by Neal Asher
Having been promoted to the Sparkind it has been necessary for me to have an augmentation fitted and, only during this process, did I discover that my mind has been edited. The medical data indicates that this was done to me when I was between the ages of eight and twelve, but since there was so much editing going on during the Prador war, the AIs did not feel it necessary to keep detailed records. I know no more than that memories have been extracted from my mind and remaining memories of the time have been "cut and pasted." What can you tell me about this, Mother? Which of my memories did you feel it necessary for you to destroy?
For some time he had been toying with the wording of this last bit, unsure if he was being too harsh, or not harsh enough. In the end he placed it in a packet file, attached his mother's net address, and sent it. There: it was done now. Cormac rested back on the bunk and tried to catch up on his sleep.
It evaded him.
10
Cormac gazed at the image on his new p-top. Its screensaver showed scenes from an encounter between one of the big Prador dreadnoughts and the My Mary Rose out in deep space, where usually the crabs won. It was a slugging match: massively powerful weapons being deployed by both ships, shield generators burning out on both of them and poxing them with fires, bigger and bigger weapons getting through defences so the two ships strewed armour and molten metal across a couple million miles of void. Then came the big CTD hit straight in a particle beam hole bored through the Prador vessel's hull. The explosion gutted it, leaving only the heavy-armour hull to tumble glowing through space like a mollusc from which the soft body had been scraped out.
But it was old news.
New weapons being deployed at the wavering line of defence had been having a positive effect for over a year. The latest ships from the factory stations, their armour as effective as that of the Prador dreadnoughts, were fighting direct one-to-one engagements and winning, and this recording was of the first of those. Now there were many new recordings of similar events and more coming in every day. Cormac consigned this recording to memory, and pulled up another one of a ground conflict in which mosquito autoguns were hammering into a line of Prador second-children. It was a messy but satisfying scene.
Even to Cormac it was noticeable that the holographic three-dee maps of the Polity had begun to display appreciable areas of regained territory. And now stories were appearing about worlds that had been occupied by the Prador and incommunicado since before he was born, and he viewed them with the utterly morbid curiosity of a ten-year-old.
When it was possible for any ECS trooper wearing an aug to easily record thousands upon thousands of hours of sensory data, and transmit that data directly onto the nets once within range of a suitable server, it wasn't so much impossible for the AIs to keep a lid on the news, but a pointless exercise. Better, they thought, for people to know what was really happening than to let the rumour mills fill the void. Censorship, which had been forever placed in the hands of the end-user, was mostly applied by parents to what their children were viewing. However, since access to information was universally easy, it was almost a rite-of-passage for most children to find their way around parental blocks. Cormac had long ago looped his mother Hannah's censorship programmes and now watched whatever he desired.
It seemed that on these worlds Prador adults had ensconced themselves like feudal lords amidst their own kind, but the position of humanity had been little better than that of cattle in some previous human age. Cormac observed the drone recordings of huge camps like those seen in human genocides, but noted a lack of bodies, not because few people died there but because those guarding the camps simply ate the corpses. However, he did glimpse one recording broadcast by some ECS ground troops of a massive abattoir containing row upon row of gutted human corpses hanging on hooks. He also saw the initial pictures of the release of some captives—these ones were bulky with fat and could hardly carry their own weight, for the Prador had been keeping them like veal calves. It was also the case that many of these captives knew of the Polity only as word-of-mouth story passed down to them by their parents, for many of them had known nothing but the camps and Prador rule.
"Anything new?" asked Osiah.
Cormac glanced up from his p-top at his friend. Osiah was working on a missive back home to his extended family—a combination of audio, video and holographic recording with explanatory texts that could be accessed throughout it all. He wanted to be a documentary maker and in the year Cormac had known him it seemed not a moment passed when he wasn't either recording, or editing those recordings.
"You can check for yourself," Cormac replied.
"But I want you to tell me—don't give me news, give me reactions to news."
Cormac shook his head and closed his p-top. He was bored now and bubbling with energy, which was good, since soon he would be having an hour of zero-gee training, usually followed by a handball match in the same gym.
Zero-gee training, familiarization with station and ship safety protocols, were the main reasons for them coming to the orbital school, but their days were also filled with numerous other lessons covering all aspects of extra-planetary existence. Cormac found that his underwater swimming at Tritonia had put him in good stead for most disciplines. He was good in zero-gee, with spacesuits and most of the safety stuff regarding vacuum and pressure changes since a lot of it applied to diving. He was less able when the lessons concerned solar radiation, field technology and the mechanics of space travel.
"Y'know we're well advanced compared to kids our age a few centuries back," Osiah once told him. "Back then we would still be playing with plastic toys."
Cormac had investigated this and been astounded at how dim the children of past ages had been and soon discovered that his own advantages were due to the AI redesign of education methods. It seemed that his mental development was at about that of the late teens of the heavily politicised education systems of the twenty-first century. Damn, kids of ten back then didn't even know about simple stuff like vector analysis. Some of them couldn't even read and write their own language, let alone the three or four most of Cormac's contemporaries managed. And none of them were much good at the sciences and, strangely, didn't really like learning them.
There was no sudden announcement that it was all over. During his first two months at orbital school Cormac was too involved in his lessons and zero-gee handball to take much notice of the news. When he again started checking he found that for the past two months the news services had been full of reports of some kind of internecine conflict within the Prador Second Kingdom and of their dreadnoughts pulling off from attacks and heading back home. Then, just a month before his eleventh birthday, Cormac realised that though plenty of Polity victories were detailed, they were usually over Prador first- and second-child ground armies abandoned by their support ships. Then, after his birthday, it seemed that past stories of battles and atrocities were being recycled. Nothing much was going on out there. Upon his return to Earth it was understood that there has been a revolution within the Prador Second Kingdom, that the king had been usurped and many other ruling Prador slaughtered, and that it was now called the Prador Third Kingdom.
"I think the war is over," said his mother one day.
Cormac nodded, for so it seemed. The Prador had withdrawn behind their original border and there were building defensive stations, while on the Polity side similar construction was taking place. There had also been as yet unconfirmed rumours of tense meetings between Polity and Prador ambassadors.
"You understand that your father won't be coming home," Hannah continued.
Cormac nodded again. He was not sure when this had become evident to him, maybe a year or so back, about the time Dax had last visited, but he couldn't remember being told.
"He's dead," he said.
"Yes," Hannah confirmed, though there was something in her expression Cormac found difficult to fathom. He did not pursue it—there seemed no need.
* * *
The inter
ior of the Sadist rather belied its ominous name, and whereas Pearl had been a crotchety AI, Sadist was chatty and cheerful.
"Welcome aboard!" it boomed from the intercom system the moment they stepped into its thickly carpeted interior.
Cormac immediately received a schematic of the ship's interior and directions to his cabin. "Cheerful AI," he observed.
"Probably enjoys its work," said Gorman. "If its choice of name is any indication."
"I've some stuff arriving in the hold here that I need to check over," said Spencer. She stabbed a finger at Cormac. "We're five days away from the Graveyard, and in that time I want you to lose that rod up your arse." She turned and headed off.
"The rod up my arse?" Cormac enquired.
"Your military bearing, my son," said Gorman. "It was fine enough on Hagren where your cover included you being a soldier, but if we go undercover in the Graveyard, you'd be spotted in an instant."
"It's all those marching drills," said Crean dryly.
"Yeah, right," said Cormac, never having marched in his life.
Travis patted him on the shoulder. "You need to slouch a bit more, maybe acquire one or two bad habits—seemed to work for Gorman."
The four of them headed off down the corridor thick with carpet grass. At intervals framed pictures hung on the walls, each displaying what looked like Egyptian papyrus scrolls that were certainly copies. Soon they arrived at a row of doorways—Cormac halted before his.
"We'll meet up in the midship training area in half an hour," said Gorman. "Meanwhile, take a look at this." A message arrived in Cormac's aug.
The luxurious accommodation contained a wide bed, plenty of cupboard space, an en suite and even his own dispensary port from the ship's synthesizer. He dumped his pack and rifle on the bed and immediately turned back to the dispensary, since he had not eaten in some hours. First he got himself a coffee, which arrived behind the chainglass hatch in a porcelain cup and saucer; then, checking through the menu, he found that just about anything was available from the ship's synthesizers. He ordered a bacon sandwich on rye bread, which arrived while he sipped his coffee. The sandwich tasted wonderful, though what it contained had never come from a pig.
While on his second sandwich and second coffee, he opened the message Gorman had sent, which was empty, then opened the attached file. Therein lay the main factors that could identify someone as a soldier. Some things he could do nothing about, for he could not unlearn his familiarity with weapons. The rest was about speech patterns, combat techniques, choice of nutrition, neatness—and slouching and bad habits. After skimming through the extensive lists, he headed over to his pack, then opened it and upended it on his bed. From the contents he pulled out his casual clothing of jeans and a sleeveless light-blue shirt and, after stripping off his uniform, donned these, retaining only his enviroboots—nothing in the list about wearing crappy footwear. He then headed for the door, deliberately leaving the mess on his bed and deliberately not putting his cup and plate into the waste port next to the dispenser. Then he slouched down the corridor.
Gorman and Crean were awaiting him, both of them dressed casually. Gorman wore baggy black trousers and a brightly coloured Indian shirt, while Crean wore a tight little green top that exposed both an expanse of cleavage and her flat stomach, white combat trousers and karate slippers. Certainly she possessed assets that might distract anyone seeing her from being suspicious of who or what she was, and her chameleonware should be able to fool most scanners, however, her emulation wasn't perfect—Cormac had yet to see a Golem he did not recognise as a Golem, and guessed there were many others like him.
The training area was merely a cylindrical room with a hard floor and numerous lockers about the circumference, doubtless packed with training equipment. Cormac surveyed it all as he walked out and stopped before the other two. Smiling, Crean stepped up close to him and, despite her being a Golem, when she reached up and began running a finger around one nipple jutting against the fabric of her shirt, he could not help but be distracted. The next thing he knew her other hand had closed around his testicles and squeezed, hard, just prior to her forehead slamming into his nose, then she kicked his feet out from underneath him and stepped away.
"Now," she said, while Gorman looked on, grinning, his arms crossed, "you are going to learn how to fight dirty."
The analgaesic patches had taken the sting out of his grazes and bruises, the repair to his front teeth was invisible and the ache in his foot subsided once the bone and cell welding had settled. He had learned a lot over the last four days. Certainly there were the specifics like which brands of drink came in breakable bottles and therefore could be broken on the edge of a table and shoved in an opponents face, but generally it was an attitude. Everything was a weapon from spittle to drinking straws and always it was better to take the initiative: if it looked like a situation was about to turn violent, better for it to be you that turned that situation violent. He had learned something else too: knowing the difference between Golem emulation of humanity and humanity itself was not quite so cut and dried as he had liked to believe. Crean sweated, she smelt of woman, and grappling with her it was sometimes difficult for him to keep his mind on fighting techniques.
Cormac took a long, slow breath. He needed a shower, but first he turned on the room screen and gazed at the world the Sadist had now fallen into orbit about. Apparently Polity operatives, scattered throughout the Graveyard, had been told to keep watch for the light-cargo hauler Carl had departed on, and it had been seen landing here. Cormac was about to apply to the ship's server for details about this world when there came a tap at his door.
"Come in," he said, without looking round.
"How's the foot?"
Cormac looked round to see Crean standing there still dressed in the skin-tight, low-cut top and similarly clinging leggings she had been wearing earlier, while taking him through the finer points of kick-boxing with your hands tied behind your back. He had broken his foot on her hip.
"All stuck back together again, though still aching a little," he replied. "I'd ask you how your hip was, if it weren't for the fact that your bones don't break and you don't bruise."
"Now," she held up a finger, "you're only half right. Look." She took hold of the top of her leggings and pulled them down to show her hip, incidentally exposing this side of her pubis and neatly waxed traditional Brazilian-style pubic hair… or was it waxed? Cormac didn't know whether synthetic Golem hair grew. It seemed crazy to him that they would want growing hair, but then it seemed odd that they emulated flawed humanity. After a moment he focused on what she was supposed to be showing him: a growing bruise on her hip.
"Does it hurt?" he asked, a catch in his voice. He could not help but notice that her nipples, invisible when she entered his room, where now very definitely visible. Did she consciously control that, or was her emulation program an unconscious thing? How deliberate was any of what she was now doing? It then occurred to him that men often asked themselves that last question about flesh-and-blood women.
She looked up. "Yes, it hurts."
"But it doesn't have to."
"And that is different to you in what way?"
It was true. Cormac did not even have to put up with his foot aching, and many troopers he knew now possessed pain-management systems installed in their bodies. In fact, it was possible for him to manage pain through his aug, but he had yet to study those functions. He nodded acquiescence, and felt a surge of disappointment when she pulled the waist of her leggings back up into position. She walked over and stood with her arms akimbo, gazing up into his face.
"You've got a little bit of a problem with Golem, haven't you?" she suggested.
"No problem, as such…"
"But we're machines?"
"Yes…"
"And you're not?"
"Well…"
"I was programmed by an AI that could run a human mind inside itself as a sub-programme," she said. "The way my mind operates is not an
y less human than yours just because its physical substance is a form of memory crystal. Honestly, Cormac, if you had not been told, you would never have known I was Golem."
He could have argued that point, but right then he didn't want to: his own particular male programming was responding to her despite the fact that she wasn't human. He felt some reservations—a seedy part of his mind telling him that sex with her would be more like VR porn than the real thing, but then, VR porn had felt just as good…
"Here." She reached up and pulled down her top to expose those all too perfect breasts, reached out, took hold of his hands, then pulled them up to her breasts. He squeezed gently, rubbed the nipples with his thumbs and she made a perfectly plausible little grunting sound. "Human enough for you?" she enquired.
They were warm and taut and certainly there was a part of his anatomy telling him there was no difference at all. She pushed closer to him, her expression coquettish as she undid his jeans and pulled them and his underwear down about his hips, then abruptly she slid down, took hold of his cock, ran her tongue around the end for a moment, then took it into her mouth, which felt sufficiently wet and warm.
"Is this part of my training?" he asked breathlessly.
She pulled away for a moment. "My programming AI told me not to speak with my mouth full." Then she abruptly stood, walked past him to the bed, where she stripped off her top and then her leggings, holding herself bent over for a moment and tugging at one buttock before clambering onto the bed and rolling onto her back. She reached down and with slow leisure began playing with herself, watching him enquiringly as he hurriedly stripped off his clothes and rushed over to join her.
Throughout the ensuing hours they both acquired a few more bruises.