Brass Man

by Neal Asher

  Then he sensed three images: organic, curved, soaking up sonar. Three images of a man moved around three sharp corners, which in turn were drifting to one side. Thorn raised his gun until the mask was picking it up too, but in three locations, then moved it across until it lined up with the figure –and fired.

  The man slammed back against the shifting corner, slid down, then began scrambling away to one side. Thorn tracked him, fired again, and again, until the figure scrambled no more.

  Then everything froze.

  Two attack ships, the Grim Reaper and the King of Hearts, have entered the system with a USER. I am under attack, and have jettisoned the VR chamber you occupy.

  A white line cut down through the dark, and pulled it aside like curtains. Thorn could no longer feel the mask on his face, and the automatic turned to fog in his hand. Suddenly he found himself standing on a white plain –and before him stood Jack Ketch. The hangman lifted up his briefcase and inspected it.

  ‘You’re being attacked?’ Thorn asked, bewildered. He knew those names –weren’t they Polity ships?

  Jack lowered his briefcase and focused on Thorn. ‘Yes, I am. It is unfortunate, but maybe certain AIs would prefer partnership with a parasitic technology rather than with what they deem a parasitic human race.’

  ‘Why did you eject me?’ Thorn enquired.

  ‘The method I have by now used to escape would have turned you into a pool of jelly in the bottom of this VR booth you occupy.’ Jack held up an illusory hand as Thorn was about to ask more. ‘What speaks to you now is only a program, and has limited answers. You have reached that limit.’

  The hangman blinked out of existence, and the black curtains drew back across. Abruptly,Thorn’s hand filled with the handle of his automatic.

  ‘Jack? Jack?’

  Movement to his right.

  What?

  Four shots crashed in the dark. One slammed into his shoulder blade and another into the base of his spine. Thorn went down feeling the shock and trauma he had added to this VR program he was running. The addition was to increase his motivation to learn this nightwork technique. He lay there bleeding, gasping, dying. Managing to turn his head, and despite what the shots had done to his mask’s sensitivity, he zoned the man standing over him. Then another shot crashed through his mask and took him into a second virtual darkness, briefly, then back to standing in a corridor in which lights were flickering.

  ‘End program,’ he said succinctly.

  The lights continued to flicker, then died, as the program continued. Thorn put on his echo-location mask, and drew his automatic from its holster. It became a familiar action.

  Some time after the Jack Ketch’s departure, the systems within the Ogygian began to shut down, just as fast as they had come on, and Fethan could not understand why. Lifting his hands from the computer console with which he had been trying to set up a com line down to the surface, Cento said, ‘I can’t do anything. It’s shutting down from inside, which it shouldn’t be able to do.’ He gazed at Fethan expectantly.

  Fethan looked around inside the bridge. There was an evident intercom system which probably had some connection to the computer, for the broadcast of automatic and emergency messages. There were security cameras everywhere, he knew that, and sensors. So the thing he had fed into the computer was probably viewing them right then, and listening in.

  ‘I don’t even know what to call you but, whatever you are, can you explain what you are doing?’

  The intercom crackled, and a voice Fethan recognized as that of the long-dead captain spoke up: ‘I have no name. I am a weapon.’

  Fethan shrugged. ‘Whatever.’

  The voice continued, ‘A message laser is presently aimed at this ship, and someone on the surface is running test programs through the ship’s system. If I had left things powered up, then whoever is firing the laser would have known that someone is aboard, or has been aboard.’

  ‘Skellor?’ Cento wondered.

  ‘Most likely. The computer contained a record of previous contacts, but none this sophisticated. Now, the sender has slanted the test programs to one objective: finding serviceable shuttles attached to the hull. I surmise that the sender will then instruct shuttles to launch and call them to the surface. I will give you adequate warning.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Fethan, then silently cursed himself as all kinds of fool.

  ‘So the two of you can board. The laser is being fired directly from the platform city, and a shuttle will not be able to land there. Any coordinates given, I will suborn slightly so that the one you occupy lands somewhere that gives you time to disembark and get into hiding.’

  Cento stated the obvious: ‘We go down with the shuttle.’

  ‘Precisely,’ replied the killer program. ‘If it is Skellor who has summoned the shuttle, you will not want to be aboard this ship when he arrives here.’

  Fethan hefted his APW. ‘I’d have thought, for our purposes, here is precisely where we want to be. We could burn his shuttle before it got a chance to dock.’

  Cento turned towards him. ‘And if that shuttle is concealed by his chameleonware?’

  ‘It’s a risk I’m prepared to take.’

  ‘But is it a risk you need to take? Your hunter/killer program is here waiting for him to connect with this ship’s computer. This area of space is USER-blockaded.’ Cento held up his own weapon. ‘I would have thought your experiences on Masada, with creatures like the hooders, would have taught you not to have so much confidence in a weapon –or are you just anxious to waste your life?’

  A number of things occurred to Fethan just then. He had lived a long time and wasn’t that anxious to die just yet, and yes he was putting too much faith in a weapon, but most importantly he had never told Cento what he himself had put into the ship’s computer. He could only surmise that the Golem and the Jerusalem program had been in contact with each other.

  ‘So we go to the surface?’

  ‘We go,’ Cento agreed.

  The final deciding factor was that, in the ECS hierarchy, Cento outranked him, and in the end could probably drag even Fethan off this ship.

  ‘So this is what you want?’ Fethan stared up into one of the security cameras.

  ‘It is for what I am designed.’

  Fethan briefly wondered about the morality of creating sentient programs that were quite prepared to go kamikaze to achieve their ends.

  It had come from one of the two attacking ships, as they arrived, then spilled from the memory space of one of Skellor’s sensors into another. He had been about to blow them, thinking this some sort of viral attack, when the package defined its own parameters and waited. He downloaded it to himself and, hardly allowing it to touch him in any way, diverted it to one of the citizens –wiping her mind first to make room for the incoming information. It was lucky that he did do this, for then a midnight wave passed through U-space and that dimension effectively disappeared. Skellor felt a cold sweat break out on his skin, and he instantly suppressed that human reaction. He had heard not even a rumour of this kind of technology, and that scared him.

  Stepping back from the message laser and telescope, both now encased in coralline Jain substructure like some part of a shipwreck, Skellor turned to his human storage vessel, one of Stollar’s young female assistants, and using what remained of her mind as an arena, opened the package like a man lifting the top of a beehive with a broom handle. Quickly he read the external code and saw that this was a VR package, and realized where he was supposed to insert himself. He extended a virtual simulacrum, and pressed ‘play’.

  ‘Skellor,’ said King. ‘I would say it is pleasant to meet you at last, but whether we are actually meeting is a debatable point.’

  Skellor pushed the timeframe, accelerated the pseudo personalities past these pleasantries. Reaper reared tall, and both these representations then said their piece. It was all smoke and mirrors:

  ‘We are here to help you escape . . . We will guide you through the U
SER blockade . . .’ Skellor applied to the personalities at a lower level to learn Underspace Interference Emitters, and understood what had shut him out of U-space. ‘. . . take you anywhere out-Polity you want to go . . . guard you . . . supply you . . . watch you.’

  Nowhere was there any mention of what their payoff was supposed to be. No matter; limited objectives. They had drawn away the definitely hostile ship that had destroyed the Vulture, and given Skellor the breathing space he required. He returned his attention to the message laser, once again interfacing with the control systems he had contrived –talking to that behemoth above. Within an hour, he had ascertained that most of the shuttles were operable and, because they were old and there was no guarantee they would all reach the ground intact, he summoned them all. He was still watching the skies when his growing aug network brought to his attention the messages sent to Tanaquil from an outpost in the Sand Towers.

  ‘Ian Cormac,’ he breathed, with vicious delight.

  Nothing was normal any more, and the churning in Tergal’s stomach made it difficult for him to keep still in his saddle on Stone’s back. Since hooking up with the Rondure Knight, he had seen a third-stage sleer, then witnessed it killed; he had seen a man of brass marching through the Sand Towers –and now? Now a fourth-stage sleer destroyed in the corrosive vomit projected from a giant droon, which he himself had actually fired on. Then that crazy and stunning rescue of the brass man by Anderson. And that escape . . .

  He had never known sand hogs could move so fast. Stone had baulked all the way up onto the top of the butte, where Tergal had been entrusted to provide cover for Anderson’s rescue of the brass man from the monstrous fourth-stage sleer. But from the moment that jet of acid had hit the sleer and the enormous droon had revealed itself, Stone had become almost impossible to control. It bolted when Tergal fired on the monster, and then the following ride . . .

  From butte to butte, taking them in its stride, leaping over canyons, half sliding and half running down sandstone walls, its feet driving into them like pickaxes, then onto the plain and moving so fast that the wind flattened Tergal’s nictitating membranes and distorted his vision. And now here: where they had seen flares of light igniting the sky to the east, and pillars of fire rising from the distant line of mountains around which black shapes buzzed . . . and then that strange object tumbling overhead. Tergal did not quite know how he should feel –perhaps exhilarated? But he was slightly confused and not a little scared.

  ‘What’s happening?’ he asked.

  Anderson turned from his contemplation of the brass man striding along ahead of them. ‘Earlier I would have said volcanism, but taking into account our friend here and what we’ve just seen, I’d suggest we’ve got visitors.’

  ‘From Earth?’ Tergal asked.

  ‘Quite probably,’ Anderson replied, ‘but I wouldn’t look so happy about it if I were you. It seems they’re none too friendly with each other, so it’s anyone’s guess what they want from the peoples of Cull.’

  A sudden wind picked up, blasting grit before it. Pulling up his hood and donning his gauntlets, Tergal nodded to their mechanical companion, whose long relentless stride kept him constantly ahead of the two sand hogs. ‘Where do you think he’s going?’

  ‘I guess that’s something we’ll find out if only we can keep up with him, though that’s becoming doubtful. He seems to show no inclination to stop, but we will soon have to.’

  Tergal observed the fading light on the other side of the sky as the sun sank behind the horizon, and he could sense Stone’s weariness in the hog’s plodding and slightly unsteady gait. He did not yet feel tired himself but knew he could not continue like this all night, and besides he was getting hungry. He grimaced at Anderson, who took out his monocular to study the terrain ahead.

  ‘There’s something over there,’ the knight said. ‘I think it’s what we saw earlier.’

  As they continued, Tergal controlled his agitation. Slowly, that something became visible through the haze darkening above the plain. He now recognized the wedge-shaped metallic object as the same one that had tumbled overhead. Was it wreckage from the battle they had witnessed, or something more?

  ‘We’ll stop by it for the night,’ said Anderson. ‘Seems as good a place as any.’

  When he could see it more clearly,Tergal noted how battered the object looked. He noticed the brass man turn his head to study it for a brief while, then turn his face forward and continue on. Stone veered to follow Bonehead as Anderson goaded his sand hog towards the grounded wedge.

  ‘Maybe we can catch up with him tomorrow,’ said the knight, glancing after the striding brass man.

  They dismounted and set up camp before proceeding to make an inspection. On one surface of the metal wedge there seemed to be a door inset, but in the poor light Anderson could find no way to open it. They did a circuit of the strange object, studied a skein of cables seemingly composed of flexible glass which spilled from a narrow duct in which Tergal could swear he saw lights glittering. The protrusions and veins, sockets and plugs on every surface were a puzzle to him until Anderson surmised that what they saw here was some component of an even larger machine.

  ‘It’s not a spaceship, then?’ Tergal asked.

  ‘I very much doubt it,’ Anderson told him. ‘I see no engines.’

  Tergal remembered how, when they had watched this thing crossing the sky, it had not seemed to be falling uncontrolled, and it had travelled with apparent slowness –more like a piece of paper blown on the wind than a great heavy lump of metal.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Not really.’

  Eventually, unable to see much more in the increasing darkness, they returned to their camp and suffered a long windy night, but one thankfully undisturbed by any visitors to their electric fence.

  –retroact partial –

  A steep slope led up a few more metres, then levelled. Above him, the sea’s surface was a rippling silk sheet, reflecting the milky luminescence of pearl crabs –like a meniscus, a barrier before him. Time stopped, and Mr Crane reached out and pressed a hand against a slightly yielding surface, but one that grew more solid the harder he pushed. Memory, but not experience, supplied the required information, and the Golem knew this barrier was insuperable to him, which was a relief because he did not want to visit the island again . . .

  There was nothing from Skellor –no instructions from the control module and no response to Crane’s request for instructions. Issuing from the link came just a low unfathomable mutter that seemed to suck the urgency out of all actions and made imperatives so much less absolute. Crane stepped back a pace, realized he had reached one of those waiting junctures and was now free to pursue sanity.

  Abruptly he squatted down, then folded his legs. In the dust before him he drew a rectangle, divided it in two down its length, then into nine sections the other way, giving him a total of eighteen segments. From his right pocket he then removed a small rubber dog, which he placed in one square. All his other toys that he took out he placed with reference to this one item: a lion’s tooth, a laser lighter, a scent bottle, a piece of crystal memory from a civilization long dead, a coin ring, also a fossil and ten blue acorns. That meant eighteen squares and seventeen items. The square that remained empty was Crane himself. Now, darkness falling, he switched to night vision, and with elaborate care he began to shift and turn the items –simultaneously shifting and turning the oddly shaped fragments of his mind.

  –retroact partial ends –

  In the early morning, during Tergal’s watch, sunrise revealed to him a shimmering wall which he kept expecting to dissipate as the temperature rose. Before this wall, only a short distance from their camp, he recognized a familiar shape.

  ‘Anderson,’ he said.

  With a grunt the knight pulled himself out of a deep sleep, and sat upright to look around. His eyes and body were functioning, but his brain lagged some way behind.

  ‘What . . . what?’ he eventually m
anaged, scanning the fence for attacking sleers.

  Tergal pointed. ‘I once saw the Inconstant Sea,’ he explained. ‘It was like that, only spread all across desert. As I drew close to it, it drained away.’

  ‘Mirage,’ said Anderson, ‘caused by layers of air at different temperatures.’

  ‘Have you no poetry in your soul?’ Tergal asked.

  ‘The air temperature either side probably evens out here during the day. That’s why we didn’t see it last night,’ the knight went on.

  ‘It’s a wall of some kind,’ said Tergal.

  Anderson looked round and stared at him. ‘That’s my guess. Why do you think it?’

  Tergal pointed again. ‘Because it stopped our friend.’

  Anderson squinted towards the shimmer, and the figure standing motionless before it. ‘I’ll be damned.’ He stood and glanced over at the metal object they had inspected the night before. ‘That thing probably hit the wall and bounced off it to land down here. It might be that we ourselves won’t be able to go any further.’

  Tergal turned away. He didn’t really want to have to go back: there was too much happening, too much to learn. And he had learnt so much already: with Anderson he was beginning to find self-respect, much of it gained while he had covered the knight’s rescue of the brass man. Turning back felt somehow to him like going back to what he had been before. Looking in that direction –back towards the Sand Towers –he observed a distant shape he could not quite make out. Only when Stone and Bonehead leapt to their feet, hissing and stamping in agitation just before bolting, did he recognize the droon heading towards them.