Denner's Wreck

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  “I know, I just ... wait a minute.” He paused, readjusting himself to the real world after hours in the fantasy-land of high technology. “Four wakes? Has Geste been back?"

  “No, he hasn't, not yet, but as a matter of fact he's on his way right now."

  “I thought he must have come and gone while I was being taught,” Bredon said, concerned. “What took so long? Has something gone wrong?"

  “That's hard to say,” Gamesmaster replied judiciously. “He didn't exactly set any recruiting records, but so far nobody's shot at him since he left the mountains."

  “Who does he have as allies now?"

  “The same two he started with, Imp and the Skyler."

  Startled, Bredon asked, “No one else?"

  “No one else. He got resounding disinterest from all the rest, from Starflower to the Lady of the Lake."

  “Can the three of them stop Thaddeus?” Bredon asked worriedly.

  “How the hell should I know?” Gamesmaster's voice remained fairly calm, but Bredon knew it was upset.

  “Sorry, I guess that wasn't a fair question,” he said.

  “It's all right. I guess we're both a little nervous."

  Bredon hesitated, then asked, “Can an arti ... artif ... artificial intelligence be nervous? A silicon one, I mean?"

  “Well, technically, kid, I don't really know if it's what you would consider nervousness, but it works for me. I feel it in situations that ought to make someone nervous, and not in others, and it's uncomfortable, so I call it nervousness."

  “I guess that's nervousness, then. After all, I don't really know how other humans feel, just what I feel."

  “Hey, you've got it exactly! Although I have the equipment to hook you up to someone else so you do feel what they do, if you want. But you'd need a volunteer to hook up to."

  “Oh, that's all right,” Bredon said hastily, “I'm not that curious."

  “The boss should be landing soon; he's just left the Skyland."

  “Uh ... why did he come back here, if he didn't get any more recruits? To pick me up?"

  “Not hardly, kid. Don't get exaggerated ideas of your own importance. I don't think he plans to take you anywhere. He's here to pick up the weapons I've been whipping up for him."

  “That's right, Bredon,” Geste's voice said from nowhere.

  “Hey, boss, that's not nice! I hadn't had a chance to tell him you were listening!"

  “I'm sure he doesn't mind."

  “Well, I...” Bredon began.

  “See?” Geste cut him off. “So, Gamesmaster, what little surprises have we got for Thaddeus?"

  Bredon leaned forward in his seat and tapped panels on the console; a wallscreen blinked, and he found himself looking at a flawless three-dimensional image of Arcade's entrance hall where he had slept that first dark, home to the “enchanted forest” where almost all Geste's carbon-based playthings lived. The ceiling was rolling back to admit a flying platform. The Trickster himself, wearing dark red this time, stood aboard the airskiff.

  “Well, boss, not as much as you might like, I'm sure,” Gamesmaster said. “I've whipped up a lot of plain-vanilla energy weapons, up and down the spectrum, most of them mobile and semi-intelligent and the rest portable miniatures, but I'll bet my last circuit that Thaddeus can defend against every damn one of them. I can't nail down his gene pattern exactly enough to tailor a personal virus—anything I can come up with by approximation has a good chance of killing someone else, usually Shadowdark, but sometimes Sheila or Feura, and it might get any number of short-lifers, so I haven't done any anti-personnel microbes at all. I've done some limited-field sabotage germs—stuff that can eat hell out of equipment but won't spread much. The problem with those is getting them into the systems they're bred for, and of course, he may have bacteriophagic protective systems; if he's as paranoid as his record implies, he might have his entire demesne laced with his own swarm of bug-eaters."

  “What about his personal modifications, symbiotes, whatever?"

  “We don't have good records on those, boss; remember, he's a born immortal, so he doesn't need as much symbiosis as most of you. I've worked up some bugs that I think might possibly eat out what he's got in his bloodstream, but you need to get them close. And of course, he may have added more that we don't know about at all, and he's sure to have his immune system alarm-rigged and multi-layered. Basically, boss, unless he's been sloppy, I don't think we can get at him with anything microscopic, but we may be able to invade some of his equipment and rot out the soft parts. And I've got some macroscopic stuff I'm working on, but even with forced growth and imprinted training I don't have anything bigger than a cockroach yet, and what I do have is dumber than dirt. They'll eat plastic, though, and dodge anything that moves, and they can take pretty high voltage without frying. I used what we had, but we didn't have anything in the forest that I could use unmodified. Those little brains don't hold much unless you build it into the genes, and they'd need better claws and teeth and defenses, so I've mostly been growing new ones, not training the ones we had. I'm working on some machine-killer mice, but they need another five wakes, minimum."

  “We probably don't have five wakes."

  “I know, boss, that's why I didn't bother with a metal-eating rhinoceros."

  Geste, standing on his platform in the entrance chamber, cast a startled look in the direction of Gamesmaster's central processor. “Is that a joke?"

  “Matter of opinion, I guess."

  Geste smiled, and would have laughed aloud under other circumstances. “Have you got anything else?” he asked.

  “Sure, boss, lots of it, hardware and software both, and a lot of it is already launched and trying to burrow into Fortress Holding, or riding in on the airwaves looking for a foothold. Saboteurs of all kinds. I think we may have taken out a few of his peripheral systems already, but I don't have enough feedback to be certain, and he's so decentralized and layered that it may not matter. And I've been working on space-benders and time-warping stuff; I've got a half-decent pocket-sized stasis field generator ready to go."

  “Good, that's all good; I'm proud of you. Start loading it all on the Skyland, then, and see if you can give me an inventory, with instructions for use, that I can load into inboard memory."

  “You got it, boss; transmitting to your skull-liner now."

  Bredon had listened to all this with fascination. Even after his incredible cram course in Terran technology, he did not follow all of it. He had no idea what a rhinoceros was, or mice. Cockroaches he knew well, since the world—Denner's Wreck—had plenty of them. Microbes in general he was very vague about. He had not had time to learn everything, by any means, not even everything that was used in Arcade. At Gamesmaster's suggestion he had focused on the inorganic technology used in Arcade, emphasizing silicon-and metal-based systems rather than carbon-based life or warped space.

  A stasis field generator? He knew what various field generators were, but not what a stasis field was.

  He had encountered, but did not really understand, descriptions of the artificial symbiotes that the immortals had living inside them, augmenting the natural repair and maintenance mechanisms of their bodies and providing them with some of their “supernatural” powers. He knew now that his bruised nose and other injuries received in trying to break into the Forbidden Grove had been repaired by an offshoot of one of Geste's symbiotes.

  What he chose to ask, though, was, “What's a skull-liner?"

  “Oh, it's a computer that's grown onto the inside of the boss's skull, inside his head, where it can link itself to his brain. Gives him a few gigabytes of extra memory when he needs it, and lets me feed him information at high speed."

  “What sort of a computer?"

  “Silicon crystal, mostly."

  “I thought silicon life was built; I didn't think silicon computers grew."

  “They don't, by themselves; the skull-liner was installed by programmed silicon-skeleton bacteria."

  “Oh.”
The thought of tiny creatures growing into a machine in his head was somehow repulsive; he shuddered slightly.

  His recent experiences had shaken him. Terran technology was overwhelming in its diversity, complexity, and power. He now truly understood that a Power, a Terran, could do almost anything with the right equipment—but so could anyone else.

  The Powers were just people. What made them Powers were their machines and their creatures—and sometimes it was impossible to tell the machines from the creatures.

  The true wonder was not the Powers themselves—after all, they had not created their technology, they had merely inherited the results of thousands of years of work by millions of people. The true wonder was their technology.

  Bredon had begun to sample that wonder, to explore the fringes of a universe unlike anything he had ever dreamt of, and he wanted to know more. Thanks to the imprinter he had learned how to use most of the machines in Arcade, but Gamesmaster had had no basic science texts, no explanation for how most of the machines worked. Geste had no need of anything like that. What he needed was instruction manuals, and those he had.

  Bredon wanted to know not just what the machines did, but how; not just how they worked, but why.

  But even while his thirst for knowledge was driving him on, even as he revelled in his new mastery over Arcade's devices, there was a growing kernel of uneasiness, of fear, in the back of his mind. He sometimes thought that he was going too fast, that he was tampering with things beyond his comprehension, perhaps even beyond the comprehension of the people who built them. Some of the things he saw seemed unclean, or unholy, or just horribly dangerous.

  Tailored bacteria, for example—those were bugs, like the bugs that caused disease, but instead of causing harm these performed useful tasks like assembling a computer inside Geste's skull.

  But Bredon could not help wondering whether such bugs could be trusted, whether it was entirely safe to put a computer inside one's head. Could Geste ever really be sure that he was still the master of his own mind? The computer was, in effect, a disease. It was a beneficial disease, vastly expanding his memory, letting him think more quickly and more clearly, but by changing how he thought, didn't it also affect what he thought?

  And the bugs that put it there—could they be trusted to follow the planned pattern exactly? What if a tailored bacterium, exposed to the myriad chemicals and radiations in Arcade and in Geste's body, were to mutate at the wrong time? Bredon had had the mechanism of intentional mutation explained to him in detail; Gamesmaster had passed off spontaneous or accidental mutation as unimportant, but Bredon did not feel sure of that.

  And the bent-space generators, machines that could wrench reality itself out of shape, creating space where none previously existed, making rooms bigger on the inside than the outside, turning corners in directions that didn't exist before—those also worried Bredon. The Powers bent space to enlarge their homes, to save themselves long walks between scattered outposts, and for any number of other trivial purposes. Bredon knew, as a matter of simple pragmatism, that if you bend anything enough, it will break. Could space itself be damaged by the twisting the Powers gave it?

  Terrans had been using these technologies for millenia, and as of four hundred years ago, when the Powers left to come to Denner's Wreck, Terra and most of its people were still intact. Even so, Bredon found himself uneasy at the thought of everything that might go wrong.

  Now Geste intended to use these things as weapons, intentionally making them even more dangerous, right here on Denner's Wreck.

  He also intended to leave Bredon here, in Arcade, while he went off to battle Thaddeus and perhaps rescue Lady Sunlight—or perhaps get her killed.

  Bredon's mind snagged on that thought. He knew, consciously, that Lady Sunlight's plight was not his fault, but some part of his mind refused to accept that. If he had not broken the disk and summoned Geste, the Trickster might not now be preparing to fight. Lady Sunlight would still be wherever she now was, but not in danger of getting caught in the crossfire.

  Geste was gathering weapons that could, if they went wrong, kill thousands of innocent people.

  And when Geste left, he, Bredon, would be alone again in Arcade, with only the machine intelligences to talk to, and he did not care for that prospect. He knew now how Gamesmaster and the others worked, and that knowledge made them seem far less human—and less trustworthy.

  Furthermore, he was running out of things he wanted to do in Arcade. He had not yet tried out most of Arcade's vast array of entertainments, but he did not care to; he had sampled enough to discourage him. The one hologame he had attempted, the simplest Gamesmaster could find, had ended in his ignominious defeat in mere seconds. The first story Gamesmaster had played for him had been incredibly realistic, exciting, and romantic, but had been so alien in setting and concept, and so emotionally complex, that he was still not sure what he had actually felt, and did not feel ready to try another. The very reality of the experience—sight, sound, smell, touch, taste, all slightly more intense than real life—had frightened him.

  Part of the fear was of something he did not understand; another part was fear that he might become addicted to such experiences and give up his own world. Gamesmaster admitted that some humans did, indeed, prefer fiction, or history recordings, to reality. It mentioned other insidious dangers as well, drugs or neural hookups that could be addictive.

  Bredon knew that if he grew bored enough, he might try things in Arcade that he would do better to avoid. He had already been dabbling in computer simulations that were fantastically real, and terrifying in the sense of power they gave him when he was actually controlling nothing but colored light, synthesized sound, and artificial odors.

  He did not want to stay in Arcade.

  Geste, however, probably would not want him along.

  Geste did not necessarily have the final say, however. Bredon was not just a savage, cowering before a demi-god. He was a free human being, and could do as he pleased. Geste had carelessly given him partial control over Gamesmaster, and therefore over all the machines and creatures in Arcade, probably thinking that he would be too frightened and ignorant to make any use of them.

  If so, Geste had been wrong, because Bredon had learned how to use them.

  “Gamesmaster,” he said, “privacy, please."

  Abruptly, he was enclosed in utter darkness.

  “Yes, kid, what can I do for you?” Gamesmaster asked.

  “Get me aboard the Skyland. Now."

  Chapter Fifteen

  “...the boatmen saw an island in the sea before them, an island at the mouth of their own harbor that had never been there before."

  "'Has it risen from the bottom overnight?’ some asked.

  "'Did it fall from the sky?’ said others.

  "But among the elders of the village was a woman who had studied the legends extensively, and she knew at once what this island must be. ‘It is Avalon, the home of Tagomi of the Seas, greatest of the aquatic Powers,’ she told the villagers. ‘This island, unlike all others, floats freely wherever its master wishes it to go.'

  "The villagers heard her words, and knew that she spoke the truth, and they marvelled that one of the Powers had come to their little corner of the world.

  "'What could he want here?’ they asked each other.

  "One young man, Filomor by name, replied, ‘Why don't we ask him?'

  "The others laughed, and called him mad. ‘Would you go up and ask him, ask a Power, ask Tagomi, what he wants here, as if he were a common vagabond?’ they asked.

  "'Yes,’ Filomor replied, ‘I would do just that. Will anyone come with me?'

  "And then the others grew angry, and cursed him, and threatened him, and told him, ‘You must not go there. You must not disturb him. If you anger him with your audacity, he might destroy us all.'

  "But Filomor was determined, and would hear none of their arguments. ‘I will go to him and ask why he has come,’ he said, ‘and nothing in the th
ree worlds will stop me.’ And he took his boat and rowed out onto the sea, across the harbor to the strange green island..."

  —from the tales of

  Kithen the Storyteller

  * * * *

  No one human saw Bredon slip off the platform as it sank to the great empty expanse of close-clipped lawn. No one human saw him glance around in the dimness at the flawlessly even grass, the delicate flowers that swayed gracefully without wind, and the great jagged house at the top of the long, gentle slope as the platform slid silently back across the rocky verge and down into the empty space beneath. No one human saw him scurry quickly into the ornamental shrubbery that glistened nearby, the glossy green leaves almost black in the dim light of the stars overhead and the distant glow of the main house. No one human saw or heard any trace of him. He was a hunter, a named Hunter and the son of a Hunter, and he knew his trade. The midwake darkness made it easy to avoid human eyes.

  The Skyler's machines were another matter; they needed no visible light. The instant his foot left the protective field the platform had provided he was seen, scented, felt, heard, measured, analyzed, his mass adjusted for in the island's lift, the biochemistry of his breath and body odor recorded for future identification, his movement matched against known human behaviors to judge his intentions.

  Bredon felt nothing, heard nothing, saw nothing of the machines, but he knew they were there, and that the central intelligence would be informing the Skyler of his presence within seconds. He pulled the little communicator from one of the pockets in his vest.

  “Hello, in the house,” he whispered.

  “Identify yourself, intruder,” a harsh voice replied, speaking not from the communicator but from the air above him.

  “My name is Bredon,” he said. “Gamesmaster sent me. It's playing a joke on Lord Geste. Look, I know you have to report me, but could you wait until we're moving? Please? If you don't the joke will be ruined. You can watch me as closely as you like, even confine me, and I won't cause any trouble."

  The intelligence hesitated, then said, “I'm sorry, sir, but I must report you to the Skyler immediately. I'm transmitting a report of your arrival right now. Anything else would run counter to my most basic programming. She may choose not to ruin the joke herself, however."