Appleseed

by John Clute

  The traffic weather in Maestoso Tropic — Kirtt noted — remained fair, though some transit points were bottlenecked by arks, mostly of the Insort Geront sigil; most of the flow through the ratking tangle of wormholes that constituted Maestoso Tropic was westward, away from the plaque- mottled rim, westward down the Spiral Clade, into the light of galaxy centre, where the trade routes petered out at the edges of the known, in the murmuring of innumerable suns, beyond the ken of homo sapiens. Kirtt then passed on to the Universal Book a carafe of fictions — some in written form to be read by eye, some tiled for masques, most in hologram format for VR entry. Finally, whiffing attar, he uncovered a terabyte (locked in truly ancient chips) of music from Human Earth recently recovered from a frozen data haven ark which had been abandoned many centuries ago.

  Kirtt readied all this material for transfer to foam.

  Half an hour passed gainfully.

  The hatch buzzed, rousing Kirtt.

  Grinning its stiffish ghostly terracotta homo sapiens grin, Number One Son had returned ex-braid from its mission into the world-sea, in a cargo floater Kirtt glanced at via the hatch holo. Wedged like a beetle into one of the port’s access pods, the floater glittered with sigils of passage and toon decals. Its tongue protruded briefly in the normal ritual of supplication, allowing Kirtt to access its contents: two quantum battle Minds, as ordered, packed at close to absolute zero inside two steaming sigil-dense capsules of an exceedingly ancient marque.

  That was wrong.

  Kirtt had conveyed Freer’s purchase order, which was for one standard-issue modern Mind at a price he could not refuse, not two warriors from the dawn of time ― even assuming Minds of that vintage were available in Trencher, Freer would not have placed such an order without consulting his ship. The cost of even one Mind of genuinely ancient lineage could bankrupt Tile Dance.

  But the delivery toon was clear: two battle Minds, prepaid at the amount originally advertised, address Tile Dance, authorisation Freer. Any memory Kirtt might normally access of Freer changing his original order was blocked; but neither had any prohibition been logged. An override was possible. Freer was always buying gizmos, especially if they looked reasonably old; the storage cornices of Tile Dance were gradually filling up with clutter, the detritus of a thousand Industrial Ages; so there was no reason for the crippled Mind to baulk or bother him at this juncture.

  Number One Son galumphed into Tile Dance, visibly proud of itself, ambled down a spiral corridor past aquaria and butter lanterns marking cornice boundaries, into the lower bowels of the ship, where sigilla and eidolon coffins were arrayed, their interiors maintained at something close to absolute zero. Coffins holding half-formed sigilla/ eidolon units, rideable by either flesh or Mind, squatted next to half-grown Freer sigilla awaiting the call to become. Specialist units for extreme conditions — temperature- resistant frog-like bodies with scythes for arms; ectomorphic long-necked browsers with radar ears; standard grunt golems - peered through frosted permaglass. Number One Son’s coffin had opened in readiness. The sigillum stepped inside its home, which shut; discharged its memories; fell asleep. It became sere and yellow.

  Meanwhile Kirtt danced a standard parlay with Mowgli, which fed access codes into the ship without serious question. A sealed trolley exited Tile Dance, loaded the capsules, brought them in. The battle Minds were soon plugged safely into maintenance niches in Made quarters, next to Kirtt’s own physical entity, and began to undergo thawing. Astonishingly soon they began to respond to input, passed quickly through the traditional rites, signed their embedment concords. Even in chip mode, they were clean and elegant and savvy and tight — welcome fingerprints of their normal quantum behaviour. The swift savvy alacrity of their responses to the ordeal of initiation had, moreover, amply confirmed the ancient lineage their sigils claimed. As far as Kirtt’s half-crippled diagnostics could plumb, they tested loyal. Loyal unto death. For the time being, this had to be sufficient. Moreover, the battle Minds seemed to have suffered little in the way of ‘repairs’, nor had they been cannibalised at any time. There was no sign of rust in either of them. No plaquing, no Alzheimer.

  Although the two newly installed cores remained technically asleep, Kirtt activated their maintenance niches, allowing installation to begin. Within human seconds, a maze of connective nerves and ganglions wove swiftly through the ship. Billions of junctions were established with Kirtt’s own ship-wide web. During this procedure, Kirtt detected nothing false, no ringers in the towers in the realm of the Made; only time, time and sleep, and below time, and below sleep: grass.

  Once they left Trencher Law Well, once they were all enabled again at quantum level, they could reminisce.

  Then the tiles would dance.

  • • •

  The commander of the Insort Geront ark in spy orbit dared to contact Opsophagos of the Harpe themself at the helm of far-distant Alderede, in the midst of preparations for the next stage in the War of the Lens.

  Wrigglies rushed into mouths, as the commander bided their sibling’s hour.

  ‘Well?’ thundered the tripartite thorax in the ceiling, finally.

  ‘Honoured sibling,’ growled the commander, with bravery, stuffing its breakfast mouth to keep from eating the mouth that talked. ‘You wished to know when the transfer had been made.’

  ‘Yes?’ thundered the elder sibling, many light-years distant.

  ‘The battle Minds have been taken aboard.’

  There was a dreadful pause. Rain steamed down the commander’s flanks.

  ‘How many Minds? Plural? Plural? Plural?’

  The commander’s skin fissured.

  ‘Two, honoured sibling.’

  Opsophagos screamed wordlessly down the thorax. They screamed thrice. Then a small still voice of Opsophagos whispered in an ear of the commander:

  ‘Only one, sibling. Only one Mind is fixed. We inserted only one Mind into the data haven ark. There was no breach of integrity. Where did the other come from?’

  The commander’s suckers carved a triad of ones in their own skin. The small voice of Opsophagos’s tiniest and most deadly mouth began to repeat ones up the scale, and became supersonic.

  There was silence within the walls of the ark command warren, except for the slush of thick rain. The commander counted their remaining fingerlings.

  ‘Sibling,’ sounded the thorax triply at last, ‘use your final minutes to uncover the enemy entity which has become aware of our strategy. Cancel the goon show. There is no window left. We have no time to flush the enemy into space. Kill it inside Trencher. Take Trencher down if you must. Suture off the danger, with your last breaths bring down the fire, sibling! We are at risk.’

  The commander squashed themselves flat against the iron floor in a kowtow.

  ‘We are at terrible risk,’ said the thorax in voices thrice- dark with dread.

  ‘The War begins,’ said the thorax in voices rank with rust, harsher than iron, thrice harsher.

  The circuits shut.

  The commander chewed its thumbs in unison, a sign in any Harpe of profound shock. They could not be expected to follow orders with any efficiency. In any case, given the rigid protocols of command structure, it may have been too late to cancel the goon show.

  Meanwhile the commander prepared the ark for death.

  Kirtt slowly became certain there was something wrong, but did not seriously contemplate the intolerable risk of going quantum within Law Well and searching for a pattern.

  Tile Dance was now fully refuelled. That was okey dokey.

  She had Thirty Million Heartbeats of travel in her fuel matrices, a year’s worth (as time might once have been reckoned on Human Earth) of wandering. Okey dokey. Nothing wrong there. There should be enough fuel to get to Eolhxir and back, wherever the planet might be exactly - the contract stated only that it was located in a known sector of the galaxy, and that a Route-Only would be supplied — and the fuel was already paid for.

  The signature advance Kirtt had okay
ed down-galaxy, in the heat, had been sufficiently attractive to haul Tile Dance outwards from her normal stamping grounds, haul her up- galaxy and eastward into the rust, into sectors half frozen by plaque, all the way up to Trencher in the dark, where the contracted cargo awaited transshipment. The journey- cake cartel had refused on security grounds to reveal the destination world’s location, but otherwise the delivery of nanoforges to the planet Eolhxir seemed a routine enough contract. Tile Dance, a ship of ancient lineage, had the carrying capacity and range required. It seemed okey dokey. They were rich again, even after refuelling. It seemed okey dokey.

  Once delivery had been accomplished and paid for, Tile Dance would be free again to skedaddle westwards and inwards, back to the heart sectors, warm the bones of her homo sapiens and her ship Mind in the light of a billion stars in the enormous day of Time. There — under the battery of the music of the spheres, the unendurable sacred data-noise of galactic centre itself - there the heat would rise until it was an ecstasy to think. And when the heat became intolerable for flesh sapients — even humans with their thick deaf skins could not remain near galactic centre for more than a few hours without suffering fatal burns — a thousand wanderlust traces had been laid down long ago, traces a ship could follow into the cool, sidewards and outwards into unknown regions, till nothing could be perceived through senses Made or fleshbound, no matter how ancient, but the crippling silence of intergalactic space.

  That was life for Tile Dance. That was okey dokey.

  But here in the bowels of Trencher something stank.

  Kirtt instructed the data mice to end the game.

  Freer discovered he was in checkmate.

  —I sense a blockage, Kirtt murmured into its homo sapiens’s head.

  —So what’s new? said Freer, blinking Teardrop open again. —We’re up the asshole of a planet.

  —We can’t get delivery yet. It will take at least ten hours to icepick a Clearance Motor out of Mowgli.

  —Fuck. Is there a fingerprint?

  —Oh yes. Insort Geront, of course, Stinky, murmured Kirtt in its gravel-thin chip voice.

  —Well fuck me.

  The frieze of tiles rimming the heart of control centre shivered very slightly, and the gold grouting that marked the joining of tile to tile gaped into slits, through which free masks were able to slide sideways. A pierrot therefore raised its head above its element, slid through the grouting and burst into the three dimensions of the world, clearly ready to weep, weep, flutter like a bat.

  ‘Okey dokey,’ Freer said acoustic. ‘Okey dokey.’

  The walls soothed. The pierrot subsided back into its tile.

  —Fuck me, subvocalised Freer, but only for Kirtt to hear. —Why? What could Insort Geront want of us?

  —Tch, murmured Kirtt.

  —We’re simple multi-millionaire traders.

  —Tch.

  —All right, all right, said Freer. —The route to Eolhxir. The secret of the lens. A chance to terminate one more rogue Made Mind, dear Kirtt, and all your krewe.

  —Agreed, muttered the chip voice of the crippled Mind.

  —So what do we do?

  —I, said Kirtt, —will sit in solemn silence in a dull dark dock. You go be a tourist.

  —Inside this asshole?

  —You’ll be able to see which way the wind is blowing.

  —Fuck.

  —But you’ll go?

  —Make me ready, chip head, said Freer.

  The holograph cube in the middle of the glass island of control centre glowed suddenly, became a point of view approximately one hundred metres above Tile Dance, which was now surrounded by dozens of pink braid capillaries ready to take Freer anywhere in the world.

  He stood within the cube and gazed.

  Docking country spread out in every direction, amber and green, lustrous and polished, like a snakeskin seen from within, lit by a thousand beams ricocheting down from the surface. Translucent braids of every hue, like spaghetti in nulgrav, laced intricately through the vast chamber, ferrying flesh sapients and others by the hundred thousand hither and yon through the innards of the world. There were orange-tinted braids, variously subcoded for the breathing needs of a range of non-bilaterals; an extremely complex and numerous tangle of blue braids, also subcoded, for the commensal bilaterals who made up the vast majority of local flesh sentients; pink for the thick-aired oxygen-high homo sapiens braids, ringfenced for reasons of decorum from any other species; and dark maroon for government officials.

  —Looks like any other asshole planet, Freer murmured.

  But he felt prickly, as though the axons of the world around him in the holograph cube were literally tickling the back of his neck, like termites sucking for gravy. It was as though he could feel in his bones the thrum of the voices of the swallowed who swarmed in their billions up and down the translucent braids, pink and maroon and blue and orange, a billion sophonts decked out in their skin and mortality.

  Having no need for protection against vacuum, the aspects or Unfleshed — sigilla and eidolons and toons, tied entities and rogues, revenants in mirrorcam trance, caspers sucking up for love, freelance lifestory avatars on hire — floated everywhere, some propelled by rampacks, some (being immaterial) by the power of thought. They were innumerable. They congested the model of docking country in the holograph cube, glittering as flesh could not, for they were self-illuminated, their eyes were red or yellow, body sigils flashing at every movement.

  Beams shot constantly downwards from orbital mirrors into the tumbleweed chaos below, bouncing off the Unfleshed, whose flickering tattooed carapaces pulsed with code like hive queens on a spree, made them seem far more native to this inner world than the flesh sentients who owned them.

  And everywhere — inside braids of every hue, and in the vacuum atriums of docking country — smiley-faced polychromatic spring-heeled toons made their sales pitches, insistent and omnipresent, though they weren’t, of course, actually there.

  —Mallworld, said Freer.

  —It’s a living, murmured Kirtt in its raspy single voice.

  —Isolate pink, please.

  Kirtt reduced the gaze within the holograph to human braids, thousands of humans visible through the translucent walls, some standing still and allowing the braid to carry them, some on wheels, some in scooters. Many wore clothes. They were behaving as humans always behaved, individual males and females engaging relentlessly (though always as part of a conversation, via comm net, with invisible partners) in the unremittingly ingenious gestures of courtship normally found in any of the rare surviving species where reproduction and sexual intercourse might occur simultaneously. Whatever the ostensible goal of any human behaviour, what humans were actually doing always seemed to be one thing.

  Freer sighed. Time to go walkabout, in the pong.

  —Are we clean?

  —Randomised perpetual fumigation routines have been in place since we docked, murmured the ship Mind.

  —Not that it matters.

  —Not that it matters, Stinky. Data leaks.

  —Data leaks, Freer murmured, repeating the old catch- phrase, after a long pause, softly.

  Like any competent ship, Tile Dance was steamy with data. Here, deep within Trencher, a million probosces stroked her as though she were a sacred aphid ready to leak. She was a shrine. Data (which Made Minds deem sacred) left traces everywhere, Tile Dance was rich in traces, leaked traces like attar into the mouths of Trencher. The traces of the world were data, the world being beauteous. The universe was the sum of all the traces of everything the universe had ever been. Only connect ― only connect the contortuplication of the traces of every All the universe had ever been — and God would smile.

  Or so it was believed in some worlds.

  Tile Dance leaked the perfume of the living God.

  Freer cradled his scrotum absently.

  —Are we being sniffed? he said to his Mind.

  —Natch, Stinky.

  —Who’s sniffing us
?

  —Mowgli, Insort Geront, every press mandala in Trencher, tithe monitors, Uncle Tom Cobleigh.

  —Do we know where we’re going?

  —Nix, Stinky.

  —Has the Route-Only been downloaded?

  —Nix. No matter if it had. I won’t be able to open it till we’re quantum again. But the journey-cake will not make delivery until we are ready to leave.

  Freer knelt into the heart of the cube. He was glowing. He smelled like a human being.

  —Stinky?

  —Yeah?

  —I’ve been sorting the news, as well as I can, being half disabled down here. I think we’re in the middle of something. I think we — I mean you, Master Stinky — have suddenly become very important.

  —Because we will soon have a Route-Only to the Boojum.

  —Yes, Stinky.

  —And?

  —I believe you anticipated this when we were quantum, though I do not have full access to the thought processes we utilised to arrive at a decision. It seems you decided to order a new battle Mind. It has been delivered.

  —So?

  —Two, in fact, were delivered.

  —Nix. I ordered one, an absolute location Mind.

  —Two, Stinky. The delivery toon insists you ordered two.

  Freer shrugged.

  —So, he said. —Do they test?

  —Loyal. Both loyal.

  —Cost?

  —They were expensive.

  —Tell me.

  —Double the cost of one, Stinky. Half our fortune.

  —Shit, Kirtt, Freer mouthed. He paused for a Heartbeat of his long life to come. Then he said, —But I trust you, dear one. I trust you. Should we keep them both?