by Neal Asher
“I leave the choice entirely to you,” he said calmly, before turning his attention elsewhere.
The hauler was small enough and, once fuelled and some of its thrusters replaced, would be fast and sufficiently manoeuvrable to get past the Atheter device and go deep into the structure it was building. What he needed to find out now was whether it would be allowed past. His attention fell upon a heavy construction robot not much smaller than the hauler. The thing was fully functional—a great slablike object with rocket motors, power supplies and grav-engines at either end and arms sprouting all around its rim. Like many others of its kind, it had already been used in clearing up some of the mess in the station and in rebuilding an area close to its location, currently being annihilated by the Atheter device. Sverl gave it its instructions, and set it in motion.
Like a great flattened spider, the robot hauled itself along some beams then waited until the device had collected up its latest batch of materials and headed off for the rim of the growing hemisphere. The robot propelled itself out, fired up a rocket drive that sent it across a gap strewn with floating debris and inside the hemisphere. Now, peering through cams on the thing, Sverl was able to run deep scans and study the massive bracing cross-struts more closely. He saw that they were a basketwork of concentrically laminated composite threads, hollow at the core. They possessed some elasticity but were designed to dampen and then resist massive stresses. Though they looked flimsy they were much stronger than the original composite beams of the station—atomic forces working in concert, piezoelectrics generating electrostatic binding and micro-hardfield reinforcing. Elegant, beautiful.
The robot reached the furthest inner face of the hemisphere, settled on a bed of woven composites and put down gecko feet. Sverl now watched the Atheter device finish its run around the rim of the hemisphere then return to the station itself to tear up more materials. It was getting closer to the hospital and the barracks, and, clad in survival suits, the shell people were coming out. Sverl, however, kept his attention focused on the device as it headed out to weave another section of hemisphere and then returned. At length it seemed that the thing was ignoring the stray robot, which meant it might be safe for him to follow it into the hemisphere. Next he returned his attention to the hospital.
People were streaming down the nearby corridors and launching themselves through the new beam-work, directly visible to Sverl now. They looked like a human swarm being disturbed from a nest. Cole was leading the way to the runcible while Trent was in the barracks ensuring that everyone left. A peek inside showed he was having trouble with just three individuals—a surprisingly small number considering the nature of these humans.
“You’re leaving now,” he told the group he had been arguing with. “If you don’t, you die.”
“That is our choice,” said one individual. “I want to stay here and see what happens—I’m prepared to take the risk.”
“I’m betting Sverl and his children are staying,” said another.
“You’ve done enough, Sobel,” said a third. “We’re adults and we make our own choices.”
They were gathered by the airlock. The surgical robot that had named itself Florence loomed in the background and behind it Taiken’s wife and her two children. Florence had acquired gecko-stick caterpillar treads and was much faster than before, which she now displayed. The argumentative three only had time to turn as she rushed them, then three shots from an ion stunner dropped them jerking to the floor.
“You can carry them?” Trent asked.
The robot was already unfolding a large sack made from bonded-together body bags. “I can.” While it opened up the bag, Sobel went to each of the prostrate forms and sealed up the survival suits of two, then laboriously pulled a suit onto the one who hadn’t been wearing one.
“When does it end?” Sverl asked him through his suit radio. “Responsibility is difficult to put down when it is taken up.”
“It ends once they’re through the runcible.” Trent finished sealing the suit of the last of them and stepped back. Florence now moved forwards and loaded all three into the big bag, hoisted that up easily and headed for the airlock.
“Hence your eagerness to ensure they all go through the runcible?”
“Yeah, hence that,” Trent replied, now heading back to Taiken’s wife.
Next, watching from outside the hospital, Sverl tracked the robot, driven by a compressed-air impeller, following the stream of shell people heading for the runcible, Trent not far behind with the woman and two children. It was likely that Florence would be going through the runcible. The robot was run by a submind of the hospital AI, which had been destroyed long ago so now there were no minds in that structure to save. However, scattered throughout the station were all its other AIs, and they needed to move.
Sverl sent data to all the AIs aboard. The results so far showed that if they made the trip across they wouldn’t be harmed, but if they stayed in the station they certainly would be. He did not offer them the choice about moving because they were completely under his control, and he had fewer qualms about the sanctity of the free will of others than Trent Sobel. The first of them was making its way across as the Atheter device reached one of the deactivated runcibles. This might be interesting, Sverl felt, because the runcible, even though inactive, wasn’t composed of merely normal matter.
Straight away he saw that the device’s approach had changed, for it dismantled the runcible rather than suck it all straight down. When it hit a component made of baryonic matter it paused, opened a gap in its surface, and took the thing in whole. Its projections then withdrew, the whole thing collapsing down to a sphere again. Then it pulsed, expanding massively as if muffling a contained explosion.
Indigestion? Sverl wondered.
After a pause, it regrew its extrusions and carried on as before, stripping away all the runcible’s structure until nothing was left but the singularity case. This, apparently, was too much for it because it snared the thing at the end of one extrusion, and then with a slow heave sent it on its way into the hemisphere. Immediately tracking its course, Sverl saw that the case would land in a hollow made in the base of one of the support struts—one obviously made to receive it. He now turned his attention away from it, and to the functional runcible lying beyond what had been his abode for a while.
All the shell people were in position, gathered on a platform at the end of the destroyer assembly tube extending past the runcible.
“Trent,” Sverl said, “send them towards the meniscus.”
“Sure thing,” Trent replied.
“Make the connection,” Sverl instructed the runcible AI.
The meniscus rippled as if a stone had been dropped into its centre point. The area on the other side remained visible, but also receded to impossible distance. Sverl felt the power draw and, touching the runcible AI’s mind, read the mathematical description of a tube which possessed no length, connecting over a vast distance. The connection was accepted, firmed and established, and thousands of other options opened. Still under Sverl’s instruction, the AI blocked all those options, which wasn’t an easy task because the runcible they had connected to could be used for rerouting.
A moment later the first of the shell people arrived at the meniscus and dropped through it, ceasing to exist here and doubtless stumbling out of the smaller runcible on the moon of Flint in the Masadan system. Everything would have been corrected for at the other end. The energy they were carrying because of the different relative motions of the two runcibles would be dumped into runcible buffers. The energy they had acquired throughout the transit which, unless buffered, would have resulted in them exiting the runcible at close to the speed of light, was drawn off too, but bounced in a retransmission loop, never actually leaving U-space and so never actually existing. One after another they went, the surgical robot Florence carrying her load through too, shortly followed by Taiken’s wif
e and children. By the time they were all gone the Atheter device was tearing apart the hospital in which they had returned to consciousness.
Sverl felt relieved of at least some pressure when that last shell person blinked out of existence. He eyed the platform they had departed and saw one figure still standing there. Trent.
“You have one minute,” said Sverl. “Make up your mind.”
He stood with his head bowed for a moment, then finally sighed, “Okay,” and launched himself towards the runcible.
“Goodbye, Trent,” said Sverl.
“Bye,” Trent replied, and disappeared through the meniscus.
Sverl hesitated as he saw another shape shooting towards the meniscus, watched it pass through, slightly puzzled by Mr Grey’s decision to go, then instructed the runcible AI, “Close it.”
“I can’t until transmission completes,” the AI replied.
Sverl had delayed just a moment too long, because the runcible buffers were registering a load. Something was coming through from the other end.
Trent
Watching the last of the shell people fall through the runcible Trent had felt relieved. He felt he had discharged his responsibility and his conscience had no more call on him. On the other side of that meniscus the shell people would have to find their own way because the responsible thing to do with people was to allow them to make their own decisions, for good or ill.
When Reece and her children had gone he had intended to follow immediately, but then realized something else was happening inside him. Things were loosening, snapping away, folding out of existence. The feeling was an odd one, but in a strange way he recognized it. He suddenly understood he didn’t have to care.
It was this feeling that momentarily held him on the platform, but then the knowledge that he could choose to care impelled him towards the runcible. As he said his goodbyes and fell through the meniscus, he felt some concern that this was a decision he could not change, but almost at the point of transition he knew it was the right one.
From the perspective of the traveller the transition is supposed to be instantaneous. Quince, the collective term for runcible travellers, are supposed to scream for that instant, but Trent found himself floating in greyness. Perhaps his transition had been instantaneous and what ensued was just a mental artefact—something set to “play” at this moment.
“Are you an evil man?” a hissing voice queried in his mind.
As he tumbled in grey void, Trent thought of people he would like to kill—the few who had escaped him over the years. He visualized killing them in the most gruesome ways possible and he didn’t flinch at the prospect. He knew, with utter certainty, that the imposed empathy was gone now and that he could kill again. However, he also knew that from now on he would avoid killing, unless it was absolutely necessary. What had changed, he understood, was that in the past necessity had not even come into the equation.
“No, I’m not,” he replied, suddenly uncomfortable with the knowledge that before Penny Royal had touched him he would have answered that question exactly the same.
“Because you could feel the pain of others and your conscience castigated you . . .”
“Yes. But no longer, it seems.”
“And now?” said a remnant of darkness residing in his skull.
“I choose to be good,” Trent explained.
The remnant whipped away, like a scrap of black silk caught in a breeze, and as it went it emitted a sound that might have been laughter, or crying. Trent looked around as if he might see the thing, but all he could see was grey, extending to infinity, and also seeming to have no depth at all. He wanted to scream, but found it locked in his throat. Unbearable tension stretched him then, and snapped him through and out into the reality of the runcible chamber on the moon of Flint in the Masadan system. As he stepped out on the black glass dais he felt a large shape looming to his right, but as he turned towards it the thing disappeared through the meniscus.
The chamber was in chaos, with thousands of erstwhile shell people milling about and a small staff of runcible technicians clad in blue overalls trying to impose some order. Those nearby were all gazing towards the runcible, expressions surprised or baffled, and he knew they had been watching the large thing that had just gone through past him. Stepping out further, he gazed beyond those nearby and saw some wearing a different uniform: the cream and yellow of runcible security—ECS. Perhaps he had made the wrong decision coming here? No, though the runcible on Flint was run by the Polity, that political entity had no power of arrest in the Masadan system. As he understood it, the cops here now had to ask permission of the Weaver.
“Come on,” said a familiar voice over suit com, and then a hard skeletal hand came down on his shoulder. He turned to find Mr Grey standing there.
“Why?” he asked.
“Why what?”
“Why did Penny Royal give me empathy, and then take it away again?”
“Sanity? You want sanity?”
“Just an explanation.”
Grey looked as if he was grinning insanely. But then, as he was a strangely painted ceramal skeleton, he always looked like that.
“Explanations,” he said, reaching up with one hand and clicking his fingers together like a ratchet. “Clickety click,” he added, which was a new one.
“Yes, explanations.”
“You are Penny Royal in microcosm,” said Grey, his voice now taking on a more sombre tone. “The elements of choice and environment that turned you into a killer were the same in essence. The killer in you was taken away and the rest allowed to re-establish itself, just as it was with Penny Royal. Your empathy wasn’t an addition, just unused and raw when you used it again.”
“You’re talking about Penny Royal’s eighth state of consciousness—its evil.”
“If you like.”
“I was an experiment—a test.”
“To see,” said Grey, “if you would still be you. Are you?”
They moved through the milling crowd. Trent opened his visor then collapsed his suit helmet down into its neck ring. The air here was cool on his face, smelled of unwashed people and iron. He saw two of the ECS people watching him, but that was all they were doing, probably because of the company he kept. Next he scanned the crowd for Reece and the two boys.
“I’m me as much as anyone is the same person after the passage of time,” he replied.
“That’s good,” said Grey.
“So I am Penny Royal in microcosm, and a test.” Trent pondered that for a moment. “So are you saying that Penny Royal intends to reincorporate its eighth state of consciousness?”
“I am.”
“Perhaps I made the right decision in coming here, then, because we can be damned sure Penny Royal hasn’t finished with Sverl or Room 101.” He paused for a second to study the skeletal Golem, but of course there was nothing to read. “Is that why you’re here? Survival instinct kicking in?”
“I don’t have one,” said Grey. “And you weren’t the only microcosm or test . . .”
“You too?” Trent asked.
“Yes.”
Trent understood. Penny Royal Golem had been killers; Mr Grey had been a killer.
“So what now?”
Mr Grey gave an eloquent shrug. Trent moved off through the crowd, checking the faces of all those around him, but he was found when a small hand closed on his own.
“Robert?”
The boy tugged at his hand and led him over to where Reece and Ieran were waiting.
“Where do you go now, Reece?” he asked.
She gazed at him, obviously annoyed. “Where do you think?”
“The Polity?”
She reached out and grabbed hold of the neck ring of his space suit. “Stop being a bloody fool.”
“Let’s go to Masada,” said a voice nearby.
“Will they let me leave?” Trent nodded towards the ECS officers.
“They’ve no choice,” said Grey. “There’s a ship here run by an Old Captain out of Spatterjay ready to take anyone there who wants to go. The Weaver has ordered that no one is to be interfered with; no one arrested.”
Trent glanced a query at Reece. She gave him a warning look then scanned their surroundings. “So how do we get to this ship?”
Trent reached up and fingered his earring. He should be able to find a way to access his Galaxy Bank, then maybe rent or buy some property and thereafter there would be no need to rush to any decisions. Perhaps together they could go take a look at what Isobel Satomi had become. Time for a holiday, and a bit of sightseeing, then he could think about what to do next and just how evil or otherwise he wanted to be. Gazing at Reece as she moved off towards what looked like an exit, he thought, Not so much.
12
Spear
The other clamberer was catching up with us but I wasn’t surprised. Mr Pace was the top dog here so his owning a souped-up version of this vehicle was almost inevitable. I was just thankful for his apparent aversion to gravcars, else he would have been on top of us by now.
“The cliff,” said Riss, her voice issuing from the console. “Go up the cliff.”
I glanced at her, then to where she was looking. On our way here we’d come down a long slope to reach this valley from a plateau above, the one that I had thought would have been a better location for the space port. Sepia turned our clamberer in that direction. Having an idea of what Riss intended, I decided to also take out some insurance. The shuttle’s computer system was as open to me as that of the Lance, but I wasn’t that confident of getting things right at a distance. Now routing all our coms through the clamberer’s console and making a link to the Lance, I said, “Flute, can you see us?”