by Neal Asher
‘Clear here,’ he said into his comunit.
It seemed pointless to eyeball the beach when no craft could come within twenty kilometres of the island without being picked up on radar. Yes, they might come in underwater, but that way would be unable to bring in anything to deal with the autogun emplacements set into the mountainside below Alston’s fortified home. By air was of course out of the question, as that would bring Polity monitors in here quick as blade beetles.
‘There’s a small cat about fifteen kloms out,’ Chaldor replied. ‘Tell your men to stay alert.’
‘What’s it doing?’
‘Nothing as yet.’
‘Probably just an otter hunter.’ Evans glanced along the beach to where two of his men were invisible in the low scrub of creosote bushes just back from the jetty. He had groups of five men spaced at intervals of a hundred metres all around the island. All of them were bored with waiting and itching for a fight, but he suspected there would be no fight here, and that the final showdown would be in Gordonstone. He turned from the sea, intending to head over and speak to his men, but just then, out of the corner of his eye, spotted something in the water.
‘What in hell’s name?’ He swivelled and peered directly at the object. At first, it appeared to be merely the top of a post revealed by one of the quick ebb tides generated by the fast transit of the moon, Cereb. But it kept rising as it headed inshore till a rim became identifiable. It took a moment for Evans to admit to himself that what he was seeing was a large, wide-brimmed hat. He lowered his pulse-rifle into position by his hip, and set it whining as it topped up the charge in its capacitor.
‘What is it, Evans?’ Chaldor asked him over com.
‘A hat, ah… with a head underneath it.’
Evans felt his skin crawl as the huge man rose higher and higher out of the waves. He wore no breathing gear, and his skin looked rubbery—false. Had Semper actually been telling the truth? Evans pulled his flare goggles down over his eyes and, as soon as the man was out to his waist, he fired. The goggles prevented the strobing flash from blinding him, thus allowing him to see the flames and the glowing impact of each shot in turn. But the big man just came on.
‘Shit, Semper was telling the truth—we’ve got one big-fuck Golem coming ashore!’
Evans fired again, holding the firing button down. Suddenly the Golem was up onto a ledge and taking huge strides through shallows scattered with pearl crabs, leaving milky footprints behind as he crushed the myriad creatures. Evans turned to run back towards his men. Perhaps more firepower might… A heavy thumping tread behind him—he couldn’t believe it; this was wrong, too quick…
Evans’s men heard the scream—and turned just in time to see the Golem discarding something ripped and bloody. They came out of cover, confidently aiming their pulse-rifles.
— retroact ends -
Guilt, Mika found, was an unfamiliar and uncomfortable emotion for which her Life-coven training had ill prepared her—and now she felt doubly guilty. She reached out to touch a finger to the hard-field that overlay the chainglass window, and found it slippery to the touch. Beyond the window, the asteroid was held central in the vast containment sphere by gravplates generating antigravity mounted all around the sphere interior, countering the minimal gravity of the asteroid itself. In the intervening space the vacuum swarmed with machines and suited figures, skinless Golem and complex telefactors operated by the Jerusalem AI. Already Jerusalem had separated the bridge pod of the Occam Razor from the surface, and sometime hence it would eject the asteroid into space in order to destroy it with an imploder missile.
‘He will not be pleased,’ she said.
The voice that replied was mild and conversational, but then you didn’t need to shout when you were a demigod. ‘Ian Cormac’s requirement for an expert in matters concerning the Jain and Dragon is not of prime concern. His singular mission is to catch and/or destroy a criminal. Our concern is to contain and understand a technology that could obliterate the Polity. Your abilities, as you surmised, will be more usefully employed here.’
Mika turned and surveyed the quarantine pod she had been allotted, with its intrusive scanning gear and the huge cowled surgical robot poised over a slab with drain channels around its edges, and felt a sudden lethargy overcome her. The nerve blockers and analgesics were not so effective now, and soon it would be time. Whether or not she would survive was open to question. The reports received from the medical team on Masada told her Apis had not yet revived, and that they were still removing further mycelial growths from him but, on the plus side, he had not yet died.
‘I’ve uploaded the recording of the operation.’ she stated.
‘I have,’ Jerusalem replied, ‘studied it in detail, Asselis Mika, and will be able to make some improvements. Presently I am designing T-cell nanobots for the finer work.’
Mika gritted her teeth and asked, ‘Will I be clear then?’
‘This method has a good chance of success. Disconnected filaments of the mycelium will not be able to transmit defensive information to each other, and so the nanobots should be able to destroy them. They will work in the same manner as the counteragent still being used to rid Samarkand of the ceramal-eating mycelium there.’
‘Disconnected filaments?’
‘The mycelium is killing you, so immediate surgery is necessary. However, I am capable of more invasive surgery than you performed on the outlinker, so I should be able to remove more of it.’
Mika shuddered. She wasn’t usually squeamish about such things, but she did not intend to ask the AI just how invasive it intended to get. The result, she suspected, would look rather like an explosion in an abattoir.
‘Might it not have been better to have Thorn here as well?’
‘The procedure I am about to undertake can also be carried out aboard the Jack Ketch. Thorn can then be kept in cold sleep until such a time as the nanobots can be conveyed to that vessel.’ Jerusalem paused. ‘There is, Mika Asselis, no further reason for delay.’
Mika knew she was procrastinating, and was doing so because she was scared. She discarded her robe, walked over to the surgical slab and sat naked on the edge of it. It was very cold. As she lay back and the surgical robot raised a nerve blocker to her neck, she thought that perhaps, like Thorn had intended, she should have had a memplant installed so that the step over death and into artificial life would be available to her too, but it was too late for that now.
* * * *
On the Jack Ketch itself, with two analgesic patches on his chest and a nerve blocker now numbing his leg where earlier it had felt as if the mycelium had taken a hacksaw to his hipbone, Thorn limped out into the corridor adjoining Medical, and thought how weird. This seemed more like the inside of some old Renaissance chateau than a high-tech warship, what with the carpets, the plaster mouldings on the ceiling, the ornate dangling light fittings. But more disconcerting was that none of this stuff had been here a couple of hours ago, when he had entered Medical to be checked over.
The dropshaft was reassuringly high-tech, however, though it shifted while he was in transit. Gripping the handles fitted at his departure point, he stepped out at an angle onto the floor of the bridge. Momentarily, the changed angle of gravity fields disorientated him, and the fact that seemingly nothing stood between him and starlit vacuum was disconcerting. He lowered his gaze to study the bridge’s strange decor, then its other occupants—just as Jack said, ‘He will speak to you momentarily.’
Cormac was pacing the rug, obviously angry; Gant lolled nonchalantly, with his shoulder against one of the cast-iron street lamps; while Jack’s mechanical avatar sat in one of the club chairs, an ankle resting on one knee, the fingertips of each hand pressing against each other to form a cage below his chin, his eyes invisible. Thorn went over to join his friend.
‘This should be interesting,’ Gant muttered.
Thorn made no comment, his gaze straying to the antique execution devices for which Jack seemed to have devel
oped a penchant. ‘That’s a new one.’ He pointed out a big brass statue of a bull.
Gant glanced over. ‘The brazen bull—particularly nasty. It’s hollow, and the victim was placed inside to be roasted. They put reeds in its nostrils to alter the sound of the screams, so that it seemed the bull was bellowing.’
‘You know,’ said Thorn, ‘I’m glad I don’t live in any system run by humans.’
‘Fucking A,’ said Gant.
Just then a shape appeared, apparently turning above them in vacuum: a ring, composed of a jade-green serpent swallowing its tail: ouroboros. This acted as a frame for something that appeared first as a distant silver dot, then grew to fill the frame and finally came through to block it from view: an androgynous face, bald and metallic, with shadowed hollows rather than eyes. This was a projection, not something actually outside the ship. Thorn and Gant fell silent to observe.
Cormac looked up. ‘Jerusalem?’
‘The same,’ the face replied.
Without any more ado, Cormac said, ‘I went to Masada specifically to collect Mika, since I require her expertise.’
The face tilted as if its unseen body had shrugged. ‘Certain other factors have come into play, Ian Cormac, not least my own requirement of her taking precedence.’
Cormac grimaced. ‘I was given carte blanche by Earth Central, which presumably you have been allowed to override, and presumably for the best of reasons, so I’m not going to argue the point. I would just like an explanation.’
‘Simply put,’ the AI replied, ‘we have decided that understanding Jain technology is more important than apprehending one criminal who happens to employ it. Skellor is certainly dangerous—any Separatist with a gun is dangerous. Do you go after said Separatist or do you go after the arms trade? The answer is simply that you go after both, but that the latter must necessarily take precedence.’
‘A very elastic analogy,’ said Cormac tightly.
‘There are the other factors I mentioned.’
‘Do go on.’
Jerusalem continued, ‘Asselis Mika will shortly undergo major surgery, without which she will die. Once I have carried this out, I will place her either on life-support or in cold-sleep suspension, whilst one of my subminds removes stray, regrowing, and possibly mutating Jain filaments. Were she aboard the Jack Ketch, the same scenario would apply: she would have been useless to you.’
Hearing this, Thorn wondered if his insistence on not going with Mika but boarding the Jack Ketch had been such a bright idea.
‘But then she’s useless to you as well,’ said Cormac.
‘For a period of five to ten days, by which time I will have designed and nanofactured robotic T-cells capable of hunting down and destroying all remaining Jain structures inside her. Obviously, Jack could employ such nanobots. But your search for Skellor—debouching from Viridian—is most likely to be either on the Line or out-Polity altogether?’
Looking uncomfortable, Cormac nodded.
Relentlessly Jerusalem continued, ‘Then the likelihood of my being able to convey some medium containing those nanobots to you is remote, as that would have to be done through the runcible network.’
‘Yeah, okay.’
‘It is also well to remember one other point: Asselis Mika herself believes she will be more usefully employed aboard me.’
Cormac remained silent, his look of annoyance fading to blankness as he folded his arms.
‘Thank you for your explanation,’ he said coldly.
The head nodded once, then slowly receded, and winked out. Briefly the ouroboros reappeared, like a call sign, then it too faded.
After a pause, Cormac turned to Thorn. ‘You heard the prognosis for Mika, so the same probably applies to you a few days down the line.’
Thorn straightened up, trying not to wince at a stabbing pain at the base of his spine. ‘I heard it.’
‘You can take a shuttle across to the Jerusalem.’
Thorn snorted. ‘What would I do aboard a ship like that? I’d rather be in cold sleep here.’
Cormac nodded, then turned to the ship’s avatar. ‘Jack, take us under.’
Immediately the stars and the blackness folded into a deep grey, and Thorn still experienced a frisson at that strange tugging feeling that told him they were on their way.
‘And while we’re here, Jack,’ Cormac continued, ‘let’s see what our dead Separatist has to say.’
Despite his pain, Thorn had been fascinated to learn that this ship possessed its own ghost. He stared as a line of distortion cut through the air outside the drawing room. With a clicking, whickering sound, the automaton Jack shut down, its head bowing and the glint dying behind its glasses. It must have been too much trouble for the AI to maintain simultaneously both the automaton and the projection of Aphran that now appeared.
This was not the woman of whom Thorn had seen images. That woman had been contemptuous, angry, frustrated at no longer being able to fight… in other words, human. This Aphran was something else entirely.
She was naked but, naked or otherwise, Thorn doubted her bones had originally been visible through translucent flesh. She was colourless, her hair long and pale, whereas Thorn distinctly remembered it being brown; her skin was white as milk, whereas before it had carried a slightly Asiatic hue; and her eyes were a demonic, pupil-less black. Thorn could only wonder if this was the result of some strange kind of vanity, for surely, appearing this way, she could be whatever she wanted. Also, the woman was drifting, like a corpse in deep water, her hair and arms pulled back and forth as if by wayward currents. There was a sound too, like delicate wind chimes or a tittering giggle, and a distant moaning.
‘Hello, Aphran.’ Cormac walked over to the edge of the carpet.
She turned and focused on the agent, though Thorn knew that this was all illusion—the woman would be seeing him through the camera eyes Jack allowed her. Thorn glanced at Gant, then stepped away from the lamp post to stand at Cormac’s shoulder. Curiosity was growing inside him, as thick and heavy as the Jain nodes that were already there.
‘Hello, agent,’ Aphran replied.
Cormac seemed at a loss. He parted his hands as if to encompass that same loss, then brought them together and got straight down to business.
‘You told me Skellor is hunting dragons,’ he said. ‘But I think I can safely assume that we’re not talking about the winged and fire-breathing kind?’
‘Dragons and brass men,’ Aphran replied, and tilted her head back as if laughing, or as if in pain. Thorn saw then that the woman did possess some colour—the inside of her mouth was bright red.
‘Well, I know about the brass man. He collected what was left of Mr Crane on Viridian only a short time ago, and that’s where we are now heading, in the hope of picking up his trail. Do you know where he’s going next?’
‘Dragons.’
Cormac appeared to be chewing on something bitter. ‘But where will he find them?’
‘Give me substance,’ said Aphran.
Cormac slowly nodded. ‘Yes, I’ll do that when I think you’re no longer holding anything back. My other option is to let Jack take your mind apart piecemeal, in order to find what I want. Though after taking that course I’m not sure I’d bother asking him to put it back together again.’
‘Cruel,’ hissed Aphran.
‘You are merely a dispensable recording, but more pertinently you are a criminal under sentence of death.’
Thorn absorbed that. Not so long ago the guilt of a cerebral recording was a murky legal debating point. Now all recordings of murderers, made after the murder was committed, came under the same sentence.
‘I have paid.’ In saying this, Aphran changed—aged a hundred, a thousand years in a few seconds, became something twisted, with flames issuing all around her.
Ignoring this display, Cormac asked, ‘Why did Skellor want a smashed metalskin Golem?’
‘Pleases him… angry when I mocked him… burnt me.’
Aphran’s
illusory form was growing young again — the flames dying away in the air around her.
‘From what I’ve seen, I don’t doubt he has the ability to rebuild Mr Crane. But because it pleases him?’
‘It pleases him. Please him. Love him.’
‘Do you know where he is heading from Viridian?’
Thorn now observed Aphran grow old again, then in a moment young.
‘Completion… the symmetry… aesthetically pleasing.’
‘Answer the question: where is he going? Where is the Dragon sphere he is hunting?’
‘I love you I love you I love you…’ Aphran was oscillating between extreme age and pubescence, and a halo of flame remained surrounding her.
Cormac turned to Thorn and Gant. ‘Is there anything either of you would like to ask? Maybe you might get some sense out of her.’
Gant spoke up: ‘What did he do to you?’
Aphran was now floating a metre from the floor. Her gaze swung down towards him.
‘Skellor,’ she hissed. Something then snapped inside her and she tilted her head back, opening her red mouth wide. A cycling wail issued from her, and she began to slide back away from them. Abruptly this movement accelerated, and she hurtled along above the deck and disappeared through the invisible wall.
‘Maybe some other question would have been better,’ suggested Thorn.
‘She said she’d paid,’ said Gant, looking directly at Cormac.
Coldly analytical, Cormac said, ‘Yes, I see. What would it be possible to do to a person if you could control the function of that person’s body at a nanoscopic level? Nerves, skin, bone and flesh could be rebuilt even as they were being destroyed.’
Thorn added, ‘She said he burnt her. I wonder for how long.’ He winced, pain not being something he could distance himself from right then.
Cormac turned and stared at the wall—at grey void. ‘Jack, should we erase her?’
‘That is your decision, but I would advise against it,’ the disembodied voice of the AI replied. ‘She has suffered but, with time and effort, can be restored. She may possess much knowledge about Skellor, and much insight.’