by Neal Asher
‘What has he told you?’ she asked.
‘He talked about travelling to the stars and I talked about human mortality,’ said Var, ‘whereupon he suggested I talk to you about the work you are doing.’
Hannah felt a flash of jealousy upon hearing that, for when had Saul last communicated with her about anything above the completely practical? She suppressed the reaction, then pointed to the racking fixed along one wall, which now held twenty aerogel boxes, all tubed and wired together with secondary power supplies in place and provided with optics ready to attach them to the station’s computer system.
‘The components are here in Arcoplex Two,’ Hannah explained. ‘Aerogel matrices in which to grow organic backups to a human mind, cerebral implants and exterior com hardware linked to those backups.’ She gestured to the safe. ‘And in another area we’re installing the equipment for growing human clones.’
Just as with Le Roque, Hannah needed to explain no more, for Var Delex understood at once, or maybe her suspicions had been confirmed. Her eyes grew wide nevertheless as she processed the news that the inevitability of her own death could be postponed. But then she moved beyond that.
‘Cerebral bioware connecting to exterior hardware?’ she queried.
Hannah shrugged, feeling somewhat uncomfortable.
‘He’s put in an off-switch,’ Var continued, ‘so he’ll be able to sever their link to their backups.’ She paused reflectively. ‘Demigod indeed.’
‘I don’t like it,’ Hannah agreed, ‘but – and now I’m going to sound like a Committee executive – too much freedom could be a bad thing.’
‘For him, you mean,’ said Var. ‘Tell me, will you yourself have this exterior hardware?’
Though one of Hannah’s new assistants had taken a sample from her skull, she hadn’t even considered beyond that. How did she feel about Saul being the gatekeeper between her and eternity?
‘I trust him,’ she said. ‘Though he’ll control my link to my backup, I will still have the chance of living forever, or at least for thousands of years, so who knows what might happen in the future? Perhaps one day he will cease to feel the need to control me.’
‘Or perhaps,’ said Var, ‘you will cease to trust him.’
‘Such cynicism,’ said Hannah. ‘Obviously you have a lot to think about and would perhaps prefer not to go this route?’
‘It seems a road worth travelling.’
‘So when will you want me to take a sample from you?’ Hannah persevered.
Var Delex grimaced. ‘Not just yet.’
Hannah just watched her, still not quite understanding this woman whom Saul felt was important enough to risk his life in rescuing her from Mars.
‘Later, perhaps after the current shift,’ Var added, ‘I was considering trying out this bar in the Arboretum. Perhaps you could join me and we can start to get to know each other better, since it’s possible we may be in each other’s company for a very long time.’ She gestured to the backups. ‘A very long time indeed.’
Hannah nodded, something tightening in her torso, like that faithless friend, her panic attacks – but a much deeper and more hollow feeling, like awe. She realized that she had been so wrapped up in the detail of what she was doing that she had failed to incorporate the big picture, and yet Var’s simple remark had opened her eyes.
A very long time indeed.
It was as if Saul held space hooked over his finger, drawn taut and ready to be released, but time dragged in the world he occupied, seeming a hundred years behind the intricate images he had constructed in his mind. Many weeks had passed since he had saved his sister’s life and, by any human measure, his plans for Argus had advanced at an amazing rate, but Saul did not measure reality in human terms. It was all too slow; the delays between thought and action and achieving final product were interminable, frustrating. Yet Saul possessed absolute control of his own mind, so frustration, a thoroughly human malady that served no purpose, was something he could just eliminate from his skull. Time dragged but Saul watched with the patience of Jove, while turning a human face to the world.
‘From the beginning, both of you claimed you wanted to work here,’ he said, peering down through the glass floor at the hive of activity in the robotics factory.
‘That’s true,’ said Brigitta.
Judd was down below with a small team of humans, stripping down one of the assembly machines only because that was quicker than letting it repair itself. Such malfunctions had been a rarity since Robotics had become ever more . . . robotic, therefore the components called human and proctor were required less and less often. Thus far, three legions of the new-design robots were standing ready, gleaming out there on the lattice wall beside the arcoplex. Saul probed the neat functionality of their minds, the perfectly in-consonance diagnostic returns from their bodies. Just a thought from him, and they would be in motion but, though they were ready, the station was not. Even if they had enough power, they could hardly keep operational for a day before they used everything up. Thus the smelters needed to go over fully to solar power, and begin producing components at their maximum rate. This would free up reactor power for the robots, which would supply themselves from numerous recharging points, even while solar power fed, via cells inlaid into their skins, the rectifying batteries inside their bodies. Once operating together as a large efficient machine constantly supplied with energy and components, they could really go to work.
Saul now transferred his human attention to the weapon he held – one of the plasma rifles Brigitta and Angela had fashioned for use in the fight against the troops from the Scourge.
‘I want you to do something else,’ he said.
‘Evidently,’ Brigitta replied.
‘I want you to leave Robotics to Judd and go back to work on the station weapons,’ Saul continued, ‘including the plasma cannon I want you to design and build. I’ve given you some of the parameters and eventual position of all the weapons in the completed ship. I’ve also opened up a new area within this arcoplex for you to develop them and, if they are available, will supply the workers and robots you may require.’
The twins exchanged a look, and then Angela gave a brief nod.
‘Okay,’ said Brigitta. ‘Things were starting to get a bit samey here, anyway, and we always like a challenge. By the way, is there any chance of us getting our hands on some radioactives?’
Saul handed the weapon back to her. ‘When we go after new materials, yes, but right now it’s all about energy.’
‘Good, because that’s our big disadvantage against anything sent from Earth. Remember, they’ve got the nukes.’
Saul nodded briefly and turned to head back the way he had come, but most of his mind was already ranging elsewhere. Much more data were available from Earth, and now he saw a further cost of having rescued his sister and salvaging the equipment and personnel from Mars. He should have attacked. Instead he should have taken Argus Station straight from the Asteroid Belt to Earth and methodically destroyed everything in orbit. Since he had not done so, Galahad had responded very quickly to the threat he represented, and he had just watched the test firing of two new heavy railguns, one from the Traveller construction station and another from Core One. Attacking now was still an option, but better for him to spend as much time in the solar system as was safe, and then just run. In the end, if he wanted to keep a lid on Earth, he would have to stay within the solar system, knocking down any attempt by the Earth-bound to reach out into orbit. Why trap himself here in such an onerous chore when a whole universe lay within his reach? At some point the Saberhagens would realize that the weapons they were building weren’t intended as a defence against Earth, but against anything they might find way out beyond.
Sixth docking . . .
As Saul arrived at the elevator that would take him out of the arcoplex, his constant companion spidergun climbing in ahead of him, he mentally reached out and locked the docking clamps holding the Mars-format space plane to Docking
Pillar One – the disassembled fusion reactor aboard it could wait to be offloaded – then began similarly locking down all the way across the station. The smelting plants had already finished their latest run, and the transporters running between them and the station were parked down in the bases of the smelting-plant docks. Now the smelters began pulling in the mirrors which had been supplying meagre concentrated sunlight to complement the output of the fusion reactors, while the big cable drums jerked into motion for hauling them back towards the station. Having now received the order, both human and robot work parties finished their latest jobs and began putting away their tools – the robots to then head off and cling to some nearby section of the station structure while the humans returned to their accommodation.
An enclosed walkway now led straight from the elevator exit into Tech Central. Saul took this at an unhurried pace, finally entering the cageway leading up to the main control room and propelling himself up after his spidergun. As he entered, the occupants busily working their consoles hardly spared either him or the robot a glance, having become used to seeing both now. Le Roque oversaw the team, speaking to someone through his fone, while Rhine was sitting at the navigation console. Saul headed over to stand beside him.
Rhine glanced up. ‘We might hit something on the way in,’ he warned. ‘Not everything is mapped.’
‘The chances are low,’ Saul opined, ‘something like one in a hundred for us hitting something and twice that for it to be big enough to knock out the drive bubble.’ He sat down at the console next to Rhine’s – the one that had before been occupied by Girondel Chang, who now resided in the rim mortuary. Really, there was no need for Rhine or anyone else to be here, since Saul was in full mental control of the whole operation.
‘It’s going to be hot,’ Rhine added.
‘Nothing the station cannot handle, and we need the additional energy.’
To pass the time, Saul again checked the programming he had in place. The moment they arrived at their destination, he wanted action, and he intended to get that – though perhaps not from the humans aboard, since they might take a few hours to adapt.
The first smelting plant locked home in its dock, then the second. He watched as Leeran and Pike – the stalwarts in charge of those plants – and other workers there, headed towards their offices and there strapped themselves into chairs. Most of the robots were now locked in place, while just a few humans had yet to sort themselves out. Le Roque took a seat and fastened his lap strap, while those around him did the same. All of this securing and locking down was completely unnecessary if the drive functioned as before, but there was always a chance of something going wrong. This was, after all, only the third time ever this new technology had been used.
‘Two minutes until shift.’ Saul’s voice issued from intercoms all across the station. ‘If you’ve forgotten something, then it’s too late now. Just leave it and get yourselves strapped in.’
Beyond the windows of Tech Central, the station rim – its inwardly curving rib bones rising up all around it – seemed to lift like the lower jaw of an angler fish. Beyond that the view of Mars turned hazy. With the drive fully up to speed, Saul could now fling them away from here with just a thought, but he allowed the crew some remaining time. While that passed, he watched Hannah securing herself in the surgical chair in her laboratory, the Saberhagen twins strapping into chairs in an office adjacent to Robotics, and his sister standing, in a heavy work suit, on the rim of the station, with her feet solidly planted and a line attaching her to one of the nearby ribs. Everyone else was safely inside the station, but Saul had made no rule about how they should secure themselves, and Var was only putting herself at minimally more risk by staying where she was.
‘Giving yourself a grandstand view, sister?’ he asked her.
‘It’s a bit disconcerting out here. It feels just like I’m standing on the inner face of a tidal wave, and now the stars are changing colour and . . . damn, look at Mars.’
Visible through the windows of Tech Central, Mars was noticeably changing hue, first turning as red as it was supposed to be, before intensifying to something as unnaturally bright as fluorescent paint.
‘I’m surprised I’m the only one outside,’ she added. ‘I would have thought that you, at least, would also want to be this close.’
‘I’m even closer, since I can view through every sensor of the station,’ Saul replied.
‘That’s hardly the same.’
‘You’re quite correct. Ordinary human senses can be so dull.’
Var just snorted at that.
It was time now.
‘Shifting,’ Saul announced.
Everything beyond the station turned black, and again Saul felt as if he was folding space around himself like a thick blanket, and rolling away into another world. He visualized the warp bubble as a droplet of water skittering across a hotplate, as he counted down the seconds then minutes of their journey. It began to grow uncomfortably hot inside the station but, out on the lattice wall, the legions of robots sucked up and rectified that increase of energy into something usable, while elsewhere throughout the station Rhine’s rectifying batteries rose quickly to full charge. A momentary shudder had Saul reaching down to grip the arms of his chair, but it soon passed. The warp bubble must have clipped something, or else destroyed something too small to stop their progress. Saul calculated it must have been an object massing just under half a tonne, before he sank into the esoteric maths concerning warp-bubble impacts, just to pass the remaining interminable yet fantastically short ten minutes of the journey.
Next, the universe suddenly turned the lights back on. Bright sunlight glared, as bright as Mediterranean daytime. They had just travelled across an appreciable portion of the solar system in a matter of mere minutes. Saul blinked. Would an experience as fantastic as this start to become as prosaic as a routine flight in an aeroplane? He unstrapped himself and stood up, walking over to the windows that had already taken on the tint that had disappeared when they had left Earth behind.
‘How was that for you?’ he asked Var.
‘Like nothing else,’ she replied, her voice hushed, sounding slightly depressed. Saul understood her reaction. She had been excited before, but actually seeing the drive work made her feel very small, and she did not like feeling that way. Despite being busy with the reconstruction, her pride was still suffering wounds. Irritated by his sister’s apparent weakness, he slid the fragment of his attention he had allotted her away and elsewhere.
Light and heat suffused the station, as energy storage, which out at Mars had forever been on the point of depletion, continued to rise, and he too felt energized as a thump reverberated under his feet – Leeran and Pike obviously feeling no need to take stock, and already extending the smelting plants. The power of sunlight, it seemed, affected all of those it touched, for even now people were unstrapping themselves and checking work rosters; while others, who knew what to do, were already donning spacesuits.
The old robots first, Saul decided, feeling them unpeeling instantly from the points in the station they had been clinging to, and dispersing to obey their queued-up orders. He then felt further vibrations through his feet as the mining robots again began hacking into the asteroid below, and as the ore carts began hauling their loads towards the big transporters.
‘It’s like . . . like waking up,’ said Le Roque at his shoulder.
‘We’ve been sad,’ quipped Rhine at his other shoulder. ‘That would be—’
‘Yes, I know what seasonal affective disorder is, Rhine,’ Saul interrupted.
‘I need to get back to it,’ said Rhine, unperturbed, as he turned away. ‘This Mach-effect stuff is fascinating.’
Rhine, Saul had realized, possessed the kind of mind best kept at work so, with a little help from the proctors, he was already finessing the design for the Mach-effect drive, and deciding how best to integrate it with what they already had.
‘Crazy, but brilliant,’ Le Roque comme
nted, once Rhine was gone. Then, turning back to Saul: ‘So now we really go to work?’
‘We do, and you yourself need to relocate to the secondary control centre.’ He glanced towards him. ‘They’re already cutting the anchors down below.’
‘Quick work.’
‘Rhine just suggested that we’re all coming out of SAD, out of suffering from a lack of sunlight, but perhaps there’s more to the power of the sun than merely that.’ Saul considered all the possible effects of this relocation, and could not shake off the feeling that the personnel here were as linked into Argus Station, in their own way, as he himself. Certainly, new measurable power was running through everything aboard, but it seemed as if a psychic current had been set up, too. He did not believe in any supernatural explanation, of course, but was not prepared to discount an esoteric scientific one.
Steadily increasing activity became visible in the station outside. Saul briefly watched teams of humans and robots heading from their accommodation towards the Mars Traveller engine, which they intended to detach from the asteroid. He watched another team begin work alongside the mining robots, cutting their way towards a fault that would eventually break the steadily shrinking mass of nickel iron in two. Then, through the windows ahead, as well as in his mind, he focused on the extent of lattice wall beside Arcoplex Two.
Now.
Smooth as oil, a neat line of the new robots began flowing across the lattice wall towards the rim, the square formation they were emerging from steadily shrinking. On their way they diverted to a stockpile of beams and other components, and that pile rapidly shrank like ice under the jet of a steam cleaner. The other two squares began to move next, sliding into thicker lines: one going straight over the curve of the arcoplex to start work on the ship’s skeleton beyond, while the other came back towards Tech Central and circumvented it to head over to the other side of the station. The robots moving there began the essential armouring of the vortex generator, thus further stockpiles diminished, and all the materials taken down from the enclosure went too.