Iron Gods

by Andrew Bannister

  Then the machine gave a little side-to-side waggle. ‘I have conferred with the AI. We assume that this facility is unknown to you. Has it been forgotten completely?’

  The ship didn’t seem to have known, she realized. Nor had any of the others, including Patras. ‘Probably yes.’

  ‘But you are here. Why?’

  She laughed. ‘You lit up a whole planet bright green. It’s a bit obvious.’

  ‘So it will be obvious to others.’ There was another silence. Then the thing spoke, and its voice sounded different.

  ‘I am the Avatar of the Archive, which was established to confine, to protect and, if necessary, to warn. You have responded to a warning, but it is clear that you do not know how to respond. There is a protocol for this, which is that the Archive is opened to general inspection.’

  ‘No, wait.’ Seldyan took a step towards the thing, which didn’t retreat. ‘Remember I don’t know anything. Confine what?’

  Behind her she heard an indrawn breath. Then Belbis said, ‘The Gods.’

  She turned to him and shook her head. ‘Belbis? This is beyond that. I’m really sorry but your paintings were just paintings.’

  ‘But they weren’t.’

  It was the Avatar. She spun round and stared at it. ‘You’re kidding.’

  ‘No. They were the output of a deliberately designed system. Your companion is another output, in a way.’

  She glanced back at Belbis and saw that he was shaking. She wasn’t surprised. She would have been, too. If she allowed herself. She turned and shot out an arm, trying to catch the floating box of riddles. It flicked back an arm’s length, so fast that it seemed almost to have existed in two places at once for a moment. ‘Explain yourself, you little box of shit. Once, and clearly. You need to know that I have a warship, close by. If you don’t start making sense I’ll—’

  ‘You will fail to make contact, as you have failed every day since you arrived here. Please don’t make empty threats. Besides, you may find your warship has other things to detain it.’

  She blinked. ‘Other things?’

  ‘Other warships. Did you think yours was the only one? Ten have arrived while we have been conversing.’

  ‘Ah …’ She looked for something to sit down on, and selected one of the Housekeepers’ pallets. It wasn’t as hard as it looked. She looked up at the Avatar. ‘You need to understand something. I don’t know about this stuff, okay? I came here because your green light stuff is fucking up a million people’s lives. I want it stopped.’

  ‘This was expected. A million is well within the gamed margins.’

  ‘Are you saying it’s not a problem?’ She leaned forwards, glaring.

  ‘The current population of the Spin is approximately seven hundred billion. Compared with that, a million is not a problem.’

  Her eyes widened. ‘Wait. There’s something here that could affect the whole Spin?’

  ‘Yes, in a way. It would be better to say there’s something here which could obliterate the whole Spin, and a significant space around it.’

  She stared at the little wooden thing for a long time. ‘Okay,’ she said eventually. ‘Tell me the rest.’ She glanced sideways at Belbis and added, ‘Us. Tell us the rest.’

  Hive

  THE HAND ON his shoulder roused him. For a moment he half dreamed it was Dimollss; he rolled over and got ready to tell her that there was something dangerous. Then he woke properly. It was the smell that had confused him – he was back in the Hive, and the danger was all his.

  He sat up. He wasn’t in one of the sleep cells, because they had made it gleefully clear to him that whatever was going to happen to him when the things hatched, was going to happen publicly. He slept on a pallet on the floor in the refectory. A good place to watch juvenile insects burst out of a human body, they thought.

  There was nothing to feel yet. He didn’t know what it would feel like when it began. He didn’t allow himself to think about what it would feel like when it was properly under way.

  It definitely wasn’t Dimollss who had woken him. The pale, elderly man put a finger to his greyish lips, nodded, and turned away. Vess got to his feet and followed. The refectory was watched less intensively than the sleep cells, but it was still watched. They had a few minutes at the most, but where he was going that could be stretched to a lifetime. He hoped.

  The Stack was already in progress – had probably been so for a while. He lay down next to one of the motionless bodies and relaxed while the probe was fitted.

  And he was floating in the warm nothing. He had to force himself to wait. His intellect knew that there was no hurry, but his fear was running on real-world time.

  The wait wasn’t as long as he feared.

  Welcome back.

  ‘Thank you.’

  There’s nothing to worry about now. You can stay here as long as you want – live out as many lifetimes as you can imagine. Some of us do.

  ‘Thank you, but that isn’t quite what I want.’

  There was a watchful moment.

  Go on.

  ‘I don’t want for ever. I’m not sure I need it.’ Or deserve it, he thought, and hoped that was somehow private. ‘But – you know about the thing in my body?’

  Of course.

  ‘It has a mind. You are talking to my mind. Can you talk to it as well?’

  Perhaps. Why?

  ‘Because I have an idea. Will you indulge me by trying?’

  Will it do harm?

  He had wondered that. But then, the Stack mind had shown him its collective strength when he had first met it. ‘I don’t think it will try, but if it does, be ready.’

  We will.

  There was a short moment of – disorder, and then a sensation of something regrouping.

  We cannot talk to it. It is too alien and too old.

  ‘How old?’

  More disorder. Then:

  The question is meaningless because there is no frame of reference long enough.

  Vess felt his inner self trying to grin. ‘It’s immortal,’ he suggested.

  Perhaps. Its memories are far, far older than its body. Did you know this?

  ‘I suspected it, because of the way it reproduces. A gestalt entity that produces a new group from a seed unit, and each unit can act independently?’

  Yes. You’re right. The collective memory goes back to the dawn of its intellect.

  He hesitated. ‘But you can’t talk to it. Can you access the memories?’

  That would be intrusive.

  He felt himself blink. ‘Well, yes. But if you’re speaking of being intrusive, consider where it is and what it is about to do.’

  Very well.

  And a gap.

  Ah. This is interesting. Vess? The creature is only barely rational but there are things in its recall that we can show you.

  ‘Go on.’

  Images, not in his head but as if he was observing from outside. Dense forest, thick with moulds and giant fungi and dripping wet – always wet. And everywhere, the many creatures that were one. They were … Vess struggled with words. It was life that had no limit to memory and a million versions of its collective self. Life that was a gestalt that just continued. It could evolve very fast if it wished, using deliberate memory, but for thousands of generations it had no cause. It lived in balance with the prey creatures of its sole environment; it maintained its numbers and its huge, distributed, longitudinal consciousness.

  Then, cause had happened, but it happened so fast there was no time for a response. The ecosystem changed; within days the air became poison and the water, acid.

  One gestalt unit had escaped.

  Vess blinked. ‘Just one?’

  Yes. Vut. Not a predecessor; this gestalt.

  ‘Oh.’ At first he didn’t know what to add. Then it occurred to him. ‘How long ago did this happen?’

  Difficult to be certain. We think, about ten thousand years ago, standard.

  Vess stared into the nothing of the
Stack for a long time. I’ve only been alone for one lifetime, he thought. Not a hundred or more.

  ‘Someone destroyed its planet. Does it know why?’

  It seems to, but it can’t express itself. Vess? This creature is not the only mind that we can see.

  ‘Mine too?’

  Yes. We can see what is being done. Alliances have been struck, promises made, much money borrowed. Or-Shls is gambling everything on one prize. We guessed something, of course; much of this manic military tooling-up has been Hive-work, and it has pulled resources in from a wide pool. But this collaboration with half the races in the Spin? This is very bad. If we were squeezed before, how much worse will it get now?

  ‘What will you do?’

  We will act. It’s probably better if we don’t say how, but you might like to think about what the name Hive means.

  Vess was puzzled. ‘It means what it says, surely? A hive.’

  It does now, but its origin is different. It used to be short for High Value. We think it still is, and that gives us a certain leverage which we intend to use. Meanwhile, in turn, what will you do? We would like to help you.

  The question took him aback. ‘What do you think I’ll do? I’ll die; soon.’

  Maybe. Maybe not.

  He listened carefully.

  He lay face-down on the cot. His back itched – a baleful internal itch that no scratching would help. If he turned his face to the side he knew he would see the nervous guards.

  They had talked through what was to happen, before he left the Stack.

  They will watch you closely, when the time comes.

  ‘I hope they enjoy the spectacle.’

  Perhaps – but that won’t be the main reason. Creatures will emerge, remember? They will want to contain them, at least – probably kill them.

  Vess mentally frowned. ‘Killing new-borns?’

  You are – astonishing, hater-of-insects. Are you prepared?

  ‘As much as I can be.’

  And now, he hoped he was. From behind him he heard a voice. ‘Fuck. It’s moving. Can you see it?’

  ‘Get ready …’

  And he did, although he knew the last comment hadn’t been aimed at him. But the itch became something else: a sharp, insistent gnawing that became …

  He took a shuddering breath and screamed, and screamed, and screamed, while the infant insects ate their way out of his body.

  Then it was – not over, it was impossible for agony like that ever to be over, he would feel it to the end of his life … but not active. He had wounds, many wounds; but they were what they were.

  He was alive.

  The creatures may elect to make the hatching non-fatal.

  He heard the sounds of energy discharges from close by.

  He lay still. As far as they’re concerned you’re dead, he thought. Maybe the creatures are too; who knows?

  The discharges stopped. There was a breathless silence. Then Vess almost jumped as strident alarms howled.

  Presumably they weren’t all dead, then. He wondered how fast they could move.

  There was the sound of anxious orders and then running feet, receding.

  After a long time, hands took hold of him and he was lifted. The movement flexed his wounds; even as he got ready to howl with pain, darkness rose to meet him.

  Vess stood at the edge of the Great Basin and watched the water rising slowly. If he kept his gaze limited to the confines of the Basin, everything looked much the same. The reflection of the Lay Palace trembled a little as a breeze moved across the water, and the tops of the supporting columns of the Cloud Deck were veiled in mist. The Basin was nearly full. Within minutes the weight would trigger the catches and the vast bowl would slide downwards, pulling up the boat lift to meet the First Middle Dock.

  Vess raised his eyes from the water and stared up at the nearest support chain. He knew what he was going to do. He just didn’t know if it was going to work.

  It had been a slow journey. That had suited Vess, who had no further need to chase anything across the Spin, and who had some healing to do.

  It had been many days since his supposed corpse had been loaded into the garbage pod and fired out of the Hive. Almost as many since the pod had been intercepted by the ancient, eccentric vessel which seemed to be friends with the Stack. He still wasn’t sure how that worked.

  He hadn’t known it at the time but as well as its official cargo of his body, the pod had an unofficial cargo – half of the infant members of the gestalt that were now calling themselves the Vutvess. They were almost affectionate. Vess had yet to work out how he felt about that.

  He could communicate with them up to a point; they used a form of telepathy between themselves, and if they worked hard they could extend it to their former host.

  They had been very apologetic. He had been almost – flattered, once he got past all his other emotions. It had been a monumental act of trust – of faith, nearly.

  The ship, which against all the evidence called itself an Orbiter, had let them in without question. It was definitely eccentric. The inside was divided into different habitats, separated from each other by gauzy force fields which allowed just enough air movement to stop things getting stale. The Vutvess liked the rainforest habitat best. Vess preferred one of the semi-arid zones. He spent a lot of his time watching the news. There were far more channels, suddenly. Most of them showed strident, probably enhanced images of the same distant space battle. When he felt well enough to be analytical he drilled in to the detail a bit, and found that the battle had lasted about four minutes. It seemed to have produced hours of footage.

  The other footage was of things happening at home. That showed a changing picture. They had begun with food riots, but now they showed a rather tense-looking calm, and a lot of people wearing uniforms. Some of the uniforms looked familiar, but it took him a moment to place them. Then he remembered. He had seen them in briefings on neighbouring civilizations, when he was still Harbour Master. Not all of the civilizations had been friendly.

  And now he was healed, enough to move normally, and the Orbiter had just made its breathy throat-clearing noise.

  ‘We are almost there.’

  Vess nodded. ‘Will you wait for me?’

  ‘Of course. I can’t do anything else. The shuttle is ready.’

  ‘Thank you.’ That had been another surprise; most orbital craft would have depended on others for loading and unloading. This one had a neat, very old-fashioned-looking atmosphere-capable shuttle, and it had been polite but insistent that it preferred not to dock with anything itself.

  Vess settled into the shuttle, wincing just a little as the wounds on his back pressed into the couch. Half an hour later he had been back on the mountain top, where apparently his identity still allowed him to enter the administrative space of the Inside, and by dawn he was at Basin City.

  The place seemed to be under new management. There was no mention of Or-Shls on any of the news channels. He had asked a few people. No one had said anything, but most had nodded upwards and then moved on. The meaning of upwards had been clear. Or-Shls was on the Cloud Deck – had been there for some time.

  Vess had not looked for Clo Fiffithiss.

  There was a soft thump that he felt mainly through his feet, and the ground gave a gentle shudder. The catch had tripped. It was time.

  Vess had positioned himself near the edge of the Basin. Behind him, less than five metres from the edge, rose one of the two great rusted iron columns that supported the fulcrum. On the other side of it, the fat wire ropes that lifted the Dock were blurring upwards at their ten-times geared-up speed.

  There were platforms on the columns. One was coming into view as the Basin moved downwards.

  When Vess had been a child he had played, and then as he got older often fled, among the columns and lifts and cables that had festooned his ground-level world.

  Surely these were just the same? Only much bigger, and hundreds of metres further from the ground.
But that difference was just in his mind, he told himself. And tried to believe it. He backed five paces away from the edge, took a deep breath, and ran.

  He covered the empty space between the Basin and the platform with his arms and legs flailing, and landed, arms spread, against the column with a solid crash that knocked the wind out of him.

  There was no time for recovery; the cables were accelerating. Sobbing for breath, he edged round the platform until he was facing the rusted steel trunks, flexed his knees and jumped. Another crash, and he was holding on to the cable with arms and legs – and slipping.

  The cable was greased. He hadn’t thought of that. He could just make his hands meet behind it; he locked his fingers together and squeezed as hard as he could. The bunches of twisted wires that made up the cable ground over his tensed muscles as if they were trying to pulp him – and he was still slipping.

  His feet scrabbled against the cable but the surface was too shallowly indented to give any foothold. Much more of this and he would have lost too much ground.

  Then something sliced into the inside of his thigh. He gave a hoarse roar of pain and his head snapped forwards to look down.

  The cable was frayed. A knotted clump of wires stuck out from the twist, and they had dragged into his thigh. His muscles were already getting ready to pull himself free when he forced them to stop.

  He was no longer sliding. He gritted his teeth and stayed still. Not long now.

  The cable was thrumming. They were getting close to the massive pulleys of the headstock. Impaled or not, he was going to have to let go soon, or he’d be pulled through the giant-scale block-and-tackle. It would grind him to nothing.

  He craned his neck and stared upwards. There should be another platform, almost at the top of the column. There wasn’t. There were just blunt, rust-eroded iron brackets.

  He had run out of choices. As the brackets swung down past him he unclamped his hands and let his unpierced leg swing out. As his foot met the bracket he let go with everything else.

  He got one foot in place.

  The frayed wire tore from his leg with the pain of an amputation. He heard himself wail with agony – and then he was standing on the bracket with the only foot that would fit, hugging the column with both arms.