Lockdown Tales

by Neal Asher

  ‘Anything else you’ll need?’ he asked.

  She looked at him with an amused smile. ‘Just go.’ Turning away she headed back inside the shuttle.

  He collected the wheelbarrow but didn’t bother with any tools – unplugging the house supply he could do easily without them. Getting it into the wheelbarrow would be a bit of a chore, however because the thing was so heavy. He would have to separate the stack and carry it in pieces. Already thinking on that work he was soon out of sight of the shuttle.

  When he finally reached the house he dumped the barrow outside and immediately went in to see to his needs. He ate a large amount, but still not as much as he had been used to eating before, drank a lot of water then made himself coffee. Sitting outside, he watched the interminable day and relaxed. Once he had finished his drink it was time to hit his bed. He undressed this time, because he could, because it was easy now, slid under the old heat sheets and fibrous blanket, and remembered no more.

  After waking he cooked some mantid meat and vegetables, and made more coffee, mainly because he was feeling anxious about detaching the power supply. Finally ready, he went and opened the back cupboard and gazed in at the stack of capacitor batteries. The first three quarters of the stack consisted of single slabs a foot across and they were the ones he had taken from the shuttle. The remaining quarter consisted of plugged-together units taken from podules. Should he take that remaining quarter? He thought so because, not being resupplied by its own system, the shuttle would likely need a lot of power. These capacitor batteries also acted as convertor cells for the peroxide that had been stored in the tank that now contained his sewerage.

  Reluctantly, he turned off the switch to his house power and pulled the two leads. Out to the barrow and back; in five trips he had the whole stack loaded. He looked around. Nothing else to do really, so shutting the door he set out.

  When he arrived at the shuttle, Anna was up on the roof doing something with the steering thruster. As he drew closer she turned and jumped down, already knowing beforehand he was approaching. The drop was ten feet but she landed and straightened as if jumping down from a fraction of that height.

  ‘I didn’t know whether to come to you or wait.’ She eyed the battery stack. ‘We need to connect that up and run a brief test, then I’ll probably need to make some adjustments.’

  Inside the shuttle the grav motor was sealed up again, all its components back in place and all the wiring and optics as neat as if fresh out of a shipyard. They carried in the battery stack, opened a panel in the floor of the cockpit and installed it, including the podules cells. With the extra content the panel would not close, so Ben put it to one side. He then stooped, his hand hovering over the power switch.

  ‘It’s just occurred to me how many shorts there’ll be in here,’ he said.

  She shook her head. ‘I’ve isolated it to power the grav motor only. Later we’ll have to check things out when we run power to the thruster turret.’

  He clicked the switch over.

  The shuttle lurched briefly, and he could feel the backwash of the grav engine.

  ‘Okay.’ She reached past him and shut off the power. ‘I’ll run some tests, secure everything and ensure the controls are working. You need to get that turret installed.’

  He nodded, grinning, and set to work, first moving a floor plate into position where he needed it, then finding something to stand on. He took down ceiling panels for access to the underside of the turret, first secured the turret and engaging the cog wheel. Next he connected up the hydraulics. By now Anna was back down in the floor space finishing up some work there. Optics and power supply next, then finally the flexible fuel hose. It all went easily, surprisingly so. He had expected to have to find some leads or hoses elsewhere in the shuttle but got them all from the other turrets and their sockets. Finally he stepped down, his back and arms aching, but it was a muscular ache and satisfying.

  He watched Anna; having finished below she was now putting the floor plates back. He assisted, briefly, to put two in place and bolt them down at the back, then went outside. Here he began transporting inside all those pieces he had collected over the years. By the time he started to run out of room on the two plates, Anna had finished securing the rest. She joined him outside, stepping over to stoop and pick up one of the thruster turrets as easily as if it was made of foamed plastic. He took chairs back inside for they had parts that might be useful – struggling with each yet them weighing a third that of the turrets. She then picked up the one fusion nacelle he had been able to drag here. He watched her carry it, her boots sinking into the ground. He had just about been able to lift one end of the thing.

  ‘We’re getting there,’ he said, eying the diminished pile as she returned.

  ‘We certainly are. Let’s hope we don’t have to take it all out again… here at least.’ She grimaced then wandered off, heading back along the old trench the shuttle had carved.

  He continued loading the rest, glancing at her occasionally. He saw her bowed over the ripped off fusion engine and its attached chunk of hull, then the thing heading back towards the shuttle, with only her lower legs protruding below it. He swore as he absorbed this salutary reminder of what she was, as if seeing her carrying the other nacelle had not been enough. With its strut and attached lump of hull, that thing had to weigh close to a ton.

  As they worked he eyed the bank of cloud now rising over the horizon. Anna had picked up the screen and taken it to the front of the shuttle. A moment later he saw the wooden screen he and Mickonsel had made arc through the air and thump into the vegetation. Returning, she said, ‘The shuttle is bent,’ and retrieved a hammer. He continued ferrying in components and soon had nothing more to move, so went round to see what she was doing.

  The shuttle screen was in place in its u-shaped seal along the top and down the sides while; with one hand against it, Anna hammered the bottom sill. Each blow was measured, exact as she worked her way along, bending the metal. Finally done, she dropped the hammer, put both hands against the bottom of the screen and shoved it up. He could see the chainglass actually flexing, then with a thump it went into the bottom seal.

  ‘Now it’s time,’ she said.

  The screen had gone in just in time to spot with droplets of rain. They went back around and climbed in the shuttle. Ben paused at the door to take in the surroundings. The passing thought that he should have gone round and said something at the graves came and went. The people in them were dead and decayed and humanity had long ago lost any belief in supernatural afterlives. And with the burial and the brief moments he had spent by the graves, he had long ago accepted their deaths. He pulled the door closed, fought the time-hardened seal until the latch clicked home, then went to join Anna in the cockpit.

  She had put herself in the pilot’s seat and he got a brief reminder of Grace sitting there. He went to the battery pack.

  ‘Now?’ he asked.

  She nodded.

  He clicked on the power and felt the brief drag of grav – not so intense now – then went and took the copilot’s seat.

  ‘Strap yourself in,’ she instructed.

  He grimaced, remembering why one had died and one had been so injured in the crash here, and pulled the safety harness across and engaged it, though with a struggle against corroded fixings.

  ‘We don’t know if that thruster turret will work yet,’ he said.

  She nodded. ‘As we discussed – we don’t have the power to expend on tests. If this doesn’t work we’ll need to bring all the solar panels out here.’ She took hold of the joystick. Ben noted a few lights ignite in the panel – all amber warning lights – while two lower diagnostic screens shimmered, scrolling lists of warnings. She lifted the joystick.

  The shuttle shuddered and under the floor behind the grav motor groaned. A clattering sound started up and he smelled a whiff of smoke. Then, with a jerk that shoved him down in his seat, the shuttle broke from the ground. The vi
ew ahead dropped away and the vehicle tilted to one side. It juddered again, doubtless tearing something from the earth, then tilted level and dropped as she lowered the joystick. It settled at about ten feet above the ground, lurching like a motor out of balance.

  ‘Now,’ she said, and eased the joystick forwards.

  With a whumph the roof thruster ignited. The shuttle began drifting forwards, but also tilting nose-down to the ground. She picked up the almanac – plugged into the console with a skein of optics – and put it on her lap. Operating a virtual console on the screen, she righted the shuttle. It continued moving forwards, steadily accelerating. With a grating sound the thruster turret swivelled, the thruster still firing, turning them on the homeward course. Ben saw a path he had trudged into existence sliding underneath them faster and faster, winding them back towards his house. He forced himself to relax, unclamping his hands from the chair arms. He grinned.

  Then after a moment he said, ‘Damn.’

  ‘Problem?’ she asked.

  It seemed so stupid, but, ‘I forgot my wheelbarrow.’

  Anna hauled the entire battery out of its compartment in the shuttle as Ben walked ahead and opened the door. As she came up behind him he ran for the house through the torrent, opened the house door and stepped inside shedding water. She didn’t run, just walked fast and soon joined him. They re-installed the battery and, when he tried the light it came on bright for just a second, then went out. That accounted for the hard landing. He had thought mechanical problems by the thruster sounds, how long it took her to position the shuttle, then bringing it down hard on uneven ground rather than where intended. Lucky they had made it as far as they did.

  ‘We will need much more power,’ she said.

  ‘To get up to the Falcon,’ he agreed, then he studied her closely. She had helped him in every way as if his aims were hers. But were they really? It would be easy to think of her as an obedient servant of human kind, especially since she had been so accommodating, but he had to remember something else about Golem. It had been more than ten centuries since they had been obedient mechanisms. They were all unique and independent entities. They were not less than human beings and very often they were more. They experienced similar emotions, needs and wants to humans and, in some cases, could experience and feel things humans could not, without augmentation, feel.

  ‘If that is what you want, of course,’ he added.

  She closed the battery cupboard and stood.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It has always been my aim to get out of here,’ he said. ‘I was marooned here and I dreamed of returning to civilization. You are helping me and I thank you for that – as you told me I would probably have been dead in another year or so without you. But what do you want? What are your aims?’

  She looked at him with her head tilted to one side. Only now, as she did this, did he notice the scrub of blond hair on her scalp. Her own nanosuite had obviously been busy. She straightened up and abruptly walked over to the cupboard where he stored his podules finds. Looking inside she pulled out more of those eggs for synthetic skin, which had come out of the load of podules she had dug up, and along with some of the chrome rods, put them on the table.

  ‘I don’t know what I want,’ she replied, beginning to strip off her envirosuit. ‘I was part of something a very long time ago, but that is gone now. I am helping you until I decide what I want to do.’

  ‘Well thank you,’ he said, turning away feeling mildly embarrassed, not so much on seeing her disrobing but of his own visceral reaction to it.

  ‘But a more pertinent question should be asked,’ she said.

  He turned back seeing her standing naked before him. Was it perverse that even with bare muscle around her waist and below her knees he still felt sexual attraction?

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘What do you want now?’ She went over and sat in the chair.

  She had a point. It had always been his aim to get off Afthonia and back to his life, but that life was gone. He had grown up on a high-tech world with parents and siblings, but by the time he was fifty had left them and that world to explore, seek adventure, find a direction. He had learned and uploaded many skills and much knowledge but still had no idea of where he was going. The job as a shuttle technician and surveyor of Afthonia had come up and he had taken it, but it had been a stop-gap while he considered what next. Now, he had no idea what had happened to the ship he had come here aboard, or the people. Perhaps they would find the Falcon, somehow get back to ‘civilization’. Then what? Almost as if in response to that train of thought he abruptly stripped off his clothing and headed for the shower – he could think of nothing else to do.

  By the time he was done he came out to find her still naked in a chair, bent over and working on her lower legs. Her torso was complete now and he studied the line of her back, also noting how her firm little breasts hung down, then shook himself and turned away to get dressed. Did Golem have sex? Too right they did. They were made to emulate human beings and had the same sensations in their skin and elsewhere and could, like with so much about them, even feel more. Her syntheskin and muscle had been installed with a fine network of nerves then connected up to her, but all the same, she could feel. He considered the new skin and muscle she had installed and was installing – her nanites had probably set about constructing new nerves in it, fining down and aligning muscle fibres, bringing her up to human standard and beyond. He dressed, told himself not to be a fool and walked over, pulled out the other chair and sat down.

  ‘If I had thought it likely you would recover as you have,’ he said. ‘I would not have cut out so much to get to your internals.’

  Without looking up she replied, ‘It was necessary for you to get to that wiring. If you had not I would not have started up again.’ She glanced up. ‘Mostly it was finding those power plugs removed, though I still would not have started up without recharging.’

  ‘I know… but I cut out your digestive system and fusion water supply.’

  ‘Don’t concern yourself. While I was working in the shuttle I found the materials I needed.’

  He looked around, wondering what the hell she was talking about. She had them here? She could not possibly have installed anything at the shuttle because he would have seen – she would have had to have opened up her skin.

  She looked up again, and obviously seeing his confusion said, ‘I ate a variety of plastics and composites. My nano-machines are using them to rebuild my internals. I could also have directed them to rebuild my skin, but that would have taken time.’

  He shrugged. ‘We’re not short of time.’

  She gave him a look he could not interpret and returned to her work, folding up her right leg into a position no human could achieve to get to the sole of her foot. He looked at the foot and found his gaze wandering to between her legs, then abruptly stood up and got himself something to eat and drink. The food, drawing blood from the rest of his body, reminded him how long it had been since he slept and he went to his bed, and quickly fell asleep. Waking came with a raging hard-on. He recognised this for the good sign concerning his health that it was, but had to wait for it to subside before getting out of bed, since Anna was still in the house, working at something on the table. He got up and went to the toilet, washed and dressed then went over to see what she was doing.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about power supply,’ she said.

  ‘And your conclusions?’

  ‘We have a lot of work ahead of us getting the shuttle capable of leaving the atmosphere to hopefully find the Falcon. We will need to make some better tools. And I think we also need to still pure water.’

  ‘Yes, for the thrusters?’

  ‘No. We can run on just one thruster turret for our needs and grav planing. I can then alter the spare thruster fuel cells to make peroxide to run through the shuttle batteries to generate further power. That is also power we will need to run the new tools
we will require.’

  ‘I tried that and gave up – what you’re talking about sounds like some meta-material method and we don’t have what’s required. I checked,’ he said. He had considered making more peroxide to run through the shuttle batteries and even ventured into the chemistry. However, even though he’d managed to find a palladium sieve in the shuttle he could have used as catalyst and perhaps could have made some, he’d had severe doubts about the refining process and, finally, if he had got it wrong, he had stood a good chance of destroying the batteries.

  She shook her head. ‘But we do. We have programmable nanites that can make the required meta-materials. I can do this.’

  ‘And that will give us enough power to run the shuttle into orbit?’

  ‘And back down again if necessary.’

  ‘It may well be necessary.’ He still had his doubts.

  She looked at him very directly. ‘And then we get to the Falcon, if it is there, and a whole series of new challenges await us. And then…?’

  She was harking back to the earlier question she had asked him. Then what? Maybe they could find the ship, if it was still up there, and get it running, depending on whatever had happened to keep it there. Maybe they could fly it out of here. After all that had happened since he found her he did not consider this impossible.

  ‘I guess we’ll get those challenges out of the way first, then we can decide,’ he replied. But now he was beginning to think about options.

  Anna immediately began working with the capacitor batteries while Ben stripped out the thruster water cells. He asked her if working with the batteries was a good idea now night was approaching, and had to accept she knew what she was doing when she said they would be back in place and charged by then.

  Water cells and their support mechanisms left on her work surfaces – components laid out on a series of turtle-tree leaves – he unloaded the shuttle and in the same way he had dealt with the repairs on her, began stripping away the damage. Soon it became apparent to him what she meant about tools and the necessary power for them. The shuttle’s hull was alloy, thankfully, and not composite, so much of the damage could be repaired in primitive ways. He could use heat to straighten out sections of hull and for that, well, he needed a furnace and a forge. After checking historical files in the almanac and consulting with Anna, he began collecting rocks and building what he needed. Then, in a concession to his needs, he took a long walk to collect his wheelbarrow.