He looked at his two crewmen, who’d been on the other side of the creature from him. They were both standing up, brushing themselves off. Ikbal emitted a worryingly hysterical giggle.
“See,” he said, “no danger at all.”
“You would be safer inside your ship,” Penny Royal repeated as it now began drifting out over the flute grasses. “In fact you can leave now, if you wish. You will find my final payment inside.”
Blite wanted to return inside and check his supposed payment. He also considered leaving. Penny Royal was letting them go; it had finished with them, so surely the sensible thing to do was to get the hell out of here now, just as fast as they could.
“I want to see this through,” said Brond.
“I agree,” said Ikbal, grinning weirdly.
Blite felt the same. He wanted completion. However, though he was The Rose’s captain and an autocrat, he felt that his crew had been subjected to too much, and that they should all be offered choices.
“Is that the consensus of you all?” he asked on open channel.
“No it is fucking not,” said Martina from inside. “And by the way, we’ve got seismic readings on something big travelling fast underground and heading straight for us.”
“Captain,” interjected Greer, “we all want to see this through, but we can do that as spectators, not participants.”
Of course, he’d been mesmerized and hadn’t been thinking straight. He turned to Brond and Ikbal. “Safety lines.” They quickly moved to secure their lines to loops set in the hull, while Blite did the same. Once his line was on he continued, “Leven, are you still with us?” His ship’s mind had grown increasingly uncommunicative since their last time here. It had been rendered redundant and quite possibly terrified in ways known only to AIs.
“I’m back,” said Leven cheerily.
“Glad to hear it. Take us up, nice and easy, then to a safe distance and put us down again.”
“I’m curious to know what might be a safe distance, Captain, other than say, a light century or two.”
The ship began to rise on anti-grav, its feet making a sucking sound against the rhizome mat. Then it broke away with a lurch that sent Blite staggering.
“How’s our hardfield projector?” he asked.
“I hardly think that—” began Leven, then fell silent. After a moment the Golem mind continued, “Oh wow.” “What is it?” Blite asked impatiently. “Seems our defensive capability has increased.” “If you could be a bit clearer.”
“Penny Royal’s been playing around with the projector.”
Blite felt a surge of excitement. If the AI had left them with a projector even just a little like the one it had deployed to defend Carapace City, then they just got stinking rich. Was this then the payment the AI had mentioned?
Leven took The Rose a few miles to one side of the building housing the Atheter AI and brought it down again. Blite unclipped his monocular from his belt and raised it to his enviro-suit’s visor. He could now see Penny Royal hovering about a mile out from that building, turning and shifting; its shape constantly reforming, as if the AI was searching for the right response to … something. Then, only minutes later, the rhizome layer just a hundred metres from the AI bulged and burst open—and that something exploded from it in pink fire, mud and steam.
“So that’s Isobel,” said Brond. “She’s not quite how I remember her.”
Blite glanced at the other two and saw that they too had produced monoculars to watch this scene. Returning his gaze to the unfolding events he felt the urge to emit one of Ikbal’s giggles. Yes, everyone had known what Penny Royal had done to Isobel. And he himself had seen some media footage of her new form when she went after some mafia boss on the Rock Pool. That had been shocking enough, because she was an almost complete, though small, hooder. Now she was a big albino hooder, pink fire caging her from end to end as she hurtled up into the sky and slowed, seemingly gripping the very air with her multitude of limbs. She hooked and halted, her hood pointed directly towards Penny Royal.
“Like the Technician?” Brond observed.
“Yes,” Blite replied, “just smaller.”
The story of the Technician hadn’t exactly been suppressed, but it did lack detail and some data had been made difficult to obtain—supposedly because of the Weaver’s ownership of it. However, he’d seen detailed pictures of the Technician, and recorded footage of it climbing into the sky. Isobel was about a third of the size. She also looked newer, whiter—fresh and youthful—while the Technician had been big and appallingly ancient, battered and stained.
Brond continued. “But the Technician was supposedly one of the Atheter’s original war machines—so why does she look like one of those, and not like that hooder that just came close to smearing us?”
Penny Royal’s earlier words, when they had first arrived here, about “a war mind growing inside her,” abruptly clarified themselves in Blite’s mind. Hooders were very devolved, distant ancestors of the Technician’s kind—so it seemed Penny Royal’s manipulations were more profound than they’d thought. But he had no time to think about them further. Up in the sky Penny Royal was changing, spreading out and curving into a great black satellite dish formed of translucent black plates. Isobel suddenly straightened out and streaked towards that dish, growing painfully bright as something travelled along her length and expelled itself ahead of her. The space-twisting force she produced wrenched at Blite’s gut even here. Then that distortion struck the AI dead centre and bounced away in pieces, some heading up into the sky and some straight down into the ground.
The sound, like dreadnoughts sideswiping each other, reached them first, and Blite slammed his hands over his ears. Where one of those distortions hit nearby, the ground folded around it as if twisted by a fish-eye lens. A wave sped out, fast, ripping up rhizome and grasses. It reached them in seconds and flung The Rose upwards, sprawling Blite on his back. Then sound became muffled, the air turned to amber around them, and he felt his ship’s grav-engines engage. They settled the ship back down gently rather than dropping it like a brick. As Blite staggered upright he saw that a hardfield now enclosed them, just in time to intercept and bounce away another of those fragments of distortion.
“Nice one, Leven,” he said.
“Like I said,” the Golem mind replied, “a couple of light centuries might be needed, if we want to observe comfortably.”
Blite now took a moment to consider Penny Royal’s earlier words. He at once understood that Spear and the AI itself were the lure to bring Isobel here. But why? Why couldn’t the AI have completed its business with her when they last encountered the Moray Firth? And why, in all sanity, had it tampered with her transformation, turning her into this?
“How much guilt does an AI experience?” wondered Brond, now standing close beside him.
He’d gone right to the heart of it. It had become evident that Penny Royal was correcting past wrongs, trying to clear up the messes it made when it had not been quite so nice. Blite couldn’t help but feel that Penny Royal had chosen Isobel—one of those transgressions—as a route to absolution. But did that mean he was now witnessing the elaborate suicide of the black AI?
SPEAR
“Fuck and damnation,” I said, hanging upside down from my seat straps.
Annoyingly, Riss was still coiled in the driver’s seat as if gravity had no effect on her, despite the fact that our ATV was now on its roof. I looked back to see the Weaver sprawled bill down against what was the ceiling—its rump up in the air and the very picture of indignity. “Agreed,” it said, then began to squirm round.
“A gravity shock wave,” said Riss, “generated by an intricate form of U-space distortion—a rather more subtle spatial manipulation than a Polity USER.” The drone looked back. “Stay where you are, I can right us.”
Hydraulic motors began humming and the ATV began to tilt sideways. Glancing to the side, I could see one of the nearest cage wheels hinging down on its axle, which i
tself was telescoping out. In a moment the vehicle was up on its side, then tilting past that, before abruptly toppling back down the right way up.
“Umph,” said the Weaver.
I looked back to see it on its rump again and looking mildly irritated, one claw supporting it against the wall because the ATV was still tilted. Gradually the wheel and axle combination that had flipped us back over retracted and aligned, bringing us level again.
“So what caused that?” I asked, probing tender flesh around my shoulder bone.
“Yes,” said Riss, again turning to look at the Weaver, her third black eye now wide open, “what caused that?”
While the Weaver scratched at its rump and chewed over whether or not to reply, I tried using my aug to go after information. Surely I could get some sort of satellite image of whatever was occurring ahead? Nothing: Masada’s computer networks were all down.
“Isobel Satomi caused that,” the Weaver eventually replied.
“What?” I said, then grew irritated with myself. That admission of dumb ignorance had been issuing from me all too often of late.
“How the hell could she have possibly got here? The security here is massive and the Polity would have come down on her like a collapsing skyscraper the moment the Moray Firth surfaced.”
“Isobel Satomi,” said the Weaver, now taking up that handy little device of his and attaching some other horn-shaped item to it, “is now a stage one biomech and war mind instatement. Penny Royal is experiencing difficulties.”
I managed to suppress the “what” before it left my mouth.
“What stage was the Technician?” Riss asked.
“Stage ten,” said the Weaver, “there’s nothing higher.” It held the device up close to its eyes. “You may proceed now.”
Riss turned to look at me and I met her unblinking gaze. “Well, you heard the fella,” I said.
Without comment, Riss faced the screen, the joystick shifted, and with a slight grating sound the ATV surged forwards again. I now noticed what looked like a thunderstorm lighting the horizon ahead—also the sky looked darker and the sun was setting behind us. We’d travelled maybe a further hundred feet when another of those waves heaved up the grasses far ahead and sped towards us. I gripped my seat arms, determined not to end up with my full weight against the straps if we were turned over again.
Click.
All around us the churned ground flattened, as if under some huge invisible arrowhead—and when I glanced back at the Weaver, it had raised its device once more. The approaching gravity wave hit the edge of this area and rode up over it. We also rolled on through the flattened area, weathering the wave, although I swore as the wrench forced my tender collarbone against my safety strap. But the ATV remained stuck to the ground and we continued on. I looked at the Weaver again, who exposed his white holly teeth in a grin.
“There are whole legions of forensic AIs who would fight each other to the death to get hold of that toy of yours,” Riss noted.
“Yes,” said the Weaver, “which is why I am here now.”
Half an hour of travelling, four more waves, and a couple of detonations finally brought us close. The latter lit up the sky like nuclear strikes. But the ATV had obviously sustained damage, because even as it laboured to the top of a hill of newly compacted rhizome, something gave out and filled the vehicle with the smell of hot metal. I looked round as the Weaver abruptly straight-armed the cargo door, which went down with a crash. It quickly clambered out and I unstrapped and followed.
“Your mask,” said Riss, who was dogging my footsteps. I donned it quickly, stopped just to breathe for a moment and clear the shadows from the periphery of my vision, then pursued the Weaver to the summit.
The vista we had hoped for now lay open before us. Far over to the right I could see The Rose, sitting under a hardfield dome. Far over to the left I could see the Atheter AI building, half buried on its side. In the sky, directly ahead, Penny Royal and the thing that had been Isobel Satomi were tearing at each other like angry gods. And it looked as if the black AI was losing.
We just watched. Isobel hung in the sky like burning vine, cupped by a disintegrating expanse of black edges and surfaces. Energies were flashing between these Titans as if they’d stopped sniping at each other and had now moved on to their particular form of hand-to-hand combat. This was a vicious scrabble, with armouries depleted and knives out. High above, in the darkening sky, I could see glinting shapes—doubtless every Polity asset in the system was poised up there. The Weaver now began heading down the slope, having inspected this view for a moment. I didn’t really think this was a great idea but I followed. Just then, as if waiting for our arrival, Penny Royal came apart with a sound like some titanic glass bowl shattering and just dropped into thousands of pieces from the sky.
ISOBEL
She’d won, she’d destroyed Penny Royal, and now Thorvald Spear had come. Complete vengeance would be hers … her mission would be accomplished. Isobel released her hold and dropped down through the sky, her fires going out. She hit the ground heavily, partially sank, then scrabbled out.
The enemy?
Her war mind reacted, bringing its remaining resources to bear with enough energy remaining to obliterate Spear. She fought it. She didn’t want his end to be that simple. And the war mind actually stopped, surprising her because she’d thought she wouldn’t be able to hold it back. Using her many legs, she sped towards the three making their way down the distant slope. She raised her hood, shedding glassy shards as she sharpened her feeding sickles, targeting frames and complex tactical schematics blooming all over the three. The snake drone was a danger, but could be dealt with using just a small twist. As for the other creature …
She slammed to an involuntary halt.
“And this is what you want to be?” a familiar voice asked.
No, you’re dead—I destroyed you.
Abruptly she forced herself into motion again, baffled by whatever had obstructed her. She inspected the last of the three. Why was Spear accompanied by a large gabbleduck? And why was it that she now, abruptly, felt so afraid?
The snake drone. She targeted it properly and began to generate the required shaping of U-space distortions to turn the thing inside out. But suddenly she couldn’t remember how to do that, the war mind seemingly fading away from her.
No matter.
The predator was still with her and the drone simply could not stand against her present form. They were now just fifty feet away. She began to raise her hood, prepared to come down on Spear, who was now crouched down, gazing at her. She felt something then, an infrasound pulse hitting her. This was how Spear had paralysed Trent, Gabriel and herself when he had first escaped them. Elements inside her abruptly froze, but now they were irrelevant. She experienced a moment of vicious joy. She just bypassed those small points of paralysis and mapped Spear’s body in intricate detail as she rose higher, determining the slowest and most agonizing way to take him apart.
“So that is all you can do?” she said. However, her translator had been destroyed, along with the two Polity weapons she’d attached to her body. She must therefore be using some more complex system inside her to speak.
Spear stood up, shrugged. “It was worth a try.”
“Few of my human nerves remain, so your prion cascade was sure to fail.”
“So the Weaver tells me,” said Spear. “It also told me that obedience to their masters is integral to Atheter war machines. Are you feeling that love yet, Isobel?”
Enough of this. She began to move forwards. Click.
She froze. No. No! Somehow Spear’s prion cascade was now working and her whole body just slid from her control. She came down like a falling redwood and hit the ground, splashing mud all around. Targeting frames, schematics, tactical calculations, they all fled. The predator relinquished her and faded too. Spear and the snake drone slid away from her perception and all she could now see was the gabbleduck, the Atheter, beckoning to her with one c
law, summoning her.
She felt the love.
The war mind was now back in full control, perfectly melded with the predator, while she continued to recede. She felt the war mind’s total loyalty, its absolute love of the kind that had created it which was utterly fundamental to its being. Then it expelled her into blackness.
SPEAR
The albino hooder, which had been partially controlled by Isobel Satomi’s parasitic mind, now came forwards. It halted just a few feet from the gabbleduck and lowered its hood to the ground. I wasn’t sure I liked that, the way it seemed to be prostrating itself. I found something distasteful about its lack of choice, even in something so lethal—but then humans fool themselves with their belief in free will. And I might well be the worst example of such self-deception. Also, such a reaction was hypocritical, when I considered my relationship with Flute …
“So, are they both dead now?” I asked, a hollow disappointment opening inside me.
“Isobel might have been killed by the war mind but Penny Royal certainly wasn’t.”
I turned to gaze enquiringly at the silver snake.
Riss continued, “The original Technician was much more powerful, yet was also incapable of destroying Penny Royal. Look.” Riss flicked her tail at the scene ahead.
Translucent black octagons, each no thicker than paper, lay scattered across the darkening landscape—but even now they were changing. They were collapsing in on themselves, compressing their own substance into something darker, harder, and definitely more opaque—crystalline objects of all different shapes like the parts of a Chinese puzzle.
I felt suddenly angry. I understood that I was part of the lure to bring Isobel here, which was irritating enough, but my main anger stemmed from my failure to understand why she’d been lured here after all that. Also why she’d been turned into the thing still grovelling before the Weaver.