by Neal Asher
Cormac scratched his earlobe, rested his hands on the chair arms. Shortly a split began to unzip in the scaled skin extending before him, revealing a red cavity from which he felt a warmth against his face. The edges folded down, seemingly flowing inside. Then a cobra pseudopod speared into the air, then another, then three more. Amidst them a thick loop of neck appeared, which straightened to bring into view a head. This was not one of the usual pterodactyl heads, but something sleeker, lacking a crest, with a more expressive mouth and slotted pupils in its sapphire eyes. It blinked, then surged forwards and down resting a loop of neck on the rim of the cavity, so the head was now poised only a few yards away from him, its eyes directly level with his own. The other cobra pseudopods spread out like a peacock fan behind it, and Cormac wondered if he should read anything into these choreographed actions. Though the head itself was like that of a flesh-ripping predator, it did not rear threateningly above him as usual. And was it looking more expressive to enable better communication or just more convincing lies?
Cormac powered up the holoprojector. To one side, hanging in midair, appeared a dracoman, then beside it one of the by-blows this dragon sphere had created on Cull: a melding of human and sleer, a chimera, the body of a woman attached waist upwards in place of the head of something that resembled a scorpion.
‘When I talk to just one dragon sphere, do I talk to Dragon entire?’ Cormac asked.
Two cobra heads turned towards the holoprojections, the main head remained focused on Cormac. ‘No and yes,’ it replied.
Cormac sighed. ‘Do you remember part of you dying at Samarkand?’ Cormac had used a CTD to destroy one of Dragon’s four spheres there—retribution for the tens of thousands of human deaths it caused on that cold world.
‘I do not.’
Not perpetually connected, then.
‘How much of that particular sphere’s experience is your own?’
‘We are distinct entities, yet we are not. We do not share what we are not, but we share what we all are.’
‘Some AIs do this,’ Jerusalem interjected for Cormac alone. ‘A shared pool of knowledge, understanding and personality, whilst retaining individuality.’
‘But how often do they share, and do they share equally? It must be by U-space com, which, in this situation with USERs all around, means this sphere here has been isolated from the remaining other sphere for some time.’
‘Irrelevant to our present purposes’
Cormac pointed to the two holograms. ‘Why?’
‘You do not accept change swiftly enough,’ Dragon replied. ‘You’ evidently meaning the human race.
‘Adapt or die?’ Cormac wondered.
‘Precisely.’
‘When I first came to you on Aster Colora, as an ambassador, your ostensible purpose was to deliver a warning to the human race, the usual credo, smarten up your act or die, because the big boys are watching.’ Cormac glanced at the holograms. ‘The dracoman was then part of that warning. A rather unsubtle demonstration of the precariousness of human existence—demonstrating how, but for cosmic mischance, the descendants of the dinosaurs could be where we are now.’
Cormac paused and studied the ophidian face before him. He remembered all his own previous speculations about what Dragon might be, or, more importantly, what its purpose might be.
He continued, ‘After Samarkand we marked you down as a bio-engineered device sent by the Makers to observe only, but one that developed a god-complex and started interacting with us. The Maker was sent to retrieve you and, in attempting to kill it, you caused the deaths of thousands of people. Which story is true?’
‘Neither,’ Dragon replied.
‘Tell me about Jain technology,’ Cormac countered.
‘It is an ancient weapon.’
‘And its relation to the Makers?’
At this Dragon showed some agitation, swinging its head from side to side.
‘We’re getting some very odd readings from inside Dragon,’ interjected Mika.
Jerusalem added, ‘Power transferences and much shifting of internal organs.’
Cormac absorbed all that and quite concisely asked, ‘What is the relationship between Jain technology and the Makers?’
‘I must not lie to you,’ said Dragon.
‘Then don’t.’
Mika: ‘Shit! What was that?’
Jerusalem: ‘Massive contraction of some inner diaphragm—something tensing up for a blow, perhaps?’
‘Will three times break the spell?’ Cormac wondered. Out loud he asked again, ‘What is the relationship between the Makers and Jain technology?
‘I will not…’ said Dragon.
Mika: ‘Big energy surge just then—something just got incinerated.’
Cormac suddenly gained some intimation of what was going on, of what had always been going on during communication with this entity. Dragon, after all, was a bioconstruct, specially programmed, and there were truths it could not tell.
* * * *
With the grab claw and gecko pads detached, Orlandine manoeuvred the Heliotrope to the inner wall of the chamber, and presented the docking tube to the airlock she had constructed there. She set down the ship ten yards away, and extended the gecko feet on their telescopic legs, adjusting them to position the ship precisely. The docking tube mated perfectly. She did not expect otherwise.
‘They will learn about the gift’—a secret admirer.
Orlandine departed her interface sphere with those words of warning still in her mind. It had occurred to her the moment she received the message containing them, that they were a deliberate nudge to start her on her present course, and that in some way she was being used. But she dismissed that thought and stuck with the basic fact: she possessed a piece of technology which contained the potential to take her beyond the haiman to the numinous. Presently, the reasons behind this gift remained irrelevant. All that was relevant was that if Polity AIs learned she possessed it they would do everything in their power to take it away from her. She could not therefore take the chance of assuming the warning to be premature or a lie.
In the cell she designated as her laboratory, the eight beetlebots she had taken out of storage and adjusted to this task moved slowly across the floor spraying on it a layer of crash foam. She dumped a large drum containing more of the polymer-forming liquid on a layer of foam already five inches thick, and transmitted further instructions to the robots. Now they would come automatically to the drum and plug in to its lower sockets to recharge their reservoirs. In the low pressure the polymer foamed and set to a hard insulating layer, which would prevent the laboratory cell from losing any heat that might be detected from outside. Later, for further concealment, she intended to add a layer of the laminated radiation shielding she had ordered loaded on to the Heliotrope before departing the station. A small autofactory inside the ship was meanwhile working flat out to manufacture large quantities of the polymer. A yard of thickness was what she required, thereafter she could open the locks to her ship and use its internal atmospheric systems to bring up the temperature and air pressure to within the specification required for the equipment she intended to use in here. Then she would bring in that equipment, also portable heaters and an atmosphere plant, isolate the cavern from the ship, then finally bring in the Jain node for further study.
The Jain node.
Orlandine paused and remembered that meeting on one of the Sol stations that had changed the course of her life.
‘Hi, I’m Jonas Trent,’ he had said. ‘You would be Orlandine?’
She had glanced across at him as he took the seat opposite. He was pale, quite then, dressed in black slacks, a canary yellow shirt, a jacket made of black diamond-shaped plates of composite bonded to something like leather, and wide braces that had a shifting pattern of snakes. Seeing he was auged, through her gridlink — the minimum internal hardware required to take the carapace she was not wearing at that time—she sent him a personal contact query. The personal details t
hat his aug settings allowed her were skeletal: he was a hundred and four years old, unattached, a sensocord rep, born on Earth… all the usual details but little more. Nothing there to tell her how he knew of her, or why he approached her now.
She sipped her espresso. ‘What can I do for you?’
He grinned. ‘As we always like to say, it’s not what you can do for me—’
She interrupted, ‘I’m haiman, so do you honestly think I need to buy any sensocordings? I’m now logging this encounter as an infringement—’
He interrupted, ‘Don’t—I’m not here to sell you anything.’
She did not log the personal-space infringement anyway. A person like this would know exactly who to approach and when, so he must be here for some other reason. He took out a rounded brushed-metal box, reached across the table and placed it before her.
‘I’ve been paid very well to act as an intermediary. All I can tell you is that there’s a certain object inside, and a memtab explaining exactly what that object is. I am only instructed to tell you that it is a “gift from an admirer”.’
She peered at the box. ‘My kind are often the target of Separatists, or, rather, would be targets. I’m cautious.’ She slid the box back across the table to him. ‘You open it.’
With a grimace, he picked it up and popped it open, then put it down and slid it back across. ‘See, no problem.’
In the foam packing rested a dull egg. Next to it lay a memtab—a piece of crystal the size of her fingernail. She pulled her palmtop from her belt and inserted the tab into the relevant port. The screen displayed the ovoid itself and, while she watched, it opened like a flower to expose a smaller ovoid inside covered with slightly shifting cubic patterns. A frame appeared over this with the figure x1000 beside it—indicating magnification. The frame expanded, filled the screen, then another appeared and did the same. Then again and again, until displaying the most densely packed nano-technology she had ever seen. Finally the image blinked out. Trying to recall it, she found the original recording had been wiped by a subprogram.
‘What is this?’ she asked, merely for form’s sake, since she already knew.
He stood, saying, ‘Ciao.’ He walked away.
A gift from an admirer.
Upon her return to the Cassius project she ran a search through the nets for this Jonas Trent. It seemed he had stepped out of the airlock of another of the Sol-system stations without the benefit of a spacesuit. It took all her expertise to avoid the semi-AI program that subsequently came after her, for the enquiry into his death remained open, and the program now wanted to know all about her and her interest in him.
‘They will learn about the gift’—a secret admirer.
Orlandine returned to the Heliotrope only to find the auto-factory had run out of some raw materials. But raw materials abounded all around her. She donned an assister frame intended for heavy work, took up a gravsled, and left the ship via the small rear hold. She then cut a small exit out of the giant pillar and stepped out into the vastness beyond. The endless acres of floor stretched away into the distance, layered many feet deep with the substance of the Cassius gas giant. Here most periodic table elements were available to her in compound form, but she possessed the tools to separate and recombine them, and the ship’s fusion reactor supplied the energy to operate those tools. Using a diamond saw extruded by the frame she wore, she began cutting blocks from the icy layer and loading them on the sled. She was satisfied she had everything here; everything she could possibly want.
* * * *
‘It is protected,’ said Hourne, the ship’s AI.
‘Protected?’ Blegg continued gazing at the artefact, now with numerous optic interfaces in position all around its rim.
‘And encrypted,’ the AI added.
‘You were getting something from the fragments of crystal found by Shayden—so what did you find there?’
‘DNA,’ the AI replied. ‘And numerous possible variations thereof.’
Blegg turned away from the viewing window to scan around the control centre. Two haimans, fifteen humans and five Golem worked at consoles, carrying out whatever tasks the AI felt best suited their specialities. The woman, with only her blonde plaits showing because her face was thrust inside a VR mask, specialized in crystal micro-scanning using only UV and indigo light. The two haimans were fast, almost instinctive, programmers; they did not seem to be doing much, but that meant nothing—if they were doing a lot it would not show in any physical way.
‘A message?’ Blegg wondered.
Al Hourne continued, ‘Shayden’s skin cells bonded to the surface of the crystal, were read at the molecular level, her DNA copied in virtual format, and in the same format possible variations processed. It was these that fed back through the optic interface she connected. That piece of crystal then began rapidly to degrade.’
‘This could happen to the entire artefact?’ Blegg watched one of the Golem reach up to pull aside his shirt, then a flap of syntheflesh underneath that to insert an optic plug. Directly controlling something—perhaps one of the telefactors.
‘It is possible. I believe this one protective measure will ensure the contained information does not fall into the hands, tentacles or claws of alien lifeforms.’
Blegg grinned. He liked this AI—it possessed a dry sense of humour.
‘You’re keeping it clean, then.’
‘Yes, now, but even though this object came from an environment in which DNA could not remain intact, just by bringing it aboard this station, it must have come in contact with complete DNA strands. That it has not self-destructed suggests different rules apply to the whole. I suspect those fragments that broke away then cued themselves to disintegrate. This would prevent any hostiles from cutting the artefact apart to obtain its secrets.’
‘So what is happening through the main interfaces with it?’
‘It absorbed the data I transmitted into it, but returned nothing until I sent in a search program. That program came back with three-dimensional measurements for the human eye.’
‘I see. We are not just dealing with data storage here, are we?’
‘The semi-AI program I later sent in returned with a hologram of the human anus—in full colour.’
Blegg laughed out loud. ‘So what does it want?’ he finally asked.
‘From having read human DNA it has constructed virtual representations of human beings. It can read molecules by touch. Scanning indicates nanoscale sensory apparatus imbedded in the surface. I am presently transmitting language files into it with five-level data back-up.’
‘Five level?’
‘Apple, for example, is represented by that word in every current human language, also a hologram, genetic coding and variations, context links to human biology, mythology, semantics—’
‘Okay, I get the picture. Let’s hope whatever is inside there gets it too.’
‘I believe it already has. Observe.’
Blegg turned to see a hologram of a naked woman rise out of the carpet. She wore a fig leaf and, while he watched, took a large bite out of a juicy apple she held.
‘How coincidental that we were just discussing that.’
The hologram shattered—like glass.
‘I am compromised,’ announced the AI.
Just then the station lights all grew very bright. Blegg turned back to the viewing window to see the various telefactors floating around, jerking as if in the throes of silicon epilepsy. To one side a heavy-duty power feed advanced on its rams to the edge of the alien artefact. Glancing around the control room, he saw the plugged-in Golem begin shaking, one of the haimans drop out of his seat and fall flat on his back on the floor. Others not similarly connected pushed themselves back from their consoles or other equipment and began calling out to each other.
‘Subverted power feed controls…’
‘I lost everything…’
‘Telefactors frozen out…’
To the rear of the room, two of the VR booths s
prung open and their occupants staggered out of them.
‘What can we do?’
‘Subversion protocol, we have to—’
‘No,’ decided Blegg, loudly and clearly.
Some of the chatter settled down as many eyes turned towards him.
‘You have primacy,’ agreed one of the Golem. ‘What do you require of us?’
‘Do nothing,’ said Blegg.
He turned back to the viewing window. The power feed was now nearly in place. He saw the crystal near its point of contact, darkening as something formed there. Then the s-con heads made contact, and the lights dimmed. A webwork of glowing lines spread through the crystal like a million cracks, then they faded to a general glow throughout it. The lights came back on again.
‘Use one of the VR booths,’ said Hourne.
People in the room glanced suspiciously up at the camcom points set in the ceiling, then turned to Blegg to see what he would do.
‘Are you truly Hourne?’ he asked.
‘Yes, and no,’ replied the AI.
Blegg nodded, turned, and walked across the room to step into a VR booth. He fully expected this to be an interesting experience.
— retroact 4 -
Logan passed him a joint. He placed it between the last two fingers of his right hand, cupped both of his hands over his mouth, and drew in the aerated smoke. Tracking the physical reaction through his body always gave his new face an introspective and shocked appearance, so that others always thought him more stoned than he actually was. The ache of rearranging facial muscles had receded to a dim memory—the art almost instinctive now since his time in Korea where displaying a Caucasian face gave him the time to step aside into that other space to avoid American bullets. Skin hue was a whole different problem for his cellular inner vision, but directing his immune system against the melanoma that appeared five years after Hiroshima, while he explored the Australian outback, had granted him the required know-how. Now though, it felt strange to be wearing a Japanese face again.