by Gary Gibson
‘Fine.’ Arbenz nodded. ‘Meanwhile we’ll return to the surface. Kieran, I want you to stay here with Corso and keep an eye on things. Anything unusual happens—anything you suspect might be life-threatening—I want you to evacuate immediately. There’s no sense in taking unnecessary risks if you don’t have to.
‘As for you,’ he said, turning finally to Dakota, ‘you’re going back on board the Hyperion until we need you again. Don’t try anything that would make us unhappy, as you’d only get hurt.’
She couldn’t keep the quaver out of her voice. ‘You can’t kill me, Senator. You need me too much.’
‘That’s true,’ Arbenz replied with a mirthless smile. ‘But we can make things bad enough that you’d wish we had.’
Nineteen
Dakota sat still as a statue aboard the submersible as it rose back up through the frozen inky depths. She felt numb, withdrawn, while Gardner and Arbenz chatted quietly together in their seats. She now sat alone, to the rear of them, ignored and happy to be ignored.
What if she was wrong, she wondered? What if, despite their barbaric, murderous ways, the Freehold could actually pull this off?
People had long dreamed of finding some way to steal the transluminal technology from the Shoal or, better yet, develop their own. It was almost a childhood dream, a power fantasy brought suddenly screaming into real life.
Yet the only certainty Dakota could see was the one Arbenz was avoiding the most: that eventually the Shoal would become aware the Freehold had found a derelict starship, and that they would retaliate.
The sub thudded into place in the main base, and Dakota soon found herself back on the other side of the airlock.
An automated supply shuttle took her back to the Hyperion, accompanied by two troopers who looked like habitual steroid abusers.
To her dismay she found a new skeleton crew of half a dozen had been installed on board the Hyperion, running their own systems checks with an alacrity that alarmed her. The Piri Reis reassured her via remote link, however, that none of her hidden alterations within the memory stacks was likely to be uncovered or detected.
She wished she could have shared the machine’s confidence.
To her surprise, the troopers abandoned her to her own devices once they boarded the Hyperion, rather than confining her to her quarters as she’d expected. At first she wondered if this represented some unexpected level of trust, until it occurred to her that both the Hyperion and the moon base were now little more than unusually roomy prisons.
She found her way, undisturbed and unchallenged, back to the cargo bay and the comforting embrace of the Piri Reis. No matter where she went, Dakota knew, this would always be her home, the one constant in her life, unchanging and ready to yield to her every demand.
She let the Piri’s effigy-form stroke her hair as she lay with her head in its lap.
It didn’t take long for the tears to come.
For a while, she might even have slept.
She dreamed of escape from a building where every exit was blocked. Something was chasing her.
A monster came roaring out of the darkness and killed her. But not before she hurt it, badly. She woke and lay in the darkness for a long time, staring out at nothing, full of a sudden determination.
It’s not over, Senator. Not by a long shot.
When she was finally ready, she opened her Ghost to an ocean of information.
Establish a data link with the machine-head interface aboard the derelict, she ordered Piri Beta. Route and encrypt via Piri Alpha. [Piri Alpha: encrypt and wipe data path post-encryption. No trace.]
But who—
Dakota came to full alertness, adrenalin surging through her.
I knew you were in there, you fucking fish. It’s you, isn’t it? The one that gave me that damn figurine. I knew it. How did you do it? How the fuck did you get in here?
For the first time in her life, even the enclosing walls of the Piri Reis felt like a prison.
Dakota absorbed this information in a state of shock. She realized whatever it was that was speaking to her had almost certainly been transferred into the Hyperion’s systems when she’d placed the statuette on the imaging plate.
She’d been right in thinking there was a spy on board the Hyperion. She’d carried it on board herself, without ever being aware.
But that didn’t explain the niggling sense of significance she felt every time she thought about the figurine. It didn’t explain what was so damned familiar about it.
Piri Alpha, how safe are we from that thing?
It was only her imagination that imbued those words with a sniffy tone.
Dakota thought hard for several seconds, her mind working overtime.
‘I thought artificial intelligence wasn’t possible,’ Dakota said out loud, choosing her words with precision. She needed to get as much information as possible out of whatever was residing within the Hyperion’s stacks. If it had wormed its way in deep enough, it might be able to override the life-support systems and send her, the ship’s atmosphere, and everyone else flying out into space. It could fill every room, shaft and corridor with deadly radiation . . . there was no knowing what it could do, or what it had already been doing all these long weeks. ‘At least, that’s what your lot always claimed. I thought Ghost technology was the only . . .’
The answer came booming out through the Piri’s speakers.
‘Manifold manifestations of “intelligence” exist, dry-skin, and can be utilized, toyed with, manipulated, as the creator might wish. Big Fish may create Little Big Fish, to do the bidding of the firstborn. And I, my dear Dakota, am one of the biggest, hungriest Big Fish of all. To possess such knowledge is to be bitten by such knowledge, even mortally wounded; therefore restriction of said know-how is but a kindness to many species, as well as to your own.’
‘I. . . see.’ So she was speaking to a genuine machine intelligence. Very well, one more secret the Shoal had been keeping to themselves.
‘Understanding within your thoughts is delightfully tasty,’ the alien commented. A visual sense-impression was beginning to form in Dakota’s mind’s eye, transmitted via the Hyperion’s stacks and filtered through her implants, of the Shoal-member she’d met on Bourdain’s Rock swimming within its briny ball of energy.
‘Enjoyment greatly derived from acquisition of understanding that, far below us, in welcoming but chilly depths, lies that which you would seek to fly far, far away. This imposing surfeit of knowingness arrives with me via wings of knowledge, derived from the very same inter-ocean singing by which your colleagues have gained their own understanding of that which lies below.’
‘All
right, so you know about the derelict.’
‘In which precious and delicate matter, Miss Merrick, I might enquire as to whether you might consider it a delight—a healthy, lifespan-prolonging delight—to aid and assist me in the destruction thereof, preventing its further investigation by those big bad fish who have been the cause of so much contretemps in your life of late.’
‘You. . .’ Dakota struggled to understand. ‘You want me to destroy the derelict? Is that what you’re saying?’
‘Your understanding and compliance would be gracious and healthy. Further, there are precise and delicate means by which this matter must be pursued, to wit destruction of said derelict. Such means should be engaged most precisely, lest failure be permitted.’
‘But why destroy it? Why not just. . .’ Dakota had to swallow to clear the sudden thickness from her throat, but she had to know. ‘Why even let the Freehold come here in the first place? Why even tell me all this?’
‘Once more, manifold necessities present themselves, dear Miss Merrick, of a vulgar and varied nature too long and windy for casual discussion. To know is good, and not to know is frequently better. In agreement?’
Ignorance is bliss? Fine.
‘Consider further potential rewards of close attention paid to your task. Enjoyment of extensive lifespan in warm tasty seas, made sweeter by exclusive granting of partial rights to as yet undisclosed, but permitted, Shoal technology.’
‘In return for my silence.’ Destroy the derelict, betray the Freehold, escape, and be rich, if she could take the monster at its word.
‘Consider benefits of continued trade amongst races of galaxy, as facilitated by mighty Shoal, biggest, vastest, mightiest Fish of all. Discovery by Shoal Hegemony of attempt to retrieve derelict would result in punitive measures, leaving human minnows lost in deepest abyssal waters without even means to sing across vacuum seas.
‘End of trade, end of all—woe, woe. But! But bad for Shoal. Much better to hide unfortunate discovery from eyes of all, sweep under planet-sized carpet and walk whistling away, yes?’
‘Which is where I come in.’
‘Huge and magnificent correctness, verified.’
‘I help you sabotage the Freehold’s salvage mission, and we pretend none of this happened. We keep it low-key so none of this registers on the Shoal’s radar, and that way they don’t have to run an embargo against humanity and lose their long-standing relationship with us. That simple?’
‘To be unhelpful in these matters would bring dastardly misfortune upon human species.’
Dakota couldn’t fault his argument. Except that meant helping alien creatures she couldn’t help but hate.
If she aided the Freehold, the alien—his consciousness somehow integrated into the Hyperion—would bring about the collapse of the fledgling interstellar human empire, and still bury any evidence the derelict had ever existed.
Or, she could work with the alien, destroy the derelict, and allow the continued survival of the fragile interstellar network of human colonies. And, if her actions were ever made public, she would earn the enmity and hatred of much of humanity for aiding the Shoal.
On the other hand, what choice did she have but to help the creature? She was already filled with loathing for Kieran Mansell and the Senator, and she desperately wanted to find a way to hurt them . . .
She thought for a long while, and the alien intelligence had the good grace to remain silent until she chose to respond. The situation was so dire, so ridiculous, she even laughed out loud at one point, the sound of her mirth edging uncomfortably close to hysteria.
But if she did help the Shoal, it might increase her chances of survival . . . and maybe give her the time to think of a way out of this mess.
And yet, and yet. . .
There was something missing here. Not so much what the Shoal-member had said, as what he had not said. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but she had the feeling there was something he didn’t want her to know. And whatever that was, it might just turn out to be an advantage.
‘Even if I help you, it doesn’t make us allies,’ she said out loud. ‘So don’t insult me by suggesting it does, you understand me? All this mess is because of your kind. The Uchidan Diaspora, the war with the Freehold—this is all because of you and your fucking colonial contracts.’ She cleared her throat of the foul taste that had gathered there, cold and bitter. ‘Yes, I’ll help you. But not because I want to.’
Alien sense-impressions flooded across the neural bridge of her implants, mostly incomprehensible, but buried deep in there was a very human-seeming sense of satisfaction and triumph. They had all of them been played like puppets.
And then she realized what it was that felt so wrong.
There’s just this one Shoal-member, but where are all the rest of them ? Why send in just one of their own as some kind of software ghost, instead of a whole ship, or even a fleet?
Unless, of course, the Shoal were so powerful they only needed to send in one of their own to defeat the aims of an entire civilization. But that wasn’t quite it either.
Everything this alien had done was underhand. He had infiltrated himself on to the Hyperion via Dakota (which also begged the question of how the alien could possibly have known she would eventually find her way into working as a reluctant pilot for the Freehold), and then remained almost entirely silent for the duration of the journey to Nova Arctis.
Why did he insist on engaging her in such an elaborate charade?
What was he hiding?
—
The digitized shadow that thought of himself as Trader-In-Faecal-Matter-Of-Animals observed Dakota with amusement. Even if she stumbled on the truth, she would have no choice but to do exactly what he wanted her to do regardless.
Trader had modelled his software environment to create the illusion of a limitless ocean, an eternal blackness that replicated the gentle drift of Mother Sea’s embrace. The creature that had spoken with Dakota was very close to being an accurate model of the original Trader: every circuit, subroutine and protocol aboard the Hyperion—plus a few hidden Shoal neural processors, well out of sight, without which the human computer systems would have provided insufficient processing power—were bent to generating his self-image and consciousness.
Mental processes of near infinite complexity had been magically compressed into the tiniest of virtual environments, entirely equivalent to taking a Deep Dreamer and squeezing it down until it occupied barely the same space as an amoeba. Such limitations prevented the digitized Trader from feeling regret that its existence was by necessity a brief affair.
To destroy the derelict and the transluminal drive within by conventional means would be to risk detection, for Shoal monitoring networks within transluminal space existed precisely to detect the complex radiations thereby produced.
And that would never do. The subsequent investigation would certainly lead to unanticipated and deeply embarrassing revelations concerning long-hidden factions within the Hegemony, for whom Trader was the prime mover when it came to dirty work.
And that would really never do.
Far, far better that the greater masses of Shoal throughout the galaxy never learned the truth contained within the derelict—never learned of the great and terrible crime that had been committed so very long ago, albeit for the highest and noblest of reasons. The destruction of the last survivors of an entire civilization—of even the knowledge of that civilization’s existence was far from a minor consideration.
The Deep Dreamers had indicated that something of great and future significance lay in the near future, and clearly the derelict now took centre stage. And this despite the fact that other copies of Trader existed in other places, monitoring other, potential near-future causal hotspots—a way of spreading the bet, as it were.
Clearly, however, the Dreamers had been on the money where Dakota was concerned.
Trader’s purpose was to ensure her actions, and those of the Freehold, did not affect the secu
rity and stability of the Shoal Hegemony. The future was to a certain degree predictable—but it was most certainly not immutable.
—
Corso found himself wondering what it would be like to live entirely in a world without shadows. The Hyperion’s simulations hadn’t come close to the maddening reality: every surface here was illuminated to an equal degree, still with no apparent source for that radiation.
At one point, by way of experimentation, he squatted on his haunches and tried to block out the all-pervading light by tucking his head in against his chest and covering his head with his arms. It worked to a certain extent, but he quickly came to realize there was a ... a misty quality to the derelict’s atmosphere, which suggested some form of luminous gas all around them. That theory might have made sense if the air piped into the derelict via the Freehold’s filtration system remained visibly luminescent outside the ship itself, but as soon as you stepped beyond the hull and into the tunnel leading to the submersible, the luminescence vanished.
It was strangely like entering a dream world.
‘According to the map, we’ve now gained access to almost two-thirds of the derelict,’ said Kieran, watching Corso as he worked. ‘Are we getting any closer yet to locating the bridge?’
‘You’re assuming there is any equivalent of a bridge,’ Corso replied. ‘Even the Shoal don’t appear to have anything like the human equivalent. Far as anyone knows, they just float around in a central space according to some ancient shoaling instinct, and issue commands according to social protocols we know almost nothing about.’
‘Then there’ll be a hub, at least, one or more central points from where the ship can be controlled.’ Kieran sounded like he’d stubbornly made his mind up.
Corso sighed and returned to his work, making minute physical adjustments to the interface chair’s neural circuitry. Kieran, along with the Senator, appeared to believe flying the damn fossil out of the Nova Arctis system in a blaze of glory was merely a matter of applying a can-do attitude.
One adjustment in particular seemed to make a difference: a minor tweak to improve the rate of dataflow between the human and alien software configurations, but one glance at a handheld screen he’d plugged into the chair suggested he’d turned a spigot and let loose a waterfall.
