by Neal Asher
–From How It Is by Gordon
The flare momentarily blacked out the virtual view from the bridge of the Jack Ketch. When that view returned, a stray rock half the size of the ship itself had disappeared.
‘I didn’t know you had imploder missiles aboard as well,’ Cormac commented, after placing his brandy glass down on the pedestal table beside his club chair.
‘No, you didn’t,’ said Jack unhelpfully.
The automaton sat in its usual chair a few paces away, thin-fingered hands flat on his thighs, immobile.
‘What other weaponry do you possess?’
‘Probably more than you can think of.’
‘APWs? Lasers?’
‘Yes and yes, though I’ll add that the former is just one variety of particle beam out of the twelve I possess; and that of the latter I possess the facility to lase light across the spectrum. I also possess masers and tasers, carousels containing missiles that can be tailored to specific purposes, from carrying surveying instrumentation to gigatonne CTDs.’
Cormac smiled to himself. Once you got a warship started on the subject of its armament, there was no stopping it. I am what I am, he thought.
‘Though the imploder missiles are a recent addition, they are not the most powerful weapons I carry. The larger CTDs obviously have a greater yield, but are messy and inelegant. I do carry singularity generators energized by the power surge of a fission warhead. Of course these must not be used unless in dire need –because of the one in two hundred million chance of thus generating a permanent black hole.’
As Jack went on to enumerate the various purposes to which he could tailor his missiles, Cormac gazed out at the scenery.
The giant research vessel Jerusalem was poised outside the asteroid field –too large to enter it without sustaining damage. Cormac had never really taken notice of the industry in the Polity directed towards acquiring and researching Jain artefacts, but now, seeing the Jerusalem, he gained some intimation of its extent, for this was the giant ship’s sum purpose. It was a sphere five kilometres in diameter, with a thick band around its equator containing everything from legions of robotic probes up to U-space tugs and grabships, like the one presently departing it. The sphere itself contained whole communities of research scientists, AI and human, all working under the aegis of Jerusalem itself –a sector-class AI some regarded as a demigod –and much of the work carried out inside its colossal structure was classified. Its AI, rather than being based around a crystal matrix, used etched-atom processors, which meant that those regarding it as a demigod might not be so far wrong, and furthermore it possessed the power of intercession, in any situation, second only to Earth Central itself.
Entering the asteroid belt, the grabship had closed its claw over one mountain of stone protruding from the asteroid and was now beginning to drag the mass out. Calling up the required views, Cormac observed a vast hold of the research vessel opening like a Titan’s mouth. With the asteroid on board, the ship was then to travel to Masada, whereupon those thousands of researchers inside it would begin their work. Not until they had wrung every last scrap of knowledge from the bridge pod, and then the Masadan system, and not until they rendered safe every Jain artefact, would that ship return to Polity space. The Jack Ketch hung over the location of the bridge pod, guarding against any further stray lumps of rock. Cormac hoped this would not be a lengthy task.
‘Jack,’ he interrupted, just as the AI was telling him about slow-burn CTDs that could melt their way down to a planet’s core. ‘How much longer until she’s uploaded?’
‘I am not actually uploading her, but a copy. I cannot give a precise period because the process is dependent on what I have to filter. This is not something we can hurry –I for one have no wish to end up going the way of Occam.’
That might sound like a philosophy, but in fact referred to the fact of the Occam Razor’s AI suiciding rather than allow Skellor to control it.
‘Rough estimate, then.’
‘Three hours.’
Cormac rubbed at his cheek and yawned. ‘Then I’m for bed. The moment she’s ready I want you to jump back to Elysium.’
‘You have always had EC’s authority,’ Jack noted.
‘You disapprove?’
‘Not of the carte blanche agents such as yourself have always possessed, but of allowing someone aboard me who contains active Jain technology inside them.’
‘Aphran –or Thorn and Mika?’
‘All of them.’
‘You surprise me.’
‘How would you feel about being the observer locked in a room with, for example, someone with a genetically proactive plague?’
‘I guess I wouldn’t be so happy.’
‘Me neither. I may be AI, but I do have feelings, you know.’
Cormac grinned –he was beginning to like this AI. ‘Well, Aphran has told us Skellor hunts dragons. I want Asselis Mika with me because she’s the nearest thing we have to an expert in both dragon and Jain technology. Perhaps she might be able to give us some lead on where those two remaining Dragon spheres went. And I want Thorn simply because he deserves to be here.’
‘As you will.’
After eight hours flat out on his bed, Cormac returned to a bridge lit by the gloaming of underspace, and with two additions: a guillotine over to one side, to balance the gallows, and the illusory form of Aphran –the Separatist leader who had once employed Skellor and who had been killed by him. There was no time to interrogate the spectre, though, because within minutes the U-space grey was displaced by a close view of Elysium. Such questioning would have to wait for the next journey in the Jack Ketch, when it began its pursuit.
The nerve shunt in his neck and the paralytic she had injected through the probes should have prevented the Outlinker from feeling anything, or even moving, but he was writhing, fighting against the clamps that secured him to the table so that they creaked alarmingly, and his face was clenched in agony. It had to be the mycelium –it was bypassing the shunt, and maybe even his nervous system, so as to control his body directly. Mika hoped that in this process it had not restored his consciousness. But as she directed the four grasping claws once again into his torso –into a ribcage opened out like the wings of a macabre butterfly and the clamped-open gut cavity –he opened his eyes and glared at her. There seemed no other option but to do it quickly now, and never mind how brutal she must now be. The claws closed on the writhing mass clinging to his spine, and through the telefactor gloves she wore she initiated the secondary incisions. With brutal efficiency, the autodoc cut through muscle and bone from the lower end of the main incision down each of his thighs, sealing veins, capillaries and arteries as it went.
Usually operations conducted by a surgical robot were bloodless, but with something this major, bleeding was inevitable. Sucking heads hissed over exposed flesh, taking away blood, which rather than cleaning and re-injecting she was replacing with an artificial substitute. It seemed the safest course –his blood was probably loaded with Jain nanomachines. Now she directed incisions across the shoulders and down both his biceps, and also up into his neck. Into all of these secondary incisions she directed wide-focus laser scalpels rather than chainglass ones, as she had found that the mycelium healed straight mechanical cuts made into itself almost immediately. In his thigh she saw the clumped filaments shrivelling away and, despite the vacuum nozzle behind each of the laser scalpels, she smelt burning flesh.
‘Now, you bastard!’ she said, flicking the sweat on her forehead to one side and sending the instruction to the robot to retract its four claws. Servomotors whined and, with a wet tearing sound, the trunk of Jain filaments, wound around the plum-sized dark nodules it had been growing, began to come up. In his biceps, she saw the severed clumps pulling in towards his torso and disappearing at the end of the incision. Those in his thighs tore up with the main mass. This mycelium, a fibrous blue-grey mass, something like a tree branch, tore up and away, but no tree branch writhed like a hooked ragw
orm to escape. Following its program, the surgical robot swung aside, bowed and deposited the thing in a chainglass vessel reserved for this purpose, slamming the lid closed on it as a door is closed on a hornet ejected from a house. It then swung back to Apis. Mika checked her readouts. All the life-support equipment was working at its maximum. She could keep Apis alive like this for many hours; but then she would need those hours to put him back together. Tiredly she went to work, cell and bone welders humming and hissing busily. When she finished, he would be complete and physically unscarred, but the remains of the Jain mycelium might still kill him, and if he remembered any of this, he might not be entirely sane.
Two metres down they hit gold, or rather brass.
The head was like something cracked from a brass statue of Apollo, only lines of division and of mechanical linkage showing that this head bore features that had once moved. Marlen reached down, attempting to pick the head up with one hand, but it was too heavy. He put his spade aside and grasped the object in both hands, holding it up to their captor, who took it in one hand, as if it weighed nothing, and inspected it. With a shudder, Marlen glimpsed movement in the grasping hand like something black writhing underneath the skin.
‘Case-hardened ceramal covered with a layer of zinc and copper alloy containing the superconductor net,’ the man said, then turned to the two diggers. ‘Keep digging. I want it all –every last piece.’ After a pause, he redirected his attention to the head, and Marlen, turning once again to take up his spade, briefly glimpsed two brass eyelids clicking open to reveal obsidian eyes.
‘What a pretty machine you are, Mr Crane. Aphran was so in awe of you.’
Placing the head on the ground, its gaze directed up at the sky, the man took his hand away and the eyes closed.
Soon Marlen and Inther uncovered a heavy ripped-open torso with one leg attached whose weight required both of them to haul it out of the excavation. Then came the other leg, and an arm. Continuing to dig, Marlen and Inther unearthed smaller components and fragments of memory crystal. The man was now getting impatient. Checking his scanner, he paced the entire area, then finally returned to them, obviously angry.
‘There’s an arm missing,’ he snarled.
The two diggers gazed up at him dumbly. Then Marlen stooped, picked up another of the lumps of memory crystal, and placed it at the rim of the hole. The man now turned his attention to this, and abruptly smiled. ‘Find all of that.’ He turned and headed over to the laid-out pieces of android. Still digging, Marlen found that the latest command was not so harshly enforced, now their captor had other things to occupy him, so Marlen could keep a wary eye on what was occurring.
Their captor knelt by the juncture between separated leg and groin. He picked up the leg in one hand, then reached out and tilted the torso so that the exposed ceramal thighbone, still attached to the torso, was raised off the ground. He then slid the leg back over this bone until it was nearly back in position. He could not get it all the way on because of the torn metal, ripped optics and bent mechanical linkages at the break. Dropping the torso back to the ground, he then turned his attention to the arm, which he could do no more than push close to where it had been ripped away. Ball joints, protruding below the head, seated into the neck with audible clicks. Now, his expression beatific, the man pushed his hand inside the torn-open chest and closed his eyes. Immediately his skin seemed to turn grey, with a black insectile shifting underneath it. He jerked and, lying on the ground, the huge brass Golem jerked as well. In the gap between brass shoulder and arm, Marlen glimpsed glittery squirming movement before the arm drew up to the shoulder, sealing the gap.
‘Bring those other components,’ the man ordered.
Marlen scrambled out of the hole, gathered up the pile of twisted metal and brought it over. Dumping this on the ground beside the Golem, he observed swirling tentacular movement spreading from the man’s hand into the chest cavity. Marlen went back to pick up the pieces of crystal. As he returned with these, it was in time to see the man backing off, his hand still in the cavity, while the Golem stood up. Withdrawing his hand the man glanced down at the twisted scrap, snorted, then kicked it aside. Without speaking, he then directed Marlen to place the crystal fragments on a nearby rock. Given no further orders after this, Marlen stood watching while the man squatted and assembled the fragments like a Chinese puzzle.
‘There are more pieces to be found. Return to your digging.’
Before the instruction took full control of him, Marlen managed, ‘Who . . . what . . . are you?’
The man looked surprised at this resistance and somehow prevented the order from taking full effect, so that Marlen was able to remain where he was.
‘Me –just a man who has important work to do. It doesn’t matter that you know who I am, and soon enough the whole Polity will know my name. I’m Skellor. Now, best you get back to your digging, as your companion will soon be no great help to you, since I will be requiring his arm.’
Marlen turned and walked woodenly back to the hole, inwardly resisting all the way, knowing why it didn’t matter what he knew. Inther walked past him the other way, still drooling, one eye now red with blood. Marlen supposed Inther had been chosen because his stature more closely matched that of the Golem. Even while he shovelled earth, Marlen possessed freedom enough to turn his head and watch what happened to Inther. He did not, but he could not close his ears to the horrible sounds that ensued, and Skellor crooning, ‘Ah, Mr Crane, soon you will be better, so much better. I’ll perfect the work others left incomplete.’
–retroact 4 –
The lander was a flat ellipse with a quarter segment cut out, where was substituted an ugly particle cannon and a pan-pipes missile launcher. Ascending on AG, the pilot made the mistake of correcting with HO attitude jets. Stalek sighed, pulled down his visor and checked the projection in its bottom right-hand corner, to be sure that all his hotsuit’s seals were locked down. He then took the remote control off his belt and pointed it ahead of him, sending his favourite pet digging for cover in the loose soil under the briars over there.
Inevitably, the flame from one of the ship’s attitude jets touched the ridge, and the incendiary briars there exploded into fire. Falco, standing to Stalek’s left, hurriedly slammed down his beaked visor as he had only just realized the possible danger.
The ship swung away and up, the particle cannon tracking the sheets of flame, then out in an arc from the fire itself looking for attackers. Stalek felt something thump against his shoulder and glanced down as a briar pod –much like a segmented cluster of Brazil nuts –landed on the ground with its segments opening out. He noted the pod’s blue-green hue.
‘Premature,’ he said.
‘What?’ said Falco.
‘Premature burn. The briar isn’t really ready, so the fire won’t spread.’
Falco nodded and flicked up his visor, once again demonstrating to Stalek the man’s stupidity. Stalek would have dispensed with him long ago had it not been for Falco’s ability to follow orders with admittedly no imagination but meticulous precision –exactly the sort of person required for some of the more repetitive mind-numbing tasks Stalek’s business required. Still watching the man, Stalek waited. The fire was dying, but the danger wasn’t past. Briar pods began thumping down all around, in a green hail. It took one of these breaking on Falco’s armoured shoulder to make the man realize he should not yet have opened his visor. Falco swore and jumped, slamming his visor down over his avian face again. Stalek sighed and returned his attention to the ship, as it came towards them.
Coding the frequency he had been sent into his comunit, Stalek said, ‘Any kind of naked flame down here is not really a smart idea. I suggest that if any correction of attitude is required, you use gravadjustment or air jets.’
There was no reply, but it was noticeable that the pilot did not use HO jets while landing the ship nearby, in the process crushing down masses of the tangled, snakish briars. Stalek smiled at the choice of landing
site. He had not expected them to put the ship down there. With its hard, sharp leaves giving it both the appearance and the potential to hurt of green razor wire, it was never a good idea to get too close to the Huma incendiary briar. But obviously the crew did not know that. A section of curved hull then folded down and hinged open, making a ramp and walkway over to the clear area where Stalek and Falco waited.
Two heavily armed figures left the ship and came down the ramp. After scanning the area –though why, Stalek could not fathom, as they must have already done that from above –one of them spoke into the comunit integral to his helmet.
‘Clear. Bring it out.’
How very strange, thought Stalek. Perhaps a definition of ‘clear’ he had yet to learn.
A third member of the crew came down the ramp leading a coffin-sized cylinder floating on AG a metre off the ramp. The item. Stalek rubbed his hands together even though he could feel little through the insulated gloves.
