THE WAR: UNDER THE THRALL
The humans with blue rings on their skin were tough. Maybe that hue denoted a nanonic sub-system that repaired their bodies, for time and again I saw them damaged and recover. They’d be cut by a sharp carapace edge or chewed on by one of the ship lice, but they bled hardly at all and healed up ridiculously fast. I received similar injuries, and the glue my prador second-child handler sprayed on my wounds only stopped the bleeding. This was why I was dying. The pain, which the device in the back of my neck didn’t block, drove me into a fugue and weakened me in ways the thing could not control. When we arrived on yet another world, I knew for certain I hadn’t got much longer. Once away from the prador ship’s stink, another smell became distinct, and I recognized gangrene.
Pain is difficult to remember for, if we truly remembered it as a direct experience, we would go mad. Intellectually I know that my suffering at that time was terrible, that because of the spider thrall’s rigid control I was only able to scream somewhere deep inside. But the mind has its defences and, through the prism of memory, I only remember a dull indifference.
First- and second-children went ahead to secure the area before the prador father-captain left the landing craft, accompanied by human thrall slaves like me. Beyond the ramp lay dank, thick jungle that had been cut down by laser and hammered flat by the passage of many feet to make a path to the encampment. I didn’t then know why we were here, only later learning that this was one of the subplots of the war. Two prador fathers were meeting on neutral ground to hammer out an alliance against another prador faction. Even while conducting all-out war against another race, these creatures were still scrabbling for power and killing each other.
I walked behind the father-captain with three other thralled humans. We were all armed, including the second-children pacing along on either side of us. As were those lying ahead, plus the father-captain’s first-children. I understand now that allowing so many first-children to live was unusual—one of the exigencies of war. After all, they were closest to maturity of all the offspring, so the most likely to challenge their adult kin. It took about an hour to reach the clearing and, perfectly on time, the other father-captain arrived from the other side. By then I was shaking and failing to make all the movements my thrall required. I was very weak and it was a relief to know I couldn’t manage the return journey, so would end up as food for my masters. I was contemplating my brief future just as the mine went off.
Across the clearing the other father-captain rose on a massive blast, its under-carapace tearing free and its children tumbling away around it. The ground bucked and debris rained down all around me. I saw another adult prador come down and bounce into nearby jungle, a great mass of its guts ripped loose. I staggered, but my thrall righted me in time to see a missile streak from the jungle. It hit my father-captain in his face, punching through to detonate inside. He exploded into large fragments, each one a chunk of heavy carapace attached to a tail of steaming green entrails. One of these fragments struck me in the chest, knocking me flat on my back. I just lay there, doing nothing as no further instructions arrived through my thrall. Then came the sudden shock. I could move! I could actually move myself.
I reached up and shoved the messy debris away, but even that left me exhausted. Now small arms were firing. The nearby second-children were strafing the jungle, though I could see no sign of targets. First-children were cutting swathes through the same jungle with particle beams, trying to rid the attackers of cover. I looked at my human fellows, who had similarly been knocked to the ground by the blast.
“It’s not controlling us anymore,” I said, my voice rusty from lack of use.
No response; two of them just lay there staring blankly at the sky, while the third was face down, apparently trying to inhale mud. It was obviously too noisy for them to hear me, but they would realize soon enough they were free.
“We can … escape,” I added and slowly tried to roll over so I could crawl away.
The air was filling with smoke and flinders of wood, yet as I tried to crawl I saw a strange thing. Right ahead of me the ground moved, then a hatch of woven vegetation hinged up and aside. Something crawled out, something practically invisible but for vague distortions and the movement of crushed vegetation. It approached and I looked up, at last able, making out a man-shaped figure in the smoke. It removed its mask to reveal a face and squatted down in front of me.
Chameleoncloth, I thought.
“Spider thrall?” he enquired.
I managed a grunt of agreement. Though I wasn’t sure what he meant, the thing they had put in the back of my neck did resemble a spider.
“Just stay there—it’s as safe as anywhere.” He closed his mask and moved away.
I tried to keep track of him as he approached a nearby second-child, slapped something against its carapace, then moved on. Then I lost track of him as that something exploded, tearing the prador in half. All around me I could hear similar detonations and smoking chunks of my captors were flying in every direction.
Sticky mines, I thought, and other memories nibbled at my mind.
All around now issued the panicked hissing and mandible clattering of the prador, further explosions, then the sawing crackle of laser carbines. I turned my face to the ground and just breathed and, I think, lost consciousness for a while. When I came to, the noise level had dropped and the air was clearer. The explosions were more distant now and I could no longer hear the prador.
“They’re no good,” said a voice nearby. “Take DNA samples and then burn them.”
A hand came down on my shoulder and turned me over gently.
“Spider thrall?” a second voice wondered. “Never seen that in anyone not a hooper.”
“They don’t live long,” said the first voice. “Doc’s on his way.”
The first speaker now shimmered into existence and I realized that my first assumption had been partially wrong. They weren’t just using chameleoncloth but were also using chameleonware. This man wore fatigues that colour-matched the smoky orange sky behind him, but didn’t conceal him as well as before. He hit some control at his belt and his fatigues switched to some prestored setting: the yellows and browns of desert fatigues. He pulled his mask aside and shoved back his hood, stripping off his gloves to reveal a left hand made of gleaming ceramal. Of course I recognized him, despite his close-cropped beard. Only someone completely cut off in some backwater, without net access, could have failed to do so. Before me stood Jebel U-cap Krong, a hero of the Polity. Here stood the man whose favoured method of killing the enemy was to slap sticky mines directly onto their carapaces. Here was someone the prador feared and, judging by the devastation all around me, rightly so.
From somewhere distant came the sounds of two further massive explosions.
“There went their landing craft,” said the one crouching beside my three fellows. He was snipping pieces of flesh from their ears, placing these in sample bottles. I watched him until I realized someone else was beside me, who proceeded to heave me upright as I groaned in pain.
“Can’t use a neural blocker,” said the one I presumed to be “Doc” as he pressed something against my throat.
“We need to move fast,” said Krong. “That dreadnought up there isn’t going to hold off for much longer.”
Doc turned to look at him, and gave a slight negative shake of his head. It was something I’d seen on other battlefields. I’ll do what I can for him but, no chance.
A hissing sound was immediately followed by blessed numbness. Doc used a diagnosticer on me, inputting its data into a drug manufactory and injecting the results. While he did this, I watched the ear-sampler drag the other three bodies into a heap, inserting a device underneath. As he walked away this ignited—a slow-burn thermic grenade—and soon the three were lost in hot white flames and oily smoke.
“No,” I managed.
“Don’t concern yourself,” said Doc. “They weren’t alive.” Then he injected somethin
g else and the world started to fade. I felt sure it wouldn’t be coming back.
A century or more later, I learned when reading about Spatterjay why one of Krong’s troops had burned the three thralled hoopers on that jungle world. The hoopers were humans made inhumanly tough by a virus found on Spatterjay—their infection enforced by the pirate Jay Hoop, who thereafter sold them to the prador. Unlike me, they had received full thralls, which meant complete removal of brain and part of the spinal cord. And unlike Captain Gideon, they had survived the process, but just as mobile meat.
4
SPEAR
Those who died with memplants in their skulls and were subsequently uploaded to Soulbank usually had a plan. There was often a contract detailing what they wanted to happen next: they had prepared. Some plumped for insertion into a virtual world, to live out eternity in fictions of their choosing. Many chose resurrection in AI crystal placed in a Golem chassis. Others wanted to inhabit drone bodies, ships and even static planetary AIs. But most chose revival in bodies cloned from their own DNA. Being one of the earliest recipients of a memplant, I had chosen none of these because none of these options were available. A clone body had been selected for me as the least traumatic option.
I had wondered why I hadn’t felt panicked, displaced and completely out of my depth, until, while still struggling to find Penny Royal’s location, I briefly studied resurrection methods. All of those returning to life were buffered. They walked out of the resurrection chamber with their negative reactions tuned down, fight-or-flight responses hamstrung, and with a gene turned off in their brains to make them youthfully malleable so they learned quickly. I also noted that, as well as my nanosuite being at its base setting, this genetic fix must have contributed to my reaction to Sheil Glasser. My mind, as well as being youthfully malleable, had been youthfully libidinous. Again, this was something that helped integration: the sexual act being something rooted right down in the reptile brain.
Usually this buffering lasted for a couple of months, gradually declining towards the end, by which time most people had reintegrated and could move on. Perhaps it explained my problems with déjà vu. I don’t know. According to Bob, I was a special case, since I had been dead for so long, and the buffering would only come up for reassessment after two months.
No way.
I spent four days in the hotel room, alternately researching Penny Royal and my new body’s nanosuite. Sheil paid me a few more visits, but I fear I did not give her too much attention. On her last visit she told me she wasn’t coming back. That I was obsessive, distracted and becoming a bore. I made adjustments to my nascuff as she went out the door, whereupon the device turned blue and became a deterrent to those seeking a physical relationship. With the distraction of sex suppressed, I felt I could think more clearly, and coldly. Though in truth that might have been more about how I expected my mind to work, and so was an illusion. However, a few hours later, I felt I understood my nanosuite and the deeper architecture of the nascuff’s controls. I manipulated them, found the tweaks that had been put in place and realized that my body had been generating an excess of its own narcotics. I turned the adjustments off but left the genetic fix in place, because now I did need to learn.
Clarity returned as the coughing engine that was my brain accelerated.
Money first. Within a few minutes I found my account, learned how to access it from any location and worked out how much I had. A minute later I was shopping for an upgrade, an augmentation to be precise. And since I was now very rich, I wanted the best on the market. Studying the stats of the best aug available I noted a reference to gridlinks—computing hardware installed against the inside of the skull. This aug was the closest you could get to the same level of function as a gridlink without a lengthy recovery time, and my need to be after Penny Royal wouldn’t wait. A few minutes later and I was out of the hotel room, heading off to be fitted. I noted wryly that the aug was named “Sylac ChromeSnake 47.”
Half an hour later I was sitting in a chair in an aseptic room with an autodoc poised over me. The thing was specialized for the procedure. No humans were involved. Perhaps this wasn’t a job where you got to meet interesting people. The aug was cold against my skull as the bone-anchors went in with a crunch, and the connection routine followed. I ignored the instructions package surfacing in my mind and engaged on an almost instinctive level. The aug had been made to accommodate varying levels of intelligence and it responded perfectly. I felt a joy at the ramping up of mental function as I overrode the block on net connection. Just minutes into the fitting, I began uploading data on my interests, updating myself on augmentation, nanotech, adaptogenics and thousands of branches of biology. This ability to integrate knowledge rapidly was of course precisely the reason AIs took an interest in me, over a century ago.
While all this was occurring, lights began flashing on my wristcom. I peered at them, not really sure what they might mean.
“This is too soon!” Bob exclaimed from the device.
I simply reached over and turned off the wristcom, even as I mentally made purchases of increased memory and processing for my aug. A moment later, I updated myself on what was known about the prador and our history with them since the war. I also collected from my hotel data store everything I had gathered on Penny Royal, now setting my aug to update constantly, or at least when netlinks were available. This last required uploading a quasi-AI search engine to sort rumour and legend from hard fact.
The fitting finally completed and the autodoc withdrawing, I realized I now had all the essentials for my quest. I possessed money and the aug on my skull was constantly updating my knowledge-base. But most importantly my determination to hunt down and destroy Penny Royal remained. There was no reason to return to my hotel, for I was finally ready to leave Earth. Even as I went out of the aug fitting room, I abandoned Bob, leaving the wristcom on the chair.
Once the fitting room was behind me, I trudged the high-towered streets, looking for a taxi to take me to the nearest runcible. En route, I used my aug to book a four-jump transit—the first one from Earth to the main interstellar runcible on the Moon. From there, I chose a world halfway across the Polity, then a newly built outlink station which sat on the Line dividing the Polity from the Graveyard. I felt excited and determined but knew that, despite everything I had uploaded and integrated so easily, I would have to be cautious. Such an expansion of knowledge and the ability to process it could easily lead to overconfidence. I had to remember that such options were available, sometimes within constraints, to everyone. Though, admittedly, I was confident of the workings of my mind. It was just that the content needed a major update.
During a flight in a driverless aircab, my mind worked overtime and soon after I was walking towards the shimmering meniscus of a London runcible. These instantaneous matter transmitters enabled the massive spread of humanity throughout a large portion of the galaxy. But this device had also been the reason for our near-defeat by the prador, because our spaceship technology had been so behind theirs. During my allotted slot I stepped through, and felt no transition as I stepped out into the massive interstellar runcible complex on the Moon. I was still uploading and integrating knowledge, fascinated by new research and new takes on the old. I sought out the eclectic and the prosaic, selecting what would be of most use to me.
When I finally arrived on Outlink Station Par Avion, I booked a room in a local metrotel and spent time refining those plans made throughout the journey. I now needed to finesse the physical preparations required to enact them. From the data I’d accrued on Penny Royal, I had found a valuable lead. Because of her particular connections, I felt sure this woman would know the location of the AI, or at least would have some information about it. This woman could also get me to a particular abandoned spaceship. This vessel would be a further source of needed data—and my main weapon. I then learned, upon checking the lie of the Graveyard, that the ship was conveniently within it. But now I needed to ensure I knew everyth
ing about the woman. I needed to understand her perfectly, to be able to predict how she would act. And I also needed to understand her unique condition.
This last required, in addition to everything else I had loaded, all available information on creatures called hooders. These were hostile alien creatures resembling centipedes the size of monorail trains. They were also the devolved descendants of war machines, or biomechs. These had an interesting heritage, being made by one of three extinct alien races that had spanned the galaxy before humans even appeared on the scene.
I also had to get data on some of the more esoteric research in adaptogenics, and information on a field of human adaptation which was new to me: haimans. My driver from Krong Tower had mentioned them. It turned out that they took augmentation right up to its present limit. Haimans were human cyborgs with highly expanded sensoriums and mentalities. This took them as close as a human mind could get to computing, just a spit away from AI.
All this extra research did slightly extend my stay on Par Avion. But I could feel my mind climbing towards a zenith I had known before and didn’t begrudge the time. Also, the woman was dangerous. If you’re going to play with fire, you should know the location of the extinguisher.
ISOBEL SATOMI TRANSFORMED
Landing coordinates arrived, and Isobel Satomi gazed at them for a long time, before staring out through the cockpit screen at the black planetoid looming out there. Was she doing the right thing?
Why did anyone make a deal with the devil? Desperation, pursuit of power and wealth … Or perhaps a mistaken confidence in one’s ability to avoid pitfalls, to take something worthwhile from that deal and not be, as some would have it, “royally screwed.” Some managed to achieve this, it was rumoured. Janger had his vengeance on the father-captain responsible for killing his family and returned to the Polity. It cost him his massive personal fortune, but he got what he wanted. Jean Fraser had her dead child restored to life from its fifty-year-old mummified corpse. And Mr Pace, of course, became all but indestructible—defeated his enemies and established himself as the premier crime lord.