Scratch Monkey

by Charles Stross

  There was a bang from somewhere behind, and a shock that rippled through the structure of the ship.

  “Spallation impact on drive radiation shield segment eighteen,” said Trotsky. “The cloud has passed us by. Damage reports from other ships now coming in.” There was a puff of light on the screen. “We lost the Thatcher. That was her drive blowing: she must have taken a fragment right on the main engine or the reactor core. About the damaged shield: it's not critical. We were hit by a ten micron paint fragment spalled off the end-wall at about two percent of lightspeed. I think it went right through me. The radiation shield segment is repairable. Neat hole, though.” He sounded humble but proud of himself for some reason. It confused Oshi. Will you still love me tonight? she wondered, thinking of the tapeworm. The room began to blur, and she realised that for no reason she could quite explain she was weeping.

  The Bronstein drifted through space in apparent isolation. The gap between the ships in the fleet widened until they were reduced to invisibility against the majestic backdrop of Turing's moon system. Oshi quickly settled into a routine. She let her circadian clock cycle to its own rhythm, dividing the day into subjective hours. She exercised in the free-fall sleeping space, plugged into isometric stimulators that gave her nocturnal rests a frankensteinian quality: twitching, jerking limbs outstretched before a sleep-walker face. Her time was spent in maintenance and meditation. Life support was nominal; the algae cultures remained stable, the yeasts thrived, and the scrubbers kept the stench of methane out of the air. Her biggest enemy was boredom and her own sense of uncertainty.

  Oshi found herself spending an increasing amount of her time in the access bay to the cloning module. Day by day she watched the skeletons accumulate a dressing of filmy connective tissue, organlike nodules that gradually changed shape and filled out to familiar proportions. Accelerated cloning was nothing like foetal growth; it produced a full-sized human body like an exotic machine, rather than sprouting it along the classical timeline to maturity. She was there when the nanotech manipulators went in, splicing interfaces into the nascent brains. Although there was nothing to see she watched intently for almost a day, wondering at the near miracle she was witnessing. It seemed to her to be beautiful and precious, in a way she could barely describe. She had spent so long concentrating on destruction that only now, with day after day of emptiness to fill, could she contemplate creation as an alternative. This troubled her, but not as much as her dreams.

  Night after night she awoke in a cold sweat, fists raised to fend off ghost-worms in the abyss. Moaning and thrashing herself awake, she fought once more against the mindless animal rapists in the ruins of Miramor. She was visited by demons, old and new: Ivan wrenched away from her, arms outstretched and beseeching, Raisa erupting in a nightmare of tendrils. Never mind that the real Raisa was uploaded, even now preparing to download into a new body. Oshi had seen her. And Oshi had great difficulty in questioning her perceptions. She had taught herself to look at surfaces so carefully that she had forgotten how when she was a blind child beggar she had seen beneath them.

  She took some comfort from watching the passive imaging displays on the bridge. Week by week they changed slowly. She sat in her web, thinking in tune to a random selection of ancient music culled from a database. It's coming closer, she warned herself. You're going to have to decide what to do next. After you escape. You need to know whether you still belong to the Boss, or whether you are free to become someone else. Don't you? Secret doubts gnawed at her heart. Every morning she said tomorrow ... but tomorrow never came, and every evening the guilt and shame grew deeper.

  Free fall disagreed with her metabolism. She forced himself to eat, nauseated; watched her face bloat in the mirror, fluid balance distorted by lack of gravity. Trotsky had little constructive advice to offer, apart from long diatribes about socialist realism and the need for a proletarian revolution. “Don't concentrate on your own problems,” the simulated revolutionary snapped at her; “work for the people, you gutless wonder! If you don't work for them, they won't work for you.” He chuckled. “In any sense of the word.”

  “And what would you know about that?” she wondered aloud.

  “You don't want to know.” Leon twitched irritably. “There's a lot you don't understand. Speak to you later.”

  “Wait,” Oshi said, too late. The AI was gone, sucked back into the guts of the machine like a lure strung out on a wire before her dog's eye. She yawned, stretched, and belched unselfconsciously. Inside her eyes the view opened out on a world of motionless stars. All the colours of the spectrum were laid out before her like a strange, hallucinatory dust; if she looked at them for long enough she saw constellations. Oh look, it's the Grim Reaper. She laughed, braying meaninglessly, more than half convinced that the trip she was on would cost her her life. It was about time too, after what she'd witnessed. She couldn't be sure, but she thought she was about thirty. So many years ...

  There were still twenty days to go before the clones were ready for implanting. Time enough to figure out what to do with her life. She hoped she could come up with something good before then. Little monkey dithering before the open cage door, deciding whether or not to flee. More than just her life might depend upon it, she began to realise. It wasn't just her life that hung on this thread: it was that of everyone around her. She was still unsure where her primary loyalties lay, or should lie. Unlike Boris, or Mikhail, or even, she suspected, Raisa. They were all human beings. And she was beginning to wonder whether she still qualified.

  Oshi was worried that she was beginning to lose her grip on reality. Eyes slightly wild, hair lank and growing out, she knew that she smelt; guessed that she was ill: worried that she was going to pieces. She saw herself in the video overspill from the scanners that preened and stared throughout the lifesystem, saw herself in shadows, saw herself lurking behind dark corners. How have I gotten into this state? she wondered. Is one month all it takes? She sat and puzzled over the question for a whole day, then went to sleep and dreamed of Raisa in her arms, face splitting apart like wet paper.

  For the past thirty days she'd watched the clones growing. After ten days, recognisable organs were pulsing visibly within frail networks of arteries. The life support systems were endlessly busy, synthesising exotic carrier proteins and taking care of the more mundane tasks like dealing with the products of metabolism. Eyeballs sprouted like soft fruit in the sockets of half-fleshed skulls that twisted on cadaverous, flayed necks. Solid kidneys and liver congealed slowly at the core of a brown haze of rapidly differentiating culture tissues. Lungs, everted, wove together with nascent blood vessels under the tireless supervision of nanomachines smaller than a bacillus. It was as if mortality had gone into reverse gear to escape a future in which death itself had died; decay in a mirror. Floating gently behind the windows of the construction tank, the bodies rocked from side to side like a cutaway section through a death camp.

  Presently skin began to grow across striae of muscle. Nails and hair and ringworm appeared. Modified fungal hyphae probed and twisted their way through gaps in the skulls and spines, digging microprobes into brain and notochord. Odd nanoconstructors floated into the cerebrospinal fluid, targeted on individual neurones. A databurst that had flashed outwards from Pascal ten days into the journey began to replay the minds into half-formed bodies.

  Oshi retreated into the command module at this point and stayed there for a week, eating packets of dehydrated noodles and drinking endless bulbs of turkish coffee. She found it too painful to watch, for now there were recognisable features; bodies with faces. It was like a mortuary populated with people she was acquainted with, and the emotions she felt towards them were ambiguous.

  One day she was woken up by a persistent buzzing. Bleary-eyed, she glanced up at the ceiling and saw a blinking icon that seemed to avoid the centre of her field of view. “What is it?” she rasped. Her mouth felt as if something furry had died on her tongue; her breath must smell, she realised.

&nbs
p; “Awake, are you?” Trotsky blinked at her uncontrollably. “I've been trying to get you for minutes. It's the Gatecoder. It's flagging you for attention. The first of the clones are ready.”

  “Oh.” Nameless feelings of unease grappled mercilessly for her soul. She felt a terrible moment of indecision, almost stage-fright. You don't have to do it right now, she rationalised, but ... She groaned. “How do I look?”

  “A mess,” Trotsky said unsympathetically. “Your hair needs trimming and your breath stinks. You're exfoliating everywhere. Not to mention your overall ...”

  “Oh thanks,” she muttered. “How's the cabin?”

  “I shut it down twelve days ago because you weren't using it. It was a waste of air and heat. I take it you want to tidy up?”

  “You take nothing for granted,” Oshi snarled tiredly. “Warm it up for me. I'll be there in a minute.”

  Trotsky flicked off the screen without warning, leaving her eyes a blur of random pixels. Damned insubordinate program, she thought to herself, knowing that it was less than the complete truth. Trotsky had to be smart; had to be capable of setting up a Dreamtime if necessary, capable of programming drone factories, capable of flying alone. Trotsky was reliable, which was more than could be said for Oshi.

  She yawned then untethered herself from the command web. Floating free she dragged himself hand-over-hand towards the rear of the module. The door sphinctered open automatically, rustling as the light in the tunnel winked on. The glare washed over her dirty skin, pointing out areas of neglect. Red abrasions presented themselves to her inspection on screen.

  The cabin was cold but habitable, a humming gust of warm air blowing the darkness and ice out of it. Oshi zipped herself into the shower niche and activated the ultrasound; clouds of dirt and dead skin shivered free, sucked through filters. Using a hair trimmer she sliced most of her hair away, back down to a respectable fuzz. Oral hygiene: mouthwash and chewing gum. Facial sponge. And suddenly she was looking human; tired and ill, but human nonetheless. It made a big impact on her. You look almost acceptable!. Now she could think beyond the timelessness of food and sleep. What next? Go ahead as planned, or –

  Almost against her will she donned a clean overall and pulled herself towards the access tunnel that led to the cargo bay.

  “Authorisation,” she announced. “Only one person to be released from tank at this time. Hold onto the rest for now.” The Gatecoder auxiliaries didn't answer her, but she felt rather than heard the gurgle of peristaltic pumps draining a tank behind one featureless wall. She approached the airlock, passed through the close-fitted sphincters, and turned to float head-down above the exit web.

  Childbirth and rebirth had a lot in common. The squeezing, the straining of muscles or pumps, the draining of fluids. Powerful fans came on and the light dimmed to a red glow. Then the body came through and began to splutter and cough appallingly.

  Escape

  Days passed. The Bronstein dropped towards Turing on a long, slow orbit. Its reaction tanks were more than half empty: this was a one-way trip. The cold-burn fusion reactor guttered on, boiling nitrogen into mist; condensers liquefied it, driving heat pumps, driving generators that powered the meson source that kept it all running. No rain of charged particles scattered the darkness behind the ship. Clamped to its docking end, layer upon layer of radiation-absorbent material fanned out in a dark sheath, refrigerated down to cosmic background temperature. Trotsky watched, waited, holding course with nerveless patience as the ship crept slowly up on its prey. At anything less than a hundred kilometres the Bronstein was as good as invisible – and by the time it closed to that range the attack would already be underway.

  Unseen in the darkness, seventy eight other ships matched course and locked their star sensors to the same beacons. The fleet ran under tight emission controls, desperate to maintain radio silence. A single uncontrolled pulse could give them away. And if the attack failed, eight hundred million lives were doomed.

  The prey was vast, the size of a small moon. It was pitted and scarred, an egg-shaped thing with dimples at each end. An intricate array of tiled segments panelled it, winding from one pole to the other, visible at long range. They looked organic and self-similar, like something that had grown rather than been built. Trotsky kept an array of sensors locked on the distant speck, watching for signs of activity, but none came. Nothing but a steady output of heat, a cloudy motion at the edges of perception. The intruder starship was passive, drifting, waiting or dead.

  The Bronstein, in contrast, was a hive of activity. Warm bodies – thirty of them crowded in a life-system built for twelve – squirted from the guts of the 'coder, coughing and choking on acrid air in the cramped red spaces of the ship. Desperation packed them four to a cabin, anchored at wrist and shoulder by restrainer straps, claustrophobia and tension vying for domination as they practised, and argued, and practised again ... while down in the payload bay, the drones ran through their choreographed self-test sequences ... and the 'coder interface waited in its geodesic container, for the signal to begin.

  I'm dozing in the close warm darkness of a cabin and when somebody kicks my hand it gives me the shock of my life. I open my eyes and jacknife awake against the sleeping straps all at once, and yell: “ shit!” – even though it was only a light kick. Then I see who it is. “Raisa –”

  “Yes.” It's confused, everything's tumbling, and there's clothing in the air that makes it hard to tell what's what, and it's dark. She holds on to me then tries to squirm around until she's face to face: it's difficult getting oriented in free fall. “Oshi. I want to talk –”

  “– was asleep,” I groan. Suddenly hear what she said. “Want to talk? What about?”

  “What do you think?” she asks. She's holding me tight, nothing very intimate about it except the fact of the contact in itself. I shiver, look, see how she's changed. She's only been out of the tank a day, and I haven't seen much of her. Her new body is much like the last. Hair a fine dark stubble, skin tight and pale and new, barely dry. The smell of her is the odour of the tanks, acrid grainy waft of synthetic chorionic fluid. “You just came in.”

  “Ack.” She leans back to see more of me. She looks pleased to see me, which is a realization that shakes me. I don't know whether to laugh or cry. It's as if she's forgotten whatever happened last time we met: or maybe wasn't even there at all. “Been up to much?”

  “I'm exhausted. Messing with critpath analysers. Boris and Mik went toy-happy as soon as they woke up; comes of having something to plot. They're both the same: no respect for humanity. Want me to staff for them. How about you?”

  “You mean they've been up for days?” She looks annoyed. “I was meant to be first out –”

  The smell, the touch, of her: I bend forward, snap out of the sleep restraint. “Yes,” I say; “but the plans changed. “ She lets go of me. “They figured it's more important to know who you need first, before they pull them through. So, load one meat chassis before another. What does it mean to them? I'm here, you're here. And I'm tired, while you want to talk. Is there no justice in Hell?”

  She laughs, a little brittle, holding her distance now. “Do you ever think of anything else? Sex or violence?” Reaches out and pinches my arm in a way which sends a thrill through me. “What are you thinking?”

  “I was born to go fast and explode,” I say. Remembering: dropping through layers of atmosphere, chutes banging open overhead. Yes, I go fast and explode. I look over her shoulder. The cabin door has closed automatically, conserving airflow. “You're cold.”

  “Huh.” She leans closer, hanging on my shoulders and hips by fingertips and agile toes. Microgravity drifts us both backward into the net of sleep webbing. “I'm here now. Aah, shit.” She looks away, troubled. That black coif of thick hair is missing; she purses her lips, holds her breath in for a moment. I freeze, trying to memorize the shape and presence of her, trying to make myself a camera. Trying to understand that initial flash of fascination, back on the colony
, why something like it is still there despite the intervening nightmare. “I've been doing some thinking. There's a long way to go, I admit. I'm not sure what I want. When you arrived I was on a backswing from something messy. But I like you. I'm just not sure –”

  “Why the revelation?” I ask, heart pounding.

  She hesitates a moment before replying: “Don't try to push me, Oshi. There's a lot you don't know.”

  I stare. “That goes without saying,” I say. I feel very cold: “were you in the colony medicentre? Do you know what happened there after the radiation storm?”

  She looks startled. “No –” Stop. “Was it bad?”

  “You can have no idea,” I say.

  “Never mind then,” she adds. “It's over. Just give me some time and come visit me. I just wanted to say that.” She half-smiles, then leans closer and hugs me. “Okay?”

  “Yes. What happened to –”

  She looks at me oddly. “You happened, that's what.”

  I feign incomprehension to cover my real confusion. “I happened? I don't understand.”

  “You wouldn't,” she says. A little tightly, “There was no room in the Duat. Everyone knew everyone else, and we all had our skeletons to bury from the time ... before then. Coming on so direct was, a bit, unexpected. I won't say unwelcome. But I've had to do lots of thinking.”

  “What happened?” I ask. I hold out my arms.

  “What happened –” she bites her lower lip. Looks at me, with a speculative expression I've seen before that shocks me with its directness. She takes my fingertips and lets me pull her closer, until I can feel her breath on my face.

  “You know about the goon squad?” she asks.

  “The goons? Didn't Anubis make them out of –”

  A finger stills my lips. “She's dead, now,” says Raisa. She doesn't sound desolate: she's managed to reach the stage of looking back on it from that level of equanimity that lets us keep our sanity in return for a certain coldness in the soul. “Anubis took her, along with the other over security specialists. All except Mikhail, in fact, turned into ... weapons. I heard this later. I never saw Amina again, not as anyone I could recognize. You die a little when that happens. We'd been together years before the evacuation, thought we'd be together afterwards, one way or the other ... wrong. That was the big mistake I regret: assuming there'd be time to say goodbye. It was years ago, when I first arrived, and there were other people in mourning. That's why we never did anything about the goons before. But you wouldn't know anything about that, would you?”