by Neal Asher
The scene blanked out and for a second it seemed as if he were just hovering in blackness, still ensconced in that chair. In that moment he felt a dread of the ill effects to come. Then all at once he was again flat on his back on the surgical table, an invisible dagger poised over his forehead. Now he felt a surge of anger and instead of just lying there waiting to feel pain and nausea, he thrust himself upright.
The optic threads linking him to the machine that had loaded that ersatz memory, drew taut, and without concentrating too hard he managed to order detach and they snapped out of his aug to be wound away. He reached up and slapped the aug cover closed, glanced aside at the roll of analgaesic patches, then swung his legs off the table and stood. Dizziness and nausea hit, but he just stood there breathing evenly and by force of will pushing those ill effects away. Next he checked his aug's inbox, and there found a small file awaiting his attention—it would be interesting to see what a war drone kept on its net site.
"Interesting," said Sadist.
"Oh really?"
"However," the AI continued, "the coincidence of the world Patience being one of our possible destinations is not such a great one. Trainees are generally brought into this area because this is where ECS is still most needed, and it is also essential for would-be soldiers to see the effects of war which, in the final analysis, is what they are being trained to prevent."
"You're preaching," said Cormac.
"Is it so obvious?"
"Yes."
"And you still intend to resign from ECS?"
"I do, when you can finally bring yourself to tell me what I need to do."
"I felt it necessary for you to at least have a cooling-off period," said Sadist. "I do understand that Crean's suicide hit you rather hard."
It had seemed the final straw, and Cormac had never known such mental pain, as everything finally impacted on that moment: Carl's betrayal and murder of Yallow, the injuries Cormac himself had suffered and the effect on him of killing his would-be murderers, the deaths of Gorman, Spencer, Travis and Crean, the discovery of his mother's betrayal. Now he felt bruised, things inside him broken, and of course it was plausible that this pain had been enough to drive him to resign his position in ECS. It was perfectly understandable, perfectly, yet a complete lie. He knew that as an ECS soldier, under the "rest and recuperation" order, there were things he would not be able to do, things he needed to do, on Patience. And how utterly fortuitous that this last mem-load had given him an unquestionable reason to go there.
"My decision to quit need not be a permanent one," he said. "But I do desperately feel the need to be out of it now… Sadist, we have had this discussion before and my opinion has not changed. Tell me what I must do."
"Very well," said the AI, sighing like any human. "There are no documents to sign, nothing like that. You merely have to state your intention to me."
"I resign from ECS," said Cormac immediately.
"Very well," the AI's voice now took on a different tone. "In four hours I will be landing at the Cavander spaceport on Patience. When you depart this ship you may take with you only those items not directly issued to you by ECS. Here." An information package now arrived in his aug. "This is the coding sequence you can use to access your back pay. And please, Cormac, remember that at any time you can rejoin ECS in the same manner as you have just departed it."
"Perhaps I will, but I need time."
"Very well, Cormac," said the AI, and it seemed like both a goodbye and a dismissal.
Cormac pushed himself away from the surgical table and headed for the door, and it was only as he stepped out into the corridor did he realise his head did not ache, and he did not feel sick. Perhaps this was because this last mem-load had not been a chunk edited from his own mind, was in fact no more than a message delivered through the same medium.
He headed for his cabin, and immediately emptied his pack onto his bed and began sorting through the pile. It did not take long. In the end his own possessions formed a very small pile on the pillow: a few items of clothing, a carbide-bladed knife, a palm-top and finally Pramer's thin-gun. Why was it, he wondered, that he did not feel any great need for possessions? Even when he lived at home, with his mother, and later when he lived away for a while working autohandlers in Stanstead spaceport, the belongings he treasured would only ever fill a small suitcase. All the ECS stuff went back into the pack, which he placed to one side of the room, with his pulse-rifle resting on top of it. He changed out of his fatigues into his jeans, T-shirt, enviroboots and jacket, and everything he truly owned went into the jacket pockets.
The Cavander spaceport rested in the mountains on a platform below and to one side of the city it served, which loomed above on mile-high legs, each of which was a vertical city in itself. Cormac walked slowly down Sadist's ramp, carefully taking in his surroundings: the sky a slightly orange-yellow and the shocking pink clouds, the smell like vinegar in his nostrils and the taste of metal in his mouth, the bounce to his walk as he departed Sadist's Earth standard one gravity to this world's point nine, things like gulls drifting through the air, which he knew, from having studied information about this world when a teenager, to be strikingly similar to miniature pterosaurs, and of course that wonderful fantastic city itself.
"Goodbye, Cormac," Sadist's voice echoed from the interior of the ship.
"Goodbye," said Cormac, glancing back as the ramp-hatch drew closed. Even as he set out across the spaceport he heard the ramp clonk into place and saw the ship's shadow speed across the plasticrete as Sadist ascended silently. He turned to watch it float higher and higher, then with a burst of thrusters accelerate into the sky. It receded rapidly to a black rod against those blousy clouds where its fusion drive ignited and it sped away. Now he returned his attention to his immediate surroundings.
This spaceport almost looked like a city itself, what with the enormous ships down here like curved edifices. He eyed two great cargo haulers, like blunt bullets stood on their back ends, about them swarms of autohandlers trundling between blocky mountains of plasmel cargo crates, and people clad in overalls striding about importantly, clutching manifest screens or handler control modules. Beside one of these behemoths, a huge lading robot—a tall four-legged monstrosity with crane arms extending down underneath it—squatted over some vast cathedral of a container to attach numerous hooks in order to lift and shift the massive weight. Perhaps the container held something for the Thander Weapons Exhibition, which had apparently only just opened to the public.
There were also numerous smaller vessels on this spaceport platform, many of which bore the standard utile shapes seen anywhere, but others that were utterly exotic. One he recognised as a replica of a World War II aircraft carrier and another as a war barge, probably a restoration job, of the Solar System corporate wars. Still others were ECS fighting ships of one kind or another, probably decommissioned and voided of their original AIs, or self-decommissioned, their resident AIs deciding to go independent. On the whole, it seemed, that there were few private ships here without some sort of military connection.
They were all here for the exhibition.
Though that same exhibition was not Cormac's only reason for being here on Patience, it was the reason he had resigned from ECS, for he wanted freedom to move, to investigate. He had known Carl for two years and though so much about the man had been false, one thing certainly wasn't—his fascination with weapons. Perhaps it was foolish of Cormac to feel so certain that Carl had made this world, and the exhibition here, his destination, but it was a certainty he could not shake. Though this whole thing came under Polity aegis, and remained closely watched, he had divined from the stories about this event that a lot of illegal arms deals went down. Carl, he was sure, would have come here to sell his remaining two CTDs. Of course, certainty about that did not insure Cormac would find him, because there were hundreds of millions of people on this world, millions here in this city, and millions more who would be visiting the huge displays and demonst
rations of armaments.
Spotting the exit buildings along the far edge of the spaceport nearest the city, Cormac set out towards them. He knew there would be no need to present identification because Sadist would already have informed the port or city AI of his presence, which would be automatically confirmed either by scan or a bounce query to his aug as he passed through that building. However, he did not want to pass straight through that building, for there he must begin his search.
Numerous chainglass doors gave access to a lounge two miles long and half a mile wide, and scattered with bars and eateries. Net consoles adorned every one of the pillars supporting a chainglass roof that was a confection of moulded-glass girders, spires and hexagonal sheets. The moment Cormac entered the area an ident-query arrived in his aug and he responded by allowing his aug to send its brief summation of who he was. The lounge area, though huge, was very crowded and he noticed numerous security drones folded out from their alcoves in the heads of the pillars, and other floating drones of a bewildering variety of shapes zipping back and forth above the crowd. Even as he watched, a number of these drones converged above where four individuals, probably plain-clothed security personnel, politely detained a lone traveller and separated him from his luggage. Cormac wandered over in time to see one of them opening that luggage and taking out a hand-held missile launcher—the kind sporting a ring-shaped magazine. He had trained with similar devices and knew their missiles could cause enormous damage.
"We'll keep this for you until you depart, Mr Kinsey," said the one holding the launcher. "I hardly think this falls under the specification of personal defence."
Though the AIs did not proscribe personal armament, there were limits. Cormac moved on, finally locating a netlink terminal that wasn't occupied. Though he could have done what he was about to do by aug, that would have necessitated him making a request through the local AI or one of its subminds, and he did not want to subject himself to the potential of scrutiny. Working the touch controls and the simple keyboard, he accessed spaceport information, specifically a record of all arrivals and departures. Eight ships had come in from the Graveyard within the required time period and because of that were subject to greater scrutiny than any other vessels. Making a file containing a copy of all the information obtainable about them, including links to related sites on the net, he then sent that file to his personal net-space, before finally turning away and giving the console up to the first in the queue now gathering behind him. He then headed for the anachronistic-looking lifts on the other side of the lounge to take him up to the city proper.
It was evident, the moment he stepped out of the lift, that Cavander city remained a work-in-progress. Though complete buildings rose all about him, the skyline beyond was webbed with scaffolds, cranes, and here and there big grav-barges loaded with construction materials. The street he stepped out upon was lined with all the usual eateries, bars and shops, interspersed with numerous entrances to towering apartment complexes above. Down the centre of the street, set about twenty feet above the ground, were the two tubes of a fast-transit network, with escalators leading up to platforms arrayed about them. Cormac swung his gaze along the street, studying the crowds, noticing a preponderance for military dress, though not necessarily the contemporary kind. He recognised uniforms from the ages of Earth extending back centuries, and fashionable variations on such uniforms. He hadn't realised he'd needed to come in fancy dress.
An enquiry through his aug of the local server gave him lists of hotels still with accommodation available. Downloading a map from that same server, he used it to locate himself and then headed for the nearest hotel. The lobby was automated and he paid from his back pay, pleasantly surprised upon seeing the quantity of money available to him. And soon he ensconced himself in a small but luxurious room. Pulling up a comfortable chair by the window he gazed out across the busy city and now accessed his own net-space, cast a swift eye over the messages therein, seeing one from his brother Dax and another from an old school friend, Culu, who was now a haiman working on some project in a distant reach of the Polity. He left these and instead downloaded to his aug the information he had sent there himself about the Graveyard ships on Patience.
Upon checking their departure points, where listed, he was surprised to find that one of them had recorded its departure world as Shaparon. It seemed too good to be true, for surely Carl would not have wanted to leave any trail, but then perhaps he had no choice in the matter and was relying on ECS being unable to trace every ship that left that world, on ECS expecting him to run for cover in the Graveyard, which would of course have been the most sensible move. Relaxing back, Cormac learned everything else he could about the vessel: it was owned and operated by an individual called Omidran Glass, an ophidapt, and it was then little problem to trace her net-space and find out how to send her a message. He contemplated this for a long moment; it all seemed just too easy. Surely ECS would be onto this already? Deciding to give the matter further thought, he now considered another message he needed to send, and going to his inbox opened the information package giving him Amistad's net address.
The drone's website was nothing like a human one. It contained no biography, no public images nor any of the usual drivel humans were fond of collecting in their net-spaces. The first page gave communication links, but the pages behind this were loaded with machine code, links to weapons sites with occasional pictures or schematics of some esoteric piece of hardware, and numerous vast and inaccessible files—perhaps stored parts of the drone's mind it no longer felt the need to carry about with it.
Cormac spoke a message, recording it in his aug, then sent it to the first com address given: "Amistad, I am on Patience, and I think there's something you want to tell me, something you have been wanting to tell me for a long time."
Then, having done that, he immediately went back to Glass' site and recorded and sent another message, deciding to be utterly blunt: "Hello, Omidran Glass. You don't know me and of course I will understand if you tell me to go to hell, but I'm trying to trace someone who was recently on the world Shaparon, who I think may have taken passage on your ship. I would like to speak with you."
With the message on its way he set about running searches to try and ascertain this ophidapt woman's location, because he half expected her to reject his request. He also tried to find her passenger lists, but had no luck there. Then, surprisingly, he received a request for linkage from Glass. He accepted it and immediately an image of her appeared to his third eye. This being an aug communication, the image was obviously computer-generated, but her lips moved in perfect consonance with her words. She too would be seeing an image of him, recorded aboard the Sadist.
"I see by your image that you're wearing an ECS uniform," she observed.
"It's an old image—I've resigned," he replied.
Her shoulders were bare and she seemed to be wearing a top of pleated blue fabric cut low, with twin straps around her upper arms. It looked like the top half of a ball gown, which seemed utterly incongruous on someone whose skin bore a greenish tinge and was spangled with small scales. Her jet-back hair flowed down behind her head, her eyes were those of a snake, and as she spoke he could occasionally see her fangs folding down a little as if she were preparing to bite.
"So who is this person you are seeking?" she asked.
"I know him as Carl Thrace, though he may possess a different identity now and even a different appearance, since he's shown an aptitude for that sort of thing. What I do know is that he was likely travelling with a large piece of Loyalty Luggage, probably in the shape of an antique sea chest."
She seemed to gaze at him for a long moment, but he realised her image had frozen. Obviously she was doing something else behind this. At that moment an icon lit in the top right of this third-eye image: message pending. Then her image abruptly reanimated. "I am presently aboard my ship and will be departing this world in two hours. There is no way you can get to see me, and this is certainly the last time
we will talk like this."
Her link cut.
Cormac sat in tired frustration. His one possible contact was gone. In annoyance he opened the other message, but his anger evaporated as he listened to a sonorous voice. It made the skin on his back crawl.
"I have been waiting. Meet me at Vogol's Stone." Appended to this was a time… time to talk to a war drone, he guessed.
14
Located on the roof of Cormac's hotel, the gravcar rental office stood by a small fenced-off area of the roofport containing a row of three cars. All were utile vehicles of similar design, with two front seats, two rear ones that could be folded down to make a luggage space, the whole compartment enclosed in a chainglass bubble, the rest of the upper part of the car being featureless brushed aluminium while the underside looked like a boat hull, with stabilizing fins. Unusually, the rental office actually had a human attendant: a young boy clad in bright yellow overalls. He sat at a work-bench scattered with strange archaic-looking engine components. Cormac gazed at these curiously.
"A marine outboard motor," the boy explained. "One that actually used to run on fossil fuels."
Cormac raised an eyebrow, since he thought that unlikely. Even on Earth such things would not be seen outside a museum.
The boy grinned. "No, not that old—they used them here before the war, and during it. Now that's the alternative." The boy pointed to the row of gravcars.
"I wondered about the hulls."
"Some people like the authentic boating experience out around the peninsular," the boy explained. "They also like to put a car down on the surface of the sea and use it as a diving platform—to go after Prador artefacts. Now, how long for?" He held out a palm-top.