Brass Man (11 page)

‘Is this entirely necessary?’ Pendle interrupted, waving a hand at their surroundings.

Bryonik wondered what his problem was: this was genuinely in the style of a premillennial police interrogation cell, with a scarred and coffee-stained plastic table, magnetic tape recorders, strip lights . . .

Pendle went on, ‘Do you know how many times I’ve sat in rooms like this?’

‘Enlighten me.’

‘Precisely seven hundred and twenty-three.’

‘There are worse alternatives.’

‘And do you know how many times that has been said to me?’

Bryonik grimaced, and through his gridlink accessed Penal Storage to change the VR format. He didn’t like being predictable, so rather than go for the Caribbean island, bright shirts, and drinks with umbrellas in them, he cobbled his own scenario. Now the two men stood in the uppermost viewing gallery of the Eiffel Tower. Pendle eyed the bank of screens to one side, showing a steel-recrystalizing robot as it slowly traversed one of the ancient structural members.

‘This is a new one,’ commented Pendle. ‘In my time the damned thing had fallen down. When did they put it back up?’

‘About seven years after you died.’

Pendle’s case had a certain historical significance -one of a defining variety of crimes committed around the same period. Prior to then it would have been called what—assault?

‘Thirteen years ago, then.’

Bryonik raised an eyebrow.

‘You know I’m real-timed. Believe me, I’ve been counting the years in here.’

‘How long have you got?’

Pendle shrugged. ‘It varies. I’ll never be loaded to a Golem chassis while there’s someone more deserving, and that’s the way it always seems to be. I could be in here until the sun goes out.’

‘Is that so bad?’

‘I can experience all the virtual worlds imaginable, but one thing I can never do is forget that none of it is real. It’s a kind of hell.’

‘Will you tell me about your crime?’ Bryonik asked.

‘No,’ said Pendle, stepping to the window and gazing down. ‘Why don’t you tell me what you want with me. You’re not a student, you’re ECS down to the virtual chainglass shiv in your virtual boot.’

‘Again, it’s probably somewhere you’ve been before. Your memplant was loaded to main storage before we discovered you had sabotaged five Golem minds. Your history being non-technical and all your employment the same, it took a while to establish that you designed a program capable of all that it did. Luckily, we recovered the five before they killed anyone. The idea of five Golem Twenty-four schizoid psychopaths wandering around the Polity gets people in a cold sweat even now.’

‘Good enough summation—though I’d dispute “psychopath”.
Sociopath
is probably nearer the mark.’

Agent Bryonik held out his hand and an old memcrystal storage box appeared in it. ‘The deal brokered for you was that you told us everything. That’s how you escaped direct mind-to-mind AI interrogation.’

Pendle grinned nastily. ‘It’s how the AIs avoided it too. Knowing I’d designed that program, none of them really wanted to get inside my head—might have been dangerous for them. Even now, I’m in isolated storage. At least other souls-in-waiting get a social life.’

‘You lied, Pendle.’ Bryonik opened the box to reveal the eight empty compartments inside.

Pendle eyed the box. ‘I told you people back then: three crystals were destroyed in the process.’

‘The prototype Golem Twenty-five . . . You were at that launch for more than the free drinks and a chance of throwing elephant shit at Corp execs. We know that now.’

‘I was nothing to do with the attack.’

Bryonik was sure he could see a touch of panic in Pendle’s expression—understandable. If Pendle was found to have been involved in that act of terror, in which eighteen people had died unrecoverably, no deal could prevent him from being utterly erased.

‘The Golem was seen on the out-Polity planet Huma—the location, for the last twenty years, of a lot of illegal arms trading. Was the idea to break the Golem for Separatist reprogramming? This is something that has occurred since then.’ Bryonik could now see that Pendle really
was
scared. He might call his confinement in VR storage hell, but it seemed he preferred it to death.

‘Look, I wasn’t connected to the Separatist cause at all.’

‘As far as we could work out, you never had any training in designing sanity-smashing programs for AI.’

‘Okay, I admit it, I fucked up their prototype, but do you think, if I’d anything to do with the Separatists, I’d have been there to get nerve-gassed too?’

Bryonik decided to let Pendle sweat a little more, even though the man possessed neither pores nor skin. ‘Seems a good cover to me. And it’s surprising that you were memplanted. Not many there were—it was new technology then, and not wholly trusted.’ Bryonik shrugged. ‘All you sacrificed was your body.’

‘Honestly, agent, the program I loaded would not have broken the Golem to a reprogramming level. It would have been schizoid and maybe a touch sociopathic, and would have just become more difficult for them to handle. I never intended to make
killers!
You have to understand that innate Golem intelligence would have prevented any Golem, just for their self-preservation, from taking that path.’

Bryonik raised a hand. ‘Okay, calm down. We know you weren’t in with the Jovians. We just wanted you to admit you screwed with that particular Golem.’

‘Good.’ Pendle nodded to himself. ‘Good .. .You say it was on Huma?’

‘Yes, there, as far as we can gather, it received what is called by those in the know as an in-Kline. A memcording of the killer Serban Kline is looped into a Golem’s mind until there’s not a great deal left. Reprogrammed and remotely controlled, it makes a handy killing machine, though not a particularly efficient one. Mostly captured Golem are mind-cored and the chassis used as a telefactor.’

Bryonik then noted Pendle’s puzzled expression. ‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘It wouldn’t. . . The Golem.’

‘Wouldn’t what?’

‘It would use
my
program . . . the schizophrenia. Multiple personalities locked into a whole.’ Pendle looked thoughtful for a moment, then suddenly worried. ‘I can’t be blamed for this!’

‘For what?’ Bryonik asked dangerously.

‘For what it would have become.’

‘Pendle . . .’

It was some time before Bryonik got Pendle to explain. ‘It could be all of them: Serban Kline, Polity Golem, Separatist slave. It could be a most efficient and ruthless killer . . . immoral and amoral . . . and also utterly moral. I don’t know if it could be controlled.’

‘Dangerous then?’

White-faced, Pendle laughed weakly. ‘Oh yes, definitely that.’

- retroact ends -

* * * *

Thorn felt a fierce delight as he watched the shuttle descend, a feeling reflected in Gant’s expression, even though his friend’s features were artificial. Yes, Thorn had definitely been very much interested in Lellan, the rebel leader—she was some woman—and had pursued that interest to a conclusion he and she found agreeable. But as the months dragged on, his discontent grew. He had been Sparkind—one of the elite soldiers employed by Earth Central Security—for most of his life and an ECS agent for the last few years, so was not the sort to sit on his hands at the bottom of a gravity well while things were happening out there. He wanted to be at the sharp end, no matter if it left him bloody.

Drifting down on AG, correcting only occasionally with the fire-blades of thruster motors, the delta-wing shuttle settled on already crushed-down flute grass at the edge of the dracoman town. The air disturbance elicited odd whistlings from some still-standing grass that was beginning to lose its side-shoots and thus take on the properties of the musical instrument after which the first Masadan colonists had named it. Dracomen of both sexes were now coming out of their dwellings to see what all the commotion was about. Mika, Thorn guessed, was probably still sound asleep after the hours of work she had put in on Apis, and Eldene still remained at her lover’s side.

‘Well, let’s go greet the boss,’ said Gant, heading towards the shuttle.

Following him, Thorn reached into his pocket and took out an item he had been saving for just this moment. He studied the circular wrist holster with its inset console and was unsurprised to see that it indicated some activity from the contained micromind. But then Shuriken, Cormac’s lethal little weapon, did have some strange bond with its master.

The airlock opened and Cormac jumped out, a slight shimmer over his face evidence that he was wearing Polity breather gear. As the agent came over, Thorn noticed other ships descending.

‘Im not being told much,’ said Gant, also looking skyward.

‘Well,’ said Cormac, ‘ECS will be establishing a facility down here, but we won’t be here to see it.’

‘What fish are we frying then?’ asked Thorn.

‘Curious expression, but perhaps apposite.’ Cormac told them who the fish was.

‘He survived it. The bastard,’ said Thorn.

Cormac nodded. ‘We go after him. I want you two with me. I also want Mika, for her expertise. You’re prepared to come?’

‘Damned right I am,’ said Thorn.

Cormac nodded. ‘The alternative is that you stay here under observation to make sure that mycelium inside you doesn’t pose a danger.’

‘A danger has already been revealed,’ Gant said, ‘though not one to others.’

But Cormac wasn’t paying attention. Thorn was holding out the Shuriken holster. Cormac took it and in one swift movement strapped it on his wrist. He grinned, then abruptly turned to Gant. ‘What danger?’

Gant showed him.

* * * *

A low muttering vibration transmitted up through the soles of his boots, and Anderson wondered just how safe this place was, ever since the quakes began. No doubt, many would be glad to see it fall, as many blamed the quakes on the increased mining engendered by metallier expansion. Looking round, Anderson also wondered if people lived like this on old Earth, or out there amid the stars. He took in the crowds, the tall metal pillars supporting oblate houses of anodized metal and glass, the numerous walkways and floors all supported by webworks of steel trusses. He guessed not, for the purpose of suspending dwellings like this was to keep out some of the less welcome sand-crawling denizens of Cull, and by night these people would be safely sealed up in their homes.

‘And what did this Lafrosten see?’ Tergal asked him from the other side of the cafe table.

Still studying his surroundings, noting dust being shaken down from high surfaces, Anderson continued his tale: ‘Lafrosten saw a moon descend upon the Plains, but when he journeyed there he found no sign of it. Wounded by sleer, then deserted by the gully traders he had promised a fortune, for he was sure that rare metal ores would be found at the point of impact, he struggled on foot across the Plains. In the wilderness, a dragon came out of the ground and spoke to him. It said, “Come no further, this is now my realm and no man may walk here.” Lafrosten returned to the city of the metalliers, but none here believed his story. He told it then in all the towns from Bravence to the mountains of Rondure where, as a boy, I heard it. When the time of my trial as a Knight of Rondure came, I chose to retrace his journey and slay the dragon.’

Anderson turned to observe a long vehicle, segmented like a louse, labouring up the street, its vibration adding to that of the quake. Mostly the vehicles here were personal transports, like the one in which Laforge had brought them here, and he wondered at the purpose of this one. He then transferred his gaze further down the street and up to where, through the industrial fug and dust, the Overcity rested on the Sand Towers like some fairy castle, but with tangles of suspended roads leading to it. How big a quake would it take to bring that down?

Tergal regarded Anderson over the rim of his glass of lichen beer. ‘Why do you want to kill a dragon?’

Anderson returned his attention to the boy, then glanced aside at the boxes containing his own recent purchases. ‘Call it the impetuousness of youth.’ Anderson rubbed at the scars either side of his top lip where his lip tendrils had been removed. He grimaced, remembering the pain of the manhood ceremony and the joyful arrogance that came after. ‘In many of the ancient stories that’s what you do to dragons, slay them, though in many others they are companions and friends of man. It was the course I chose and, having chosen it, must pursue it, as that is the nature of the trial. Twenty years of travelling have changed my attitude somewhat.’

‘It doesn’t take twenty years by sand hog to get from Rondure to here,’ Tergal observed.

‘No, let’s say my journey has been rather convoluted and interesting, and I’ve learned a lot.’

‘But you still intend to slay the dragon?’

Anderson grimaced in irritation. ‘I’m too close now to turn aside. I’ll provide myself with the means of dragon slaying, and I will find the dragon. I rather suspect that what happens then depends on what the dragon itself does. Again, it is the nature of the trial—the journey being more important than arrival. But tell me, Tergal, what about
your
journey?’