‘Yes, humans do that, but that’s not quite what I mean. It would be an existence without physical form?’
‘That is where they went after the separation. This is the method which you seek.’
‘No. Not quite. This is something from our legends, stories that may be fiction. It is a nonsense, but it persists.’
‘We have no stories of such a thing.’
‘I see. Thank you.’
Tyzak continued along the street in his long fast bobbing motion, not even turning to focus on the Delivery Man. ‘But the city does speak to me with the smallest stories.’
‘It does?’
‘Not a sound. But a voice nonetheless.’
‘That’s interesting. What story is it telling you?’
‘Where my ancestors left this place. This is how we will find it.’
The Delivery Man wanted to say: but you don’t use machines. Because he knew that’s what the communication must be, a download into the Anomine equivalent of human macrocellular clusters, a little genetic modification that the remaining Anomine hadn’t purged from themselves after all.
‘We made assumptions again,’ Gore said. ‘We thought Tyzak was familiar with the elevation mechanism. But he’s got to ask the surviving AIs.’
‘No,’ the Delivery Man said. ‘That’s not what he’d do; I know him well enough by now. He’d rather risk getting torn apart by wild animals at night than use a decent weapon to defend himself with. This is something else . . .’ He ran a more comprehensive field scan. ‘Nothing is being transmitted, at least that I can detect. Yet I’m still getting the creeps about this place. You’ve been here two days, has it bothered you?’
‘Ghosts and goblins? No.’
Typical, the Delivery Man thought. But he was still disquieted by the city, and Tyzak was receiving information of some kind, which was impacting in a fashion his biononics couldn’t detect. He ran another scan. Sonic. Chemical. Electromagnetic. Visual/ subliminal. Microbial. Surface vibration. Anything known to discomfort a human body.
The city wasn’t active in any way. Yet when he’d walked through previous Anomine cities without Tyzak, he’d felt none of this. So if the effect isn’t impacting from the outside . . . The Delivery Man opened his gaiamotes fully, and searched amid his own thoughts.
It was there, hovering out of reach like a foreign dream on the fringes of the gaiafield generated by the nests they’d left orbiting above. A mind, but woven from notions very different to those human sentience was comprised of. Colours, smells, sounds, emotions were all amiss, out of phase with what he perceived as correct.
‘Hello?’ he spoke to it.
There was a reaction, he was sure of that. A tiny strata of the strange thoughts twisted and turned. There was even a weak sensation, not a thought or memory but an impression: an animal curled up sleeping, contracting further as something pokes its skin.
So we can understand each other. Except the city didn’t want to, because he was not part of the city, not part of the world. He didn’t belong, didn’t connect. He was alien. There was no regret, nor even hostility within the somnolent mind. The city didn’t hold opinions on him, it simply knew he wasn’t a part of itself or its purpose.
‘The AI is neural-based,’ he told Gore. ‘I can sense it within the gaiafield. It’s semi-active but only responds to an Anomine’s mind. We’re never going to get any information out of it.’
‘Shit.’
‘How ironic is that: one wish, one thought from a native, and the whole city will revive itself to provide them a life they can’t even imagine any more. Yet they’re happy with the whole been-there-done-that philosophy.’
They were trotting down a long boulevard which led up a steepening slope. Slim arches linked the buildings on either side, each one glowing with a uniform colour, as if the bands of a rainbow had been split apart, then twisted round. His exovision was displaying a map. ‘You know, we’re heading your way.’
‘Yeah, I see that.’
‘Actually, we’re heading directly for you. That can’t be coincidence.’
‘Sonny, I’ve given up on being surprised by anything this planet pitches at us.’
It took them another hour to navigate through the city’s broad streets. Tyzak walked on unhesitatingly. Though towards the end the big alien did seem to be labouring to bounce forwards with quite the vitality he’d possessed that morning. Even the Delivery Man’s biononic-aided muscles were starting to feel the strain. They’d been walking for fifteen hours with only a few short breaks.
But with the stars barely visible through the cloying light-haze cast by the buildings they finally came out into the open plaza. It was a broad empty circle seven hundred metres in diameter, with long garden segments of dense green-grey shrub trees ringing the outside. Towers and elongated globes over a kilometre high stood around the edge, something about their height and proximity giving the impression that they were leaning in protectively.
It was a slightly incongruous setting for the Last Throw, but Gore had brought the starship down on one side of the plaza, close to a swollen cylindrical tower with a blunt dark apex. The gold man was already striding over the plaza to greet them, casting a range of pale harlequin shadows in all directions that shifted like petals as he approached. He stopped in the middle of the plaza and bowed gracefully to the old Anomine.
‘Tyzak, I am honoured that you should spend time telling us the story of your ancestors’ departure.’
The Delivery Man raised his eyebrow as he realized the sharp chittering sounds of Anomine language were coming directly from Gore’s throat.
‘It is a joy to do so,’ Tyzak replied. ‘Your coloration is different. Are you more advanced than your species colleague?’
‘In this form, I am not, no. My body is from a time long past. Circumstances required me to adopt it once more.’
‘I am glad you have. You are interesting.’
‘Thank you. Can you tell us where your most sophisticated ancestors departed this world from?’
The Delivery Man almost winced at the bluntness.
‘Right here,’ Tyzak said.
Gore pointed a golden forefinger at the matt-glass surface of the plaza. ‘Here?’
‘Yes.’
Gore turned full circle, almost glaring at the shiny surface of the broad plaza. ‘So we’re actually standing on the machine which changed them into their final form?’
‘Yes.’
The Delivery Man’s biononics performed a deep field-function scan on the substance below his feet. Gore was doing exactly the same. The plaza was actually a solid cylinder extending nearly five hundred metres down into the city’s bedrock. Its nuclear structure was strange, with strands and sheets of enhanced long-chain molecules twisting and coiling around and through each other like smoke tormented by a hurricane. They were all cold and inert. But they did seem to be affecting the underlying quantum fields to a minute degree, an effect so small it barely registered.
He’d never seen anything like it before. The smartcore certainly couldn’t identify it or any of the functions which the weird molecular arrangements would produce if they went active. When he opened his gaiamotes he could just sense the elevation mechanism’s soft thoughts, even more abstract than those of the city’s mind. With a despondent curse he knew there was never going to be any possible connection between it and a human. It would take Tyzak or his kind to coax it back to awareness and functionality.
‘They really didn’t want anyone to follow them, did they?’ Gore said pensively.
‘Looks that way.’
‘Huh. Then along came me. Right then.’ His hands went onto his hips as he looked up at Tyzak. ‘Will you ask the machine to switch on for me, please?’
‘The machine which separated our ancestors from us is not a part of my life. It has discharged its purpose. The planet has destined us for something different.’
‘That’s it? That’s your last word on this?’
‘How co
uld it be other?’
‘The galaxy may be destroyed if we don’t establish how your ancestors left this universe.’
‘That is a story which I would not repeat at any gathering. It lacks foundation in our world.’
‘And if I could prove it was true?’
‘If that is what awaits this planet, then it is what awaits us also. The planet carries us.’
‘Goddamn fatalists,’ Gore muttered.
‘Now what?’ the Delivery Man asked. It was hard to keep a tone of defeat from his voice.
‘Stop whingeing, start thinking. We’ll just have to hack into it, is all.’
‘Hack into it?’
‘The control net, not the actual machine. Once you’ve got control of the power switch you’re in charge, period.’
‘But we’re hardly talking about a management processor. This thing is a cross between a confluence nest and meta-cube network. You can’t subvert it, the bloody thing’s sentient, half-alive.’
‘Then we physically chop the connections and insert our own command circuitry into the mechanism itself. Now shut up. Have you run a comparison review of the other fifty-three zero-width wormholes we found?’
‘What? I . . . No.’
‘Stay current. Every one of them is right next to an open space like this plaza. In other words, there are at least fifty-four elevation mechanisms on the planet. Makes sense, really. There were too many high-level Anomine for a single gathering point, especially if they really did all come back from their colony worlds. The upgrade to post-physical must have gone on for a long time.’
‘Yes, I’m sure it must.’
‘Good. So how did they power it? If you’re bootstrapping yourself up to archangel status, that’s going to take a lot of energy, especially when you’re using a machine that’s nearly half a cubic kilometre of solid-state systems.’ He turned to stare at the bulging tower that backdropped the Last Throw and wagged an accusatory gold finger at it. ‘But if you’ve got a cable that plugs directly into the nearest star, power is the least of your worries.’
‘Ah, the wormhole doesn’t carry information . . .’
‘No way. They’ve got some kind of energy siphon swimming about in the photosphere or maybe deeper, it sends all the power they need back along the zero-width wormhole. Okay, that works for me. We’d best go see if the siphon’s still there.’
For a moment, words refused to come out of the Delivery Man’s mouth. ‘Why?’
‘What part of I-don’t-give-up-easy is hard for you?’
‘The wormhole isn’t extended. Everything is managed by machines that have their own psychology, and it’s anti-us psychology.’
‘One step at a time. First we check it all out. If everything is still there in standby mode just like they left it, then we start an infiltration strategy. Human-derived software is the most devious in the galaxy, our e-head nerds have had a thousand years to perfect their glorious trade, God-bless-em, and I’d stack them against anyone. Certainly a race as sweet and noble as this lot.’
‘But we don’t have any with—’ The Delivery Man caught the expression on Gore’s golden face and groaned as comprehension kicked in.
‘And if I can’t re-establish something as fucking simple as a de-energized wormhole then I’m already dead and this is hell taunting me. Now come on.’ Gore started marching across the plaza to the Last Throw.
‘Are you leaving?’ Tyzak asked.
‘For a short while only,’ the Delivery Man assured the old Anomine. ‘We have to fly to check on something. It should take less than a day. Will you stay here?’
‘I wish to hear the end of your story. I will remain for a while.’
The Delivery Man resisted the urge to spill out an apology, and hurried after Gore.
*
In the time it took to dive into hyperspace and re-emerge three million kilometres out from the star’s photosphere the culinary unit had produced a batch of lemon risotto with diced and fried vegetables. Lizzie used to make it, standing over a big pan on the cooker, sipping wine and stirring in stock for half an hour while the two of them chatted away at the end of the day. The Delivery Man instructed the unit to produce a side plate of garlic bread, and started grating extra Parmesan cheese over the steaming rice. Lizzie always objected to that, saying it dulled the flavour of the vegetables. Gore shook his head at the offer of a bowl.
‘You’re still worrying about Justine, aren’t you?’ the Delivery Man said.
‘No I am not worried about Justine,’ Gore growled out. ‘We’re still well inside the time-effect it should take her to reach Querencia.’
‘Okay then.’
‘Even if something has happened it’s not as if we can launch a rescue mission.’
‘Unless that witch Araminta persuades the Skylord to abandon the Silverbird, I don’t see anything which could interrupt her flight.’
‘That wouldn’t stop my Justine. Maybe slow her down some, but nothing worse. You have no idea how stubborn she can be.’
‘Where does she get that from, I wonder?’
Gore gave him a small grin. ‘Her mother.’
‘Really?’
‘No idea. That is one memory I made sure I junked a thousand years ago.’
The Delivery Man put a slice of the garlic bread into his mouth, and ended up sucking down air to cool it. ‘I don’t believe that.’
‘Son, I’m not a fucking soap opera. I can’t afford to be. My emotional baggage level is zero. I haven’t had anything to do with that woman since Nigel watched Dylan Lewis take his epic step.’
‘What?’
‘Kids today! The Mars landing.’
‘Ah, right.’
Gore sighed in exasperation.
The Delivery Man wasn’t sure just how much of that attitude was for his benefit. As he forked up some more risotto the Last Throw emerged back into spacetime. Warning icons immediately popped up in his exovision, along with a series of external sensor feeds. A quick status review showed the force fields could cope with the current exposure level of radiation and heat. Hysradar return of the corona and photosphere was fuzzy, distorted by the massive star’s gravity. Even the quantum-field resonance was degraded.
‘We need to get closer,’ Gore announced.
The Delivery Man knew better than to argue as they began to accelerate in toward the star at ten gees. He just hoped that Gore wouldn’t try to tough out the heat. The way the gold man was wired it was a distinct possibility.
There were no borderguards within ten million kilometres of the star. The few that did cover that section of the Anomine solar system showed no interest in their flight. Nor were there any other kind of stations, only a host of asteroidal junk and burnt out comet-heads. The closest large object was the innermost planet at seventeen million kilometres out, a baked rock with a day three and a half times the length of its year, allowing its surface to become semi-molten at high noon. It was only the starship that had followed them from the Leo Twins that showed any interest in their exploratory flight, remaining five million kilometres away, and still keeping itself stealthed.
The Last Throw’s safe deflection capacity limit was reached at approximately a million kilometres above the fluctuating plasma of the photosphere, leaving them swimming through the thin, ultra-volatile corona. Giant streamers of plasma arched up from the terrible nuclear maelstrom below, threatening to engulf the little ship as they expanded into frayed particle typhoons rushing along the flux lines.
Sensors probed down into the inferno, seeking out any anomaly amid the superheated hydrogen. The starship completed an equatorial orbit and shifted inclination slightly, scanning a new section of the star’s surface. Eight orbits later they found it.
A lenticular force field two thousand kilometres below the surface of the convection zone. Hysradar revealed it to be fifty kilometres wide. Intense gravitonic manipulation was keeping it in place against the force of the hydrogen currents which would otherwise have expelled it up into
the photosphere at a respectable percentage of lightspeed.
‘That’s definitely our power siphon,’ Gore said. Hysradar showed them the flux lines swirling round the disc in odd patterns. The force field appeared to be slightly porous, allowing matter to leak inwards at the edge.
‘Why not just use a mass-energy converter?’ the Delivery Man mused.
‘Check the neutrino emissions; only a mass-energy converter will give those kind of readings,’ Gore said. ‘And look at it. All it’s doing now is holding position, and see how much mass it’s converting just to do that, because sure as Commies whinge about fairness that intake ain’t flowing out anywhere afterwards. This is the mother of all turbo-drive converters.’
‘Okay, so we’ve proved it’s there and still functioning. Now what?’
‘Our force fields wouldn’t get us halfway, but the only way we can access it and infiltrate is go down and rendezvous – possibly even dock, or at least cling on and start drilling into the thing’s brain.’
The Delivery Man gave him a frankly scared look. ‘You’re shitting me?’
‘Wish I were, son. Don’t panic, the replicator we have on board is high-order. We’ll have to churn out some advanced force-field generators to upgrade the Last Throw’s defences. Once they’re beefed up to Stardiver standard we’ll drop into the convection zone and switch the power back on to the elevation mechanism. Well . . . When I say us, I mean you.’
*
‘It looks impressive,’ Catriona Saleeb said.
‘Yes.’ For once Troblum felt content. He looked at the featureless suit of matt-grey armour standing in the middle of the cabin with its round helmet almost touching the ceiling. It was big, adding about twenty-five per cent to his existing bulk. That didn’t matter. The electromuscle bands could move it around easily enough. Walking would be effortless. As would flying, thanks to the little regrav unit he’d incorporated. There were no weapons, of course. He couldn’t even think along those lines. But the defences . . . He would be safe anywhere. In other words, he could even face the Cat and not piss himself like he had on Sholapur.