The Beauty of Destruction

by Gavin G. Smith

  ‘Are you trying to drive us both mad?’ Beth shouted at him.

  ‘Our communications are often carried by human mediums for convenience’s sake but the Circle has its own satellite network and it’s very secure.’

  ‘But it’s been compromised, right?’

  Du Bois frowned. ‘I don’t think that’s what everyone else heard when they answered their phones. That wasn’t them.’

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘I think that was Control, one of the Circle’s AIs, artificial intelligences, and I think it was in pain.’

  ‘So they can’t tell you what to do?’ Beth asked. She had expected anger but instead she saw momentary confusion on du Bois’s face. Then the ground shook. They stared at each other. For a moment Beth wondered if the thing in the Solent had burrowed through the earth and was coming for them. She followed du Bois out of the hangar and into bright light.

  It looked like a white sun was rising in the south. Her vision darkened, polarising, and she swallowed hard.

  ‘Is that a nuclear bomb?’ she asked. Even to herself she sounded like a frightened little girl. Du Bois nodded. ‘Portsmouth?’ He nodded again.

  ‘A tactical nuke, probably delivered by an artillery shell. All the missiles will be compromised. If I had to guess it was probably fired from Salisbury Plain. The British aren’t supposed to have tac nukes.’

  ‘Your Circle?’ she asked as a warm wind blew across the runway. She was aware of the radiation she was soaking up but she also knew that the technology inside her could easily handle it.

  ‘They certainly have the resources for something like this.’

  ‘Will it … will it deal with the problem?’

  ‘Possibly,’ du Bois said. He didn’t sound convinced. He turned and walked back towards the Range Rover.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Beth called, unable to turn away from the fading light in the south.

  ‘London.’

  3

  A Long Time After the Loss

  He may not have had the soft-tech augments or the combat neunonics gifted by the Dark Mother but he felt exhilaration, not fear. He may have been on the bottom rung of the hierarchy according to the Murder Darwinists, still unproven, but he wanted to kill. He wanted to find out if he could taste the tiny machines in the blood, the machines he had heard stories about but didn’t quite believe in.

  He was small, lean, and pale from his time in the dark. They’d been fed little and had to fight for that. He looked down at the chitinous, barbed, spear-like weapon grafts. He knew if he fought enough, killed enough, then one day he could have hands. Maybe even a name. He knew the name he wanted but he would have to live up to that one. As a neophyte he knew he was little more than a hunting animal.

  The neophytes of the rival street tribe were loping towards them, some of them on two limbs, others on more. He was out ahead of the rest of the Darwinist neophytes; he leapt up onto the wide, low lip of the catwalk, the gas clouds far below him looking like they were trapped in glass. The first enemy neophyte swung a fused, club-like limb at him. He somersaulted sideways over his opponent. Landing behind him, he twisted and rammed the spear-graft into his enemy’s back. His first kill happened so quickly, so instinctively, he barely registered what he had done, let alone had time to savour the warm splash of red.

  Both of his graft arms were dripping, his pale naked body was spattered in blood. He could hear the older Darwinists coming up behind him, the rough bark of projectile weapons as they put injured neophytes out of their misery. He used his boot to push an enemy with mandibles off his spear-graft, the barbs tearing at the flesh as they were ripped free. He strode towards the ziggurat. The way the stepped building’s smart matter opened for him reminded him of sex. He stopped for a moment. He knew he should not go any further, that was for the higher ranks, so they could receive their gifts. He was gripped by a compulsion, a wanting. He wanted to know what was in there. He speared the dead enemy neophyte again, an offering, and then dragged the body through the opening.

  He didn’t really understand the feeling of disappointment at the plain, empty chamber inside the ziggurat. He let the corpse of his victim drop to the floor. He heard a cracking noise. He looked down to see black tendrils growing from the floor into the enemy neophyte’s head.

  ‘Do you want hands?’ He didn’t understand the inflection in the words. He was always told what he had to do. It almost sounded like there was some kind of option here. Despite the clattering of the mandibles and his victim’s apparent base-male gender, there was something feminine and seductive about the voice emanating from the corpse. He wasn’t sure if his blood-stained erection was from the killing or the sound of the voice.

  He ran through the options. He was supposed to earn his hands through acts of blood. He would be killed if someone or something outside of the Murder Darwinists provided them, therefore if he wanted hands he would have to prevent this from happening. It seemed simple once he had thought it through. Making a decision was still something of a new experience.

  He almost cried out as the tendrils grew from the smart matter and pierced the pale flesh of his leg, but pain was a friend, a teacher; sweat still beaded his bloody skin. He felt movement in his body, then the pain in the barbed spear-grafts made him stagger and almost fall to his knees. He watched them change. He found himself looking at four fingers and a thumb on each hand as the last of the chitinous barbs sank into his flesh, the matter transformed and reused.

  ‘I …’ the neophyte started. ‘I want more.’

  The corpse started to buck on the floor, its chest caving in as its base matter was harvested to make an egg. One of the Dark Mother’s ‘gifts’. The neophyte plunged his hand into the chest cavity, fingers closed around the egg and he yanked it out, his fist still red but now dripping again. He held the egg in front of his eyes and watched it ‘hatch’, the harvested carbon changing at a molecular level, growing and transforming into his gift. A projectile weapon, a large frame, old-fashioned revolver, a tumbler pistol.

  ‘That is mine.’ Suddenly he was standing in the shadow of a bulky figure in the ziggurat’s doorway.

  ‘I don’t think I’m a neophyte any more, Evisceral.’

  ‘The first half of your statement is correct. Hand me the gun, neophyte.’

  He continued to stare at the red dripping gun held in his fist. The tumbler pistol couldn’t belong to Evisceral. It felt like it had always been his. It was an extension of his new-grown hand, little different from the weapon grafts.

  ‘I want a name,’ he said, still not looking at the Murder Darwinists’ leader.

  ‘You will get rendered down for this insolence,’ Evisceral told him. There were other named members of the Darwinists crowding around behind him. Nobody ever did anything like this. Everyone knew their place.

  ‘When I rest, behind my eyes, I see a tower of bone.’ He turned to look at Evisceral. ‘Do you see a tower of bone?’

  For a moment the gang leader didn’t seem to know how to respond, then his face hardened. ‘Give me the gun, neophyte, now!’

  ‘I have a name now.’ Ever since he had slithered, wet and half grown, from the smart matter exo-womb in the walls, he’d heard whispers that his genetic code came from the Bad Seed line. ‘My name is Scab.’ He levelled the tumbler pistol at Evisceral’s head and squeezed the trigger, nice and sweet.

  Scab wasn’t sure why the memory of his first kill had come to mind. He was not one for dwelling on the past and this … glory that he was witness to, even holographically, despite having witnessed it in action himself, was still a thing to behold.

  They were in a windowless, stone-walled, open plan room, part split-level lounge and part conference room, high up in the hundred-mile-long habitat that was the Cathedral, the Church’s base of operations.

  At first Scab had thought the ten-foot-tall golden armoured form of Churchman was an automaton. Perhaps it was the bulbous tinted visor between its shoulders that changed his mind but Scab w
as beginning to believe it was some sort of exoskeleton. He was sitting on a throne-like chair against the interior wall.

  The Monk, whose name was apparently Beth, was Talia’s sister. This meant that she had been alive before the Fall and the loss of Earth. Or at least her original body had – Scab had killed her at least twice himself. She was leaning against the wall to the left of Churchman. Tall, lean, athletic looking, her head completely shaved. She was dressed in a simple black gi and was watching the holographic display with a look of concentration.

  Talia was sitting on a mouldable cushion affair, low to the floor, staring in horror at what the hologram was showing. She was wearing a leather corset with a lace dress underneath it. The dress had a flared skirt. Her clothes were all in black to go with her hair and her eye make-up.

  Elodie, his sometime consort, a feline intrusion and kick-murder specialist, was reclined on a chaise longue the room had grown for her from the smart matter. She had been body sculpted to look almost human except for her feline eyes, ears and the dark downy fur that covered her body. In her chitin-style armoured bodice and thigh-length boots, she looked as elegant as she looked bored. The feline was inspecting her envenomed nails and ignoring the holographic display. Her long, animated hair braid, ending in a spike, was swishing from side to side impatiently, like a tail.

  The chair that the room had grown for Vic, his seven-foot-tall, hard-tech augmented, insect partner, actually looked comfortable. Scab had tried to subtly hack the room’s smart matter to make the seat less so but the Cathedral’s security systems were more trouble than they were worth for something so petty. Vic was staring at the holographic display, mandibles agape in what Scab suspected the ’sect thought was a human expression of horror. Scab knew it for what it was, a humanophile’s affectation. Vic was trying too hard. Again.

  Scab’s personal satellite, a small black sphere containing sensors, electronic warfare hard- and software, and a laser normally used for personal point defence, hovered on its anti-gravity motor just over his left shoulder. The P-sat provided information on his surroundings and the other people in the room via interface with Scab’s neunonics, but it was the hologram that had most of his attention. He was watching a star being consumed by what looked like a swarm of squirming black bacteria or maggots. It was the thing he had seen in Red Space when they had found the Seeder ship Talia had been on. The thing he had summoned with the girl’s blood and the blank Elodie had stolen from Mr Hat, the diminutive lizard bounty hunter with the god complex who was pursuing them. Watching the swarm consuming a ship, even a fleet of ships, was one thing. Seeing it eat a star was another. He watched the red sun grow dimmer and dimmer in the black sky. It was a level of destruction far in excess of even what he had wrought as an Elite. It took him a moment to realise that the feeling spreading through him was his under-utilised sense of wonder.

  ‘Beautiful,’ Scab found himself saying. Talia looked at him, horrified. Vic shook his head, another human affectation. The rest of them ignored him, though he couldn’t shake the feeling that Churchman was staring at him through the tinted visor.

  ‘That thing …’ Talia started. The fear in her voice was unmistakeable. Scab could smell it on her. He was sure that before the Fall she’d had some kind of experience with the thing. The image was becoming darker as the sun was consumed. Finally the room was almost dark. He suppressed his feelings of contempt when he heard Talia sob.

  Suddenly they were bathed in the orange glow that illuminated all of the Cathedral, though Scab would have preferred the blood-coloured light of Red Space that lay outside the Church’s hidden base. Two of the walls, apparently smart matter, became transparent. The interior facing wall looked down on the cloudy fifteen-mile drop to the dolphin pools far below, the main chamber of the Cathedral. The now-transparent smart matter wall on the other side of the room looked out on one of the gothic flying buttresses, its foundations far below in an asteroid. One of the three capital ships present at the Cathedral, each one the size of a small city in its own right, was passing outside – silent, ponderous and balletic. A heavy boarding/ground assault shuttle was setting down on the landing platform embedded into the massive flying buttress.

  ‘What is it?’ Vic asked.

  ‘We don’t know,’ Churchman’s deep, obviously modulated voice boomed. ‘We know it consumes matter.’

  Talia’s face scrunched up in concentration as she wiped tears of eyeliner off her face.

  ‘Conservation of energy …’ she managed. She seemed to be dredging through some long-distant memory. Scab turned to look at her. The Monk could not hide the expression of surprise on her face. ‘What? I liked physics at school.’

  ‘The teacher was attractive, wasn’t he?’ the Monk said, smiling.

  ‘Fuck off,’ Talia muttered.

  ‘What does conservation of energy mean?’ Vic asked.

  It took Scab a moment to realise the odd noise emanating from Churchman’s exoskeleton was a sigh. ‘Is that information not in your neunonics, Mr Matto?’ Churchman asked.

  ‘Obviously not,’ Vic said irritably. ‘Or I wouldn’t have asked.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t seem very important these days, but then the uplifted races are a parasitical species,’ Churchman continued. The Monk rolled her eyes.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Vic demanded. The ’sect seemed to have overcome his fear of being captured by the Church, judging by the way he was speaking to Churchman.

  ‘That we have spent too long relying on the benefits of S- and L-tech …’ the head of the Church started.

  ‘L-tech?’ Vic asked.

  ‘What you call S-tech is actually two kinds of technology. Seeder tech is the soft-tech, the biologically derived technology of the alien progenitors of the uplifted species. L-tech is the hard-tech, the material technology such as Mr Scab’s energy javelin, and the technology from which the Cathedral itself is derived.’

  ‘What does the L stand for?’ Vic persisted.

  ‘Lloigor,’ the Churchman told the ’sect. Vic shook his head. Scab had never heard the name before. Talia looked mystified, but then she would, and Elodie was still examining her nails.

  ‘All we know about them comes from examining their technological artefacts and talking to the frequently damaged or corrupted AIs within those artefacts, the Lloigor’s machine servants. As far as we can tell they lived in a universe that predated ours. They ascended but did not survive the destruction of their universe.’

  ‘Are you saying that Scab’s energy javelin is older than the universe?’ Vic asked.

  ‘No. More likely, when the Lloigor’s machines bridged into this universe they did so with some kind of assembler with a powerful AI driving it. One of the original AI’s offspring or descendants would have created Mr Scab’s weapon, which is among one of the least of their technologies.’

  ‘We may look for these artefacts,’ Vic said. ‘They may be powerful enough for the corporations and the noble houses to fight over, but that doesn’t make us parasites.’

  Scab started to laugh as he realised what Churchman was telling them. ‘Everything?’

  ‘Everything of worth. Bridge technology, our information and communication infrastructure, nanotechnology, material science, augmentation of our bodies, all of it is derived in one way or another from L- or S-tech. With a little help from social conditioning we just stopped trying. We’re too lazy, too self-absorbed, and too busy trying to crawl all over each other for a slightly bigger slice of shit that we can’t be bothered to develop our own science and technology. And why should we, when we can just cannibalise the remnants of more advanced alien civilisations?’

  ‘Well that’s fucking depressing,’ Talia muttered. ‘Surely you’re trying to improve on it.’

  ‘Mostly we’re trying to reverse engineer it. The Seeders and the Lloigor were so far in advance of us that any progress made outside of these walls tends to be for privatised profit rather than the betterment of all.’

&nbs
p; Scab frowned. He didn’t really understand what Churchman was talking about. People only ever did things for gain. There was no betterment of all because the person next to you was just competition for resources, unless they could be used in a way that meant they contributed more than they cost. That was just the way people were, regardless of their species or gender. It was the way things had always been.

  ‘And this place, your secret base, it’s L-tech?’ Vic asked. Scab heard Elodie sigh.

  ‘Yes, but this isn’t just our base. This entire facility is basically one big telescope. We use bridge technology to study real space from here,’ Churchman said. Suddenly Scab found himself paying more attention. He noticed Elodie look up from her nails as well. There was a slack-mandibled expression on Vic’s face. It was clear that it was going above the ’sect’s head.

  ‘Why?’ Vic asked.

  ‘What do you mean “why”?’ the Monk asked, exasperated. ‘To find things out, expand our knowledge.’ Scab knew enough about his ‘partner’ to know the ’sect was confused. Information was only useful when it could be used for gain. Knowledge for the sake of knowledge would make no sense to Vic. Like seemingly everyone else in Known Space, Vic had very little in the way of curiosity.

  ‘Why a cathedral?’ Talia asked. The golden armoured form shifted slightly on the throne to look at her.

  ‘A crucible for the transformation of man,’ Churchman said.

  ‘But apparently not women,’ the Monk muttered.

  ‘Conservation of energy?’ Scab asked. His head was starting to throb.

  ‘Talia?’ Churchman asked.

  Talia’s face screwed up in concentration. ‘Energy can’t be created, or destroyed, only transferred. Something like that.’

  The Monk was smiling.

  ‘Close enough,’ Churchman said. Scab was pretty sure that if Churchman had a face he would have been smiling in a patronising manner.