by Neal Aher
It suddenly snapped up one hand, then one finger. Trent hadn’t even been able to track the movement. No doubt at all that if it decided to kill him he was utterly helpless.
“I remember. I was called John Grey,” it said. “Snickety snick,” John Grey added while, his hands a blur, he tore out and discarded circuit rods from the wall and then detached a skein of fibre-optics from behind where they had been.
“What did Penny Royal do to you, John?” Trent asked. Maybe, if he kept talking, he could defer the point when he ended up in bloody gobbets scattered about this cabin. Such an end struck him as likely since, if Penny Royal wanted Satomi, Trent Sobel himself was most likely irrelevant. Perhaps a little distracting entertainment while this Golem took Isobel’s memcording to the “he” he’d mentioned?
John Grey looked up from sorting cables. “Mr Grey,” he said firmly.
Trent felt his hopes of getting out of this alive retreat even further. He watched as the Golem began plugging the optic cables into his chest. After a few minutes of this Mr Grey said, “Snick,” as he plugged in the last of them—all in a neat ring around his crystal. He then tugged more of the optics out of the wall to give him the slack to stand up and step back towards Trent. Reaching out to press a finger against Trent’s chest, the Golem then dipped his head to inspect his own finger more closely. Trent knew that in an instant Mr Grey could shove that finger straight through him. He cleared his throat, then said, “I didn’t want to die on that moon, and I don’t want to die here.”
Grey looked up. “You didn’t want to die?”
Trent cleared his sticky throat. “No.”
“Neither did I,” said Mr Grey.
Trent was puzzling over what he could possibly say in response to that, just as Grey’s head dipped again, as if he was nodding off, and the ship shuddered like some beast running into a bare power cable, twisted and groaned, and dropped into U-space.
SVERL
The cargo ships that had taken on many of the refugees from the planet were now gone, as was the ship the Polity agents here, at the Rock Pool, had boarded, and Sverl felt slightly disappointed to not be having some exchange with the drone Arrowsmith. Now deep scanning the local system, he picked up the small single-ship orbiting the Rock Pool and noted that the ship contained a Golem that was trying to open communications with him again. He ignored that, instead pondering on his impulse to direct the Golem here. He should not have done so and, more importantly, he should not have come here himself. It seemed likely that some of Cvorn’s spy satellites would still be here so Cvorn might learn his location and know that Sverl had not taken the bait.
Whatever—he would deal with Cvorn in due course.
Sverl now allowed a communications link with the Golem to establish and made an informational request to link deeper, since it was no longer his slave. It allowed this and he gazed through its eyes.
“You have arrived,” said the Golem, who had now apparently acquired the name John Grey. Mr Grey was peering at an image of Sverl’s dreadnought in a small screen. Next, he raised his gaze to focus on a distant speck of that same ship through the main cockpit screen.
“Come over,” said Sverl. “I will open a docking bay.” He felt a mental hesitation within Mr Grey, along with some strange echoing effects and hints of esoteric maths, and so he continued smoothly, “Unless you wish to maintain some distance while we work out what your payment should be.” Sverl had absolutely no idea what such a creature, now free of his control, might want.
“I want to accompany you,” said Grey, dipping his head to peer down at his own body. Sverl now realized why the link seemed so odd. Mr Grey had plugged himself into that little ship to make the required calculations to control the U-space engines, and was still partly lost in that mathematical universe.
“Why?” Sverl asked, then before Grey could reply, said the answer himself: “Penny Royal.”
“Yes.” The affirmation was almost dismissive as Grey turned to gaze at Trent Sobel, who was stepping into the rear of the cabin, his expression wary at first, then alarmed when he saw the image on the small screen.
“Come over,” Sverl repeated, meanwhile mentally sending a signal to open a door into the assault bay. He withdrew, partially, his awareness of what was happening aboard that small vessel remaining just enough to alert him to anything that might require his attention. Next, as the ship fired up its fusion drive and began its approach, he began updating from his various sources within both the Polity and the Kingdom. It soon became evident that he should have been paying more attention to things outside his usual compass.
Something was happening.
In response to occurrences over on the other side of the Graveyard, Polity watch stations and border forces were on high alert. But what those occurrences might be wasn’t very clear from the data he could gather on the Polity side. Most of Sverl’s sources of information in the Kingdom—the data intercepts, status updates and the prador gossip transmitted like a round robin—weren’t making things clear either, so Sverl decided it was time to try another more risky source, and he opened a U-space link deep into the Kingdom.
“Hello Sverl—I’ve been expecting your call,” said the individual at the other end of that link.
“So what exactly is going on, Gost?” Sverl asked of the large armoured prador now displayed across his screens.
Gost was either a large first-child or a young adult that just didn’t behave with the selfishness usually displayed by that kind. Gost was one of the prador king’s large extended family, one of his children, and served his father as one of the King’s Guard. Gost had contacted Sverl many decades ago with an offer of amnesty if he returned to the Kingdom. Sverl hadn’t believed it and, anyway, it had been too late. Part of his surrender involved physically coming before the king and by then Sverl had changed too much and had known what the prador reaction to his change would be: instant extermination. However, after his refusal, their occasional conversations had continued. The king was perfectly well aware of this but allowed it even though Sverl was an outlaw. The king wanted to control his kingdom and to be ready to counter any threat, so he needed all the data he could get. Cutting off communications between Sverl and one of his utterly loyal guards would not have been useful.
“You mean, why is the Polity getting nervous?” Gost enquired.
“Of course.”
“Probably because of the host of dreadnoughts at the Graveyard’s borders and the squadron of King’s Guard reavers gathering in the Feeding Frenzy within the Kingdom.”
“I see,” said Sverl. “And why are such ships gathering?”
“Because of you, Sverl.”
“I didn’t think I was such a threat.”
“Certainly the image I am seeing on my screens is no threat at all,” said Gost. “But I would be interested in seeing what you really look like, and I would be even more interested in taking a peek inside you, specifically around your major ganglion.”
Sverl was lost for words. He just stared at the King’s Guard and clattered nonsense from his prosthetic mandibles.
“I see that you lack a sensible response,” said Gost. “Let me make something plain for you: we know what you are, Sverl. We know what the black AI Penny Royal did to you.”
“And so you wish to erase such an atrocity,” Sverl managed.
“Such a typical prador response might be expected . . .”
Gost was offering him something—some insight. Now under pressure, Sverl’s mind went into overdrive, mainly functioning in its AI component. Gost was not behaving exactly like a prador, and neither was the king. No one had seen the king for many years and the king’s children, his guard, were never seen without their armour . . .
“Transformation might not be unique to me,” he suggested.
“It might not,” admitted Gost. “But consider how the majority of untransformed prador would react to you. Consider how some prador, bitter about the termination of the war and certain of their man
ifest destiny to dominate the universe, might use you.”
“Cvorn,” said Sverl.
“The dreadnoughts on the border of the Graveyard contain Cvorn’s allies who, though surrendering power to my father, the king, have continued to nurture their hate. To them you would be an abomination and utter proof that the war should have been continued to its—in their view—inevitable conclusion: the extermination of all Polity humans and AIs. Unfortunately they are unable to overcome their instincts sufficiently to understand that the true inevitable conclusion of the war would have been the annihilation of most of the prador race, with the remainder being confined to the surfaces of just a few worlds, as a novelty, as a source of interest to godlike artificial intelligences.”
Again, Sverl had difficulty finding any response. What were the King’s Guard that they could see so clearly beyond their instincts? What was the king? Had Penny Royal’s urge to transform extended even into the Kingdom?
“And no, Sverl, neither I nor my kin have been touched by that black AI.”
Shit, a mind reader too.
“And I’m not a mind reader,” Gost added.
After sputtering for a moment, Sverl managed, “Penny Royal was rogue . . .”
“They would not, or would not want to see a distinction: Penny Royal is an AI and therefore of the Polity.”
Sverl paused, banished the shock he felt as a foolish organic reaction, and cogitated for an AI moment, then said, “But Cvorn and his allies would need physical irrefutable evidence, which is me.”
“Yes.”
“Cvorn cannot capture me.”
“Maybe when his only resource was a destroyer . . .”
“Explain.”
“Vlern’s five children raided a world for females and during that raid, and showing abilities not usually within the compass of their kind, they stole an ST dreadnought, which they took to Cvorn in the Graveyard.”
“Why? Why take it to him?”
“Some form of mind control is indicated.”
“I wonder what—”
“So,” Gost interrupted, “Cvorn’s activities in the Graveyard threaten to lead to civil war in the Kingdom, probably followed by all-out war against the Polity. And you are the key. My father now has a quandary to resolve. He can launch an attack against Cvorn’s allies, which would be costly, or he can take the very dangerous risk of sending a squadron of reavers into the Graveyard, to which the Polity would have to respond.”
“To deal with Cvorn,” said Sverl, knowing with leaden certainty that this was not what Gost was getting at. The reavers—the ships of the King’s Guard—would have another target.
“No, Sverl,” Gost said. “There will always be prador like Cvorn but there is only one piece of evidence, ostensibly of Polity perfidy, like you. And so your very existence could trigger a war.”
“So you are preparing to come in to hunt me down and kill me,” said Sverl.
“We could do so by breaking treaties and forcing the Polity to respond with attack ships, which would give Cvorn’s allies an excuse to come in and engage too, to which the Polity would have to respond with dreadnoughts . . . This would provoke the very war we are trying to avoid. Need I go on?”
“You need not,” said Sverl. “What would you have me do? Destroy myself?”
“That would be very convenient for us. Are you offering to do so?”
“I am not.”
“Then you have a few choices remaining if, as I have divined from our previous communications, you have lost your hatred of the Polity and have gained a hatred of warfare and all it entails,” said Gost. Sverl felt some relief that there might be an alternative to his suicide or murder by his own state.
“You must find some other way of removing yourself from the game. While you remain in the Graveyard, you face the certainty of extinction either from us or from Cvorn and his allies. Either you hand yourself over to the Polity or you depart elsewhere.”
“I will ponder on the matter,” Sverl replied.
“Don’t, as has often been your wont, allow your pondering to turn into procrastination,” said Gost, then cut the communication, his image shimmering out.
Sverl settled down on the floor of his sanctum, feeling deflated and lost. He really did not want to be the key to starting a conflict between the Kingdom and the Polity, and he definitely did not want to die. Handing himself over to the Polity would take him far from Cvorn’s grasp, but it would probably put him within the grasp of something like that forensic AI the Brockle. If he headed out of the Graveyard and beyond both Polity space and the Kingdom, his need for some sort of resolution with Penny Royal would never be satisfied. So, thinking on these matters, he returned his focus to the approaching single-ship and felt a sudden intimation that an answer might lie there.
“Did you have any problems passing the Polity watch stations?” he enquired, following a suspicion.
“None at all,” replied Grey.
“Who the hell is that?” asked Trent Sobel.
Sverl belatedly realized that Mr Grey was allowing the ship’s computing to translate their communication for the man’s benefit. He felt a momentary annoyance, then again remembered that this Golem was no longer his slave and he had no control of it, no claim on its actions.
“I am Father-Captain Sverl.”
“Right, you’re still here.”
Sverl felt no inclination to disabuse him of the notion that he had remained near the Rock Pool because he now had other things to consider. Despite the Polity watch stations being on high alert, this single-ship had come through. It might have evaded detection, but more likely the watchers had let it through because of whatever threat Penny Royal had made. This all related to Sverl; he felt sure he was still part of the black AI’s plans. He would let them carry him, he decided. Turning from his controls, he headed over to the back wall of his sanctum, sending a mental instruction to open a storeroom and, upon reaching it, began bringing out some equipment. Penny Royal had seen fit to send him Isobel Satomi’s memcrystal, so it clearly wanted him to do something about it. It might be that he wouldn’t need this hardware to penetrate the crystal—that it would take standard optical connections—but he wanted to be prepared.
SPEAR
This Sverl, I decided, was a dangerous character indeed. Not only was he an augmented prador but one using both prador and Polity technology, as demonstrated by his use of sophisticated chameleonware capable of concealing a prador dreadnought at close quarters.
When his ship had appeared like that, I’d just gaped at the thing filling up the screen fabric and waited for a wave of fiery destruction, like the one I’d experienced at Panarchia. But my ship and I weren’t of interest to him, and he took himself away and U-jumped.
We found out why only a short while later. Sverl had made a physical penetration of the relay and now, knowing where it was transmitting its signal to, had gone after it. Or at least so I supposed. He’d also left the thing open, babbling its transmission coordinates across the ether so anyone could follow. And follow we did.
However, I wasn’t going to jump after Sverl without taking precautions, and so I instructed a somewhat terse and moody Flute to take us to a point at least a light hour out from those coordinates. I guessed Flute had been as spooked as I had by the appearance of the father-captain who had made him. Flute remained uncommunicative throughout the journey and I meanwhile reluctantly returned to my inner world.
I could now confine my experience of past lives to times I specifically wanted to explore, so I experienced them in my cabin, prostrate on my bed. I tried once to stop them surging up into my consciousness entirely, but that simply didn’t work. They gnawed at me like a hated addiction. I felt depressed and even experienced physical pain if I didn’t allow at least two or three to reveal themselves to me every twenty hours.
I was now also able to analyse them meticulously and had run up programs in my aug for this purpose. I knew, for example, that of the thousands Penny Royal h
ad killed and cached, one thousand and eight hundred of them were murderers. These included deaths I had not experienced at first-hand because the searches and analyses extended beyond those, to all the spine contained. One thing was also evident: the deaths I had experienced, and whose every instance I could recall at will, could not possibly all reside in my mind. They were in the spine, quantum entangled with my mind, part of my mind despite the separate locations.
This analysis also confirmed for me that little rationality lay behind the murders. It didn’t matter whether the people were guilty or innocent, contemptible or lovable, young or old. A large portion of them had certainly deserved to die, but there were many innocents too. I think the only reason they weren’t a cross-section of ordinary humanity was because ordinary people weren’t the kind to cross Penny Royal’s path.
I get it, I fucking get it! I wanted to scream at the spine, and at Penny Royal. I understood that no justification existed or could exist. Penny Royal was a mass murderer, an AI psychopath, a fucking computerized and mechanized Hannibal Lector who really deserved to die. Really, I didn’t need to experience any more of those deaths to know that, but they continued relentlessly to play out their horrible sordid dramas in my mind.
“So Sverl catches up with this Cvorn character and obliterates him,” I said during one of my forays outside of my skull, as I studied a nanoscope image of a ring of quantum processors on the surface of the spine. These had no direct connection at all to everything that surrounded them, and they baffled me. What possible purpose could they serve?
“That would be Sverl’s approach, one would suppose,” said Riss cautiously.
“One renegade prador destroys another one, and both have been sitting in the Graveyard since the war,” I said.
“You are reconsidering your idea about there being a connection here with the activity at the Graveyard’s borders,” said Riss.
“Just raising it as a discussion point.”
“So even with Penny Royal’s involvement, you cannot see why Sverl, Cvorn, or both of them might elicit such a response,” Riss pushed.