The Age of Scorpio

by Gavin G. Smith

  Zabilla’s apartment was a handsomely appointed three-storey nook high enough for her to make out stars through the canopy of bioengineered leaves. The bottom level was her lab, steel and glass, the wood grown around it and redesigned to be non-porous and support a sterile surface. The upper two storeys were open plan, a catwalk running around the top floor. Through the large window opening in the wall she could see the light-speckled shadows of the other trees. The bed was on a raised plinth that grew from the floor and the wall. A small waterfall and pool provided a water feature/bath/shower combination. Discreet sound-dampening projectors took care of the constant noise of water.

  They experimented. They gave her apartment’s sound-dampening properties a run for its money as they pushed Dracup’s heightened nerve endings to their limits. Afterwards, exhausted, Zabilla had to carry Dracup up the wooden steps to her bed. She laid him down trying to decide how she felt about him. Was he anything more than just a handsome, if severe, game piece? More to the point, what was she to him? A lover? A mentor? A stepping-stone to a better thing for an ambitious player? If so, then he was a much cleverer player than she had so far given him credit for. When she was younger it had been easier to differentiate between Zabilla the person and Zabilla the player.

  She looked down at him. He looked peaceful, more innocent, when asleep. She wondered if that was the only time they could be themselves. It wasn’t the first time she had thought this. But dreams contained sensation as well. Even when they slept they were not alone. There was something in the back of her mind. Some sense of disgust at this violation of her sleeping mind, an alien feeling that she hadn’t felt in so long. She tried to suppress it. She had no idea why she was feeling this way. Not when she was so close to winning the audition.

  She released a potent anti-anxiety drug into her bloodstream, then a less potent sedative. She had time to climb into bed and roll next to Dracup, feel his warmth, before fatigue and the sedative overwhelmed her and took her where she could be herself.

  It was like a sting, a tiny pinprick but it felt deep. She shouldn’t have felt it, but she was a light sleeper and had paranoia routines written into her neunonics. Even then she probably wouldn’t have felt it if it hadn’t been for her heightened nerve endings. She had forgotten to send a chemical signal to dull them before she fell asleep.

  She sat up in bed feeling vulnerable and frightened, dragging the sheets around her. She hadn’t felt like this since she was a child. Where was all the fear coming from? she asked herself.

  Almost immediately she turned to look at Dracup. He was deeply asleep in a way that was difficult to fake. She confirmed this with physiological readings provided by the medical applications of her nano-screen. Her first thought had been that Dracup was playing some kind of gambit.

  She checked her internal systems. There was nothing as far as she could tell, no biological or nano-agent. She checked her nano-screen and the apartment’s security systems. Neither of the systems had detected any kind of foreign presence in the room.

  Zabilla was beginning to convince herself that she had been dreaming when the banging on the door started. She jumped and turned to stare at the closed aperture in the wood. Her security systems should have warned her the moment somebody turned into the corridor that led to the door to her apartment. The fact they hadn’t meant that they had been overridden. That and the sound, that particular knock, the sound from a thousand immersions and a million newscasts, meant that it was the heads outside.

  Feed from the door sensors to her neunonics confirmed this. Outside, two of the powerful automatons with the enlarged smiling face of the Absolute, pre-ascension, were waiting at her door. The grin on their massive faces looked more obscene and frightening to her now than ever before.

  The knock came again. Her mind raced. What had she done? Had Scoular managed to frame her? A bold and clever move if he had, but it had better be watertight or else she would destroy him. Then she thought back to her feeling of disgust, of violation from having the Absolute see inside her mind. She had committed treason. She had gone from being a player to being a loser. The thoughts had come unbidden! It was so unfair.

  ‘What?’ Dracup sat up, quickly going from rudely woken to completely alert. He turned to look at her. There was no fear in his expression; instead there was a questioning look on his face. It was just short of accusation.

  The knock came again. They never knocked more than three times. Now they would override the apartment’s security. The aperture opened. Zabilla’s neunonics told her that Dracup had sent the command. She couldn’t shake the feeling of teeth closing in around her.

  The two heavily armoured automatons stepped into the apartment, looking up at the bed. They looked like walking statues, their faces twisted, agonised somehow, sinisterly clownish parodies of the pre-ascension Absolute.

  ‘Can I help you?’ Dracup asked.

  Zabilla wondered when he had become assertive. She controlled the fear. She put on her Game face, quite literally. ‘What do you want and why are you disturbing me at this hour?’ she demanded.

  Dracup turned to look at her, raising an eyebrow. On the other hand it was the question of a completely innocent person.

  Neither of the heads said anything. Zabilla had pulled her nano-screen in as the heads expanded theirs. There was sparring at a nano-level as their nanites interrogated hers and Dracup’s.

  ‘What just happened?’ the voice, modulated for psychological impact, asked. She wasn’t sure which of them had spoken.

  ‘Explain yourself,’ she told the heads.

  ‘For a moment there was something not of the Game in here,’ the voice answered. She felt coldness creeping through her. The pinprick. The strange thing was that she thought she had heard something that she had never heard before from a head. It sounded like it was unsure of itself.

  ‘Well, have you found anything?’ she asked.

  ‘Why were you reviewing your physiological readings and security systems?’ the voice asked, suspicious now. Dracup turned to look at her. He looked suspicious as well.

  ‘I thought I felt something. A pinprick, but it was nothing, a dream or some half-waking sensation, nothing more. What made you think there was something else here?’

  ‘It came from the Absolute,’ the voice said.

  So the Absolute had been monitoring her as she slept. Again the cold clammy feeling of violation rose inside her. She tried to force it down. Both the heads seemed to be staring at her with the dead black holes in their mask-like faces where eyes should have been.

  ‘Perhaps the Absolute only felt what I felt?’ she said.

  ‘Have you found anything?’ Dracup asked impatiently.

  ‘No,’ the voice answered.

  ‘Will you be taking any further action?’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Not at the moment.’

  The heads turned and left the apartment, the aperture door shutting behind them. Dracup gave her that questioning look again. She wanted to talk to him, to hold him, to take comfort from him, but this would only leave her more vulnerable, and her paranoia, one of the most important qualities of the professional player, would not allow her to show that weakness.

  The massive chamber was arched like a Seeder cathedral. The wood had been grown into detailed ornamental patterns. Parts of it were friezes showing the history and mythology of the Game and the Absolute. It showed the Absolute’s journey from a world of toil to the world of leisure and pleasure that was the Game. In which you didn’t have to work unless you chose to. All you had to do was play the most involving game that had ever been created.

  The hall had been grown out of the main trunk, its back wall a series of stained-glass windows. Sun shone through, illuminating the dust motes and larger nanite clusters in the air. Zabilla stood next to Dracup, her installation, her gift, in front of her in a covered glass box about the size of a large cupboard. Scoular was to her right, with Carinne and a similar covered box in front of him. He d
idn’t look confident; in fact, he looked ill.

  Zabilla recognised most of the crowd. They were the top players from the arcology within the fields of genetics, biology and biophysics, as well as a number of art critics.

  Shallow stairs led to a raised area in front of the stained-glass windows. On that platform stood the avatar, an automaton with an idealised body of brass complete with suitably intimidating phallus. Its face was a mask of beaten platinum and gold. The Absolute as a pre-Loss God. The sun made the polished metal gleam and sparkle to the point where it was difficult to look directly at the automaton. It was like a genuine religious experience, Zabilla thought. All her doubts of last night were forgotten. The avatars were direct representatives of the Absolute, and this one was here to judge the final part of the audition.

  The avatar’s musical tones were still ringing around the hall from its opening address. There had been polite applause, then all eyes turned to Scoular, who was sweating heavily, and Zabilla. She tried to suppress her awe as the avatar turned its imperious gaze on them. She bowed slightly and held out a hand towards Scoular. It would, of course, appear like the gracious gesture of someone allowing their opponent to go first. It was not; it was calculated. She wanted the impact of going last. Scoular probably would have done the same thing, but he looked too sweaty, sick and nervous. When he realised what she’d done, he glared at her.

  With as much of a flourish as he could manage, Scoular tore off the sheet covering the glass box. The glass box then disintegrated in front of their eyes, allowing a better look at its contents.

  Lying in a nutrient bath were what looked like the torsos of a male and female human, though sex was difficult to tell because they were completely fused together. The semi-human chimerical organism almost rippled against itself in never-ending, distinctly sexual gyrations. Pleasure seemed to be written in a series of artistic blushes on its skin.

  There was a degree of art to it, Zabilla had to admit, particularly the blushes and the suggestion of different genders, but at the end of the day it was little more than a pleasure generator. She wasn’t even annoyed that Scoular had upped its output by using heightened nerve endings gained from his espionage directed at her own research.

  There was hushed conversation among the crowd. Zabilla felt her contempt for them. Nobody wanted to be the first to compliment or criticise; they wanted to see what others would do first. They lacked boldness, which was why they would never be truly great players.

  She looked down as if politely trying to hide a smile. Dracup was less subtle. She gave them time to take in Scoular’s work. He was looking sicker by the moment, particularly as applause seemed less than forthcoming.

  Finally, after she felt expectations had been raised enough, she nodded to Dracup, who without a flourish removed the sheet as Zabilla’s glass box began to disintegrate.

  The most difficult thing had been to combine the scream with musical tones to make something beautiful out of agony.

  Like Scoular’s design, it was little more than head and torso. There was to be nothing that was unnecessary. Like Scoular’s design, it utilised her heightened nerve-ending biotechnology. Other than skin and mouth it had no sensory organs, but those were the only two it needed. Its body existed only as a conduit for pain and music. A metal clamp fused with its spine held it up. In the nutrient bath opposite it was a tree. Purposefully designed to look like an arcology tree, its branches moved like tendrils. Its leaves were monomolecular razors that dug into the musically screaming torso’s flesh.

  People stared at it. Genuinely moved by the beauty of the music of her creation’s screams, Zabilla allowed a tear to run down her cheek. Dracup, who had tears streaming down his, would later tell her that many in the audience were similarly moved.

  The sound of metal clanging against metal over and over again caught everyone’s attention. Zabilla looked up to see the avatar, seemingly staring at her with the unmoving mask of its face, applauding with its large brass hands.

  ‘This is mere pornography!’ Scoular disgraced himself by shouting. His voice sounded weak and was barely heard as applause broke out around the hall. Scoular sank to his knees. Nobody noticed. Carinne went to him, trying to help him up, but even with the tiny AG motors that helped support his fat he was too heavy for her. ‘What’ve you done?’ he screamed at Zabilla.

  She turned to look at him. I introduced a very new, very subtle, very difficult to detect and trace, very deadly and particularly well-timed virus into your system when we shook hands earlier, she didn’t tell him. She hoped the smile communicated it all. His public execution for little more than opposing her and having poor taste was part of the audition as far as she was concerned.

  Scoular collapsed onto the wooden floor. His last living act was to meat-hack Carrine, activate the upmarket combat abilities that all good consorts had written into their neunonics and augmentations, and send her after Zabilla.

  Which was what Dracup had been waiting for. He interposed himself between Zabilla and Carinne and moved forward to meet the other consort. Carinne’s face was a contorted mask of hate and anger. There had obviously been a powerful emotional element to the hack. Carinne suddenly crouched, her leg swinging out to sweep Dracup’s. Dracup flipped back. Carinne was already back up, advancing on him, drawing her own bone knife. Dracup landed on his hands and kicked up from the ground, surprising Carinne. The blow caught the other consort just under her sternum. There was an audible crack as Carinne was lifted off the ground by the force of the blow. She staggered as she landed but immediately started towards Zabilla again.

  There were shocked gasps from the crowd as Dracup threw his bone knife. Carinne blocked the flying blade at the last moment with her own, sending Dracup’s blade skittering across the floor. Thinking him unarmed, she went to finish the job, but Dracup had used the minute distraction of the flying blade to close with Carinne. He grabbed the elbow and wrist of her blade arm and twisted the knife round. Before Carinne had a chance to resist, her own blade was stabbed up through her mouth and into her brain, where it released its deadly payload of neurotoxin. Carinne shook; blood frothed from her mouth, and she tumbled to the ground.

  Dracup smoothed down his tunic and retrieved his blade.

  Zabilla found it hard not to smile. She tried to control her face as she heard the sound of metal footsteps resonating off wood. She turned to look at the gleaming avatar.

  ‘Will you come with me, please?’

  To call this vehicle a G-car was to do it a disservice, Zabilla thought; it was like a luxurious flying fortress. The inverted cauldron shapes of AG motors ran up either side of the vehicle. The destination, however, took her by surprise.

  They sank beneath the Black Leaves into the roots. She needed her augments to see into the outside, where darkness prevailed. She saw the huge machinery of the roots and was even able to make out a degree of movement as the root structure steadied the arcologies they supported.

  As they got closer to the roots themselves, she started to make out the morlock servitors maintaining the machinery. They lived in squalor in tiny shanty towns made out of what they could scavenge from the waste of the world above the black-leaf canopy. She saw morlocks in cast-off finery clambering over mountains of once-fine furniture, ornamentation, artwork and other bits and pieces of assembler detritus from the world above. Rubbish that people had for one reason or another never got around to disassembling. Dracup was unable to conceal his distaste. Zabilla was less sure it was the morlocks’ own fault.

  All through the journey the avatar had said nothing, and Zabilla, wanting to show poise and calm, had also remained silent.

  They sank into the planet itself. Spiralling slowly around massive roots that dug into crust and then mantle. Finally they flew through a network of airlock-like heavily armoured doors that shut behind them one after another.

  The luxury G-car landed in a huge open space. There were other more utilitarian and military vehicles present. The structure might
have been the first construction that Zabilla had ever seen that was not made of wood. She had to search her neunonics to find references to nano-bonded reinforced concrete.

  Still without saying anything, the avatar, now looking as ostentatious and out of place as Zabilla felt, led her through a heavily defended series of chambers to a very secure laboratory, which, unlike her own laboratory, seemed to be all substance and no style.

  Lying on a metal table in the centre of the lab, surrounded by very visible sensors of every conceivable type and a ring of automated weapon systems, was a strange, roughly coffin-shaped cocoon structure made of a white substance that Zabilla did not recognise.

  ‘Congratulations. You have got the job,’ the avatar said.

  23. Southern Britain, a Long Time Ago

  ‘Why are they here?’ It was unusual for Bress to hear nervousness in Ettin’s voice.’

  At Crom Dhubh’s behest. They harvested the crystal,’ Bress said emotionlessly.

  ‘But then why does the dragon remain?’

  ‘It feeds from her while poisoning her like a parasite. It wants to ride her corruption when it comes. Besides, it is a little added security.’

  ‘These primitives are no threat to us.’

  ‘Some of these primitives have the blood of the gods in them.’

  Ettin stared at Bress for a moment, trying to fathom him. ‘Watered down,’ the two-headed creature said, turning away.

  ‘Not all.’

  ‘Your woman. The one you spared.’

  ‘She is not my woman, but she is coming south with two others.’