Gridlinked

  On the horizon the Andellan sun was a small copper coin on an off-white sheet. The place where they had landed, with the dark cloud sliding overhead, seemed almost to lie beneath some sort of overhang, so heavy was that cloud. Cento had put them down on a frozen lake of complex water ices, which now fluoresced as the heat from the shuttle raised them to the temperature where they made the transition to normal water-ice. It was a weird scene: the shuttle blackly silhouetted over those lights. Cormac turned away and saw that Carn was looking at the dim sun.

  ‘Morning here,’ Cormac told him. ‘At the installation it’s midday. One week solstan and it’ll be night there. Lot colder then.’

  Carn nodded. ‘I’m aware of that. So’s Chaline. She’s getting impatient.’

  Lugging equipment, they moved from the shuttle to the nearby shore of the lake. Here the slabs had fallen like stacks of coins, and in places had the appearance of curving staircases. Sitting on one of these slabs they pulled on grip shoes and the abseil equipment. The entrance to the shaft was only a short climb above them, over the crusted purplish rock. They reached it in ten minutes.

  The mouth of the shaft was a perfect oval created by its angle into the flat ground. Either this area where it had been started was clear to begin with, or it had been specially cleared. Its walls were coated with a fine white powder of carbon-dioxide crystals streaked with the green of sulphate impurities. At the lip of the shaft Gant squatted and opened a box. Within were silver spheres stored like eggs in a tray.

  ‘I’ve pre-programmed them,’ he said, and took one from its packing. As soon as it was in his hand it glowed like a light bulb. He tossed it into the shaft. As soon as it was out of his hand it streaked away. ‘There are sixty in this box. The way I programmed them we’ll have one every thirty-five metres with a couple left over for the chamber itself.’

  Cormac said, ‘Should be enough. I would suggest a twenty-metre spacing between us as we go down. You can call the lights down.’

  Gant nodded. ‘You’re the boss.’

  Cormac smiled, then remembered that Gant could not see his mouth through the mask. He was about to say something more, when a loud crack behind had him spinning with his finger poised at the quick release on his shuriken holster.

  Cento was holding a long tube with two handles. While Cormac watched he loaded a cartridge into the top of it and pressed on the cap. A couple of metres across from the first, he fired another fixing bolt into the ground. Cormac let out a tense breath. Until that moment he had not realized how on edge he was. He straightened up and watched as Cento pulled the ring from the box on his belt. As he pulled it, there was a faint fizzing sound. With its cladding on, the chain-cotton looked like a yellow rope, impossibly thick to have come from such a small box.

  Gant joined him and attached his line, and soon the two of them were walking down into the shaft. As they had been instructed, Cormac and Carn attached their abseil motors and followed after. Learning to use the friction setting was difficult at first, but Cormac soon found that the way to do it was to lean forwards a little way and walk normally.

  Thus they descended.

  16

  Dragon: This Aster Coloran dragon is fast passing into fable, but we know that it did exist. For we know that on that planet existed a creature consisting of four conjoined spheres of flesh each a kilometre in diameter. We know about the pseudopods and the gigantic Monitor. Those of us that have not seen pictures of these must have spent the best part of our lives living in a cave. Doubt is now being cast on these ‘Dragon Dialogues’. It seems likely that they were a product of a man called Darson who, driven almost insane by a lack of evidence of Dragon’s evolution on Aster Colora, then went on to construct an elaborate hoax. He almost succeeded in convincing everyone that Dragon was some sort of intergalactic biological construct. Where the hoax fell down was in its introduction of Ian Cormac at its end (Refer ‘Dragon in the Flower’ ref. 1126A), whom we know to be the invention of fabulists.

  From Quince Guide, compiled by humans

  Pelter was not good at waiting. He sat in a form chair by the window of his room and stared at the storm. It was like staring into a deep green fish-tank. He accessed the local server to see what he could find out about this weather that the people here so readily accepted. As with any aug, the information scrolled up on his visual cortex. It was like having a third eye directed at a computer screen, and it took some getting used to. The background of this screen, unlike for other augs, was now a vast wall tegulated with hand-sized scales.

  The information he was viewing was not what he wanted. He did not want to know how many thousands of litres were hitting the ground every second, nor did he want to know about the giant fire far to the south which was feeding the weather system. With a thought he initiated one of the aug’s search engines, and, with another thought, primed it and sent it on its way. The information he wanted clicked up: a few numbers on a white background. Two hours, then. He closed off the link to the server and began to disconnect from the aug.

  If you are gridlinked, the information is downloaded directly into your mind.

  ‘Who said that?’

  No need to speak out loud, Arian. I can hear your thoughts.

  ‘Dragon,’ Pelter said. He did not want to just think what he had to say; that was too intimate.

  Yes.

  ‘I’ve been waiting for this. Is he still on Samarkand?’

  He is, but that is not where you must go.

  ‘I go where I choose.’

  Hubris is at Samarkand. Do you think you could avoid being detected?

  Pelter crushed the rage that rose up inside him. The storm—the green beyond the window—was taking on shape. It now had scales.

  ‘What would you suggest then?’

  I will tell you where you can wait for him. Where, when the time is right, you may kill him.

  ‘When the time is right?’

  I too have a purpose.

  Somewhere a pterosaur head was speaking against red light. The smell of cloves, so strong it made Pelter wince, invaded his room. Behind him he heard Mr. Crane move.

  ‘Your purpose is to see him dead?’

  Of course.

  The hesitation was fractional, but Pelter was too close to miss it. Almost instinctively he activated Sylac’s aug and his connection to Crane. Something had been touching that connection. He knew it just as someone knows when a thief has been in their private residence. The scales before him, he now realized, were the other augs, close and intimately linked.

  ‘Where should I wait?’

  Again that hesitation. Viridian. Ian Cormac will come, eventually, to Viridian. You will wait for him there.

  ‘Thank you. Do you know what he will be doing there?’

  He will be going to kill someone.

  ‘Who?’

  That is not your concern, Arian. Just let him complete his mission, then you can kill him.

  Pelter used Sylac’s aug to interpret the chaos of scales. A sorting program gave him the form of a web. At the centre of that web was an obese shape, a human taking on the form of his master. From this shape he felt the controlling link and the force of alien personality.

  ‘What forces will he have with him? Do you know that much?’

  There may be four Sparkind. Perhaps he will have others, but they are inconsequential.

  ‘Sparkind are not.’

  You have substantial weaponry. You also have Mr. Crane.

  ‘Don’t worry. When he sets foot out of the runcible installation he is a dead man.’

  On Viridian, Arian Pelter, I want you to wait. Let him do what he has come to do.

  ‘Merely an expression. He will be a walking dead man. I will hold back for you, for all that you’ve told me. But tell me, how is it that you know all this?’ The scales were fading now and Pelter could see his own bitter expression reflected back at him. The reply he got now was faint.

  Their runcible AIs, Arian Pelter, so arrogant and so sure tha
t they cannot be overheard. I listen to them all the time and, sometimes, I find things even they have missed. I wish I had found it earlier. Samarkand would not have been . . . necessary . . .

  The personality turned away. The pterosaur head faded. But the links, all through, remained. Pelter summoned up an image of a thin-gun pointed at his face, and used it as an anchor. It took a huge effort of will as he fought the cold pain in the side of his head and disconnected from the Dragon aug. Scales faded, links that had been growing ever stronger faded. He snorted the smell of cloves from his nostrils and stood.

  ‘Like hell I will,’ he said, and walked over to his bedside table. There he picked up his comunit and made a particular connection.

  ‘Arian,’ Grendel said to him. ‘Do you have what you . . . need now?’

  ‘In one respect, yes. In others, no.’

  ‘I do not understand.’

  ‘It’s a matter of hardware again,’ said Pelter. ‘Can you meet me at the warehouse.’

  ‘The storm . . .’

  ‘This is important, Grendel, and the storm’s nearly over.’

  ‘Very well. I’ll see you there in an hour or so?’

  Pelter clicked off the unit and turned to Mr. Crane. ‘Nobody controls me, and nobody controls you but me. Did they think I was so stupid?’

  He gazed through the window. His problem did not lie in the aug, but in the force of the personality behind it. Dragon, he knew, could swamp him with a direct connection. Here, of course, the connection was not direct. Dragon was somewhere deep in the Polity. The link was an obese man who called himself Grendel.

  * * *

  The muted roar had been constant over the last fifty solstan hours. Storm gullies in the old hydrocar streets could barely contain the consequent torrents, and a long night had come to Huma. Occasionally, when the wind parted the curtains of rain, you could see the layer of cloud poised above like a ceiling made of old green jade. Stanton looked down. A hydrocar was edging across the AGC park. He saw that there were few AGCs left there, and that those remaining had been secured with the car clamps that had so puzzled him. Under each of those covers, about which he had asked the drunk outside The Sharrow, was a grav coil that interacted with the car’s AG. It effectively stuck the car to the ground. A precaution he understood perfectly when he saw a driverless AGC being shunted down one of the streets by the wind. He stepped back from the window.

  ‘Come back to bed,’ Jarvellis said.

  ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I’m getting impatient. And I would reckon Arian is probably spitting magma by now. This is bad. We don’t need this, not after wiping out a covert ECS group here.’

  Jarvellis sat up and slid back so she was resting against the headboard. Almost without thinking about it she started playing with her right nipple. Stanton had been in battles that were less exhausting than twenty hours in a room with this ship captain.

  ‘Bad,’ she said. ‘You didn’t have to close up one of the Lyric’s holds, then clear out a few thousand litres of water and storm sludge. I’ve had more fun—’ An abrupt beeping stilled her tirade for a moment. ‘What the fuck is that?’ she said, releasing her nipple and scratching at her belly.

  Stanton walked over to the bed, reached under the pillow and pulled out his small comunit.

  ‘You bring it to bed?’ Jarvellis said, her voice rising.

  Stanton held his finger to his lips and pressed his thumb to the pad on the side of the unit.

  ‘In the bar, five minutes,’ said Pelter.

  Stanton removed his thumb and dropped the unit on the bed.

  ‘Woof, woof,’ said Jarvellis.

  Stanton gave her a dirty look. ‘Any more of that and I can always tell him you’re here. Even though he’s agreed to your extortionate price, I’m sure he’d still like to talk about it.’

  ‘He is not getting anywhere near me, nor is that lump of homicidal scrap.’

  Stanton grinned and began pulling on his clothes.

  * * *

  The metrotel was primitive by Polity standards. The rooms had no sleepfields, the showers only squirted hot water, room service came by way of a grumpy robot trolley and, rather than drop-shafts for transport, the building merely had express elevators. Stanton hit the pad beside the sliding doors and waited impatiently. Shortly the doors hissed open to show Dusache and Svent. Stanton felt uncomfortable getting into an enclosed space with them.

  ‘Action, do you think?’ he asked them.

  ‘Yes,’ they said simultaneously, then looked at each other. Svent went on. ‘The hotel server has it that the storm should be finishing soon.’

  The doors hissed open onto the lobby and they walked out across thick carpet. By the glass frontage a beetle-shaped robot was droning back and forth, cleaning up the mess tracked in by the hotel guests. Dusache glanced through that frontage before turning towards the bar.

  ‘That isn’t rain, it’s a vertical sea,’ he said.

  To a certain extent Stanton agreed with him: it was a vertical sea, except when the wind turned it into a horizontal one. He followed the two mercenaries into the bar area and looked around. Corlackis and Mennecken were sitting playing cards at a low table. Corlackis had a stack of coins next to him and Mennecken a murderous expression on his face. He was gambling, and losing as usual.

  ‘Where’s Pelter?’ Stanton asked. Corlackis shrugged and continued dealing out the cards. Svent and Dusache moved over to join the school. Svent looked up.

  ‘He’s on his way down,’ he said.

  The communication between the three of them was obvious, and why not? Any augs could link together like that. What bothered Stanton was that such linkage was out of character for both Pelter and Dusache, just as wearing an organic aug was an odd thing for Svent to do. He walked over to the bar, where a metal-skin was waiting in obedient stillness.

  ‘Give me a vodka cool-ice,’ he said.

  The skin immediately took up a glass and held it to the vodka optic. Stanton wondered if the ill-fitting shirt, bow-tie and black trousers it wore were an example of what passed for humour here. He watched the skin open the ice dispenser and select two of the rainbow cubes to drop into the vodka. It didn’t need tongs—its metal fingers were tongs. Stanton was taking his first sip when Pelter walked in, Crane’s presence behind him so expected now that Stanton found himself beginning to ignore the android. Perhaps not a healthy habit to get into.

  ‘We go to the warehouse now,’ Pelter said.

  ‘You sure that’s a good idea? It’s only a little while until this shit stops,’ asked Corlackis, glancing up from his hand.

  Pelter moved further into the room. He stared at Corlackis until the mercenary looked up again. There was a brief uncomfortable silence until Pelter spoke.

  ‘Whether or not it is a good idea is irrelevant. You will go outside and get the transporter round to the front here. You will do it now.’

  Corlackis dropped his cards on the table and stood. He glanced past Pelter to Mr. Crane, then headed from the bar. Mennecken stood and followed him. Stanton watched the two of them go. Corlackis would do what he was told. He would complete whatever task was given to him and he would take the money. He would not try to kill Pelter; he was not that stupid. Pelter now looked at Stanton.

  ‘A word,’ he said and nodded over to the bar. The others watched them with curiousity as they moved beyond hearing range. By the bar Stanton waited on what Pelter had to say. Pelter reached up and touched the organic aug. Strain further distorted his features. He lowered his hand and glanced at Mr. Crane. The android had now reacquired those small movements it had been devoid of over the last few days.

  ‘You have a stun pistol?’

  Stanton tapped his trouser pocket. ‘I liked that one Corlackis has. They’re cheap here,’ he said.

  ‘Very well. When we are at the warehouse and when I give you the signal, I want you to hit Dusache and Svent with it.’

  ‘What? . . . Why?’

  ‘Just do it,’ said Pelter.


  ‘As you say, Arian.’

  Pelter closed his eyes for a moment and then glanced across at the two mercenaries. They were looking back with puzzled expressions.

  Pelter went on. ‘Contact Jarvellis. Have her at her ship within the hour. If she wishes she may stay in her cabin, but just make sure she has the B hold open for us, and is fully prepared to open the A.’

  Stanton moved off to one side to do as bid, while Pelter returned to the others. He was starting to get an uneasy feeling about all this. Jarvellis, of course, greeted his news with a stream of very colourful invective. He grinned, pocketed his comunit, and joined the others.

  ‘Is Grendel meeting us out there?’ he asked Pelter.

  ‘He is.’

  That ended the conversation, but gave Stanton an inkling of what was going on. They waited in silence until the transporter glided in from the AGC park to the front of the metrotel.

  * * *

  The trip out to the warehouse was a risky venture. The old AGC transporter, effectively a long alloy box with a cab bolted on the front and turbines on the side, swayed and plummeted as the walls of water it passed through confused its ground-level detector. The noise was tremendous, but not enough to cover Corlackis’s quiet swearing at the controls.

  ‘We could take it up,’ Mennecken suggested, after an errant and ferocious gust of wind tried to slam the vehicle against a building.

  ‘Not one of your best ideas, brother.’ Corlackis said.

  Stanton, who along with the others was clinging to the webbing straps distributed along the inside of the box, had to agree. If Corlackis lost control here, they at least had a chance of getting out alive. He looked at Mr. Crane, who was standing alone in the middle of the floor, and wondered if the android had magnetic feet. He appeared to have been welded there.

  Eventually they left the old hydrocar streets behind and came to a wide scattering of buildings like giant Nissan huts. Through the front screen Stanton saw a crack of light opening out, as the doors of one warehouse slid aside. Corlackis brought the transporter in through those doors and landed it on the plascrete flooring. As Stanton followed Pelter out into the warehouse, he looked with renewed wonder at their most recent acquisition.