by Neal Asher
He tuned to the groping signal, and made contact.
Who are you? he asked over the link.
Vulture… ship… Skellor… came the reply, along with corrupted code and a weird whining note like a child crying.
Cento absorbed that last name and immediately knew who the second humanoid was. Cento had taken much interest in the events on Masada, and with his ECS clearance he had obtained the full story. That a copy of himself had died aboard the Occam Razor had greatly focused his interest. So, somehow, Skellor had escaped, still possessing Jain technology. This also explained Crane’s resurrection and superior strength and speed: Skellor had obviously made him something more than a merely boosted Golem Twenty-five.
Skellor’s ship? he asked.
Salvor burned now… take download… going U-space… it coming.
I’m prepared for the download, but any attempt at subversion and—
The download came anyway: jumbled information, hints of exchanges of information, views of Skellor standing behind a pilot’s chair containing the burnt-out husk of a human being, Mr Crane squatting on the floor with objects arranged in front of him like chessmen. Then, in one brief burst before the signal cut off: coordinates.
Cento knew that information like this was critical, for with the sheer size of the Polity and all the methods of transportation available, ECS might never find Skellor. But how to convey those coordinates to somewhere they might be of use? The Golem surveyed his surroundings and ran diagnostics on himself. Quite apart from the fact that he only had one arm and was trapped in a rock bubble at the bottom of a steep slope, the heat from the nearby river of magma was beginning to affect some of his systems. Already memory storage was becoming dubious, as the crystal matrix of his mind distorted, the motors in his hips had ceased to function, and those in his remaining arm were into amber. His sight was also going. Infrared was unusable in this situation, but he was also losing the other end of the spectrum. His internal radar suffered the same distortions from the crystal lying below as did his radio. Apart from those latter badly distorted two, he in fact only possessed now the senses of a human being. He had to try for the survey ship again, and to do that he had to get himself higher.
Cento reached above him and was thankful that what remained of his hotsuit had preserved the syntheflesh underneath; this at least meant that he retained a sense of touch. Groping about, he found a crevice—which he tested by wrenching hard against its sides to make sure the rock would not break away. He shut off that part of his emulation program that prevented his joints moving more than was humanly possible. Planning every move in advance, he reached higher, jammed his hand in, then using the full swing of his shoulder joint, hauled himself out of the bubble like a winkle from its shell. For a second he was suspended over magma, then using his wrist joint and elbow, he pulled himself up to the point where he could lodge the knee end of his right thighbone in the lower part of the crevice and then lay his torso fiat against the slope. This he did just in time, as another tremor tumbled loose stone down all about him.
He kept his head down until the cascade had ceased, then looked up. Now he could see that the crevice ran at an angle up the slope and would take him about five metres higher. The problem was that each time he released his hand, he would be supported only by his hipbone and by his weight pressing against the loose stone of the slope. But there was no choice: this close to the magma, the heat would destroy him eventually. He turned and withdrew his hand, reached higher and jammed it in, and maggot-like hauled himself up and up, pausing every time the ground shook, clinging as tightly as he could while falling stone threatened to dislodge him.
Five metres.
Here, Cento noted that some of his systems were coming back online; that the numerous warnings he had been receiving were growing fewer. Glancing down he saw that a curve in the slope now concealed him from the incandescence below, and checking his internal temperature, he saw it was dropping. Abruptly the motors in his hip joints came back on. Here, he realized he might be able to survive for as long as his power supply held out, and even then his mind might remain intact afterwards. Perhaps he should secure himself as best he could, and just drop to minimal function? Cento considered this for only a moment before removing his hand from the crevice and reaching above to clear away loose rock in search of a fresh handhold. Cento was ECS and, though as a free Golem he could choose between duty and survival, he chose duty.
Eventually he located a jut of stone that seemed sufficient to support him, clamped his hand on it and hauled himself up once again, but he could not get himself high enough to lodge his thighbone against that same stone. Lowering himself again, he cleared more rock and found a small hollow just below and to one side of the outcrop. He pulled himself up again, lodging the bone’s end in this hollow—easier now that he could actually move his thighbones about—and, from this precarious position, groped higher. Stone skidded as he pushed it aside, banging and clattering past him. Smooth intestinal stone above now; nothing to grip. Another sudden ground tremor bounced his leg bone out of the hollow. He flailed for a grip as he began to fall, his hand sliding over this treacherously smooth stone. Then before him there appeared a crack, leaking sulphurous gas under pressure, then his arm went through, in an explosion of such gas, and he found a safe grip inside another lava bubble.
Cento would have breathed a sigh of relief if he had not turned off his lungs while in the previous bubble. After using his head to break away more of the thin crust, he peered inside and saw that this cavity formed the terminus of a lava tube extending up the slope. Pulling himself inside, he began to inch his way up the smooth interior, using thighbones, head and arm as four limbs. Here he took more risks, as a fall now would only result in him ending up back at the bottom of the tube, not trying to swim in molten rock, and consequently he traversed its twenty-metre curving length in a matter of minutes. Now all he had to do was get out of there.
Wedged on his back, braced by head and thighbones, Cento drove his fist outwards at what he estimated to be an angle of ninety degrees to the slope itself. Stone shattered under this piledriver blow, and fell in on him to reveal a bruised sky into which poured black smoke and fountains of magma. Of course—the eruption about which they had been warned. Early. That figured.
* * * *
Skellor stepped back and inspected his handiwork. Mr Crane raised his replacement arm and closed his hand into a fist. Fastidiously he then reached out and took up first his hat then his coat from where he had draped them over a nearby console. Placing the hat on his head, he tilted it to the required angle before donning his coat and with slow precision fastening each button. Why, when given limited freedom to act, the Golem had spent much of the voyage either using equipment and materials found aboard this ship to fashion such clothing, Skellor could not fathom. But it was part of the weird fascination Mr Crane held for him.
‘Quite the dandy, aren’t you,’ muttered Skellor, discarding the arm replaced down beside Salvar’s corpse—both now just organic detritus. Now Skellor smirked as he watched Crane step back, squat down on the floor and pull out his various toys. Joining the rubber dog, the acoms from blue oaks on Viridian, five cubes of survival rations and various other items gathered from inside this same ship, was now a piece of green crystal. Briefly linking inside the Golem, Skellor observed that the crystal and the dog had found their places in the matrix, which drastically increased Crane’s chances of putting the rest together in the right order. However, though the odds against him achieving the right combination before had been 3.6 x 1014 to one, they weren’t that much better now. Probing inside Crane to see how he had managed to achieve even this reduction of odds, he encountered a resistance that was integral to Crane’s entire mind. Skellor could easily have broken it, but in doing so he would lose that essential, fascinating Mr Crane. He turned away, stepped over the human remains on the floor, and seated himself in the pilot’s chair. If Crane ever managed to reduce the odds to, say, the chan
ces of a meteorite striking him on the head, Skellor would take action. But now to the task in hand.
There were two areas of space, two possible destinations—one inside the Polity and one beyond its border. This much he had learnt from the Reverend Epthirieth Loman Dorth before killing the man. The network of Dracocorp augs that had been coming under the man’s control at Masada had initially seemed a complete entity. Further probing its structure, Skellor had ascertained it to be a slave cell that, upon reaching maturity (that point where Dorth gained absolute control over the other minds in the network), would link via other networks to an autocratic control. There were two such centres of control, with only vague locations—the two Dragon spheres. Skellor had of course already chosen the one outside Polity space. Even so, that particular area extended a hundred light years across, so locating Dragon inside it would be no easy task.
Skellor considered how he might achieve his ends. Previously, the most likely way of locating Dragon had seemed to be to find a Dracocorp facility and work from there, but his probes into the AI and virtual networks from Viridian had quickly disabused him of this notion. Dragon had foreseen that enemies would follow this trail and so, rather than erase it, had concealed it under a thousand false trails. Gaining information concerning even these had also quickly turned into a risky option when his searching attracted the attention of some seriously dangerous hunter-killer AI programs engaged on the same search. Obviously, ECS also seriously wanted to know Dragon’s location. No, he must use a different approach: tracing Dragon through the augs those facilities manufactured, and which were now in use.
The running of Dracocorp was not something Dragon had to remain wholly engaged in, but slow accretion of control through the networks thereby generated required it. To find the link from this distance Skellor needed to infiltrate network after network to follow it home. Better then to find such a network much nearer to that same home—nearer to Dragon. So thinking, Skellor affirmed the coordinates already input, and dropped the Vulture into underspace.
— retroact 7 -
Alston supposed various factors were interacting in the man’s mind: obviously, the longer the interrogation, the longer he would stay alive. However, the longer he delayed answering questions, the greater would be his agony. Alston was therefore beholden to increase the man’s agony to that point where, in the hope of a quick death, he would become more forthcoming. Alston always loved the way his victims reacted when, having obtained what he wanted, Alston continued with the torture. There was horror and a kind of indignation at this betrayal of the unspoken contract between torturer and tortured.
‘I’ve been aware for some time that Arian wants me dead. That is hardly news to me, but I want details. When does he plan to launch an attack on my island? How many of his people will he send? What kind of armaments will they be carrying?’
Semper, suspended upside down from the boom at the back of the fishing barge, bubbled something. Alston wondered who had first worked out that suspending someone by their feet increased the blood pressure in their head and thus prevented them from fainting. He again reached out with the wire cutters to where Semper’s hands had been nailed to the stern rail, and with one crunching snip sent a little finger bouncing across the deck.
‘What was that?’
When he had stopped yelling, Semper articulated more carefully.
‘Not… sending… his men.’
Alston passed the wire cutters over to Chaldor—the woman who had been so proficient with the nails and who had earlier burnt out Semper’s right eye with a red-hot kitchen fork.
‘What do you mean, “Not sending his men”? You told me earlier that an attack is planned…’
Gazing at Alston with his remaining eye, Semper managed, ‘Today… maybe tomorrow.’
Alston peeled the surgical glove from his right hand, then reached up and turned on the comunit attached to his collar. ‘Evans, take us back in.’ Immediately the boat’s engine droned, and below Semper the water boiled as the craft began to come about. Alston glanced at the box of gloves open on a table nearby, then peeled off the other glove and went over to get a fresh pair.
‘What do you think?’ he asked Chaldor.
Chaldor, as attractive as she was mean, with her red hair plaited intricately against her head and containing as much concealed weaponry as it did jewellery, gazed at him with her pure-purple eyes. ‘I think he has a lot more to tell us. What’s this machine he was babbling about?’
‘Yes, I think you’re right.’ Alston took the wire cutters from Chaldor and once again turned to his victim. ‘Now, Semper, please tell us about this machine of Arian’s.’
‘It’s a Golem… a Golem!’
From Semper there then issued a piggish squealing. Alston counted fingers and saw that he had enough left for five further questions.
‘Golem don’t work for Separatists. It seems to me that your loyalty to Arian is much stronger than I thought. Still you are trying to cover for him. Still you have not answered my questions. I want to know how many men, what weaponry, and when.’
‘It’s a Golem… broken Golem… brought in from… Huma.’
Alston sighed and shook his head. ‘Chaldor, go and get the blowtorch and the sanding machine. It seems we’ll have to go all the way.’
As the afternoon progressed, and as they came back in sight of the island, Alston was surprised at Semper’s resistance—always coming back to the same ridiculous story about a broken Golem. Near the end, Alston was tempted to believe that story, but he knew that broken Golem were as mythical as Horace Blegg. And were such a creature possible, an AI-hater like Arian Pelter would never use it. Dumping what was left of Semper over the side, as food for the adapted whitebait and pearl crabs swarming in the shallows around the island, he finally admitted defeat—Semper had managed to conceal the truth unto death.
— retroact ends -
Gant seemed on edge, studying the throng as if he expected attack from every direction. Cormac supposed the uploaded soldier had every right to be paranoid while accompanying him—bad things tended to happen around Cormac.
Why am I able to gridlink? Cormac asked, as he strode on ahead of Gant across the embarkation lounge.
A rather deeper scan than I am managing now would be required to answer that question, Viridian replied directly into his link. It seems that somehow you have managed, at an unconscious level, to turn your gridlink back on. Only an AI such as myself should be able to do this, though there is one human who possesses the ability to interfere with AI coding at that level.
Let me guess: Horace Blegg.
Correct.
What about memories of U-space? Quince transportation is instantaneous, so how do you explain that?
What memories?
I can’t vocalize it.
Cormac opened the bandwidth of his link and sent the jumbled images that plagued him. He sensed the AI receiving and studying those images—and, just to test, he applied to it on another level for information concerning his visit here.
Major Arn is awaiting you at the exit, a submind replied.
Cormac scanned ahead and saw that same individual, in the uniform of the ES regulars, standing beside shimmer-shield doors leading outside. The man looked ill at ease. Cormac glanced at Gant, caught his gaze, and with a nod drew his attention over to Arn.
‘I don’t suppose he’s too glad to see you,’ said Gant. ‘You got a lot of his men dead.’
Cormac nodded, continuing the silent conversation in his head as he and Gant headed towards the waiting man.
What do you think?
The images are… I see you accessed one of my sub-minds. It would seem your gridlink is regaining total function. As I was saying, these images are the nearest human interpretation of U-space possible. You have definitely seen it, yet hopefully you are still sane. This is unusual.
Let me guess again: only one other.
Correct.
As they approached Arn, Cormac accessed inf
ormation on the man. He’d been a sergeant when Cormac had first known him, and his performance against Arian Pelter had resulted in his promotion by Viridian, who was, like all runcible AIs, also the planetary governor.
‘Good to see you again,’ said Cormac, holding out his hand.
Arn gripped the hand but did not return the compliment.
‘I’ve got a stratocar outside, which should get us there in a few hours,’ he said. ‘I also received a message that you have further requirements.’
‘Ground-scanning gear and maybe an excavator later on,’ Cormac replied.
Arn nodded, and Cormac picked up the hint of a transmission from the grey military aug behind the man’s right ear. Cormac realized that he himself now possessed the ability to make all the required arrangements; however, he was not yet prepared to rely on his gridlink.
Arn now turned to Gant and studied him.
‘Gant,’ said the uploaded soldier, holding out his hand, ‘I partnered Thorn in our Sparkind unit.’
‘You weren’t here back then,’ Arn observed, shaking the hand.
‘I had a bit of a problem.’
‘Problem?’
‘I was dead.’
This did not seem to fluster Arn, who Cormac had realized was conducting his own silent conversation, via aug, during this introduction. The major turned back to Cormac as if Gant had said nothing at all strange.