It was faster than I was. It ducked the moment I started to move, correctly anticipating my action, and flattened itself along the ground. The heavy bullets scored its synthetic stone skin, gashing it to bare metal along its knobby vertebrae, and striking sparks. The long head on an even longer neck snaked forwards, and a sudden fan of spines burst erect around its head, needle sharp.
I recognized an electromagnetic pulse array. If I'd been operating on ordinary hardware it would have stalled me right there, but the bursts emitted had no effect on the organic Armour, although they interrupted 901’s connection very briefly.
I felt myself flicker rapidly, oscillating between safe and warm in bed and myself here, coldhearted and determined, a fury cyborg.
When the gargoyle saw its strategy was not working, it resumed its position blocking the door. I realized the state of play: as long as I didn't try and leave, it wouldn't do anything. But if the diary was that precious, it probably wouldn't do anything that might threaten to destroy it either.
As if on cue I heard the abbot's voice coming from a speaker somewhere behind St. Catherine. “If you put the book down, Petra will leave you alone.” He was back in worldweary mode, now that he was safe in his bunker. His cute name for the ten-foot horror only confirmed my assessment of his mental state.
I looked around more carefully. I was contained in a stone room only one-block thick all around. Even so, with that dog loitering there I didn't have time to make a hole anywhere. I'd have to go through it. I activated the gauntlet cutter, set the beam width to minimal on maximum power, and trained it on the gargoyle.
With a speed I couldn't follow it narrowed itself, extruding like a sausage, and leapt forward. One giant paw, with five long finger attachments, crunched into a fist around my hand. It got hold, but the beam died. Its head butted into my helm like an anvil and it threw me backwards, pinning me spreadeagle fashion to give me the least leverage against it.
It weighed a fucking ton. Well, 2.49 tons, but enough to make my shell structure strain under the pressure. As my skin pumped itself higher and the weight eased, I fished for breath and listened to myself creaking and expanding, lifting it fraction by fraction. It was amazing. But the speed of the beast bothered me. It must run on lightware.
“Who made you?” I asked of it, but there was no answer, and no maker's mark anywhere that my readouts could discover. I tried lifting myself, and it, with full power assist. My hands lifted about half an inch before they fell back.
The laser cutter was bent and useless under its paw. I could always cut my own hand off to get away, but that seemed a bit extreme. My other arm, the right, was pinned just above the wrist. Now that she had me, Petra herself was frozen. If the diary didn't move she probably wouldn't either. I could detach the right gauntlet and send it to detonate my grenades or fire its hand cannon, causing a diversion which might attract her away. By my calculations, I could take three minutes’ exposure to the gas on my skin before things started to get bad. But that seemed unlikely to work. I needed the firepower of the rifle.
I sealed Armour at my right wrist and detached the gauntlet. Rippling like a snake, the glove eased itself off my hand. The monster did not move. There was a small amount of hissing as I repressurized in a new array, trying to better withstand the crushing bulk of the robot. I heard scraping, dry noises as the glove dragged itself along, operating on a new program in the hand processor. There was a rattle and a scamper, and it was gone.
I determined that, no matter what, I must sever my hand in two minutes and fifty-nine seconds, should the glove not return. A rill of shock and dread coursed through me and I had another breakout.
I don't want to lose my fucking hand! Augustine was horrified. I need my hands to work. Especially the right hand.
And even through the painkillers and adrenalin he could feel the fingers there, cold outside the protection of the shell, beginning to twitch in real or imagined response to the poison vapour.
I realized things were going very badly. I was furious with Augustine, and in dread now of Soldier, and panic was rising. Carlyle was coming and we weren't going to make it.
“Shall I break the connection?” 901 asked.
“No,” I said desperately. How could I desert Augustine?
Zap.
I made a final attempt at breaking free by brute force. I succeeded in wasting power, and spurring the gargoyle to clamp my head in its jaws. The triangular teeth scraped against my helm like nails on a chalkboard, and my own astonished reaction was to feel violently and personally insulted. I activated my glue jets at the waist sector and began to spray the thing with a thick webbing, spanning between its upper arm and torso. When that was done I started on the next limb. Petra didn't feel a thing, apparently, and in the cool night air the glue solidified rapidly. Any tugs or jerks now exerted on it would trigger its polymers to tighten, and I doubted even it could break the bonding, unless it did it in the first move and chose to rip my head off.
There was a clanking from the devastated lift system as it cooled down. I was sharply aware of time counting down, and the beginnings of nausea from some of the poison which had sunk through my skin into my capillaries. With Petra immobile above me, and the orrery deep below me, I had to wonder again at Roy's spite for all automata and his systematic hatred for everything I admired about insentient engineering. But I couldn't believe Roy would ever make Petra. He would say she was a toy, despite her expert controller system, and he would pit a true AI against her any day. I never expected to be testing his faith for him, and I resented it.
My naked hand itched ferociously.
The gauntlet reappeared, moving carefully towards me under the suspended bulk of Petra. I was into double figures on seconds now. I could see that the gauntlet was dragging the rifle and I keyed straight into the gun, switching the magazine to shatter explosives. It was too late to put the glove on. It used my leg as a prop to brace the barrel, angling up into the gargoyle's jaw and neck. As the glove stabilized the gun and I triggered it, my countdown finally ran out.
I didn't feel a thing. Just a slight constriction around the wrist, numbed instantly by the pharmaceutical dispensers at my forearm, and then I forgot that as the gun started going off.
There was sound and light so strong that both blacked me out temporarily, overloading my receptors, but I didn't need senses; they'd had time. I only needed a burst of power from one side to topple the beheaded thing. It shifted. I felt a series of heavy impacts on my chest and abdomen, and portions of my torso flickered. Then I saw the stars, clear in the empty sky: Orion's belt and sword shining, the dogs at his heels.
As I picked up the rifle left-handed, I saw Augustine's right hand lying on the ground, limp and coronaed in scarlet. I was struck by how lifelike it still seemed. If the severed end were blocked from view, I might still easily imagine the rest of him lying in the rubble of the entrance. It did not seem like my hand, but it was. I looked and thought of this as beside me the gargoyle spasmed in stone-crunching fits, her feet inches from my back, scattering the debris of the roof and raising clouds of dust. There was no trace of her head, but the glue strands were already beginning to separate where they were thinnest.
I lurched away through the lidless gap of the door, ruined properly now, and saw that behind and to my right, the pristine bulk of the second gargoyle was closing rapidly. As I jumped two-footed to clear the heaps of masonry my rearview cameras picked it out clearly, leaping through the last of the antique glass in a window of St. Sebastian, scattering shards like water.
The explosive clip which had freed me and blasted me with shrapnel was all out. I keyed in again mentally to the gun's intelligence, and switched magazines to plasma shell as I turned, braced, and fired. It was all one continuous action, precise and perfect, and far in excess of anything I had believed myself capable of. I felt a wild exhilaration, almost a joy, in the ease of it all as the rocket shells burst into ion flowers one after another, blooming towards the spinal
power packs. I saw the thing's primary storage cells liquefy and give off a burst of glorious green and blue incandescent gas. But the gargoyle was virtually on me anyway. Powerless, its momentum flung it onwards over me. Legs crumpling, head collapsing, tumbling down with neck spines out—I saw the stars again, but just for an instant before they were blocked out.
It's a very strange thing to know that you're in a lot of pain but not able to feel it. Frightened, you expect it to fade in slowly, just like when you whack your thumb with a hammer. See it first—wait—then agony. But the agony was on infinite delay. Armour was now only two-thirds functional, chest badly damaged, but the book was safe. With difficulty I struggled out from beneath the twitching bulk of Peter and noticed with irritation that Petra was moving again, her legs sweeping a clean space in the crypt entrance. That was small fry, however, compared to the urgent readings all around me which said that there was a significant power surge building up. The whole abbey field generator was charging itself and there was no way I could get clear of it in time, even at a flat-out run.
I looked up, hoping to see Carlyle, and sent an SOS via 901.
A figure appeared at the head of the stairs. Croft. He shouted at me, “Drop the diary and you will be free to go. Otherwise the field disruptor will kill you. Once you are dead, we will cut open the suit and collect the book. I am sure you realize you have no time to escape.”
There was no useful round left in the rifle except bullets, and I didn't intend to shoot him. I slung it across me by its strap and took up one of the grenades I had stowed away before. I couldn't open the damaged chest compartment one-handed, so I held the grenade against it as hard as I could and depressed the pin with my thumb.
“You switch the generator on, and I blow it to hell.” Action was so easy, even if the words were trite. I was kind of surprised I'd never tried it more often.
There was a pause. The generator was ready to go. From the dark of the west transept the bulk of Petra appeared, headless but steady. It walked clear of the mess and sat down patiently, awaiting its master's voice.
My thumb started to ache. Soldier's power was running low. The pin was a pathetic ten pounds, but Augustine's hands weren't made for strength; they were made for delicate work and I was exhausted. I didn't think I could hold it long unassisted.
“I'm losing my grip here,” I informed Croft, “so you'd better make your mind up fast.”
I wondered if I really would kill myself. No, it wasn't worth it. I'd lob the grenade if I had to. But he didn't know that. There was a silence in which I watched Petra, and saw the broken spines around her severed neck joggle in the cold sea wind. I began to edge further away from the ruins and into clear space to give myself a chance of rescue. Carlyle's ETA was nearly on me.
With unnerving ease Petra got up and began to cross towards me at a slow walk. I could hear her claws scraping the delicate mosaics through their coating of grass.
“Perhaps it is the will of God,” Croft speculated.
“I don't see your mutt going back to its kennel,” I said. I was receiving a clear signal from 901 now, telling me that Bush was angling down from high altitude. Meanwhile my thumb muscle was quivering. I could feel its weak, involuntary jumping every few seconds.
Croft held something up. “I could give you your hand back,” he said, “whilst there's still time to save it.” I wished I had shot him when I had the chance.
Petra sidled around a column, her forelimbs and hands flexing with each step, eager for my throat. She crouched, edging nearer when she thought I wasn't paying attention, her hindquarters bunched. Despite her lack of head I was sure her plan was to wrest the grenade away from the book, or bat it to a safe distance with her paw so she could safely kill me or let the generator do its work. A glance at the crypt confirmed that Croft was gone. They were ready to make their move.
“Back away from her slowly,” 901 advised, “and keep her at the limit of her jump range. You're out of there in twenty seconds.”
I heard the concussive thump from the cemetery as two ground-launch missiles leapt into the air after Carlyle's still invisible jet.
“I have them,” 901 said unexpectedly.
It shot their guidance systems by targeting them with a satellite-defence system beam none of us knew the Company had possessed—typical.
I was doing everything I could to channel power to the thumb on my left gauntlet and to rest my actual thumb. When Bush made her pass, I would have to use all of the energy left to polarize my backplate so that the line magnet pickup would get me, and not Petra. Then I would have to hold the grenade or throw it. At the same time Petra would make her pounce and the field generator would come on. I would have to use the grenade to throw her off and pray that the plane could get me out of range of the field. Numbness was spreading through me from my core outwards. I couldn't feel my chest or neck any more, as increasing doses of analgesics pumped slowly into my suffering torso. I could have known the full extent of my injuries, but I deliberately blocked them from my mind.
“I bet you're glad you don't have a body now,” I said to 901.
“Maybe so,” it replied. “Carlyle will drop you at Fylingdales. Dr. Billingham and the ground medevac will take you from there. Under the terms of the Test Unit Code this mission is still a secret matter. You will go to the specialist unit at Leeds Central, where the jacks were put in, for treatment and debriefing.” There was a pause and it added, “Of course, the Company knows about your involvement with Carlyle and Helping Hands, even if they don't reveal it straight away. I would imagine that any future you would have with them will depend on whether you are prepared to give them what you came here for. Their Net Techs searching in the Shoal and the network have been pursuing the Source with great vigour. I'm having a hard time restraining them, but I think I can keep them at bay for a while.”
The jet screamed down out of the sky on its side, trailing a long line of smartcable.
Petra's ravaged veins and wires pulsed and crackled with sparks as she crouched.
“Now,” 901 said.
I transferred all power to the backplate. My thumb didn't last a second, but it didn't matter because it had a two-second fuse. Petra was already halfway into her leap, paw outstretched for the grenade.
The magnet on the end of the plane's line crashed through a section of fine filigree lattice and yanked me off my feet and backwards with a jerk that winded me. At the same moment I threw the grenade in Petra's direction, and the field generator became active and filled a space the size of a stadium with the inaudible destruction of oscillating five-to-twelve hertz—at the last not a new technology but a dinosaur of a design which immersed my feet to the ankle for a split second and shook them to pieces. Petra, at the apex of her leap, was hit by the grenade's blast and thrown to the ground.
The plane shot out over the sea, trailing me like a toy. I pressed my left hand to my chest, over the book, and cursed Roy Croft and all his works.
I heard Nine's voice, “I think that's enough,” and it did something Soldier hadn't time to counter.
We fell apart. I wanted to keep the connection, and remember blathering to 901 about it, begging for information, but it remained stubbornly silent.
Heavy, weak, breathless, and shaking with shock, I came around to myself slowly. The whole experience was overwhelming and for a long time I couldn't make a single thought of any kind stay long enough in my head to make sense. I lay and looked at the blank wall and hot water ran out of my eyes and turned the pillow cold under my soft, useless cheek.
The combined effects of the last few days hit me with a vengeance. I stayed in my room and saw no one except Lula until an hour before the plane was due to leave for Strasbourg. The work I had to come up with for Klein and the committee was mostly done for me by 901, and I excused myself from their actual presence by claiming a stomach bug and exhaustion. I guess they were pleased not to have to deal with a vomiting, rude, and angry psychologist shoe-ruiner because there were
no complaints about it.
My biggest worry was Augustine and the diary.
901 informed me that the suit was so damaged that the diary lay, undetected, inside the chest cavity. They thought that we had gone for information, not a physical object.
I followed Augustine's progress with 901’s help as he was safely taken to OptiNet's secure hospital research facility in Leeds Central, hidden away in one of the office blocks the Company owned, and protected from prying eyes by a labyrinthine security system of corridors and desks. From one warren to another.
Billingham sent me a short message: “Condition stable. Loss of hand and both feet. Prosthetics requested and underway. Psychiatrist concerned at bad pattern matching, but will advise more later. Suit mostly salvaged.”
“Sod her bloody suit,” I said to 901. “What the hell is going on down there? Did you send him my messages?”
“I believe he has read your notes and is in relatively good health,” it said, using the implant only, “but I've received no replies. It may be that the hospital computer is censoring outgoing mail at the request of the psychiatric officer.”
“Can you get me more news on that?”
“I'm afraid not.” Which was so unusual it must be true, and wasn't worth questioning.
As for the Greens, they would have to wait until the trial was over to see if it was time to kill me or make a demand for the diary. Either way, I was in debt to them, and nothing I sent them by way of an excuse or an explanation got more of a reply than a response to tell me they'd read it.
And so I festered, irritable, guilty, self-pitying, and worried sick, living off potato chips and tea and being surly to anyone who tried to talk to me. I took the pattern-matching test myself, in which responses to a variety of psych questionnaires were compared with a previous set of answers I had done before encountering Armour or Soldier. They showed a marked increase in paranoia, speed of decision-making, and the kind of judgmental attitude that wouldn't have put me out of place at the Spanish Inquisition, even if my analyses were, on the whole, more sophisticated and less damning. (Cheers, Soldier—nice one.) But, on the other hand, where I would wallow in excesses of fruitless speculation and nuances of detail to no profit, I was now proven far more accurate and fast in the assessment of ongoing social situations.
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