Brass Man (61 page)

Even as he adapted the virus, he used it swiftly on himself and cut away his poisoned arm. On the back swing, he took off the second serpent’s head before turning to the other two, who seemed busily intent on wrecking his work. Now, knowing the degree of adaptation his viruses needed, he sprouted more axes from his fists and attacked, chopping and hacking in a frenzy. Then, when bleeding segments were drifting all about him, he asked himself why this attack had been so strong.

Skellor stepped away from the virtual vision of his battle and opened his comprehension to an utterly informational level. He realized that the kill programs’ defences were strongest around the hard-field generators, the reactor and the balanced U-space engines of this ship. It wanted to keep him here in orbit of Cull. That being the case, he now made it his prime objective to get away. He probed, tentatively, into the start-up routines for the U-space engines. The reaction he got, like poking a stick into a nest of vipers, confirmed his suspicions. Now, in the virtuality and not limiting himself by human perception, he began gathering his weapons. Turning towards those closely guarded systems, he hurled himself forward thousand-armed, viruses and informational bacilli propagating around him, layered attack programs like swarms of bees, a growing mass then a wall of every informational weapon at his disposal falling on that nest of serpents.

In a virtual age, he slew the guardians. In real computer time of microseconds, he swamped and subsumed engine control. His diagnostic search informed him of slight misalignments in both engines and hard-fields. It would hurt him, but he would survive—as he had before. The fusion reactor started easily; someone had used it recently. No matter. When enough power was available, he started the fusion engines of the ship. He had no control of navigation, but the ship had been tangential to the planet. Accelerating, burning up rusty water from its fuel tanks as it drove up to ram-scoop speeds, the ship left orbit. One fusion chamber sputtered as the water started to run out, then the ram-scoop fields opened out and began funnelling in hydrogen and other spacial matter to use as fuel.

Then, achieving sufficient speed relative to the fabric of space, like a speedboat ready to move up onto its hydrofoils, the
Ogygian
engaged its U-space engines and dropped out of realspace.

* * * *

Dragged back against one wall of the bridge, the long-dead captain’s skull still clutched in his right hand and the Jain exoskeleton now rooting into the metalwork around him, Cormac wondered what new torture this was. But agony twisted Skellor’s features, and Cormac’s mind screamed at the flashes of grey infinity beyond the screen—all his human perception could make of under-space. Some instinct made him try to grasp more. He opened up programming space in his gridlink to carry the load, but his mind just kept sliding off. Desperation grew in him, as if his survival depended on his cognizance of this dimension.

With augmentation, it was possible for him to comprehend more than he could with his normally evolved human mind. With heightened perception, Cormac could visualize five dimensions: see a tesseract and observe a Kline bottle pouring into itself. But this was more dimensions than that, and none at all. U-space contained the potential for dimension. It was the infinity of a singularity, and the eternal instant. To human perception, it was things and states that were mutually exclusive. It was impossible . . . impossible for a human to encompass. But Cormac knew that he must encompass it or completely lose one of the bulwarks of his mind. And so, naturally, as he strove for comprehension, he moved further away from his own humanity.

* * * *

With a feeling of good riddance, Dragon watched first the
Ogygian
then the
King of Hearts
drop into under-space. It being evident that this entire system and probably others were enclosed in a USER trap, the entity felt sure that neither Skellor nor the rogue AI ship would be going far, and that maybe the Polity would survive, just so long as others of its members could resist temptation.

Temptation . . .

There was a saying attributed to a nineteenth-century human character who seemed famous more for his sexual proclivities than his ability with a pen ... or quill.

Dragon knew the dangers of Jain technology, but the option for control of it from its nascent stage . . . Polity AIs must be aware of this aspect of the technology, and Dragon understood why some of them had gone rogue in pursuit of it.

Ican resist anything but temptation.

Ah ...

Dragon also quickly came to understand something else. It was certain that the higher Polity AIs had worked out quite some time ago how Jain technology operated. Hence this scenario: the trap had not only been for Skellor, but for those AIs that did not show the requisite self-control. The entity did not like the idea that the same trap might have intentionally included itself but had to admit that possibility. Whatever, on the surface of Cull was an item that could create another Skellor or, utilized by Polity AIs or Dragon itself, something even worse. Dragon felt the Jain node would be safer ... elsewhere. Still working to repair its U-space engines, to shorten the hours-long trip to the planet to minutes, it then detected a U-space signature. Observing the scale of what was coming through, Dragon felt a sinking sensation in its many thousands of stomachs.

‘Now where are you going?’ Jerusalem asked.

* * * *

Strangely, AIs that ran Golem bodies were more patient than those which controlled spaceships and runcibles, and whose understanding of time and the universe was immense. Cento waited, utterly still, utterly forbearing, as the hours slogged on past. Only a few hundred metres away from him, down at the bottom of the engine pier in the captain’s bridge, the
Jerusalem
hunter/killer program had immobilized Skellor. Maybe, if he took his APW down there, he could use it to convert the biophysicist to so much ash. But
maybe
wasn’t good enough. That particular maybe was only the contingency plan.

‘You still have him contained?’ he asked, though in reality the question contained no human words.

The program responded in the same computer language, ‘He is contained. Be prepared for your action.’

The kill program made all the calculations in
Ogygian’s
computer before presenting the idea to Cento. It did this only minutes after Skellor began using the message laser. Cento was dubious of the accuracy of the program’s results. It was no ship or runcible AI, in fact was not designated AI at all (though Cento admitted to himself that was probably for reasons of expediency), and the computer on the
Ogygian
was primitive. However, when the program showed him the scale of the target and its intentions, Cento had to agree.

Skellor, no matter what capabilities he possessed, would not be getting away from
there.
Cento, having now to do the one tiling of which the program was incapable—all its actions being on an informational level only -would not be leaving either. But the Golem, being AI and of AI origin, and also being backed up in Earth Central, did not view personal destruction in the same way as did a human, or haiman, whatever Fethan thought himself.

‘There is something else,’ the program then interjected.

‘And that is?’

‘The Skellor has brought a hostage aboard with him.’

‘That is unfortunate,’ said Cento, ‘but it does not impinge upon the plan. The loss of one or two lives, even a few hundred lives, is a small enough price to pay to be rid of Skellor.’

‘The hostage is Ian Cormac’

Cento experienced spontaneous emotion, something he had not felt since seeing Ulriss die and then finding the incinerated corpses of Shayden and Hourne. First, he felt surprise that the agent had allowed Skellor to capture him at all, then he felt sadness. Cormac did not back himself up, and even if he was memplanted, that technology would not survive what was to come. The agent would die irretrievably.

‘That makes no difference.’

The program fell silent, returning that small sliver of its awareness to the chaos of its virtual battle to keep Skellor contained, and unaware of the subtle control it exerted over the ship’s helm. Many hours later, precisely to the calculated second of ship time, Cento pointed his APW at the superconducting cables leading to the U-space engine above him, triggered the weapon, and drew violet fire across. The blast threw him back. The side of the support pier blasted out into U-space, the blobs of molten metal creating strange kaleidoscope effects as they departed the ship. Above him the engine stuttered out something weird that impinged even on Cento’s Golem consciousness as, briefly, the s-con ducts carried proton energy back into it before flaring like burning magnesium. Then, suddenly, black and starlit space bled into the gap as the
Ogygian
resurfaced. Cento closed an arm around a bubble-metal I-beam as something pulled hard at him for a moment, released its hold, then pulled again.

Tidal forces
, he surmised.

Weakened by the APW blast the pier twisted above him. He felt its wrenching scream through the metal he clutched, observed the beam itself twisting. Then that force tugged again, and the U-space nacelle, along with much of the pier above him, tore away from the ship. Cento observed its slow departure, then turned his attention to where he calculated their destination would be. The brown dwarf seemed a vast wooden sphere looming at them out of the dark; the
Ogygian
was already being dragged down towards it, already being torn apart by its tidal forces. Cento headed down towards the bridge. Now, to make sure, he would also carry through the contingency plan. It would be a pointless though satisfying exercise, for in a few hours Skellor, the ship and all detached debris, Cento and Ian Cormac, would constitute a very thin film on the dead sun below.

* * * *

Somehow the barrier had remained: a shimmering silk meniscus between Mr Crane and everything real. Yet, strangely, by this separation he could view the world and his worlds and discern what was now and what was then. The surreal battle between a knight mounted on a giant crustacean and the ziggurat-headed droon was real and was now. Briefly, it reflected on the etched game board, before the vulture brought her players back to order with a sharp peck and a lengthy swallowing. Crane moved the piece of crystal and gazed up at the sea’s surface. It was fantastically bright up there, almost as bright as revelation. Inside his head he felt something turn and clunk into place with all the positivity of a ship going into a docking clamp. Tearing off the aviapt’s head had not been a particularly moral act, nor had Crane’s killing of Stalek been particularly nice, but for what they had done to him—and likely done to others—they deserved death. Also they had been outside the Polity, and Crane had been under instruction ...

In some part of himself, Crane recognized the mealy-mouthed dissimulation of a coward. Though ordered through the Pelters’ control unit to kill those two, he had not needed to be quite so bloody. He reached down to move a blue acorn. A beak intervened and he instead moved the scent bottle. Taut excitement filled him, and imminence—that was the only way the various parts of his mind could see it. Something of all his parts was poised on the edge of the real, waiting to come into focus.

The sea’s surface drew no closer—he knew he was not ready for that. But some bright structure like a vast glassy plankton turned in electric depths and presented itself to another mass of the same. It keyed in, locked into place, took on the same spectral pulsation as all the rest. Mr Crane stared down at one brass hand. It was utterly real, and utterly right there and then. Folding in his thumb, he saw himself tearing people apart on Cheyne III. Those were Arian Pelter’s orders, and the man had been nested close in Crane’s mind, his control through a military aug all but absolute. How could the Golem have done otherwise?

Lies lies lies
. . .

Crane folded in a finger, remembered killing policemen, then killing one of Arian’s allies. But one of those policemen had survived. Out of an impossible situation, Mr Crane had allowed someone to live. The antique binoculars he had taken in place of the life now replaced by the scent bottle he had just moved. Hadn’t he saved so many lives? But counting the deaths he soon ran out of fingers.

The little knight, mounted on a miniature sand hog, charged the lion’s tooth, and, prodding it with his lance, moved it to a new position. Two bright structures mated with a satisfying click and the gratifying alignment of the last turn on a Rubik’s cube.

What Crane had done .. . He could have done nothing else.

Crane could have done nothing else.

Rising, nemesis from the sea, Mr Crane was angry. He raged at a life denied him, howled inside at the Serban Kline they wanted him to be, was rabid because there was nothing inside or out to prevent him killing. But there was justification. The people on this island had done those horrific things to Semper. They had unmade a human being piece by piece, scream by scream, and left him to marine crucifixion for Crane to find. Oh, how they would pay.

The man on the shore—a bloody rag—gone, others the same. Crane walked slowly through silver moonlight, glints like pearl crabs at the corners of his eyes. Alston was at the centre of the island and Crane was told to go to him, to kill him, but also to kill any who stood in his way. No one had said how he should go to Alston. No one had said he should walk a straight course. Crane walked a spiral, killing as he went and leaving hellish art behind him, till coming to the final poetry of making Alston’s fortune utterly the man’s own.