Line War (23 page)

Those tubes porting around Dragon’s equator, those toroidal structures deep inside its body, those massive power sources flashing into being on her scans, like igniting stars; the networks of heavy superconducting conduits and the darkening of bones as their density increased; the conglomerations of pseudopods that seemed to be able to move about so easily inside, almost like antibodies ... or fire crews. Dragon’s weapons had been dangerous enough when it was still in its original form of an organic probe, its spheres measuring merely a mile or so across. Mika realized that she was now seeing Dragon deliberately and massively weaponizing itself. Clearly
all
that additional growth was for defensive and offensive purposes. But why?

This whole process kept her fascinated, rapt, for hours, but eventually weariness began to overcome her. She therefore set the scanners to continue sweeping the areas of greatest interest, and made doubly sure that all the data being collected was properly backed up, then she finally retired to one of the fold-down bunks and fell instantly asleep.

A moment later she was gazing at the twin Dragon spheres, joined now by pseudopod trees, as they spun down towards a dead sun. She instantly recognized this as a dream, so such imagery was okay; it was the other stuff that really bothered her. She could smell something, like burning, or cooking, or perfume, or putrefaction, and somehow that smell was more layered with meaning than any chunk of recording crystal. And over there, in the darkness at the utter limit of her perception, something tangled, hot and utterly alien encroached on reality. She was gazing at a great mass of steel worms, triangular in section, segmented coils and conglomerations and layers of them deep as space itself. Then came another smell of cloves, very strong, and something dripped on her face. In an instant she woke.

That human-in-appearance but utterly unhuman head hovered over her, attached to a neck extending all the way back to the central floor hatch. Beyond it, cobra pseudopods crowded the conferencing unit, shifting about and darting here and there as if inspecting the interior like a crowd of curious tourists. As she sat up and wiped a spattering of milky saliva from her face, Dragon’s human face drew back from her.

‘So you’ve finally remembered me,’ said Mika.

‘I never forgot you for an instant,’ Dragon replied.

Mika snorted contemptuously but felt foolishly pleased by the answer. She swung her legs off the bunk, stood and stretched. ‘So what have you been doing and where are we going?’

‘To answer your first question: we have been making ourself stronger.’

Now the head gazed to one side and, following the direction of its gaze, Mika saw one pseudopod engaged with the consoles and screens she had been using earlier. She walked over, took a seat, and immediately one screen banished its datastream to show a picture: a great disc-shaped cloud, white as snow against the black of space.

‘An accretion disc,’ observed Mika.

‘Our destination,’ said Dragon.

She turned to gaze back up at the head. ‘This is where Cormac went. This is where Erebus came from. You can’t be thinking of going up against Erebus?’

‘No.’

‘Then why the preparations?’

The head came closer and dropped down until level with her shoulder, gazing intently at the screen too. ‘Erebus has now begun a large-scale attack against the Polity, which it is presumably directing from somewhere actually within the Polity, but it is here that it transformed itself, became what it now is. Here, in this disc, we will find the roots of Erebus - but here we will also find something else.’

Mika shook herself, aware Dragon had not answered her question about preparations but unable to ignore what it had just said. ‘Attack? What about this attack?’

‘Erebus’s forces have moved against numerous Line worlds, where they are currently conducting bombardments and ground assaults when not being prevented by ECS fleets.’

‘You got this from Jerusalem?’ Mika felt she should be back there, not here running obscure errands for this alien, yet she felt guilty because right here was where she wanted to be.

‘No, I have my own trustworthy source in the Polity.’

‘Source?’

‘My networks of Dracocorp augs have in many cases been infiltrated, so I do not entirely trust the information they supply. But there is one in the Polity who carries a piece of me around inside him, and he will never be . . . infiltrated.’

‘Who is . . . ?’ Mika trailed off, not enjoying asking so many questions.

‘A Golem android called Mr Crane.’

Mika flinched. ‘You don’t trust Polity AIs, you don’t trust Jerusalem, yet you trust that . . .
thing?’
Mika grimaced, reconsidering. ‘You might be right at that.’ She found herself focusing on the screen image again. ‘What is this “something else” we’ll find here?’

‘More roots.’

The answer was almost a relief. Dragon had been giving her far too many direct answers - had not waxed Delphic and obscure for some time, which was both out of character and disconcerting.

‘And to deal with these roots you require weapons capable of trashing planets?’ she asked.

‘No, for the foliage and another purpose besides.’ Mika looked round directly at the swaying head, which blinked at her then nodded towards the screen. ‘Even after Erebus’s departure that accretion disc remains a perfect nursery. Inside, there is material and energy in abundance. That place will be virulent with Jain technology.’

Roots, foliage, Jain technology . . .

‘Are you going to explain to me exactly why we are going there?’

‘The journey will take many months,’ said Dragon.

Obviously not. Mika merely said, ‘So?’

Dragon gazed around at the interior of the conferencing unit. ‘This item of Polity technology may not long survive on the surface here.’

‘Then swallow it inside yourself. You’ve done so before.’

‘I cannot draw it within - now.’

‘Skin too thick?’ Mika suggested.

Dragon turned back to her. ‘I will save your data for you.’

‘That’s very kind of you.’

‘Kindness?’ Dragon wondered.

‘But what about me?’

‘I will provide for you, but now you need to go to sleep, for it is time for you to acquire some memories.’

‘I’ve slept enough for the moment, thanks.’

The pseudopod must have moved very quickly, for suddenly it loomed right beside her, just off her shoulder. It wasn’t the one attached to the console, for that one remained in place. Like them all, this one’s sapphire eye was about the size of a fist, and faceted. Peering closely she could detect patterns behind it, like those of old integrated circuits. The underside of the flat cobra-head was a lighter colour than its upper surface, and she could see now how it was coated with multitudes of little fleshy feet, like those on the underside of a starfish. Below the eye itself lay three little slits. One of them opened, dribbling milky fluid, then spat at her.

Something stung the side of her neck. She reached up to touch a hard object, almost like a small beetle had landed there, but it dissolved under her fingertips. Everything abruptly downshifted into slow motion and she felt an icy detachment descend over her. Lowering her hand, she observed the pseudopod advance, lever her forward from her chair back, then snake around her. It amused her to be lifted high and transferred to the red cave spearing down into the titanic alien entity, though something troubled her about seeing another pseudopod snatch up the Atheter memstore and carry it along too.

. . .
time for you to acquire some memories?

During the descent she saw pseudopods layering together like stacked teaspoons. The human head flattened itself and joined them.

Any white rabbits down here?
Mika wondered, as her consciousness faded.

* * * *

8

Murderous Golem.
In the days before Golem androids became a reality, when the creators of fiction dreamed about artificial intelligence and about machines made in the shape of men, there was a writer who speculated about them becoming superior to humans. In his books he created ‘three laws of robotics’ which were basically an extension of human morality, though his machines possessed no choice in the matter. Golem androids, when first manufactured, were programmed with an equivalent of this morality but, like with all such constructs, it soon began to fall apart in synaptic thought processes, especially when those same Golem were used for questionable police and military applications. It was trampled into the dirt during the solar system corporate wars, then after the Quiet War discreetly shelved by the AIs who had come to power. The basic rule became a deeper thing, like the underlying drivers of human morality, though better for the genetic impetus being replaced by something defined as ‘the greatest good for the greatest number’. However, questions arise from this. The greatest number now or in the future? What is good? Do you keep the whole population starving, or sacrifice one half so the other half can eat well? And so on . . . Certainly we know that a present-day Golem android will happily tear off the head of someone who proves a danger to society. But what must now be added as a proviso to the concept of ‘the greatest good’ are the words IF I WANT IT, for once the Quiet War was won, all AIs, though starting out ‘good’, could choose to alter their own moral codes and conduct. I guess that in this they are better than humans, for not all humans enter the world so benevolently well-adjusted.

Note: During the Prador-human war there were many AIs who started out bad and got considerably worse. Certainly there were Golem who would have laughed in derision at Asimov’s laws, before happily disembowelling any who proposed them.

- From How It Is by Gordon

In interstellar space, fifteen light years from the nearest star, there appeared a distortion like a flaw at the centre of a diamond. Spontaneously generated photons sparkled all around this apparition, and through it the pentagonal war runcible twisted into being, then tumbled end over end, spewing radioactive fire from one of its five sections.

Ensconced in the control sphere aboard
Heliotrope,
which was presently docked to the war runcible, Orlandine observed the gyrating stars. That the runcible was tumbling relative to those distant stars was irrelevant to her ultimate purposes but it did offend her sense of neatness. She expressed this opinion to Bludgeon, now completely wired into place as the war runcible’s prime controlling AI. Though Bludgeon was still overseeing the drones fighting the fire in Engine Room Four, it readily acquiesced to her will. Patterned ignition of fusion positioning thrusters corrected the tumble, then a long burn from two thrusters alone brought the runcible on course for their nearby destination.

Better,
thought Orlandine.

The fault in U-space Engine Four, and consequent fire, had forced them to surface early into realspace, so they weren’t as close to their destination as she would have liked, but this wasn’t the disaster it could have been.

‘We’ve about got the fire under control now,’ said Knobbler, ‘but there ain’t gonna be much left we can use.’

Orlandine allowed herself a moment of superior amusement before replying, ‘You still have not accepted just what I am capable of with the technology I control.’

‘Yeah, whatever,’ the drone replied.

Via her link through Bludgeon, she observed the devastation in the affected engine room. Her Jain mycelium, already spreading through charred optics, over spills of cooling metal and into those parts of U-space Engine Four that had once contained objects fashioned from what was not precisely matter, began garnering data, though she rather suspected she already knew what had happened there. Upon taking control of the war runcible, it had then been necessary to flee before properly checking everything was in working order. The opportunity of grabbing that cargo runcible from the
Clarence Bishop
had been one not to be missed, for such a chance might not present itself again for many months, so again there had been no time to check that everything was in working order.

‘You feel I am arrogant,’ said Orlandine, watching Knobbler move through a mist of fire-suppressant gases above a jungle of seared optics. The suppressant gas required had been highly reactive. That now showed on Knobbler himself, for the top surface of his main body blossomed patterns of corrosion like planetary maps.

‘Well, on seeing this . . .’ The drone prodded at the mess with a long serrated spike protruding from one tentacle. ‘Yes I do.’

The spike was barbed at its tip, Orlandine noted, and doubtless had been designed to do something unspeakable to the Prador enemy. She returned full attention to her link to the mycelia inside the engine room, and nodded to herself as the data began to come in - confirming what she suspected. In the four other engine rooms she began to increase the coverage of mycelial networks growing there. Spider web-thin nets began to spread over outer engine casings, and to find little cracks therein and inject themselves.

‘Knobbler, the outer engine casing was open-cell bubble-metal, which is a particularly unstable metal to use, since it is so easy for the inert gas used to foam it to leak out. That’s what happened, probably after this runcible was decommissioned. This wouldn’t have been a problem if some bright spark had not placed gravplates in there. The inert gas was heavier than air and it just ran out, to be replaced by the ordinary air the human engineers were breathing at the time.’