by Neal Asher
“There’s more—you said you were expecting me.”
She looked up then, as if remembering herself, straightened her back as she fingered the scar on her stomach and chewed on her top lip. The undercurrent couldn’t be any clearer now. I considered how I should react, then made an aug link to my nascuff and fiddled with its controls. Slowly it changed from blue to red.
“When the Polity Golem came here and took your memplant away,” she said, “I asked to be kept informed, and I was. I’ve known your location, with a few limitations, ever since you were resurrected.” She paused, staring at me intently. “I knew when you arrived here at Masada and I knew when you came here to Chattering. I was sure you were tracing your past … have always been sure you would come here.”
I thought I understood the undercurrent then. Had she become a little obsessive about me? I now considered reversing what I’d done with my cuff, but by then other feelings were kicking in and my inner lecher was thinking: Why not? I shook my head, half-expecting to be annoyed but feeling amused instead. Then I concentrated on the story she’d told me.
It all seemed so random. She had to do as Penny Royal asked, then someone had to recognize my implant, then the Polity had to collect it and resurrect me. I needed to eventually find out about this place and come here, and then remember someone else’s memories. Finally, Gloria had to be here to tell me her story … But no, nothing about Penny Royal was random. Penny Royal had probably known precisely how Gloria would react, might even have programmed it into her mind. The AI had probably calculated to the second when the implant would be spotted and then collected. It might have calculated to the second when I would be sitting here hearing this.
“Tell me, Gloria,” I said. “Did your mother leave this world shortly after some of her comrades were executed in the Cage?”
Gloria nodded. “My mother placed a thermal device in the ritual fire to make sure they didn’t suffer. I think that act was what finally drove her to give up on the cause.”
Well, no, Gloria, I thought. She’d already made that decision beforehand.
Gloria’s story had been a confirmation of what I’d already felt, but perhaps a necessary one. The sensations of déjà vu, the fragments of memories and the larger recollection I had experienced here were all true memories. She had proved that with her version of events. Undoubtedly, through the spine, I was connected to other lives—lives that had been taken by Penny Royal. Why the AI needed this to be completely confirmed for me I had no idea. However, I suspected the answers were coming my way with the inevitability of the death of suns. I picked up my wine, finished the glass and put it down. Gloria leaned forwards, picked up the bottle and looked at me enquiringly. There was more to her enquiry than the wine. I glanced over at Riss.
The snake drone uncoiled and headed for the arch.
“Riss?” I asked by aug.
“Nearly choking on the hormones,” she replied out loud. “I’ll see you back at the hotel.” She disappeared through the arch.
Gloria followed, probably to open the shop door for Riss, but she paused at the arch and I heard the door open and close beyond her.
“Well, how did it do that?” she asked, turning back towards me.
“Riss is a war drone of many talents,” I explained. “She used to sneak into prador dreadnoughts, so obviously a shop door is no problem for her.”
“Her?”
“Female-designated drone—simply because of certain physical traits.”
Gloria walked back and stood close beside me. “And apparently able to sense human hormones.”
I reached out and traced a finger round the scole scar on her stomach. She reached down and placed a hand over mine, holding it in place.
“I won’t be staying,” I said.
“That doesn’t matter.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Just telling the story doesn’t feel like enough.”
It made a kind of sense. I shrugged, so she pushed my hand down to a stick-seam at her hip. I inserted a finger and slid it down to open it. She reached down to help and was soon kicking the skirt off her feet. She was obviously proud of her body, standing there in that revealing top and a pair of all but transparent lacy knickers. She then pressed a point on her top just above one breast and the garment retreated like a living stain into a nodule there, which she detached and discarded. I was reminded of Sheil Glasser and her similarly easy-to-discard clothing. When she did nothing more than stroke her scar, I reached out, grabbed a handful of lacy material and pulled her towards me. After stumbling a little, she moved closer, stepped astride me, then reached down.
Even as she was screwing me I wondered how much of this had been preplanned: the way she had dismissed Riss, the way she had directed me to this stool rather than the armchair, the wine, how she had been dressed. Hands clamped to her waist, I sucked and chewed on her nipples and she rubbed her breasts in my face. However, when I tried to pull her head down to kiss her she pulled it away, began grunting and shoving hard against me before coming with a series of surprised exclamations. I tried to keep her moving but she leaned back, resting her hands on the table, studying me with a puzzled frown. I leaned forwards, pushed her onto her back on the table and stood over her. She just lay there watching me, expectant. I then grabbed the wine bottle, putting it to one side with the glasses. It would have been more dramatic to sweep them aside, but it was good wine. After quickly shedding all my clothing, I lifted up her legs and pulled off her knickers, since they’d been making the side of my cock sore anyway, then fucked her on the table. She started to get back into it again and was responding vigorously by the time I started to come, but my orgasm was killed a bit when, at that point, the table collapsed.
She started giggling and, after a moment, that set me off. We untangled ourselves from the wreckage, grabbed the wine and glasses and she led me into her bedroom. She dissolved a stim strip in her mouth while I just made some further adjustments to my nascuff. Over the ensuing hours we drank another two bottles of wine, took our time, then it just reached an ending that at first baffled me.
“It was nice to meet you, Thorvald Spear,” she said, suddenly distant.
Climbing off the bed and pulling on a robe, she moved over to the bedroom door and opened it. I was dismissed. Still puzzled, I dressed—I would shower in my hotel. When she led the way out of the bedroom I followed, trying to think of something else to say, then gestured to the tricone shell box lying beside the collapsed table.
“Why didn’t you get her to Soulbank?” I asked, nodding down at the thing. “I doubt she’s wanted for whatever she did in the Graveyard, and I would bet that the AIs would resurrect her for her services to the cause here.”
Gloria looked up. “Because I love her.”
Of course, Gloria seemed to love a research project and an ideal, but the reality might turn out to be harder to love. Similar rules applied to hate. As I headed for the shop door she said, “You knew things you shouldn’t have been able to know and I was curious about you.”
“I guess,” I replied.
“But now I will take her to Soulbank,” she said, almost indifferently.
What had changed? I began to think that nothing had changed, but that something had been completed. For me, anyway. Once out of Markham’s I strode out of the converted church into lavender sunshine. I noted that one side of the Cage’s monomer covering had been lifted, and some workmen were using ancient acetylene cutting equipment on the metal posts securing it to the ground. I guess the council or committee here had come to their decision.
Heading for my hotel, I pondered how lacking in curiosity Gloria had actually been. She told me her story but asked very few questions of me. Perhaps Penny Royal had simply programmed her, with the ease of winding up a clockwork toy, to deliver her story. Her own concerns, curiosity, questions … being irrelevant. I really hoped that everything that came after hadn’t been part of the AI’s plan. But I couldn’t help feeling that the AI wa
s a completist and that it had programmed her obsession with me. The sexual act had been the full point at the end of her plot thread in my story and now she could move on, resurrect her mother—continue with her life.
18
ISOBEL
Her hunger was intense now and she knew it was going to be difficult to keep it under control—aboard a ship with a human crew of ten and a troop complement of fifty. Linking through to the Glory, she saw the first four cold coffins being loaded to a pulpit handler; they would then exit through a hold lock. She estimated that they would arrive here on the Caligula within half an hour, so all she needed to do was maintain self-control until then.
“So where are we going?” Morgan asked, as he walked behind her towards the Caligula’s bridge—there not being enough room in the corridor for him to walk beside her.
I must open out this ship too, she thought, trying to distract herself from Morgan and the four behind him. He was accompanied by two boosted men, a male heavy-worlder, and a woman with cybernetic augmentations. And all of these, to her present way of thinking, were just prey.
“In good time—I have some arrangements to make first.”
Just then, ahead of her, a man and a woman in combat fatigues stepped out of a cabin. She halted, it was almost too much. They stared at her in shock, with curiosity, and she stared back, seeing every bead of sweat on their faces.
Control.
“Crew and the troops are to remain at their stations or in their quarters,” she announced, that same announcement echoing from the ship’s PA a moment later. The two ahead paused for a second, then backed into the cabin. There would have been more of them, Isobel knew. More of the crew and troop complement would want to get a look at her, at how she’d changed. She didn’t know, should they all start milling around her, if she could restrain herself.
Five people were seated on the bridge, two controlling the ship’s weapons and one permanently checking on the ship’s second-child mind. Another two were ready at damage control and ship’s maintenance stations. They all turned, with one of them, a woman, abruptly standing up and looking terrified. Isobel rapidly inspected files. This woman had once worked aboard a smuggler ship that traded with Masada, so knew all about hooders. Isobel fought to maintain calm as she moved to the middle of the bridge floor.
“All of you,” she said, “return to your quarters, now.”
After a hesitation, they all stood, some of them looking to Morgan questioningly. He nodded once and she suppressed the urge to let herself go here. She was in charge and yet they needed confirmation from him? No matter. They were redundant, as now she was in charge of everything they’d controlled.
“What’s going on, Isobel?” Morgan asked, now sounding wary. “There’s no need for this—we’ve always carried out your orders without deviation.”
Really, did she need any of them? If Spear and Penny Royal were in orbit she could completely control the attack. If they were down on the surface of the planet, she should be able to hit them from orbit. Why had she bothered pulling together all these troops?
No … stupid.
Her plans would depend on the situation at Masada. She might need to divide her forces, or send troops to secure some location, or she might require them as a distraction. She mustn’t return to her old way of thinking that she could absolutely control everything with her mind. She wasn’t thinking straight.
The pulpit handler was halfway to the ship, the hold she had entered through standing open to receive it. She should have waited there and satisfied her need before coming here. She turned, slowly, fighting for self-control. The moment the five crew fell into the complete compass of her senses, target frames blossomed all over them and attack plans reeled out in her mind. It was an odd feeling, as if she was some three-fold being. The predator wanted to rend and tear, yet something analytical and cold was growing in her, something that mapped a route to the immediate destruction of a threat. Her human self also remained, trying to hold all three aspects together.
“We are going to Masada,” she said abruptly.
Morgan looked startled while the other four glanced at each other, obviously surprised and then trying to shut down on any further reaction.
“Dangerous,” he said.
“Yes, but necessary.”
“Why?” he asked.
She watched him in silence for a moment, then said, “You are asking too many questions, Morgan.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, “but going to a Polity world, especially that one, is a hell of a risk. I don’t know what the payoff could possibly be.”
Isobel moved forwards and Morgan and the others abruptly got out of her way. She needed him, didn’t she? Better to decide her response to such insubordination after she had fed.
“I have to return to the hold,” she said. “Explanations can come after that.”
They followed her as she headed back the way she had come. Through ship’s cams she watched the pulpit handler enter the hold then the space doors there closed. She was eager, but knew she should not allow that to distract her now. Why the hell had she told him where they were going just then? Had some part of her wanted to instigate violence? The answer was obvious: the predator wanted to feed and was pushing her other parts. She watched Morgan and the others through the ship’s internal systems and, just as she reached the bulkhead door into the hold, she saw it.
He reached up to tap three times against his cheekbone, then lowered his hand again. Her analytical part ran through all her memories of Morgan, riffled through them like a speed reader. He didn’t touch his scarred face very much, and she had no recollection of him having ever made that movement before. It was a signal—a simple option when you knew all other forms of communication were being monitored. The augmented woman fell back a few paces, shaking her head and putting on a show of looking frightened. She abruptly turned into a side corridor and moved away. Isobel knew it was all an act and that she was supposed to assume xenophobia had driven this person away. While continuing to watch Morgan and the remaining three, Isobel used the ship’s cam system to track the woman.
She went directly to her cabin and, of course, there were no cams operating inside. Shortly after that, a cam outside the cabin developed a fault, but Isobel was able to access it and correct it.
Too easy; a deliberate distraction.
At the bulkhead door to the hold, Isobel turned to Morgan and the other three.
“Wait here,” she said, mentally opening the door behind her then scuttling backwards through it. As the door closed, she turned to eye the four cold-storage cylinders the pulpit handler had deposited on the floor. Targeting frames immediately overlaid them and she jerked back, a line of translucent pink fire travelling down the length of her body. What? Why was she reacting like this to what were practically corpses? Some sort of hidden weapon? Isobel moved to one side, putting some distance between herself and the containers, trying to order her mind. She checked recorded data on the history of these containers to check for any possible tampering. She also searched for anything unusual in the recorded footage of them being taken from the Glory’s hold, yet could find nothing wrong.
With more success, she simultaneously checked an old schematic of the Caligula against an updated one, looking for holes in security. It was well concealed and, had her mind and senses not been as ramped up as they were, she would have missed it. Hidden routes had been opened up throughout the ship from the woman’s cabin. Isobel traced one of those routes down to a maintenance door in the corridor leading to this hold. The maintenance robot she required was just off that route, replacing a faulty optic cable, so she turned it and sent it creeping to a new position. Then she froze it into immobility when it detected movement, and gazed through its cam eyes.
The woman was coming and she was carrying something. Isobel focused in and identified a portable proton cannon—and the woman was screwing a giga-Watt energy canister into its underside. Morgan had made preparations to deal with
what he’d thought Isobel had become, should she be a threat. But she knew these were inadequate, given what she now knew about herself. She moved back towards the door. She had to deal with this. But that new part of her abruptly wrenched her back to focus on the cold coffins. It was taking over, gathering energy …
A subspacial twist emanated from her, kaleidoscope refractions cutting the air of the hold. Coffins must be expelled, destroyed. Too dangerous this close. Through her haiman augmentation she sent an instruction to one of the coffins for confirmation and simultaneously ordered an emergency expulsion of the hold’s air. She also directed the space door to open even while sending an order—viciously enforced—to the Glory for all its cargo to be expelled …
What?
The coffin opened and, with senses stretching into realms her previous augmentations hadn’t reached, she inspected the corpse lying within. The primitive control device inside its empty skull and extending down its spine was unimportant. The blue rings of scar tissue were just organic damage and the virus that had grown from them inside the corpse was prosaic at the microscopic level. However, at sub-microscopic levels, the new part of Isobel recognized danger.
The enemy.
The wave issued from her instantly, its gravity front smashing into the four coffins and the pulpit handler—slinging them as wreckage through the space doors and far out into vacuum. In the first few seconds this wreckage travelled a hundred miles out, then the twist, following it out, enclosed it and collapsed. A brief star blossomed as that twist compressed the wreckage nigh to the point of fusion.