by Neal Asher
‘Because I want you to answer a few questions.’
‘Go fuck yourself.’ Thellant closed his eyes, and for a moment closed out all perception. He understood that his need to escape was not entirely his own, it being imbedded in and integral to the technology occupying his body, and now this ship, too. It contained no sentience, just an animalistic desperation of the gnawing off a leg in a trap kind.
‘It won’t be me I’ll be fucking, Thellant.’
‘Exactly. So why should I answer questions? We both know that I am not going to get out of this alive. I answer your questions, then you fry me.’
‘Well, we could fry you—a microwave beam should do the job—or we could use what’s called a CTD imploder. You probably haven’t heard of that—collapsing gravity field into an antimatter explosion. Not a great deal left afterwards.’
Thellant opened his eyes. What was this guy about? Was this supposed to persuade him to cooperate?
The man called Thorn went on, ‘Of course we could drop you on some remote world where you could live happily ever after.’
‘Is this what passes for humour in ECS nowadays?’ Even knowing the other man must be lying to him, Thellant experienced an emotional response to the offer that felt almost out of his control. He knew then, in that same instant, that the Jain technology possessed its own agenda, and only allowed him to control it.
‘There’s my quandary,’ said Thorn. ‘I have to try and persuade you that we really are prepared to grant you that indulgence, if you provide the information we require.’
‘And what might that information be?’
‘I want you to tell me exactly how you acquired that Jain node, and I also want you to tell me about the Legate.’
Thellant felt a flush of anger at the mere mention of that name. The cruelty, as he saw it, lay in giving him such power in such intractable circumstances. It had been like gluing a gun into the hand of a hostage who is surrounded by terrorists wielding laser carbines. The result possessed a degree of inevitability. Despite the fact that he seemed certain to die, perhaps he should answer those questions. Maybe that would result in the Polity coming down as hard on that bastard Legate as it seemed certain to do on himself.
‘Tell me about this remote world where I can live happily ever after.’
‘Oh, I can tell you all about that. Obviously Jain technology is of overwhelming interest to researchers human, haiman and AI, and apparently there has been a world specially prepared for just this sort of eventuality. It’s orbited by all sorts of scanning satellites, and has twenty gigatonne-level CTDs sunk into its crust. Basically you get to do what you like for as long as you like down there. However, the moment you try to leave that planet, you leave this life.’
‘That almost sounds plausible,’ said Thellant. And it did, since he could almost believe the Polity might value him highly as a scientific resource, despite the mass slaughter he had caused. ‘Take me to this place first and then I’ll answer your questions.’
‘I think you can probably guess my response to that,’ said Thorn, ‘but I’ll say it anyway. You answer the questions first, you tell me all you know, then you get transported to that world. I could take you there first, but you would be no safer there than you are here.’
‘But I would at least know if you had lied about it,’ Thellant replied.
‘No, you would not. Just consider what is happening here. The Polity is evacuating a billion people from an arcology, so think of the resources and organization that requires. A world as I just described could easily be made ready in the time it took us to transport you there.’
‘Very well.’ Thellant paused for a moment and thought now might be the time to give something. ‘The Legate gave me the Jain node.’
‘Please continue,’ said Thorn after Thellant did not continue.
‘I can transmit you complete memcordings of all my dealings with the Legate.’ Almost without thinking, he began compiling those memories and layering them with every informational weapon he could find within the Jain tech, or could think to create. He considered it a vain hope that the ship’s AI would accept this package, obviously the technology occupying his own body felt otherwise.
‘We’ll establish a tight-beam link with you, and then you may transmit the memcordings across,’ replied Thorn.
* * * *
Glowing craters pocked the Jain-occupied section of the arcology, amidst which immense fires now raged. The firebreak slowed the substructure’s advance, as did the destruction of Runcibles 5 and 6, but it was those other strikes delivered by Brutal Blade that finally halted it. It then attempted to build up more stashes of resources and energy but, as the HK program relayed their positions, the dreadnought destroyed them too. For two days, the Jain advance stalled, then the HK program went offline, and a microsecond later a viral attack came through the link, and Coloron shut it down. On the third day the Jain advance began again, slower than before, more tentative. However, these events produced other encouraging results.
Over the two days, Coloron diverted the multitude gathering around Runcible 4 to other runcibles further inside the arcology, and diverted the exodus through 3 to the exits positioned in the south-west corner. Those around 7, it began moving elsewhere. All of those runcibles would be next to go. ECS forces, having arrived in strength, now used transports to evacuate many citizens directly through the arcology roof. Along with those forces arrived thousands of drones equipped to scan for Jain tech, and this made it possible to move thousands of people way beyond the quarantine perimeter, which meant a reduction in the population density directly outside, so those inside could evacuate quicker. And they were certainly getting out quicker: the knowledge that a large portion of the arcology had been reduced to radioactive rubble encouraged them to abandon their precious belongings and run. However, though the substructure’s advance might be more tentative now, it was still inexorable, and after 3, 4 and 7 it would next reach Runcible 8—and Coloron itself.
The AI turned its attention to the armoured chamber that contained it. Its brain rested between the interfaces of a thick optical control pillar: a pillow-sized lump of yellow crystal wrapped in a black s-con cagework. For the first time in many years Coloron undogged the locks to the heavy chamber door and opened it. Through the door marched an object like a headless iron ostrich, but standing three yards tall with two arms slung underneath its hollow body. From the hollow, a thick lid lay hinged back bearing emitter dishes, a com laser, and a powerful U-space transceiver. It came to a halt before Coloron.
The AI now focused back on the runcibles in greatest danger. The flow of humanity heading away from them remained uninterrupted. Surprisingly, the crowds around Runcible 3 had nearly cleared, while those leaving the south-west exits just kept on moving, knowing the imminent explosion might reach them there. For the moment, nothing required Coloron’s personal attention, so the AI disconnected.
Sight through thousands of cameras—assigned on the whole to simple recognition programs so the AI could respond to the circumstances they recognized—blinked out. Soft links to sub-minds controlling many aspects of the arcology collapsed. Coloron lost its links to autofactories; to maintenance, surveillance, military and agricultural drones; hospitals and the many varieties of autodocs they contained; servers and other com networks; mining operations; fusion reactors; recycling plants; and to satellites including the particle cannon. Coloron disconnected from its body—the arcology entire.
From vast perception the AI collapsed down to single tunnel vision seen from the crystal it occupied. It observed the robot carrying on through with its program, reaching down and closing three-fingers hands around Coloron’s braincase. Movement then, only visually perceived. The robot held Coloron poised for a moment over the hollow in its body, then lowered the AI down into darkness. The lid slammed shut and a seeming age of sensory deprivation followed. Then connections began to re-establish, and finally Coloron gazed through the sensorium of its new home at the optic
interface pillar closing up. It now U-space-linked itself to those of its subminds possessing such facility, and electro-magnetically linked elsewhere, as the arcology’s structure permitted. The losses in not being optically linked amounted to about a third, however the advantage was quite evident: Coloron now need not die along with its arcology.
* * * *
The barren sandy plateau, scattered with monolithic boulders, lay far from any human habitation on the planet Cull. A mile up, his ship hovering on AG, Blegg focused scanning gear on the location of the Jain node. Eight thousand miles above him, a dreadnought waited with a five megatonne CTD imploder ready to be fired. Why it had not yet been fired was problematic, Earth Central’s instructions to him simply being: ‘Go down there, and see. You can transport yourself out should there be any danger.’
Strange oblate objects were scattered about the base of one slanting sandstone monolith. The movement he could see down there did not look human. Blegg increased magnification and, on one of the subscreens, saw circular entrances into these objects. Something came out of one of them and clambered on top of what must be its dwelling; for scan now revealed these objects to be hollow, and that many contained living creatures. He recognized the scorpion shape of one of the native life forms: a sleer. He focused in, and the creature turned its nightmare head up towards him. It bore a human face.
Dragon.
While it was here on this world, Dragon had conducted experiments that were morally indefensible at best, and obscene in the extreme. The entity had crossed human DNA with the genome of native insectile creatures to result in by-blows like this. Why do so? Dragon had partially answered this question during Cormac’s interviewing of it, but not really to anyone’s satisfaction. In truth, Blegg felt, Dragon did such things because it could not resist tampering and tinkering, because it liked to upset natural orders and humanity alike, and in the end simply because it could.
Drawing closer to this strange settlement, Blegg brought his ship down. It landed in a cloud of dust just on the outskirts. Blegg abandoned his seat, collected a pulse-rifle and a hand-held scanner now formatted to detecting the U-space signature of a Jain node. As an afterthought, he collected a couple of planar grenades before heading for the airlock.
Dust hazing everything, its taste metallic; a sharp smell as well—something acidic. His foot crunched on shale as he stepped from the extended steps. A few paces from his ship he turned and studied the craft for the first time from the outside. It bore that standard flat-bottomed shape of a general-purpose shuttle, but also sported four nacelles mounted on stubby wings—two positioned behind the nose and two at the rear. It stood on three legs, each possessing three-toed sprung feet. Blegg wondered why someone had chosen to colour it a bright inferno red. With a snort he turned back towards the hybrids’ village.
Blegg began walking, seeing increasing activity ahead. The first of them then came scuttling out to his right: two centaur-like creatures he had already viewed images of when going through the reports of what happened on this world. The larger of these possessed a six-foot-long sleer body, out of which grew the upper half of a bearded man. Making direct mental contact via the ship to the AI nets, he commented, ‘One of those two looks quite young. Could this mean they are breeding?’
‘Dragon would not create them sterile—such precautions are not in its nature,’ came the reply.
Blegg was unsurprised at how quickly the U-space comlink established.
‘Okay, Hal, what game are we playing here?’
EC replied, ‘Just retrieving something Skellor dropped. Dragon is reluctant to part with those nodes it possesses. It seems it does not trust us with them. But we have received a communication from one it did trust.’
‘One of these creatures? Are they like the dracomen, immune to Jain tech?’ He glanced about himself. The two centaur creatures drew closer and scuttled back and forth in agitation. To his left, three humanoid figures appeared out of the roiling dust, which Blegg realized was now thickening. These… people snicked at the air with the pincers protruding from their mouths. Ahead something scuttled past: a sleer body, a human face seemingly frozen in a permanent scream.
‘You will see,’ said the Earth Central AI.
Now the looming presence of the oblate dwellings all around him. He tracked one of the screamers with the barrel of his pulse-rifle as it came close, then swerved away to clamber up onto one of the dwellings. He now turned his attention to his node detector. The readings looked strange for a moment, until he tilted it upwards. The monolith—the Jain node was up there. Blegg considered transporting himself directly to the node’s location, but rejected that idea. He did not know why, and did not concern himself further with the thought.
Eventually a wall of slanting multicoloured layers loomed before him. Things scrabbled and hissed in the wind-gnawed hollows about the monolith’s base. Blegg turned to his left and began to walk round. All about him shadowy shapes loomed and retreated in the haze. Eventually he came to a point where they all seemed to be closing in. Here, carved into the stone, were foot- and hand-holds. He pocketed the detector, slung his pulse-rifle from his shoulder by its strap, and climbed.
Earth Central commented, ‘There comes a time when useful fictions become weaknesses to be exploited.’
‘Meaning?’ asked Blegg. Sleer hybrids clung either side of him to the sandstone face: the screamers.
‘Yes… meaning.’
‘Is it my imagination,’ asked Blegg, ‘or do you sound more and more like Dragon every day?’
On a ledge here, Blegg rested and eyed his companions on the rockface. The air carried less dust this high, so he could see them more clearly, which was not exactly reassuring. He checked the detector and saw that the Jain node lay only twenty yards away, in a straight line running up through and above the monolith. Not so far to climb, so he grimaced and continued, eventually coming up over the edge onto the top.
‘Ah… I see.’
Blegg unslung his pulse-rifle and casually aimed it, not that a weapon like that would do any good. He considered the grenades he carried and rejected the idea, too. Anyway, he could step away through U-space any time he chose.
Only a few yards away from him, the figure stood eight feet tall. It wore a wide-brimmed hat held in place against the wind by one heavy brass hand. Its coat was ragged, and it wore lace-up boots.
Mr Crane.
Perfectly complementing this menacing tableau, a vulture suddenly landed in a cloud of dust and a scattering of oily feathers. Blegg remembered this bird to be another Dragon creation; the mind it contained being the AI from the Vulture—the ship Skellor stole and which the AI had forced to crash here before transmitting itself to Dragon.
‘So, who’s been talking to Earth Central?’ Blegg asked out loud.
The vulture cocked its head and replied, ‘Me, of course.’ It extended a wing towards the big brass Golem. ‘He don’t say much.’
Mr Crane tilted his hat back on the brass dome of his skull, groped in one pocket, then took out a handful of various objects. He stirred them with one finger. Blegg noticed a piece of crystal disturbingly like that of the Atheter artefact, a blue acorn, a small rubber dog, and a golden ovoid. The brass Golem selected the ovoid from among them and held it up before his face like a jeweller inspecting a suspect gem, then, with a flick of his hand, tossed it to Blegg.
Too dangerous to touch, but Blegg snapped out a hand and snatched the object from the air. I’m dead, he thought, as he held up his hand and opened it. The Jain node rested in his palm, cubic patterns shifting on its surface.
‘You understand?’ Earth Central asked.
I’m damned.
The Jain node did not react at all.
* * * *
Jack routed the package from Thellant into secure storage in a virtuality, where it howled like a pack of wolves confined behind a thin door. Aphran held back for a moment. Having witnessed the initial non-reactive scan of this package, she knew it to be laye
red with Jain tech subversion and sequestering routines, as was expected. However, though Jack perpetually delegated tasks to her, in this one there seemed some hidden purpose—she was too closely entwined with the AI to not realize that. She now extended the boundaries of the virtuality and projected herself inside it. For ease of handling she gave the memory package a form easy to comprehend on a VR level, while on an informational level her programs could take it apart. Swirling chaos eventually collapsed down to a stack of books in which squirmed venomous reptiles and insects—she needed to read these books yet avoid being stung or bitten. Beside her, a thin man appeared. He wore a pinstripe suit, bowler hat, and the glitter of thick spectacles concealed his eyes. Jack Ketch, the hangman.
‘No reservations?’ Jack asked, just like with Freyda, the Separatist.
‘I have some,’ said Aphran. ‘I’ve been working for the Polity under a sentence of erasure, which I know will never be repealed. Why should I continue?’
‘Because as long as you work, that sentence will not be executed.’
‘And because you may be damaged in the process.’
Jack leant forwards. ‘You think?’
‘Yes, though you have been gradually disentangling yourself and I suspect that, while I deal with this’—she gestured to the VR representation—‘you will pull away even more.’
‘Yes,’ Jack replied, ‘the processing power you will require in this task will further weaken your hold on me. I may even be able to separate from you completely.’
‘Does it mean nothing to you that I saved your life?’
‘My life is very important to me—which is precisely the point: my life.’
‘So you are going to erase me, just like you did Freyda.’
‘You believe that?’
‘I do.’
‘Then do not carry out this task.’
Aphran looked upon the perilous stack of books. She seemed damned either way: doing this, she could be separated from Jack and wiped out; if she did not do this, it would just take longer.