Gowchee,' said Gorol9, still being held down on the
carved stone. 'You have nothing to be ashamed of.'
'So speaks the machine,' said the Legion creature.
'Good, obedient device, just one amongst the
Construct's little horde of windup junkpiles. Attend
carefully, Human - this machine, this contraption, will
never know the wonder of convergence, the intermin-
gling of life's pure essence and a technology perfectly
adapted to life's supreme ambition. Oh, machines can be
made highly complex and made to imitate the permu-
tations of true sentience, but ultimately it is only
obedience to a detailed matrix of commands, a dry,
empty mockery of living sentience.'
'You are a made thing,' said Gorol9. 'Your vaunted
convergence with technology is nothing but your des-
perate need to flee the pains of the flesh, the entropy of
the flesh, the ending of the flesh. And you? - you are
little more than an offcut, stemming from your progen-
itor Knight's need for an instrument...'
'Liar! My essence, my foundation is organic, and my
sentience flows from the purity of convergence ...'
INTRUDERS HAVE BEEN DETECTED!
Kao Chih almost quailed at the thunderous volume
of the voice which reverberated all around but which
seemed to issue from the stone floor beneath. In that
instant he saw a spiderweb of glowing threads spreading
across the intertwined patterns, all emitting a curious,
crystalline brightness.
'Aah, the guardian awakes,' said Drazuma-Ha*.
YOU ARE OF THE LEGION, INTRUDER - YOUR
PRESENCE HERE IS A VIOLATION. YOU MUST BE
ERASED.
'Exactly, machine. Obey the unvarying schemata of
your responses. Open the door through which I may
fulfil my transcendent task ...'
'Sentinel - I am Gorol9 of the Construct's forward
echelon. You must not deploy your energies against the
Legion intruder - it will use them against you.'
I RECOGNISE YOU, GOROL9, BUT YOU MAY
NOT COMMAND ME. THE THREAT IS CLEAR
AND IT MUST BE ERASED.
Feeling helpless, Kao Chih raised his gun again, then
his shoulders sagged and he slumped back, tears of
angry desperation in his eyes. How he hated this
machine-creature.
'Good - you recognise the futility of your position,
Human,' said Drazuma-Ha*. 'You may be weak, yet
there is hope for your species - many have already taken
the first steps towards convergence and when the Legion
assumes its rightful dominance we will help them further
along that illustrious journey.'
'You betrayed me,' Kao Chih said. 'I trusted you! ...'
'Look upon it as a lesson,' the Legion creature said,
lancing out with an amber shaft of force which batted
away the beam pistol then grabbed him round the neck
and hauled him in. At the same time, the crystalline
radiance rising from the warpwell patterns began to
pulse, lighting up the ceiling and the walls.
THE LEGION INTRUDER IS A CLEAR THREAT
AND WILL BE ERASED. ALL OTHERS MUST
LEAVE - NOW!
'And now the pair of you will join me in my triumph,
but only as equals ...' An amber blade extruded from
the Legion instrument's force aura and Kao Chih began
to cry out in horror, struggling as the blade swept round
towards his own legs.
The droid Gorol9 acted. A jointed arm shot out and
its multiclawed hand flew straight at Drazuma-Ha *, col-
liding with its forcefield aura, to which it clung. The
restraints and the blade shafts shrank to nothing as the
forcefield flickered with bands and went out. Kao Chih
reached over to snatch up his beam pistol then gleefully
aimed it at the Legion machine-creature, which was now
lying on its side, a motionless, lopped-off steel tentacle.
'Your weapon is as useless as it asserted, Gowchee.
But you have a neural device in your pocket which
might immobilise it - use it! We have only seconds
before it recovers.'
A neural device? A quick search of his pockets pro-
duced ... of course, the nerve-blocker which
Compositor Henach had used on him back on the
Chaurixa ship! Trusting to Gorol9's advice, he dived at
the Legion Instrument, which was starting to right itself.
He grabbed it round the middle with one arm and with
his other hand took the nerve-blocker and rammed it
into the joint between two of the thing's articulated seg-
ments. A panel opened in the side of it and a tool-tipped
arm lashed out at him. While fending it off with his
pistol, he had to use his body weight to hold the Legion
machine-creature down as he desperately shoved the
nerve-blocker's flexible arms into the joint gap, praying
that it would work.
'Betrayer! - you have betrayed life and aided ... dead
machines . . .'
'I have my honour,' Kao Chih said, gritting his teeth
against the pain of his wounded hand, slashed by the
tool-wielding arm. 'And the satisfaction of knowing that
you are ended . . .'
But the flickering aura went out and suddenly he
realised that he was talking to a lifeless piece of machin-
ery.
Light hung all around in layered veils, just visible
through his overwhelming exhaustion. The voice of the
warpwell Sentinel was booming somewhere overhead,
an exchange involving Gorol9. Pilot Yash was close by,
shaking his shoulder, saying that a company of
Brolturan troops would soon be on top of them. Kao
Chih tried to sit up, but instead he flopped onto his
back, staring up at the chamber ceiling, his tongue mutt,
his limbs numb, his flesh as cold as the wintry radiance
that surged over him like a tide.
He never lost consciousness. Everything was lucid
and he felt quite alert, despite the dreamlike swirl and
eddy of images, his mother and father bidding him
farewell at the dockside at Agmedra'a, the Roug
Tumakri riding with him in the strange AI cart at
Blacknest . . . then instead of Tumakri it was the
Chaurixa surgeon, Compositor Henach, who was shar-
ing the cart's cramped interior. 'Ah, the unblemished
human brain,' he was saying. 'A remarkable canvas for
convergence .. .' Then the cart turned and shot into a
dark corridor full of swaying shadows and, oddly for a
deep space station, the smells of growing things. There
were the sounds of familiar voices and a glow. Eyes
open, he realised that he was lying on his back and
raised his head . . . and regretted it when pain clamped
his temples.
'Back with us, Human?'
The Voth was seated on a fallen log, next to a conical
lamp giving off a buttery yellow light. Propped against
the trunk were the remains of Gorol9, who was regard-
ing him steadily. 'You were poisoned by the Legion
Instrument's desperate self-defence,' the droid said.
'Luckily, Pilot Yash had some anti-tox
in infusers in his
big bag so the only effects you suffered were the psy-
choactive ones.'
Yash grinned. 'It's a good high - so I've been told . . .'
Kao Chih looked around him - they were gathered in
a hollow in a darkened forest, beneath an overhanging
rock bearded with moss and grass from which water
dripped. It was raining out in the night, a subdued whis-
pering from the dim shapes of trees, leaves rustling,
branches swaying in occasional breezy gusts. He could
smell and savour the odours of a vastness of biomass
and he shivered, cold and excited - this was Darien, a
living world as lush as Pyre once was.
'How . . .' He paused to cough. 'How did we get
away?'
'Since the immediate threat was over, the Sentinel of
the well graciously condescended to translocate us away
from the Brolturans, although it had to be certain that
this was in accord with the general tenor of previous
commands,' said Gorol9. 'The remains of the
Instrument have been sent to the Construct.'
'Jelking machine mind,' Yash said. 'My bank has a
branch on Yonok - why couldn't it send me there?'
'So where are we now?' said Kao Chih.
'Roughly seventeen miles west of Hammergard,' said
a voice from nearby.
Looking up, he saw two men descending the slope
just along from the overhang - one was short and wiry
with sandy-coloured hair while the other was taller with
dark hair. He recognised them as Europeans, with that
wide-eyed look of astonishment that he had only ever
seen in the Retributofs data files. Both were wearing
blue cheek patches from which pickup stalks protruded.
'Greetings, Humans Cameron and McGrain,' said
Gorol9, then to Kao Chih it said, 'I have fashioned small
translators for them so that we may understand each
other.'
'Very smart wee gadgets,' said the taller of the two,
his odd Anglic dialect smoothly translated by Kao
Chih's linguistic enabler. 'But I'm glad to see that you've
recovered. When myself and Rory got here an hour ago
ye were still in the grip of that drug . . .'
'Totally out of it,' said the other man with a grin.
'Oh yes - this is Rory McGrain and I'm Greg
Cameron,' said the first.
Kao Chih nodded courteously from where he lay. 'It
is an honour to meet you. But how did you know where
to find us?'
'Well, one of our allies has a certain understanding
with the warpwell Sentinel,' said the man Cameron. 'He
couldn't say anything other than to get to this spot with
all speed, and after we did your friends filled us in on a
few details about what happened up at Giant's Shoulder
and what you did.' He shook his head. 'Incredible, just
incredible. But neither of them know how ye became
involved with this Legion cyborg creature, or where
you're from.'
Kao Chih sighed and, ignoring his headache, got to
his feet. 'Honourable sirs, my story has more twists and
turns than a bowlful of noodles. But first I must intro-
duce myself properly and fully - my name is Kao Chih
of the Human Sept of Agmedra'a, and my people origi-
nally came from Earth 150 years ago, fleeing the Swarm
invasion . . .'
The two men listened in astonishment as he told them
about the beautiful world where the Tenebrosa had
finally landed, the colony established by his forebears,
the Hegemony mercenaries and the prospector ships
that strip-mined the planet, the exodus of half the
colony to the Roug orbital, Agmedra'a, and their inden-
ture under conditions of secrecy. His voice shook as he
recounted their sorrowful tragedy and he saw their faces
grow sombre.
'But then news came of the discovery of your world
and, at the Roug's instigation, I was sent to find you,
meet your leaders and warn them of the Hegemony.
Most importantly, I was to ask permission for my
people to come and settle here and be part of your com-
munity. But now I find that the Hegemony and its
Brolturan vassals have taken control of your world,
which has a secret that is attracting the agents of an
ancient enemy.' He shook his head. 'That Earth has
become a willing ally of the Hegemony is almost the
worst of it. Freedom for both our peoples seems a for-
lorn hope.'
'You musn't lose hope, Kao Chih,' said Cameron.
'Hard struggles lie ahead, more than I care to think about,
but only yesterday one of us gave them a humiliating
kicking and that, together with your astounding victory,
all three of you - that gives me hope. The task ahead of us
is monumental and our enemies are innumerable, strong
and vicious, but if we don't take them on, who will?' He
glanced at the Construct droid, Gorol9. 'And sometimes
help can come from the most unexpected quarter ...' His
gaze swung back to Kao Chih. 'And the last thing I was
expecting was you! Just knowing that your people, the
colonists from the Tenebrosa, have survived all those
calamities and are eager to come here and join us - that
gives me hope and strength!'
He held out his hand. 'Kao Chih - welcome to
Darien.'
For a brief moment, he stared back at the man
Cameron, wondering if anything else lay behind the
open smile, the clear brown eyes, and the apparent
integrity. Then he relented, deciding that he would trust
Greg Cameron. Today.
'Thank you, Mr Cameron.'
And they shook hands, smiles widening to grins.
EPILOGUE
ROBERT
Awakening was a slow ascent. He arose gradually from
black oblivion, a no-sound, no-sight, no-place which
steadily dissolved into a blurred grey ocean, dream's
drowsy shallows. It felt as if he was struggling through
thick mud to get to the shore and the lighter it became,
the more he began to remember ... things, faces, places,
nightmarish encounters. In his thoughts he shied away
from those grotesqueries, but they trailed after him, one
seizing his shoulder in an icy, bone-chilling grasp ...
Suddenly his eyes were open and he was aware of
lying on his side in a comfortable bed, in a room full of
natural light, a cool, dawn rosiness. There was a faint,
sweet fragrance in the air and for a second he imagined
that he was in their townhouse on the outskirts of Bonn.
But he knew he couldn't be there, because he knew that
he had been on Darien not long ago.
'Good morning, Robert Horst. How are you feeling?'
The voice sounded vaguely androgynous with a
midrange pitch and lack of expressive highs and lows. It
was coming from the foot of the bed, and when he
pushed back the lightweight cover and sat up he saw an
odd figure garbed in dark blue robes and wearing what
seemed to be an archaic, fully concealing pale mask. But
when it spoke the pale lips moved.
'I am
a proximal of the Construct - when you converse
with me, you are conversing with the Construct...'
'Why won't the Construct see me in person?' he said.
'The Construct is a fabricated entity. Its artificial sen-
tience, intelligence and cognition centres interact at
many levels yet their physical manifestors have definite
boundaries.'
'So you represent the Construct - is this your actual
appearance?'
'No, Robert Horst - this was adopted to make you
feel less dislocated. Would you prefer that I present my
actuality to you?'
'Yes, I would, thank you.'
The proximal reached up and pulled away the mask-
head, tugged off the blue robes and compressed it all
into a small bundle. Its appearance was spindly and
metallic, a slender, attenuated hourglass torso with plain
rod-like legs and arms, and a head which was a slender
cylinder with a rounded top. Chrome-like surfaces
seemed etched with strange geometrical patterns or dec-
orated with textured squares resembling aluminium,
brushed gold, opaque glass, or obsidian, while the clear
areas reflected the light and outlines of the room.
'So, Robert Horst, how are you feeling?'
'Actually, I feel very well.' And so he was, alert and
lacking in his normal chorus of aches and twinges, while
also feeling Harry's absence like a missing tooth.
'Excellent, Robert Horst - the remedial process has
been a success. You were seriously wounded during your
courageous battle with the vermax. The touch of the
kezeq shard disrupted your flesh and threatened your
central nervous system, leaving us little choice but to
take steps. So that your body could regenerate the lost
tissues, we suspended your entropic essence then, once
health was restored, we reset it to an earlier stage.'
'I'm sorry, er, Construct, but I don't quite under-
stand.'
A shiny, metallic arm extended, holding out a small
oval mirror. 'Your physical age is now twenty years
younger than it was.'
Stunned, he looked in the mirror and saw smooth
skin, fair hair not yet showing the silver (and beginning
to grow back to that earlier hair line). The eyes were
more alert and some of that old sharpness was back, yet
he still saw the shadow of Rosa's death there, hints of a
sorrow that would probably never fade. Then he
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