“Oh will you snap out of it!”
I opened my eyes. I was aboard the Coin Collector, in my chair, facing my array of screens. The Client’s world was there in vacuum and around it I could see the flash of fusion drives and the distant bulks of ships.
“Why am I alive?” I asked, peering down at my battered artificial body.
“You’re not,” said Harriet. “You’re dead.”
I turned to study her. She had put her artificial claws back on and had painted them bright custard yellow, even applied some eye shadow of the same color. It occurred to me then that I should have wondered, what with her supposedly being so inept with her claws, how she had always so neatly applied the nail polish and other make-up. Transferring my gaze to her side I could see no sign of her injury, just clean scaled skin.
“What do you mean I’m dead?”
“The Client used stock memcrystal for the processing in your avatar. That crystal has more than enough storage to contain a human mind. You’re a copy and even though your human body is dead, you live. You are you, Tuppence.”
I wasn’t quite sure how I felt about that.
“Are you Polity?” I asked. “Are you a Polity agent?’
“No, completely independent,” she replied cheerfully.
“I’m confused.”
“Understandable—it’s been a trying day.” She paused while I stared at her, then relented. “Okay, you hired me and I got thoroughly screwed. The damage was bad and it was way beyond being repaired with the reward you gave me or the facilities available at that hospital. That war-drone made a real mess. Then, while I was in the hospital, I received an offer I couldn’t refuse. They’d pay to repair me. They’d bring in the expertise. They’d pay to turn me into what I am now—”
“And what are you now?”
“I’m practically indestructible, and more machine than lizard.” She paused. “And with a mind distributed about my body so it couldn’t be killed with a single farcaster shot.”
“Right,” I said. “Please continue.”
“I was to stick with you, and lead them to the Client.” Harriet paused. “However when I worked out what you were up to, I went for the bigger reward—the one for offing the Client.”
“The Polity,” I said, feeling slightly disgusted.
“Polity technology, certainly, but not the Polity and its AIs.” She pointed a claw at the screens. “Them.”
I stared at the screens for a long moment, then reached out and upped the magnification. They weren’t Polity ships out there swarming around the Client’s world; they were prador dreadnoughts.
I wasn’t sure about how I felt about that either.
“What now?” I asked.
Harriet raised a claw up in front of her face.
“The yellow was a mistake, I think.”
Just then the Coin Collector shuddered, and I realized something large had just docked. I guessed the prador were bringing her reward, and wondered if that might be a cause for regret.
Neal Asher lives sometimes in England, sometimes in Crete, and mostly at a keyboard. He climbed the writing ladder up through the small presses, publishing short stories, novellas and collections over many years, until finally having his first major book, Gridlinked, published in 2000 by Macmillan, who have since published sixteen of his. These books have been translated into twelve languages and some have appeared in America from Tor. "The Other Gun" is a story produced from a proliferating plot thread removed from the first of a new trilogy about a black AI called Penny Royal—perhaps familiar to readers of Asimov's from "Alien Archaeology" (June 2007). Neal's other U.S. publisher, Night Shade Books, will be bringing out his Owner trilogy—The Departure, Zero Point, and Jupiter War—respectively in February, May, and September. For more information check out: http://freespace.virgin.net/n.asher/ and http://theskinner.blogspot.com/.
Neal Asher, The Other Gun
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