by Neal Aher
I transferred my gaze to a long tubular flute-grass building, which now lay some miles distant after the Weaver had ordered the Polity to move our platform away. The Weaver, the one and only sentient member of the Atheter race, had recently entered that building. Moreover, it had done so with a hooder, the war machine that had once been a human called Isobel Satomi. No one knew what they were doing, because no one could spy out what was going on in there. In fact, beyond freeing itself from Polity oversight, no one had any idea what the Weaver’s intentions now were. None of this affected my purpose, however.
It was time to leave.
But where should I head? Even though I was sure Penny Royal was no longer on this world, I simply had no idea where it had gone. And I needed to find the AI, because I felt certain that I was destined to destroy it. I could feel the anger of the dead, and it was mine too.
“So where are we heading?”
I turned to peer at Riss, uncomfortable with the assassin drone’s ability to see stuff like that inside me.
“Where did Penny Royal go?”
“Amistad is fully functional now,” said Riss, “and coming up with some interesting titbits. It seems that Micheletto’s Garrotte, after repairing itself, was summoned out to the blockade. It never arrived and no one has any idea where it went.”
I shrugged. Even if we discovered the black AI had escaped on that ship, we were no closer to knowing where it had gone. I felt a ball of frustration inside me at that.
“If we want to hunt down Penny Royal, we have to go back to first principles,” I said, gripping the rail, fingers white. “It seems it was here to clear up a mess it had made, in the form of Isobel Satomi, so what will it do next?”
“Penny Royal left no shortage of messes,” Riss commented. “Most of them in the Graveyard.”
“The Graveyard is a big place.”
“You’ve reviewed that data on the Rock Pool, on Carapace City?”
“I have.”
“What do you think?”
“It seems Penny Royal was there protecting the city when the prador started fighting each other. It then drew Satomi after it when it left that world.” I paused. “What am I supposed to think?”
“Probably no more than that Penny Royal indulged in some passing altruistic act while in the process of luring Satomi here,” said Riss. “However, if you were to factor in this little gem . . .”
Riss sent a data packet directly to my aug. I opened it at once, seeing no reason to distrust the assassin drone. It was an audiovisual file and started with a report from some slightly evil-looking man. He was clad in a shiny suit with what looked like laser burns on the sleeve. I was unsurprised to learn, in the introduction to this file, that he was a Polity agent. He was talking to someone who could not be seen.
“Data is limited in the city,” he said. “There have been no actual physical encounters with the prador father-captain. However, it’s interesting how every time he communicates with the shell people or with the other prador down here the images used are unchanged. I’ve analysed them and know that the father-captain everyone sees is indistinguishable from the one in wartime recordings before he was hit by an assassin drone parasite infection.”
“If you could clarify that,” said a cold voice.
“There’s no doubt that Sverl is computer-manipulating old images.” The man paused, inspected the burns on his sleeve for a moment, then continued, “He doesn’t want anyone to see what he looks like now and perhaps that’s understandable. We routinely use ocean sifters, which analyse pieces of prador genome. They recently picked up something quite strange: a chunk of the prador genome and human DNA combined in such an unfeasible way that there has to be picotech processes behind it.”
“You have dispatched this?” asked the cold one.
“I have.” The man frowned. “And have you dispatched some backup for me?”
“The drone Arrowsmith will be joining you directly, along with a Sparkind squad inclusive of two Golem twenty-eights.”
“Good.” The man nodded. “And about fucking time. I’m presuming, then, that you got confirmation on my previous report?”
“I did—there is no doubt that Father-Captain Sverl visited Penny Royal’s planetoid.”
There was a brief hiatus in the recording, then I was viewing footage taken decades later. The man in the shiny suit didn’t look any older, just more evil.
“The drone Arrowsmith is staying, but I’m pulling the rest of my team out. It’s a bust. It’s only a matter of time before Cvorn gets a kamikaze through and fries us all. Sverl just won’t be able to intercept everything Cvorn throws at him and afterwards he’ll probably go after Cvorn—enough of the prador remains in him to want vengeance.”
After seeing these recordings, I mentally reviewed data on the events about the Rock Pool, a world deep within the Graveyard. I had visited it only once, when buying the second-child mind Flute now aboard my ship. I then updated on the news filtering through. Sverl had defended the world for months from various types of prador kamikaze attacks, and ships had eventually arrived to evacuate the people from there. That, as far as I could gather, was how the situation presently stood. There were of course questions to ask. Cvorn’s attempt to wipe out a human colony could be due to his simple prador xenophobia and aggression. However, why was Sverl defending it? Because he was more human? I found that notion blackly amusing.
Then there were new worries for me to mull over. Flute, my ship AI, ran additional AI crystal, which had raised his intelligence. It had come from this Sverl, who in turn had had dealings with Penny Royal in the past. My amusement at the previous notion disappeared as I considered how everything Penny Royal had touched simply could not be trusted, could not be taken at face value, and that included me.
I returned to the moment.
“Another Penny Royal mess?” I suggested.
“So it would seem,” Riss replied, “and could signal where Penny Royal is heading now, don’t you think?”
I turned to study the drone. “How did you get hold of this stuff?”
Riss blinked her black eye. “I still have my contacts.”
I realized she hadn’t blinked, but winked.
“Even after the years you spent in a coma, out by Penny Royal’s planetoid?”
“Even so,” Riss agreed. “As I told you before, AIs don’t have human problems with time.”
“So perhaps these contacts are related to your previous employment, considering parts of the recording?”
“You got it.” Riss dipped her head solemnly. “I was the assassin drone who infected Sverl with the parasite that almost destroyed him. And my contacts are erstwhile war drones now employed by Earth Central Security. These ECS drones have been keeping watch for anything concerning Sverl and over the years have relayed it to me.”
It was a lead, of sorts, and worth investigating. Now, having decided to leave Masada and find Sverl, I was anxious to be gone. Anything that could lead me to Penny Royal gave me hope—as my desire for revenge, for its slaughter of eight thousand troops during the war, was undimmed. Yes, undimmed. I was sure . . .
“I think we’re done here,” I said.
“At last,” said Riss, then looking behind me she added, “Are you coming?”
I turned round to see Amistad, completely rebuilt and standing just a few paces away. Riss’s offer immediately annoyed me and, opening a private channel to the snake drone, I made my thoughts known to her, avoiding the need to speak.
“I’m not so sure this is a good idea,” I said.
“Understandable caution.”
“Sure,” I continued, “his kind of firepower would be handy to have around when we finally catch up with Penny Royal, but he was the Warden of Masada.”
“And would only accompany us to look out for Polity interests?”
“You nailed it.”
“You don’t know Amistad’s history.”
“You needn’t concern yourself, Thorvald Spear,”
Amistad interrupted. “I intend to remain here.”
“So what is it about the word ‘private’ that escapes you, Amistad?” I asked.
“Old habits.” The big scorpion drone waved a dismissive claw. “Anyway, I may no longer be the Warden of Masada but it could be that my older skills will be required here. Look.”
Another data packet arrived in my aug, this time from Amistad. I treated this with more caution, then wondered why I trusted stuff sent by Riss so much more. I opened the packet and found another audiovisual file.
“There was no data from inside the building until I could once again utilize my resources,” Amistad stated.
I was seeing the inside of that tubular flute-grass building from multiple viewpoints—a confusion of perspectives I was only able to encompass using my aug. The massive albino hooder, the Technician, lay stretched out within and, as I watched, the Weaver moved ponderously inside and loped down the length of it to halt beside its spoon-shaped head. Next in came the smaller hooder that had been Isobel Satomi. It swarmed into the building then up onto the Technician’s back. About halfway along it halted, spreading out its legs to clamp itself to its larger brethren. Nothing appeared to happen for a while, then I spotted “Isobel’s” legs melding in place and a smoky meniscus spreading out from this connection. It spread to wrap around both the Technician and the smaller hooder—a cocoon.
“At this point,” said Amistad, “we have this.”
A sub-packet, which annoyingly I had missed, opened. It was neither audio nor visual—just hard AI data—and difficult for my aug to interpret for my soft human brain. After a moment, I got it. I was seeing energy readings, data handshaking and molecular activity ramping up inside the Technician.
“I have to stay here and monitor the situation,” Amistad concluded as the file closed and then began to erase itself.
I was fascinated, but it was a distant thing. Interesting and doubtless important events were occurring here, but they weren’t for me. These were merely the results of Penny Royal’s actions, but the AI itself was no longer here. And that AI was my focus—my reason for being.
“Observe,” said Amistad, pointing a claw to the scene beyond.
I turned to see the smaller hooder heading away from the Weaver, who was now standing just beyond the building. Even as this was happening, something chopped from side to side within that structure, tearing out the walls at one end. Having given itself some space, the Technician, repaired and resurrected by its smaller kin, flowed out into the Masadan morning.
“I have to stay,” Amistad repeated with more emphasis.
“Yes, I suppose you do,” I replied, turning away.
My business was with Penny Royal.
FATHER-CAPTAIN SVERL
Perhaps the excitement some months ago had stimulated it, or perhaps it was responding to the ensuing months of waiting and watching, interspersed by frantic moments of action whenever Cvorn fired something into the Rock Pool system—or the tension of awaiting another such attack, which was long overdue. More likely it was just the result of some internal prador biological timer, but whatever the impetus, Father-Captain Sverl knew that he was about to experience another growth surge. His cysts of body fat had been growing rapidly over the last few weeks, and now he was shivering, feeling tight and gravid. He could feel pressure rises inside and, deep scanning his body, he could see hot spots, odd chemical reactions and growing dead areas.
Next, gazing through the deep scanner at his tail, he considered removing it again, before the surge. The soft fleshy extrusion contained actual human vertebrae that connected to his main massive body, which, over many years, had taken on the shape of a human skull, his carapace softening and the internal changes radical. The grotesque transformation Penny Royal had initiated in him had continued slowly between surges and now he could see rib bones sprouting from that spine like plant shoots. The ribs were starting to curve now to enclose a large cyst that had recently appeared and in which shadowy human organs were being etched into existence. If this wasn’t bad enough, the spinal cord had made connections to the muscle surrounding it and was now making further connections to his nervous system, and thence to the human brain tissue growing in and about his prador major ganglion. He had started to feel this horrible outgrowth, and in fact he could move it, wag it even. But no, when he had previously removed this tail it had grown back—the whole process taking many agonizing months and the only effective form of anaesthesia being to dunk his rear end in a large bowl of iced water.
The shivering increased as if in response to his thoughts about surgery, and Sverl settled down on his belly in a small comfortable area in his sanctum. He felt disgusted by how his lower body spread under his weight as it had never done while he possessed a hard carapace. Yes, his main body had taken on the shape of a human skull, but no bones had grown in it and as well as steadily losing his outer carapace he was also losing inner bracing webs of the same material. He was becoming repulsively soft.
The constant shivering became rhythmic, turning to shudders and then convulsions. As always happened on these occasions, his AI component detached itself from the suffering of his dual organic brain and watched the changes through the deep scanner suspended above. His temperature rose rapidly, internal fluid pressures increased, his heart accelerating beyond the speed any normal prador could survive, and Sverl watched the surge. Further internal webs of carapace dissolved, human brain tissue bulged as it grew in his prador ganglion, internal organs shifted, some expanding and others contracting, fat supplies dwindled as this activity burned them away. His tail flicked from side to side and within it the bones of limbs blossomed into existence and pushed four flipper-like outgrowths from its sides. Sverl blistered all over, shed stubborn fragments of old carapace to reveal pink skin underneath. Black excrement leaked out of his anus, he puked chyme, and yellow fluid poured from his human eyes. At length the convulsions ceased, his temperature began to drop, and finally, two hours later, it was over.
So where was this transformation heading? How could the small human body growing in his tail possibly support a gigantic and boneless skull-like head? Why did his scanning now show that his diet would have to change to include more vegetable matter and that the lighting in his sanctum would need to be brighter if he was not to suffer vitamin deficiencies? Moments like this revealed it all as a grotesque and horrifying joke. Surely, the punchline was past and the joker now had things for him in mind of a more serious nature?
His twinned organic brain being hugely weary, Sverl used his AI component to control his prosthetic limbs and tried to stand. A horrible ripping sound ensued and he collapsed down on one side. Shortly after that came the pain. He could not see it through his own eyes, but via the sensors of the deep scanner he saw exactly what had happened. His prosthetic legs, all on that one side, had torn their sockets out of his soft body. Sverl gaped at the horrific wound: the stretched nerve tissue leading into the sockets, the wet brown flesh exposed and the green blood leaking from ripped veins. His organic component screamed, but his AI self knew at once what to do, for he had prepared for this long ago. His gaze strayed to ceramal bones and ribs stacked inside a sterile chain-glass case just a short distance away, then to the robots folded up in the roof of his sanctum. After a brief hesitation, he gave them their instructions.
Sverl had known that if his transformation continued as before, his steadily softening tissues would eventually cease to be able to support his prosthetics. Now radical intervention was needed, for it was time for him to acquire a skeleton. While his organic brain tried to deny the reality, his AI self uploaded programs to the robots that were now dropping from the ceiling on umbilicals and preparing their esoteric collections of surgical tools. They gathered around him, submerging him in a sterilizing cloud. A consonance of his different meshing parts ensued, and an acceptance. Unconsciousness was a tricky option for a prador but not for a human, so he forced his human brain tissue into that state first. His prador major
ganglion he disconnected by overloading some nerves while one robot injected a tentacular manipulator to insert micro nerve blockers. Within minutes, all of Sverl that remained fully aware was his AI.
The first cuts were made. One robot, dripping virobact fluid, extracted ceramal bones from their sterile case and hauled them over. Even Sverl’s AI felt some horror as the machines laid open his soft body, unpeeled and divided it like a large flower bud, supported organs and stabbed fluid shunts into place.
Just an hour later he was no longer recognizable—just something exploded about prosthetic limbs and mandibles. The ceramal bones started to go in. Clamps locked around metal leg sockets, claw sockets and mandible sockets, while struts connected each set of clamps in an interlocked whole. Flat ribs fixed to a lower column to support his organs, and fixed to these were cups and containers for organs that needed further support. All this connected by further struts to an intricate smaller rib case like the skeleton of an Ouroboros to hold his tripart brain. Next his organs, fat, wasted muscle and interconnecting tissue all started to go back into place, along with an intricate optical loom and millions of nerve interfaces. Sverl wanted definite AI connection to all his parts in the hope of controlling any problems after such drastic surgery.
The robots drew together and used cell welders to join him back together invisibly, filling with collagen foam and drawing back his skin, layer by layer, to glue it back into place. When they finally retreated, they took away every scrap of surplus dead tissue and left little sign of their intervention beyond a pool of sterile fluid on the floor and spatters of collagen foam on nearby equipment. Observing through the deep scanner, while his prador brain reconnected and his human brain returned to consciousness, the AI Sverl could see that his shape looked more solid, it no longer sagged as it once had. Full reintegration ensued and with it the inevitable pain. Yet it was nowhere near as bad as he had expected, and he felt somehow right, as if what he had done had not only been necessary but fated.