Gridlinked

by Neal Asher

‘If they do not kill it, they will hurt it sufficiently to make it run. It knows your runcibles now. It will run for them.’

  ‘But why should we want it to run?’

  ‘So it goes somewhere else.’

  This was more like the Dragon of old: it was playing semantic games with life-and-death issues. Cormac paused for a moment of thought before continuing.

  ‘Dragon, what did you intend to do had the Maker been here, and free from its containment vessel, when you arrived?’

  ‘Now you have a grasp of the basics, Ian Cormac.’

  ‘You would have killed it here, then. And you still can,’ said Cormac. Then he added, ‘We have a runcible to install now.’

  ‘I will not hinder you. But you may take onboard my creatures. They will assist you. They will obey every command. This I offer in reparation.’

  ‘Accept or die,’ whispered Thorn.

  Cormac did not like this. He felt, as he always felt with Dragon, that a lot was not being told. He especially did not like an offer of reparation that was not open to negotiation. Should he refuse, and risk more of the wrath they had just witnessed? He let the thought slide, and in that moment decided there was one more question that needed an answer.

  ‘Dragon, where is . . . the rest of you?’

  The reply came slowly. ‘We are at the four corners of your galaxy, Ian Cormac.’

  Cormac thought how apposite this was. He visualized star maps with little arrows pointing to the darkness at the edge of the galaxy, and there written the words: ‘Here be dragons.’

  ‘An object has been launched from Dragon towards us.’

  ‘Scan it. If it looks suspicious, destroy it.’

  ‘It contains the two dracomen.’

  ‘OK, bring them in,’ said Cormac. There seemed little else to do. He was not about to start becoming argumentative with Dragon just as he was beginning to get some answers, truth or not. He closed the channel with the alien, and turned to Chaline.

  ‘You can get on with it now,’ he said.

  She smiled happily and left the room.

  ‘How much of that did you believe?’ Cormac asked Mika, Thorn and Aiden.

  ‘I think it will let us set up the runcible, and I believe it is genuinely after whatever was in that artefact. Beyond that its motivations are debatable,’ said Mika.

  ‘All of it is plausible,’ said Aiden. ‘One must question one’s own motives for distrust.’

  Cormac answered him. ‘Dragon has little regard for human life; we know this. Why would it be concerned about the possible deaths of a few million people?’

  Aiden looked thoughtful for a moment, and then said, ‘You are correct. It has motivated us because it requires our assistance. This makes a number of its claims invalid. I concur with Mika.’

  ‘Thorn?’ asked Cormac.

  ‘Tapestry of fucking lies, old man,’ said Thorn, smiling bleakly.

  * * *

  Cormac was sitting on his bed, wondering about the possibility of sleep, when there came a knock at his door.

  ‘Come in,’ he said.

  In came Jane, apparently no less a goddess because she wore baggy overalls.

  ‘Jane, please, sit down.’

  Jane swished into the single chair with an economy of movement and an elegance that was enviable. She had a grace that Aiden lacked. But Aiden had a brute power she lacked. Both of them could have squashed the likes of Thorn without needing their artificial sweat glands.

  ‘What do you require of me?’ she asked, crossing her legs.

  Cormac rubbed at his forehead. ‘Chaline told me that your speciality was secondary installation. You deal with AIs normally, which was why she could release you to me last time. You hadn’t a lot to do then.’

  Jane smiled. ‘Yes, that is correct.’

  ‘That submind we brought back—Hubris can’t get through to it. It’s completely internalized. Do you have any suggestions as to how we might get through?’

  ‘It would be kinder to shut it down. It was part of the Samarkand AI, and as such more of a fragment of a mind. The destruction of the rest of it has driven it insane.’

  ‘No, I can’t allow it to be shut down.’

  ‘Might I ask why?’

  ‘Dragon.’

  ‘You think it contains vital information?’

  ‘All I know is that when Dragon was scorching the planet, it managed to vaporize every remaining installation of the Samarkand runcible. It was all well disguised, as it scorched the entire area. But I find it suspicious for all that.’

  ‘Destroying the evidence?’

  ‘Looks like it.’

  ‘What do you hope to find?’

  ‘Perhaps some chronology to these events. There might be a record of when the dracomen arrived, or when the Maker left . . .’ He paused and stared off to one side. ‘Shit! Blegg!’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘He knew! The bastard knew!’

  Jane waited. Cormac went on.

  ‘When he sent me here, he told me the runcible AI managed to transmit some information. I bet it told him about the arrival of the dracomen. That’s why he sent me.’

  ‘Does this mean the submind can now be shut down?’

  ‘No, definitely not. All we can be sure of is that he knew about the dracomen, and about the runcible going down. There might be more. What were the events surrounding these various arrivals and departures? I need to know. Will you try?’

  ‘If you so wish.’

  Jane glided to her feet and with a quick smile she left him. He lay back on his bed. He could see what Blegg had done: given him the minimum of information so he would have to get over the effects of gridlinking and approach the problem without preconceptions. Did Blegg believe Dragon had destroyed the runcible? Or did he have some inkling of Dragon’s version of events? Whatever the answer, Cormac knew he could not expect Blegg to deliver it to him. He was on his own, as always. Half-truths and outright lies, the casual killing of thousands; Blegg knew what motivated him. Cormac was determined that he would not let go until he had found some answers and someone, or something, roasted for what had happened here. He did not like playing the fool.

  22

  The lines between sciences have, in the last few centuries, become wide grey wastelands where questions of science become questions of philosophy and sometimes of religion. If you can build a human, molecule for molecule like any other human, then is he a human? Perhaps it is a question that will not need to be answered. Though we have the capability, we do not have the inclination. We can build better than nature now. We can now design and build machines that make some of the creations of evolution seem comparatively clunky. Of course, you then have to think about whether or not this is merely a continuance of evolution, then you’re back to philosophy again.

  From How It Is by Gordon

  Twenty years in the ES regulars had left Cheryl with a jaundiced view of human nature and an almost supernatural recognition of potential shitstorms. When she saw the huge figure standing amongst the rows of vines, she did not shout a greeting nor ask that figure its business. She immediately ducked down, accessed her aug, and sent out a recall to the pickers. A two-and-a-half-metre-tall metal-skin would not come to the crop house to enquire about the passionfruit business, nor to purchase juice for one of the wine makers. Cheryl kept utterly still and hoped that the android had not heard her, and she felt some relief when the first of the pickers came along the rows.

  These pickers were something to make the skin crawl on anyone who had not been born on Viridian. They were made so that they could scuttle through the vines without causing too much damage as they selected fruits of the required ripeness. Upon finding such a fruit, they did not actually pick it, but they would grip it in their mandibles and suck it dry; and once their sacklike bodies were full, they would go to empty themselves at one of the juicing stations. The AI that had designed them had taken their template from an Earth lifeform perfectly suited to this task. That lifefo
rm was good at both scuttling and sucking things dry. Each picker, as a result, was a black plastic spider with a body the size of a football.

  The android flicked its head from side to side as the spiders moved past it. Cheryl set a loop in their programs so they would keep searching the rows in that same area, then very carefully backed away. Now, with any luck, the android would not hear her: the scuttling in the growths might cover the sounds of her breathing and her heartbeat. When she had put four rows between herself and potential trouble, she crouched down by the small silo of a juicing station and put a call, through her aug, to the authorities in the capital. She was unsurprised to find her signal blocked. Just as she was unsurprised to see a man, another two rows across, walking towards the crop house. This man was dressed in plain business-wear, had black hair, and a black sun-band across his eyes. The giveaway was the Drescon assault rifle he had hanging from a shoulder strap.

  Cheryl very carefully moved in the opposite direction from him. His attention was firmly fixed on the crop house and he was speaking into a comunit. So, there were others. Cheryl was very glad of the habit of dress she had acquired during those twenty years, a habit reinforced by the tendency of some Viridian inhabitants to sneak in and empty juicing stations in order to make a shilling or two with the wine makers. Her ES battle fatigues were chameleon cloth. Had they not been she felt sure she would be dead by now.

  Five small thuds came in quick succession from her right. Not from the man she had already spotted. She froze and felt a sudden surge of fear. Until the moment she heard the horrible mosquito whining that followed immediately upon the shots, this had almost been like a training exercise. Seeker bullets! Whoever these people were, they were using seeker bullets. The sound of smashing glass leavened her fear. The shots had been fired at the crop house. Had she been inside, the bullets would have found her by now, homing in on her body heat to detonate at her skin in a blast of micro-shrapnel. A couple of small explosions then came from the house. The bullets had probably decided on hitting the most likely heat sources. That meant the central heating in the house would be gone.

  Cheryl reached round to the back of her head and undid the neck pocket of her fatigues. She pulled the hood over and fixed the mask across. Now she could take the risk of standing and having a look. Three men walked out from between the vines and into the yard of the crop house. They were talking and gesturing. The android just stood there with a briefcase clutched in its brass hand. It gave her the creeps. She auged up a visual intensifier program, and got X10. Now she could study these intruders more closely. Two of the men looked the typical suited thugs that some organizations recruited. The third man, in his mesh shirt and baggy fatigue trousers, seemed to be in charge. There also seemed to be something wrong with him. She downloaded what she was seeing as a visual file, then slowly dropped back down. The face of the man she enclosed in a frame, and had the aug tidy up, was a mess. He had some sort of optical link that did not seem to have taken so well, and his face was haggard and scabby. She stood again to see what they would do next, and now set her aug to record everything she was seeing and hearing.

  One of the suits crossed the yard to the transporter: an AGC that was simply an open-backed truck with a framework able to carry juicing stations. The other suit walked around to the back of the house, and soon returned driving Cheryl’s personal AGC. So that was what this was all about: they just wanted transport. Good. Once they secured it and went on their way, whatever blocker they had would go with them. She watched while the android tore the framework from the back of the transporter and tossed it aside before taking its place there. Foamed steel frame: it had to be strong to take the weight of the juicing stations. Cheryl swallowed dryly. She had definitely made the right move. The other suit got into her AGC—she would have liked to have known how they broke the security lock—and the leader sat at the controls of the transporter. Soon they were up in the sky and roaring overhead, all turbines opened at full. Cheryl waited until they were out of sight before heading back into the crop house. She had almost reached the door when a hand caught her shoulder.

  Cheryl reacted. She caught the hand, pulled on it, and drove her elbow back as hard as she could. No pulling punches; this was life or death. Her blow elicited a grunt. The next thing she knew there was a grip on the back of her fatigues, on her arm, and she was airborne. She hit the ground flat on her back, spun her legs to give her momentum, and then flipped up into a fighting crouch. The man standing before her was heavily built, had cropped ginger hair, and seemed to have been in the wars. As she pulled her pathetic chainglass pruning knife, just one thought went through her mind. Fuck: boosted.

  ‘I could have let you go in,’ said John Stanton, holding his hand to his torso and looking ill.

  Cheryl paused at that. If she ran, she would probably get it in the back.

  ‘What do you mean?’ she asked.

  ‘They stole a personal AGC. So they’d have known someone was here.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘You army?’

  ‘I was.’

  ‘Then you should know about seeker bullets. Programmed levels of targeting. Five shots and two explosions. What does that mean, soldier?’

  Cheryl got a sudden cold shudder when she realized what he was saying. ‘You’re not with them?’ she asked.

  ‘Not now,’ said Stanton. ‘And I suggest we put a bit of distance between us and this house.’

  Cheryl put her pruning knife back in her belt and stood upright. She nodded and walked back to the edge of the vine field. The man walked along with her, and she noted how gingerly he was moving and that there was a drug patch on his neck. She wondered if he had not replied to her attack with a killing blow simply because it would hurt him too much at present. After a moment she took her attention away from him and directed it towards the field.

  ‘Pickers run on chemical batteries that get warm,’ she said.

  He said nothing in reply to that, but it gratified her to see his expression when three pickers scuttled out of the field and headed for the house. He seemed about to ask something then, but he assumed a tired look and just watched the pickers go in through the door. Three explosions followed in quick succession. On a billow of smoke, a couple of black plastic legs came tumbling through one of the broken windows.

  ‘Who are they—and who are you?’ she asked.

  ‘You got any more AGCs here?’

  ‘No, and you haven’t answered my question.’

  Stanton shrugged and replied, because he could not be bothered not to reply, ‘The ugly one is a Separatist bastard called Arian Pelter. The android is the psychotic Mr. Crane. The rest are like me: mercenaries.’

  ‘Why they here?’

  ‘To die, if I have my way. Now tell me, where’s the nearest habitation?’

  Cheryl pointed. ‘About ten kilometres that way.’

  ‘And the runcible installation?’

  ‘About a thousand kilometres beyond that.’

  Stanton looked in that direction, then back at the house. ‘Right, I need the use of your medkit, and I need food and water. Consider these payment for your life.’

  ‘Inside,’ Cheryl said, and let him go ahead of her into the house. As he did so she sent the recording from her aug, and kept the channel open for real-time transmission. She thought it unlikely this man would reach his destination, once the police received her recording. She also thought it likely Viridian would be receiving a visit from ECS sometime soon.

  * * *

  From the mask, clean oxygen blasted into her face and she gasped at it. A light-headed euphoria flooded her, but only for a moment. Pain was secondary; oxygen was survival as it charged her cells. But as her organism became satisfied it now had attention to spare for that pain.

  ‘One moment,’ said a gruff voice.

  There was a gentle fumbling in her neck ring, then pressure at the side of her neck as a drug patch was pressed into place. Through blurry eyes she saw a mesh ceiling and a th
in bluish hand retreating from view. Outlinker, was her one thought.

  ‘Fused across the join. We’ll have to cut,’ said the gruff voice.

  ‘Then cut,’ replied a woman’s voice. ‘She’s probably still bleeding in there.’

  A dentist-drill whine quickly followed on the words. She felt the Outlinker tugging at her suit. While he was doing that the edge went off the pain, but Jarvellis knew she needed more than a patch to block it completely. She was in a bad way. She didn’t need to see her injuries to know that.

  ‘That’s got it. Get Sam over here.’

  The suit seal crumpled as it disengaged and she felt the motors in the back of the suit hinging it open.

  She screamed as something ripped in her hip.

  ‘Shit, a lump of chainglass. Sorry, darlin’. Close off that artery, Sam.’

  Jarvellis clamped down on another scream as something cold went into her hip. She heard wet slicing sounds and the pain became more intense. Another patch went down on her stomach and another on her knee. When she thought she could bear the pain no longer it started to fade a little. Now she felt something else pressed against her breast. A blessed cold numbness suffused it. She felt herself beginning to drift on the load of painkillers pumping round her blood supply. But the narrow hand would not allow this; it patted at her face.

  ‘Stay with us. I want you to lift your head and look,’ said the gruff voice.

  Jarvellis just lay there. She didn’t see any incentive to move. John was dead. The Lyric was gone. It was all over. The patting turned to a slap and the voice got angrier.

  ‘Wake up, damn it!’

  This seemed too cruel after all that had happened. Why couldn’t they just leave her alone? She opened her eyes and raised her head to tell them to do just that, but in the end could not even manage to.

  She lay on the ceramal floor of an airlock. To her left crouched a little robot the shape of a limpet. It had two multi-jointed arms, and she almost chucked when she saw how it had opened her leg to reach in and clamp the artery. The thigh pad it was reaching over had a bloody dagger of chainglass right through it. Jarvellis did not want to know what might lie under the dressing on her breast. She inspected the other two occupants of the lock.