by Neal Asher
‘Without Mika,’ said the agent, ‘that might be something we’ll need desperately.’
* * * *
‘Well, if you fully understand the danger, then I cannot dissuade you,’ said Anderson, knowing that the sister of a killer coming after him had only increased Tergal’s fascination. It was harmless enough: the danger Unger Salbec represented held no threat for the boy.
Golgoth was to the right of them now and ahead numerous trails tangled into the Sand Towers. This was not the usual route taken away from the city—which lay on the other side—but Anderson hoped thus to avoid encountering Salbec’s sister. He had intended to depart from the lower city directly underneath the platform, but Laforge had advised him against that because apparently the area of the Towers lying below the Overcity was swarming with nasty creatures—some of them possibly human. Here, but for the occasional sulerbane plants standing, with their woody frills and brackets, like petrified dwarfs in ragged clothing, the ground was barren. The coloured sand eroded from the layers had been trampled by the passage of many feet into a mixture of nondescript grey.
Raising his monocular, Anderson turned aside and studied the Overcity of Golgoth. Its two-kilometre-wide platform, as well as resting on the buttes themselves, was supported by steel pillars and arching trusses. In the shade thus engendered, there was movement amid scattered bulbous dwellings made of bonded sand. The Overcity, with its rectilinear towers, domes and spires, resembled an Earth city that Anderson had once seen in an ancient picture. He panned his monocular around to face the buttes directly ahead. He could distinguish falls certainly caused by the recent quakes and, above them, could just make out the occasional sinister shape of a sleer skittering across the high faces of sandstone, or in and out of the caves bored into it. The creatures were small, but it would be best to keep safely to the centre of the paths.
‘Have you ever had to kill a third-stage sleer?’ he suddenly asked.
‘They don’t have a third stage,’ Tergal replied.
‘Ah, they are rare where you come from, but not so rare where we are going.’ Anderson pointed. ‘Those are all first-stage—little more than nymphs. They’re cave hunters mostly, and for that purpose possess a feeding head with grinding mandibles with extensible antlers, ten legs attached in pairs on independently rotating body segments, and though quite capable of killing a man, they never grow larger than a metre in length. Also, like their adult kin they possess the ability to split themselves in two, but there’s no necessity for that as they are not breeders.’
‘I know what they are,’ said Tergal, giving Anderson a puzzled glance.
Anderson continued regardless. ‘After about two years, they encyst in the sand and transform to the second stage. The front segment folds up and melds into the feeding head, the two legs attached turning into carapace saws for dealing with larger prey outside the sand caves—prey they can now see because they simultaneously gain a nice triad of compound eyes. They also grow an ovipositor drill which they can use to inject paralytic. And at this stage they grow to about two metres in length.’
Tergal grunted, then shifted about in his saddle. He asked, ‘What’s an ovipositor?’
‘It is the egg-laying tube protruding from the rear of an adult sleer.’
Tergal turned to him. ‘There, you see: “adult sleer”, so why do you talk of a third stage?’
‘Because there is one.’ Anderson considered all he had learned during this journeying, and all he knew about sleers and their life cycles. One day he would write a book about it all, to add to the collection kept in the Rondure library—but not yet, not while there was still so much to see. He continued enthusiastically, ‘The second-stage creature, as you are aware, splits itself for mating: each half moving on four legs. The rear section can then go off to mate with the rear sections of other sleers, while the feeding or hunting end continues about its business—the two sections still communicating by low-frequency bio-radio. Once rejoined after mating, the whole creature lays eggs in a cave or burrow in which it will dump paralysed prey. Nymphs—first-stage sleers—then hatch out and feed on this preserved food. After many years, and for reasons I’ve not yet fathomed, a second-stager again encysts, and transforms into the third stage. These lay eggs in a similar manner, but out of them hatch second-stage sleers.’
‘What are they like then, these third-stage creatures?’
‘Bigger, inevitably. The first one I killed was three metres long. Its carapace was dark grey, rather than bearing the usual sand-coloured camouflage, and another pair of legs had ridden up beside its head to form pincer arms that act just like that punch axe you carry. And of course it now ran on six legs. It did that.’ Anderson pointed to the rim of his sand hog’s carapace where two large puncture holes had been filled up with a web of the epoxy strips normally used to shoe a sand hog’s feet. Tergal observed this damage silently, then his gaze slid up to the long case fixed further up the carapace.
‘How did you kill it?’
‘Not with that—I got that later.’ Anderson waved a hand at the case. ‘I hadn’t properly learned my trade then, so used my fusile. Luckily the creature was more interested in my mount than in me, and it clung on even as I kept reloading to shoot bullet after bullet down its gullet. Meanwhile Bonehead slid his feeding head underneath it, and chewed on its guts. While that was happening its breeding section broke away and ran off on two legs—I never knew what became of that.’
Anderson had noted one of Bonehead’s two eye-palps—which had extruded from its sensory head earlier as they first came in sight of the sleers—turning towards him during this conversation. It seemed that, after contact with a few human generations, sand hogs would begin to understand human speech. The irony was that after coming to understand their riders fully, the beasts often ended up abandoning them and heading off into the wilderness.
He continued, ‘Had it directly attacked me, there was little I could have done—it would have winkled me out of this armour easy as eating a sand oyster.’
Staring into the shade that lay between the Sand Towers, Tergal asked nervously, ‘So we could encounter such creatures here?’
‘It’s a distinct possibility. And we might even encounter a droon or an apek, or even a fourth-stage sleer.’
‘You only find apeks near lakes,’ argued Tergal. ‘And droons are either extinct or a myth. As to fourth-stage sleers, I’ve not even heard such a myth. Don’t tell me: your hog here lost its claw to one?’
‘No, an apek took that over by Lake Cooder in Bravence. And I’ve myself seen drawings of fourth-stage sleers—and droons—but I’ve never heard of any who have encountered them.’
‘Which probably confirms they don’t exist.’
‘Either that, or not many have survived to tell the tale.’
* * * *
The reception committee consisted of technicians working in the docking tower who, upon seeing Mr Crane step out behind Skellor, suddenly decided to get busy about other tasks. He saw that all three men wore Dracocorp augs, and supposed the source of that bright point in the aug network had sent them to assess this new visitor. Now ignoring them, he strode on towards the security arch spanning the gangway leading to the centre of the tower. The arch was to alert the station AI to anyone entering with lethal biologicals or weapons capable of damaging the structure of the station itself. Skellor did not want to know what it might make of him or Crane and, stopping before it, he pressed his hand against the device’s white anodized surface. From his palm, Jain nanofilament eased between the molecular interstices of the metal, and spread, invading optics and tracking them back to the controlling submind.
Too late, that same mind became aware of the invasion. Skellor isolated it and linked, erased its immediate memory and substituted one comprising a single inoffensive human stepping through the security arch. With his other hand he waved Air Crane ahead of him. He then raided the submind for information about the station and its residents, delaying its restarting for
a few seconds before pulling his hand away, the filaments stretching and snapping back as if he had just pressed his palm into treacle. He stepped through himself and, glancing back, noticed that two of the technicians had been watching him. They would have no idea what he had done, but they would certainly know he had done something, for there had been no alarm raised on the detection of a large armoured Golem.
Beyond the arch, the long high corridor, lit by spider-web lights inset in the ceiling, terminated at the mouth of a dropshaft. Stepping past and to one side of Crane, who was now peering down into the well, Skellor inspected the control panel. He chose ‘Main Concourse’, then stepped in. Descending, he glanced up to see Crane step into the shaft, clamping his hand down on his head as if he expected his hat to be blown off, but there was no air-blast as the irised gravity field rigidly took hold of him.
Exiting the shaft, Skellor surveyed a large open area floored with mica-effect tiles, its high ceiling supported by bulbous pillars reminiscent of the Bradbury Hotel on Earth, the lighting web extending across the ceiling giving it the illusion of depth. Spread across this expanse were seating areas, trees of all varieties growing in small walled gardens, bars and open-plan restaurants, and all around the edges, between the many exit tunnels, were lighted shop fronts. Right in the centre, in a circular lawn kerbed with polished agates, grew a huge baobab under whose low branches people rested or picnicked.
Skellor immediately noted that many people were eyeing him and Mr Crane. He was not worried over this—the nexus of the Dracocorp network would not get the time to react appropriately. He closed his eyes and, using those devices grown inside his body, mapped signal strengths throughout the station. He again created the virtual sphere, then input the blueprint of the station he had taken from the submind, deforming the sphere to fit it. The central glowing point was ahead, higher up and to his left. He made for the relevant tunnel, Crane dogging his footsteps like Dr Shade.
The tunnel, sectioned like a pipe and lit as elsewhere, had coloured lines traced along the edge of the mica floor to provide directions for those without augs. Checking the blueprint, Skellor saw he would have to take the next dropshaft leading to the floor above. Around the mouth of this shaft loitered people wearing Dracocorp augs.
Now for the reaction. Skellor first alerted Mr Crane, then inside himself recalled a stored viral program he had used aboard the Occam Razor. No longer being part of a large Jain structure as well as a Polity dreadnought, he did not have the transmission power he had used in the Masadan system. Back on the Razor a touch to any one of the Dracocorp augs worn by Separatist prisoners had been all he required to take control of them all—but theirs had been a nascent network, with no individual yet gaining ascendance. In the Masadan system it had been necessary for him to take control through the Hierarch, who was also the one in control of the aug network, which he had done through the sheer power and bandwidth of the transmitters available on the Occam Razor. Here, he must touch the ascendant Dracocorp aug and, to get to the individual wearing it, he suspected he would leave a trail of blood.
As he reached the dropshaft, seven people turned towards him. He scanned them at a low level, and saw that all of them were armed. He noted how they had prepared for Mr Crane: two of them carried APW handguns, and another a mini-grenade launcher. But they had carried out no scan themselves, and were reacting only to what they were seeing: a human and a simple, though large, metalskin Golem.
One of them stepped forwards; a catadapt man with a mane and feline eyes. He grinned, exposing fangs.
‘Welcome to Ruby Eye,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you’d like to explain how you came aboard without Security becoming aware of him.’ He gestured at Mr Crane.
Skellor halted. This man was carrying an APW; Skellor also noted that in a pouch attached to his belt he carried a Dracocorp aug. No doubt they assumed that the lack of a reaction to him by the security of this station meant he was a Polity agent. He linked through to the big Golem, to give instructions, and then saw that they were not required. Crane had already picked up from him the result of the scan and was ready to act.
‘By what authority do you ask that question?’ he asked, taking a pace closer.
‘The authority of Nalen, who, despite what the Polity might think, runs this station.’ The man drew his APW handgun from inside his puffed coat, and held it down to his side. ‘And Nalen would like to meet you — but with suitable precautions in place.’
Precautions… The man meant Skellor wearing the Dracocorp aug, and to do that he would expose himself to Nalen’s inspection. Perhaps he could insert the virus through that link, but then again Nalen might be able to fend him off. It would have to be the bloody path. Mr Crane moved even before ordered.
The man had no time to raise his weapon. Crane went past him with a snapping sound, which might have issued from the Golem’s clothing—so fast did he move— but more likely from the man’s neck. He remained standing for a second—his expression bewildered as his head sagged, his shattered neck unable to support it. Crane hit the next APW wielder and hefted him screaming from the floor, a big brass hand turning in a bloody morass below his ribcage. Skellor advanced, in no particular hurry, and observed the one equipped with the launcher turning and bringing the weapon to bear from underneath his long coat. He fired—just as Crane turned the victim he was holding into the path of the shot. The screaming man exploded into something ragged and bloody. Crane threw the remnants at the one with the launcher. This second man was yelling as he tried to disentangle himself. Crane was by him, taking away his launcher, turning it round and driving it straight through his body. Even as he dropped the man, he turned and backhanded an assailant behind—a woman—who in an instant was a headless woman cartwheeling sideways through the air. A second woman drew her weapon and aimed at Skellor.
‘Tell it to stop!’
Skellor smiled, shook his head, disappeared.
‘Fuck! Fuck!’ the woman screamed, firing repeatedly at the spot where he had been standing. Then her gun was snatched away, disappearing, whereupon a single shot issued from one side, making a hole through her cheek and blowing out the back of her head. The two remaining people, a man and a woman—both dressed in the coveralls of runcible technicians—backed away, firing at Mr Crane and frantically screaming for help over their augs. Crane accelerated towards them, not because they were causing any damage to him, but more likely because of the holes they were putting in his coat. Reaching them, he grabbed both by their heads, then slammed them together. His hands met, palm to palm, in a wet explosion.
Standing to one side of Crane, Skellor reappeared. ‘You are impressive, Mr Crane,’ he said.
Crane scraped away the larger spatters of brain and pieces of bone from the front of his burnt coat. As he stood there, his exposed brassy skin darkened as it exuded Jain fibres—and in a few seconds the burns and tears on his coat had disappeared. Even the blood faded as if sucked away. Crane looked down, shook a piece of skull from the toe of his boot, offered no reaction to the words. Skellor immediately probed inside the Golem and, with what he found, considered destroying Crane there and then. Some of the Jain structure inside the Golem was no longer under Skellor’s control, hence the way Crane had used it. But Skellor stayed his hand, putting in place a program to alert him should any more of that structure be subverted by the Golem. Mr Crane, after all, was so very good at his job.
Skellor turned and walked towards the dropshaft and, not bothering to utilize panel or grav fields, which might well be under Nalen’s control, reached inside and grasped the maintenance ladder. Before following, Crane abruptly stooped and picked up the piece of skull he’d shaken from his boot, then gazed at it. They had all died, so he could not, in his twisted logic, gain a substantial icon. He tossed the skull fragment aside, and followed Skellor into the dropshaft.
8
The human mind operates within a brain that comes in a one-size-fits-all lump of meat. The AI mind operates from vessels as many and va
rious as are the different minds they contain. The basic Golem mind is stored in a ‘brain’ that is a fist-sized lozenge of crystal laced with s-con nanofilaments and micro-optics, semi-conducting laminates in their billions, power feeds and cooling tubes. It is roughly equivalent to a human mind, but eidetic and functioning ten times as fast, though limited by anthropomorphic emulation programs. Going by the old IQ system, the Golem comes in at about 150. But such methods of measurement are now almost irrelevant, as Golem can be upgraded and, with augs and gridlinks, even that lump of meat can transcend the limits imposed on it by evolution. Also, human minds can be loaded to silicon—become AI—and, if the rumours are true, AI minds can be loaded to human brains. And, in the end, it is difficult to know what to measure.
— Excerpt from a speech by Jobsworth
Completion… the symmetry… aesthetically pleasing.
Cormac swung his legs out of his bed and, swearing, stood up. ‘Jack, take us out of U-space and set up a communication link through the runcible network.’
The AI did not question the order, and Cormac immediately felt the lurch; the displacement as the Jack Ketch surfaced into realspace. For a second he thought that somewhere on the ship there was a fault in the shielding, for what he had just felt had been almost painful. Then he realized that might not be the true explanation; the feeling was probably all his own. Perhaps, like someone subjected to allergens for too long, he was becoming overly sensitized? He dismissed the thought—for the present.
‘Right, run a trace through the net and locate the Sparkind Golem called Cento.’
‘Bearing on our present mission?’ asked Jack’s voice, sounding leaden.
‘Symmetry—don’t you see? When she said it, I assumed she was talking metaphorically, vaguely, but what she was actually saying referred to something specific. To complete Mr Crane, to make him symmetrical and aesthetically pleasing, Skellor needs what Cento has.’