‘This seems decidedly dodgy,’ said Amistad.
‘There is a related offworld report.’ Ergatis relayed it at once.
The victims, it seemed, had come from Cheyne III. They were Separatists who years ago had dropped off the radar. Their own residences, when found, revealed nothing at all, but travel data had them going often to one particular location: a small, illegal otter-bone warehouse. When ECS raided it they found a laboratory within the warehouse, completely burnt out by a localized fire – some high-temperature incendiary had been used. In the ash were the remains of some very high-tech equipment and a further three corpses. There the trail had ended.
Was it instinct or intellect, Amistad wondered, that made him utterly sure this all had something to do with events here and now?
‘They brought something here from that laboratory,’ Amis-tad stated. ‘I would guess that dracomen, through Dracocorp augs, hijacked a Separatist cell and used it for their own purposes.’
‘That seems a bit of a stretch,’ Ergatis replied.
‘It does,’ said Amistad, ‘and I cannot pursue it now.’
‘The mechanism,’ stated the other AI.
‘Yes.’ Amistad paused to contemplate, then continued, ‘It is evident that a series of events, instigated by Dragon, assisted along their course by dracowoman Blue and involving the Technician, Tombs and the approaching mechanism, are coming to a head.’
‘But you must act without reference to them,’ Ergatis stated.
‘Yes, I must.’
The fact that the mechanism would be here very soon was more important than unresolved though related questions about events below. The thing on its way here looked quite capable of trashing worlds and Amistad had to deal with it first. He shifted position on the tokomac, directed his sensors away from Masada and opened up communications with the warships presently in the Masadan system.
Grant took the gravan high above the flute grasses and the trails cut through them from Dragon Down, checked coordinates on his map screen then applied acceleration. As he flew he checked behind, noting that Tombs still sat on the floor in the rear of the van. After insisting that they go out to exchange him for Sanders, he had just followed meekly when Grant headed out, and had said nothing since.
‘This is crazy,’ said Shree from the seat beside him.
‘It’s his choice,’ Grant replied. ‘Anyway, I wouldn’t have thought you’d have any objection to him handing himself over to the Tidy Squad.’
‘It would certainly be newsworthy,’ she replied non-committally.
‘And news is what you’re all about, is it not, Shree?’
Grant jumped. He hadn’t heard Tombs move up behind them, and now began to wonder why the man was suddenly making him feel so nervous. Glancing at Shree he could see the same reaction in her.
‘So what if it is?’ said Shree.
‘Do you know what I was doing with the dracoman Blue?’ Tombs asked.
Grant glanced round at him, furtively, unable to analyse why he felt the need to flinch. The man was just gazing ahead through the gravan screen, expression pale and serious.
‘No one’s seen fit to explain that,’ he said grudgingly.
‘Dragon sent two of its dracomen to the surface before the rebellion. One to monitor and one to be eaten. Blue and her brother.’
‘You what?’ said Shree.
‘The brother was pure information and a method of transmitting that information. Her brother was the Technician’s cure. Chanter saw and understood that, but I suspect his mind was insufficiently engaged to see the rest.’
‘The rest?’ Grant was getting the creeps now. Perhaps he’d made a big mistake acceding to Tombs’s demand to bring him out here, he obviously still had a lot of value inside that skull of his. Grant looked round to see the man staring at him. His eyes seemed completely black.
‘Why heal the Technician?’ Tombs asked. ‘Just to annoy Polity AIs, this being Dragon? I think not. What is the Technician’s purpose?’
Grant just wanted to concentrate on flying the gravan. His map screen told him the containment fence around the Atheter AI was only a few kilometres away and they’d be over it in minutes. But the question was directed at him, only him.
‘It wants to resurrect its master, this Weaver,’ he replied.
‘Yes.’
‘But if it does that the thing that first fucked it over would stop it,’ Grant continued.
‘Therefore?’
‘Dragon did something else?’
‘Precisely,’ said Tombs. He reached over and placed a hand on Shree’s shoulder. She seemed about to shrug him off, but then froze. Was she feeling that rigidity, that unnatural strength that Grant himself had felt? ‘Dragon understood something that the Atheter, the Weaver itself, and the Technician too did not understand. The Atheter terror of Jain technology, the terror that led to their madness and racial suicide, is a weakness that can be exploited.’
The barrier now started to come into view ahead through a low mist. The thing stood five metres tall. On first inspection it looked like no barrier at all, since it consisted of a long array of arched sections made from tubular ceramal. But within the foamstone rafts into which the arches were rooted were hard-field projectors, and the arches themselves contained all sorts of sensory gear. The animals of Masada could pass through this barrier freely, but the moment a Human, dracoman or any other intelligence tried it without permission, the hardfields would block their way. Grant turned the van into a course parallel with it.
‘You’re not making sense,’ said Shree. She was staring straight ahead, her eyes wide.
‘Jain technology is the key – Dragon knew that,’ said Tombs. ‘But it was a key that had to be kept safe until the lock it fitted could be moved into position.’
‘And what lock would that be?’ asked Grant.
Tombs just ignored that and continued: ‘The Technician is a war machine, a very sophisticated biomechanical war machine that has survived for two million years. Its purpose is battle, destroying the enemy. Protecting its Atheter masters was just a result of that, a secondary purpose, and one it served in one case throughout those years. But, like a soldier closely guarding a civilian, it has always been hampered. It could never risk itself in battle whilst it actually contained the one it was protecting.’
‘The Weaver,’ said Grant, not sure where this was going.
‘The Weaver, yes . . . only when forced to defend itself has the Technician fought. When the Theocracy tried to kill it, it responded, but in a limited way, only destroying the direct threat to it and its master before going into hiding. Even the likes of Amistad don’t really understand what it is capable of, though perhaps Penny Royal now has some intimation.’
‘Wait a minute,’ said Shree. ‘You’re saying it’s no longer hampered?’
‘Yes, I’m saying that.’
‘Right, we’re going back to Dragon Down,’ Grant said.
‘No,’ said Tombs.
Grant looked round at him. ‘If I’ve got this right, you’re saying the Technician no longer contains a copy of the Weaver, which means the only one in existence is the one in your head. That’s too much to risk. You can’t die.’
‘I am not going to die,’ said Tombs, ‘and you are going to take me to Sanders.’
It happened so fast Grant didn’t even have time to take his hand from the gravan’s joystick. Tombs’s hand made a snapping sound as it came down. He felt a slight tug at his waist, then, the barrel of his own disc gun was pressed down into the gap between his collar bone and his neck. He looked across as Shree slumped back and fell to one side, unconscious.
‘You’re risking too much, Tombs,’ said Grant.
‘Was that a risk you considered when you fought the Theocracy?’
‘I don’t understand – you’re more the Weaver now than the original Jeremiah Tombs . . .’
‘You are right, you don’t understand. The Weaver has changed me, the Weaver constantly changes me,
but guilt keeps me Human. Though it does not want me to risk myself, it cannot stop me from doing this.’
‘But once free of guilt you’ll be gone – the alien mind inside you will swamp you completely?’
Tombs shrugged. ‘Perhaps. But if the Weaver remains swamped within me it seems, ostensibly, that certain things cannot happen, and if they cannot happen I will be dead anyway.’
‘You need to explain that better.’
‘The mechanism will have detected the Weaver within me and will know that the war machine it had neutralized is once again active. It will come here to ensure, by deploying the full array of its disruptors, that its own purpose is completely fulfilled. This is as was intended by Dragon, in the plan that entity provided along with the cure that was Blue’s brother.’
‘The mechanism, the thing that fucked up Penny Royal?’
Tombs gave a slow nod. ‘Certainly. It is also likely that it will have moved into a new programming state, will have integrated knowledge of an alien civilization here – a civilization that has already interfered in its purpose. It seems likely Amis-tad has gone to organize the Polity defence, but it won’t be enough. The Technician now needs to be given new orders – it needs to cease being protective and go into full battle mode – and the orders for it to do so must come from a living breathing Atheter.’ He looked pained for a moment, adding, ‘Apparently.’
‘But . . . the Weaver is in you . . . and what do you mean “apparently”?’
Tombs didn’t answer, just pointed. ‘There.’
The ATV had been parked a few hundred metres out from the arched barrier. Grant could see people nearby, but only two of them, one standing and the other lying on the ground. Doubtless Ripple-John’s sons were concealed either in the ATV or in the surrounding flute grasses.
‘Land,’ Tombs instructed.
Grant wanted to just disobey, to turn the gravan round, but his own disc gun was still pressed in below his neck and he very much doubted Tombs was bluffing. He eased the joystick down, spiralling the gravan towards the ground. He aimed for the edge of a wide muddy track, not wanting to have to push through flute grasses immediately on departing the vehicle. Soon the gravan crunched down through grass beside the track, landing with a thump and settling with a sigh. Grant shut down its gravmotors and mini-turbines, listened to both hum down into silence to leave only the rustle of grasses and the ping and crack of cooling metal.
‘Okay, let’s go.’
Grant unstrapped and pushed himself up out of his seat, the gun barrel still hard against the base of his neck until Tombs abruptly snapped it away and stepped back. Grant peered at Shree, wondered if he should go for her weapon, but knew he just would not be fast enough. Rather than use the cab door he followed Tombs into the back of the van, and as the man opened the door and stepped out, followed him.
‘What do you want me to do?’ Grant asked as they stomped through squelchy mud.
‘You take Sanders back to the van and you get out of here.’
‘What’re you going to do?’
‘Whatever is necessary.’
Following the path round they reached the edge of the small clearing in which the ATV was parked. Tombs halted, then abruptly held out the disc gun butt first.
‘I am of course your prisoner,’ he said.
Grant accepted the weapon, clicked off the safety and pointed it at him.
‘You understand that you won’t be able to get me back to the gravan,’ Tombs continued. ‘Already two of Ripple-John’s sons are between us and it, whilst the third is ten metres behind the ATV with a missile launcher.’ Tombs turned to gaze at Grant. ‘That was probably just in case you changed your mind about landing.’
How the hell could Tombs know that?
Tombs began walking whilst Grant stared at the gun he held before abruptly following. In moments they reached the clearing, close enough to see the nasty flack gun Ripple-John pointed down at Sanders’s head.
‘That’s far enough,’ said the Overlander, then, ‘Jeremiah Tombs.’
Tombs didn’t react, just stood unmoving.
‘So how do you want to do this?’ Grant asked.
Ripple-John smiled. ‘It’s nice that you’ve seen sense, Leif. Did he give you much trouble? I don’t suppose he did. They were always bullies and braver in packs.’
‘I’m not here for a pleasant chat, Ripple-John.’
The Overlander held one hand out to the side, his expression apologetic. ‘Sorry to put you in a position like this, but you brought it on yourself when you considered proctors anything more than coffin fillers.’ He nudged Sanders with the toe of his boot. ‘Get up.’
Only then did Grant see that her ankles were no longer tied together. With some struggle, because her hands were still bound behind her back, she got to her knees and then to her feet.
‘Simple exchange,’ said Ripple-John. ‘She walks over to you whilst Tombs walks over to me. Anything untoward happens and both you and Sanders, die. My boy Kalash has you in his sights now.’
Grant stepped over behind Tombs and nudged him in the back with his disc gun. ‘Get moving.’
It was like pressing the barrel against a tree trunk, but after a moment Tombs took the first step, then another.
‘Go on bitch, get out of here,’ Ripple-John instructed.
The two paced across the clearing towards each other. Sanders halted when she was close to Tombs. ‘I’m sorry, Jeremiah, so sorry.’
Tombs dipped his head in acknowledgement but kept walking. When Sanders reached Grant the strength seemed to drain from her and she stumbled. Grant caught her, let her lean on him. With care he reached down and freed the knife from his boot, reached round and cut the length of optic cable binding her wrists.
The moment Tombs reached a pace away from Ripple-John the Overlander stepped forwards and lashed the flack gun across his face. The impact was hard, vicious, and should have immediately dropped the erstwhile proctor. All it did was turn his head, his body still as immobile as a rock. Then it seemed Tombs remembered he was supposed to be Human and stumbled, going down onto his knees. Grant saw the confusion in Ripple-John’s expression. The man stepped in and drove a boot into Tombs’s gut, and Tombs going down on his side, coughing and hacking, seemed to satisfy his attacker.
‘Where’s Amistad?’ asked Sanders. ‘Where’s Penny Royal?’
‘Not here.’ Grant eyed two of Ripple-John’s boys as they stepped out from the flute grasses.
Ripple-John dragged his attention away from Tombs and concentrated on Grant. ‘Get out of here now. If I don’t see your vehicle leaving within the next few minutes, you won’t be leaving at all.’
Grant caught Sanders’s arm and turned her, forcing her to keep up with him as he marched her back towards the gravan.
‘We can’t leave him – they’ll kill him!’
‘Nothing we can do,’ said Grant. ‘It’s not safe here, not safe at all.’
But the source of the danger here, he felt, was not the men with guns.
17
Gabbleduck’s Brain
Three times the meat and five times the number of convolutions of a Human brain, along with four times the number of white-matter connections – just too much brain for a simple predatory animal. This was the limit of the knowledge of the gabbleduck’s brain prior to the rebellion on Masada, because studying them was hindered by the fact that they emit a hooder-attracting hormone when they die and when dead, hooders fall on them like famine victims on a roast chicken and there’s never much left to study. After the rebellion, studies were further hindered by the reclassification of gabbleducks higher up the sentience scale. All studies in recent years have been limited to scan data only, but have been revealing. In its animal state a gabbleduck uses just a third of its brain entire and just 10 per cent of its triple-lobed cerebrum. Among the many highly complex structures to have been identified is one that relates to language. Other structures appear to be organic modems capable of picking up a range
of frequencies, and some cite these as reasons for their often odd behaviour – reception of Human-generated signals causing neuronal firing that their simplified brains don’t know how to deal with. The bottom line, however, is this: these creatures are animals, but they also have unused mental watts far in excess of those of an unaugmented Human being. Let’s just hope they never start using them.
– From HOW IT IS by Gordon
Jem lay utterly still. The only damage his assailant had caused was the cut on his temple, which leaked salty stinging blood into his right eye. This was irritating since, having a mere two eyes, it did impede his function. He reached up carefully and wiped his eye. It blurred, further dulling the senses of his inadequate body, so he reached out for further sensory data – data he had always known, but never truly acknowledged, would be available to him.
He had been aware of it ever since escaping the sanatorium on Heretic’s Isle, that constant low mutter as of something stirring in uncomfortable slumber. Now as he touched it, the mutter turned to a mumble, then a panicked retreat from coherence. He reassured it, calmed it by opening his consciousness to it, then demanded a response; and the Atheter AI woke up to the presence of one of its masters. The history loaded in a second, he analysed it in that same second, began to understand more.