by Neal Asher
'They would have been destroyed with the runcible, wouldn't they?'
'The discovery and subsequent excavation of such an object would have been of interest to all Polity AIs and many human experts. The Samarkand AI would not have kept the news to itself.'
Cormac sat still and let that percolate through his mind. It seemed as if something other than people had been at work here. The dracomen again?
'Have you scanned for any equipment near the mouth of the tunnel?'
'I have. Before moving to deep scan I completed a full scan of the surface of the planet.'
'Oh,' said Cormac. Then he looked up at the screen as it blanked out. 'Hubris, where's the picture?'
'There is no more picture. Something destroyed the probe.'
Cormac stepped out of the drop-shaft into the shuttle bay, took a deep breath to bring some calm to himself. It was not what they might find on the planet that worried him; it was the briefing he was about to give. All four of the Sparkind awaited him, along with an assistant of Chaline's. She was too busy with preparations to install the runcible to come herself, so she said. As he walked to the shuttle Cormac studied these people, for they were all people under Polity law.
The two Golem Thirties made Gant and Thorn appear small. Both of them were over two metres tall and archetypes of human physical perfection. Only Cybercorp produced androids like this. All other androids were poor by comparison, if you believed their advertising. It was true that there were some pretty dreadful copies: the metal-skins, or others that were more like a collection of prosthetics than anything coherent.
Aiden had cropped blond hair and blue eyes, and looked like what Hitler might have been after with his eugenics programme. He was distinctly Teutonic. Cento had curly black hair, brown eyes and tanned skin, and might just as well have been modelled on Apollo. All four of the Sparkind were loaded with equipment. The weapons they carried did not weigh much, but then did not have to. If they were not sufficient, then the next step would have to be a direct strike from the ship. Chaline's assistant, Cam, was a small monkeylike man, thin and wiry. He affected a beard like Thorn's, but his hair was long and tied in a ponytail. Behind his right ear was the crystalline slug of a cerebral augmentation, and his eyes were mismatched. His right eye, its yellow pupil matching the colour of his crystal aug, was certainly artificial; the other eye was a mild brown. His left hand was silvered, and a wide range of instruments was strapped up his arms and on the belt of his coldsuit. Cormac reckoned that he had more instrumentation inside than outside, and felt a moment of affinity with him. He stepped forwards to speak to them all.
'You're all probably aware of the situation, but I'll reiterate just to be sure. Two hours ago Hubris picked up a black spot on scan. It was bounce rather than absorption, so it's probably an artefact. It is lenticular and about five metres wide by two metres thick. We've since learnt that it sits in a chamber about a hundred metres across. Hubris also detected a shaft leading down to it. The shaft was formed by methods we don't usually employ.' He paused for a moment. 'It seems increasingly likely that no human agency made it. It could be that the object made the shaft, diough it is itself larger, but this is all speculation. One hour ago Hubris sent a probe down. One kilometre down, the probe was destroyed.'
Cormac walked to one side and rested his hand against the wing of the shuttle above his head. Stacked before him were some packages ready to be loaded. He continued his monologue.
'Whatever destroyed the probe is still down there. Now, it seems highly unlikely that this object has nothing to do with the destruction of the runcible, and I get suspicious when it appears something does not want us to see it.' He nodded to Cam. 'I want you to find out exactly what it is.' He inspected the four Spar-kind in turn. 'And you know what your jobs are. Any questions?'
'Has there been anything more on scan from down there?' asked Gant.
Cormac shook his head. 'Too deep. Hubris picked up the object only because it was a black spot. Very little else can be read that far down.'
Gant went on. 'You detailed climbing equipment. We brought 2k reels of chain-cotton and motorized abseils. Is it a straight drop? Could be difficult if we run into trouble.'
'No, the shaft runs down at about thirty-five degrees. There'll be ice, though.'
Gant tapped the box he was sitting on. 'Grip shoes. I didn't like the footing last time we went down. How about lighting? I'd like to send drone lights ahead, if that's possible.'
'We'll try it. Anything else?'
Cam spoke up then. His voice was soft but incisive. 'You realize that if this object is impenetrable to scan, it may be impenetrable at close range to portable equipment?'
'There is that possibility, I agree…'
'I merely wish to ascertain that you are aware of the difficulties. It may be that the artefact will have to be… moved to the ship.'
From under two kilometres of rock?
Cam observed him, and his mouth twitched with repressed amusement.
Cormac suddenly twigged. He nodded.
'That can wait. There may be other evidence down there we don't want to destroy… like whatever got the probe. Is that all?' They all nodded agreement. 'Let's go then.'
The shuttle dropped into atmosphere with all the aerodynamics of a paving slab. Heat indicators stuttered up their scales, groping for the red areas, and screens showed a lambent glow along the front of the wing's surfaces. The deep droning of AG and the shuttle's turbines made speech almost impossible. Cormac was glad of his straps and hoped Cento remembered that his human cargo was not so durable as himself. Rather than the acid hiss of ice crystals on the screen and body of the shuttle, there was a drawn-out roar as it punched through yellow cloud and left a wide vapour trail behind. Cento did not treat the machine with the same gentleness as did Jane. He tested its limits, flew it hard, perhaps for a good reason, perhaps just for the hell of it. Cormac had seen a devilish grin of anticipation on his face as he had taken the pilot's seat. He wondered what the AI that programmed him had been thinking of. The rear-view screen, he saw, was whited out. The forward view showed cloud getting steadily darker above a landscape of fractured slabs.
'Getting near to night here!' Cento shouted.
Cormac remembered that Samarkand did experience night and day, but, with its ponderous turning, each was nearly a solstan week in length. When they finally came into land below cloud now slowly turning to the colour of brass, only Cam made comment on the flight.
'Lucky no mycelium was missed,' he said as he unstrapped himself.
As he picked up his facemask Cormac nodded agreement. There was a lot of ceramal in the construction of this shuttle. He watched Cento and Aiden as they rose from the front seats and came back. Cento appeared smug. Aiden was all Teutonic efficiency; even in the enclosed space of the shuttle he seemed to be marching. Only then did Cormac notice that the suits they were wearing were not coldsuits. These Golem considered appearance to be secondary to the mission, then. A good sign, he hoped.
Before they all disembarked, Gant demonstrated the chain-cotton abseil devices. He held up a harness with a cylindrical box attached, and with a wide ring he pulled from the box a line so thin it was difficult to see.
'Cento and me'U be wearing these on our backs. The lines will be fixed to the rock outside. The rest of you will wear them side-harnessed and attached to our lines. They're easy enough to use.' He pointed to a touch-control on the front of the harness. 'Here you can control the speed of your descent and ascent. We probably won't be using that, though. We'll be walking down with grip shoes, so we'll use the friction setting. Should there be an emergency of some kind, don't use the full-speed setting. These babies can wind you in at thirty kph.'
He nodded to Cormac when he had finished, but Cam spoke out before Cormac could say anything.
'What about the chain-cotton? Slightest mistake and you could lose an arm.'
'No, I can't demonstrate it here - wrong temperature - but out there the cotton will be
coated with a speed-set foam as it comes out. The foam is stripped off when the line is wound in.'
Cam nodded, satisfied.
With little more to add, Cormac signalled that they go.
Outside the shuttle the air was pellucid even in the encroaching darkness. It seemed almost like a frosty morning and Cormac half expected to see vapour billowing from Aiden's mouth. The temperature was 150 Kelvin, though, and if he had taken his mask off, his first breath would have frozen his lungs to a delicate glass sculpture that would have shattered on his next breath.
On the horizon the Andellan sun was a small copper coin on an off-white sheet. The place where they had landed, with the dark cloud sliding overhead, seemed almost to lie beneath some sort of overhang, so heavy was that cloud. Cento had put them down on a frozen lake of complex water ices, which now fluoresced as the heat from the shuttle raised them to the temperature where they made the transition to normal water-ice. It was a weird scene: the shuttle blackly silhouetted over those lights. Cormac turned away and saw that Cam was looking at the dim sun.
'Morning here,' Cormac told him. 'At the installation it's midday. One week solstan and it'll be night there. Lot colder then.'
Cam nodded. 'I'm aware of that. So's Chaline. She's getting impatient.'
Lugging equipment, they moved from the shuttle to the nearby shore of the lake. Here the slabs had fallen like stacks of coins, and in places had the appearance of curving staircases. Sitting on one of these slabs they pulled on grip shoes and the abseil equipment. The entrance to the shaft was only a short climb above them, over the crusted purplish rock. They reached it in ten minutes.
The mouth of the shaft was a perfect oval created by its angle into the flat ground. Either this area where it had been started was clear to begin with, or it had been specially cleared. Its walls were coated with a fine white powder of carbon-dioxide crystals streaked with the green of sulphate impurities. At the lip of the shaft Gant squatted and opened a box. Within were silver spheres stored like eggs in a tray.
'I've pre-programmed them,' he said, and took one from its packing. As soon as it was in his hand it glowed like a light bulb. He tossed it into the shaft. As soon as it was out of his hand it streaked away. 'There are sixty in this box. The way I programmed them we'll have one every thirty-five metres with a couple left over for the chamber itself.'
Cormac said, 'Should be enough. I would suggest a
Gridlirtked twenty-metre spacing between us as we go down. You can call the lights down.'
Gant nodded. 'You're the boss.'
Cormac smiled, then remembered that Gant could not see his mouth through the mask. He was about to say something more, when a loud crack behind had him spinning with his finger poised at the quick release on his shuriken holster.
Cento was holding a long tube with two handles. While Cormac watched he loaded a cartridge into the top of it and pressed on the cap. A couple of metres across from the first, he fired another fixing bolt into the ground. Cormac let out a tense breath. Until that moment he had not realized how on edge he was. He straightened up and watched as Cento pulled the ring from the box on his belt. As he pulled it, there was a faint fizzing sound. With its cladding on, the chain-cotton looked like a yellow rope, impossibly thick to have come from such a small box.
Gant joined him and attached his line, and soon the two of them were walking down into the shaft. As they had been instructed, Cormac and Cam attached their abseil motors and followed after. Learning to use the friction setting was difficult at first, but Cormac soon found that the way to do it was to lean forwards a little way and walk normally.
Thus they descended.
16
Dragon: This Aster Coloran dragon is fast passing into fable, but we know that it did exist. For we know that on that planet existed a creature consisting of four conjoined spheres of flesh each a kilometre in diameter. We know about the pseudopods and the gigantic Monitor. Those of us that have not seen pictures of these must have spent the best part of our lives living in a cave. Doubt is now being cast on these 'Dragon Dialogues'. It seems likely that they were a product of a man called Darson who, driven almost insane by a lack of evidence of Dragon's evolution on Aster Colora, then went on to construct an elaborate hoax. He almost succeeded in convincing everyone that Dragon was some sort of intergalactic biological construct. Where the hoax fell down was in its introduction of Ian Cormac at its end (Refer 'Dragon in the Flower' ref. 1126A), whom we know to be the invention of fabulists.
From Quince Guide, compiled by humans
Pelter was not good at waiting. He sat in a form chair by the window of his room and stared at the storm. It was like staring into a deep green fish-tank. He accessed the local server to see what he could find out about this weather that the people here so readily accepted. As with any aug, the information scrolled up on his visual cortex. It was like having a third eye directed at a computer screen, and it took some getting used to. The background of this screen, unlike for other augs, was now a vast wall tegulated with hand-sized scales.
The information he was viewing was not what he wanted. He did not want to know how many thousands of litres were hitting the ground every second, nor did he want to know about the giant fire far to the south which was feeding the weather system. With a thought he initiated one of the aug's search engines, and, with another thought, primed it and sent it on its way. The information he wanted clicked up: a few numbers on a white background. Two hours, then. He closed off the link to the server and began to disconnect from the aug.
If you are gridlinked, the information is downloaded directly into your mind.
'Who said that?'
No need to speak out loud, Arian. I can hear your thoughts.
'Dragon,' Pelter said. He did not want to just think what he had to say; that was too intimate.
Yes.
'I've been waiting for this. Is he still on Samarkand?'
He is, but that is not where you must go.
'I go where I choose.'
Hubris is at Samarkand. Do you think you could avoid being detected?
Pelter crushed the rage that rose up inside him. The storm - the green beyond the window - was taking on shape. It now had scales.
'What would you suggest then?'
/ will tell you where you can wait for him. Where, when the time is right, you may kill him.
'When the time is right?'
/ too have a purpose.
Somewhere a pterosaur head was speaking against red light. The smell of cloves, so strong it made Pelter wince, invaded his room. Behind him he heard Mr Crane move.
'Your purpose is to see him dead?'
Of course.
The hesitation was fractional, but Pelter was too close to miss it. Almost instinctively he activated Sylac's aug and his connection to Crane. Something had been touching that connection. He knew it just as someone knows when a thief has been in their private residence. The scales before him, he now realized, were the other augs, close and intimately linked.
'Where should I wait?'
Again that hesitation. Viridian. Ian Cormac will come, eventually, to Viridian. You will wait for him there.
'Thank you. Do you know what he will be doing there?'
He will be going to kill someone.
'Who?'
That is not your concern, Arian. Just let him complete his mission, then you can kill him.
Pelter used Sylac's aug to interpret the chaos of scales. A sorting program gave him the form of a web. At the centre of that web was an obese shape, a human taking on the form of his master. From this shape he felt the controlling link and the force of alien personality.
'What forces will he have with him? Do you know that much?'
There may be four Sparkind. Perhaps he will have others, but they are inconsequential.
'Sparkind are not.'
You have substantial weaponry. You also have Mr Crane.
'Don't worry. When he sets foot out of the runcible i
nstallation he is a dead man.'
On Viridian, Arian Pelter, I want you to wait. Let him do what he has come to do.
'Merely an expression. He will be a walking dead man. I will hold back for you, for all that you've told me. But tell me, how is it that you know all this?' The scales were fading now and Pelter could see his own bitter expression reflected back at him. The reply he got now was faint.
Their runcible AIs, Arian Pelter, so arrogant and so sure that they cannot be overheard. I listen to them all the time and, sometimes, I find things even they have missed. I wish I had found it earlier. Samarkand would not have been… necessary…
The personality turned away. The pterosaur head faded. But the links, all through, remained. Pelter summoned up an image of a thin-gun pointed at his face, and used it as an anchor. It took a huge effort of will as he fought the cold pain in the side of his head and disconnected from the Dragon aug. Scales faded, links that had been growing ever stronger faded. He snorted the smell of cloves from his nostrils and stood.
'Like hell I will,' he said, and walked over to his bedside table. There he picked up his comunit and made a particular connection.
'Arian,' Grendel said to him. 'Do you have what you… need now?'
'In one respect, yes. In others, no.'
'I do not understand.'
'It's a matter of hardware again,' said Pelter. 'Can you meet me at the warehouse.'
'The storm…'
'This is important, Grendel, and the storm's nearly over.'
'Very well. I'll see you there in an hour or so?'
Pelter clicked off the unit and turned to Mr Crane. 'Nobody controls me, and nobody controls you but me. Did they think I was so stupid?'
He gazed through the window. His problem did not lie in the aug, but in the force of the personality behind it. Dragon, he knew, could swamp him with a direct connection. Here, of course, the connection was not direct. Dragon was somewhere deep in the Polity. The link was an obese man who called himself Grendel.