by Neal Asher
For some time he had sensed the stunted, imperfect growth inside him. That the mycelium was killing him he was certain, and now perhaps he would know how and why. As she returned from her analysis of the data gathered by the probes piercing him like needles stabbed into a grub, Mika looked grim.
‘What’s it doing, then?’ he asked, his gaze wandering from her How am I going to tell him this expression to the robot poised over him, like a chrome cobra head but with an underside of complex insectile manipulators and surgical tools. Not for the first time he felt a shudder at the resemblance this device bore to the hooder he and Eldene had seen devour the First Commander of the Theocracy—only a hooder’s cutlery served instead the purpose of dissecting its food to be sure the predator did not ingest any poison. That there had been none existing in Dorth had not dissuaded it from this meticulous and lengthy task.
Studying her laptop, Mika replied, ‘It’s forming nodes inside you, but I don’t know why—possibly because what it’s making is as incomplete as it is itself. In doing this it uses more of the available resources, and so has shut down some of its other functions.’
Apis shook his head. ‘Like enabling me to survive outside.’
‘Yes, like that… It’s moved from mutualism to parasitism.’
‘Like something alive, then,’ said Apis, knowing such comments unnerved Mika.
She gave him an unreadable look but did not reply.
‘What about the pain?’ Apis asked.
‘That comes from where the growing nodes are trapping your nerves.’
Now Eldene, who throughout the investigative procedure had remained silent, spoke up. ‘What are you going to do about it?’
The expression on the Life-coven woman’s face was now readable: embarrassment and pity. She returned her attention to the screen of her laptop.
‘You now possess sufficient physical growth to sustain you in this gravity, and that will not go away. I can attempt to save you by surgery.’
‘What do you mean, “attempt”?’ Eldene asked, her voice rising.
Before Mika could reply to that, Apis said, ‘It’s a mycelium—that would be like trying to remove cobwebs from jelly.’
‘Not quite, since its filaments are tough and not so easy to snap, which should make them easier to remove. Previously I would have considered such an operation impossible, as the mycelium grew evenly throughout your body. But now it’s drawn its main mass into your torso, with trunks extending into your limbs and head. I estimate that I could remove over ninety per cent of it.’
‘You still haven’t explained what you mean by “‘attempt”,’ Eldene insisted.
Mika turned to her. ‘The mycelium will work to close any cuts I make. It will actually fight the surgery. It will also fight against having itself removed—attempting all the time to return to its… home. And even should I manage to remove the main mass, remaining filaments—those reaching into his extremities—might die and cause massive blood poisoning as they break down. Or they might stay alive and grow into a new, complete mycelium. They might even stay alive and become something else.’
‘What alternatives are there?’ Eldene asked.
Mika did not reply, and Eldene bowed her head, knowing the unspoken answer. Apis felt a sudden surge of self-pity, and the need to get out of there, to live whatever time he might have left as fully as possible, but he stamped down on it hard. At least, should he die under the knife, he might provide Mika with enough information to save those others who faced the same prospect: Mika herself and Thorn—but foremost to him, Eldene.
‘Can you start now?’ he asked.
Mika nodded.
Apis turned to Eldene. ‘I’d rather you left now.’
She looked hurt, but he doubted she would relish the prospect of seeing him open like a gutted fish on this table any more than he relished the prospect of being that way. Mika then tapped out something on her console, and Apis felt a cold spreading through him from where the probes penetrated his flesh. As his consciousness faded, he saw Eldene turning to go. The surgical robot bowed like a geisha, and opened out its glittering tableware.
* * * *
The man halted and studied their surroundings, and Marlen found himself slavishly tracking the man’s gaze.
The chequer trees had shed their square leaves, which now lay like badly applied gilding over the mossy ground, or else caught in layered clumps on spiky sedges. Fallen from the adapted oaks, the blue acoms that punctuated these surfaces like discarded half-sucked sweets were being nibbled at by creatures like birth-defect rabbits, hopping and bouncing as if ever on the point of coming apart. Marlen noted the old damage to the trees, and the occasional lumps of metal protruding from the ground. There had been a battle here between agents of ECS, accompanied by Viridian soldiers, and the Separatist Arian Pelter—this had been one of the first bits of information the man had ripped from Marlen’s mind. Glancing at his accomplice in their recent disastrous robbery attempt, Marlen saw that Inther was drooling. What the man had done to them both through their biotech augs must have damaged Inther’s brain. Marlen returned his attention to their captor.
He appeared perfectly ordinary: stocky, brown-haired and dressed in a cheap environment suit—not noticeable. But closer inspection revealed that he sank deeper into the soft ground than he should, and that his gaze held a silvery shimmer as if lizard-scales were moving in the sclera of his eyes. What was he, then? Both Marlen and Inther were big men, and boosted too, yet he had tossed them about as if they massed no more than origami sculptures before… doing what he did.
The man turned on a scanner. Marlen glimpsed on its screen a translucent image of the ground, in which were buried stones, wood, jags of metal and more macabre objects.
The man pointed to a sunken area. ‘Dig there,’ he ordered. Marlen and Inther could only obey—the biotech augs behind their ears were grey, as if seared, and something was poised inside their skulls like a reel of fishhooks.
The two men took up their spades and picks, and immediately set to work. Marlen concentrated on the task in hand—was unable to concentrate on much else. He didn’t slack; didn’t stop to rest until his muscles were burning from lactic overload, and then he didn’t rest for long. He and Inther were a metre down into the soft ground when Marlen’s spade sheared up a layer of decaying fabric, exposing rib bones and ah intricate line of vertebrae. Marlen noted that long-tailed slugs, the undertakers of Viridian, had eaten away all the flesh and skin, and that a nest of them was balled up in the skeleton’s ribcage. They were skinned over with hardened slime while they made the slow transformation to the next stage of their life cycle: a hard-shelled chrysalis that burrowed to the surface to protrude like a tubeworm, its end opening to release the flying adult form of the creature. He poked at this ball with the edge of his spade, fracturing the coating to reveal slithing movement.
‘I want the skull,’ said their captor.
Inther dug at one end of the spine, and Marlen at the other. Marlen hit the pelvis, then turned as Inther unearthed the skull, took hold of it in his big hand and twisted it away from some remaining tendon, before passing it up out of the hole.
‘Okay, now dig over there, where I’ve marked out.’ As he scrambled from the hole and over to another sunken area—marked out by four twigs shoved into the ground—Marlen glanced at the skull. Its previous owner had obviously been into cerebral augmentation in a big way. Behind where the ear would have been, a grey bean-shaped military aug was still attached by its bone anchors. Extending from this, a square-sectioned pipe lay alongside the temple curving round to enter the left eye socket—some sort of optic link. It was also obvious how this individual had died since, perfectly positioned in the centre of the forehead, was a neat hole ringed by blackened bone—someone had shot this person through the head with a pulse-gun.
‘Oh Arian,’ the man said, ‘Mr Crane was so wasted on you.’
— retroact 3 -
The acrid smell of molten and se
ared plastic filled the room as Semper welded up the final seals of the covering. Syntheskin was not an option, as firstly it was difficult to obtain, and secondly it was quite thick; layering Mr Crane with it would only make him bulkier and therefore even more noticeable. Stanton thought the whole humanizing process laughable. The Golem was over two metres tall, possessed huge skull-crushing hands and didn’t really move like a person—there was an odd, jerky, sometimes birdlike tendency to his every gesture which somehow hinted at a frightening instability. Now, with his skin-tone plastic covering, Stanton thought he looked even worse. It was like making a crocodile walk upright and wear a suit—some horror from a child’s fairy tale.
‘Okay,’ said Semper, ‘you can put your clothes back on.’
Crane, who until then had been standing motionless while Semper worked, abruptly looked down at himself. Negligently he reached down, pinched at the skin over his chest, and tore a piece away.
‘Leave that!’ Semper reached out and slapped the Golem’s hand as if berating a naughty child. The next moment the Golem held him suspended off the floor by his neck.
‘Put him down!’ Angelina Pelter yelled. ‘Put. Him. Down!’
She rose from where she had been sitting on one of the packing cases stacked along a wall of the warehouse and, discarding her laptop, rushed over. Mr Crane’s hand snapped open and Semper collapsed to the ground, hacking and gagging. Stanton looked down at his pulse-gun, then returned it to his shoulder holster. There had been no real purpose in him drawing the weapon and, upon studying the file he had taken from Stalek’s computer, he discovered that even the sticky mine he had earlier placed on Crane would have no more effect than to briefly knock the Golem off its feet. Really, if they lost control of Crane and he decided to kill them, their only option was to run just as fast as they could, and hope the wrecked AI inside that brass body would soon find some other distraction.
Recovering somewhat, Semper dragged himself away from Crane before standing up. The Golem, as if nothing noteworthy had occurred, turned to the folding chair on which its clothing had been draped, picked up his hat and placed it carefully on his head. After standing utterly still for a second, he then took up the ragged trousers and put them on. Another pause, then the long coat. Watching him then don the big lace-up boots was almost comical. Almost.
Semper, who had now moved to stand beside Stanton, said, ‘Sooner or later, that fucking thing is going to kill one of us.’
‘You are so right—it certainly is,’ said a voice from behind them.
Semper whirled, groping for his weapon. Stanton didn’t bother—he’d already heard Arian Pelter walking up the aisle, between crates containing dark-otter bone.
‘Alston,’ said Stanton. ‘On his island.’ He turned. Alston was also part of the criminal organization supporting the Separatist cause. He was a part Arian Pelter wanted rid of. Stanton studied his boss.
Arian Pelter, Stanton felt, was just as pretty as his sister with his violet eyes, long blond hair and perfectly symmetrical features. Today he was dressed in an expensive white suit and a shirt that perfectly matched the shade of his eyes. He also wore a matching set of platinum New Tiffany jewellery: a single teardrop earring on the opposite side of his head to a matching aug, bracelets on each wrist, and rings on the fore- and mid-fingers of each hand. However, despite this foppish appearance, he was just as ugly on the inside as his sister, and just as dangerous. Stanton was certain it was Alston’s contempt for the Pelter vanity, rather than the man’s skimming cash from the otter-bone trade, that had made Arian decide he had become a liability. Unfortunately, out on his island, Alston was well protected.
‘Dear sister,’ Arian acknowledged, as Angelina walked over, ‘so this is our new acquisition.’ He walked forwards, Semper and Stanton parting before him, then following as he headed over to inspect Mr Crane. He paced one circuit of the Golem, then turned to Angelina. ‘Have you tried him with weapons?’
‘Not yet. We’ve only just put on his skin,’ she replied.
Arian turned to Semper. ‘Your weapon.’
Semper was reluctant, but he handed over his pulse-gun. Arian took it and held it out to Mr Crane. ‘Now…’ He looked around, then pointed to two crates standing one on top of the other on the further side of the warehouse. ‘Mr Crane, I want you to take this weapon and destroy the top one of those two crates.’ He held out the gun.
The weapon looked silly, toylike, in Crane’s big hand. With a darting motion, he dipped his head to inspect it. He then turned to face the crates, holding the weapon out to one side as if not sure quite what to do with it. There came a crunching sound and the brief flash of a laminar battery discharging. Pieces of Semper’s gun fell about the Golem’s feet as he abruptly lurched into motion. With long strides he ate up the ground between himself and the crates. Reaching them, he picked up the top one and just closed his hands on it, smashing the compressed-paper boards and the golden bones inside. Another abrupt movement scattered the debris all about him. He turned and strode back, stopping before Pelter to await further instructions.
Tapping his beringed forefinger against his aug, Arian said, ‘Well, he followed the instructions precisely, but not quite in the expected manner.’
About then, Stanton started to feel it was time for him to collect the money owed to him and depart. He did not want to be around when Mr Crane took literally one of Arian’s psycho ‘Kill them all’ orders. If the Separatists here on Cheyne III wanted to play catch with greased axes, he’d leave them to their game.
— retroact ends -
As he drove his spade into the ground, Marlen kept half an eye on what the man was doing, but he was not entirely certain of what happened next. The skull broke like egg shell in the man’s hands. Then, retrieving something small and black from inside it, he discarded the bony remnants as he turned away. When he walked back over to watch his two slaves work, Marlen saw that he now held nothing, and could not shake the impression that the man had put the black object in his mouth and swallowed it.
3
The difference between hotsuits and coldsuits has been a source of sometimes lethal confusion. Does a hotsuit keep you hot, or prevent you from getting hot; and is a coldsuit refrigerated? The rule of thumb I apply is to just remember that the suit’s internal temperature remains constant, so the ‘hot’ or ‘cold’ applies to the temperature outside it. Attempts were made to get everyone using ‘envirosuit’ with given temperature ranges, e.g. envirosuit 150-250K (Kelvin). This would have been much better because many suits do not function outside certain ranges and can even be damaged if exposed to temperatures outside them. People have frequently purchased inappropriate coldsuits for cold environments. The envirosuit example quoted, having been raised above 250K, will not then insulate below 200K. Equally, a hotsuit capable of keeping a human alive in temperatures above the melting point of steel will be destroyed by ordinary room temperature (which begs the question of how a human gets in and out of such a suit, but I won’t go there just yet). Of course, nothing so logical as the envirosuit nomenclature caught on: human language, go figure.
— From How It Is by Gordon
The flare momentarily blacked out the virtual view from the bridge of the Jack Ketch. When that view returned, a stray rock half the size of the ship itself had disappeared.
‘I didn’t know you had imploder missiles aboard as well,’ Cormac commented, after placing his brandy glass down on the pedestal table beside his club chair.
‘No, you didn’t,’ said Jack unhelpfully.
The automaton sat in its usual chair a few paces away, thin-fingered hands flat on his thighs, immobile.
‘What other weaponry do you possess?’
‘Probably more than you can think of.’
‘APWs? Lasers?’
‘Yes and yes, though I’ll add that the former is just one variety of particle beam out of the twelve I possess; and that of the latter I possess the facility to lase light across the spectrum. I also possess
masers and tasers, carousels containing missiles that can be tailored to specific purposes, from carrying surveying instrumentation to gigatonne CTDs.’
Cormac smiled to himself. Once you got a warship started on the subject of its armament, there was no stopping it. I am what I am, he thought.
‘Though the imploder missiles are a recent addition, they are not the most powerful weapons I carry. The larger CTDs obviously have a greater yield, but are messy and inelegant. I do carry singularity generators energized by the power surge of a fission warhead. Of course these must not be used unless in dire need—because of the one in two hundred million chance of thus generating a permanent black hole.’
As Jack went on to enumerate the various purposes to which he could tailor his missiles, Cormac gazed out at the scenery.
The giant research vessel Jerusalem was poised outside the asteroid field—too large to enter it without sustaining damage. Cormac had never really taken notice of the industry in the Polity directed towards acquiring and researching Jain artefacts, but now, seeing the Jerusalem, he gained some intimation of its extent, for this was the giant ship’s sum purpose. It was a sphere five kilometres in diameter, with a thick band around its equator containing everything from legions of robotic probes up to U-space tugs and grabships, like the one presently departing it. The sphere itself contained whole communities of research scientists, AI and human, all working under the aegis of Jerusalem itself—a sector-class AI some regarded as a demigod—and much of the work carried out inside its colossal structure was classified. Its AI, rather than being based around a crystal matrix, used etched-atom processors, which meant that those regarding it as a demigod might not be so far wrong, and furthermore it possessed the power of intercession, in any situation, second only to Earth Central itself.