After a short while, with Bsectil hurriedly firing a chemical drive to catch up with him, he arrived at a wall of the packed internal mechanisms and infrastructure of the original station. Here the damage and riotous alterations had not been so severe. The factory pods, fluid tanks, materials conveyors, accommodations, assembly lines and other interconnected paraphernalia of wartime production were all visible. However, there were gaps where trees of ’structor pods were at work chewing away strange composite worm casts or glittering nanotech blooms, and other areas where printer-bots were busily rebuilding. Mapping ahead, he propelled himself to the open throat of an attack ship construction tunnel and sent himself hurtling along that. The walls all around him were packed with neatly folded arms and grabs, coiled spiderbot tentacles, the mica faces of hardfield projectors, but there were no attack ships, even partially constructed, to block his path.
Arriving at the end of the tunnel where the heads of giant extruders stood prepared to inject the hot metal hull beams ready to be bent by hardfields into the bones of ship skeletons, he halted by a secondary production tunnel for fusion engines and waited for Bsectil to frantically catch up, meanwhile absorbing data on a particular problem.
The shell people were old humans who had reached the ennui barrier in their lives. In an effort to defeat that boredom such people took big risks and quite often ended up killing themselves. These people had convinced themselves that the answer to their problem was to completely change themselves into prador. To do this they had used dangerous biotech, risky surgery, mental alterations that would have been illegal in the Polity. Their leader, Taiken, had gone the whole prador route, setting himself up as a father and thus enslaving the rest with his pheromones. It was a situation that had been sure to lead to disaster as they ceased to tend to their completely imbalanced bodies. It would also have resulted in disaster for Trent and some other humans as Taiken decided he would turn them into human blanks. After Golem Grey had dealt with Taiken—Grey had torn his head off—Trent had shouldered responsibility for the shell people. With the assistance of Spear and the drone Riss, they had been injected with an acid that dissolved their prador grafts, and with nanotech that preserved their lives and put them into a coma. Now, using human prosthetics and other wartime medical tech, including mental editing and reprogramming enacted by the mind-tech Cole, they had been restored to near humanity and were waking. But their problems weren’t over. Cole had done his best but they were still attached to the idea of transformation, still at the ennui barrier, still liable to self-destruct.
When the first-child arrived, Sverl propelled himself down the tunnel. There were no robots or assembly equipment here, just walls lined with white composite vines cored with superconductor and serving no purpose at all. Then, by more cramped routes, Sverl came finally to the hospital where, even now, the last of the shell people were being roused. He scanned through cams inside but most of the structure within was made for humans and he would be severely restricted on where he could go. Instead he propelled himself round to the tubular jut of barracks lying just beyond the hospital—having been moved from their previous location a couple of miles away. These were larger inside with larger airlocks to gain entry because they had housed both humans and war drones—usually small attack or sabotage groups.
Sverl found an airlock provided for war drones and entered, Bsectil still struggling to keep up. He passed through and perambulated down a long tunnel to enter a huge room with two levels of galleries running around the edges, armourers’ columns going from floor to ceiling—only one of which was operational and now supplied a limited variety of vitamin-laced protein bars and sachets of drinks—raised work surfaces and a scattering of furniture collected by robot from other “human” areas in the station. The place was crowded. At a glance Sverl counted over a thousand people here.
“What the fuck are you?” exclaimed someone nearby.
Sverl focused on a man. This individual was dressed only in shorts and a sleeveless shirt as if he wanted to display his prosthetic limbs and skull, whose inner workings were revealed under translucent synthetics. A nearby woman, obviously less inclined to this sort of display because she was clad neck to toe in a close-fitting overall, said, “Looks like some kind of war drone.” She then looked past Sverl and showed surprise as Bsectil entered, and took a couple of paces back. “Prador,” she muttered, abruptly scrubbing at her arms as if her skin itched.
Others had now noticed their presence and began heading over. Seeing the steadily converging crowd, Sverl began transmitting the scene out towards the approaching fleet. Though Garrotte wasn’t responding, he was sure it would be viewing any transmissions from the station. As he did this, he noticed Trent and Cole hurry into the room, obviously having been made aware of his presence.
“Funny-looking prador that,” said someone else nearby. “Looks all twisted up.”
Of course, none of them had seen Sverl’s children other than in armour. The crowd continued to gather and Sverl began to feel nervous. He wasn’t used to so many alien creatures around him, and now wasn’t completely sure how to go about delivering the news he needed to give them. Still transmitting, he moved out from the airlock. People began touching him, and they began touching Bsectil, who kept turning to try and face them and snapping his claws in nervous tension.
“Father?” he asked, almost desperately.
“Did you hear that?”
“What?”
“He called the robot father.”
“Some seriously fucked-up prador, then.”
They all understood the clattering and bubbling of prador speech. Sverl should have known that for, wanting to be prador, they had all had cerebral uploads of the prador language. He halted and rose higher on his legs, eyeing Trent and Cole as they drew closer and came to a halt amidst the crowd.
“Passing visit?” Trent enquired.
“Those in the approaching Polity fleet need to know who they might kill should they attack,” Sverl replied.
“What is this, Trent?”
“That a prador mutation?”
The babble increased as questions were asked, demands made, protests submitted.
“Is it time to tell them who you are?” Trent asked quietly.
“Pay attention,” Sverl said loudly and in human speech. “I understand that you have all been loaded with a potted history of what has happened to you since you left Carapace City.” He was struggling to get them to listen, and many were still chatting and laughing. “But the history was limited to what you could safely encompass. First you need to know that you are aboard no ordinary space station. You are aboard factory station Room 101.” That got their attention and now they all fell silent.
“You have felt what it was to be true prador. Which means, unless you are a father, to be a slave. Prador are aggressive killers and in human terms they are utterly amoral. Surely you understood this when their conflict between each other destroyed your city?” He paused, trying to read them, but even though he was capable of reading a limited amount of human expression, these were complicated creatures and beyond him. He then began accessing the technology nearby. There was a holographic projector set in the ceiling. Perfect.
Sverl immediately started loading image data from his personal files, editing it together even as he continued doggedly, “There doesn’t have to be much of a reason for prador to start killing each other, but in this case there was an unusual one you need to know about. You see, most prador are xenophobic and have an abhorrence for AI, so would not react well to one of their kind ceasing to be one of their kind, nor to a prador who became interfaced directly with AI crystal.” Another pause while he studied them. He decided not to explain that further, nor to over-explain what came next. It would give them something to mull over. “Even though these changes might have been the result of an ill-thought-out visit to a black AI called Penny Royal, a cunning prador like Cvorn could
use Sverl as an example of why the Polity was not to be trusted, why their present king, in making peace with the Polity, should be ousted. Then he could propel the prador race into a destructive war against the Polity.”
The first projection appeared then: Sverl standing amidst them as he had appeared many years ago, before he had visited a particular planetoid and a particular AI.
“Cvorn’s battle with Sverl and subsequent plan to lead Sverl into a trap, where he could be captured, is what has finally brought you here.” No need to get into the stuff about Sverl’s not entirely clear reasons for coming to Room 101.
“You all recognize Sverl,” he added.
By now a space had cleared around the projection of Sverl and most in the crowd were facing it, only occasionally glancing towards the real Sverl. They still probably thought he was some robot come to update them on their situation.
“Now see how he changed.”
He ran the hologram and the Sverl there started changing, his shell fattening, legs and mandibles dropping off, instantly to be replaced by prosthetics, palp eyes sinking into pits, his entire shell taking on the shape of a human skull, blue eyes blinking open. The whole grotesque transformation played through in just a few minutes, rousing gasps of both horror and amazement. Sverl focused on one woman and saw that she was crying, while another man staggered from the crowd to be violently sick. This at least was an indication of how strongly they had tied themselves to the idea of being prador, and how much they had held Sverl as the paragon of all they wanted to be.
“His genome was a combination of human and prador, manipulated by Penny Royal to create the grotesquery you see before you,” Sverl told them. “Along with the outer transformation you see, there were other transformations. He began to grow human cerebral tissue and, so he thought, began to think like a human. Also, AI crystal was growing and attaching to his major ganglion.” Sverl considered showing the surgery he had enacted on himself to build his current skeleton inside, but that would dull the final shock value he was aiming for.
“Sverl fled Cvorn and came to Room 101 but, meanwhile, the king of the prador had become aware of the threat Sverl posed. He sent his King’s Guard to rid him of that threat.” Sverl opened another hologram above, this one showing their arrival at Room 101. Above, in glorious Technicolor, his ship came apart and, under fire, the Lance hurtled towards the massive station. “There was no safety for him here while he could still be used to foment rebellion and war, so while the King’s Guard bombarded the station a war drone called Riss came with an enzyme acid similar to the one that rid you all of your prador grafts.”
Riss came in from the side and injected, and slid away. Did this projection system have sound? Yes, it did. Sverl ramped up the volume and let the recorded scream play, and watched as his old self dissolved before his eyes. Hands were slammed over ears. Many went down on their knees. Some were crying, some were laughing hysterically. The effect could not be clean and even; had to be as messy as the minds it was affecting.
Are you bored now? Sverl wondered.
The dissolving flesh fell away, finally revealing the underlying skeleton. It took them a while to get over the shock, then the Sverl of the present saw some of them glancing from the image to him and back again. Some began talking, some shouting, some remained down on their knees with their heads bowed. Some of them, Sverl knew, would come out of this and at last pass through the ennui barrier. Some would kill themselves while still others would go on to seek out other dangerous entertainments. This was an ending and a beginning. He considered for a moment how his story reflected old religious stories humans once had a penchant for, death and resurrection and all that.
“I am Sverl,” he announced loudly, when at last they were all focused on him.
Utter silence fell. He turned away, the crowd parting before him as he headed for the airlock, Bsectil quickly falling in behind him. As they entered the airlock and the door closed he felt contact through a channel that had remained open.
“Okay,” said Garrotte, “you’ve got an extra ten hours to sort out that mess. I suggest you open up your runcible to the Polity system and send them on their way. You can choose to either follow them or leave the station aboard a ship. It’s up to you.”
Ten more hours . . .
Sverl’s attention strayed through the station to where the hardfield generators were still being churned out. Their rate of production had actually increased, so much so that the controlling AI there was having trouble keeping the bubble-metal plant cool and keeping up the flow of materials. Ten hours was more than enough time.
“Two birds with one stone, as Arrowsmith would say,” he said to Bsectil.
His first-child just expressed prador puzzlement with a dismissive lift of his mandibles. Sverl wished he himself had the human ability to grin.
Spear
I half expected something to knock us out of U-space the moment we entered it, but nothing happened and, after a few minutes, I accepted that the Polity fleet had ignored us.
“How long till we reach our destination?” I asked.
“Three days, ship time,” Flute replied.
I stood up, looked across at Sepia as she stood up, picking up her bag.
“You have cabins?” she said.
“I had four cabins made,” I said. I stabbed a thumb back at the door into the now-partitioned volume that had held Sverl and his first-children.
“Which can I use?”
“Mine is the first on the left,” I told her.
“So I can use any of the other three?”
“Yes, of course—the palm locks aren’t configured,” I said, trying to hide my disappointment.
Instead of heading to the door, she turned and headed back to me. I spun my chair to face her and, dropping her bag, she stepped astride me, sat down on my lap and kissed me. It was surprisingly gentle. I’d half expected her to be as forceful as Sheil. My body responded from the tips of my toes to the top of my head. And, even though she smelled a bit sweaty, that aroma seemed loaded with an aphrodisiac cocktail of hormones. After a moment she leaned back.
“I told you I wasn’t playing,” she said. “However, I know how large that space was back there and as a consequence know how small four cabins are likely to be. I’d like a little space of my own.” She paused. “Do the cabins have fabricators?”
Finally catching my breath, I replied, “No, but the door at the end leads into my laboratory-cum-workshop and there’s one in there.”
“Good.” She stood up, incidentally reaching down and giving my penis a squeeze through my trousers. She then winked, picked up her bag and headed for the door. I spun my chair back into the horseshoe console to be faced by Riss, reared up and close, black eye open.
“What are you looking at?” I asked.
“Nothing much,” she replied. “Just trying to decide whether this display of human weakness is an improvement or otherwise.”
“I don’t see it as weakness.”
“Maybe.” She dipped her head, slithered off the console, then writhing about a foot above the floor, shot off through the other door into the rest of the ship. As she went I wondered how she occupied her time while in transit like this. She ventured around the ship occasionally, but mostly seemed somnolent. She didn’t even have sufficient means to manipulate her environment in order to research or build stuff. I remembered once speaking to a drone on this matter during the war. There were the virtual worlds of their own devising they could venture into, it had told me, but when I persisted, it had replied, “Your human, linear perception of time is a product of evolution, and not necessary for us.” I guessed, in my terms, Riss just slowed down or sped up that perception to match the pace of events.
I sat for maybe an hour longer, checking through ship’s systems and then opening up my connection to the spine to further explore it. When it responded with memor
ies seemingly right out of a porn virtuality I closed off the connection and, getting to my feet, headed back. I first went to my laboratory/workshop but Sepia wasn’t there, then I went to my own cabin. As I got there a door further along opened and she stepped out. Unless what she wore had been packed into the bag she’d brought aboard, she had used the fabricator. It was the ubiquitous little black dress—a favourite over centuries, impervious to the foibles of fashion. It reached to her thighs, clung to her like paint, exposed plenty of cleavage and ended under her arms. Her hair no longer looked as greasy as before and seemed to shift Medusa-like as she walked towards me in snakeskin ankle boots.
“Better?” she enquired, pausing to pose for me.
“Difficult to improve on perfection,” I replied.
She put two fingers in her mouth and pretended to vomit over to one side. I palmed the sensor beside my cabin door and the door swung open, then I held out my hand to her. She came closer, took my hand and I towed her inside.
“Of course it’s not staying on long,” I said, turning to face her and now getting a waft of musky perfume.
“Oh, I know that.” Still holding onto my hand, she pulled it closer and pressed it between her legs just below her dress. I slid my hand up her inner thigh. She was wearing nothing underneath and, unlike Sheil, had retained her pubic hair. I slid the edge of my forefinger into wet warmth and slowly began rubbing forwards and back, folding my thumb so the knuckle pressed into her clitoris. She huffed impatiently then and pushed me towards the bed. I resisted and kept rubbing, so she reached down to the hem of her dress and pulled it off over her head, then shoved against my chest again.