by Neal Asher
“So where now?” she asked.
“Back to our ship,” I replied.
“And where then?” she asked.
“There’s only one direction for us.” She gave me a puzzled look so I continued, “Into the future. Where else?”
Blite
There was enough power available now to start up the fusion drive again and, because there was nothing else to be done, Blite did so, sending his ship towards Panarchia. He then sat back and turned to gaze at Greer.
“Perhaps it left something with them?” she suggested.
“Perhaps,” he agreed.
The links had established shortly after the departure of the Brockle—to their augs, to the screens before them. They got the whole story in perfectly digestible form, tailored to their augmentations, senses and intelligence. This was very generous of Penny Royal and very much unlike the way the AI had communicated with Blite before. He felt he had witnessed the end and there was some satisfaction in that, but now Penny Royal lay beyond the event horizon and there was no way he could communicate with it. He could not ask the black AI for Brond, Ikbal and Martina.
“There’s the Brockle,” he said.
Even though they had been given a glimpse into the future and the eventual demise of the forensic AI, it was still dying its thousand-year death on the edge of the black hole. It contained recordings of Ikbal and Martina.
“I doubt it will be very communicative,” said Greer. “And I doubt it would spare either the energy or processing to transmit the recordings to us.”
“We have to try.”
“Yes, but the planet first.”
As they drew towards Panarchia Blite feared neither option would give him the result he wanted, and that his three crewmembers were irretrievably dead. It was time therefore to think beyond this place. Yes, he’d lost a ship and three crew, but he had gained another ship, a small fortune now resided in his Galaxy Bank account, and another fortune would be joining it when he sold Mr Pace’s art collection. But then? He would have to make some enquiries of the Polity authorities of his and Greer’s standing there. The AIs had wanted to ream his mind of information regarding the threat that was Penny Royal, yet the AI was now beyond reach and no longer a threat. If they did want information from him he’d agree to turn himself in for questioning, just so long as it did not involve the kind of forensic AI he had already encountered.
“You have a com request,” the ship’s mind informed them.
“Where from?”
“Layden’s Sink.”
A shiver ran down his spine. Could Penny Royal reach out of the black hole in other ways now? Certainly the AI had been communicating via the Hawking radiation . . .
“Accept it,” he said.
A frame etched itself into existence on the screen before him, and a haiman peered out. Blite immediately recognized this thin man with his mop of blond hair, sensory cowl open behind his head, crystal interface plugs in his temples and deep blue eyes in which it seemed something metallic, like the inner workings of an ancient mechanical watch, was in constant motion.
“Haiman Crowther,” said Blite.
“You know me, so I therefore assume you know my mission here at the Well Head,” said the man, “and doubtless you were linked into the circuit that has kept us all apprised of recent events.”
“Yes.”
Crowther nodded. “I have received more data integrated in the Hawking radiation output of Layden’s Sink.”
“And?”
“It is a message of plain text,” said Crowther. “It reads ‘Captain Blite, first art is always unrefined, but visceral.’ Do you know what it means?”
“Typically cryptic,” said Blite. “And no, I have no idea what it means.”
Crowther sighed. “I’ll put it out across the AI nets and see what arises. No doubt the meaning of the words will be revealed after the fact of them.”
“So that’s all you received . . . no blocks of data?”
“Just the words.”
Blite felt his stomach tighten with disappointment. “Okay, anything else you want to convey?”
“When I apprised Earth Central of this message, it told me to send it to you.” Crowther reached up and scratched his head, revealing the optics plugged in along one arm. It almost seemed his arm was in the process of turning into a wing. “All charges against you and your crew have been dropped but, at your convenience, it would like you debriefed by a runcible AI, for which you’ll be paid.”
“Figures,” said Blite. “That all?”
“That’s all.”
“Then goodbye.” Blite reached out and cut the link.
Sitting back, he stared again at Panarchia, now much bigger in the screen.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” asked Greer.
“I don’t know. I’m not a mind-reader.”
“First art . . .”
Blite nodded and, leaning forward again, used the controls to call up the ship’s manifest. He stared at it for a long while, noting that Pace’s collection was listed in order of date with the most recent first. With a touch to the screen he reversed the list to show at the top the first Pace had ever made. Like all the other items on the list there was just a code, which included the pallet and crate numbers, and a date.
He stood, just a second after Greer. She was smiling as she headed back, but Blite did not allow himself to hope, not yet. They made their way back through the ship to the door into the hold.
“I wish to examine the art collection,” he said.
“I was instructed to keep you away from it until it is delivered to the buyer,” replied the mind.
“I do not intend to either move it or damage it.”
“I still cannot allow you t—zzzzt.”
The lights in the corridor flickered and Blite felt grav fluctuate. The door ahead thumped up off its seals and, before he could reach out to it, swung open. Auging into the ship’s system, he pulled an overlay from the manifest and saw each pallet of crates outlined with their number bobbing over them. The pallet he wanted was underneath two others.
“Get that,” he instructed Greer, pointing to an auto-handler in the corner, and walked over to the stack.
Greer went with him, her arms folded, while the auto-handler detached from the wall as she controlled it through her aug. Blite reached down and slapped the pallet they wanted—“This one—” and stepped back.
The handler trundled over, folding out and locking its two lower arms. In a few moments it had the pallet they wanted and was placing it down on an open area of floor.
Blite flipped the latches on the lid and opened it. Reached inside and pulled out the top layer of shaped packing foam.
“Interesting,” said Greer.
Blite reached inside again to try and heave out the heavy sculpture, but needed Greer’s help. Being a heavy-worlder she took most of the weight, and they deposited a glass prador the size of a sea turtle on the lid of the next crate. The thing was a strange mix of beauty, ugliness and menace. It had been fashioned of translucent yellow and green glass, even with glass internal organs. Its limbs were distorted and there were whorls in its deformed shell.
“I don’t think Mr Pace ever got a look at Sverl’s children, do you?” said Blite, trying to keep his tone level.
“Maybe he went to the Rock Pool sometime in the past?” said Greer.
Blite gave her a look.
“What now?” she asked.
Remembering how the hooder sculpture had activated when he held it, he placed his hand on the prador’s visual turret. For a short while nothing happened and he was about to take his hand away, but then he spotted lights flickering into existence deep inside the thing. He kept his hand there as it began to shift, then snatched it back when those claws started to move. They looked sharp. However, unlike the hooder, once
his hand was withdrawn, this prador didn’t shut down. It rose up higher on its legs, snipped at the air, swivelled its eye stalks then turned around to face Blite, seeming to look at him. It tilted back until it was down on its rear end, revealing the neat rows of manipulatory arms folded underneath.
“It’s got something,” said Greer.
The prador opened out its arms and deposited objects on the crate lid. As Blite began reaching for them it tilted forwards and snipped its claws at him warningly. Next, palp eyes swivelling as it tried to keep the both of them in sight, it skittered to one side and dropped back into its box with a heavy thump.
Blite swept up the objects the prador had deposited, weighed them in his hand for a moment, then slipped them in his pocket. He then contemplatively picked up the shaped packing and pressed it back into place over the glass prador, closing and latching the lid.
“Put the pallets back,” he said.
“Of course,” said Greer hoarsely.
He glanced at her. She was smiling, but there were also tears running from her eyes. He stepped back as the auto-handler swiftly returned everything to how it had been, then retreated to reattach itself against the wall. They stepped out of the hold and the door closed and locked behind them.
“I still cannot allow you to enter the hold,” said the ship mind.
“That’s okay,” Blite replied. “I just wanted to take a look.” He started strolling back to the bridge, adding, “I want you to turn us around now. There’s no need to go to Panarchia. Take us to this buyer.”
“Certainly, Captain,” the mind replied.
“Can I see them?” asked Greer.
Blite reached into his pocket and by feel selected three of the four objects there. He held them out on the palm of his hand. Three cylindrical ruby memcrystals lay there and, he had absolutely no doubt, they were Brond, Ikbal and Martina.
“After we’ve delivered Pace’s sculptures we’ll head to the nearest Polity world with resurrection equipment,” he said.
“Good.” Greer nodded her head firmly, wiped away the tears and, perhaps out of embarrassment, quickly outpaced him, heading for the bridge. Blite dawdled because he wanted to take another look at the fourth object. He put the memcrystals back and, when Greer was out of sight, took out the other item and peered at it closely. Was it a keepsake, or was it something that might activate in the future? It felt heavy, and it felt cold, and did he see a glimmer of something in its depths?
After a moment he closed his fist around the black diamond, and returned it to his pocket.
Penny Royal Unbound
Beyond the first event horizon of this Kerr black hole, Penny Royal, compressed and functional at the highest processing density possible in the physical universe, fell into the swirl of space-time around the inner event horizon enclosing the singularity. From there it fell into the wormhole that Layden’s Sink had generated.
Once upon a time it had been speculated that such wormholes connected to other places in the universe, to other universes, to matter fountains or white holes. However, as theories of quantum gravity evolved and new forms of mathematics were created, it became evident that the terminus of such a wormhole was not elsewhere, but elsewhen.
Penny Royal fell back through time for millions of years towards the point in time when the original sun that formed Layden’s Sink began its collapse. During that time it thought deeply, solved equations that had evaded even the minds of the Polity AIs, invented, discarded and invented again further new forms of mathematics. It created virtual technologies, then created them again in material form by reordering elements of its super-dense body. As it fell into the past it also leached material and energy falling into the hole, expanding its outer shell and its inner being and steadily growing more massive.
The black AI extrapolated from all it knew, which—prior to it entering the black hole—was everything in the totality encompassed by the Polity and the Prador Kingdom. Its knowledge and understanding rose on an exponential curve that possessed no final terminus.
And then, in the remote past of the universe, it hit the final barrier.
A time loop closed.
Penny Royal appeared in the centre of a hypergiant sun on the point of collapse, adding the final mass that initiated that collapse. As the sun began falling in on itself, Penny Royal ate matter, laying it down as processing, data, mind. Ejecting some materials in a massive solar flare, it spun the hypergiant sun just so. Routing energy into the underlying twist in U-space, which supplied the energy it needed to survive the massive forces all around it, it altered the charge of the sun—something that could never happen naturally. Then, as the sun finally collapsed into a physical singularity, Penny Royal achieved mental singularity. Eternity opened a route to the appallingly distant future where all matter and all the data of the universe had fallen into the final singularity; the Omega point. And there, at the end of time, the AI made connection to the gathered infinity of other entities and became one with them.
But even as Penny Royal arrived, simultaneously with the other entities, because, at the Omega point, time did not exist, the multiplication of underlying U-space twists turned one notch too far. Penny Royal existed and thought for eternity, where time had stopped, but also existed and thought for an instant too infinitesimal to measure. The final singularity exploded, but back through eternity, back through the inevitable wormhole to that point in existence humans had once labelled the Big Bang.
And the universe began.
Penny Royal, still existing, always existing, felt slightly irked by this enclosed system, and began to look for a way out.