by Neal Asher
‘Hey! You! Get over here out of this damned storm!’ Anderson shouted.
The man halted abruptly, his head flicking round towards them in a decidedly strange manner. He hesitated for a long moment, then turned and came striding towards them, pulling his hat down low. By the sleer he paused for a long, slow inspection, then suddenly came on again. As this strange apparition drew closer, Tergal suddenly wished Anderson had kept his mouth shut. The man ducked down into the opening of their shelter, almost blotting out all of their view. He then squatted by the stove, keeping his head down so that his face was not visible. As he reached out his hands to warm them, Tergal saw that he seemed to be wearing gloves fashioned of brass. He glanced across at Anderson, saw the knight was staring at those hands but seemingly disinclined to say anything further.
‘Are you lost?’ Tergal nervously addressed the figure. ‘Where’s your hog, or the train you’re with?’
No reply.
Tergal again glanced across at Anderson, who was now staring with a worried frown at their new companion. Behind this frightening individual, a hiss issued from the sleer.
‘Don’t fret, just nervous reaction,’ said Anderson woodenly.
Tergal noticed how the knight was resting his hand on the butt of his own new handgun, and decided to keep talking. ‘Where are you from? Are you from that minerallier encampment back there?’
Still no reply.
Tergal then noted how the metal gloves were intricately jointed. They had to be a product of the metalliers. They glinted now, as the sun suddenly broke from behind the back edge of iron cloud.
‘You’ve come from Golgoth?’ he persisted, his nervousness making him gabble.
The sunlight was harsh and bright after the storm’s darkness, and now Tergal saw the glint of metal underneath that wide hat, too. He remembered legends of strange creatures wandering the wilderness, of unholy spectres unable to find rest after violent deaths, and banshees howling on the storm wind.
‘Why don’t you speak?’
The sunlight was suddenly hot, and steam began rising from damp stone surfaces, from sand, sulerbane leaves and the back of the dead sleer. Tergal supposed it was this heating that caused the sleer to hiss again. But when, with a rippling heave, it pulled itself up onto its feet, he realized he was mistaken.
‘Oh bugger,’ said Anderson.
Tergal couldn’t agree more—that comment defined his entire present circumstances. He was transparent to the knight, who knew him for the scum he was. The sleer was clearly not so dead as either of them would wish. And now their storm-visitor had just raised his head to show merciless black eyes set in a face of brass.
Anderson leant over and grabbed up his new carbine, while Tergal drew his handgun as the sleer turned towards them scattering showers of melting hailstones in every direction. The brass man looked over his shoulder at the creature, as Tergal dived one way out of the shelter and Anderson the other. Tergal levelled his weapon, but was reluctant to fire it, as that might draw the sleer upon him. He was also not sure what should be his primary target. Anderson perhaps held back for the same reason.
The sleer was now rocking its head from side to side, as if dizzy or confused. The brass man stood and turned in one swift movement, and in four huge, rapid strides was standing before the creature, which snapped forwards, its pincers closing on his torso with a solid clunk. But he reached down, pushed those pincers apart as easily as opening a door, and shoved the sleer backwards, its feet skidding on and then tearing up the ground. He next turned the pincers like a steering wheel, one, then two full turns, till with a loud snapping crackle the sleer’s head came off. Behind it, the body just collapsed. The brass man held the heavy head to one side, in one hand, its pincers still opening and closing spasmodically; then, as if suddenly losing interest, he discarded it and strode off down the canyon without looking back.
Tergal gaped at the departing figure, then turned to stare at Anderson. The knight stared back at him without expression. Tergal carefully reholstered his weapon and the two of them returned to their temporary camp. There were a thousand questions for them to ask, and a thousand discussions they might now have, but right then neither of them felt like saying a word.
* * * *
Reconnecting himself to the systems originally occupied by the Vulture’s AI, Skellor assessed the damage to the ship. Structural cracking and distortion were minimal, for the hull was a tough composite manufactured to take the impacts inevitable while surveying asteroid fields, but the fusion chamber and all its injectors were a charred and radioactive ruin. He soon realized that, with half the chamber’s substance blown away into atmosphere, he needed to obtain materials to rebuild it. Pressing his hand down on the console, he extruded from his body a Jain filament to track back through the ship’s optics to find what remained of the chamber’s sensors.
Thickening the filament into substructure, to carry more material from his body and more information back to it, he then divided it at its end and began sampling and measuring. He needed silicon, which surrounded the ship in abundance, but also rare metals. He could not rebuild the chamber in situ, for its inner layer needed to be pressure-cast at temperatures more often found on the surface of a sun, and subsequent layers consisted of nanofactured chain molecules. After absorbing all measurements and all parameters, building an exact virtual representation of the item in his mind, he began to withdraw. Soon, he stepped back from the console, headed for the airlock, and back outside.
The earlier storm had cleared the dust from the air and, even as the hailstones were still melting, Skellor saw shoots of blue-green plants spearing up from the canyon floor, while yellow nodes of other growth were appearing on the multicoloured layers of the sandstone buttes. But this though was of passing interest, he concentrated on other aspects of this place. He reached down and scooped up a handful of wet sand, clenched it tight, and injected Jain filaments to analyse it. The handful did contain some of the trace elements and metals he required, mainly in the form of salts and oxides. Assuming all the sand in this area was of the same constituents, he calculated just how long it would take him to find in it enough of what he required.
But that wasn’t the biggest problem: concentrating all his resources on obtaining these materials in the quickest time, he would need to root himself here and, given the possibility that ECS might arrive at any moment, he would then be a sitting duck. There was also little in the way of fuel for him to power a furnace. The ship’s little reactor could provide some, but the logistics of that were nightmarish. He needed help, willingly given or otherwise.
Skellor turned and looked back at the Vulture, then, from one of the many devices built inside his body, sent a signal to the first addition he had made to the little ship. All around it the air rippled, and starting from its upper edge a deeper distortion—like a cut into reality — slowly traversed down the ship, erasing it utterly. Best, he thought, to use the ship’s reactor to power the chameleonware generator. Now, where to go?
Breathing, Skellor analysed the air in his lungs and immediately detected trace hydrocarbons, partially oxidized. Using the full spectrum of emitted radiation senses he possessed, he studied the sky. He observed some kind of bird winging its way across, then he concentrated on air currents and spectral analysis of the compounds they contained. Shortly he detected the column of rising air thick with hydrocarbons, which the bird used to ride higher into the sky. Not far away, someone was burning coke. Skellor smiled evilly and set out.
12
The titanic monitor lizard on Aster Colora was ample enough demonstration that Dragon could radically redesign genetic code. The dracoman and the weird living chess set Dragon created to confront the human ambassador it summoned were proof it could manipulate hugely complex protein replication and create living creatures holding a mental template of themselves, which they could then alter. Evidently, Dragon is a supreme bio-engineer with abilities that exceed those of all present Polity AIs. The entity ag
ain proved this with its creation of the biotech augs, and others have confirmed this beyond doubt by further studies of the race of dracomen which was created from the substance of one Dragon sphere at Masada. Unfortunately, what is less clear is the purpose of many of these creations. The monitor did nothing much really, other than die, while dracomen seem almost a taunt, with their ersatz dinosaur ancestry. And one wonders what Dragon could do with the wealth accumulating to Dracocorp from the manufacture of biotech augs, and whether it could survive the subsequent AI scrutiny, should it come out of hiding to claim that wealth. Speculation is of course rife, ranging from each creation being a lesson—but one as opaque as all Dragon’s Delphic pronouncements — to the intended destruction of the Human Polity. My feeling is that, though Dragon is a complex entity indeed, the reason for much of what it does is simple—because it can.
— From How It Is by Gordon
Construction of the platform had begun during the rule of Chief Metallier Lounser, Tanaquil’s greatgrandfather, and reached completion when Tanaquil himself was still a child. Most of what was now referred to as the Overcity had sprung up during his own rule, but what lay underneath the platform had been accumulating ever since the construction crews had moved above ground level. Even so, Chief Metallier Tanaquil knew that not enough time had passed to account for the evolution of some of the things down here. Something else was the cause of them, something frightening, powerful.
‘If you keep dropping that beam, Davis, something is going to shoot in and rip off your face. Now I don’t mind that too much, it’s just that whatever does it might get one of the rest of us next.’
After kilnsman Gyrol’s dry observation, Davis raised his weapon, with its attached torch, and kept it directed into the surrounding gloom, as they moved on through the shadows of the Undercity. Tanaquil glanced around at the rest of his police guard. They, along with Gyrol, were here to defend him against any strays that might decide to attack. If that ‘something else’ had not restrained most of the horrible creatures that dwelt under here, then none of them would have stood a chance.
‘We should burn this place out,’ Gyrol muttered.
‘And there I was thinking you a member of one of the foundry families,’ said Tanaquil.
Gyrol looked at him queryingly.
Tanaquil explained, ‘Sufficient heat to kill off what lives down here would probably soften all the trusses and pillars and bring the Overcity crashing down.’
‘Poison gas, then?’ suggested Gyrol.
‘A valued friend has lived down here since my father’s rule, and without him we would not be so advanced as we now are.’
‘First I’ve heard of it,’ said Gyrol. ‘Why doesn’t he come out of the dark and live in the city proper like everyone else?’
‘This is only the second time I’ve come down here for a consultation. The first time was ten years ago, when I first became Chief Metallier. Kilnsman Nills was police chief then. Our friend stays down here for reasons that will become evident when you see him, also because he conducts his experiments here and does not like to be bothered too often.’
‘What experiments?’ Gyrol asked.
‘They are the reason you and your men are down here with their lights and guns.’
Gyrol shuddered.
Tanaquil waited. Gyrol sometimes appeared slow, but this was because he was meticulous, which made him such a good policeman.
‘There are no hold-ups in the plan, so why are you here?’ Gyrol eventually asked.
‘You are quite right: we’ve built the required industrial base, and our manufacturing technology is still advancing. As you know, last year Stollar managed to create the first artificial ruby. What you don’t know is that only yesterday he tested the communication device built around it, and managed to obtain a response from the computer on Ogygian. I will, during my rule, stand on the bridge of that ship.’
Gyrol looked at him doubtfully. Tanaquil was used to such doubt, but never allowed it to affect his intent. Stollar’s laser was the first step in a plan to bring down one of Ogygian’s landers. It was ambitious—indeed a leap in technological terms—but Tanaquil was determined it would be done.
‘Which still doesn’t tell me why we’re down here. Something to do with that spacecraft we saw?’ Gyrol asked.
‘No, I was summoned,’ Tanaquil admitted.
They passed where a wide iron pillar reared up into the dark beside one of the buttes. At its base rested a bulbous house with a single entrance hole. It looked more like the nest of some creature than a home. Inside, eyes glinted. Tanaquil halted, turned on his own torch and studied the map he held.
‘Not far now.’
They moved away from the strange dwelling, then two of the men stopped and swung their torch beams back towards where a head protruded. It seemed partially human, but in place of its mouth it had pincers. Its eyes glittered like cut gems.
‘Let’s keep moving,’ said Gyrol, and they did that willingly.
‘If you were summoned,’ the kilnsman asked Tanaquil, ‘surely any message could have been delivered in the same way?’
‘Not how our friend operates.’ Tanaquil removed a film bag from his pocket and showed Gyrol the contents.
‘I was told about these by my father, and didn’t believe it until the first one came and stung me.’
In the bag rested a lizard-like creature, but with an insect’s wings.
‘What in hell is that?’ Gyrol asked.
Tanaquil pocketed the creature and shrugged. ‘Who’s to say—something created, like all the things you find down here. One of these stings you, and you just feel increasingly uncomfortable until you obey the summons.’
They were now walking down a shadowy canyon between looming buttes, Gyrol’s men keeping the beams of their torches trained on creatures clinging to the walls. Some of these, Tanaquil noted, were pure sleers — others were different, distorted. He saw one that bore four legs and dragged behind it a long bloated tail; then, stepping rapidly away from them into a darker cave, something that walked upright like a man.
‘This is it,’ said Tanaquil, when they finally came to a wall of sandstone into which many metre-wide burrows had been bored. They halted, waited. From within the burrows came a rasping, slithing movement, and deep inside could be seen glints of blue light. Out of the central burrow slowly emerged a pterodactyl head, which reared up above them on a long ribbed neck. Tanaquil caught Gyrol’s arm as he made to draw his handgun.
‘Fucking sand dragon,’ said Gyrol, who was shaking.
‘Certainly,’ said Tanaquil. ‘But, unlike the ones up on the plain, this one has always helped us.’
Now, from other burrows, emerged cobra heads, each with a single sapphire eye where the mouth should have been. These too reared high, casting about the area a dim electric-blue light.
‘Metallier Tanaquil,’ said the first head.
‘Why was I summoned?’ asked Tanaquil.
‘Because.’
Tanaquil had read all his family’s secret transcripts of conversations like this. Always they were oblique, Delphic, and sometimes utterly pointless. He was about to demand that this conversation not be so, when the head continued: ‘There is danger.’
‘There’s always danger,’ Tanaquil observed. ‘Does this have something to do with the spacecraft we saw?’
‘One has come,’ said the dragon.
‘In that ship? Yes, I saw that.’
‘You must flee.’
‘What?’
‘You must all abandon your city and flee. He is in the Sand Towers and he will come. Go north, and come to me on the Plains, that way.’
‘Oh great!’ interjected Gyrol. ‘Go to the Plains and get fucked over by all the sand dragons there.’
The head turned towards the policeman. ‘We are all Dragon.’
Tanaquil could not believe what he was hearing. ‘Abandon all this—when we’re so close? What is this one that we should fear it? We’ve got weapons up i
n the Overcity that could turn most of the Sand Towers to dust.’
Now the cobra heads began withdrawing.
‘I have warned you, and I can protect you. Flee or die—your choice.’
The pterodactyl head began to withdraw too.
‘Wait! You’ve got to tell me more!’
The head paused and fixed Tanaquil with its smaller sapphire eyes. ‘He is one man, and he commands a technology that could turn you all into slaves. You cannot fight him, so flee.’
The head withdrew into sandstone, suddenly gone.
Only later, as they returned, did Gyrol ask, ‘What did it mean, “We are all Dragon”?’
Tanaquil had no answer for him.
* * * *
Every time the asteroid swung the Jain sample back into the red dwarf’s light, that sample digested more minerals and metals, and it grew. Already it was five metres across and one metre deep into the rock. Encircling it on the surface, and moving back with it using stick-pad feet, three telefactors transmitted data back to the Jerusalem. Through a nanoscope, that one telefactor held poised over the edge of the mycelium, Mika watched. But now, rather than be confined to her work station, she had joined Colver, D’nissan, James and fifty other scientists in one of the Jerusalem’s exterior input centres. Though she was glad of the company and of how they bounced ideas about in such proximity and in such an atmosphere, she was aware that this was just another form of quarantine. And because Exterior Input was isolated from Jerusalem’s full processing power, she could not use VR tools, and sorely missed them too.
‘I could direct a telefactor from my own work station,’ she had pointed out.
‘As could all the others,’ Jerusalem replied. ‘However, all this spreading of signals could be unhealthy. I will allow information to leave Exterior Input only when it has been checked for viral subversion.’
