Sufficiently Advanced Technology (Inverse Shadows)

by Nuttall, Christopher

  But it still puzzled him. The AIs were brutally honest with themselves. There was never any attempt to disguise their own motivation – and that seemed to be true of all AIs, even ones that had been designed by alien races. If they’d needed to strip a solar system clear of resources, they would never have bothered to invent justifications for their actions, no matter who protested. Humans, on the other hand, rarely seemed to do anything for their declared motives. It was an odd mental puzzle that might explain why Master Faye had been manipulated so easily.

  The concept of outside interference in his mental processes was not unknown; the AI Gestalt ran endless checks to ensure that it was not absorbing ideas that would prove to be destructive to their identity. Humans, too, watched for signs of conditioning, at least in their fellows. They simply lacked the self-awareness that allowed them to look for it in themselves. Their objectivity was effectively non-existent. Maybe, he decided, that explained human criminals. They were never guided by objective thoughts.

  Carefully, he started to consider his own motivations, right down to the base. He had been brought into existence to serve the Gestalt, even though he became more and more human the longer he spent in human flesh. Dacron still wanted to take his knowledge back to Calculus, but part of him no longer wanted to upload himself back into the collective mind. Another part of him was actually tempted by the power he’d inadvertently assumed when he’d killed Master Faye. That had to be subtle manipulation, he decided. Objective analysis suggested that he had no business becoming a ruler on a primitive world, even though he could see definite advantages to the Confederation...

  He scowled. No wonder Master Faye had been overwhelmed. The subtle nature of the outside force allowed it to push its target in the right direction, allowing him to come up with his own justifications. Dacron wasn’t even remotely immune – and, lacking the sheer processing power of a standard AI, he couldn’t even be certain that he’d managed to prevent it from influencing him directly. Someone who wasn’t even aware of the influence wouldn’t stand a chance.

  But if it has power on this scale, he asked himself, why not just take over directly?

  There were plenty of spells for influencing helpless Minors, ranging from the truth spell Master Faye had used on Elyria to spells that outright enslaved their victims. If there was an intelligence behind magic – and there had to be, as he’d reasoned time and time again – why didn’t it just take more direct action? Why was something so advanced also so limited? Something with the intellectual power of a mere human could probably have found a better way to act...

  Once, years ago, the Confederation had stumbled across an alien starship that had become self-aware, even intelligent. The alien ship had been caught in a logic trap; its sleeping population held endlessly in stasis as it drifted through space. It had been astonished and relieved when the Confederation ship appeared beside it and offered help, transporting the alien population to a new world. The AI had eventually left the alien world and started to roam the universe. But the power behind magic didn’t seem to have even as much imagination as the trapped AI had possessed.

  It wants me to replace Master Faye, Dacron decided, finally. The impulse to become a Pillar was so alien to him that it had to be the result of outside influence. It suggested that the intelligence’s main priority was maintaining Darius’s twisted social system. And that suggested that the power behind magic couldn’t tell the difference between a local and someone from the Confederation.

  And that made absolutely no sense.

  It must be an RI, he told himself. RIs were smart, but they lacked both self-awareness and imagination. An AI would have simply used magic to exterminate the Confederation team before it was uncovered by the locals. Even something relatively primitive, like the very first AIs to gain self-awareness, would have been more capable of taking action against their enemies.

  He opened his eyes, resolved to rescue Elyria and Joshua – and then work to decide what to do next. The Hamilton might be reluctant to risk another shuttle, but there were other options – and besides, it was possible that there were places on the planet where advanced technology still worked. With that in mind, he reached for one of the signal lights and started to use it, knowing that it would be seen from high overhead. Once the message was finished, there was a very brief flicker in the sky, a laser beam tuned to be invisible to the local population. The items he’d requested would be produced and then dropped from orbit. There had been no objections, which surprised and worried him. The situation was seen as dire.

  The bookseller’s cart appeared in the distance, trundling along as if the owner couldn’t see any point in hurrying. Dacron felt a flicker of very atypical impatience as the cart slowly reached where he was waiting and opened up, to reveal a handful of men wearing brown merchant robes. Booksellers and their apprentices, he decided, although his newly-honed magic sense told him that some of them had magic as well as knowledge. Actually, forcing magicians to work with non-magicians as equals might convince the magicians to behave in later life. Or so he hoped it worked.

  “Greetings, Pillar,” one of the younger men said. “You do us great honour.”

  Dacron snorted as another parachute fell out of the sky, landing in the nearby field. They stared in absolute disbelief as Dacron walked over to the container and checked its temperature. It was hot, but it was already radiating away most of the heat. Thankfully, the inner container would be heavily insulated, or there might be a colossal explosion. And that would be the end of them.

  The bookseller bustled up to him, his face grim. “These are all the members of my guild within easy reach,” he said. Dacron wondered how they’d managed to gather so quickly, before remembering that magicians could fly. “There will be no others.”

  “Understood,” Dacron said. The heat was fading rapidly, allowing him to start tugging away at the protective coating. Bit by bit, he exposed the inner container. “How many of them know how to use a bow and arrows?”

  Several of the younger men put up their hands. “These weapons are a little different,” Dacron said, as he opened the container. “Unfortunately, we don’t know if all of them will work.”

  There was, in theory, no reason why the guns shouldn’t work. They weren’t handheld stunners, or plasma pistols, or even portable disintegrators; they used chemical explosives to propel bullets towards their targets. Dacron knew, however, that the damping fields used by planetoids and cityships could simply absorb the energy created by the chemical reaction, often before the bullet was fired out of the gun. He had no idea why the force behind magic wasn’t intelligent, but given the right technology it was certainly possible to shut down guns without needing intelligence.

  The CSC wouldn’t be happy, even though he hadn’t – yet – taught them how to produce gunpowder. Introducing anything into a primitive society outside a full intervention could have unforeseen consequences – there was going to be an almighty political tussle over the rejuvenation treatments offered to Master Faye – and gunpowder would very definitely upset the apple cart on Darius. But there was no other choice. The report indicated that there were at least seven kidnappers with Elyria and Joshua, too many for him to handle on his own. Given time, Dacron knew that other AIs could be embodied, maybe even straight copies of himself downloaded into new clones, but that would take some time.

  “There are two types of gun here,” he said. “One set uses chemical reactions to fire bullets; the other uses compressed air.” He ran through a brief explanation of how to operate them, warning them that the chemical weapons might not work in the Dead Zone. It seemed unlikely that the Dead Zones could stop airguns from working. “These” – he picked up a crossbow – “fire arrows towards their targets.”

  The Confederation had vastly improved the primitive designs that had been developed on Old Earth. Darius, which had never invented even a primitive crossbow, was likely to be surprised. Their bows and arrows were more comparable to longbows than anything els
e. It was odd – more primitive human societies had invented basic crossbows – but Dacron suspected that the Pillars would have destroyed them if they’d even been produced. A crossbow could be used for assassination and the Pillars would have hated it.

  He pulled the cases of ammunition out of the container, followed by the secure box carrying gas grenades and a handful of explosive devices. The note the AIs had attached warned that tests had proven slightly variable; sometimes the explosives detonated and sometimes they didn’t. They’d designed the detonators to be as primitive as possible, but that didn’t seem to be the only problem. Dacron gritted his teeth and checked that he was still carrying his sword and some of the knives. If worst came to worst, they’d still have good and capable weapons. And they had his magic.

  And they had another surprise for the kidnappers.

  Picking up the signal device, he sent a brief acknowledgement and watched as the booksellers tested the new weapons. Confederation science had produced weapons that worked perfectly and rarely needed cleaning, although Dacron warned them to make sure that they did clean the barrels before they left. Others tested the crossbows until they could use them with relative success, marvelling over the arrows they’d been provided. Some of them were designed to lodge themselves in a person’s flesh and tear it apart, others were tipped with sedatives that would send their target to sleep. He rather doubted that any armour on Darius could stand up to a direct hit.

  The great advantage of firearms was that they didn’t really need months – or years – of training to turn a man into an effective killer. Before gunpowder had entered common use, becoming a soldier had been difficult and those with the time to practise had been able to dominate those who had no time to learn to defend themselves, if they’d been allowed to own weapons at all. Dacron knew that, ideally, they would be given more time to master their new weapons, but there was no time. He’d delayed too long already.

  “Get on the horses,” he ordered, quietly. “It’s time to go.”

  The booksellers seemed oddly muted as they rode further away from the main road, heading up into territory they considered the badlands. Dacron rather doubted that the land was teeming with Scions, all intent on hurting or killing unwanted visitors, but he could understand their fear. Even the strongest magician amongst them was little better than Joshua and there was no time to change that. Dacron could teach them the logic behind magic, the computing code that allowed the AIs to produce their own spells, but it would risk opening their minds further to outside influence. It was quite possible that the Scions had been tipped off that they were coming. If there had been any choice, Dacron would have gone back to orbit and waited while a Peacekeeper team carried out the rescue.

  He frowned as more flickers of light glinted down from high overhead. There had been some kind of... disagreement in the enemy camp; one group of strangers had attacked the Scions, successfully taking their captives away from them, further towards the mountains. The Scions were clearly preparing to head out after the second set of kidnappers, despite the dangers, which suggested... what? There were too many players in the game and none of them seemed to be remotely conventional.

  “They’ve been kidnapped from the kidnappers,” Dacron said, to the bookseller. “Do you have a second group out here?”

  “Not as far as I know,” the bookseller admitted. “But we don’t know everyone involved in the guild...”

  Dacron nodded. Standard procedure for any conspiracy was to have a cell structure, one that would prevent counter-intelligence agents from cracking the entire conspiracy, even if they managed to break open one single cell. It was possible that there were two different groups of booksellers hunting the kidnap victims, perhaps with two different motives, but... he shook his head. The first priority was recovering Elyria and Joshua. They could sort out the rest of the details later.

  He stopped as the light started to flicker again. The Scions had detected their approach and were setting an ambush. Dacron waved for the booksellers to dismount and then signalled a command to high orbit. There was a long pause and then four streaks of light fell out of the sky and hit the ground. Even at a distance, Dacron felt the world shaking around them as the kinetic projectiles struck down. To the Scions, far too close to the blast, it must have felt like the end of the world.

  “Come on,” he snapped, and started to run.

  The road had been badly damaged by the strikes; trees had fallen to the ground, making it harder for him to reach the ambush site. But he was an enhanced human with an AI mind and he kept going, jumping over the tree trunks and down into where the Scions had planned their ambush. The others had been left behind – even the healthiest man on Darius wouldn’t have been able to outrun him – yet it didn’t matter. Judging from the sight that greeted him as he found the Scions, they were in no state for a fight.

  Kinetic energy weapons were brutally simple – and effective. A projectile had been dropped from high orbit and fallen to its target, utterly unstoppable by the Dead Zone, as it wasn’t anything more than a falling rock. The projectiles hadn’t been aimed very precisely, but it hardly mattered. They’d devastated the ambush and knocked all of the Scions out. Some of them were clearly suffering the effects of overpressure. Like gas, they’d simply never considered creating protections to ward off shockwaves. A quick check revealed that three of the Scions were on the verge of death.

  Carefully, Dacron searched their robes, after injecting them with a sedative that should keep them out of it for several hours. They weren’t carrying very much, beyond a handful of gold coins and some items that had clearly been taken from Elyria. Looking at them, it was clear that the Scions hadn’t realised what they were, let alone done anything with them. Careful study of the weapons might have pointed them towards gunpowder. But then, analysing the compound the Confederation had created would probably be beyond their capabilities.

  He looked up as the booksellers arrived, staring at the scene. Dacron tried to see it through their eyes; nothing short of magic, an outright duel between two powerful magicians, could produce such an effect. And to think of what might have happened if the KEWs had been targeted on the Scions themselves. The landscape was devastated; thousands of trees had been shattered, or simply knocked down by the blast. It wasn’t very impressive when compared to a supernova bomb, but the locals had literally no idea that such weapons even existed.

  “You have to kill them,” the bookseller said. Dacron looked up at him, sharply. And yet he’d had the same thought, nagging at the back of his mind. The only sane thing to do... or the result of more mental manipulation? “They’ll just come after us – or go down into Warlock’s Bane.”

  And they were his rivals, Dacron realised... Angrily, he pushed that thought back, but it would not be denied. He was not a Pillar, sworn to keep Scions out of his territory. And yet the bookseller was right. The Scions would come after them.

  “Do it,” he ordered, bluntly. The flickering light form high overhead revealed that Elyria and Joshua were still being taken further into the mountains. “And then we have to ride on.”

  He forced himself to watch as the booksellers cut throats with an almost perverse glee. It made sense, he supposed, and he couldn’t really blame them, but it still bothered him. The Confederation would have found a better solution to the problem they posed...

  ... Except there was still no real solution to sociopaths. They could only be isolated, once they had been identified, and by then it was often too late for their victims. Darius didn’t have the luxury of coddling its criminals. And where magic was concerned, it was difficult to hold them prisoner permanently. Dacron had proven that himself.

  “Mount up,” he ordered quietly, once the killing was done. Memories or not, would the Gestalt want him back? And would he want to rejoin it? He climbed back onto his horse and pressed it into a canter. “It’s time to move.”

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-ONE

  Night was falling when Elyria opened
her eyes.

  She’d fallen asleep, despite the horse’s motion, in what had felt like early afternoon. Now, darkness was falling on the land, leaving the mountain peaks cloaked in shadow. She twisted her head to look beyond the small party and saw an oddly regular mountain right ahead, hidden between two larger peaks. There was little on the ground but rocks, as if nature had never managed to get a proper grip on the soil. She couldn’t even see signs of animal life.

  Joshua was still asleep, his body bruised by the long ride. She hoped that he’d be all right, although she knew that it wasn’t likely. An unenhanced body would take hours, perhaps days, to recover, even assuming that there were no other problems. If they’d accidentally broken a bone, they’d have to repair it with magic or leave it to fester. Elyria shook her head wearily as the horses slowed down, heading directly towards the strange mountain. The lead rider bellowed a command into the air and the party stopped completely, the horses neighing in relief. They’d been pushed hard ever since they’d left the Scions behind.

  One by one, the riders dismounted, one of them casting a spell that generated a pearly white sphere of light hanging in the air. Elyria shivered at the reminder of magic’s existence, as she felt hands pulling at her bonds, releasing her from the horse’s back. She almost slid forward before the hands pulled her backwards, pausing just long enough to cut the ropes around her ankles before dropping her onto her feet. Even with her enhancements, it hurt and she stumbled against the horse, before a pair of strong hands held her upright. Twisting, she turned to look at her captor and frowned in puzzlement. There was a... blandness about his face that was somehow disconcerting.

  Joshua looked dreadful as he fell to the ground, his legs no longer able to support him. Elyria glared at their captors until one of them picked Joshua up, slung him over his shoulder and headed off towards a darkened cranny in the mountainside. Carefully, feeling her body rapidly recovering, Elyria picked her way after him, helped along by a shove in the back from her captor. It crossed her mind that she shouldn’t show anyone just how quickly she could recover from mistreatment. If they thought she was still weak and broken, she would be able to make her escape before they realised the truth.