Scratch Monkey

by Charles Stross

  “There's no need to shout!” snapped the dog-head. Saliva foamed white along his jaw. “Your cooperation is entirely unnecessary. You know in your ba, your heart, that you are guilty: the degree of your guilt will decide whether I eat your ba now ... or later.” A goon was climbing the back of the throne, gripping it with two pairs of prehensile feet as it wrestled with the centrepost of the balance. Anubis lifted his huge, blackened cleaver and began to strop it on a woven steel belt.

  Oshi tensed. The goons holding her tightened their grip on her arms and legs. Shit he's going to open me up with that THING? Her head swam and she felt sick. Angry too, but mostly resigned. Rip my heart out, weigh it, and eat it? Shit!

  The goons picked her up, exoskeleton and all, and carried her round the pit of fire. She looked up; Anubis stood over her, dribbling like a hungry dog. She could see the whites of his eyes. The balance pans swung wildly in the rising air current from the fire. She could see what they were blackened with now.

  “Link is cut,” Ish whispered in the back of her head.” What's your –”

  Whatever he said next was lost. Anubis threw back his head and screamed like a dog in agony. Simultaneously, Oshi blinked – and green gunsights swam back into focus before her eyes. The goons still held her by arms and legs. She lashed out sideways with one of her exoskeletal limbs; felt something soft crunch before her sharp-edged blow, and tugged hard with all the strength in her powered carapace.

  Her arm came free. Something greasy clung to it. A creature hissed in pain: “ YEEE!” Oshi kicked out, heard a whine from a damaged servo in one knee. Something tugged her to the right. Panicking, she bought up her other free exoarm and twitched her ghost-fingers, playing an imaginary chord.

  Hiatus.

  Her head hurt. She couldn't see. She couldn't feel her left arm. She had to pay attention but everything was so fuzzy and her head hurt. “ Status,” she whispered to her built-in wisdom kit.

  “Mild concussion. Proximity clearance program initiated. All proximate life forms terminated with extreme prejudice. Ammunition reserves down to less than twenty percent. There are two messages waiting for you from Ishmael. Replay: yes or no?”

  “No.” Her head was spinning. She pushed herself upright, found that her left arm was throbbing where she had fallen on a rock. Everything was coated in a thin layer of slime. “ What's online?”

  “All proximate life forms terminated. Axial redoubt management system answers when I ping it. Hub comm systems time out after sixty seconds: no carrier. Orbital observation systems times out after sixty seconds: no carrier. Colony support management system times out after sixty seconds: no carrier. Colony dreamtime upload system responds but is locked up to crash emergency priority. Colony general wisdom axis time out after –”

  “Stop.” She knew she should be elated, but somehow it all felt disconnected from her. The colony was shutting down; dreamtime upload was in effect. In the colony below her, nobody would be conscious. Microscopic scanners embedded in nerve cells would be running flat-out, uploading tagged packets of mind-software into the dreamtime over cellular communications links already saturated and in danger of collapsing under the load. Meanwhile, the connection to Pascal – where whatever was left of Anubis was doubtless raving and gibbering with fury – was cut off. No human minds would be fed to this Superbright. And up here, the axial redoubt was safe ...

  “Is anyone still alive? Can they make it up here?” she said aloud.

  “Prognosis negative. Hub elevators locked. There are two messages waiting for you.”

  “How long was I unconscious?”

  “Twenty-six minutes. Alert. A new message has arrived.”

  “Play it to me.” She looked around. The slime coating the rocks around her glistened like ruby in the firelight. Her head still swam and she felt sick.

  “Message follows: Oshi, we did what you said. Uh, radiation levels climbing. The goon squad went berserk just after you called. We're going to upload now the system's clear; it's too hot for comfort. I mean, I'm ... ugh ... shit. We're sick already. Guess the Ultrabrights found us after all. You should button down right now. Maybe we can talk when we're uploaded. Shit, I don't know why I'm –

  “Message ends.”

  “Tell redoubt control to shut the door and switch to internal gas recycling,” she told her wisdom. “ Button down for a big solar flare.” She stood up, felt something dripping down her face. The world spun around her head and her knees were weak, but the exoskeleton held her upright. “ Get me to an accomodation area with medical support. Right now.” Quietly, without any fuss, the skeleton walked her away from the wall she'd fallen against. Her booted feet squelched slightly as they passed by the smoking fire pit. It stank of roasting pork.

  “I think I'm going to be sick ,” she said to herself, as everything became confusing. Then the world went out.

  The colony was dying.

  As Oshi slept in a haze of exhaustion, the systems that kept the great colony running were winding down into death. The intricate web of dependencies that held the ecology together was tearing apart. A storm of gamma radiation swept through the plane of the planetary system, shattering cells and circuitry alike. Delicate nanomechanisms poised within the engineered life forms of the colony ruptured and fused; DNA chains cross-linked and broke down into a sterile chaos. Deep in the axial redoubt, shielded by fifty metres of solid rock and metal, a human being might slumber on without noticing. But out on the thin-floored tracts of the colony seven different kinds of hell were breaking loose.

  The Dreamtime upload web was saturated as the human presence shut down and uploaded into mindspace. Neomort corpses drooled mindlessly in the nooks and crannies of the colony; they flopped or twitched as the nanoscale transceivers in their brains copied their entire personnae out to the Dreamtime. Packet-bursts of information strobed outwards, each containing part of the information necessary to reconstitute a fabulously complex neural network. Labelled by origin and time, the data packets were switched from transceiver to cellular transceiver. Normally they would be queued in the huge data repository of the hub, then pulsed out via laser communicator on a one-way trip to the Dreamtime on Pascal, where they would be reconstituted as actors in the virtual reality. But the comm link was severed; and the data was backing up in stasis, stored in the protected repository of the axial redoubt.

  Meanwhile, the goon squad lashed out with spastic abandon. A pile of eviscerated bodies heaped up outside each of the houses in the small town called Memphis; blood and brains pooled in empty corridors where human life was on the retreat. The plasma tubes that lit the colony dimmed to a minimum reaction rate, fusion cores barely maintaining bootstrap activity; a dim blue haze cast razor-sharp shadows across the carnage. Radiation-damaged ninjutsu nightmares crashed through the halls and cavities of the habitat zone, screaming mournfully and attacking anyone they saw; “ IL DUCE! Is dead! Il Duce! IEEYAH!” Armed with claws, fangs, tentacles and chainsaws, the goon squad was an instrument of terror rather than a serious army. Still, neomort colonists splashed satisfactorily, slaking their crazed appetite for blood and disruption: they wrestled aimlessly in the long shadows of twilight. Soon they, too would be dead. The world screamed destruction. Everything above the level of a cockroach would be dead of radiation damage. Except –

  The tapeworm. One corpse bubbled and heaved in a lively imitation of life. White fronds wove brittle jaws together in an eternal grin. Coral-like growths sprouted, untended, from the grass on either side of it, the delicate pink flush of blood suffusing the segments of each tumor. Genetic recombination heaved and bubbled rapidly in segments developed for a very different task – directed evolution trying to outrun radiation-induced damage. Around the edges of the necropolis, all the vegetation was rotting: silvery hyphae reached out, grappling and curling through leafy stomata and soil alike. The worm grew with a furious energy, soaking in every unit of biomass that it could find. Where it encroached on buildings, compacted sandstone gave way to it
s idiot shove. Heaps of strange mucus built up in the crawlspaces and death ducts of the cell blocks. Soon, if it survived the gathering radiation storm, the worm would be the only living macroscopic organism in the colony. It would eat the biological support chassis that held the end walls together. And then the colony would finally disintegrate, spilling its guts across a million cubic kilometres of space.

  In the centre of the doomed colony, Oshi Adjani slept on. She was bruised from her fight, exhausted, one ankle swollen and hot: and she was concussed. Her exoskeleton carried her gently into the core of the redoubt, to a dark tube-chamber that showed little sign of the theatrical artifices of Anubis. It paused before a web of patched cables, extended a delicate sensor arm, plugged itself in, and then –

  – I awaken and look out through its eyes, remembering who I used to be. Locked into the redoubt's control system, I have access to many of the eyes scattered throughout the tube. I can take a good look at you. You're in a sorry state, my little Scratch Monkey. I really don't know why I bother looking after you! (Yes, I walked you here after you blacked out. You think I'm just your wisdom program, don't you? Part of the great big dump your Boss left in your cache back in orbit over New Salazar. That's alright by me. It's good to be unrecognized, but sometimes I really would prefer to be able to look you in the eyes and ask what you see when you stare at me.) I take a good look at the carnage raging below. It's instructive: an object lesson in why Superbrights should not be left alone.

  Perhaps I should have come out and dealt with Anubis myself. But I don't think he would have been very receptive. Do you think so, Oshi? (Oh dear, you're still asleep. Silly me!) In any case, you dealt with him very satisfactorily, didn't you?

  Just as I expected.

  But that's beside the point. The radiation levels are still increasing, according to the life support system. Gamma radiation only, which I find intriguing. I wonder how long it will take you to figure out what's going on? Even with the help of those foolish, brave explorers – how I wish they'd beamed themselves my way! – you may have difficulty defeating it. And it certainly won't be expecting humans, puny humans, to put up any resistance worth speaking of. But that's for later. You're tired, you're ill, you need to sleep, and frankly I don't think I trust you to respond appropriately if you see what is going on at ground level. You never were good at keeping your emotions out of your work.

  Sleep tight, little monkey. I'm sure your dreams will be interesting ...

  Oshi spent the first few hours curled in the control cylinder, sleeping fitfully before a wall sized monitor screen. Her exoskeleton stood guard under the control of her wisdom programs, monitoring blood pressure and electrolytes; it kept close watch on her metabolism but made no attempt to clean her, so her skin was stained the ochre of drying blood.

  When she awakened, the world was a dim green shell illuminated in fitful flashes by the pulsing of tiny lights. Like the random blinking of fireflies, the lights pricked out no discernible pattern. She yawned and reached up to rub her sleep-bleared eyes, to be brought up short by the jolt of glove on visor. Silly, she thought; still half-asleep, she cued the exoskeleton to open her artificial eyelids. Then she froze.

  Red lights blinked manically in her eye. The exoskeleton was buttoned down, a transparent visor covering her face: she was breathing recirculated air. The core radiation level was reading more than two centigreys per hour, all of it hard gamma rays. She'd already picked up a dose greater than a years normal exposure. Where's it coming from? “ Give me an air check,” she muttered, cuing in her wisdom.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Ambient radioisotopes. Anything that differs from normal. Got that?”

  “Negative. There are no unusual signatures in the circulating air.” She blinked bleary eyes at the winking firefly lights on the walls. Phosphorescence?

  The wall screen. The gamma flux triggering off brief flickers of illumination. The firefly signature of dying radiation.

  It must be hot out there, she realised, shuddering and wondering. “What's the external radiation level like?” she asked.

  “No link available.”

  “Huh. Project an estimate, based on the attenuation expected given half-thicknesses of the core wall structure. What should the external radiation level be like?”

  She squinted. Sweeping curves dropped across his vision like a net of spun emerald. “ Estimate in progress. Normalising. Sum biological radiation load is estimated at five decagrays per hour. Frequency is hard gamma, peaking at one point two mega-electron volts. Do you require further information?”

  “That will be all,” she muttered. Shit! One gray per hour was lethal – about the same dose that a neutron bomb would deliver at ground zero. What's going down out there? she blinked, perspiration globbing on his eyebrows. “Helmet fan on,” she whispered. “Are they all dead, yet?” A wild horror threatened to overwhelm her.

  “No external links.”

  “Damn you, shut up! I wasn't talking to you.” Oshi settled in to wait. Fifty hours. If this doesn't stop before then, I'm meat. she shuddered, closed her eyes. It didn't make things better. “You got any sedatives?” she asked.

  “Affirmative. What do you require?”

  “Twenty hours of sleep.” Twenty hours should be long enough. If it hasn't dropped by then ... might as well do it the easy way. she licked her parched lips. “Can you inject it directly?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Then proceed ...” Almost immediately, she felt a cold pricking in his left buttock. Then the core was quiet for a long time, and Oshi was alone in her dreams of long ago ...

  War crimes

  I'm going downside on Miramor Dubrovnic. It's my first field mission, and I'm tense as a wire. This is no great treat. They weave me into a dropcap with a quick briefing on local mores and taboos and a GP knife for emergencies and the right costume so I'll blend in, only if you think it's a costume they'll click on you're a hostile and burn you before you can say 'flatline'. Repeat, this is normal , this is what you go to work wearing, this is the way you live, this is who you are – for a while. They're going to drop me right on the outskirts of a town, which would be big trouble except that the army has cordoned off the countryside around it, which is worse. If we do an external insertion I am going to be very dead by the time they get through raping and burning anything that comes their way. So ...

  The dropcap is not a nice experience. It bounces about like a dying man on the end of a rope as I drop through the stratopause, shedding bits of molten heatshield and jinking about to break radar lock. I've only ever ridden these in sim before and I'm so shit-scared it's a good thing I've had no food for a day. I lie flat on my back and stare at the colours on the inside of my eyes as the giant fist of deceleration settles down across my body and then there's a THUMP from outside the cap that rattles my teeth in my jaws. Shit if that's a proxfuse they've locked on got range I'm dead – but no. The status log in my left eye is coiling green, no angry red flare of hostile sensors bouncing off my skin. Well, they said the ratfuckers were primitive –

  There's another Thump, and this time I recognise the sound of my aerobrake cutting loose and beginning to burn. That means we're nearly down so I check my display and see the last kilometre unreeling like a broken spring. There's more deceleration, savage this time, and a final BANG as the dropcap grounds. I'm down and so dizzy that I can barely see. I think I bit my tongue, and I can't smell anything ... I scrabble for the release button and then I'm free and the pod exit light is on and I can push at the front of the capsule. It falls away in a wave of silent heat to let the groundside night in. Yes, I've landed.

  Welcome to Miramor Dubrovnic.

  I'm standing beside the dropcap in a patch of derelict land. It's night. Trees bulk huge and ominous to either side. Rubble, a stink of decaying garbage, something torn that flaps in the wind. I take a step forward, my heavy woollen greatcoat dragging, then turn round: the dropcap is already disintegrating, silently
melting into grey cobwebs of self-digesting ceramic. Right. Now is the time to move: that's critical. If they don't come for me in the next three minutes –

  I get going, nervy and on edge, left hand curled round the pommel of my powered knife, deep in one pocket. I scurry from broken wall to dying tree, hunched low, relying on passive sensors to tell me if anyone approaches. But they don't. And I stumble onto the road almost by accident, and take a moment to look up past hissing gaslights to the strange stars above.

  This is real. I'm somewhere else. On an alien planet.

  At this moment, even if the whole of the fucking Stasis descended on me like a ton of shit, I wouldn't be able to resist. I probably wouldn't even notice. It's a magical moment, something I can't explain. For the first time I am dirtside on another world and it is bitterly cold, my breath pooling in the wintry air, and I can feel leaves crunching underfoot and see heaps of rock and mud lying about and it's like I understand what it's all about, and it all makes sense at last.

  I stand like that, mouth hanging open, for an indefinite span of time – and then I remember where I am and go for ground as fast as my legs will carry me. Shit! You want to get zapped? Or just captured beaten raped and carried off to a destructive-labour camp? Idiot! There's nobody about and I figure that this side of the town is derelict, black-out husks standing jagged against the skyline. I twitch my eyes to heatlight and look around. Infra-red sense makes the grass glow puce and the sky turn dark and hazy. Nobody moves in the wasteland. I check bearings and click on where I am. It's a former industrial suburb called Vladigrad, ploughed over by incoming shells something like two years ago. The war heated up and enemy artillery got within ten kilometres of the city for long enough to turn it into a real mess, leaving only blackened memories where once there were factories and homes.