"I keep hearing rumours," I said. "About Gideon's health. Some people think that's why he's letting the cheap stuff hit the streets. Because he's too ill to manage his own lines of supply."
I hoped I had not said anything which would betray my ignorance of the true situation. But Ratko just said, "Gideon's still producing. That's all that matters right now."
"I won't know until I see him, will I?"
"He's not a pretty sight, I hope you realise."
I smiled. "Word gets around."
Chapter Thirty-Six
WHILE RATKO was leading us towards Gideon I allowed the next episode to happen. That was how it seemed, anyway: that now it was up to me when it happened, as if it were simply a case of digging through three-hundred-year-old memories, sorting them into something like chronological order and letting the next lot flood my mind. There was nothing jarringly unfamiliar about it any more. It was as if I half knew exactly what was going to happen, but just hadn't given the matter much recent thought, like a book I hadn't opened in a long time, but whose story could never completely surprise me.
Sky and Norquinco were climbing down from the shaft where they had emerged, negotiating the chamber's slippery, scalloped sides until they were standing near the shore of the red lake.
The maggot which rested in the lake, tens of metres away, had just introduced itself as Lago.
Sky steeled himself. He felt a tremendous sense of fear and strangeness, but he was convinced that it was his destiny to survive this place.
"Lago?" he said. "I don't know. From what I gather, Lago was a man."
"I'm also that which existed before Lago." The voice, though loud, was calm and strangely lacking in menace. "This is difficult to say through Lago's language. I am Lago, but I am also Travelling Fearlessly."
"What happened to Lago?"
"That's also not easy. Excuse me." There was a pause while gallons of red fluid gushed out of the maggot into the lake, and then gallons more flowed up into the maggot. "That's better. Much better. Let me explain. Before Lago there was just Travelling Fearlessly, and Travelling Fearlessly's helper grubs, and the void warren." The tendrils seemed to point out the cavern's sides and ceiling. "But then the void warren was damaged, and many poor helper grubs had to be . . . there isn't any word in Lago's mind for this. Broken down? Dissolved? Degraded? But not lost fully."
Sky looked at Norquinco, who had not said a word since entering the chamber. "What happened before your ship was damaged?"
"Yes-ship. That's it. Not void warren. Ship. Much better." The mouth smiled horribly and more red fluid rained out of the creature. "It's a long time ago."
"Start at the beginning. Why were you following us?"
"Us?"
"The Flotilla. The five other ships. Five other void warrens." Despite his fear, he felt anger. "Christ, it's not that difficult." Sky held up his fist and opened his fingers one at a time. "One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Understand? Five. There were five other void warrens, built by us-by people like Lago-and you chose to follow us. I'd like to know why."
"That was before the damage. After the damage, there were only four other void warrens."
Sky nodded. So it understood something of what had happened to the Islamabad , anyway. "Meaning you don't remember it as well?"
"Not very well, no."
"Well, do your best. Where did you come from? What made you latch onto our Flotilla?"
"There've been too many voids. Too many for Travelling Fearlessly to remember all the way back."
"You don't have to remember all the way back. Just tell me how you got where you did."
"There was a time when there were just grubs, even though there had been many voids. We looked for other types of grub but didn't find any." Meaning, Sky assumed, that there had been a time when Travelling Fearlessly's people had crossed space, but not encountered any other form of intelligence.
"How long ago was this?"
"Ages ago. One and a half turns."
Sky felt a chill of cosmic awe. Perhaps he was wrong, but he strongly suspected that the maggot was talking about rotations of the Milky Way; the time taken for a typical star at the current distance from the galactic centre to make one complete orbit. Each of those orbits would take more than two hundred million years . . . meaning that the grub's racial memory-if that was what it was-encompassed more than three hundred million years of space travel. The dinosaurs had not even been a sketch on the evolutionary drawing board three hundred million years ago. It was a span of time that made humans, and everything humans had done, seem like a layer of dust on the summit of a mountain.
"Tell me the rest."
"Then we did find other grubs. But they weren't like us. Not like grubs at all, really. They didn't want to . . . tolerate us. They were like a void warren but . . . empty. Just the void warren."
A ship with no living things aboard it.
"Machine intelligences?"
The mouth smiled again. It was quite obscene, really. "Yes. Machine intelligences. Hungry machines. Machines that eat grubs. Machines that eat us."
Machines that eat us.
I thought of the way the maggot had said that; as if all it amounted to was a mildly irritating aspect of reality; something that had to be endured but which could not really be blamed upon anyone. I remembered my revulsion at the thought of the maggot's defeatist mode of thinking.
No-not my revulsion, I told myself. Sky Haussmann's.
I was right-wasn't I?
Ratko led the three of us through the crudely excavated tunnels of the Dream Fuel factory. Now and then we passed through widened chambers, dimly lit, where workers in glossy grey coats leaned over benches so densely covered with chemical equipment that they resembled miniature glass cities. There were enormous retorts filled with litres of dark, twinkling blood-red Dream Fuel. At the very end of the production line, neat racks of filled vials waited ready for distribution. Many of the workers had goggles like those worn by Ratko, specialised lenses clicking and whirring into place for each task in the production process.
"Where are you taking us?" I said.
"You wanted a drink, didn't you?"
Quirrenbach whispered, "He's taking us to see the man, I think. The man runs all this, so don't underestimate him-even if he does have quite an unusual belief system."
"Gideon?" Zebra asked.
"Well, that's part of it," Ratko said, obviously misunderstanding her.
We passed through another series of production labs, and then were led into a rough-walled office where a wizened old man lay-or sat, it wasn't immediately clear-before an enormous, battered metal desk. The man was in a kind of wheelchair: a brutish, black, armoured contraption which was simmering gently, steam whispering out of leaking valves. Feedlines reached from the chair back into the wall. Presumably it could be decoupled from them when he needed to move around, gliding on the skeletal, curved-spoke wheels from which his chair was suspended.
The man's body was hard to make out under its layers of aluminised blanketing. Two exquisitely bony arms emerged, the left placed across his thigh, the right toying with the army of black control levers and buttons set into one arm of the chair.
"Hello," Zebra said. "You must be the man."
He looked at each of us in turn. The man's face was skin draped over bone, worn almost parchment-thin in places, so that he had a strangely translucent quality to him. But there was still an aura of handsomeness to him, and his eyes, when they finally looked in my direction, were like two piercing chips of interstellar ice. His jaw was strong, set almost contemptuously. His lips quivered as if he were on the verge of replying.
Instead, his right hand moved across the array of controls, depressing levers and pushing buttons with a dexterity that surprised me. His fingers, though they were thin, looked as strong and dangerous as the talons of a vulture.
He lifted his hand from the levers. Something started happening inside the chair, a rapid noisy clatter of mechanical switches. When
the clatter stopped the chair began to speak, synthesising his words with a series of chime-like whistles which-if you concentrated-could be understood.
"Self-evidently. What can I do for you?"
I stared at him in wonder. I had been assuming that Gideon would be many things, but I had never imagined anything like this.
"You can fix us the drinks Ratko promised," I said.
The man nodded-the movement was economical, to say the least-and Ratko went to a cupboard set into a rocky niche in one corner of the office. He came back with two glasses of water. I drank mine in one gulp. It didn't taste too bad, considering it had probably been steam only a little while earlier. Ratko offered something to Zebra and she accepted with clear misgivings, thirst obviously suppressing concerns that we might be poisoned. I put the empty glass down on his battered metal desk.
"You're not quite what I was expecting, Gideon."
Quirrenbach nudged me. "This isn't Gideon, Tanner. This is, well . . ." and then he trailed off before adding weakly, "The man, like I said."
The man punched a new set of orders into the chair. There was more clattering-it went on for about fifteen seconds-before the voice began to pipe out again, "No, I'm not Gideon. But you've probably heard of me. I made this place."
"What," said Zebra. "This maze of tunnels?"
"No," he said, after another pause while the chair processed the words. "No. Not this maze of tunnels. This whole city. This whole planet." He had programmed a pause at that point. "I am Marco Ferris."
I remembered what Quirrenbach had just told me about the man having an unusual belief system. Well, this certainly fitted the bill. But I couldn't help but feel some sneaking empathy with the man in the steam-driven wheelchair.
After all, I wasn't exactly sure who I was any more.
"Well, Marco," I said. "Answer a question for me. Are you running this place, or is Gideon in charge? In fact, does Gideon even exist?"
The chair cluttered and clacked. "Oh, I am definitely running this place, Mister . . ." He dismissed my name with a minute wave of his other hand; too much trouble to stop mid-sentence and query me. "But Gideon is here. Gideon has always been here. Without Gideon, I would not be here."
"Well, why don't you take us to see him?" Zebra said.
"Because there is no need. Because no one gets to see Gideon without excellent reason. You do all your business through me, so why involve Gideon? Gideon is just the supplier. He doesn't know anything."
"We'd still like a word with him," I said.
"I'm sorry. Not possible. Not possible at all." He backed the chair away from the desk, the huge curved-spoke wheels rumbling on the floor.
"I still want to see Gideon."
"Hey," said Ratko, stepping forward to interpose between myself and the man who thought he was Marco Ferris. "You heard the man, didn't you?"
Ratko moved, but he was an amateur. I dropped him, leaving him moaning on the floor with a fractured forearm. I motioned to Zebra to lean down and help herself to the gun Ratko had been about to pull. Now we were both armed. I pulled out my own weapon, while Zebra aimed the other gun at Ferris, or whoever the man really was.
"Here's the deal," I said. "Take me to Gideon. Or take me to Gideon weeping in agony. How does that sound?"
He pushed and tugged at another set of controls, causing the chair to unplug itself from its steam feed-lines. I suppose there could have been weapons set into the chair, but I didn't think they would be fast enough to do him much good.
"This way," Ferris said, after another, briefer period of clattering.
He took us along more tunnels, spiralling downwards again. The chair propelled itself along with a series of rapid puffs, Ferris steering it expertly through narrow chicanes of rock. I wondered about him. Quirrenbach-and perhaps Zebra-appeared to accept that he was delusional. But then if he wasn't who he claimed, who was he?
"Tell me how you got here," I said. "And tell me what it has to do with Gideon."
More clattering. "That's a long story. Luckily it's one I've often been asked to recount. That's why I have this pre-programmed statement ready."
The chair clattered some more and then the voice recommenced: "I was born on Yellowstone, created in a steel womb and raised by robots. That was before we could transport living people from star to star. You had to be grown from a frozen egg cell; coaxed to life by robots that had already arrived." Ferris had been one of the Amerikanos; that much I knew already. That period was such a long time ago-before even Sky Haussmann's time-that, in my mind at least, it had begun to blend into a general historical background of sailing ships, conquistadors, concentration camps and black plagues.
"We found the chasm," Ferris told me. "That was the odd thing. No one had seen it from Earth's system, even with the best instruments. It was too small a feature. But as soon as we started exploring our world, there it was. A deep hole in the planet's crust, belching heat and a mixture of gases we could begin to process for air.
"It made very little sense, geologically. Oh, I've seen the theories-how Yellowstone must have been tidally stressed by an encounter with the gas giant in the recent past, and how all that heat energy in her core has to percolate to the surface, escaping through vents like the chasm. And perhaps there's some truth in that, though it can't be the whole story. It doesn't explain the strangeness of the chasm; why the gases are so different to the rest of the atmosphere: warmer, wetter, several degrees less toxic. It was almost like a calling card. That, in fact, is exactly what it was. I should know. I went down into it to see what was at the bottom."
He had gone in with one of the atmospheric explorers, spiralling deeper and deeper into the chasm until he was well below the mist layer. Radar kept him from smashing into the sides, but it was still hazardous, and at some point his single-seat craft had suffered a power lapse, causing it to sink even deeper. Eventually he had bottomed out, thirty kilometres beneath the surface. His ship had landed on a layer of lightly packed rubble which filled the entire floor of the chasm. Automated repair processes had kicked in, but it would take tens of hours before the ship could carry him back up to the surface.
With nothing better to do, Ferris had donned one of the atmosphere suits-designed to cope with extremes of pressure, temperature and chemistry-and had begun exploring the layer of rubble. He called it the scree. The warm, wet, oxygen-rich air was steaming up through the gaps in the rocks.
Ferris scrambled down, finding a route through the rubble. It was perilously hot, and he could have fallen to his death many times, but he managed to keep his footing and negotiate a route which took him down hundreds of metres. The rubble pressed down on the layers below, but there were always gaps he could squeeze through; places where he could anchor pitons and lines. The thought of dying was with him always, but it was only ever an abstract thing. None of the first-born Amerikanos had ever had to understand death; they'd never had to watch people grow older than themselves and die. It was something that they did not grasp on a visceral level.
Which was good. Because if Ferris had understood the risks a little better, and understood exactly what death entailed, he probably would not have gone as deeply into the scree as he had.
And he would never have found Gideon.
They must have expanded through space until they met another species, Sky thought-some kind of robot or cyborg intelligence.
Gradually, tediously, he got something resembling a coherent story out of Travelling Fearlessly. The grubs had been a peaceable, innocent starfaring culture for many millions of years until they had run into the machines. The grubs had expanded into space for arcane reasons of their own which Travelling Fearlessly was not able to explain, except to convey that they had little to do with curiosity or a need for resources. It seemed to be simply what grubs did ; an imperative which had been hardwired into them in evolutionary antiquity. They had no overwhelming interest in technology or science for their own sakes, seeming to get by on techniques they had acquired so long a
go in racial memory terms that the underlying principles had been forgotten.
Predictably, they had not fared well when their outlying colonies had encountered the grub-eating machines. The grub-eaters began to make slow incursions into grub space, pressuring the aliens to modify behaviour patterns that had been locked rigid for tens of millions of years. To survive, the grubs first had to grasp that they were being persecuted.
Even that took a million years to sink in.
Then, with glacial slowness, they began, if not to fight back, then at the very least to develop survival strategies. They abandoned their surface colonies and evacuated themselves entirely into interstellar space, the better to hide from the grub-eaters. They constructed void warrens as large as small planets. By and by they encountered the harried remnants of other species who were also being persecuted by the eaters, though they had a different name for them. The grubs appropriated technologies as it suited their needs, usually without bothering to understand them. Control of gravity and inertia had come from a symbiotic race called the Nestbuilders. A form of instantaneous communication had been bequeathed by a culture who called themselves the Jumper Clowns. The grubs had been sternly admonished when they had asked if the same principles might be extended to instantaneous travel. To the Jumper Clowns there was a fine, blasphemous line between faster-than-light signalling and travel. The one was acceptable within tightly specified parameters of usage. The other was an unspeakable perversion; a concept so distasteful that it caused refined Jumper Clowns to shrivel up and die in revulsion.
Only the most uncouth of young species failed to grasp this.
But for all the technologies that the grubs and their loose allies held, it was never enough to beat the machines. They were always swifter; always stronger. Now and then there were organic victories, but the general drift of things was always such that the grub-eaters would win.
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