by Neal Asher
The crodorman swore at him then made a sound halfway between a scream and a groan when he made the move. Kellor watched him writhe for a moment, then detached his own wrist bands and picked up his winnings. As he walked from the tent with the General the crodorman slumped across the board, either in a faint, or dead. He did not notice. By then he had lost interest.
* * * *
The device was alive. Chapra defined it as a device because she was certain it was a product of technology rather than of evolution. It was also growing. Some time during their sleep period the creature had placed the thing on the bottom, at the side of the chamber furthest from where its food crustaceans congregated. It was half again the size it had been. It was now ten centimetres across: a spaghetti collection of tubes, a coral.
“You notice it’s increased in size rather than complexity. It’s exactly the same shape as it was,” said Chapra.
Abaron grunted an acknowledgement. She knew he was deeply involved in problems with the food ecology. The crustaceans ate the artificial proteins he gave them, they could in fact ingest Terran protein and plant matter, and they seemed really healthy. But he could not get them to breed. It was possible he might never know what was lacking in their food or their environment, but opined that while he tried to find out he learned much else. Chapra reckoned it was work he preferred because it tracked him away from the alien itself.
“Where has the shell gone?” she suddenly asked. “Box, did you have it cleared from the chamber?”
“No, the creature utilized it,” replied the ship AI.
“Show me.”
A flicker and she was looking at an earlier view into the chamber. Another flicker and the water became totally unrefractive; it looked as if the creature, the plants, and the pseudo-shrimps were just floating through air. She watched as the creature placed the device on the bottom then began cruising in circles around the chamber. After a time it reached up on the jetty and collected all the pieces of shell. It took these to the device, and next to it, on the floor of the chamber, ground the shell to sludge and fed it into the tubes.
“What are the main constituents of those shells?” Chapra asked. Abaron replied, “Calcium carbonate and calcium phosphate.”
Chapra’s hands glided for a moment then she paused in irritation and plugged in her interlink. Her hands glided again.
“The device has been increased in size structurally, using those compounds, but its other constituents are more diffuse. These are carbon and copper compounds in the main, with aluminium, microscopic amounts of tungsten carbide…” Chapra’s voice trailed off and she sat there trancelike. After a time she turned to Abaron who was watching her carefully. “Now is our opportunity,” she said.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“I mean I’m going in there.”
“You must be insane,” he said. He looked slightly ill.
“Box,” she said, ignoring him. “I want those compounds in the precise proportion they are in the device, only ten times the quantity, separate and held in inert containers…make the containers from the same material as the sphere inner shell, and in the same fashion. I leave it to you.”
“What about contamination?” asked Abaron, a catch in his voice.
“None of its bacteria or viral forms have shown any pathogenic tendency in human tissue, and we are free of all harmful human viral or bacterial forms. Even the beneficent ones we do carry would not be able to survive in its environment.”
“The heat?”
“I’ll wear an environment suit, but I do not want to be completely cut off.”
“Why?” asked Abaron, confused.
“If I completely enclose myself the creature may not be able to see me in its way. Remember, its primary senses are most like our senses of taste and smell—it has no vision.” Abaron just shook his head and returned his attention to his console and display. Chapra smiled and stood, removed her interlink. Before leaving the room she rested her hand on Abaron’s shoulder.
“Xenology is not the most clever choice for a xenophobe,” she said, and headed for the door. Before she went through it he managed a reply. “It is exactly the right choice.” Once she was outside the room and beyond Abaron’s hearing, Box said, “He is right, and we watch him. His fear makes him a most meticulous researcher.”
“Have you followed my instructions?”
“But of course. Judd awaits you in the isolation chamber.”
“Superior bastard,” she muttered as she strode down the corridor.
* * * *
The world of Callanasta was Diana Windermere’s home world, and where the rest of the Cable Hogue’s crew were stationed or lived on permanent call. It was also the world the Hogue orbited and, it had been established, that orbit was of great benefit to the Callanasta’s two-centuries-old terraforming project. Diana thought it good that a breaker of worlds, just by its presence, assisted in the making of a world. The call came while she was spear fishing for the huge adapted turbot in the estuary. She was slowly coming up on one of the great diamond shapes as it cruised along the bottom when there came a splash above her and the iron crab of a remote drone sank down toward her. The turbot shot away in a cloud of silt and Diana resisted the temptation to shoot the spear at the drone. It would only bounce off. She surfaced and the drone surfaced with her.
“This is a priority call. You are to come at once,” said the drone. Diana pulled her hemolung breather.
“Another fucking drill?” she spat.
“The crew are gating aboard at the moment. We leave the system in one hour.” The voice was different all of a sudden. Diana realised the Hogue AI had just spoken to her and that it sounded excited. Usually it was locked into the net and too busy in other pursuits to even talk. Diana dropped her spear gun and opened up with her fastest crawl for the shore. She kicked off her flippers in the surf then ran down the grey strand to her beach house. She delighted in the strength of her body. To be this fit compensated for the times she had spent in hospitals being cell welded back together, just as the captaincy of the Hogue compensated for the years she had spent taking orders. She grinned to one side at the drone as it overtook her, carrying her flippers and spear gun. Her beach house was made of pine shipped around from the other side of the planet and was a replica of the chalets they built in Siberia in the twenty-second century shortly after the permafrost melted. At least, that’s what the catalogue said. Diana did not care so long as she had room for her weapon collection and gym—not for her the augmentations that were so popular in Security, as she considered it better to know her own strength.
Inside the chalet she stripped off her swimsuit and stepped under the shower. As she did this she heard the thump of her spear gun and flippers hitting the floor. Out of the shower she dried, pulled on her jump suit, looked around for anything she might need. There was just one thing. She took a large ceramal commando knife down from its wall display and slid it into her boot. It was unlikely that she would use it; she just took it because she felt uncomfortable without it.
In the back of the chalet stairs led down into an underground chamber that had been carved out of yellow rock of Callanasta. It always gave Diana a thrill to come down here. She rated this, her own runcible. The floor of the chamber was dark glass underneath which could be seen the shapes of machines and ducts. At the centre of the floor was a circular dais of black glass three metres in diameter. At the centre of this stood two nacreous bull’s horns three metres high between which shimmered the cusp of this Skaidon gate. No living human understood the science. Iversus Skaidon had, for the brief time he survived directly interfacing with an AI. The whole science was created in a matter of minutes. Diana watched the drone shoot into the cusp and disappear. There were people who used it just as casually, but Diana could not. Always there was a moment of reflection before she stepped through. She stepped through.
No time. No space, nor pain. Just a feeling of strangeness that came not from the transference itself
but from the dislocation. The air was different, as was the gravity, sounds, smells, tastes. All in an instant.
“Captain, it isn’t a drill.”
Weapons comp: Eric Jabro.
“I figured that,” said Diana, striding away from the gate to the screens that showed Callanasta below. She needed that momentary reassurance. “Is everyone aboard?”
“I’ll check.”
They would be. Whatever this was, they had trained for it for the last eight years. She stared down at the planet. For eight years the planet had had tides, now it would have to do without for a while.
* * * *
The suit blew cold air up under her hood. Every so often a feather of the air in the room got through. It felt as if someone had passed a red hot iron near her face.
“If the air temperature is taken lower, vision will be restricted.” Chapra stood with her back against the lock door. Judd stood a pace or two ahead of her. Was this such a good idea? She looked down at the case of hexagonal containers she held. It weighed heavy on her arm. Would the creature understand the gesture? Would it even recognise what was in these containers?
“Let’s do it,” she said, her words disturbing the air in front of her face and letting some of the heat in. She started to sweat.
“The creature is aware of our presence,” said Judd. The Golem was linked in to Box and to the control room where Abaron sat biting his nails. Box had arbitrarily decided not to speak to them while they were in the isolation chamber as this might confuse the creature.
“There,” Judd pointed to where three triangular tentacles broke the surface and zeroed in on Chapra. The fronts of these tentacles were equilateral triangles about ten centimetres on the side. Contained in these triangles was an organic complexity that had something of a lamprey’s mouth, the underside of a starfish, and a computer interface plug.
“It is physically motionless now, though Abaron informs me that there is huge sensorium activity.”
“Fine,” said Chapra. She walked to the end of the jetty, lowered the case to the floor, then walked back to stand beside Judd. There was something strange…something made her shiver.
“We are being ultrasound scanned,” the Golem observed.
Chapra nodded. That was what she was feeling. Her partial catadaption made her more sensitive to some things. She thought about some of the structures they had studied in the creature’s head. There had been much they had been unable to fathom, but now they at least knew it used ultrasound. Just by looking at a human’s hands, eyes, and the structure of the brain it is not possible to know all of what a human is capable.
“Something like a dolphin,” said Judd. “There are also complex pheromones present in the air.”
“It’s talking to us,” said Chapra.
“It is scanning the case,” said Judd.
Before Chapra could think of any reply to that the creature propelled itself to the edge of the jetty. A tentacle poised above the case, came down, pulled the lid to one of the containers, hovered above it. Something like a butterfly’s tongue flickered from the end of the tentacle. There was a pause, then the creature sampled the other cases so fast its movements were a blur. The hand came out then snatched the case into the water, gone.
“Well, thank you, too,” said Chapra, but she was euphoric.
* * * *
Back in the control room Abaron watched, fascinated as the creature coiled around its strange device and worked upon it in some strange manner. It opened the pots one at a time and fed tastes of the various compounds into it with its tentacles. It reached inside with its long fingers and shifted things, reached deep inside with dabs of the compounds. This was causing reactions inside the device and turning the surrounding water cloudy. Abaron could see it was growing rapidly. When it reached twenty centimetres across, the creature snared more crustaceans, feeding itself on their flesh and their shells into the device, which continued to grow. After one sleep period it lay a metre across, and was like some enormous seashell bearing the shape of a wormcast. Its outer surface was red and rough, but what he could see of the interior was iridescent white, smooth, with the tube ends turned out like lips. Movement was visible far inside, which under scan seemed the interplay of complex mechanisms, or the internal function of a living creature. The line was blurred.
“Have we any idea at all what that is?” asked Abaron.
“Could be anything. It might use it to prepare its food, make drugs, or it might even serve no purpose at all. Imagine an alien watching a human paint a picture…”
“I think it serves a function.”
“It’s a step or two beyond complete analysis,” said Box in an unusual interruption. “But there are nanomechanical structures in there and as a consequence we must limit scan.” Chapra said, her voice flat, “Then its function could be anything, and might even be everything.”
“What do you mean?” asked Abaron.
“Nanomechanical—it’s likely it can make whatever it wants from the molecular level up. I would guess the only constraint to be materials, environment, and the size of those tubes.”
“It might make something to break out of there,” said Abaron. Chapra looked at him. “It is not a prisoner. If it wants to leave at any time and shows that capability, then we should allow it to leave.”
Abaron shuddered.
“That bothers you?” Chapra enquired.
“It bothers me, but I can live with it…what’s it doing now?” They both turned to the projection. The creature caught one of the larger crustaceans, but rather than eat it, fed the crustacean into one of the tubes of the strange machine, then coiled around it.
“Feeding it?” wondered Abaron.
“I don’t think so,” said Chapra, and her fingers went reflexively to her console. After a moment she lifted her hands away. “Box, I’m not getting anything on scan.”
“Scan is inadvisable at this time. The radiations of scan may damage the nanomechanical structures or interfere with whatever process is taking place.”
“Ah, Schrödinger,” said Chapra tightly, but she allowed a little smile at the irony.
“You’re not letting us look,” said Abaron in disbelief.
“Precisely,” said Box.
To Abaron Chapra said, “He’s right, X-rays and ultrasound could wreck things on a molecular level, and the other spectrums of scan aren’t likely to do any good.”
“What about underspace?”
Box said, “An underspace scan still requires a real-space medium after gating.”
“Oh,” said Abaron, and looked embarrassed.
“That’s my lot for now,” said Chapra, and she stood and left the room. Abaron sat for an hour analysing all extraneous data, but when the creature made no further moves he decided it was time for him to sleep. After he had gone, Judd entered the room and stared at the projection. Communication between Golem and ship AI was silent but long. Eventually Judd leaned forward and turned off the display, then just stood there still as something dead.
* * * *
Once in her quarters Chapra sat on her bed and stared at nothing in particular for a while.
“Box,” she eventually said, still staring, “There’s huge potential here.”
“We have no suitable scale of measurement or comparison,” the AI told her.
“I was just thinking,” she went on. “The scientific community is not the only group that’ll be taking an interest.”
“This has been noted.”
“I am glad…you are only a science vessel.”
“I am.”
“What is being done?”
“As soon as nanomechanical structures were discovered in the device Earth Central was informed and has since taken appropriate action.”
Chapra lay back on her bed. “Every world that’s in the net but outside of Polity control will be watching, if not doing something. Separatist organisations are almost certainly looking for ways to capitalise on this. What exactly is being done?”
“The dreadnought Cable Hogue has been dispatched and will arrive in two solstan weeks.” Chapra swallowed dryly. That if anything brought home the seriousness of things; dreadnoughts were not put into action for anything less than interplanetary war.
“Will we come under military control?”
“No,” said Box.
Like a million scientists before her Chapra did not believe that.
* * * *
Kellor watched Conard’s reaction with some amusement as the vendor thanked them for their custom and floated on to the next table. Separatists were uniform in their hatred of all machine intelligences. Kellor sipped his cool-ice and waited. He reckoned on the transportation of weapons or as an outside bet a military strike, which was fine by him so long as the target was not actually within the Polity.
“We require your services,” said Conard.
Kellor obliged this comment with a, slight tilt of his head.
“There is a science vessel that poses a threat to the Confederation. We need to take it out.”
“Polity?”
“Yes.”
“Expensive.”
“Ten million units of irradiated platinum.”
“Behind the Line?” Kellor asked, preparing to get up and walk away.
“What do you mean?”
“Is it in Polity space?”
“No.”
Kellor sipped some more of his drink and allowed a chunk of the psychedelic ice to melt on his tongue. That was a lot of irradiated platinum for destroying a science vessel outside of Polity space. There had to be a catch. There always was.
“Where is this vessel?”
“Its last reported position was at the edge of the Quarrison Drift. Entering the Drift. I have that position to within a light year. There must be no survivors; total obliteration.”
“For my own sake I have to agree. I don’t want the Polity taking an interest in my affairs. What complications might there be?”
“The ship could be planetside by the time we reach it.” Conard gave a bleak grin before sipping his glass of mineral water. Kellor distrusted people who made a point of staying sober. It probably meant they needed a clear head to keep track of their lies.