Brass Man (31 page)

Breathing, Skellor analysed the air in his lungs and immediately detected trace hydrocarbons, partially oxidized. Using the full spectrum of emitted radiation senses he possessed, he studied the sky. He observed some kind of bird winging its way across, then he concentrated on air currents and spectral analysis of the compounds they contained. Shortly he detected the column of rising air thick with hydrocarbons, which the bird used to ride higher into the sky. Not far away, someone was burning coke. Skellor smiled evilly and set out.

* * * *

12

The titanic monitor lizard on Aster Colora was ample enough demonstration that Dragon could radically redesign genetic code. The dracoman and the weird living chess set Dragon created to confront the human ambassador it summoned were proof it could manipulate hugely complex protein replication and create living creatures holding a mental template of themselves, which they could then alter. Evidently, Dragon is a supreme bio-engineer with abilities that exceed those of all present Polity AIs. The entity again proved this with its creation of the biotech augs, and others have confirmed this beyond doubt by further studies of the race of dracomen which was created from the substance of one Dragon sphere at Masada. Unfortunately, what is less clear is the purpose of many of these creations. The monitor did nothing much really, other than die, while dracomen seem almost a taunt, with their ersatz dinosaur ancestry. And one wonders what Dragon could do with the wealth accumulating to Dracocorp from the manufacture of biotech augs, and whether it could survive the subsequent AI scrutiny, should it come out of hiding to claim that wealth. Speculation is of course rife, ranging from each creation being a lesson—but one as opaque as all Dragon’s Delphic pronouncements — to the intended destruction of the Human Polity. My feeling is that, though Dragon is a complex entity indeed, the reason for much of what it does is simple—because it can.

— From
How It Is
by Gordon

Construction of the platform had begun during the rule of Chief Metallier Lounser, Tanaquil’s greatgrandfather, and reached completion when Tanaquil himself was still a child. Most of what was now referred to as the Overcity had sprung up during his own rule, but what lay underneath the platform had been accumulating ever since the construction crews had moved above ground level. Even so, Chief Metallier Tanaquil knew that not enough time had passed to account for the evolution of some of the things down here. Something else was the cause of them, something frightening, powerful.

‘If you keep dropping that beam, Davis, something is going to shoot in and rip off your face. Now I don’t mind that too much, it’s just that whatever does it might get one of the rest of us next.’

After kilnsman Gyrol’s dry observation, Davis raised his weapon, with its attached torch, and kept it directed into the surrounding gloom, as they moved on through the shadows of the Undercity. Tanaquil glanced around at the rest of his police guard. They, along with Gyrol, were here to defend him against any strays that might decide to attack. If that ‘something else’ had not restrained most of the horrible creatures that dwelt under here, then none of them would have stood a chance.

‘We should burn this place out,’ Gyrol muttered.

‘And there I was thinking you a member of one of the foundry families,’ said Tanaquil.

Gyrol looked at him queryingly.

Tanaquil explained, ‘Sufficient heat to kill off what lives down here would probably soften all the trusses and pillars and bring the Overcity crashing down.’

‘Poison gas, then?’ suggested Gyrol.

‘A valued friend has lived down here since my father’s rule, and without him we would not be so advanced as we now are.’

‘First I’ve heard of it,’ said Gyrol. ‘Why doesn’t he come out of the dark and live in the city proper like everyone else?’

‘This is only the second time I’ve come down here for a consultation. The first time was ten years ago, when I first became Chief Metallier. Kilnsman Nills was police chief then. Our friend stays down here for reasons that will become evident when you see him, also because he conducts his experiments here and does not like to be bothered too often.’

‘What experiments?’ Gyrol asked.

‘They are the reason you and your men are down here with their lights and guns.’

Gyrol shuddered.

Tanaquil waited. Gyrol sometimes appeared slow, but this was because he was meticulous, which made him such a good policeman.

‘There are no hold-ups in the plan, so why are
you
here?’ Gyrol eventually asked.

‘You are quite right: we’ve built the required industrial base, and our manufacturing technology is still advancing. As you know, last year Stollar managed to create the first artificial ruby. What you don’t know is that only yesterday he tested the communication device built around it, and managed to obtain a response from the computer on
Ogygian.
I will, during my rule, stand on the bridge of that ship.’

Gyrol looked at him doubtfully. Tanaquil was used to such doubt, but never allowed it to affect his intent. Stollar’s laser was the first step in a plan to bring down one of
Ogygian’s
landers. It was ambitious—indeed a leap in technological terms—but Tanaquil was determined it would be done.

‘Which still doesn’t tell me why we’re down here. Something to do with that spacecraft we saw?’ Gyrol asked.

‘No, I was summoned,’ Tanaquil admitted.

They passed where a wide iron pillar reared up into the dark beside one of the buttes. At its base rested a bulbous house with a single entrance hole. It looked more like the nest of some creature than a home. Inside, eyes glinted. Tanaquil halted, turned on his own torch and studied the map he held.

‘Not far now.’

They moved away from the strange dwelling, then two of the men stopped and swung their torch beams back towards where a head protruded. It seemed partially human, but in place of its mouth it had pincers. Its eyes glittered like cut gems.

‘Let’s keep moving,’ said Gyrol, and they did that willingly.

‘If you were summoned,’ the kilnsman asked Tanaquil, ‘surely any message could have been delivered in the same way?’

‘Not how our friend operates.’ Tanaquil removed a film bag from his pocket and showed Gyrol the contents.

‘I was told about these by my father, and didn’t believe it until the first one came and stung me.’

In the bag rested a lizard-like creature, but with an insect’s wings.

‘What in hell is that?’ Gyrol asked.

Tanaquil pocketed the creature and shrugged. ‘Who’s to say—something created, like all the things you find down here. One of these stings you, and you just feel increasingly uncomfortable until you obey the summons.’

They were now walking down a shadowy canyon between looming buttes, Gyrol’s men keeping the beams of their torches trained on creatures clinging to the walls. Some of these, Tanaquil noted, were pure sleers -others were different, distorted. He saw one that bore four legs and dragged behind it a long bloated tail; then, stepping rapidly away from them into a darker cave, something that walked upright like a man.

‘This is it,’ said Tanaquil, when they finally came to a wall of sandstone into which many metre-wide burrows had been bored. They halted, waited. From within the burrows came a rasping, slithing movement, and deep inside could be seen glints of blue light. Out of the central burrow slowly emerged a pterodactyl head, which reared up above them on a long ribbed neck. Tanaquil caught Gyrol’s arm as he made to draw his handgun.

‘Fucking sand dragon,’ said Gyrol, who was shaking.

‘Certainly,’ said Tanaquil. ‘But, unlike the ones up on the plain, this one has always helped us.’

Now, from other burrows, emerged cobra heads, each with a single sapphire eye where the mouth should have been. These too reared high, casting about the area a dim electric-blue light.

‘Metallier Tanaquil,’ said the first head.

‘Why was I summoned?’ asked Tanaquil.

‘Because.’

Tanaquil had read all his family’s secret transcripts of conversations like this. Always they were oblique, Delphic, and sometimes utterly pointless. He was about to
demand
that this conversation not be so, when the head continued: ‘There is danger.’

‘There’s always danger,’ Tanaquil observed. ‘Does this have something to do with the spacecraft we saw?’

‘One has come,’ said the dragon.

‘In that ship? Yes, I saw that.’

‘You must flee.’

‘What?’

‘You must all abandon your city and flee. He is in the Sand Towers and he will come. Go north, and come to me on the Plains, that way.’

‘Oh great!’ interjected Gyrol. ‘Go to the Plains and get fucked over by all the sand dragons there.’

The head turned towards the policeman. ‘We are
all
Dragon.’

Tanaquil could not believe what he was hearing. ‘Abandon all this—when we’re so close? What is this one that we should fear it? We’ve got weapons up in the Overcity that could turn most of the Sand Towers to dust.’

Now the cobra heads began withdrawing.

‘I have warned you, and I can protect you. Flee or die—your choice.’

The pterodactyl head began to withdraw too.

‘Wait! You’ve got to tell me more!’

The head paused and fixed Tanaquil with its smaller sapphire eyes. ‘He is one man, and he commands a technology that could turn you all into slaves. You cannot fight him, so flee.’

The head withdrew into sandstone, suddenly gone.

Only later, as they returned, did Gyrol ask, ‘What did it mean, “We are all Dragon”?’

Tanaquil had no answer for him.

* * * *

Every time the asteroid swung the Jain sample back into the red dwarf’s light, that sample digested more minerals and metals, and it grew. Already it was five metres across and one metre deep into the rock. Encircling it on the surface, and moving back with it using stick-pad feet, three telefactors transmitted data back to the
Jerusalem.
Through a nanoscope, that one telefactor held poised over the edge of the mycelium, Mika watched. But now, rather than be confined to her work station, she had joined Colver, D’nissan, James and fifty other scientists in one of the
Jerusalem’s
exterior input centres. Though she was glad of the company and of how they bounced ideas about in such proximity and in such an atmosphere, she was aware that this was just another form of quarantine. And because Exterior Input was isolated from Jerusalem’s full processing power, she could not use VR tools, and sorely missed them too.

‘I could direct a telefactor from my own work station,’ she had pointed out.

‘As could all the others,’ Jerusalem replied. ‘However, all this spreading of signals could be unhealthy. I will allow information to leave Exterior Input only when it has been checked for viral subversion.’

‘Slightly paranoid,’ she suggested. ‘You allow study of the mycelium on the bridge pod to be conducted from separate research cells.’

‘The bridge pod is being kept at minus two hundred Celsius, in near absolute vacuum, and its only energy input is from the instruments used to study it. Even then, the mycelium perpetually tries to grow outside the boundaries laid down for it, and to subvert any equipment in close proximity. All samples from it are kept at minus two-twenty for contained study, and if there is any kind of subversion evident from them, they can be ejected from the ship in less than a second.’

Mika did not ask how much of the surrounding area Jerusalem might eject as well. She was aware of how self-contained was each research cell. Subversion from a Jain sample probably meant the whole cell would end up outside the ship.

‘Okay,’ she had replied. Perhaps it would be safer to conduct research outside her own work area. Surely, Jerusalem would not eject the
whole
exterior input centre? She looked around. No one here wore any kind of augmentation, which showed just how seriously Jerusalem took the possibility of viral or nano-mechanical subversion. Jerusalem would not allow human custom or protest to influence it, and here, in this situation, must be prepared to think the unthinkable.

‘Wow,’ said Colver from beside her. ‘I’m getting fast outgrowth down fault AFN three four two.’

‘That means the mycelium probably now has some kind of radiation detector,’ said D’nissan. The man was in the deep-scanning sphere, its interior adjusted to his environmental requirements, the scanning equipment directly linked into his nervous system.

‘Why’s that?’ Colver asked.

‘Check your geoscan. Fault three four two is its quickest route to a deposit of pitchblende. It’s going after the uranium and radium.’

‘Then it can plan, think by itself—it’s sentient.’

‘Not necessarily,’ said D’nissan. ‘This could be no more than the biologically programmed response of a tree root. Though I’ll allow that there is greater complexity in this mycelium than there is in you, Colver.’

Colver winked at Mika. ‘He reckons his brain works better than mine because it operates at a lower temperature. I think he resented me asking him to blow on my coffee.’