by Neal Asher
'Scanning.'
'What do you expect to find?'
'Sabotage… too specific to be anything else.'
'How?'
'Well, the buffers would have been too cold for some kind of manufactured virus, and are screened to everything bar neutron radiation, so it has to be nano-machines.'
'If it is nanomachines… can you do anything about them? Will you be able to set up your runcible down there?'
Chaline chewed on her knuckle. 'They would have survived a fusion explosion… Getting rid of them is like getting rid of a disease: there's always one bacillus survives to start the process off again. But… but they are not prone to mutation like a bacillus or virus. Once we get a sample, we should be able to make a counter-agent.' She glanced up at his puzzled expression. 'Counter nano-machines, ones with the singular purpose of hunting down and destroying the nanomachines there. It would take ages though, and years for Samarkand to be clear.'
'And the new runcible?'
'Oh, we can protect it. There isn't a great deal of ceramal used in its construction. The buffers are carbon-seventy-based superconductors. The nanomachines won't touch them. We will need to set up a proscription scan like that used for weaponry.'
Cormac waited for her to continue.
'To stop it getting taken off planet,' she explained, as if tired of dealing with an idiot. 'Samarkand would also have to be limited to runcible transport until it's clear. Therefore, no ships.'
'As a way station it wouldn't get many anyway,' Cormac said.
'True,' said Chaline, and returned to pushing chips back into place.
'Nanomycelium detected,' said Hubris, before the silence between them became too stretched.
'Mycelium?' asked Cormac.
Chaline looked round and frowned. 'Fibres like a fungus; we need to get some here for analysis. We'll have to use class-one isolation—'
Hubris interrupted. 'It will not be necessary to bring it here. Nanomycelium also detected in shuttle bay.'
Suddenly warning lights began flashing on the walls and the voice of the AI was heard throughout the ship.
'Warning, possible hull-breach in shuttle-bay area. Section fifteen to be sealed in ten minutes.'
Downlink Com was not in section fifteen. Cormac, Chaline and the five technicians watched the screens showing that section. There was no panic. If the situation had been dangerous, Hubris would have sealed the section and the people would have been evacuated in emergency suits. As it was, they walked to the section's exit looking mildly annoyed. At that exit four technicians waited with hand scanners that bore a disturbing resemblance to truncheons. They ran these over each of the evacuees, paying particular attention to the soles of their footwear. While they watched, one irritated man, an ophidapt with a spined crest on his bald head, had to remove his shoes and toss them in a canister by the exit.
'Will the detector pick them all up?' Cormac asked.
No one felt inclined to answer him.
'Let us hope you can make a counteragent, then,' he finished.
They watched as the section was finally cleared, and the doors closed and hermetically sealed.
'Hubris, we need samples,' said Chaline.
The picture being showed to them changed to a view into the shuttle bay. The camera zeroed in on a section of polished floor. On the floor were dull footprints from which spread black fibres like dry rot. The camera pulled back to show a little remote drone hovering a few centimetres from the floor. It was a chrome cylinder not much bigger than a man's forearm. All along its underside it had pairs of manipulators. In one crab claw it held a sample bottle. As it approached the footprints another arm unfolded. By one of the footprints that arm folded down and smoke spurted up. The yellow laser beam only became visible in that smoke as the drone meticulously cut two strips of flooring, levered them up with what could only be a screwdriver, and dropped them in the bottle.
'I'll have to get down to Isolation,' Chaline said to Cormac. 'I have a lot of work to do. The entire hull of this ship is ceramal.' She waited a moment for him to say something. Cormac let her go without comment.
Back in his cabin, Cormac called up a view into Iso- lation and watched the dracomen eat yet another meal. Could it have been them? he wondered. Somehow that did not seem Dragon's style. It was possible, but why would Dragon do such a thing? Why would Dragon want the people of Samarkand killed? Or perhaps he was asking the wrong question. Why would Dragon want the Samarkand runcible destroyed? He shook his head. There was not yet enough evidence to put any theories together.
'Hubris, any luck with that submind?'
The AI's reply was quick and succinct. 'I do not have the capacity to spare for it at the moment.'
'The mycelium?'
'Two-thirds of my capacity is being used for decoding it and designing a counteragent.'
'OK, can you put me through to the submind?'
'Yes.'
'—throw away archetypes but keep ideas bathwater baby hell hath no hungry mole lord of pain lord of pain where is edge? Sinter snapping hove to green rotting fruit—'
Running his finger down a touch-strip Cormac turned the sound down. He said to the submind, 'The runcible buffers were destroyed by a nanomycelium.'
He turned the sound back up.
'—hungry hungry eater green green grass is green fell into the rainy day bleed break men lizard Janus—'
Men lizard?
'Who destroyed the runcible buffers?'
'—gain gone flee on invisible wings rotting fruit blackthorn thorns peach—'
Cormac clicked the voice off. For a moment he thought he had something there, but would the runcible AI have known who planted the mycelium? It seemed unlikely. Had it known, it would have transmitted more information before its destruction. Had it known, it would have instantly shut down the runcible. Freeman might have ended up lost in underspace, but that would have been better than him causing the deaths of 10,000 people.
'Hubris, show me that mycelium in the shuttle bay.'
The picture on the screen changed. There was no word from the AI. Perhaps it was getting impatient with him. He stared at the picture. Even with part of the deck cut away the shape of the dull footprints was evident. They were long and splayed, with a mark for a back toe; obviously not human and obviously the footprints of dracomen, but was that damning evidence? Anyone who had been to the surface could have carried some of the mycelium away with them. The dracomen had been there longer, so it was more likely to be them.
'Hubris, the dracomen brought the mycelium aboard.'
'Already aware.'
Cormac rattled his fingers on his desk.
What now?
He could try the dracomen again, but his last attempt at communication had tried his patience to the limit. He was sure they were quite capable of speaking with him in some manner, but one of them just sat there and grinned while the other just sat staring at the food dispenser. Perhaps what he needed was face to face, rather than gestures through the viewing window and speech through the intercom.
'Damn it!'
He stood up and headed for Isolation.
As he came from the drop-shaft Cormac saw that Mika was standing before the viewing window to the isolation chamber. She stood in an attitude of deep contemplation, an elbow cupped in one hand and her other hand under her chin. Standing like that she appeared less of a girl. Or was he seeing her differently now? He wondered how old she was. She could be anywhere from eighteen to 300 years. Appearance had not been a way to judge age for the last four centuries. He walked up beside her. She did not acknowledge his presence until he was two paces from her.
'Ah, Ian Cormac.'
'Just Cormac. Something bothering you?'
'No, not really - not bothering me. I'm just intrigued. I did some checking.' She pointed to the floor of the isolation chamber by the far wall. 'You see those?'
Cormac looked across and saw what appeared to be a couple of screwed-up polythene bodysuits. He lo
oked from them to the two dracomen, who were squatting motionless in the middle of the chamber, and noticed that they appeared cleaner, brighter.
'Skins,' he said. 'They shed their skins.'
'They've done it three times since they were put in here. They're regenerating: sloughing off and excreting radiation-damaged cells, and rapidly replacing them.'
'Yes, Hubris told me.'
She glanced at him. 'Did it also tell you that they are also immune to cancer, to replication error?'
'A handy trait, but it is also one we have.'
'Yes, but ours is done by viral or nanomachine repair of our DNA based on the corrected birth blueprint. We still develop cancers and they still have to be cured. This is completely different.'
'I don't know whether or not it is relevant, but, as well as it being proposed that dracoman was one of the race Dragon claimed to represent, it was also proposed that he was some kind of organic machine.'
'We are all organic machines. No, you miss my point… I analysed some of that skin. They are without DNA. They replace cells by direct protein replication. It's been done before, but no creature has ever evolved that method. Far too complex.'
'So they are some kind of machine?'
'If you want to call them that. Philosophy is not my field.'
Cormac felt a twinge of embarrassment. 'I guess that was a stupid thing to say.'
'It was.' She smiled briefly to take the sting away, and went on. 'But these creatures definitely were made in some way. You call them dracomen and in doing that you infer gender, but they are completely sexless: no self-contained method of reproduction. I would say, considering their antecedents, that they were made to serve a purpose, and that purpose is not their own survival and continuation of their genes, as with us; it is Dragon's purpose. They are an alien form of the Golem Series - or any other android for that matter.'
'And what might their purpose be?'
'I have no idea. All I know is that this Dragon built well.'
'There's more?'
'Endless. I could make a lifetime of study out of them.
Their bones are solid; calcium laminated with something similar to tooth enamel, and about twice the size and density of ours. They've got a digestive system which could extract nutrition from a stone.' She turned to him again. 'But, as we know, they take the easy option.' She turned back. 'And their musculature is as dense as old oak. We are lucky Uiey felt no inclination to leave this isolation chamber when we first put them inside. The door would not have stopped them.'
'Perhaps they're different from the one I saw before.'
Cormac remembered his fight in the shadow of Dragon. He had defeated that dracoman quite easily, but perhaps that was what Dragon had wanted. 'Theatrics' are how he had described Dragon's actions to Chaline. It occurred to him that the whole performance had been a cover for other actions; to leave humankind believing Dragon had destroyed itself. Had it been scared, or just a lover of subterfuge?
'Quite likely'
'What… sorry?'
'These are probably different from the one you saw on Aster Colora. Dragon probably makes them to suit its current requirements,' said Mika.
Cormac cogitated for a moment. 'How did they survive the cold?' he asked.
'Now, that is where things get really interesting. They use protein replication, but I have yet to find any kind of template. Their physiognomy will take years to unravel. But… their brain structure is completely different from ours. My theory is that the template is a mental one and that they can alter it at will, within limits. When Thorn said they must have antifreeze for blood, he was probably not far wrong. It would also be interesting to have another look at where they were sheltering.'
'Why? Some evidence there?'
'Just to see how much they ate over the last fifteen months. I bet they ate a phenomenal amount to maintain their body temperatures, and that those corpses we saw were perhaps just a couple of days' supply.'
'Is there anything about them that might indicate their purpose?'
'Nothing really, except maybe their strength. Perhaps they were made to tolerate heavy G… But such strength could pertain to anything.'
'You said the door would not stop them. Just how strong are they?'
'Have you been to the Sparkind quarters?'
Cormac shook his head.
'Well, you remember Gant telling you they had Golem Thirties? Do you know what they are?'
'Cybercorp combat androids. The best.'
Mika pointed at the dracomen. 'These two would be a match even for them.'
'Bloody hell! We should move them to a security section.'
Mika smiled. 'I doubt the security section would hold them either. Anyway, the cell has been armoured since they were first moved in, and there's shutters to come down over this window. Half a second and they end up in a box of ten-centimetre-thick case-hardened ceramal.'
'Will that be enough to—' began Cormac, but was interrupted by Hubris's voice.
'Notification: there will be a slight adulteration of the air supply. This is not a cause for alarm. Counteragents are being spread through all systems. I repeat, there is no cause for alarm.'
Cormac felt something loosen its hold on the inside of his chest; until then he had not quite realized how worried he had been about the nanomycelium. He looked back to the dracomen and saw that Smiler was standing. For a moment he thought food was being delivered. Then he saw that the dracoman was sniffing at the air. He watched, and while he watched he became aware of a bitter metallic taste in his mouth and a pungency to the air that reminded him of the smell from a cold-forge.
The counteragents.
'Chaline works quickly,' he said to Mika, and wondered at the precise meaning of his words.
'Yes,' said Mika, something in her voice. Cormac studied her suspiciously, but she was watching the dracoman.
Cormac felt uncomfortable for more than one reason. It was disconcerting to think that the air was filling with little mycelium-killing machines, and that they were on his tongue and in his nostrils. The dracoman seemed to find the whole thing amusing. It grinned, then walked to the viewing window and stared directly at Cormac, which was disconcerting as well, as the window was set for one-way viewing. He had nearly convinced himself the dracoman could not see him, when it pointed up at the intercom speaker.
'They do have vocal cords. They should be able to speak,' said Mika.
Cormac reached across and switched on the inter- com. 'Have you something to say, my friend?' he asked, trying to appear unruffled. This could be what he needed. At last he might begin to unravel this mystery.
'Dragon coming,' said the dracoman, and turned away.
'Wait!'
The dracoman returned to the middle of the floor and sat down, and from there it just grinned at him.
'I don't think you're going to get any more than it wants to tell you. Remember, its motivations are not the same as ours.'
Cormac contained his anger. 'Yes,' he said.
But Dragon was coming, and had never been shy of communication, even in its Delphic and sometimes explosive fashion.
14
Many lifeforms have hitched a ride with us and been part of our successful spread into the galaxy. From the beginning it was decided that quarantine strictures were an exercise rendered pointless by the huge advances being made in bioscience. If you have a creature's DNA or whatever other template it might use, what matter if it is wiped out? You can re-create it if you want. Also, it is a fact that this is the way life works: species have been wiped out for millennia by more successful contenders. Some have bemoaned the loss of variety, but this is a specious argument at best. Genetic adaptation and straight biotechnological creation have brought newer and more interesting forms. Sorry, people, but we are improving on nature all the time. My only complaint in this matter is that some of the older and more unpleasant forms are as successful as those we adapt and create. Why is it that on worlds that are wet I so often end u
p tripping over ground skate? Why hasn't someone come up with a competitor less lethal to us than the blade beetle? And who the hell decided it was OK to let mosquitoes colonize just about every damned world?
From How It Is by Gordon
The rain was flecked with black dirt blown up from the burn zones on the edge of the equatorial deserts and though it slid from the repelling charge on the screen of the old Ford Macrojet, a line of sludge was gathering at the join between screen and bonnet. Daven stared at the sludge for a moment, then across the expanse of streaming slabs of the AGC park to the entrance of the metrotel. It was all bright and warm beyond the glass panes and there was a party going on in the lower bar. Two hours earlier a load of aircabs had come in to land to belch the revellers. It seemed as if someone had taken out a marriage contract during the long day and was now celebrating that idiocy.
'They have contracts?' Pellen asked yet again.
'They have contracts,' Daven confirmed. 'They still have them in a lot of places, but more often out here beyond the Line. You must have seen it?'
'Never occurred to me,' Pellen said, shaking her head. Daven inspected her. She was an attractive woman and he wondered why she had felt the need to go catadapt. She was also, he felt, a bit naive for this sort of operation. People who had spent most of their formative years on an Outlink station tended to be that way. No doubt ECS had sent her out here as part of her training. Easy way in, trying to track down a few arms runners, especially with Jill, the Golem, to dig her out of any pit traps. The stakes had gone up though as soon as Jill had seen Arian Pelter coming out of Grendel's place. Now things might just get a little sticky.
'Two of them. Three o'clock,' said Pellen abrupdy.
Daven lifted his attention from the sludge below the screen and looked where directed. It was the slick mer- cenary with a rainfilm over his business suit, and the heavy who had met Pelter outside The Sharrow. They were sauntering towards the metrotel. Velet and Jill should be along behind them any time now. As he reached for the intensifier on the dash, Daven heard a low thump, then rain and warm damp air gusted into the AGC. Rear-door lock blown, shit! He had no time to get to his stomach holster. A hand closed in his hair and cold metal pressed into his throat.