“Gabbleducks,” said Sfolk, using his speech synthesizer to say the human word describing those strange animals that inhabited the world of Masada.
“The Atheter,” Penny Royal replied.
Still holding his position, Sfolk used his palp eyes to check his surroundings again, but could see no sign of the black AI. He then paused, remembering all he had been taught about the Atheter, and rediscovered his capacity for awe when he thought about the device he now clutched close to his underside. How much prador technology would still be working after being abandoned for two million years?
“Cowards,” tried Sfolk.
In return he saw the gabbleducks all sitting here alive, occasionally twitching, and occasionally turning a head. He was aware of the passage of time in this image, and felt the internal twist of U-space constantly as he saw some heads bowing, a claw dropping, then the gradual onset of decay. No battle, then, no struggle for survival; they’d just sat here and died. Of course the images from Penny Royal could not have been real, because how could the AI have recorded an event that occurred two million years ago?
“I know about these,” said Sfolk. “We are taught about the old races and know more about them that you Polity AIs suppose.”
He then felt a surge of objection that had him clutching tighter to the atomic shear. Penny Royal did not consider itself a Polity AI. Sfolk let that go even though to his mind it was the same as him saying he wasn’t a prador. He was smart enough to know that you didn’t get into aggressive arguments with something that could rip apart a space station without even trying.
“How did this ship avoid being obliterated by their mechanism?” He paused, not sure what this AI knew about the Atheter, then continued, “They made a machine to annihilate their entire technology.”
“Yes,” replied Penny Royal acidly, “I encountered it.”
Sfolk chose that moment to tip back his palp eyes and look up. The black AI was floating above him beside another of the cup-shaped baskets. Its form was that of a black sea urchin again, but it had also extended silver tentacles and plugged them into the soft matter of a screen up there.
“So how did this ship survive?” Sfolk repeated.
The reply was the twist of U-space deep inside himself, and some sense of annoyed impatience. He understood the first to be a clue and the second to be: use your brain. He thought about what it meant for the ship to be here. The Atheter aboard must have dropped it into U-space without some destination set, perhaps deliberately or perhaps because of some sort of fault. So while it was in U-space the mechanism had been unable to find it. Eventually the ship had washed up here—recently when thinking in terms of two million years. It could have been too inert to have been detected, or it could be that the mechanism had simply not got round to dealing with it before something more urgent summoned it to Masada, where, according to recent data out of the Polity, it was destroyed.
“What do you want of me?” Sfolk asked.
Penny Royal now detached from that disc screen and drifted across the chamber, finally coming to rest against another of those baskets. This one was much larger, the arm connecting it to the central machine much bigger too, and a series of disc screens was suspended before the basket. After a moment Sfolk propelled himself after the AI, finally catching hold of this larger basket and drawing to a halt. The skeleton here was huge, the bones thick and heavy and riddled with implant technology. Its arms did not terminate in claws but in numerous tubes penetrating the screens before it.
“The captain?” Sfolk asked.
A high-pitched whining ensued and the skeleton began to vibrate, then to crack and shed flakes. Both the skeleton and its implant tech shattered into a million pieces and with a thunderous crack collapsed into a central mass as if a singularity had been generated inside it. This spinning ball of flaked bone and pieces of bright metal and crystal then just shot away, arcing down towards the floor, spreading into a loose cloud and then settling.
“Here,” said Penny Royal.
The basket was big enough for Sfolk and, if he climbed into it, he could reach those screens. The prospect horrified him because he was sure the big gabbleduck had been more like a ship mind than any father-captain. He feared that Penny Royal might want a mind for this ship and Sfolk was the only candidate around. He immediately tipped back, extending his under-slung arm and activating the atomic shear, sure that if he didn’t act now he would never get another chance. Some force snapped the shear from his grasp and sent it tumbling, then the same force took hold of him, hauled him up and slammed him down in the basket. He tried to throw himself clear, but instead watched in bewilderment as his claws extended and penetrated two of the soft screens.
“You know where to go,” said the AI, now drifting away again.
Sfolk only half heard that, for he was paralysed by horror at the feeling of something penetrating his claws and crawling up his limbs underneath his shell, like worms.
Amistad
The one thing about being the warden of a world like Masada was that it gave you time to think, and Amistad had been doing a lot of thinking. As he drifted above a misty cloud layer below aubergine skies he continued to try and work his way to the heart of the matter but, as ever, he was without critical data. Penny Royal was certainly making restitution for past wrongs, but in the process working towards something else. The hijacking of the Azure Whale with its three runcibles aboard was an obvious clue, but there were other more subtle indicators. Take Isobel Satomi. In her the black AI had created a dangerous creature that had built up a nasty coring and thralling operation, and it had then destroyed both Satomi and her operation. However, the upshot of that was that the Weaver had been provided with another biomech war machine which in its turn had repaired the older and larger Technician. Had this been an altruistic act on Penny Royal’s part towards the Weaver? Amistad thought not.
Despite talk of a restoration of balance, Amistad was sure there had been some sort of exchange—that this had been in essence a simple commercial deal. Penny Royal had supplied the Weaver with the war machine and the Weaver was to give something in return. There had been much discussion of this among Polity AIs. Some of them believed the Weaver had supplied Penny Royal with that new version of the hardfield, while others named a thousand other possibilities related to the AI’s capabilities. Amistad felt that the curved hardfield, with its anchoring in U-space, was entirely Penny Royal’s creation. He also felt that the delivery of the war machine was not a deal being completed, but just a down payment. And now it seemed he might be right, because the Weaver was on the move.
Amistad dropped down through the cloud, grav-planing, moisture beading on his nano-chain chromium armour and running away in rivulets. He stabilized and gazed down at the border fence lying between the patchwork of squirm ponds where the big cargo shuttle had landed and the outer wilderness. Along the fence stood automated guard towers like giant flat-topped mushrooms made of a tough dull grey composite. Ranged radially on the upper faces of these a variety of weapons could be brought to bear—the cap tilting and turning to aim them. There were high-powered ion stunners that could drive away most of the life forms here, up to and including the wild gabbleducks. There were lasers and projectile weapons for dealing with any that became stubbornly persistent—usually the siluroynes—and then there were the particle cannons which were fortunately rarely required. In a sane world a shot from particle cannon should be enough to vaporize any being, but here they were just a deterrent to hooders.
Amistad scanned the wilderness for anything nasty, spotting at extreme distance a heroyne striding through the flute grasses, apparently unaware of the siluroyne stalking it. But they were a long way off and heading away, so Amistad mentally connected to the towers along this section of fence and deactivated them all. It wouldn’t do for them to mistake the gabbleduck heading here for the wild variety. He then swung round and gazed across at the cargo
shuttle.
There was always someone not prepared to take a hint. There was always someone for whom the lure of wealth would overcome any fear of Polity AIs. That someone, in this case, was unsurprisingly a hooper spaceship captain. Right now he was sitting out on one of his shuttle’s landing feet, a rosewood pipe jutting from his mouth, a hood up over his head, waiting for his passenger.
The legal status of the single sentient Atheter on this world, and the world itself, had been problematic, especially when the case was being argued by a two-million-year-old Atheter AI. It had been a theocratic out-Polity world, after a bloody revolution it had been subsumed by the Polity but placed under lengthy quarantine, with the strange arrival of the Weaver it had become a protectorate world, with the advent of what was effectively a large sabre for the Weaver to rattle it had become a Polity “associate” world—a designation never used before. The Weaver, exploring the new freedoms granted by “associate status,” had discovered that he had just about the same rights as a Polity citizen. Nobody had really minded about this, until it became evident that he wanted to use the runcible network. Fortunately, because of this world’s previous quarantine, the only runcible in the system was positioned up on the Braemar moon, Flint. Polity AIs had agreed that the Weaver could use the network, then neglected to supply him with a way of getting to Flint. But the Weaver had established his own communications network, and now this shuttle had arrived. Amistad pondered the matter for a moment longer, then grav-planed over to the shuttle and landed heavily, right down beside the hooper. Perhaps there might still be time to scare him off?
The hooper hardly twitched. He puffed on his pipe a bit more, his face hidden behind a cloud of tobacco smoke, then waved the smoke away, before pulling his hood back to expose his bald-as-an-acorn head. He studied Amistad, his expression mildly curious, and Amistad studied him back. The man was big, heavily built, his skin blue with ring-shaped scars, but the fact that he was not wearing an enviro-suit, as Amistad had first supposed, and was showing no signs of getting out of breath, told Amistad that scaring him off was no longer an option. He was an Old Captain, he didn’t really need the air, or at least wouldn’t need it for some while, didn’t really need much of anything to stay alive, and didn’t really have much to fear from anything that might try to kill him.
“So you’re the big-shot drone warden thingy here,” said the hooper, stabbing his pipe stem towards the drone.
“Yes, I’m Amistad.”
“You’ve come to try and persuade me to leave?”
Coercion wouldn’t work, but maybe something else would.
“How much are you being paid?” Amistad asked.
“Enough,” said the Old Captain, which was the expected answer really.
“Whatever it is, the Polity can pay you more not to be here,” Amistad tried.
The man shook his head and tut-tutted. “I can’t be goin’ and lettin’ down a new and potentially important customer. How would that look?”
“One ton of diamond slate,” Amistad suggested.
The captain just stared at Amistad for a long while then reached into a pouch at his belt. Out of this he took a folded sheet of paper, opened it and carefully studied it. It was one of Spatterjay’s famous paper contracts. They were even more unbreakable than a palm-and-DNA-sealed contract under runcible AI oversight, but Amistad was pleased to have managed to get the man to study the small print. After a moment he folded it closed again and shook his head, carefully returning it to his pouch.
Amistad sighed and then settled down, his belly plates against the mud. “Okay, I give up. What are you being paid?”
The erstwhile war drone and warden of this world, then what could only be described as an adviser, knew he hadn’t tried very hard, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to. It struck him as petty the way the Weaver was being blocked, and Amistad was now frankly bored with the politics. He was coming to the conclusion that when Riss had invited him along with her and Spear he had made the wrong decision in staying. Responsibility was, he had decided, swiftly becoming a burden he no longer wanted to bear.
“Oh, just the usual,” the captain replied.
“And what’s that?”
“A few hundred New Carth shillings.”
Cheap, then. The Weaver had quickly established itself a Galaxy Bank account and under the terms of various agreements was effectively charging the Polity, the human population and the dracomen, ground rent for the areas they occupied.
“And of course,” the captain added, “having an ally with ‘associate status’ who has a big-fuck AI that can tangle Polity AIs in knots might come in quite handy.”
Amistad got it now. Spatterjay, this man’s home world, was independent but still fell under protectorate status. It might be that the rulers there wanted to move on to associate status and lose the world its warden and other Polity watchers.
“I see,” said Amistad.
Just at that moment there came the crump of an explosion and a flash. Amistad spun round and stood up higher to peer back towards the fence. A large hole had appeared in it, the narrow ceramal palings severed away, glowing hot where they had been cut. The drone sighed. This was a perfect example of how bored he had been getting here, since he was neglecting things like, for example, lowering a section of the fence to let the Weaver through.
The big gabbleduck was squatting on the other side of the hole. It now put away in a little holster on its harness the object it had used to cut the hole, then went down on all fours and ambled through. As it walked over, the captain stood up, took a remote control from his pocket and pointed it back at his ship. With a thump, a ramp door opened in the side of the shuttle and lowered itself to the boggy ground. The Weaver, meanwhile, had reached Amistad, who noted that it carried a large bag strapped to its side. A packed lunch? Its travel bag? It settled back on its behind again.
“The build has to be completed,” it said.
“What build?” Amistad asked.
“Then I get final payment, and no more need for this.” He waved one big black claw at the ship then, with a sigh, went down on all fours and headed for the ramp.
So what next? Amistad could see himself sitting on his viewing platform or cruising through the skies of this world. He would occasionally get roped into the negotiations between the Atheter AI and the human ambassador here, but the other negotiations between that AI and Earth Central it learned very little about until some new piece of legislation was being enacted. Perhaps there might be some action if those members of Tidy Squad due to be deported tried something, but it would be brief and efficiently quashed.
“Can I come?” Amistad asked.
The Weaver paused on the ramp and looked round. It studied Amistad for a long moment, then shrugged and beckoned with one claw. Amistad was already sending his resignation by the time he reached the foot of the ramp.
Spear
The space port official I had spoken to earlier was waiting in a second reception area at the foot of the elevator. He was a brusque little man who seemed to have been formed from soft lumps of pale dough, clad in a waterproof slick-suit and wide-brimmed rain hat. He again tried to obtain proprietary bidding rights on my ship or to get me to mortgage it against a cash hand-out, but when I showed no interest he tried something else.
“Exotic life forms have to be fully scanned and approved,” he said. “There’s also an import tax—payable in advance of the inspection.”
“What?”
He gestured at Riss and I wondered if he’d been born on this world and never left it. Riss, who until then had been content enough just to coil up on the floor and wait, rattled her ovipositor against the tiles and rose up to peer over the counter at the man.
“Exotic I may be,” she said, “but life form I am not.”
“I’ll need some sort of proof.”
“No you won’t,” Riss replied. “
But you may be needing an autodoc soon.”
The man stared at her with his mouth hanging open, then abruptly turned a touch screen round to face me. The landing fee was there, the text red, along with a number of icons to select. I touched the Galaxy Bank—the icon itself reading my DNA through the screen, then a shiver passed through me as a scanner made a secondary check on my identity. After a moment the text turned to green and folded away.
“That’s it, then,” conceded the man grumpily.
“We want to rent a clamberer,” I said.
“Base level,” he snapped, then rounded his desk and stomped over to the elevators. I presumed that meant he didn’t get any backhanders from those who rented out the clamberers.
“Come on,” said Sepia, catching hold of my shoulder. “I know where to go.”
We left the reception area to enter a street of bland apartments with bubble windows and small parking bays outside for field-effect scooters. Sepia led us down this to another bank of elevators. This took us down another level, where we had to walk through a shopping centre scattered with bars and restaurants from which staff eyed us hopefully.
“They make sure you can’t just go straight down, rent a clamberer and leave,” Sepia observed. “The space port owner wants visitors to spend as much money as possible here.”