Next I loaded knowledge of how to change my attitude to things, variously listed under titles like “confidence,” “assertion,” “ambition,” “drive,” “personal goals” and others besides. I could change these, but was reluctant to do so. Surely if I changed them I would no longer be me? It then occurred to me that if I was going to venture down this route I could wipe out any inclination to go trailing after Penny Royal. I could, if I wished, programme myself to be happy with a life in the Polity driving a taxi.
Fuck that.
I came up off the bed all in one movement, dispelling the editing suite to the depths of my aug and abruptly feeling angry with myself. It was just then that Flute decided to deliver his news.
“We’ve got a problem,” he said through the PA speaker. “A Polity fleet of twenty modern attack ships and two modern dreadnoughts has just arrived.”
“Right,” I said, slamming my door open and heading for the bridge.
Riss was up on the console as I arrived, gazing at me with her black eye open, and I wondered if she’d been in my mind while I had been contemplating screwing around with it. I sat down in the chair, throwing up frames in the screen fabric of ship stats, applying to Flute for a view of the approaching ships and putting them in another frame.
“Any communications?” I asked.
“Sverl has been speaking to them,” said Flute, “but I didn’t have access to that.”
“Sverl?” I enquired out loud, making a link.
Sverl sent me a cam view of Bsectil heading our way clutching the spine, then said, “You’ve got less than twelve hours to get out of here. Also, as a favour, I would rather you didn’t mention my hardfield generators, should anyone get in contact with you.”
I glanced at Riss.
“I’ve said nothing,” she protested.
I made another link. “Trent, we’ve got a Polity fleet coming in. I’m leaving this station soon. What do you want to do?”
After a short pause he replied, “I have to see this through.”
“Your companions?” I asked, suddenly realizing how important to me his next reply would be. It suddenly occurred to me there might have been a reason for my reluctance to depart the station.
Another short pause ensued while he spoke to Sepia and Cole. Cole emphatically wanted to stay and study the further results of his mind-work on the shell people. Sepia was undecided. She opened a private link to me herself.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“Where do you think?”
“I presume you’re going after Penny Royal, but after recent events here I wasn’t sure.”
“I am. But I don’t know where it’s gone.”
“Have you room for another passenger?”
I didn’t have to think. “Of course I damned well have—you know you are welcome.”
“That’s good to know, Thorvald. I wasn’t sure what your attitude to me was.”
“Acquisitive,” I replied.
“Oh good,” she said.
“Get over here now—when you’re here we’re going.” I paused again, then switched to a private link to Trent. “Trent, you’re sure?”
“I’m sure,” he replied with calm certainty.
I don’t know why I felt I owed him anything. The man was a killer who, at Isobel Satomi’s instruction, would have had no compunction about snapping my neck.
I sat back. That was it, then. We were going. Linking through the ship’s system into that of the station, I watched Sepia say her goodbyes, collect a small case and head out of the hospital to climb onto one of the maglev carts that had been used to transport the shell people there.
Halfway along its journey it halted at a station and Sepia stood up and looked around in confusion. Bsectil then appeared, for he had stopped the cart. The prador first-child handed over the spine to her without a word, then turned to head back to his father. It took her just ten minutes more and I watched her all the way. The moment she stepped into the Lance’s airlock, I rested my hands in the indented ball controls before me, auged through to the local bay AI and requested undocking. With thumps that shuddered through the ship, the clamps disengaged. Next, after a pause, I took my hands away from the ball controls. What the hell did I need them for when I had a pilot?
“Flute,” I said. “Take us out.”
Only because the bridge, which was lined with screen fabric, seemed transparent, was I able to see that the Lance was on the move. On steering thrusters Flute took us away from the wall of the construction bay then slid us out towards bright vacuum under the loom of the old dreadnought. The light steadily increased, then stepped down as the system adjusted it for normal human vision.
“Hi Riss,” said Sepia as she entered the bridge.
“Hello catwoman,” Riss replied.
Sepia grinned at the snake drone then turned to me. “You okay with me here?”
“Bit late now if I’m not,” I replied, my attention now fixed on the object she had under her arm. “But I’m glad you came.” At that moment I auged through to my nascuff and it slowly began turning from blue to red.
She stepped over to me, slid the spine out and held it out. “This, I believe is your phallic MacGuffin?”
“So it is.”
At that moment Riss emitted a snort, then muttered, “Damn, I’ve been thick.”
I was surprised it had taken her so long.
I reached out and closed my bare hand around the spine. I felt that familiar jolt, followed by a weird moment of disconnection, almost as if parts of my mind had flown apart in some mental explosion. They flew up, reconfiguring as they did so, then came down again, interlocking in new ways and having acquired greater bulk in the process. Greater mental perspectives opened for me and I knew on an absolutely basic level that I had skills and knowledge I had never acquired personally. It was without any doubt that I understood I had re-engaged with the spine and with the knowledge of Penny Royal’s victims; that in a sense they were all part of me now. I reached out then, not needing to locate and direct com systems or sort through com channels and frequencies.
“Goodbye Sverl,” I said, without using my vocal cords.
“Goodbye, Spear,” Sverl replied, “which I say with the absolute certainty that we’ll meet again.”
I didn’t have to think too deeply about that. The fact that Penny Royal had left that hardfield generator meant it was unlikely the black AI had finished with Sverl yet. I was going after the black AI, so it seemed inevitable that my and Sverl’s courses would again intersect. I then considered Sverl’s “absolute certainty,” which could not be parsed from the presence of that hardfield generator.
“What else have you found?” I asked.
“Fast again, I see,” Sverl replied, then sent a massively complex file concerning the physical and mental structure of the AIs in Room 101. I realized that in sending this, Sverl was deliberately testing my abilities. I worried for a second it was beyond me. But it was as if my mind, until that moment, had been running rough and unevenly like a big engine barely able to tick over. The pressure Sverl had just exerted was like a foot slamming down on an accelerator, fuel flooding in and the engine coughing into full life.
Externally everything slowed down. I found myself processing the kind of data load it had taken me hours to deal with on Par Avion, when I had been researching Isobel Satomi, in just the time it took Sepia to take one step. By the time she was sitting down in the chair she had previously occupied I was there, and understood what Sverl had found at the centre of every AI aboard.
“Damnation,” I said, out loud, now wondering if I had made the right decision to leave. My aim was to track down Penny Royal but the AI’s obvious continued interest in this place might mean it would lead me back here.
“Problem?” asked Sepia.
I gazed at her for a long moment. Why ha
d Penny Royal said what it had during our last encounter if it intended coming back to this station? No, we were going back to my “beginning” and that certainly wasn’t here. I realized it would be too easy to over-analyse all this and find myself sinking back into inertia. I needed to do something; I needed to move.
“Just new data,” I replied, waving a dismissive hand.
“You have to go,” said Sverl.
“Why?”
“I don’t know why,” he said. “I just know you have to.”
“Then goodbye again,” I repeated, and pulled my mind out of the station.
“If we’re going to get along, you’ll have to do better than that,” said Sepia. “What new data?”
“Okay. Sorry. It seems Sverl has found a piece of Penny Royal in every single AI aboard that station.” I paused, adding, “I’ve yet to work out the implications of that.”
She nodded, then, after a moment’s thought, pulled across her straps. Watching her for a moment longer, I noted her cat’s claws flexing in and out of the end of her fingers—something she did when she was tense. But she was cosmetic catadapt rather than a true adaption. She had cat’s eyes, sharp teeth and elfin ears, but had restricted herself to something generally human. She didn’t have a tail or all-over body hair, for example, and she wasn’t one of those who had altered her body form with shortened legs and shifted joints so she could drop on all fours and move like a real cat. Retrospectively I realized that last bit of knowledge was not something I had personally learned. She was also gut-wrenchingly attractive and, now I’d reset my nascuff, her presence was already having more and more of an effect on me.
“So where are we going?” she asked, looking up.
“I haven’t decided yet.” I paused for a second. “Flute, where can we get some decent AI net updates?”
“I am receiving updates even now,” Flute replied.
“But there are restrictions?” I suggested.
“Broadcast data is limited,” Flute replied. “Specific search requests aren’t allowed outside the Polity, but we can key into a permitted Graveyard server.”
I focused back on Sepia. “There you have it: we’ll head close to the Polity border with the Graveyard. Is there anywhere specifically you want to go?”
“Anywhere that isn’t boring,” she replied.
“So that’s why you’re with me?”
“It is.”
“I would have thought remaining aboard Room 101 while it comes under attack would be . . . interesting.”
“Been there, done that.”
“Trent, Cole, the shell people?”
“Cole is too wrapped up in his own research to be interesting. Trent I found interesting until I discovered that as well as being burdened with a heavy conscience, he now seems to have fallen for Taiken’s wife. The shell people—” she waved a hand as if at an irritating fly—“are too close to home.”
“Old and suicidal,” I said, understanding completely now. The shell people were too much of a reminder of her own condition, for Sepia was one of those pushing the ennui barrier. I wondered then if it was a good idea having someone aboard who might be inclined to taking suicidal risks, but then let it go. Generally those pushing that barrier risked their own lives, and not the lives of others.
“Well, you sure know how to flatter a girl,” she said. “And shall we stop playing? You know why I’m here, and I know why you want me here.”
“I’m not sure I do know, but I hope it will be a pleasure finding out.”
Riss issued another snort.
Out in the bright light of the hypergiant, with Room 101 falling behind us and the Polity fleet not yet close enough to interecept us (if it intended to), I said, “Take us under, Flute.”
As we went I felt as if some tie had snapped—I felt free.
The Brockle
In a corridor aboard the High Castle, where a moment before it had been certain of simple victory, the Brockle fell from a beam strike. It rolled, its back smoking and one of its units dying, broke its human form and exploded apart, another beam cutting through the space it had occupied. At the end of the corridor a figure ducked out of sight, but the Brockle had already recognized one of the Sparkind. Its instinct was to set out in pursuit immediately. It had been attacked now, which meant it could respond. It was no longer morally obliged to preserve life . . . But it stamped down on that instinct at once.
All Sparkind were professional soldiers whose training and martial knowledge was at a peak, so why would one of them take a shot at something she knew could not be killed with a laser carbine? With its units stuck around the walls of the corridor, the Brockle began checking data and cam views and decided to hang back. The fleeing human soldier had just passed two Golem companions, waiting with portable proton cannons. In the hands of Golem those would have resulted in a lot more damage, with the likelihood of every one of the Brockle’s units being struck. This therefore was the trap . . . but it was far too simple.
Why hadn’t the soldiers knocked out cams in the area they had occupied? Why had they sent their human companion with the laser carbine when they could have come themselves with the more effective weapons? They must know that it could see them waiting there. The trap, then, must be more subtle.
Checking, the Brockle saw that all the scientists were sealed in their research area, the bridge crew was sealed in the bridge and the remaining Sparkind squads were sealed in their quarters. The Sparkind squad, which must have got out before the partitioning shields went down, consisted of four members, and one of them was missing. Running a search, the Brockle noted a mass discrepancy in one of the maintenance passages but nothing visible through the cams. The other soldier was using chameleonware and heading towards the location of one of the U-space communicators. So, on the face of it, this present “trap” was a distraction to allow the fourth soldier to get off an SOS to Earth Central, but again it was too easy. Now knowing what it knew, what was its expected response? It would ignore the three in the corridor and take a direct route back past the science section to intercept the one heading for the communicator. Knowing that this was what the Brockle would do, what trap would the Sparkind have laid?
The route to the communicator would have taken it down a passageway running along the inner face of the ship’s hull near to a series of airlocks. The Brockle could detect nothing unusual there but, almost certainly, explosive devices had been planted. There would be those to blow out an airlock and another EM device to at least momentarily paralyse it so it would be sucked out into space. Was there another layer? Quite possibly, but now it was time to act. However, instead of going in pursuit of any of the four Sparkind, it routed through to the ship’s armoury and fired three low-yield chemical explosive missiles, programming them even as they railed out of the High Castle.
The Brockle then pulled all its units back together. It regained human shape, turned around and away from the waiting soldiers. Meanwhile, the missiles were turning sharply and the ship’s system warning of the danger. The Brockle ignored that as it reached the frame of an emergency bulkhead door, stepped past it and turned. It then mentally reached out again and opened two airlocks.
Emergency lights began flashing and a breach alarm began sounding. A slight breeze tugged at the Brockle’s false clothing just before the bulkhead door slammed across. It now focused its attention through cams positioned in the corridor leading to one of the open airlocks and watched the steel eye of a missile nose cone, limned in chemical propulsion flame, hurtling in. The missile, which wasn’t much larger than one of the Brockle’s own body units, shot in through the airlock, travelling at twenty thousand miles an hour. It took a microsecond to reach the two Golem and their human companion, and detonated precisely on time. The hot blast blew open the corridor and threw molten metal and wreckage out into the rest of the ship. It vaporized the human soldier, burned and blew apart the
two Golem, their tough remains carried in a wall of fire along the corridor to be deposited on the other side of the ship.
The second missile, progressing in a longer arc, shot in through its designated airlock just a moment later. The length of corridor it traversed was a short one, its final destination a flat wall beyond which lay a water tank. Hitting the tank, it exploded, its ultra-thermite core vaporizing the water and the metal of the tank too, and heating them so intensely they even began to disassociate into plasma. The white-hot gas exploded outwards, but in the main corridors could travel no further than the recently closed emergency bulkhead doors. However, it did have one route out, and that was through a maintenance tunnel in which the Brockle had deliberately left blast hatches open. The gas travelled along this and entered another tunnel, heading towards the mass discrepancy. Through the cams in the tunnel the Brockle just had time to see a human figure thrashing, his suit shredding away, then skin and flesh peeling away too, just before the cams went out.
The Brockle closed airlocks and the ship immediately began recharging with air.
“Proud of yourself?” enquired Captain Grafton from the bridge.
It gazed through cams at her. Instead of responding, it initiated emergency eject, feeling the deck convulse under its feet just a moment later. An exterior view showed a circular plug of the ship a hundred yards across rising out of the hull, then being blasted away by the neat solution of the air from the surrounding corridors emptying out underneath it.
The science team must remain—they still had the remains of the Black Rose and might render useful data.
“It was necessary,” the Brockle replied to Grafton, as the bulkhead door ahead opened.
It walked along scorched and smoking corridors, fire-retardant foam drifting all around. At the turning it looked to its right, where a great hollow had been blown open within the ship, then turned to the left.