by Neal Asher
King accelerated. Four seconds. Time for the signal to reach another location: rail-gun hidden in the sulphurous moon, and now firing a barrage of missiles at half the speed of light. But the King of Hearts was a modern Polity attack ship. It stood on its tail, opened up its fusion drive to full power and, accelerating at a hundred gravities, left a single anti-munitions package behind it. The worm broke apart, eating itself, but King already knew the frequency and format of the signal it had sent, and thus transmitted its own present. King’s worm burrowed into the mind it located on the moon: just a drone waiting here to ambush any pursuers, fiercely loyal and ready to destroy itself. It was not quick enough. It had seen the others leave, tracked their departure and then awaited some to return to say its mission was over. King learnt all that in microseconds. Microseconds after, another CTD detonated in the face of the moon, and left a burning sulphurous crater. The barrage of missiles proceeded to detonate around the anti-munitions package, easily fooled into thinking they found their target.
‘I’m coming to find you,’ sang King, accelerating out of the system.
As Mika detached herself from the VR frame she felt tired and frustrated. Every time she entered the virtuality now, there awaited a mass of new information to be processed, and she experienced difficulties in keeping on top of it all. While she deconstructed singular molecular structures the work stayed easy enough, but with research now being directed towards what could be formed from those structures and their interrelationships, it got tougher. Much of this work being conducted at AI speeds, it now became the province only of Jerusalem, other AIs aboard, and those humans sufficiently augmented to keep up.
Stepping down from her frame, she surveyed the various screens in her research area and saw that those not frozen were scrolling reams of code. She walked over to the counter on which the screens rested and picked up the item lying there. The aug was similar to the one D’nissan now wore: a flattened bean of gleaming metal with an exposed crystal in the shape of a snail’s shell on one side – that aspect purely aesthetic. Its visual interlink entered via the wearer’s temple, so was not as grotesque as many of its kind, but the device still required surgical installation. Susan James and Prator Colver had both upgraded: the former with an aug like this and the latter with the more conventional kind, though he talked about going fully gridlinked when he could spare the time – that too required surgical intervention since the gridlinking tech needed to be imbedded in the inner surface of his skull.
Mika now faced a choice. In her present unaugmented state she was rapidly becoming obselete. If she wanted to stay at the forefront of Jain research, she needed to upgrade. Staying as a standard-format human meant she would soon be pushed to one side, handling small peripheral projects. But did she really want to keep up with Colver, James and D’nissan?
Ever since installing that Jain mycelium in herself, on the planet Masada, and the drastic surgical procedure required to remove it, her attitude to invasive augmentation had become rather cautious. Her present situation also posed certain questions about what she was and what she wanted to be. Did she really want to go the haiman route? She thought about Cormac and their recent utterly human liaison. He was gridlinked, but not willingly so – the device had reinstated itself in a way yet to be explained. He had been taken off the gridlink because being linked for so long had compromised his efficiency as an agent, for he lost the ability to connect with humans at a human level, though that lack did not seem so evident to her now. But there the rub: was Mika sufficiently curious about Jain technology to lose her essential humanity in pursuit of its secrets?
Mika entered her living quarters, went over to her bar unit and poured herself a glass of brandy. Taking this with her, she slumped on her sofa.
What do I love?
She loved Cormac, or felt she did – Mika always encountered problems with hazy terms like ‘love’. But what about her research? What were her aims? In the end she was practically immortal, and nor did she require her vocation to put bread in her mouth or a roof over her head. Her reasons for pursuing it were based on a feeling of both duty and self-gratification. But the sense of duty became irrelevant when there were those better able to perform the research than her. So what did she enjoy about it? What gratified her? She considered the last few years. On Samarkand she most enjoyed taking apart and studying the Maker-constructed creature there, and subsequently studying the dracomen. On Masada the dracomen again provided that same pleasure, as did her lengthy digging in the mud to find the remains of the dragon sphere that had sacrificed itself there. In the end she reluctantly realized she preferred field work, getting her hands dirty, not the esoteric research now being conducted by the others.
‘Jerusalem,’ she said, ‘they’re leaving me behind.’
The AI replied instantly. ‘Augmented mental function and memory are now almost a prerequisite. The big picture spills out beyond the scope of the human mind.’
‘Precisely,’ Mika said and sipped her brandy. ‘How vital is my contribution?’
‘No one is indispensable.’
‘Well thanks for that.’
‘I am not indispensable,’ the AI added.
‘Right.’
‘You are reluctant to augment yourself?’
‘I am. The others are mostly number-crunching now, and are moving increasingly into the AI mental realm. I’m not sure that’s what I want to do.’
‘Why?’
Mika thought about it for a long moment then said, ‘I saw Susan James recently. She was eating Provit cake and drinking water and did not see me even though I stood right in front of her. When I first met her she listed her prime interests as mathematics, sex and gourmet food, and was not entirely sure of the order of preference.’
‘Augmentation changes one – that is its essential purpose – but the degree of that change must be governed by the individual.’
‘Cormac . . . he lost his humanity?’
‘He did. It is a notable paradox that some augmented humans do lose their humanity – becoming what they, at an unconscious level, perceive AIs to be – while AIs, through age, experience and their own expansion of processing power, come to understand humanity better and therefore become more humane. Cormac’s present condition is a puzzle – almost as if some fundamental change in him has enabled him to become gridlinked again whilst still retaining his humanity.’
‘What would you advise for me?’ Mika asked.
‘I would advise rest. I would advise a lengthy break from your work, in which you can consider what you want to do next. Incidentally, I have recently disconnected Susan James, and she is currently undergoing an enforced and medicated rest. She is one of nearly four hundred individuals suffering the same problem.’
‘That being?’
‘In trying to understand and fully encompass all that Jain technology is, they have managed to lose themselves.’
‘How reassuring.’
‘I would not want you to feel, if having chosen augmentation, that you made an uninformed choice. Nothing worthwhile, Mika, comes easy. Consider what the word “augmentation” means. The idea is that you augment something already existing. Many who do it destroy that essential something in the process – become more their additions than themselves. It is part of the haiman ethos to retain that humanity until such a time as it becomes possible to truly extend self. They call themselves haimans but know that until that becomes possible they are not truly post-human.’
‘But what is that essential something?’ Mika asked.
‘Indeed,’ was Jerusalem’s only reply.
The gabbleduck was mountainous: a great pyramid of flesh squatting in the flute grasses, its multiple forearms folded across its chest, its bill wavering up and down as if it was either nodding an affirmative or nodding off to sleep. It regarded Blegg with its tiara of emerald eyes ranged below the dome of its head.
‘Why have you chosen such a bizarre shape for yourself?’ Blegg asked. ‘Obviously it i
s something you’ve ransacked from the mind of the AI here, but I fail to see the purpose.’
‘Jain, Csorians and Atheter,’ said the gabbleduck. ‘You humans have much to say about all three but know so little.’
‘Then tell me,’ Blegg suggested.
‘The Jain became extinct, five million years ago. Currently you believe it was their own technology that drove them to extinction. We believed this, too, though in our time, two million years after the Jain, there was more evidence available than there is to you now’
‘And?’
‘Jain technology is a weapon.’
‘So we believe.’
‘Who did they use it against?’
‘It was made to destroy civilizations,’ said Blegg, ‘but that was a rhetorical question which I presume you’ll answer yourself.’
‘Who is always the greatest enemy? You fought a war with the Prador, but that could almost be classed as anomalous. The greatest enemy is nearly always those you can understand enough to hate.’
‘I see,’ said Blegg. ‘An internecine war.’
‘It lasted for half a million years. But why a weapon designed to destroy civilizations?’
‘I don’t know. Why don’t you give me a clue?’
‘Despair,’ said the gabbleduck. ‘Hatred of the futility of intelligent life and technical civilizations, all of them, forever.’
‘Despair and arrogance,’ suggested Blegg.
The gabbleduck shrugged. ‘Just so.’
‘What happened to you, then?’
The gabbleduck turned its head and gazed out over the ersatz landscape. ‘The Csorians, like these Makers, thought they understood the technology, increasingly depended upon it, then were ultimately destroyed by it.’
‘You didn’t answer my question.’ This virtuality was very realistic, and Blegg found himself becoming fed up with standing, so he sat like some acolyte on the ground before the monstrous being.
‘We nearly did the same. We lost planet after planet to it, and it subsumed and killed billions. We exterminated billions on the worlds we sterilized.’
Blegg decided he wanted to get straight to the point. ‘Was it a Pyrrhic victory in the end? Your civilization no longer exists, but then few Jain nodes exist either. The ones we are having trouble with now are those brought here by the Maker.’
That chuckle again. The gabbleduck stretched out one limb and opened out a hand composed of talons like black bananas. ‘You know that Jain technology is nano-technology, but study it long enough and you find that its foundations go deeper. All matter is merely knotted space and time in the end, adhering to certain rules soon learnt by any sufficiently advanced species.’ Floating inside that claw appeared some construct of light. ‘When you organize the underlying structure of matter, the difference is always noticeable when observed from the right place.’ The creature turned to peer at him. ‘There is a price.’
‘Name it.’
‘You return us to the surface of the place you call Masada – home of the gabbleducks.’
Blegg considered that. The plan had been to keep the artefact aboard the Hourne so it could quickly be moved to different locations in the event of war. Such a repository of valuable information must be protected. However, the survival of the Polity might depend on being able to locate Jain nodes. He did not need to confer. He replied, ‘It will be done. You have my word, and that is good.’
‘I know – it’s the word of a ruler,’ the gabbleduck replied cryptically.
The construct drifted down from its claw, turning as it came. Blegg kept utterly still as it hovered before him, and as it drifted towards his forehead and penetrated. ‘The Jain used U-space, yet their destructive technology does not. It was made by their AIs, which were based on the Jain themselves as yours are on you, before those AIs transcended their erstwhile masters and left them to kill each other. Why they left the U-space option out is a question best addressed to those same AIs, wherever they might be.’
It was a pattern in his mind, seven, eight dimensional: something beyond what he could encompass, but at least recognizable as a U-space signature. With a sudden flush of excitement Blegg realized what he saw: a Jain node as viewed via underspace.
The gabbleduck peered down at him. ‘This is what you came for?’
‘It is.’
It nodded slowly. ‘You never get them all – there’re always some overlooked, to start the process all over again. There is only one way to win.’
‘And what is that?’ Blegg asked, wondering what the quickest way out of this realm might be.
‘You cease to be what the Jain hated.’
Blegg turned away.
Never.
Was that what the Atheter did? Hatred of the futility of intelligent life and technical civilizations . . .
Were the gabbleducks all that remained of the Atheter when they made their fateful decision to cease to be the intelligent citizens of a technical civilization? Blegg doubted that, else why did this thing, this Atheter AI, want to be taken to where remained those animalistic descendants, the gabbleducks? It was all a mystery that would have to wait for another time, since Blegg had more pressing concerns. He turned away, felt the ground sliding out from underneath him, and saw a black wall descend.
Hiatus.
Blegg stepped out of the VR booth, blinked and looked around him. The staff on the observation deck peered at him warily. Gazing through the screens, he observed that the artefact seemed to have settled back to its previous state.
‘Hourne,’ he said, ‘are you back?’
The AI replied, ‘The artefact has disconnected itself from me, but may reconnect at any time.’
‘Do you have that U-space signature?’
‘I do – it was transmitted to me at the same time as you received it in VR.’
‘You saw all that, then?’
‘I did.’
‘Interesting . . . about the gabbleducks. Do you believe it?’
‘If it is not actually the truth, it seems a strange and pointless lie to tell.’
– retroact 5 –
‘There was not much resistance, then,’ Atheter observed.
‘Sporadic,’ Blegg replied. ‘Mostly crushed by human fighters bright enough to realize the AI rulers were better at governing than any previous human rulers.’
He turned to another card, saw them laid out all around him like gravestones.
Blegg ran down the seemingly endless corridor, while klaxons shrieked and warning lights flashed. Grieg told him the terrorists were ex Matthew Corporation employees who obtained the planar explosives from a mercenary group who decided on retirement under the new regime and were now selling off their assets. That had been a relief, since from the beginning of the investigation ECS intelligence believed them to have obtained fissile materials. But planar explosives could still do plenty of damage if detonated somewhere critical.
‘Left turn at the end here, second door on your left,’ Earth Central informed him.
Somewhere critical seemed to be snuggled up against the Amaranth Station reactor, or so Draben told the interrogators. Halting by the door Blegg waited a moment.
‘Nothing connected to the door,’ EC assured him.
He opened the door and entered, scanning the room. The reactor cube, five yards on each side, sat in the middle of the room amidst a tangle of cooling pipes and heavy power cables. Control consoles lined one wall, and gratings had been pulled up from the floor when this place was searched earlier.
‘The detonator is solid-state, activated by timer and gravity switch.’
Blegg walked in, studying that part of the reactor where steam pipes exited towards the generators next door. There – beside the pipes. No wonder the earlier searchers did not find it. The bomb appeared to be a pressure and stress analyser bolted across the point where the pipes exited the reactor. He climbed nearby steps up to a catwalk and walked along until standing beside the explosive device.
‘How long have
I got?’
‘Four minutes – not long enough to deactivate it.’
Blegg considered that. Running here had been an almost instinctive reaction. He should have transferred himself through U-space to give himself more time. But, then, would another couple of minutes have made any difference? He placed his hand on the bomb. ‘A gravity switch and a timer, you say? Nothing else linked to its attachment to the pipes?’
‘So Draben just told his interrogator, and he seems less inclined to lie now. One moment . . .’ The AI fell silent for a while, then returned with, ‘It is secured by four bolts. You require a socket drive, which you will find in a toolchest below the catwalk.’
Blegg quickly returned below, found the toolchest and flipped it open. The socket driver, a gun-shaped object with a tool-head that could adjust to fit any bolt, lay amidst a well-used collection of old-style spanners. Ominous, that. He hoped whoever used the device kept it well charged and did not have to resort to the spanners too often. He picked it up and pressed the trigger – seemed okay – and returned to the catwalk. Closing the driver on the first bolt he hoped Draben was not lying. The bolt spun out easily, as did the second and third.
Placing the driver over the fourth bolt Blegg concentrated on his breathing and instilled calm within himself. The gravity switch meant he must keep the bomb to its present orientation. He clamped a hand against it and spun out the last bolt. Discarding the driver behind him, he then carefully eased the bomb away from the pipes.
‘How long?’
‘Two minutes.’
Blegg checked his watch. It would have been nice to be able to transfer himself and the device far from here, but neither gravity nor orientation applied in U-space, so such a transference might trip the switch. Amaranth would be safe; he would cease to exist. He turned slowly and walked along the catwalk to the steps, his martial training enabling him to move smoothly and evenly. Negotiating the steps was more difficult, but he reached the floor safely.