by John Clute
All the same, their search pattern seemed gradually to be drawing them in his direction.
—I recommend augments, said Kirtt.
—Can you reach me?
—Just barely.
—Can Uncle Sam integrate?
—Roger, said the spider in his Teardrop.
—So do it.
Augment mode hit Freer like an unending orgasm. He groaned, a sound from a helium larynx. The world stilled as though in the last throes of homo sapiens passion. The grunt search pattern slowed to a hieratic though jumbled dance. Sigilla and eidolons hovered around them in the gloaming like broken thoughts, some of them already battered to the floor by designer blasters. The surviving humans stood or hunkered in the eternal slow pulse of everlasting life; gaping. Slowly, after the first spasm of augment had settled through his system, the world began, very slowly, to move again, though darkened down by spectrum shift.
Dopplered down to the bone, a klaxon sounded.
—Kirtt?
—Silent running, please.
Freer stood utterly still for a second, which seemed hours within his augment frame.
—An, said Kirtt. —They seem to want you.
—What?
—But it’s not at all clear. It may be your augments are drawing them. You cut quite a figure on the screens.
—Fuck that, said Freer. —Switch me into Uncle Sam and defend.
—Understood.
From this point, Freer saw precisely what he needed to see, as though he were nestling somewhere deep within his own skull and keeping score; but his body had become the tool of Uncle Sam. The defence program began its ancient polished professional killing rite. The Sniffer continued to growl softly and territorially from its den at the bottom of its human’s proprioceptive armature, keeping the toons at bay, and other soup. Through the ancient competent cold eyes of the Uncle Sam, Freer continued to observe himself, saw that he was moving like grease away from the alcove, that he was slipping in amongst the gangling grunts and the wah-wahing auxiliaries, which seemed rather faster on the uptake than their charges. He saw there was something like a knife in his hand. Suddenly it was coated in mucus, there were fewer upright grunt sigilla. One of them began to bellow, slower than molasses, just as Freer saw himself slit its throat junction. Being a sigillum, it collapsed like souffle.
Sigilla did not suffer pain. They did not do screams.
Soon there were none left.
They were like spoiled desserts.
But Freer was continuing to move, like a wraith, almost faster than the unaugmented eye could catch: certainly too fast to be identified until later analysis, dancing through the auxiliaries, which had begun to lollop with surprising speed upwards through shattered escalator housings toward their landing craft. One by one, he destroyed them.
—I need one, he could hear Kirtt say within his head, for his benefit: for he was actually addressing the Uncle Sam.
So Uncle Sam, still snug as a bug within the graven embrace of its homo sapiens, got one; grabbed its flailing legs and held on until its imperatives could be overwritten.
Finally, the auxiliary unit quietened.
—I think we have it now, murmured Uncle Sam.
—Good good good, said Freer, sheathing his knife, beginning to shudder. —Now please put me down.
Uncle Sam obeyed.
Freer began to brake and fade out of augment.
He shuddered less and less.
In the flickering dusk of the emergency lighting, he was barely visible to any remaining flesh sentients who had managed to hold on to fragments of the shivering floor, and who remained safe, for the moment, from the abyss. There was a constant noise of air rushing, terrifying gusts of wind from below. Almost certainly they would have no idea that he had popped into sight out of augment.
He was just a dream they were having.
He would be ravenous soon.
The dead sigilla lay in puddles, their surface features already beginning to dissolve. Scrubbers surrounded them, beginning to suck the nutrients. Any minds which had been observing through their sensoriums would have cancelled their downlinks, almost certainly some time ago — sigilla death was unpleasant to experience.
The emergency lighting flickered higher for an instant, showing spewed corpses in the near distance, the herniated braid beyond. Bits of the world continued to rattle down from far above. Alarms continued to nag, as useless as alarms have always been since the invention of electricity on any planet. There were some wounded flesh sentients nearby. There were many dead.
An eidolon knelt beside a motionless female sentient. It began to emit a formal wail.
The deactivated auxiliary unit squatted nearby like Humpty Dumpty.
—I hear keening, said Kirtt.
—Routine obsequies, looks like, said Freer. —Just an eidolon. Normal forelock-tugging. All the same, I think perhaps we’d better get out of here. It’s going to hot up. I foresee the need for several hundred scapegoats, frankly, Kirtt.
—Uncle Sam is equipped to do a DNA wipe, and recommends one. I agree. There is no point leaving your signature in plain view.
—There’s no way to scrub all traces, Kirtt. You know that.
—It’s only polite to clean the room after using it, Stinky. In any case, while I was cut off from you, just before the ark hit, I received word from the planetary fuckheads that the contract had been cleared. It is on its way now, along with the nanoforges, and the Route-Only. We can be out of Law Well before the planetary fuckheads sort anything out down there.
—I smell a rat, Kirtt.
He was beginning to feel sick to his stomach. Perhaps it was augment reaction. Perhaps it was not.
He felt focused upon. Like a bug caught in amber.
—Trust me, Stinky. I give you excellent clean girl she is second cousin of my sister no problem!
—All right, all right. But hurry.
The Uncle Sam took over, and ran Freer backwards, like tape reversing, through his period under augment.
—Isn’t this a bit obvious?
Freer continued to prance backwards at the behest of the battle program, through spoiled piles of sigilla stuffing.
—Sure, said Kirtt. —But it’s only meant to last an hour or so. By then we’ll be outta here.
Freer was panting.
But by now the Uncle Sam had finished its DNA scrub, and had laid dov/n a false version of Freer’s last few minutes here: DNA traces of a Freer who had never moved from his safe, still-intact alcove.
It wouldn’t stand up under real analysis, but might hold for an hour or two.
—Okey dokey, said Kirtt, —I have managed to commandeer a stealth floater. Look up.
But of course it was invisible.
The Uncle Sam relaxed, though. The Sniffer wagged its tail. Freer put the auxiliary unit under his arm, and stepped in the direction his tools told him to step.
—Let’s go.
As far as any flesh sentient could tell whose eyes remained able to look upon the world, the homo sapiens with the ponytail and the habit of walking backwards took two steps forwards through the battlezone into a congealing of air, and became utterly unseen.
—Hurry, please, said Kirtt very urgently. —I feel something through the plaque.
The stealth floater skittered invisibly into safety.
• • •
A dozen Heartbeats later, the fatally damaged central braid exploded as though a thousand bombs had struck, under the impact of the vast brazen descending central hulk of the crashed ark of the Harpe, which had continued to settle downwards into Trencher, cindering the world around it, boring closer and closer to magma.
The Insort Geront sigil shone like a branding iron on its flanks.
Within, the commander’s three corpses, joined at the tail and elsewhere, stared in the oblivious unison of death through tripartite visors at the devastation he had ordered.
The ark killed another billion flesh sentients before it stuck
for good, a thousand klicks inside the doomed planet.
two
The world in the wake of the stealth floater continued to fall into itself. Shock waves guided the tiny craft like a pinball through braids and ganglions as it carried the unwounded flesh sentient Freer home, invisible to naked eyes. The Sniffer on his ear growled softly. The Uncle Sam, which had married the small stealth mind for the trip, did a bee-dance blur of diagnostics inside Teardrop as it overrode the growing gnarls of plaque and kept the floater on course. The seat held on to Freer, he held on to the seat.
The Humpty Dumpty face of the captured auxiliary unit, which was still draped over his shoulder, wore an idiot smile.
‘Ulla,’ Freer murmured occasionally, to keep it soothed. ‘Ulla.’
The stealth discus swatted into docking country.
‘Ulla.’
Boulders fell like dust through vast ganglions from exit passages klicks above. Aftershocks could still be seen shaking the cupolas of egress starwards.
—Welcome, said Kirtt within him.
The floater whipped around a towering pillar whose bubble-top housed the control centre for docking country, and descended into the grip of an oval deck which bulged at the end of its hose-like housing like a cobra head.
And stopped.
The floater’s bubble-top opened.
Above him, wrapped into its landing cradle, Tile Dance hulked intact, a polished featureless ovoid, an egg unbroken, manifestly not a thing of this planet. It seemed to shimmer slightly, as though it were gathering itself.
Tears started to Freer’s eyes.
He was at the gates of home.
The cobra head lifted its cargo towards a port that opened suddenly in the ovoid.
—Quickly, please, said Kirtt.
—More coming down?
—Almost certainly. Henny penny, added the ship Mind. —Henny penny, Stinky.
There was a sigh of sealants as the cobra head married the irising port extrusion, and Freer climbed into safety, the auxiliary unit dragging its multi-jointed legs behind him.
‘Ulla.’
The port sealed shut behind them.
The Sniffer shut itself down and slept.
Freer was within at last. He climbed the tight entry spiral upwards into the inner regions of Tile Dance, which had been his home for Half a Billion Heartbeats. Wind chimes and lachrymals surfaced like dolphins from their tiles, echoing out of sight as he moved further inwards to the very navel of the ship, which awaited him. Porticoes opened at his touch into the whorled salty air of the deep interior, which was never entirely still. The walls smelled of mahogany, the railings were brass; above them, the walls were lined with tiles stiffly flexing their chip-sodden scenarios, and universal windows portraying rooms which did not exist at the moment, though they had, or would. Lanterns not yet in the direct line of vision glimmered softly aslant through mirrors, announcing turns in the passage, sometimes silently, sometimes murmurous or cooing. One of Tile Dance’s two altars of the Universal Book sat in a niche, waiting to divulge new realms of glory from the recent download.
Between the universal windows in their side-chapels, translucent blue porcelain azulejaria patterns covered the walls with tiles, joined by molten grouting. Flyte masks — and jack masks nestled safely within them — rested inside the designs, eyes shut, awaiting quantum foam, awaiting revival of the eternal commedia, when they might pulse freely out in the world again, singular, janiform, singular, janiform, unendingly, first flyte then jack, then flyte, then jack; a few of the masks were blank, though they boasted a weak ghostly sentience even under chip constraints, enough to keep a few freelance nanos round their banked fires, fascinated (as untied nanos were designed, or fated, to be) by any iconic resemblance to meat puppets.
A sketch version of the face Kirtt assumed indoors when disabled stared out of one flyte mask fastened to the wall above a vine-choked alcove. Its enraged eye opened to track Freer as he climbed higher into Tile Dance.
Freer winked at the eye, tossed his mask toward a tile whose grouting absorbed it sideways, so that it showed for a fraction of a Heartbeat its janiform double gaze before settling into a tile drama; and stashed the gangling auxiliary unit into the alcove, which absorbed it with sleight-of-hand speed.
There was a swift stench of something like roses.
He caught a glimpse of the unit’s cracked face, its painted grimace, before it disappeared completely.
‘Ulla,’ he said for the last time.
—Thanks, said Kirtt through the mask, —for the snack. Maybe we can find something out.
There was a pause.
—Down the hatch, said Kirtt.
The enraged eye closed its lid.
—Incidentally, said Kirtt, —its name was Alice.
The walls were almost as warm as human skin; the azulejaria commedia held its breath for quantum foam; a mirror somewhere cooed like a dove.
—Are you hungry? said the ship Mind, extruding a long nipple from the wall. —You must be, after augment. Take a sip.
—Thanks.
He sucked at the nipple for a moment.
—Now . . . said Kirtt.
—Right. The contract.
The nipple retracted and a writing surface extended itself from the wall. A sheaf of literal papers rested on it.
—Your contract. I’ve vetted it every which way, said Kirtt. —It’s more or less standard. Give it a flesh signature and we can get out of here. In all the shit down there, the icepick was clearly inaudible to Big Brother: we have a Clearance Motor.
—Ace, ace.
Freer glanced at the top page. A chair-shape nudged his buttocks and he sat. Everything seemed routine in the contract and manifests: one cargo of nanoforges duly stowed in the nest of foam-shielded geodesic crannies that made up Tile Dance’s hold. Location of Eolhxir to be supplied by data-monad (which would self-destruct after completing its mission) in the form of a fully failsafed Route-Only. Half the agreed fee payable in advance, half on completion. Usual sureties mutually supplied.
—Advance cleared?
—It paid for the Uncle Sam, said Kirtt.
—Any zaitech? he asked.
—Not a whiff detectable within Law Well, said Kirtt. —All seems straightforward.
So he gave his drop of blood to the contract, which, sated, crept into the wall, leaving a copy in the vault.
—I retained the stealth floater, said Kirtt. —It will now take the contract down to Trencher archives.
—And then?
The chair-shape goosed him.
—Time to go, said the voice of Tile Dance.
—You’re reading my mind.
—Well, yes. It’s in the job description. Move, boss!
Freer hoisted himself from the signature alcove, took the lift shaft back up past cornice after cornice into the heart of Tile Dance, where a brass iris rimmed the entrance to control centre. Incised into the rim of the iris, in a runic script, in some language other than Old English, were the words ‘Ynis Gutrin’. Freer had noticed the inscription very early on.
—Ynis Gutrin? he had piped — hardly more than an egg then, though precocious. —Sounds like Human Earth. A singer perhaps? Female?
—Glass Island, the ship Mind had said in a voice of gentle quantum puissance. —It translates as Glass Island. It is a place of vision.
Which seemed reasonable enough, given the view from within. He let his hand slide over the rim. It was warm. He stepped into Ynis Gutrin, into orbiting scintillae of light and tile, sat in the bucket couch. The tiles were subaqueous in the light, ebbed and flowed, loomed. He sat cocooned within what appeared to be a bubble protruding into space, though in reality, of course, Glass Island lay deep in the central core of the ship, a coffer sunk inside holy turf. Command centre was the inside outside of the navel of Tile Dance, locked into the cavities and pyroclasts of the ship’s abiding configuration in time and space. He sat in a bath of sensors, which tickled for an instant until his skin sett
led into the marriage of ship and flesh. A net of monitors surrounded him, as faceted as bee eyes, and hatrack herms wearing masks made a semicircle round his couch. Through the inward gaze of the monitors, every cavity of the ship could be accessed. Datagloves for ancillary inputs beseeched from flexipods like palms in a storm. Tiled panels curved around him, their scenarios caught in chip stall. And before him the holo cube rested, pulsing slowly, blank for now.
Beside him, the Clearance Motor eidolon waggled its ceremonial wood-like head. Freer patted it absently.
He waved a hand. Toggles curved their necks decorously in clusters for his touch; the holo came alive, the entire sphere of the universe surrounding Tile Dance came to life.
In every direction, docking country was juddering to a halt. Spasms of discharge lit the extremities of the arched klick-high cavern. Directly ship-front, a tangle of gantries slowly imploded, like a flower living backwards. A hundred- metre-high rack collapsed, spewing cargo. In the middistance, a giant freighter trembled, began to lean into a turbid gout of flame ten storeys high. Readouts flickered in Teardrop, summarising the picture in the holo.
The planet seemed to tip in his vision, though Tile Dance remained stable.
—Kirtt? Are we maintaining gravity?
—Maintaining gravity, Kirtt said, —against all regulations. Very soon we are going to have to go solo—
—Hah! Freer shouted.
A green GO from central control was flashing in Teardrop.
—Pindown has lifted, murmured Kirtt. —Go!
The Clearance Motor flashed release codes into the ship Mind. Tile Dance instantly cleared its cradle, and Freer’s point of view lifted. He could see the whole of docking country, an ants’ nest under an invisible boot. The ship sighed upwards through spasming grids into the vast illuminated cupola that crowned docking country like a brindled dunce’s cap; from below, it was like rising into a hollow cone shot with light. Shuttles toppled from the inner tassels of the cap into the turmoil below.