Did I?
All I knew was that I didn’t want to go rushing to Panarchia and was again feeling my way. I also felt I didn’t want to ignore the data Amistad had supplied. Was I procrastinating again? I thought not, because Mr Pace was another creation of Penny Royal’s and quite probably another loose thread in the story that AI was weaving. While, on the one hand I didn’t want to respond to what I had called a summons, I also felt I wasn’t supposed to respond straight away—that my visit here was in the weave. Before I could vocalize any of this, Sepia interjected from the seat beside mine, “Don’t you?”
Riss swung round to look at her.
“I guess that would probably suit you too,” said the drone.
Not rising to the jibe, Sepia replied, “I don’t think so—I’m beginning to feel that period of my life slide behind me.” She shrugged. “Anyway, it’s not as if we’ll be losing much time. Rorquin here,” she waved a hand at the cloud beyond the screen, “is more or less on a straight-line course to Panarchia.”
“And it’s not like Panarchia is going to be disappearing any time yet,” I added.
Flute had uploaded astrogation data via the watch station, and though when I had been on that world it had been said it was a century away from being dropped into Layden’s Sink, that had apparently been a very rough estimate. The world had another twenty years.
“Of course you do understand how risky this is?” Sepia enquired, turning to face me.
“As far as I understand it, he’s a dangerous character.”
“He is dangerous, but then so is Riss here.” She reached out to Riss, who was between our two seats, and patted her on the head. The drone swung round as if about to bite, ovipositor rattling against the floor. I got the impression she hadn’t appreciated being treated like a pet. I also got the impression that it was repayment for Riss’s earlier jibe. “The main problem with Mr Pace is that he’s dangerous, homicidal in fact, and unpredictable.”
“You’re implying that I am predictable?” snapped Riss.
“Didn’t you behave precisely as Penny Royal predicted?”
“That’s different,” said Riss snottily, turning away from her and facing me again. “What if Penny Royal is on Panarchia right now and decides not to wait for you?”
“Not really a problem.”
The shuttle finally dropped through the lowering cloud, heavy strawberry rain lashing against the screen. Mountainous terrain was just visible below through the murk, the peaks rounded and grey like the bouldered guts of the world thrust up through the surface. I could see lights down amidst them—no doubt the small space port we were heading for. As we descended towards this, I wondered what had been the negative outcome of Mr Pace’s visit to Penny Royal. He had been given a body formed of a tough and hard metallic glass: a layered thing which, according to Polity analysis, was as near to indestructible as something formed of conventional matter could be. Dropping out of the sky in a gravcar would be no problem for him—he would in fact be as difficult to kill as a battle drone like Amistad.
“State the purpose of your visit,” a voice demanded from the console.
I auged to Sepia. “What’s the best way to go about this?”
She smiled, showing her sharp teeth. “I’ve always found honesty is the best policy.”
“I am here to see Mr Pace,” I replied.
The response was laughter. Obviously that “state the purpose of your business” was just a way of opening communications, because the man speaking got straight down to the meat of the matter. “The landing fee is five hundred New Carth shillings or equivalent in any other viable currency, including diamond slate. We also take Galaxy Bank transfers.”
“That’s not a problem,” I replied. It wasn’t: I still had plenty of portable wealth aboard and, according to my recent aug update, my service pension was nicely accruing interest.
“That’s a C-class Polity destroyer you arrived in?”
“It is,” I replied, slightly puzzled and feeling the need to add, “armed.”
“Does the mind have instructions in the event of you suffering some mishap?”
I got it then. The man thought I was one of Sepia’s crowd, or like the shell people: that I had come here to alleviate my boredom. Having loaded much data on Mr Pace, I’d learned that Sepia was quite correct and that while in residence before he’d had many such visitors. They came because he was dangerous. They also came because he was very old—beyond the ennui barrier—and might have some insight to their condition. It struck me that visiting him bore some similarity to Perseus visiting the three witches: you might get the information you were after but would quite likely end up dead. And like a gambler throwing away his last cent on the longest odds possible, that was why they did it. Generally, if they managed to get to see him at all they never reappeared again. “It has instructions,” I replied, not wanting to take the conversation any further.
“If you are visiting Mr Pace,” the man continued, “we are prepared to waive the landing fee on the basis of us being designated the auctioneer of your vessel.”
I wondered how the hell that worked in the Graveyard. The space port I knew to be independent although it sat on Mr Pace’s claimed property. I assumed that whoever owned it must have business links into the Polity.
“That won’t be necessary—just send me precise landing coordinates.”
“If you’re utterly sure,” he said. “We can give cash and credit advances on all our facilities here and in Adamant Town on the same basis.”
I was getting tired of this. “Alternatively I can land elsewhere since I don’t see any barrier to my doing so.”
“The terrain is mountainous and you may experience—’
“This is the landing craft of a Polity destroyer,” I pointed out.
After a short pause he said, “Sending coordinates,” and cut com.
As the coordinates arrived I loaded them to my aug, assumed manual control and took us down.
“Did you know that ‘visiting Mr Pace’ has become synonymous in some parts of the Polity with self-euthanasia?” said Sepia.
“No, but I’m not surprised.” I shook my head. “If your . . . erstwhile kind wanted some advice on how to just keep on living they’d do better visiting those Old Captains on Spatterjay.”
“Many do that too,” she replied. “The opportunities for dying on that world are boundless.”
I didn’t really have any answer for that.
The space port was a platform a mile square raised halfway up four half-mile-high corner towers. There were buildings along one edge and even more packed in on the floor below. The platform was scattered with ranks of shuttles or U-space-capable craft small enough to fit down here. The whole thing sat in a valley with a river running through and actually passing under the port. Further down the valley was the sprawl of a town, the houses constructed of atomic sheared blocks of the local stone evidently taken from a quarry cut into one of the slopes above. Various roads wormed away from this settlement, doubtless leading to others scattered over this continent and maybe all the way around the world. I didn’t know. Though I’d loaded plenty of data about Mr Pace I hadn’t thought to get detail on the planet he occupied.
“So what do they do here?” I asked as I brought the shuttle in between two of the port towers.
“Do?” Sepia echoed.
“This is the Graveyard and not some AI-cozened world in the Polity,” I explained. “And I note there are a lot of ships here, not necessarily all with crew just coming to ‘visit Mr Pace’. How do they earn their living here?”
“Oh, rare earths and gemstones, some strange biologicals from native slime moulds. And, believe it or not, tea.”
“Must be an adapted variety.”
“It is. They have valleys of tea oaks growing here. The trees were planted here before the war and survived it
, though most of the original residents didn’t.”
“I’m surprised,” I said as I brought the shuttle in to land. “There must be a lot of places to hide in these mountains and anything that got all the people surely wouldn’t have left much else.”
“Bio-weapon,” she explained.
“It’s not named,” Riss interjected, “just called number twelve.”
“You know this world?”
“I know of it. The weapon, number twelve, was a potent nerve agent.”
“Everyone?”
“Every single human being.”
“Inactive now?”
“Mostly,” Riss replied, in a way that wasn’t exactly reassuring.
The shuttle settled on its belly, the remora clamp engaging because local information had it that this valley could get very stormy. Checking the package on local conditions in my aug, I found that we wouldn’t need breathers or temperature-controlled suits if we went outside, but we would need insulated clothing and, it went without saying, waterproofs.
“Well,” I said, “let’s go.”
I didn’t bother looking for anything in the shuttle’s stores since the enviro-suit I was wearing would be more than adequate. Sepia was similarly clad so needed no extra clothing either. She did, however, holster a small pulse-gun at her hip and take her laser carbine. I just picked up one other item: the spine. Perhaps it would have been better had I left it aboard the Lance, but I felt I needed it with me and, as I was beginning to understand, it might be a lot more effective as a weapon than the carbine my catadapt companion carried.
We trooped out of the airlock onto pitted rain-swept plasticrete. As we tramped, and slithered, towards the nearby port buildings I noted in the puddles things that looked like jellyfish. When we reached the building, from one corner of which a drainpipe was belching water, I spotted molluscs like penny oysters stuck to the lower stonework, and was reminded of Masada.
“Any dangerous wildlife here?” I asked as I pushed open the door.
“Nothing we need worry about,” Sepia replied. “We’ll hire a clamberer in the port city below and that will take us straight to his castle—nothing should be able to get to us.”
The inside of the building was bare, with just a row of elevator doors across the back wall. I wondered where I was supposed to pay my landing fee.
“So what exactly happened last time you came here?” I asked.
“He wasn’t here but I went out to his castle anyway.” She grimaced. “I obviously wasn’t as far gone as I thought because, when I finally got a look at the bone pile at the foot of his mountain I decided I didn’t want to hang around.”
“His previous visitors?” I asked.
“Yes, his previous visitors.”
10
Sfolk
As he slid down towards the strange ship Sfolk saw Penny Royal come apart, taking on the form of a swarm of knives, which then shot down towards the vessel and disappeared. He arrived shortly afterwards—the huge ship looming around him like some vast city—boarded through a protruding open weave tube, alarmingly without an airlock, and began exploring. The AI wasn’t confining him, seemed careless of him. It was time therefore to find a weapon, or some other technology to give himself an advantage. Even though he suspected he was powerless against the black AI, he had no intention of giving up.
He saw at once that this was definitely no human ship because the interior was made for something larger, but it hadn’t been made for prador either because the tube he was traversing could accommodate no more than a prador of his size. Its strange weave also caught at his feet as he walked and he recognized none of the technology he could see, not a thing. It also occurred to him that he was walking as if in gravity, yet could not feel its pull. It was true that prador could survive in vacuum and so were less nervous of it than humans; however, Sfolk found it unnerving the way the open weave of the tubes and some areas of the hull enabled you to look straight out into open space. He was still baffled by his ability to breathe. Pausing where one wall of the tube actually formed the hull, if it could even be so described, Sfolk pushed a claw out through one of the gaps in the weave. Beyond that gap he could feel vacuum sucking at his claw joints and see vapour exiting them, yet in the gap he had detected no kind of force-field he knew. He guessed at some kind of meta-material effect integral to the way the strange materials of the ship had been woven together, but could not get beyond that.
Moving on, he came to a series of side tunnels and hesitated in exploring, but just then the lights came on. Where the macramé of the ship intersected in intricate flower-like patterns the threads began glowing, as if at an electrical short, that glow increasing until it became an intense blue-white glare. Penny Royal must be into the workings of the thing and powering it up, and this in turn gave Sfolk more confidence. He entered one of the side tunnels, finding it a little cramped but navigable, and went through it into a bulbous chamber.
A sanctum? Sfolk wondered. A cabin?
The chamber was spherical, devices like the nests of social insects attached all round, and in the lower hollow a strange thing like a lopsided basket holding a disc of green crystal a couple of feet across, spiky silver fingers touching it like the heads of data recorders or players, and which Sfolk suspected they actually were. Now floating, he propelled himself out into the chamber, caught a leg against one edge and pulled himself down to a macramé tree holding all sorts of glittery devices at the tips of its branches. He thought that some of these might be useful, but having no idea what their function might be left them alone. After a further inspection of his surroundings he departed the chamber and moved on.
The next two chambers were much the same, but in the last of them he picked an object because it might be a weapon. It was a tube of tightly woven threads with what looked like a handle on the side and inset gridded spheres that were surely a method of adjustment. He moved on, holding the device in one of his under-slung manipulators, keeping his claws free. He would investigate it later.
As he continued exploring, he began to get some intimation of the internal layout of the ship. Towards the point of the leaf-like projection he found an object at the start of a long row of the same that was definitely a weapon, but was rather too large for him to cart around. It sat in its own little niche: a hard sphere ten feet across, as neatly inserted as an eyeball in a socket, extending what looked like one large cannon out into vacuum, a cluster of square-sectioned barrels alongside it.
After travelling for a further hour he realized he must have passed the point of the leaf and was now heading back into the main body of the ship. Here he found more cabins and one large chamber that seemed a recreation room for the weavers because it was packed floor to ceiling with all sorts of strange woven objects. Here he picked up a device with a large handle at one end—obviously made for something similar to a human hand but much larger—with one of those ball controls and what was obviously a trigger, though no protruding barrel, just a small polished disc. He held it in one under-hand and pointed it ahead before pulling the trigger. It just clicked and did nothing. He played with the ball control and pulled the trigger again. This time a yellow thread appeared, extending three feet from the polished disc. He waved this at a nearby sculpture and didn’t even feel a tug as one large woven mass parted company with the rest. Further investigation revealed that the ball control could extend this line no further than the three feet, though it could increase its thickness to an inch.
It was some kind of atomic shear, then, just a tool, but one that could be usefully employed. Sfolk was delighted and now took out the other thing he had surmised might be a weapon, pointed it and tried the ball controls on that. However, no matter what he did, it just flashed a blue light at him from underneath the ball controls. Delight faded to disappointment, but he kept the thing. He knew that it wasn’t necessarily broken. It could be some stricture that prevented
it being fired inside the ship, it could be personalized—only capable of being fired by its owner—or it could require mental control. The possibility that it required power or fuel he dismissed, sure that all the devices here must be induction-charged in this basket of a ship, and that was why the shear was working.
Now impatient to move on, Sfolk began to travel much faster, heading towards where the leaf attached to the main body of the ship. At one point he found a long straight tunnel spearing in that direction and accelerated to a run which he maintained for a good hour. Eventually he reached a junction and from there found himself in a wide tube on one of a series of walkways that ribboned around a central bar, ten feet thick, of some highly polished material that threw back his grotesquely distorted reflection. Beyond this he passed further chambers containing technology as recognizable as that weapon, if only because the objects here possessed some bulk and were connected by black hexagonal-section pipes that might be power supplies or data-feeds. He also spotted objects that looked like the consoles humans used, a wall of golden bricks scattered with deep recesses that could have been prador pit controls, and a great stack of glassy octahedrons that could have been a prador screen array.
Some while afterwards, for he estimated he had travelled many miles, he finally entered the very centre of the snowflake, and was glad to see that it did seem like some control centre or inner sanctum.
Lying at the centre of this huge space, at the centre of the entire ship in fact, rested a massive object. The thing was pyramidal, with sloping woven sides sporting those inset octahedrons and consisting of woven mechanisms like models of some animal’s intestines. It boasted bristling spines, an internal green disc and other items that bent out of reality into silvered tubes stabbing to infinity. This had to be the drive of the ship, or its control system, for arrayed all around it, squatting in cup-shaped baskets extended out on arms, with upright discs before them like either screens or control panels, was the crew.
Sfolk walked into this area, then with a shove of his feet launched himself from the floor. He sailed up and caught hold of one of those cuplike baskets and gazed at its occupant. The bones of the skeleton were black and grey and bore a faintly iridescent hue. One big arm, oddly jointed and divided towards the end, terminated in black talons inserted into the white material of the disc screen. Sfolk poked at the screen with one claw and found it soft; unpleasantly fleshy. Turning back to the skeleton to study it more closely, he saw sections of mummified skin, the remains of internal organs shrivelled to threads and hard nodules, but also implant technology laced through, silver weaving over bones and glinting jewelled beads. Of course the majority of this technology lay around and penetrated into the big domed skull, with its arc of eye sockets, and its protruding birdlike bill.