Wolfsbane

by Guy Haley

  Their names were Friedisch Adum Silip Qvo, and Belisarius Cawl. They did not agree on much, it was true, but it was equally true that they enjoyed the friction of their differences as much as the ease of their similarities.

  When their shifts coincided they would take sustenance together. They often lingered in the hall for a while to debate with one another, as they did that day. Surrounded by the clatter of nutrient cubes delivered to metal trays and the constant hum of plasma cell recharging coils, their often contentious discussions were as safely held there as anywhere else.

  A good thing too, for their debate had taken them into dangerous territory. The subject the racket of the hall shrouded was their shared mistress, Domina Magos Hester Aspertia Sigma-Sigma. The line of conversation worried Friedisch. For the same reasons, it energised Cawl.

  Somewhere inside Domina Magos Hester Aspertia Sigma-Sigma was a woman, though most people would not see that, because what covered the woman over was so alien as to obscure her human origins completely.

  'Consider her appearance,' said Cawl, before unflatteringly describing her. 'Domina Hester Aspertia Sigma-Sigma is exactly three metres tall when she is at full extension. The body she wears, for the benefit of the world, is a monstrous thing, as long again behind her reverse jointed pelvis as it is tall above the clutch of mechapeds that propel it. Her mirrored helm face covers over the front of a cranial augmetic three times the volume of a standard human head and twelve times the weight. From her occiput sprouts a circular crest of data arrays, short-range emitters, omnilinks, sensor banks, augurs, vox-parsers, cogitator shunts and other common tea* tions devices that are as complex as any voidship's sensor suite. In deference to her wilfully forgotten origins, her mirrored face b fashioned like a eamivale mask - that of a well-proportioned human female whose beauty is so well considered in its artifice it is bland The eyes and the lips are sealed. A hint of sardonic humour has been stamped onto the mouth.'

  'You shouldn't be speaking this way,' interrupted Fnedisch.

  'Why not?' said Cawl. 'It is true. She would admit it. That silver mask is as human as the domina gets. She is the epitome of the cyberphile cult. There is no remnant of humanity beyond this ironic statement. If there are fleshly components to her, they are sealed deep within her armoured warframe and never displayed.'

  'But she is human.'

  'Have you ever seen her organic parts?'

  'Well, no…'

  'Well, then,' said Cawl.

  'She's still human,' insisted Fnedisch.

  Cawl shook his cowled head. 'She has a multiplicity of arms. Seven, at my last count but the number never remains the same for very long. The domina is addicted to change in a way that some say praises the Omnissiah, but which I privately hold to be very unhealthy.' He stirred his caffeine drink. It smelled more of oil than it did of anything else. 'She cannot be called human, not anymore. Any semblance to normal human anatomy is gone. Save that silver face,' said Cawl gleefully, 'which is appended to that body like the punchline to a jest of questionable taste.'

  Which is exactly what Cawl had just made. Fnedisch was appalled. 'You can't say that!' said Friedisch. 'You absolutely cannot say that.' He spoke quickly. They were both lowly men, and Friedisch could not yet afford the binaric augminer unit he coveted. Denied its lightning-fast mode of conversation he had sped his organic speech to compensate. It was an affectation that, frankly, irritated Cawl, though he was generous enough to hide it.

  So Cawl thought. Friedisch was perfectly aware of Cawl's irritation, and was irritated in return.

  On the surface, Cawl appeared unaugmented. He was one of those who regarded the human form as holy in itself as an expression of the Machine-God's perfection. Friedisch was of the other school seeing the body as a natural accident that must be improved upon. Not that his own augmentations had gone to plan. Friedisch's ocular enhancement had not bonded correctly with his organic corpus. His skin was a sickly white around the plastek-coated steel, spongy looking with persistent infection. A scent of biocidal gels clung to him as a result of unsuccessful self-treatment.

  'How can anyone proclaim their adherence to the Mechanicum code when they swap out components so freely?' Cawl said. 'There is a perfect point that can be reached, but that is the intersection between compromise and ambition.'

  Friedisch put his tin mug of sustenance solution down. 'That's not perfection,' he said. 'That is settling.'

  'It is a kind of perfection,' insisted Cawl. 'In admitting our imperfections, we move as close to perfection as we can get. Imperfections must be embraced and accommodated. They cannot be ironed away.'

  Friedisch's frown grew a few more wrinkles. They pulled at the puffy skin around his augmetics. Cawl couldn't help looking at them. Friedisch had taken the upgrade too soon, before he had sufficient monies or influence to ensure good-quality finings.

  'That's… heretical,' said Friedisch.

  'Piffle!' said Cawl. 'Human rivalry cannot be programmed out. We in the Mechanicum are human. Human knowledge, human power. If we abandon human form, we abandon the Machine-God. How often do we forget that?'

  Friedisch disagreed with Cawl; he was worried what would happen to him if he were caught spouting such nonsense, and by extension what would happen to Friedisch himself.

  'You skirt dangerous ground,' said Friedisch. 'The central tenet of our creed is improvement of the human form through embracement of technology.'

  'Yes!' said Cawl in agreement, though in actual fact he was not agreeing; it was a rhetorical trick he over-employed. 'And look at what the Emperor achieved doing just that. In the Legiones Astartes, primarchs, custodians and the others He has accentuated nature's art. What He has done is sublime, but the form remains. Surely the Machine-God must be pleased with these finest works of the Omnissiah?'

  'If you believe Him to be the Omnissiah.'

  '''Thou shalt know Him by his works',' quoted Cawl from the Principia Mechanicum. 'If you can't accept the Emperor as the messenger of the Machine-God, you will be waiting for your Omnissiah for a very long time,' said Cawl.

  'There is too much dissension as to whether He is the Machine-God, or the Omnissiah, or neither,' said Friedisch. 'I'll leave the logic gate on either-or for that one.'

  'I have made up my mind, and I am entitled to my own views.'

  'Whatever He is,' said Friedisch. 'The transhumans. He has made are a means to an end, you'll see.'

  'Do you really think so?'

  Friedisch nodded earnestly. 'Above all things, the Emperor wishes to preserve humanity, not advance it into new forms. They are tools to be used to protect the baseline types. They are all sterile.'

  'Not so,' said Cawl. 'They merely reproduce in a more efficient way.'

  'A parasite's way. The engineered gene-code of the Legions requires a host. They cannot reproduce alone, but must be nurse-maided.'

  'Then you do not see them as the refinement of the human genome?'

  'They are not. If that were the case, why is the Council of Terra made up of baseline humans? If the Emperor is the Machine-God—'

  'Or his Omnissiah,' said Cawl. He couldn't resist interrupting everything Friedisch said.

  'Or his Omnissiah, why doesn't He embrace the machine as we do?' Friedisch leaned closer in. 'The storm is dying. Messages have started to come through from Terra. The Mechanicum has been disbanded. There is a new Fabricator General, on Earth, not on Mars. They are calling this new organisation the Adeptus Mechanicus. It is a coup by any other name that brings our people further into Terra's thrall.'

  'And? Kelbor-Hal is a traitor. There should be consequences to his actions,' said Cawl with a shrug.

  'He is the rightfully chosen emissary of the Machine-God, not the Emperor!' hissed Friedisch. 'He has done wrong, fine. Let him be tried by his peers and executed if that is judged appropriate. But no one outside the Martian hierarchy has the right to replace him.'

  'The Omnissiah does.'

  'If the Emperor is the Omnissiah.'


  'If He is,' allowed Cawl.

  'Which He is not,' said Friedisch.

  There followed a brief, tense silence. Nearby energisers crackled. Sanctified oil dispensers chimed. A trio of higher-ranking adepts scuttled by, twittering at each other in binaric.

  'Let us return to the debate in question,' Cawl said.

  Friedisch wearily acquiesced.

  'So, your standpoint is that the Emperor does not believe in improving the human race in toto. The creatures He has made are for a purpose, and are disposable.'

  'It's obvious, Cawl!'

  Cawl held up a silencing finger. 'Whereas I hold that we instead are over-reliant on the supplementation of the human body with these crude augmetics.' He gestured pointedly at Friedisch's own mistake. 'If you are correct, I can't say who has the better goal. Can you honestly say your additions have improved your life?'

  'Well, I…' The question wrong-footed Friedisch. 'The implants were problematic. There is the low-band spectral sight. And the dark sight. I can see in the dark very well. The pict function carries data-rich imagery directly to my memcore without requiring it to pass along my optic nerve shunts, which frees up more bandwidth of my native neurology for—'

  'But has it really brought you anything?' interrupted Cawl. Again. 'Apart from a succession of fungal infections?' He smiled, a quick, nervous, wholly condescending flash of white teeth, and gestured with his cup at Friedisch's inflamed skin.

  Friedisch sighed. Cawl's lack of conversational etiquette was maddening. Once he began talking, it was exceptionally difficult to break into the datastream until he had delivered whatever point he had to make, often several times over.

  'No,' he said. 'But it will. This augmetic is just the start.'

  'Exactly,' said Cawl, agreeing without agreeing. Again. 'Now, let us suppose that the domina felt the same way about her first implants and still feels the same way? Why do you think she upgrades herself constantly? What has she gained? Nothing!' he said, answering his own question.

  'Well, nothing except a five hundred-year lifespan, the ability to control a battlefleet by thought alone and more cogitative power than there is in every thinking unit in the system. Not much utility at all,' Friedisch said sarcastically. 'She controls all the military assets of Trisolian. I would not say that is nothing.'

  Cawl ignored his jibe, leaving Friedisch put out.

  'Let us not even touch on what she has under those robes,' Cawl said.

  They shared a little shudder. 'Well, my friend,' said Cawl. 'Mark my words, you will never find me altering myself to such an extent. I am human. I know what I am. There are far more efficient ways of increasing ones lifespan, powers of thought and the other innumerable facilities the Machine God has seen fit to gift us without mutilating the original body beyond recognition.'

  'You are a heretek, Cawl. Biogenesis is not the Machine-Gods doing.'

  'I believe it is. And if it isn't, so what? All this metal is counterproductive. Inefficient. If I am to be enhanced, let it be by the science of the pure biologians, not the genetor-mechanii. You'll never catch me becoming like the domina.'

  Friedisch was flustered by Cawl's standpoint. 'The human body is inefficient. Melding with the machine is the best way forward.'

  'I say improving on the marvels nature has provided is. Machinery is the inefficient part, and once bonded, it is far from freeing - it is limiting. The battleplate of the Legions is a better solution. Put it on when needed, take it off when done. Replace according to role and function.'

  'You're obsessed with the damned Legions!' Friedisch attempted a laugh to cover his annoyance. It came out forced.

  'My dear fellow, we're adepts of the Mechanicum. Mechanicus. Whatever. My point is we're all obsessed with something. Oh, are you finished?'

  Friedisch nodded, his mouth full of his meal's last morsel. They returned their plates and cups to the fabricators, where every fragment of organic matter down to the last bacterium would be removed to be recycled into fresh nutrient cubes. The plates would be melted down and reformed. The station had plenty of energy, and precious little water. Refabrication was more efficient than washing the dishes.

  'Tez-Lar!' said Cawl.

  A bulky servitor detached itself from a charging socket and clanged heavily towards the tech-priests.

  'You shouldn't give them names,' said Friedisch, though he viewed Cawl's servitor enviously. He had not accrued sufficient status or credit to afford his own.

  'Why not?' said Cawl. 'You should have a little more spirit a little more individuality.'

  'It's just not done!' said Friedisch. 'I wish you would think about your future sometimes. How does it look? Follow the maxim, question not, learn not. It's a warning.'

  'That's not a warning not to question, it's a warning that if we don't question, we don't learn!' said Cawl.

  'But only in a certain manner, Cawl.'

  'Are you talking down to me, Friedisch?'

  Not like you ever do that to me, thought Friedisch. 'Both meanings are meant,' he said. 'You can't see that, and it will get you into trouble.'

  'Ah, my friend. One day you will have the emotional excision and you will no longer care what happens to me, though I am touched. Who needs hierarchy, that's what I say.' He leaned in to Friedisch and lifted his hand to hide a stage whisper. 'Hierarchy gets in the way of getting things done,' he said. 'You chase status all you like. Leave the great deeds to me!'

  Arrogant fool, thought Friedisch of Cawl.

  Mind-numbing energy parasite, thought Cawl of Friedisch.

  'Anyway,' Cawl said, 'Tez-Lar likes his name, don't you, Tez-Lar?'

  'Yes, master,' groaned the cyborg. The voice came through an augmitter set into his left shoulder. Tez-Lar had no lower jaw.

  'He's named after the fabled master of the Motive Force, the great Srpskan-Murican,' explained Cawl condescendingly.

  Friedisch gritted his teeth. Cawl had told him that only a dozen times before.

  'He was a polymath.' Cawl patted his hulking servitor unit on its mulcted shoulder. 'Tez-Lar's name is a sign of my respect for those who master more than one field. It is a sign of my ambition to do the same.'

  'There is nothing wrong with ambition,' said Friedisch 'But missaplied ambition will get you killed - that is what the maxim warns against.'

  'My dear Friedisch, in this terrible era everything will get you killed. My ambition distracts me from how awful life is. You should try it.'

  Friedisch was ambitious! He had a stinging retort ready to deploy. It never arrived.

  'I shall see you for last watch sustenance?' Cawl said.

  'Yes,' said Friedisch, meaning to say no. He never did: despite himself, he enjoyed Cawl's company.

  'As the Machine-God wills it,' said Cawl, and off he went.

  Cawl's workspace-quarters were as modest as his rank, located far down the levels of Septa, near where its vast trunk anchored the station to its host moon. Tech-adept accommodation was a warren of intersecting corridors laid out by machine-governed algorithms, but confusing to the unenhanced human mind. Narrow doors gave way into small rooms. In each one, and thus also in Cawl's, there was a single atmospheric vent, for those that needed air. A rotatable bed had a workbench on the underside, a tool locker nestled close to its head. Cawl's room was further cramped by Tez-Lar's revitalisation cradle. Cawl was tall, like a lot of Martians. The natives of the red planet had delicate bones lengthened over millennia of living under low gravity. But the beds of the processing station were made to fit a physiological average taken over hundreds of forge worlds, so it was too short for him. When he worked at his little bench on his folding stool he banged his left elbow on Tez-Lar's cradle. The Mechanicum prided itself on being the guardian of knowledge, but at the macro scale it was susceptible to the idiocy of brute generality. It was all so damnably inefficient. Cawl preferred to work around all that.

  Friedisch was envious of Tez-Lar for all the wrong reasons. Cawl hadn't told him that he'd built the servitor
himself from scavenged parts. Like the cradle he rested in. Like many of the idiosyncratic tools that cluttered his work desk. They were mainly of Cawl's own building. He had purchased none of them, been awarded but a few, and acquired most of the parts for the rest in dubious circumstances.

  Fundamentally, the Mechanicum operated upon the principle of discovery - or finders keepers, to put it more crudely. Cawl put his acquisitiveness down to an individual expression of the principle that guided all forge world societies, and doggedly refused to acknowledge his acquisitions as theft.

  Technically, Cawl shouldn't have filched the bionics for Tez-Lar from the recyc heaps of Gamma-Gamma-Gamma when he was stationed there. Technically, to lay claim to the corpse of the indigent who provided Tez-Lar's organic component, he should have filled in rather a lot of forms.

  Finders keepers. They could call it stealing if they wanted to. He knew better.

  He didn't have time for any social conventions like custom or law. They were so restrictive. The pursuit of knowledge was a pure calling that overrode any moral compass, not that the priesthood was in any way moral.

  He sincerely believed what he had said to Friedisch. Too many of his colleagues were focused on their own advancement. Advancement in position was a corollary to advancement of human knowledge; to put it the other way round was counterproductive to the consolidated effort of the Mechanicum.

  So often, individual human desires undermined collective human effort. Cawl could easily progress to a higher level with the priesthood. Doing that meant taking a specialisation, pledging allegiance to one of the Mechanicum's myriad factions and all the limitations those things brought. At higher levels, his work would be more heavily monitored. At some point he would have to rise through the ranks. But not yet. He had so much to learn. For the time being he chose to operate under the auspex beam, as it were.

  Trisolian was a major transit hub for the Mechanicum. Aboard the Heptaligon there were biologians, astromancers, genetors, artisans, magi, logi, transmechanics, lexmechanics, cyberians, cogitati… Tech-priests of every conceivable type. Cawl had spent the last few years going to each kind that interested him. He flattered his way into their confidence, learning all he could of their knowledge before proclaiming, with great regret, that his talents were not fit for their specialisation, and that he must humbly take his leave.