by Neal Asher
When the contrail from the pods had bled away, Jane twisted down on the joystick and the shuttle spiralled down into the lower atmosphere. They dropped through a thick bank of yellow cloud, where flat ice crystals the size of thumbnails hissed against the screen. They came out of this and swooped low over a desolate landscape that could have been described as tundra had it possessed but a little vegetation. The only suitable description to Cormac’s mind was ‘arctic desert’. Here the ground had a pattern of tidal sands and icy sculptures like frozen waves poised over narrow gullies. In the rear-view screen Cormac saw that their passage was creating a blast cloud of powdery CO2 ice. Ahead was a huge mountain with the shape of a giant sandstone butte surrounded by snow-heaped slopes. As they drew close, Jane slowed the shuttle to less than the speed of sound so they could bank round the mountain’s icy flanks.
‘It was originally M65, but over a twenty-year period seven people died trying to climb it. It is now called Mount Prometheus. Prometheus was chained by Zeus to a mountain, where every day an eagle came to feed on his liver, and where every night his liver was renewed.’
‘Charming. Has anyone ever reached the summit?’
‘A woman called Enoida Deacon once climbed it with nothing but a coldsuit and oxygen pack. No one else has climbed it. She settled at the runcible town.’
So was now dead, he thought.
They swooped on past the mountain then across the icepan of New Sea below an off-white sky completely clear of cloud. Once they were beyond sight of the shore, it was as if they were flying between two curved but featureless cotton sheets. Jane upped the speed of the shuttle past the sound barrier, and soon twists of sooty cloud smeared the horizon. Minutes later they streaked over the farthest shore: a row of cliffs like the edge of a crust yet to be stripped away from the purity below, arctic desert again, but this time scattered with obvious flat areas that were frozen water. In the distance, Cormac saw a heat-sink station. It might have been the one they had been inside, but there were many on that shore, so it was difficult to tell. Soon they came upon the first scattering of buildings, most of them undamaged. Ahead was the dark ring of the blast-site.
‘Strap yourself in,’ said Jane.
Cormac pulled his harness across and clipped it into place. You did not get such comforts as internal gravity in anything other than passenger shuttles. This wing was military, so you didn’t get shockfields either. ECS did not believe in pampering its employees. Jane yanked back on the joystick and the shuttle turned straight up into the sky. Cormac was thrust back into his seat, but the pressure soon eased off as Jane levelled the shuttle out and slowed. Soon they came to a halt above the blast-site, AG operating at full.
‘Bomb away,’ she said, after punching out a sequence on the console.
He watched the screen that showed the view below. He saw the silver sphere fall away, to be quickly diminished by distance. Seconds later there was a flash which left a momentary black spot on the screen, then around that there was a ring of eight flashes as the cluster bombs carried the counteragent across the site. After a short time a cloud of icy dust rose up and obscured the ground. Had the body of the intrepid Enoida Deacon been destroyed then or before? He doubted it would have mattered to her.
Jane turned the shuttle on its tail and they streaked into the sky.
* * *
As the shuttle drifted through the shimmer-shield into the Hubris, Cormac noticed that a large area of the shuttle bay’s deck had been replaced. A couple of crewmembers were working on something behind the far wall, near the drop-shaft, but otherwise it looked as if most of the damage had been repaired. The shuttle itself had been attended to before they went out, and at least ten technicians and numerous robots had been waiting for them to move the vehicle, so they could get to the deck underneath it.
‘Well, that’s the holiday over,’ he said to Jane.
‘You considered that restful?’ she asked him.
‘Yes. I have a feeling I’ll be looking back on our little trip with something approaching nostalgia in the days to come.’
He unclipped his belt and stood up. He grinned to himself as he left the Golem; it was nice that she could think of no patronizing reply. Now, as he had told her, the holiday was over. Perhaps something more had been discovered here. Bowing slightly to Jane’s observations, he headed for the recreation room, rather than the misanthropic solitude of his cabin. From there, he would talk with Hubris. As he entered the corridor leading to that room he saw Chaline, her overall wrinkled and sweat-stained yet again, walking in the opposite direction with another technician. At the end of the corridor they kissed before moving on. Cormac felt a moment of chagrin, then grinned to himself again. Perhaps her shower didn’t work properly. He entered the canteen.
The only people in the room were three technicians. They were eating a meal while checking computations on their notescreens and arguing about five-dimensional singularity mechanics. Cormac heard one of them mention N-space and another say something about Skaidon cusp time vectors. He nodded to them and headed for the food dispenser. It was not as if it was a conversation to which he might be able to contribute. The round screen of the dispenser clicked to life when he tapped a miniconsole that someone had left extended from the wall on its narrow stem.
‘Do you have Cheyne white cakes?’ he asked.
The words ‘In Stock’ appeared on the screen and a ‘Waiting’ sign began flashing in its lower right-hand corner.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘I’ll have Cheyne white cakes, new bread and butter, and a suitable white wine.’
The words changed to ‘Acquiring’, and it took only a few minutes for his meal to drop into the slot below on a sealed tray. He had been on worse ships. He sat at a table as far from the technicians as he could get—their discussion had reached the waving-plastic-knives-across-the-table stage—and flipped up the table’s screen.
‘Hubris, anything new?’ he asked as he unsealed his tray. He examined the glass bottle of wine he freed from the tray. Made from null-G grapes; he pursed his lips in approval, and then pulled a glass free too.
There was a delay before he received an answer from Hubris. The screen flicked on to reveal the view seen from something moving slowly down a smooth-sided shaft.
Hubris said, ‘Deep scan has revealed a black spot underneath Samarkand’s surface. This shaft leads to it. It is two kilometres under the ground. I initiated a probe.’
Black spot?
Then he remembered: a black spot was something the various radiations of scan bounced back from without the usual spectroscopic information; or something from which they did not return, like a black hole.
‘Did you get a bounce?’ he asked.
‘Total reflection. There is a lenticular object of an as yet unidentified material. It is five metres wide by two metres thick.’
‘What materials give that kind of reflection?’
‘There are one hundred and fifty-six recorded—’
‘OK, don’t list them.’ He continued to watch the screen. Then something more occurred to him. ‘Hang on, will that probe be all right down there? What about the mycelium?’
‘All the ceramal in this probe’s construction has been replaced by chainglass.’
Remembering what Jane had said, Cormac snorted and returned his attention to his food. The picture was uninteresting and he gave it only cursory attention. He finished his meal and poured out the last of his wine. As he sipped, Hubris spoke again.
‘Further information indicates that the shaft is too narrow for the object to have passed down it in its present form.’
‘How do we know it did?’ asked Cormac.
‘We do not, but it does seem likely.’
‘Then there would be a crater. Signs from when it struck.’
‘Not necessarily. Samarkand has had recent volcanic activity.’
‘What exactly do you mean by recent?’
‘Two hundred thousand years ago,’ Hubris replied.
; Cormac let that sink in. He also equated it with a claim Dragon had made about his age and wondered just what the hell he was dealing with here. He got back to the central issue.
‘It might be that the shaft was cut by people on Samarkand. Perhaps they were digging this thing up,’ he said.
The picture from the probe changed as it slowed and turned. What he was seeing now was frosted black glass. He doubted the crystals were from water-ice, though.
‘The walls of the shaft are made of compression glass,’ Hubris told him. ‘This indicates the rock was melted and compressed. The usual method of tunnel digging is to either cut or vaporize the rock. Here, on a cold world with an energy surplus from the runcible, it would have been the latter method. There are no records of either being used. No records of any such excavation.’
‘They would have been destroyed with the runcible, wouldn’t they?’
‘The discovery and subsequent excavation of such an object would have been of interest to all Polity AIs and many human experts. The Samarkand AI would not have kept the news to itself.’
Cormac sat still and let that percolate through his mind. It seemed as if something other than people had been at work here. The dracomen again?
‘Have you scanned for any equipment near the mouth of the tunnel?’
‘I have. Before moving to deep scan I completed a full scan of the surface of the planet.’
‘Oh,’ said Cormac. Then he looked up at the screen as it blanked out. ‘Hubris, where’s the picture?’
‘There is no more picture. Something destroyed the probe.’
* * *
Cormac stepped out of the drop-shaft into the shuttle bay, took a deep breath to bring some calm to himself. It was not what they might find on the planet that worried him; it was the briefing he was about to give. All four of the Sparkind awaited him, along with an assistant of Chaline’s. She was too busy with preparations to install the runcible to come herself, so she said. As he walked to the shuttle Cormac studied these people, for they were all people under Polity law.
The two Golem Thirties made Gant and Thorn appear small. Both of them were over two metres tall and archetypes of human physical perfection. Only Cybercorp produced androids like this. All other androids were poor by comparison, if you believed their advertising. It was true that there were some pretty dreadful copies: the metal-skins, or others that were more like a collection of prosthetics than anything coherent.
Aiden had cropped blond hair and blue eyes, and looked like what Hitler might have been after with his eugenics programme. He was distinctly Teutonic. Cento had curly black hair, brown eyes and tanned skin, and might just as well have been modelled on Apollo. All four of the Sparkind were loaded with equipment. The weapons they carried did not weigh much, but then did not have to. If they were not sufficient, then the next step would have to be a direct strike from the ship. Chaline’s assistant, Carn, was a small monkeylike man, thin and wiry. He affected a beard like Thorn’s, but his hair was long and tied in a ponytail. Behind his right ear was the crystalline slug of a cerebral augmentation, and his eyes were mismatched. His right eye, its yellow pupil matching the colour of his crystal aug, was certainly artificial; the other eye was a mild brown. His left hand was silvered, and a wide range of instruments was strapped up his arms and on the belt of his coldsuit. Cormac reckoned that he had more instrumentation inside than outside, and felt a moment of affinity with him. He stepped forwards to speak to them all.
‘You’re all probably aware of the situation, but I’ll reiterate just to be sure. Two hours ago Hubris picked up a black spot on scan. It was bounce rather than absorption, so it’s probably an artefact. It is lenticular and about five metres wide by two metres thick. We’ve since learnt that it sits in a chamber about a hundred metres across. Hubris also detected a shaft leading down to it. The shaft was formed by methods we don’t usually employ.’ He paused for a moment. ‘It seems increasingly likely that no human agency made it. It could be that the object made the shaft, though it is itself larger, but this is all speculation. One hour ago Hubris sent a probe down. One kilometre down, the probe was destroyed.’
Cormac walked to one side and rested his hand against the wing of the shuttle above his head. Stacked before him were some packages ready to be loaded. He continued his monologue.
‘Whatever destroyed the probe is still down there. Now, it seems highly unlikely that this object has nothing to do with the destruction of the runcible, and I get suspicious when it appears something does not want us to see it.’ He nodded to Carn. ‘I want you to find out exactly what it is.’ He inspected the four Sparkind in turn. ‘And you know what your jobs are. Any questions?’
‘Has there been anything more on scan from down there?’ asked Gant.
Cormac shook his head. ‘Too deep. Hubris picked up the object only because it was a black spot. Very little else can be read that far down.’
Gant went on. ‘You detailed climbing equipment. We brought 2k reels of chain-cotton and motorized abseils. Is it a straight drop? Could be difficult if we run into trouble.’
‘No, the shaft runs down at about thirty-five degrees. There’ll be ice, though.’
Gant tapped the box he was sitting on. ‘Grip shoes. I didn’t like the footing last time we went down. How about lighting? I’d like to send drone lights ahead, if that’s possible.’
‘We’ll try it. Anything else?’
Carn spoke up then. His voice was soft but incisive. ‘You realize that if this object is impenetrable to scan, it may be impenetrable at close range to portable equipment?’
‘There is that possibility, I agree . . .’
‘I merely wish to ascertain that you are aware of the difficulties. It may be that the artefact will have to be . . . moved to the ship.’
From under two kilometres of rock?
Carn observed him, and his mouth twitched with repressed amusement.
Cormac suddenly twigged. He nodded.
‘That can wait. There may be other evidence down there we don’t want to destroy . . . like whatever got the probe. Is that all?’ They all nodded agreement. ‘Let’s go then.’
* * *
The shuttle dropped into atmosphere with all the aerodynamics of a paving slab. Heat indicators stuttered up their scales, groping for the red areas, and screens showed a lambent glow along the front of the wing’s surfaces. The deep droning of AG and the shuttle’s turbines made speech almost impossible. Cormac was glad of his straps and hoped Cento remembered that his human cargo was not so durable as himself. Rather than the acid hiss of ice crystals on the screen and body of the shuttle, there was a drawn-out roar as it punched through yellow cloud and left a wide vapour trail behind. Cento did not treat the machine with the same gentleness as did Jane. He tested its limits, flew it hard, perhaps for a good reason, perhaps just for the hell of it. Cormac had seen a devilish grin of anticipation on his face as he had taken the pilot’s seat. He wondered what the AI that programmed him had been thinking of. The rear-view screen, he saw, was whited out. The forward view showed cloud getting steadily darker above a landscape of fractured slabs.
‘Getting near to night here!’ Cento shouted.
Cormac remembered that Samarkand did experience night and day, but, with its ponderous turning, each was nearly a solstan week in length. When they finally came into land below cloud now slowly turning to the colour of brass, only Carn made comment on the flight.
‘Lucky no mycelium was missed,’ he said as he unstrapped himself.
As he picked up his facemask Cormac nodded agreement. There was a lot of ceramal in the construction of this shuttle. He watched Cento and Aiden as they rose from the front seats and came back. Cento appeared smug. Aiden was all Teutonic efficiency; even in the enclosed space of the shuttle he seemed to be marching. Only then did Cormac notice that the suits they were wearing were not coldsuits. These Golem considered appearance to be secondary to the mission, then. A good sign, he hoped.
&nbs
p; Before they all disembarked, Gant demonstrated the chain-cotton abseil devices. He held up a harness with a cylindrical box attached, and with a wide ring he pulled from the box a line so thin it was difficult to see.
‘Cento and me’ll be wearing these on our backs. The lines will be fixed to the rock outside. The rest of you will wear them side-harnessed and attached to our lines. They’re easy enough to use.’ He pointed to a touch-control on the front of the harness. ‘Here you can control the speed of your descent and ascent. We probably won’t be using that, though. We’ll be walking down with grip shoes, so we’ll use the friction setting. Should there be an emergency of some kind, don’t use the full-speed setting. These babies can wind you in at thirty kph.’
He nodded to Cormac when he had finished, but Carn spoke out before Cormac could say anything.
‘What about the chain-cotton? Slightest mistake and you could lose an arm.’
‘No, I can’t demonstrate it here—wrong temperature—but out there the cotton will be coated with a speed-set foam as it comes out. The foam is stripped off when the line is wound in.’
Carn nodded, satisfied.
With little more to add, Cormac signalled that they go.
Outside the shuttle the air was pellucid even in the encroaching darkness. It seemed almost like a frosty morning and Cormac half expected to see vapour billowing from Aiden’s mouth. The temperature was 150 Kelvin, though, and if he had taken his mask off, his first breath would have frozen his lungs to a delicate glass sculpture that would have shattered on his next breath.