by Neal Aher
“Flute, did you survive?” I asked via my aug, but the response was only a fizzing.
Finally, we were led into a sanctum that bore a closer resemblance to a botanist’s laboratory than the control centre of a murderous father-captain. Riss’s box settled in a clear space at the centre, while the two first-children entered and stood guard inside the door, which closed behind them. Sverl rose up on prosthetic limbs from the usual array of screens. I noted the tail, which looked like an amphibian attached to his rear, then gazed upon the massive skull his body had become.
“Two human visitors in such a short time,” he said mildly. “Gost must never know of this—it would definitely rouse suspicion even in him.” He moved over to Riss’s box and peered inside with large, human-looking eyes. “And you.”
“Hello Sverl,” said Riss, now scraping her ovipositor down the glass separating them, her voice issuing from some speaker set in the ceramal frame holding that sheet. “My, didn’t Penny Royal fuck you up?”
“That is debatable,” Sverl replied. “And by now you must be aware that the chain-glass between us is not responding to the usual decoding molecule and EM frequency you’ll be deploying. It is a laminate of chain-glass and transparent sapphire so you would first need to cut through the inner layer of sapphire to get to the first sheet, disintegrate that, then cut through the next layer of sapphire. You would have to do this twenty-four times. Now look up.”
The drone lowered her ovipositor to rest it tip-down on the floor of the box so she appeared balanced on it, then did so. I looked up as well and amidst all the equipment, all the folded-away robots, power cables and optics, I saw a large cone sitting directly over Riss, base down, with mesh across the base.
“What you are seeing,” said Sverl, “is an EM pulse cannon of my own design. It has enough power to fry every circuit inside you, though I am currently setting it merely to take out everything but your crystal. So, no more attempts to get through that glass, and would you kindly desist in trying to penetrate my computer systems? I very much doubt you have the mental watts for that, but if you do make the slightest inroad, you’re toast.”
I thought this particular father-captain had a very odd turn of phrase. He sounded like a war drone laying out the situation. Perhaps this was the result when you combined something as martial as a prador with AI crystal and human DNA. Sverl now turned towards me and walked over. I really wanted to run away, but had nowhere to go.
“So you are Thorvald Spear,” he said.
“I certainly am,” I replied. “Pleased to meet you, Father-Captain Sverl. Tell me, who was this other human you had here? Is he still around?” I had been searching the vicinity for the odd discarded bone but it was as clean in here as the corridors outside, if a little more cluttered. “I would like to meet this person if he or she is still around. I’m sure we’ve got—”
“Understandably you are nervous,” Sverl interrupted, “which is why you are babbling. I am not going to kill you and I am not going to eat you. In fact, right now my robots and some of my children are repairing your ship for your eventual departure. Meanwhile we have a shared interest, which is Penny Royal. We both want something from that AI and you may, if you wish, accompany me in my pursuit of it.”
“You know where Penny Royal is?” I asked.
“I do not,” said Sverl, turning now and pointing a claw at Riss, “but that horrible worm in there does.”
“I do fucking not!” Riss exclaimed hotly.
“You do,” said Sverl. “I have learned from Isobel Satomi that Penny Royal is returning to its beginning.”
Riss froze. She had no reply to that. Into the ensuing silence, and feeling as if I’d just been gut-punched, I interjected: “Isobel Satomi?”
Sverl waved a dismissive claw. “The visitor I had was Trent Sobel, who is now with the shell people. He carries the mind of Isobel Satomi in a jewellery item. I accessed her mind and learned that Penny Royal had left a clue there as to its next destination.”
“Shell people?” I asked, still distrusting Sverl and wondering if they were in some onboard larder.
With a clattering of metal limbs against the deck, Sverl turned towards me once more. “They are aboard in their own section of the ship, currently extending their doomed experiment in becoming prador, by now trying to form themselves into a family unit. Now, as Penny Royal instructed, Trent Sobel has his chance to redeem himself.”
I felt a little bit better about that, but not much. “In their own section” did not sound like larder, but the fact that Trent was here meant there was one human aboard who might have a reason to try to kill me. It was almost too much to incorporate and I just stood there with my mouth open as I tried to put it all together.
Sverl turned back to Riss and stepped closer so he was almost touching the glass.
“I know the last known location of Factory Station Room 101,” said Riss, subdued, “but I cannot pass on that information. It is under AI lock.”
Room 101?
Just then, the door grumbled open and I turned to see the two first-children parting to allow in a second-child sans armour. It looked distorted, this creature, its carapace sagged as if it had been partially melted, and its legs bowed under its weight. Did it look nervous? How could I possibly read its expression? Nevertheless, there was something about it of someone carrying an unexploded bomb as it entered the sanctum, bearing the spine of Penny Royal from my ship.
“Of course it is under AI lock,” said Sverl. “How else was the secret kept? Isn’t it fortunate therefore that the means of unlocking that information has been provided? Or, perhaps, aren’t we seeing all the pieces of an ever-developing puzzle, created by a black AI, slotting inevitably into place?”
“You keep that fucking thing away from me,” said Riss, who until this moment had shown no particular fear of the spine.
Suddenly her ovipositor was screeing at the glass, fragments falling inside. Next, her assault on the chain-glass turned an inner layer opaque, before it peeled away, falling to dust. I felt a thump of an EM wave passing through my body. It sent me staggering and my aug went offline. When I had recovered my balance and looked at Riss, she had dropped to the bottom of her prison and now lay still.
“I did warn you,” said Sverl.
10
BLITE
The coordinates of their destination lay forty light years out from the Rebus system, and even further from Crispin Six, so Blite could not see why Penny Royal had directed his attention towards these places, unless it was to find a safe distance from which to watch their destruction. Nevertheless, he decided to search their data, starting with the first of them. The Rebus system lay just ten light years beyond the Polity border. The sun was a blue giant orbited by two gas giants, with a scattering of other smaller worlds closer in. One large moon orbited the closer gas giant and had been listed by Polity surveyors as occupied by an interesting and thoroughly alien silicon-based ecology. Closer still to the sun was a green-belt world where conditions were Earth-like. The surveyors had listed this as possessing a carbon and silicon-based ecology. Blite was still at a loss as to why Penny Royal had sent him here. Then he noted the link to a historical file attached to the initial survey, and opened it.
“One hour until we’re there,” said Brond, now back on the bridge.
“And then we end up skating down the probability slope . . . or something,” Greer added. She was off watch now and it was her time to head for her cabin, but she was lingering to see what would happen when they finally surfaced from U-space, carrying all that negative energy from their time jump.
“If you believe the multiverse theories,” said Brond.
“This kind of science is now like religion,” said Greer. “You can choose the theory that best suits you.”
“Only of the theories you don’t understand.”
“You understand them, then?”
“Keep it down,” said Blite. “I’m concentrating.”
“Sure thin
g, Captain,” said Greer, and they both returned to contemplating their screens.
Apparently, these worlds were both of enough interest to Polity AIs for them to have sent an AI science ship to observe and gather data. The ship’s mission was to map out the ecologies at both the moon and the green-belt world, and to gather and preserve samples of every single life form. This massive task required a ship’s crew of war drones repurposed for the job, and Golem, perpetually visiting both the world and the moon to observe and record the fauna and flora in their particular habitat, record that habitat in detail and gather samples. Checking through some of the data on this, Blite came across a highly technical report from a Golem android who had for a number of years watched a silicon-based plant growing until it shed spurs into a methane storm to seed itself. As he read he kept stamping down on his growing frustration and anger. This all had to mean something.
Next, he came upon a mission conducted by two drones and a Golem who, of necessity, wore a strange form of syntheflesh and skin. A human community on the green-belt world, of over fifty thousand, struggled constantly to survive. Being highly adapted and living in a mutualistic relationship with a silicon-based mould enabled them to digest a wider spectrum of the local fauna and flora. The mould also grew tough armour over their skins to protect them from a local combination of social insect and parasite that injected eggs that grew into nests inside their victims.
“Forty minutes,” said Brond, alerting Blite to just how absorbed he had been in his reading, and how successfully he had suppressed his impatience.
“Shut up,” the captain replied.
Checking further, he found that this human society was the result of the pre-Quiet War diaspora, for its members were descendants of colonists who had been brought here by a cryoship. The colonists had almost destroyed their vessel in the process of landing it, and during their first years on the world had cannibalized it. Their history was interesting and grotesque. None of the original colonists remained alive because the adaptations they needed to make to survive were far too radical for an adult, with the technology they had available. Instead, they made the adaptations and introduced the mutualistic mould to their children, most of whom were foetuses in amniotic cryo-tanks when they landed. The adults had to spend their remaining lives in sealed buildings—only venturing outside in armoured space suits. Some of them might have survived until now—the gerontological science of the time would have enabled this—but their children, upon reaching adulthood, rebelled, introducing a nasty social parasite to their parents’ living quarters.
This was all very interesting, but was still irrelevant to the Black Rose’s arrival so many light years from their world. Blite now focused his attention on Crispin Six.
Crispin Six had been a planetary system until its sun went supernova six years ago. It fried its planets in the first day, and the blast wave had been steadily expanding ever since. This front had already passed over a binary system close by and given it a toasting, causing one ice giant there to lose a couple of worlds and itself expand into something more gaseous and hot. It had also swept away the cometary cloud surrounding that system and destabilized one of the suns—an average G-type—which it had left poxed with sunspots and hurling out tentacular flares. But no life existed there, and the blast hadn’t fried any ecologies so far. That would change with devastating effect, however, when it finally reached Rebus.
Blite experienced a moment of cold sweat until he rechecked the realspace coordinates of their destination. Thankfully, it lay behind this blast wave. However, he still couldn’t see why these worlds Penny Royal had highlighted were of any relevance to the AI. Certainly it now seemed unlikely that it wanted to destroy them, since their destruction was imminent anyway. He next quickly checked for status updates on this story—his new ship had updated itself from the Polity net when they were at the border. He discovered that of course the Polity AIs were aware of the inevitable destruction of Rebus, and they were acting. The human population of the world wasn’t too large for evacuation by ship. But such an operation would be difficult, and an easier method was available.
“Twenty minutes to our destination,” said Brond.
Blite just glared at him for a moment, then returned to his studies.
A Polity stellar incident centre had dispatched a cargo hauler called the Azure Whale. Aboard, it carried three runcible portals. Runcible technicians would position one on that gas giant’s moon and two on the green-belt world. Once they activated these, thoroughly prepared incident teams would come through. On the moon their job was, like megascale gardeners, to dig up every element of a whole ecology. Apparently, the AIs concluded that samples were simply not enough and the silicon-based ecology was too precious to lose to the blast. On the green-belt world, their job was also to gather large elements of the ecology, but the main task was to round up all the humans there and dispatch them through the runcible. To this end, Sparkind forces and grappler robots were to be deployed—obviously, they expected some resistance.
“Captain,” said Leven.
“Yes,” Blite replied distractedly.
“We just deployed U-space disruptor mines.”
“What?” Blite looked up. “Why?”
“I don’t know,” said Leven, “perhaps you would like to ask Penny Royal.”
Blite felt no inclination to do so, as he was sure he’d be finding out within minutes. He sat back, still pondering on the world of Rebus. Was this rescue attempt normal Polity behaviour? The world wasn’t quite within the Line so wasn’t the AIs’ responsibility. He grimaced. It struck him as more likely that the Polity actions had more to do with the interesting silicon ecology and adaptations of the human society. He then wondered when it was he had become so cynical.
“And we’re arriving,” said Brond.
Blite felt the distortion from the top of his head to his toes. Leven cast the local view up in the screen laminate: just dark starlit space. But Blite already knew that they were not arriving in any planetary system.
“So what—” he began, then felt further twists in the pit of his being.
“The mines,” said Leven.
The view on the screen swung round and, checking the figures along the bottom of it, Blite saw that they were under heavy fusion acceleration. Another jump ensued, brief—feeling as if it was on the edge of turning him inside out. White lightning webbed the area of space now centred on the screen—and out of it nosed something immense. Out into the real came a great slab of a ship that looked unnervingly like a pre-Quiet War gravestone. And Blite recognized it at once from his investigations.
“The Azure Whale,” he said.
“What?” Brond turned to look at him.
“Seen it before?” asked Greer.
He just gestured to his aug. “I saw it just a few minutes ago.” He requested a link to them and, when they enabled it, he shot over the data on the Polity rescue attempt. It would take them a while to digest it, by which time, he reckoned, Penny Royal would have finished doing whatever it was going to do here.
“We’re using particle beams now, apparently,” said Leven woodenly, even as those beams cut across from the Black Rose to the big ship. They picked over its surface—hitting here, carving a line there, centring on one point and burning right through the big vessel in several places. The Whale, which immediately after exiting U-space had fired up a powerful fusion drive array, bucked. Then something exploded out of its side, and its drive went out.
“Evacuate,” hissed a voice—Penny Royal of course. But it didn’t seem to be addressing them.
After a few minutes, a square on the screen etched out a point on the ship and brought it into focus. Two objects shot out of an ejection port. The view next swung across to show castellated shuttle bay doors opening, then a couple of wedge-shaped evacuation shuttles blasted out into vacuum.
“I’m getting queries from the captain of the Azure Whale,” said Leven. “He wants to know why they have been attacked and why he
, his crew and the ship AI were ordered to abandon ship.”
“Beats me,” said Blite. “Penny Royal, what the hell are you doing?”
The screen view changed again and, on checking, Blite found it was unmagnified this time. They were now right over the hauler and its upper surface spread below them like a massive steel plain.
“Do you want to speak to them?” Leven asked.
“Not yet,” said Blite.
He gazed at the view for some while longer, glanced at Brond and Greer and saw they had a glassy look as they worked through the data he had auged over to them.
“Bay doors are open,” Leven noted.
Blite watched and in a moment saw a large shadow falling down towards that massive ship.
“I take it our passenger just left us?” he asked.
No reply.
“Leven?”
Still no reply as the shadow settled on the hauler.
“Leven?” Blite asked again.
“Yes,” Leven replied, sounding distracted and odd.
“Focus in on that.”
The view from the surface of the hauler shot towards them. The rippling spiky mass on its hull was certainly Penny Royal and, even as he watched, it sank into the surface, leaving a hole filled with glittering darkness. After a few minutes, the view retreated again to show much activity on and about the ship. Robots had swarmed out of some of the holes, making rapid repairs, while debris spewed from various ports.
“So Penny Royal is over there, Leven?” Blite asked again.
“Yes and no,” the Golem mind replied.
“Explain.”
“A U-space connection I cannot explain occurred just after those first mines were deployed. The AI’s mass increased two-fold, then it separated. One portion is aboard that ship while the other one remains here.”
Blite mulled that over as they watched the activity aboard the hauler. After twenty minutes it began to wane, despite just a little of the damage having been repaired. The fusion drive fired up again and began to draw the big ship away. Blite thought about talking to that captain aboard one of those escape shuttles, but couldn’t think what he would say. A short while later, as the hauler grew increasingly distant, he felt the twist of U-space and watched it finally fold out of existence. It seemed that Penny Royal had just stolen a massive hauler with three runcibles aboard.