberon is now flinging his capital ship, along with a fleet of state-of-the-art dreadnoughts, straight into the Graveyard, aiming to attack creatures which are yet to show themselves to be a genuine enemy. This seems a typically Pradorish move to make, but Sadurian is puzzled. Yes, enough has been learnt about the Jain to know that they possessed a highly advanced and dangerous technology and, yes, it seems that these creatures resurrected in the Graveyard are Jain soldiers. But why does it seem such a personal issue to Oberon? Why is the King risking so much to move in on them so quickly? And what more does the King know?

  ‘You could have left them alone,’ she suggests. ‘There’s no certainty they will head in this direction. They might head for the Polity instead, and become a problem for the AIs.’

  ‘If these creatures are allowed time to develop, they will become everyone’s problem,’ says the King, speaking Human words.

  Now that the tiers of screens are out, the lighting in here is sinister and concealing, despite the surrounding whiteness. The King lets his mandibles rest on the floor and now seems soaked in shadow, immobile as some baroque sculpture fashioned out of wrought iron. Sadurian can feel implicit threat in the air. She is too close to discovering things that might cost her her life, but that is a risk she is now prepared to take.

  ‘How can you be so certain?’

  ‘Because I know them,’ says the King, his voice hissing with an unhuman edge. ‘Long ago a Polity captive described to me Human nightmares, and I never understood what he meant until I experienced them myself, mere decades after I was first infected with the Spatterjay virus. Perhaps because of those nightmares I chose to halt the virus’s progress within me and simply rule -however, after four centuries of rule I saw stability around me, but also stagnation. With me eternally at its head, the Prador civilization will never advance, will never have the opportunity to become something that won’t then fall apart without me. And also I was bored.’

  The King shifts one of his heavy limbs, his hard carapace scoring a glittering scratch in the floor. Sadurian resists the urge to step away–to just leave quickly.

  ‘But you let the virus start growing inside you again,’ she surmises.

  ‘I did, and the nightmares returned with redoubled force. I realized then that much of the data surfacing in my consciousness could not have my own brain or memories as its source. That’s when I began studying the virus more deeply than I had on first acquiring it, and that’s when I found the quantum storage within the Jain genome.’

  ‘You’ve known about this for so long?’

  The King brings his mandibles up off the floor, snaps them open and shut again with a sound like branches breaking, then focuses a dark-eyed regard on Sadurian. ‘I saw visions of power, technological advantage that could flatten the Polity. I picked up scraps of knowledge even in my dreams: elements of science that we have since used. But I still wanted to get to the source of it. Every time the virus changed me, I felt myself getting closer to that source of knowledge, and my studies have shown me that, if I strip away all the stored animal genetic tissue the virus carries and finally begin using the Jain genetic schematics, this will give me access to the quantum storage–for activating the tissue activates the storage.’

  ‘And you have access now?’

  ‘It is knowledge that can kill.’

  ‘All knowledge can do that.’

  ‘Those scraps of knowledge I acquired derived not from simple computer storage but from the minds of powerful, aggressive and hostile entities.’

  ‘That’s interesting, coming from the King of the Prador.’ The moment she says the words, Sadurian feels herself sweating in panic. Perhaps she has gone too far.

  ‘To use Human vernacular,’ says Oberon, ‘compared to these Jain, we Prador are just pussies.’

  Perhaps not.

  ‘They are dangerous,’ says Sadurian, making her words neither a question nor a confirmation.

  ‘Truly accessing that quantum storage so as to obtain real knowledge might kill me, because I would be accessing their minds, and they would then seek to seize control of me. I might thus become one or all of them.’

  ‘But still you try…’

  ‘I still try, but slowly–and very very carefully.’

  ‘I am surprised that they are stronger than you.’

  ‘The introduction of technology slows the process of evolution, but it never actually ceases,’ the King explains. ‘And when technology advances sufficiently to be applied to the bodies and minds of those wielding it, it becomes a tool of evolution.’

  ‘That is understood.’

  ‘The Jain were all hard individualists, whose civilization rose and fell over tens of thousands of years, constantly specialized, and changed…’ the King continues. ‘They divided and fought, they learnt and they changed themselves and built up layer upon layer of technology, plumbing depths far beyond the universal secrets we have only just scraped. They fought battles that lasted longer than either of our civilizations have been in existence. Fighting amongst themselves, they evolved into something even the King of the Prador is justified in fearing.’

  ‘All this from your nightmares?’

  ‘All of this, yes. The Jain are what the Prador could become if we were to survive a million years. The King pauses and, to Sad-urian, seems suddenly weary. ‘My research has led me to deduce that these Jain soldiers are inherently hostile to any form of competition, even from others of their own kind. And just the scraps of knowledge I have gathered about their technology have made it clear to me that if unleashed with such technology, they could exterminate all Prador. There would be nothing left.’

  ‘Are the Polity AIs aware of this?’

  The King jerks as if coming out of reverie and begins to shift his legs. Sadurian realizes the time is fast approaching for her to depart.

  ‘They have been aware of this for longer than I have, and they are certainly well aware of what is happening in the Graveyard.’

  ‘And will Earth Central Security ships be coming?’

  ‘They will not.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because your AIs realize that I and my children have the potential to become Jain ourselves, and as such we represent a huge danger to the Polity. Because they sent me an ultimatum: I must demonstrate that I am quite capable of keeping my house in order, in other words capable of dealing with virus-infected Prador who have been turned into Jain.’

  ‘Ultimatum?’

  ‘Whilst my Kingdom stagnates, your Polity advances. I have therefore no doubt about the result of a conflict between the two: we Prador would lose. Earth Central Security would do it quickly, using weapons based on your runcibles and upon what your AIs already know about Jain technology. They would move fast to nullify any chance of me trying to resurrect Jain soldiers to use as a weapon against them. Prador civilization would collapse; the Prador race itself would be lucky to survive.’

  ‘That still doesn’t explain about this ultimatum.’

  ‘It has been a balancing act. The cost to the Polity of a war against my kind would be heavy even now, but all that has held off ECS so far has been the fact that I am judged sane; that I do not try to turn my children into Jain soldiers, do not try to
turn them into a weapon to use against the Polity. But the greatest fear of your AIs is that at any time it could happen by accident, somewhere out of their sight, within the Prador Kingdom.’

  With frightening speed for something so massive, the King heaves himself to his feet.

  ‘It is a fear, indeed, that first brought them close to attacking me, and a fear only calmed over a century ago by the knowledge that I have the power to detonate fusion explosives in the armour of each and every one of my children. However, in recent years that fear has grown again, especially now a Human genius has enabled me to breed and the population of my children constantly grows.’ Sadurian begins backing away as Oberon takes one step, his complex foot crunching down like a sawn log landing end-on.

  ‘I must demonstrate to the Polity that if such a situation develops within my Kingdom, I can control it. Demonstrate this I must, or my family dies and my erstwhile species ends up back down in the ancestral mud.’

  ‘The AIs will do this?’

  ‘They are not so kind as you Humans would like to believe,’ the King hisses.

  Sadurian turns and walks away, determined not to break into a run.

  Something is knocking this ship about, that is evident, but Orbus guesses it isn’t some malfunction that causes the imprisoning cylinder around them to rise like a belljar being lifted. Water washes in about his feet and, being an Old Captain from the seas of Spatterjay where only the unsound of mind will ever get their feet wet, he peers nervously at the odd mechanisms and organisms swimming within it.

  ‘We have a problem,’ the Golgoloth informs them.

  Control systems, honeycombs of screens and other unidentifiable devices sprout on stalks around the Prador’s platform, and bend in close like attendant priests. The Golgoloth stabs with its claws, while all its underhands are inserted into a bank of pit controls, and optic connections plug themselves into ports in its body like pins driving into a big bug. The creature is moving fast, turning from system to system, inputting data, sending certain devices away and summoning others in. Technology swarms about it like starving metal animals falling eagerly on the only source of food.