by Neal Aher
“Snickety snick,” something said.
For just a second Sverl thought this was an attack and brought up all his defences. He recognized the U-space channel and the mental signature, but had expected nothing from there ever again. However, it seemed the Golem that Penny Royal had provided all those years ago still existed.
Sverl had never really been comfortable with the Golem, which was probably why, on the Rock Pool, he had allowed the Mafia boss Stolman to ostensibly find and activate it. Stolman had believed it utterly under his control, but it had acted as a spy for Sverl. Isobel Satomi, when she had penetrated Stolman’s aug network and incidentally ripped apart and eaten that man, had believed she then controlled it. Thereafter, when she had taken it along with her to Masada and to her doom, Sverl had thought it destroyed. Now he began updating from it.
Intelligent enough to recognize the likelihood of its own demise during Isobel’s pointless assault on Masada, the Golem had abandoned ship, sending Sverl’s best wishes to her as it did so, though Sverl hadn’t known. It had then gone somnolent in vacuum, unable to send signals to Sverl because its internal U-space transmitter just wasn’t powerful enough to penetrate the U-space disruption in that system caused by the earlier deployment of USERs. Next, for no immediately apparent reason, Captain Blite had picked it up on his way out of the system, whereupon it covertly rose out of somnolence to observe its surroundings. It had seen that Blite had also picked up Satomi’s second, Trent Sobel, and that the man wore a very interesting earring. Blite handed Trent and the Golem over to the Polity, and both were now in a very sticky situation indeed.
The earring . . .
Isobel Satomi had fascinated Sverl because what Penny Royal had done to her was very similar to what it had done to him. She had wanted power and the AI had turned her into a powerful monster—a hooder. Sverl had wanted knowledge of why the humans and AIs had been winning the war. The AI had given him that knowledge by turning him into an amalgam of prador, AI and human—yet another powerful monster.
He had wanted to talk to Satomi, and to examine her, because he felt sure he had much to learn from her. He’d thought her gone, dead, annihilated at Masada, but now Trent Sobel possessed her memplant. The Golem, via subtle scans, had found Isobel recorded in the purple sapphire hanging from Trent’s ear. How it got there was irrelevant but, having been acquainted with the events on Masada that had culminated in Isobel’s downfall, Sverl knew who had put it there: Penny Royal.
“Does he want it?” the Golem asked, eagerly adding, “He wants it. He wants it!”
Did he?
Through the eyes of his Golem, Sverl saw Sobel’s clothing lying neatly folded on a stone floor with the earring lying on top. The man himself was currently a smeared-out organic mass occupying the crevices of a loose ball of segmented biomech worms. These worms had utterly taken him apart and were examining him down to sub-molecular levels. Sverl could see his disconnected skull in there, its bony jaw opening and closing. He felt the horror and recognized that although Penny Royal was unique, the black AI was not that unique. After Sobel’s inevitable, final, demise the forensic AI there would turn its attention to the Golem and find this communication link.
“I want it,” he replied, “but recognize the limits of possibility.”
He felt pity for Sobel and found himself unsurprised at a response so untypical of a prador. Undoubtedly, in Polity terms the man was deserving of death, but did any being deserve to die in such a way? Sverl also felt a degree of pity for the Golem because, although it was an artificial being, it still possessed a sense of self. It was still capable of suffering, and would soon be facing similar dismantlement. The earring would go too, for Penny Royal had transformed Satomi, and all the data that she was, the AI would take apart and analyse.
“I’ll get it,” the Golem intoned.
“If you can; if you wish,” said Sverl, lining up a particular program in his mind. “I am now releasing you from my grip. Henceforth you are a free entity and may do what you will.” Sverl sent the program that would completely release the Golem and felt it thump home with all the physicality of a hatchet, but the U-space link remained open. He continued, “If you can bring Isobel Satomi to me then I will be glad, and I will reward you in any way I can. However, your first priority now must be to save yourself.”
Sverl now cut the link and began ramping up his security around it. Maybe the Golem could escape, for it was, after all, a product of Penny Royal and more than just a Polity Golem. Maybe it would then be willing to bring him the memcording of Satomi. Most likely, this would be the last he ever heard of it. Most likely, there would be something dangerous occupying the other end of that link next time he opened it, and he had to be ready.
TRENT
Against a background of intense suffering, it started with what he recognized as his earliest memory. He was a boy running along one of the corridors of an arcology on Coloron when Dumal stepped out in front of him. He knew he was about to be beaten and humiliated but, in the present, he couldn’t remember previous beatings and humiliations. Grinning horribly, Dumal spread his arms so Trent could not run past. Suddenly it was all too much and the infant Trent understood that neither flight nor compliance could ever stop this. If he ran away as before, the bigger boy would catch him because of a longer stride. Instead, Trent ducked his head down, kept running, and rammed his head straight into the other boy’s fat gut. Dumal went down on his rump and Trent, his neck hurting, tried to get past, but a hand caught his trousers and dragged him down. The beating that ensued was the worst yet, and subsequent beatings would be just as bad, but Trent had made the decision to fight and refused to back down. The beatings only ceased when Trent caught Dumal in a restricted area and knocked him semiconscious with a length of steel pipe.
“And there’s the decision,” a voice whispered, “murderer.”
Dumal was down and bleeding, nearly unconscious. Trent gazed down at him lying there on the edge of the shaft that speared down to the bedrock of the arcology, just stared, utterly still, no knowledge of how much time was passing, and then, with no real thoughts in his mind, he stooped down and heaved Dumal over the edge. Watching the boy drop, he felt nothing but relief and, after that faded, nothing at all.
Now he felt that the Brockle’s judgement of him was unfair. Further memories ensued, all harsh and cold and painful in their clarity. The Brockle raised his sister in his mind as an obvious comparison. She had suffered like him but she hadn’t turned to crime. The forensic AI then stripped away protective forgetfulness to reveal that Trent’s association with Separatists and other criminal elements on Coloron really had led to her death. It then moved on to his career in the Coloron mafia and his eventual escape from that world, the trail of misery he left behind him, and his arrival in the Graveyard.
He managed to ask why this was happening, not really using words, but from a point of puzzlement in some part of his mind still able to think.
“The pain?” the Brockle enquired. “It occupies your surface consciousness and does not permit you to conceal anything from me. The torturers of old weren’t entirely wrong.”
Something else?
“Yes, I could use other methods, but I’m an old-fashioned AI who believes in punishment.”
My sister . . . who I was . . .
“Oh, that suffering is just your own, now you clearly remember,” the Brockle said conversationally. “You have no real pathology and have always known the difference between right and wrong. Most intelligences know that difference in the context of their particular society and make a choice—often the easiest one. You knew, even as a boy, that perhaps you would have further conflict with Dumal after you beat him with that pipe, but that your status as a victim had ended, and that Dumal would pursue easier prey. But you chose an easy murder instead.”
Trent’s association with Isobel Satomi came next and he was aware that she was the Brockle’s main interest. Everything Trent thought about her, knew about her,
every conversation he had had with her and every sight of her, the AI examined in meticulous detail. It focused huge attention on the change she had undergone, and every reference to Penny Royal it checked repeatedly, ad nauseam. Then Thorvald Spear entered their compass, and Trent’s pain abruptly faded. He felt that the AI was now concentrating so intently it had forgotten to torture him.
“He should be examined,” the Brockle hissed.
Trent thought that was for him, but another cold voice replied, “Thorvald Spear has committed no crime.”
“Nevertheless . . .”
“It is not in your remit,” the other voice said. “Finish there.”
“You fear what it will do next?”
Trent felt a leakage of frustration and anger. Obviously, his interrogator did not like the way this was going.
“Penny Royal can change paradigms,” the cold voice said opaquely. “One murderer more, or less, makes no difference.” The voice paused, then continued, “This piece must remain in play.”
“So it is true, what Garrotte has revealed?” said the Brockle. “About Penny Royal’s actions in Panarchia and what happened there?”
“Yes.”
“And the Golem?”
“Release it too.”
“Satomi—her memplant?”
“That goes too.”
Trent sensed some ensuing hesitation, rebellion even.
“Release them,” the cold voice repeated. “Do not infringe upon the terms of your own agreed imprisonment.”
“I would argue that this lies outside those terms.”
“So do U-jump missiles. We could easily deploy them against you if you stray.”
“Do you not think I have not prepared for that?”
“Your choice . . .”
The pain returned redoubled. Trent now screamed on the outskirts of memory as the Brockle examined his generally irrelevant memories of being stuck in an airlock when Penny Royal had visited Satomi’s ship the Moray Firth and repaired its drive. He spent an eternity in hell while it checked and rechecked through the series of events that had led to Satomi’s demise on Masada. It puzzled over why Penny Royal had sent the recording of her mind to Trent’s earring and it fretted about why the black AI had sent Captain Blite to rescue Trent from the wreck of the Firth. Throughout all this Trent still felt that leakage of frustrated anger and was sure that the Brockle was being even more vicious than previously.
“They are wrong. Penny Royal isn’t capable of change,” the forensic AI finally told him, “and you don’t deserve to live.” Whereupon he plummeted into darkness.
Trent woke sprawled on steel gratings and, just like when he woke after being beaten or shot, at the location of that event or in a hospital bed, he remained absolutely still, waiting for the pain. When it didn’t arrive, he opened his eyes and carefully tested his limbs. Though he felt no pain, the memory of agony suffused him bone-deep. Eventually he slid his hands underneath his body and heaved himself upright to look around.
He was still in the dock, the ship he had arrived in resting nearby with its hold door still open, the Golem still on its sled inside. He was naked, his clothing stacked nearby with his earring resting on top. Not much had changed except, when he peered more closely at the floor he had been lying on, he saw it scattered with pieces of bone and small gobbets of flesh, a frosting of blood, some half-dissolved bone-clamps and another item he recognized at once: a titanium splint that had been inserted in his right thigh over three decades ago. He stood up, testing his limbs further, and found he was able to move easily enough, though he felt tender to the core. He examined his arms, torso and legs and found them free of old scars.
“Why am I alive?” he asked.
“A question all beings must pose to themselves,” replied the Brockle tightly.
Suddenly, as if it had edited its presence out of his consciousness and back into its human form, the forensic AI was an overweight youth again, squatting just a few yards away from him. Trent stepped back from it. Perhaps this was how it went: after the examination, it returned him to perfect health for final execution of sentence. He waited for that.
The Brockle waved a chubby hand at the detritus scattered on the floor. “Whenever I reassemble someone I always like to remove the faults. It’s nit-picky of me but that’s the way I am. Perhaps you should consider the removal of your scars the physical expression of disconnection from your past and perhaps, as Penny Royal suggested, you should redeem yourself.”
“When are you going to stop toying with me and get this over with?” Trent asked.
“I am not toying.” The Brockle pointed to the single-ship behind him. “I have removed my submind that usually guides it, but there is a replacement available. Take the ship and go.”
“You still haven’t answered my question.”
“Orders,” the Brockle replied. “Apparently Penny Royal is going to stop a war and you are an important part of its plans. You are a messenger.”
Trent pondered that for a second, then said, “So what did the Garrotte reveal?”
“Not enough, in my opinion, to justify your release,” the Brockle replied. “And not enough to justify a policy of non-interference.”
“Non-interference?” Trent echoed.
It did not reply. Trent blinked and the Brockle was gone. Should he believe all this? Maybe his mind was in some virtuality where the AI was still playing with it, while his body remained in pieces spread throughout the Brockle’s real body of biomech worms. He knew, perfectly well, that it could adjust his perception of time to keep him in such a virtuality for seconds of its own time, but centuries of his.
Trent turned and walked over to his clothing, first picking up his earring to fit back into his ear, but annoyingly the Brockle had even repaired the hole there. He put it to one side and then donned his clothes. Even if this was a virtuality, he had to act and react as if it was real, so now he thought about what to do.
The Brockle had given him a ship but one without an AI and therefore incapable of dropping into U-space. Sure, he could obtain some second-child ship mind somewhere, but he had no idea how long it would take him to arrive at that somewhere. He decided to explore, because he probably needed more than that box of soldier’s rations under his bed aboard.
Slipping his earring into his pocket, he turned towards the tunnel the Brockle had come down and saw that the antique door was closed. He walked over to try it and found the manual wheel locked solid. He then tried all the doors in the back wall but they were locked too. Perhaps this was just the result of some alteration of the code in this virtuality, or perhaps this was real, but either way he wasn’t going through those doors. However, in a side wall stood a smaller door he had yet to try. He walked over and it opened easily, but now he felt reluctant to step through. Damn it, he couldn’t keep expecting the worse, so he forced himself to take the step. A tunnel beyond, with walls streaked with actual rust and beaded with condensation, led him to yet another door—this one welded shut. He walked back from it and paused by one of a series of oval portholes of the kind found in First Diaspora cryoships, wiped away condensation and peered out.
From the right issued the orange glare of a sun, or some other astronomical object, and silhouetted against this stood an ancient com tower scattered with radio dishes. He couldn’t actually get a look at the body of the Tyburn but, pushing his face against the cold glass, he could see a massive nacelle poking out down below, so this ship was probably some early U-space vessel like those that left towards the end of the First Diaspora. However, gazing at that old design of nacelle he could see new metal around a bulge towards its rear that indicated that it might well be functional, and might well contain some newer form of U-drive. He grunted to himself and backed away, then headed back out into the dock.
“Okay,” he said, “I’ll leave.”
No reply was forthcoming, but he hadn’t expected one.
He headed over to the open hold of the ship, walked up the ramp a
nd paused to gaze at the Golem lying on its sled. Reality or otherwise, he didn’t want this thing in the ship along with him. He reached out and activated the small control panel on a narrow upright post on the sled, bringing it up off the floor; then, using the “simple towing” setting, he kept a finger on the control as he walked back down the ramp, the sled obediently following. He shut it down on the floor of the dock and returned inside the ship.
On the other side of this hold lay the door into the space that had been his prison. The corridor beyond took him to a cramped engine room filled with the bulk of a fusion drive and fusion reactor and the control columns feeding optics out to the U-space nacelles. Returning along the corridor brought him to the cockpit. This was cramped too, contained a single dusty acceleration chair and console, a viewing laminate in the lower half of a chain-glass screen and a scattering of sweet wrappers across the floor. He brushed the chair down, then sat and reached out to activate the controls. They were of a very old design but he knew he could operate them.
First, he closed the hold, hearing the ramp rumble back up and seal with a satisfying thump. Next, after disengaging docking clamps, he searched for and found “space doors” and set them to open, but when he did so the clamps re-engaged and he heard that rumbling again, shortly followed by a screen warning that the hold was again open, and offering him the option of closing it. What the hell had he done wrong? He closed it once more and again punched the control to open the space doors. He felt the ship turning, the screen now telling him the dock pressure was dropping. Turning a full hundred and eighty degrees, the ship clumped to a halt. He saw sliding space doors, their edges castellated, opening ahead to reveal a swathe of stars.
Am I really free? he wondered, as he took hold of the ship’s joystick and raised it a little, hearing steering thrusters ignite and feeling their rumble through the floor. He pushed the stick forwards and the ship obeyed, taking him rapidly towards the open doors. He shot out into vacuum, the orange eye of some cold Neptunian planet coming clear to his right. With a twist of the joystick, he spun the single-ship round and with it travelling backwards gazed at the Brockle’s lair. The hulk was at least a couple of miles long and he recognized the design. On the end of a long stalk to the fore was a section like a giant bulbous monorail carriage. This was where the crew and passengers were packed in hibernation capsules. This stalk extended from the larger drive section he had just departed, while extending from this were the vanes holding the U-space engine nacelles. Two nacelles were still in place and had obviously been modified, while it looked as if the third had been sliced off. Further inspection along the hull revealed stubby weapons turrets and the dark maws of weapons ports—all obvious additions. He wondered then about the exchange he had overheard: . . . terms of your agreed imprisonment.