Infinity Engine

by Neal Asher

  As the starship slid smoothly into underspace, Penny Royal entered the control room. Eyeing the entity, Sfolk realized it was bigger now and its surface spines were perpetually in motion. It seemed energetic . . . almost excited.

  “My time will come?” he enquired.

  “Concentrate on understanding your weapons,” the AI told him. “You will need full understanding if you are to prevail.”

  Spear

  As I stepped into the cabin, I felt Sepia attempting to restore our aug connection. It had taken her a while, with some assistance from Riss, to reinstate the device, and now it was working. After a hesitation I allowed the connection, for she had already shown how she took precautions with it. Leaning against her dressing table, she glanced up at me, a quizzical smile on her face. She’d dressed in a short skirt and tight almost transparent blouse, put red highlights in her hair and used make-up on her face, but my gaze still strayed to her right leg, which ended below her knee.

  The autodoc had finished working on the both of us a day ago, but I was puzzled that she had refused a prosthetic—there were some aboard. She’d instead knocked the grav down in her cabin and, just recently, loaded instructions to the ship’s system so one of its autofactories could make the item I had now brought to her. It was a boot, but one of a very odd design.

  “Bring it over,” she instructed, then hopped over and sat down in her dressing table chair. “Help me put it on.”

  The boot was constructed of sliding scales of chain-glass with an intricate webwork of carbon nano-tubes and other meta-material structures on its inside. It extended up her thigh and connected via skin-stick surfaces. The knee and the ankle and foot of the thing could hinge and move just like a normal foot. In fact, the whole thing wasn’t much thicker than her actual leg had been. It was motorized and could be controlled by an aug connection, power supplied by laminar storage modules inset in each of the scales. Yet it was hollow right down to where its toes should have been, and I wasn’t sure why.

  I stepped over and stooped down before her with the thing. She raised her stump and swung it towards me, and at that point I noticed a curious thing. After her amputation the autodoc had sealed across with syntheskin, her leg ending in a clean rounded nub. That nub had now developed a distinct protrusion at its centre, red capillaries and a slightly bruised look. In the end of the protrusion I could see an even line of five further small nodules.

  “Do you understand yet?” Sepia enquired.

  I suddenly got it. In the Polity the usual response to the loss of a limb was a prosthetic followed by a tank-grown and organically printed replacement made from the recipient’s own tissues. However, there were other methods . . . I decided not to show off my own knowledge. “Perhaps you could explain?”

  “Besides a particularly sophisticated nanosuite I have some interesting genetic tweaks from my mother’s side of the family: a combination of DNA strings from amphibians and flatworms.” She paused as I got the boot in place, pushing it up until the top nearly reached her knickers, the warmth of her thighs pressing against my hand, then I activated the skin-stick patches all down the rest of her leg—actions that seemed more intimate than anything I had done before with her. “But of course you do know what I’m talking about.”

  Difficult to prevaricate with such a close aug connection.

  “How long?” I asked

  “By the time we reach Panarchia my leg will have regrown,” she explained, “but it will still need support for some weeks after that as the bone hardens.”

  “The muscles?” I enquired.

  “You didn’t check the blueprint I used?”

  “Some.”

  “Perpetual stimulation as they grow and afterwards.” She reached down and patted her new hollow leg. “It’s a longer process without this but still works. I had a similar arm sleeve about fifty years ago after a nasty infection from an alien fungus.”

  I moved back and stood.

  “How do you feel about this?” she asked, standing also.

  How did I feel about my present squeeze being part flatworm and amphibian and being able to regrow her limbs?

  “I think it’s great,” I said, “since we don’t have the facilities for growing or otherwise constructing you a new limb aboard.”

  “Good, because some people find this . . . difficult.”

  I reached out, grabbed her around the back of her neck and pulled her close. Kissed her. When we finally parted I said, “I’ve had quite a bit of involvement in this sort of thing, and I am just fucking glad you’re alive.”

  I glanced towards the bed but she pushed me away. “Tell me about Blite.” She began walking round her cabin, testing out her ersatz limb. Her motions were jerky at first but quickly began improving. I noticed the grav in her cabin slowly increasing as she walked.

  “Interesting situation,” I said. “Mr Pace was a man of many facets. He wanted to die, he wanted to either kill Penny Royal or put a spanner in that AI’s machinations, but he was also an artist.”

  Sepia gave me a doubtful look.

  “Blite was caught up with Penny Royal for a long time. He lost his ship, in fact he lost it twice. Some of his crew were killed.” I paused to try and put in order what the man had told me as, when I had struggled to carry Sepia, he had taken her off me and carried her into the Lance.

  “When Penny Royal first boarded The Rose—Blite’s ship—it offered him payment for his services, despite the fact he couldn’t withhold those services. You see, he had encountered the AI before and lost crewmembers to it. The payment was memplants—recordings of those crewmembers that were killed. Later it paid him with further memplants, for which he claimed reward from the Polity.” I shook my head in wonderment. “All Penny Royal’s victims whose recordings reside in the spine . . . even now some of them may be walking round alive again.”

  “Complicated,” she opined.

  “Yes, it is that . . . Having lost another crewmember because of the AI when the second ship—the Black Rose—was destroyed, Blite wanted out, and eventually he ended up in a position where Mr Pace provided him with the perfect opportunity. Pace’s ship is loaded with sculptures he made throughout his life. This is a collection Mr Pace did not want broken up after his death and for which he had found a buyer in the Polity. Pace set things up so the title of his ship would go to Blite after his death, but not full control. The collection is aboard and the buyer is ready. If Blite takes the collection to this buyer in the Polity, who happens to be a planetary AI, he gets the full payment and full control of the ship.”

  “Yet he is following us to Panarchia . . .”

  “Yes, as I said, he lost further crewmembers. He thinks it is likely that they too have been recorded and that he will be able to obtain memplants of them from Penny Royal.”

  Sepia paused in her pacing and studied me. “Have you checked?”

  It came to me in a rush that of course I could check. It seemed all Penny Royal’s victims and many of those who died as a secondary result of its actions had recorded to the spine. I could find out if Brond was there, but the others?

  “It gets a little more complicated . . .”

  “Do tell.” She sat down on her bed.

  “There’s this forensic AI called the Brockle . . .”

  “Tell me about it later,” she said, patting the bed beside her, “much later.”

  Amistad

  “I can only open the gate to where it was open before,” said Sverl, “and, apparently, it will only be one-way.”

  “What?”

  Sverl gestured towards the Weaver squatting down on his platform.

  Amistad propelled himself away from Sverl and, trying his internal Mach drive and grav-engine, found he was managing to key on his surroundings, but had to make adjustments for a strange cork-screwing effect. Within a minute he was settling in vacuum before the Wea
ver’s platform.

  “Masada only,” said the Weaver over com.

  Amistad just about contained his frustration, and politely enquired, “Why?”

  “Matters are in hand,” said the Weaver, waving one claw generally as he sat complacent on his platform, occasionally tinkering with the odd, mushroom-like control interfaces.

  “Look,” said Amistad. “Penny Royal is going to Panarchia for some kind of . . . denouement with Thorvald Spear. The Brockle is going to see Spear arriving, is going to see Penny Royal there and is going to attack them. Okay, I doubt Penny Royal is going to be physically hurt by that, but what if Spear is? If Spear is killed, the AI might just decide not to bother and let things go.” Amistad had chosen that line of argument since he felt that the Weaver would not be concerned about one human life.

  “Penny Royal will not decide otherwise.”

  “And then there’s the point of transition,” said Amistad.

  The big gabbleduck tilted its head to one side as if curious.

  Amistad gestured a claw to encompass the surrounding sphere. “This structure and its enclosing hardfields has been made to take Penny Royal through the event horizon and into the Layden’s Sink. Do your design parameters include it being bombarded with some of the most lethal weapons at the Polity’s disposal at the same time?”

  The Weaver dipped his head gravely. “That would destroy it.”

  Would?

  Amistad hadn’t expected that, and it took him a microsecond to get back on track. “So let Sverl open the gate to somewhere other than Masada. Let’s open the gate to Earth and pull Polity forces right through here.” Amistad waved towards the shimmering runcible gate. “That thing’s big enough for attack ships and medium-sized destroyers!”

  “You have neglected to notice that the sphere is complete.”

  “Make a fucking hole in it!”

  “No,” said the Weaver. “Exit by runcible only, and only one-way to the runcible on Flint.”

  Amistad hesitated. There was something the Weaver wasn’t saying. Had it a reason for not wanting Polity forces here? Perhaps some yet-to-be revealed motive? Maybe the Weaver, having made this sphere, now awaited final payment before completely fucking things up?

  “I have to wonder,” said Amistad, ensuring that all his weapons were ready to fire in a microsecond, “how a massive space-time rift might affect your own position in the universe?”

  The Weaver reached down to his tool harness and between the tips of two talons extracted a flimsy-looking thing that looked like the internal auditory workings of a human ear fashioned out of blue metal and glass. This was the self-same device it had used to knock out two security drones on Masada. Amistad backed up, charging his carapace and ramping up internal defences. How would the Polity AIs react if he inadvertently blew away the only living member of the Atheter race?

  “I would still only exist in recorded form,” said the Weaver, “because my existence is predicated on the human race arriving on Masada.”

  “What?”

  “The paradox would annihilate both the prador and the humans.”

  “So you say. Are you sure it wouldn’t tilt the balance in your favour just a little?”

  “No.” The creature shrugged. “Though the paradox would not affect my own race—it is too distant.”

  Was that it?

  “Look,” Amistad decided to be more direct, “why don’t you want Polity forces here?”

  “The sphere,” said the Weaver, “cannot be unwoven.”

  “Then let me gate to Earth—we can at least pull some forces through the Well Head runcible.”

  The Weaver shook his head, looking tired of the conversation.

  “You will see,” he said.

  He released the device and it floated up above his head, rotating in some way. With a click Amistad felt right at the heart of his being, the very substance around him which he had been using both his Mach drive and grav-engine against twisted out of phase just the precise amount. He found himself hurtling away from the Weaver. When he shut down those two drives and began to spin round back towards the creature, a sphere abruptly enclosed him and dragged him on. He knew if he fired any of his weapons now he would end up doing himself more damage than the enclosing field. The runcible gate loomed before him, its interface shimmering and rippling. The field tossed him through, shutting off at the interface.

  Amistad fell through, still carrying his earlier impetus, the light gravity of a moon taking hold of him beyond and dropping him skidding on a floor of polished artificial quartz, tearing up flakes of stone.

  “Now that will require more than a polish,” said the Flint runcible AI as Amistad turned and accelerated back towards the runcible. Just before he reached the interface he slammed face-first into a hardfield.

  “Not a good idea,” said the Flint AI. “The other end closed immediately after and if you had managed to get through you’d have spent the rest of eternity in U-space.”

  “Fuck,” said Amistad, then, “I need to talk to EC.”

  Backing off from the runcible, he turned and surveyed the circular chamber with its numerous exit doors, registration pillars and occasional businesses. The place contained a scattering of technicians in blue overalls that almost seemed like religious attire. There were travellers here too, some sitting in areas separated off by low walls into cafés and restaurants, others inside shops. Scanning beyond this chamber, he found the barracks empty and no ships down on the surface. There were some in near space, but none was military.

  “There has to be more than this,” he said.

  “We agreed to remove all military assets from the system, as you know.”

  “Yeah, but . . .”

  “And the agreement is monitored.”

  “Yes, it is,” interrupted a familiar voice.

  Amistad spun round, tearing up more of the Flint AI’s precious floor as he did so, to face a shape suddenly looming beside him. He eyed the big gabbleduck squatting there, recognized it as a hologram and quickly powered down his weapons.

  “You were tolerated in your erstwhile position as warden of Masada,” said this manifestation of the Atheter AI, whose physical form was down on the surface of Masada. “However, since the Weaver is no longer here to tolerate you and my instructions for the interim have been very precise, you must leave now.”

  “Why?” said Amistad, already knowing the answer.

  “Because you are a military asset.”

  Amistad wanted to argue that, but the agreement between the Polity and the Weaver was still clear in his mind. If he didn’t leave, it could mean that the Polity lost any foothold here at all, and the method of that loss could be grievous. To confirm this, the Atheter AI linked a visual feed. This showed a giant white hooder rearing up from the surface of Masada where it had been creating an intricate sculpture fashioned of bones. They were old bones this time, not the recently stripped remnants of one of its victims. The threat was there. If Amistad didn’t get out of here fast, the Atheter AI was going to send the Technician itself.

  “Route me to Arvis,” Amistad told the Flint AI.

  “Done,” the AI replied.

  Amistad headed for the runcible, the hardfield blinking out ahead. He walked to the interface then jumped through, finding himself once again in zero gravity. Here a recommissioned war runcible drifted in vacuum. The thing was an octagonal structure two miles across, once used for gating asteroids at the prador. Correcting for the lack of EMR here from the distant binary red dwarf the runcible orbited, Amistad spun slowly, surveying his surroundings.

  A fleet of twenty attack ships, like somnolent crows, sat a hundred miles out. Five destroyers clustered over to one side of them. Nearby sat a dreadnought of the lozenge design which, at five miles long, could not have passed through the runcible to get here. Meanwhile, weapons installations on t
he runcible itself had powered up and Amistad knew that there was enough weaponry pointing at him to turn him into a wisp of vapour in a microsecond.

  “Data,” came the demand.

  Amistad recognized the tone and signature—Earth Central was now linked in and talking to him directly. He took a whole two seconds to put together a précis of events and sent it. That it took a further five seconds before EC replied, confirmed something he had been aware of since ceasing to be warden of Masada: because he had been subverted by Penny Royal, and despite being vetted by forensic AI afterwards, he still was not trusted.

  “A military response to the Brockle would be ineffective,” said Earth Central. “The Well Head runcible is too small. No interference is necessary.”

  “Ruthless,” said Amistad.

  “Necessary,” Earth Central replied.

  “No, I don’t think so.” Amistad tried to keep his anger locked down. “I think it’s cowardly. You knew how dangerous the Brockle was, but you failed to act against it before it became a serious problem. You failed to act against it because it could not be legally defined as guilty. Yet you provided the motivation for it to incriminate itself. How many people were there aboard the High Castle?”

  “Sixty-three, including all artificial forms.”

  “So, you saw Penny Royal and the Brockle as problems, one of which would solve the other. You provided the Brockle with the motivation to go after Penny Royal, the means to be effective, and in the acquisition of those means a way to incriminate itself fully.”

  “Yes.”

  “It was also about deniability,” Amistad added, almost to himself. “Penny Royal had likely returned to the Graveyard, so you couldn’t send in effective military assets without causing a problem with the prador.”

  “Quite.”

  “You should have destroyed the Brockle when it was aboard the Tyburn.”

  “You misunderstand. Prior to its voluntary incarceration on the Tyburn, the Brockle’s situation was such that if it didn’t agree to incarceration, any attempt at capture might have resulted in the deaths of thousands. Then, while aboard the Tyburn, it always had deep scanning available and could use that ship’s drive at any point. Destroying it while it was there was not possible: the Tyburn was both its prison and its means of escape. Had we made some attempt against it, it would have escaped and it would have turned against the Polity. Given time to develop, it would have become as dangerous as Penny Royal.”