by Neal Asher
‘It’s still a war drone, not a planetary governor AI.’
‘Not so. Amistad, it seems, long ago surpassed the memory, experience and intelligence of an artificial intelligence like me. And it seems that after reintegration of his consciousness, Amistad will acquire huge processing power and become the prime authority on all things Atheter. The drone will climb to the status of AIs like Geronamid and Jerusalem.’
‘What?’
‘I can no more give Amistad orders than can you. Only Earth Central itself is higher, and that AI just told me to butt out.’
Sanders turned in a daze and left the church, the eyes of fat lecherous cupids tracking her departure.
Miloh kept his eye utterly fixed on his rifle sight and swore. Whilst Tombs had been talking to Deela – a dockworker Miloh recognized – he’d got target acquisition, the crosshairs locking over the proctor’s head and the rifle’s gyros shifting the weapon about in his hands to make minor adjustments whilst he kept it in the targeting field. But now the man was running, the rifle just wouldn’t acquire. This was ridiculous – he’d checked the damned thing over for hours before coming here to wait, he’d even run a full diagnostic of its internal workings, including structural scan of its moving parts. The rifle was as near to perfect as possible, yet now it was malfunctioning.
Without acquisition Miloh tried one shot, but saw no sign of the bullet hitting anywhere near the fleeing proctor. He next tried a five-shot burst, but again saw no sign of impacts. Swearing, he took his eye away from the sight and just aimed down the barrel, firing another five-shot burst. It was then, his eye away from the sight, that he saw them: ten slugs hanging in the air just a few metres away from him, all edge-on and arranged in a slowly turning circle. Then abruptly all of them turned back towards him.
‘You have got to be kidding,’ he said.
Suddenly the bullets were in motion, accelerating towards him one after another as if the circle they had been arranged in was some sort of invisible ammo can rotating to present each bullet in turn to an invisible breach. The first slammed into the crane’s metalwork beside his head before he had time to even duck or flinch. Then the rest were impacting all around him, splinters of metal and broken rifle slugs exploding apart and filling the air like a swarm of sprawns. He managed to cover his eyes, tried to draw back to cover, but with the certainty one of those bullets would soon slam home. However, the tenth bullet hit and it was all over. He checked himself for damage and saw none at all, which seemed an impossibility considering the amount of metal that had been flying about.
‘Protected,’ he said, his heart thundering in his chest.
He swallowed drily, then reached with a shaking hand to his water bottle and uncapped it, took a sip. Suddenly he was just grateful to be alive, the feeling of relief swamping the constant anger he felt, at least for the moment. He considered what he had seen. Somewhere about here there was a Polity war machine concealed by chameleonware. Perhaps that accounted for the reaction first of Deela, then of Tombs himself. Tombs had been about to put his harpoon into her, but the weapon malfunctioned. She must have seen the thing, which was why she ran rather than take the opportunity to beat the crap out of Tombs for threatening her, as Miloh knew she was quite capable of doing. Tombs must have seen it too, which was why he ran. It seemed there was something damned scary about whatever—
Miloh froze, and felt a shiver running through his body. The crane stood on a loading jetty not currently in use, so would be powered down. It was also heavily built and well anchored into the jetty, which itself was reinforced enough to take the loading stresses imparted by the magnetic docking system dragging in half a million tonnes of cargo ship. There was no wind today and the sea was calm. So only one thing could account for the vibration Miloh could feel from the box-section he was sitting upon and the I-beam he rested his back against: something heavy was climbing up the crane towards him, and very soon he was going to die.
What could he do against something invisible, and capable of stopping his shots in midair, playing with the bullets like marbles, then firing them back at him? He peered down the length of the crane to the ground and for a moment could see nothing. Then came displacement, occasional prismatic distortions, a glimpse of something black and sharp at one moment, then the writhe of a metallic tentacle. The thing could do total invisibility, Miloh knew that – it just wasn’t bothering to conceal itself from him. He considered emptying his rifle down towards it, but feared it would only send the bullets back.
‘I’m not a threat,’ he said. ‘I’ll not try again.’
‘Yess,’ a voice hissed up at him.
‘Shouldn’t you be sticking with Tombs? The central town won’t be safe for him.’
The thing relentlessly continued its slow ascent. He pointed his rifle down towards it, then hesitated. What rules did this thing exist by? If he deliberately fired upon it would that give it the excuse to kill him? Was that why it had revealed its location to him? Abruptly he raised the rifle, clicked across the safety, then ejected the magazine and pocketed it.
‘I’m done,’ he said, peering down at the thing again.
‘Yess,’ it hissed, and came up at him like an express elevator from Hell.
Black spines and metal writhing like squerms, cutting, nerves winking on and off like party lights, a single red eye inspecting him dispassionately. For just seconds, or maybe eternity, Miloh lived in some nightmare place and understood he was being given some hint, some small taste of a realm Jeremiah Tombs had once visited. It didn’t end abruptly, just seemed to fade away, and he found himself with his face pressed against the I-beam, arms embracing it, legs coiled on the box section below, a tight cramp in his side. He tried to push away from the beam, but realized the thing that had assaulted him had either cuffed or tied his wrists on the other side, probably very tightly too, for he couldn’t feel his hands and his forearms felt . . . odd.
Shuffling himself more upright, he tried to bring his wrists into view to see if there was some way he could free himself. When he finally did get a look at his bonds he at first felt a slightly irked puzzlement, which gradually grew into horror. His hands were gone, and his wrists terminated at his rifle, one at the stock and one at the butt. They were melded into the rifle, skin and metal blended into some whorled woody substance. He could feel the rifle between, actually feel it as a linking extension of his arms.
It took three hours before dockworkers responded to his shouts for help, and they wondered why the harbour submind had ignored him. He soon learnt that his feeling of the rifle was no illusion when those workers tried to cut through it to free him, and he screamed in pain and the weapon bled. Eventually they sliced a section out of the I-beam and lowered him to the ground. Later, in Zealos hospital, Polity medical technology swiftly restored his hands, but that technology could not free him of the sudden stabbing agony in his palms any time he touched a rifle, nor could it return to him his hate, which had withered and shrivelled away like a tumour starved of blood.
8
Being Human
Terms change as times change and language is necessarily protean in order to keep up. When we were still confined to Earth, a Human being was easily defined by body shape, mind and genetics. The first of these to go was body shape, as cosmetic surgery and deep body surgery improved then claimed new territory. This started with cat’s eyes and elfin ears, then went radical as it became fashionable to take on other animal characteristics. Thereafter it ventured off into both the weird and the grotesque as some considered the utility of, say, an extra arm, a fish tail rather than legs, wings or the head of a crocodile. Mechanical augmentation played its part as people also turned themselves into cyborgs, with maybe an extra mechanical arm, or some steel tentacles or a motorized shell. And body shape became an irrelevance when it became possible to record and download a Human mind to any vessel. The shape of the Human mind disappeared with cerebral augmentation, much of it necessary to control different body shapes or tho
se mechanical augmentations, much of it to expand mental watts, memory, or to turn the mind into a specialized processor. Human DNA, already being adjusted for medical reasons, came in for major adjustment as Humans began to adapt themselves to new environments. Initially surgical alterations and technological augmentations played their part, but their limited scope was not enough for a people who wanted to colonize a whole world – they wanted alterations the body could repair, and that they could pass on to their children. So, in the end, what is it to be Human now?
– From QUINCE GUIDE compiled by Humans
Jem staggered out of the still standing harbour gates, his sprint through the guano storage bays to get away from the Devil seeming to have drained the last of his strength. He went down on his knees in an area that appeared more familiar to him, a row of open-top trucks parked to his right and a small proctors’ guard post to his left, neglected and its windows smashed.
He fought to regain breath, return some strength to his limbs, wondered if his air supply was running out early and, so thinking, lurched to his feet and headed for the short road leading up to the central town.
Worker huts had once stood on either side of the road, but now new structures were being erected on the foamstone rafts – long low buildings which, when he saw one yet to acquire a roof, seemed packed with complex and already moving machinery. Other machines worked between these huts, perfectly designed for laying foamstone blocks, or cutting and welding into place bubble-metal beams and plastic-laminate roof panels. Then amidst them, amidst that madness, Jem saw something to utterly confirm that Hell had arrived here at Godhead.
Skeletons walked amidst these new structures: the skeletons of men and women but coated with gleaming chrome. They were labouring to build the engines of damnation here on Masada. Only now, seeing this, did he truly comprehend that phrase ‘godless machines’. It wasn’t that the Polity denied the reality of God, rather, the Polity had accepted and welcomed to its steel heart the legions of Hell. When one of these skeletons turned to gaze at Jem with utterly Human eyes in its silver skull, that seemed more horrifying than either empty sockets or some satanic red gleam. He moved on as fast as he could manage, gasping, eyes blurred with tears.
How could this all be true? How could it possibly be true?
The road ramped up onto the thicker foamstone raft of the central town and, though Jem recognized covered walkways for what they were, and saw hints of old structures, most of the buildings here were new. He recognized so very little of this. What had happened here?
Avoiding one of the larger covered walkways, he turned into a narrower street, hoping to reach a walkway perhaps less used, and then find access to breathable air. Maybe inside somewhere he could find a breather mask and an oxygen supply, then perhaps he could head back here and steal one of those trucks. He didn’t want to stay inside Godhead and find it turned into some Sodom and Gomorrah.
Twenty metres into this street he saw a man and a woman jogging towards him from ahead. He turned towards the entrance into an alley; someone there too, then another approaching from behind. He continued walking, moving over to the side of the street to avoid the two ahead, but they came straight towards him – it was him they were coming for.
‘I’m guessing you’ve noticed some changes here, Proctor Tombs,’ said the man, halting before him.
‘Who are . . . you?’ Jem managed, studying him, noting the lack of a breather mask and the metal aug affixed to the side of his skull.
‘My name’s David Tinsch,’ the man replied. ‘But you don’t know me. Me and my son were sent to work the ponds after someone just like you accused me of heretical speech, had me beaten and took away everything I owned. My son died of septicaemia when the scole attachment went wrong.’
Jem wanted to say sorry, then cursed himself for the inclination.
Tinsch looked over to one side where the woman now squatted on the paving, some sort of control panel before her on fold-down legs.
‘Where is it?’ he asked.
‘Coming this way, and fast,’ she replied.
Jem stared at her. She was wearing the negative of a proctors’ uniform, demon script running from armpit to leg. He recognized the writing at once. How was it he recognized that, yet even at that moment could not visualize the writing of the Satagents? Was he being absorbed into Hell?
‘How long?’ asked Tinsch.
A resounding crash echoed from somewhere distant, seemingly back along the route Jem had traversed. He glanced round to see a pillar of lightning stabbing up into the sky above the buildings. A curved hardfield flashed into being up there, something black and nebulous briefly visible behind it, then both the shape and the field flashed out of existence, sending a wavefront of fire speeding overhead. He watched this pass out of sight, then lowered his gaze to the two men now approaching him from behind. Both wore the same negative uniforms as the woman.
‘At this rate, five minutes at best,’ said the woman. Jem returned his attention to her, dizzy, a sickness in his stomach, but noting her fear as she continued, ‘It just took out the first hardfield.’
‘Best we get this done now,’ said one of those behind Jem.
Hands closed on both his arms. The two dragged him forward and threw him down on the ground, nose smacking agonizingly against the paving and lights flashing across his vision. Before he could recover they were on him, turning him over on his back and pinning him there. Tinsch, whose clothing was of a plainer cut than the others, strode forward and squatted over him, holding out between his finger and thumb an aug just like the one he wore. It was a metallic version of the Gift, Polity tech, and Jem realized they were about to take him into a brotherhood of a very different kind. In this final act they would recruit him to their legions.
‘That necessary, David?’ asked one of the black-clad men whilst drawing a big evil-looking dagger from the sheath at his hip. ‘This doesn’t have to be complicated.’
‘When that thing gets through it might kill us all,’ said Tinsch.
‘We know that,’ replied the other. He scraped the tip of his knife against a package affixed to the front of his belt – a series of antipersonnel mines. They all wore these, Jem realized. They each wore enough explosive to gut this entire street.
‘But if we ream out his brain we’ve got a bargaining chip.’ Tinsch tapped a finger against the metal aug. ‘The AIs will want this, and it’s directly linked to my aug – if I die then the small explosive inside it detonates.’
‘Small comfort to the rest of us,’ the knife wielder quipped.
Another crash, and another line of fire flaring across the sky.
‘Second hardfield gone,’ the woman called. ‘For Christ’s sake get it done!’
‘Turn his head.’
Jem fought just as hard as he could, but the arms holding him were like steel. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Tinsch lowering the aug to the side of his head. He could see the standard anchor ring there – designed to attach the aug to the bone behind the recipient’s ear – but the thin needles already beginning to extrude from within that ring weren’t standard at all.
A low thunk issued from one side, and Jem recognized it as the sound of a stun-stick connecting. The pressure came off him and the aug retracted slightly. Managing to turn his head a little he saw the woman sprawled across her console.
‘Put it away,’ said a gravelly voice.
That big knife swept in towards his throat. Another impact of a different kind and the knife wielder yelled and spun aside, the handle of another knife protruding from his shoulder whilst his own blade clattered to the paving. Something cracked – a disc gun firing – and the other one pinning him sprawled away too. Jem grabbed up the fallen knife and scrabbled across the paving past the figure striding in. He should have felt some relief, some gratitude, but felt only a tugging, gnawing fear deep inside his head. He recognized the newcomer’s voice, and that recognition lay deeply embedded in the darkness within his skull – thre
atened to tear it open.
‘You fucking traitor!’ Tinsch still clutched the aug in one hand, his other hand straying to the explosives on his belt.
‘That’s debatable,’ said the newcomer.
Reaching a wall, Jem heaved himself up and, gasping for breath, rested his shoulder against it. He held the knife out to fend off any new attack, but it seemed he had slid into irrelevance. The newcomer stood with his back to Jem. Short grey hair topped a wide-shouldered rangy physique clad in flute-grass fatigues. The disc gun the man held pointed unwaveringly at Tinsch’s forehead. One of the other men lay on the ground, hands pressed to his stomach and blood leaking between his fingers. Jem’s other attacker stood with one hand at the handle protruding from his shoulder, his other hand sliding down towards the explosive on his belt. Jem closed his eyes. They were all going to die now, but that was alright, just so long as the one with the gun did not turn, did not reveal his face.
After a pause the newcomer continued, ‘Did you really think you could do this? Did you hear your last two hardfields crash? Did you get another dramatic fireworks display?’
Jem opened his eyes. Tinsch and the two negative proctors all had hands at the explosives on their belts, the one with the stomach wound repeatedly, desperately, stabbing a bloody finger at some control. And all three explosives were simply failing to detonate.
‘I get that you thought Miloh would delay it long enough for you to put up hardfields between.’ The grey-haired man shook his head sadly. ‘Good plan, but you have no idea what you’re up against. It divided out there, sent one half of itself off to deal with Miloh, while the other half continued to shadow Tombs here. And it didn’t even have to do that – Miloh was no real danger, nor are you.’