Nemesis (56 page)

Will’s face fell. ‘
Me
, as a variant?’

She nodded urgently. ‘Yes. You’ve integrated already. You pass. The final step is a full extension of your submind pattern out into the entire biosphere. Your calculating nuclei would piggyback on our own cells. That kind of an upgrade isn’t normal, I grant you, but there isn’t another option. Either my offspring take control or you do.’

‘You’d let me do that?’

She gave him a look then that made Will certain that if the curator hadn’t been sentient before, she was now. He saw sadness there, along with a desperate animal loneliness. Beneath it all, most disturbingly, lay love. Snakepit was desperate to host life. Any life.

‘I can’t be alone any more,’ she said. ‘Not now. Not after I’ve seen all this. You know how that feels. I know you do.’

Will felt an unexpected pang of empathy for the vast piece of alien machinery he lay embedded in. Was he simply seeing his own loneliness reflected? He couldn’t tell. Maybe it didn’t matter.

‘How would I do it?’ he said.

The curator reached a hand towards his face. ‘May I?’ she said. ‘You need to understand more. A lot more. We might need to put down these silly bodies for a while.’

Will nodded. ‘Okay, show me.’

He braced himself as the metaphor he’d built to filter the planet’s knowledge fell away. The curator took his mind and dunked it gently into her impossible depths. Like drowning, he understood.

All he needed to do was lay himself open to the planet’s semi-autonomous defensive node network, just as he’d laid himself open to save Ann. This time, though, the planet wouldn’t be interfacing with his mind so much as extending it. He’d be written into the very system that had been used against him.

Will balked at the scale of the offer. His former powers felt laughable by comparison. One body? A mere thirty trillion smart-cells? A
single
planet-busting nestship? Hah! He’d become a home for billions of people. There’d be no more worrying about saving the world – Will would
be
one. No more politics. No talkback. No betrayal. He’d be able to spit out fleets of starships and swallow whole civilisations on a whim. He’d been invited to become a god.

The prospect scared him. In his experience, extreme power always came with an extreme price. And the level of integration the planet wanted was huge. He might never untangle himself enough to think like an individual again.

On the other hand, if he didn’t act, the consequences were inevitable. The Nems would overrun Pari’s troopers and find Ann. In a few more hours, they’d integrate fully into the planet and all of its power would be at their disposal. The human race, on all its worlds, would be gulped down like a between-meals snack. Without realising it, Will had joined the planet with just minutes to spare to save his own kind. As it was, Earth still stood a chance.

He knew he couldn’t say no. The planet would either take him or the Nems.
Neither
wasn’t an option. Maybe he’d have a chance to fix that later, but at that moment it was clear where duty lay.

He blinked his mind back into stability. The museum felt tiny now – a doll’s house for the mind. He already knew too much to fit in such a model. Even with the curator’s hand removed, his link to Snakepit was growing steadily.

‘If I’m going to do this,’ he said, ‘I want an insurance policy.’

He turned and manifested himself in the operating theatre. He focused on Ann’s body, letting the planet feed his mind the tools he wanted. With them, he started augmenting Ann.

The cellular engines repairing her body paused, reflected and started rewriting her, fusing improved copies of his own smart-cell technology into her tissues. Along with the changes, he sent a backup of his own mind – not a perfect replica, but as good a shadow as he could build. It’d be enough that if he didn’t make it out of Snakepit alive, she’d be able to pilot the
Ariel Two
without him. And she’d understand what had happened.

With Ann’s changes racing ahead, he turned again to the curator.

‘Show me where they are,’ he said.

Something like a tactical display of the world bloomed before him, with defensive nodes marked in blue, Nem landings in red like scattered measles, and a single stain of green activity for himself. Apparently, the tunnels around him had already aligned with his mind and the change was spreading.

Will didn’t have a clue how he could fight the Nems on their own turf. They undoubtedly understood this place far better than he did. Nevertheless, he had to try.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘You have a deal. Give me control.’

The curator took the orchid thing from her lapel and, with a sad smile, pinned it to the ship-suit his avatar was wearing. As she did so, she started to look a little smaller, and a little vaguer.

‘There you go,’ she said, patting his chest. ‘It’s all yours now. Be good to it.’

She stepped towards him, arms outstretched, and hugged him. As she did so, the museum fell away. Will became a world.

The moment the system connected, Will started duplicating his command structure out into the planet around him, reaching down nerves hundreds of kilometres long. He sent a single instruction to the returning mutants.

Stop
.

A new pressure built in his mind as the mutant swarm’s intelligence sought him out. Will scrambled to give it a face and a voice – some kind of distinct identity that would enable him to know which thoughts came from him and which from it.

The boy from the surface of Tiwanaku sprang to mind – poor Ryan, with the coffee machine in his stomach. This new Ryan wasn’t pathetic, though. He shone with strength. Glittering armour clad his body, making him look like a fairytale hero.

‘Why have you stopped us?’ said the Ryan-thing. ‘We won the right to modification and we have not finished.’

The metaphor shifted around Will as his connection with the returned swarm gathered strength. He suddenly found himself standing in a new part of the museum – a vast, cathedral-like space littered with the dusty remains of long-dead warriors. Memorials to past mutations lined the walls in endless rows under densely carved plaques explaining their genetic limitations. Grey light seeped down from high, unreachable windows. Will knew where he had to be: a representation of the defensive network – the planet’s battleground. In this corner of Snakepit’s planet-mind, knowledge was not revered. The only thing that mattered here was force.

As he took in his surroundings, Will realised that, this time, the ersatz reality filling in around him didn’t feel like his own creation. He tested its boundaries and found them to be disturbingly resilient. The swarm wanted him here.

Ryan clasped a broadsword in his right hand and a silver shield in his left. The young hero hefted his weapon, staring at Will across a swathe of ancient flagstone floor.

‘Your knowledge has been superseded,’ said Will, fighting down his unease. ‘The modifications you offer are inadequate. I am here to replace you.’

The Ryan-thing regarded him with amusement. It tasted him with a thousand senses for which Will had no name. For a moment, the virtual arena smeared like paint.

‘Your offering, while sophisticated, is homogeneous,’ it said, ‘whereas we have ingested thousands of individual foreign processing organs. And within thirty days we will have billions more. Retrieval devices are already on their way. Fulfilment is at hand.’

In other words, the attack on Earth had been mobilised. The clock was ticking.

‘Our solution is preferable to yours,’ said the Ryan-thing. ‘Once modified, the processor organs we have found will perfectly complement our redundant biome. Our world will be complete as the Founders intended. And after that, so shall all others. We will bring life and harmony to the galaxy at last. Our superfluous complexity will finally be purged. Simplicity, peace and order will reign.’

Will funnelled the information into Ann as fast as he could. At the same time, he readied his weapons. He had no idea how useful his Transcended software tools would be in this fight, but he didn’t have anything else.

‘Your projections are irrelevant,’ he said. ‘The processor organs you have identified will resist incorporation, causing waste and risk. They have been forewarned of your approach. You are ordered to decohere immediately to avoid fruitless damage to useful resources.’

The Ryan-thing regarded him with contempt. ‘If you are right, then you will have to demonstrate superiority via force. This is how it is always done.’

‘I thought you might say that,’ said Will, hefting the broadsword that had materialised in his hand. ‘Brace yourself.’

17.3: MARK

To Mark’s intense relief, the constructorbot’s cabin contained a proper med-chamber. It wasn’t anywhere near as sophisticated as he’d have liked, but it promised to keep Venetia’s condition stable. With the help of his two remaining exosuits, he laid his friend inside.

All the while, his mind kept churning over the revolting truths that Britehaven had thrust upon him. The Flag settlements weren’t places where fundamentalists went to fight. They were places where fundamentalists were manufactured. Once Earth’s sect leaders shipped the poor out to the Far Frontier, they could do what they liked with them, including stuffing their bodies full of compromising technology. And so long as they kept IPSO stretched, the probability of their being caught at it was next to zero. He thought briefly of the boy Ryan with the Sanchez-head sticking out of his neck. Were the atrocities the human race inflicted on its own kind really so different?

At that point, his mind let him notice the presence of the staring corpses still hanging inside the suits like limp puppets. One of them was Den’s. Mark looked within for the disgust he knew he should feel, but instead found only a tight, fiery knot of determination.

‘It was me or them,’ he said aloud.

‘Of course it was,’ said Zoe from where she lay on the floor.

It was the first coherent thing she’d said since they escaped from Britehaven. The med-packs covering her lower legs must have brought her pain down to manageable levels.

‘We don’t need them now. Put those poor bastards in the elevator pod then come and give me a hand.’ She winced as the huge robot rumbled over a boulder.

‘How are you feeling?’ he said, kneeling to check on her packs.

‘I’ll survive,’ she said. ‘How’s Venetia?’

‘Okay, but she’ll need something better than that chamber. I doubt it can reprint as much skin as she’s going to need.’

‘Will she live?’ said Zoe.

‘The chamber says yes, presuming we get her to a fully equipped med-bay in the next twenty-four hours.’

‘Great. Then stop the robot.’

Mark shot her an impatient glance. ‘Why? We need to get out of here.’

‘Because we need time to think. We can’t afford to touch the legal edge of Britehaven’s border. Massimo talked to Sam, which means Sam will be watching us. The fact that he hasn’t acted already means he was hoping the Flags would finish us off for him. The moment this robot crosses that border, he’ll know that’s not going to happen. He may have figured it out already. The moment he wises up, we can expect to be nuked from orbit. That fucker has made it very clear he wants us dead, which means we don’t have any time to waste.’

Mark exhaled. Frustrating as it was, she had a point.

He brought the huge machine carefully to a halt.
Carefully
was the only way to brake a machine that size, unless you wanted to make a forty-storey face-plant onto a dead ocean.

‘Can you get a direct link back to Massimo’s dome from here?’ said Zoe.

‘Of course. I have his overrides and line-of-sight. The signal will be perfect.’

‘Good. Take me to that console.’ She pointed to the manual driving station on the far side of the cabin.

Mark shot her a sceptical look. ‘I’m not sure we should be moving you yet.’

‘
Take me to the console!
’ Zoe screamed. Her fists pounded the plastic floor. Her eyes said
I’ve lost it and you have to help me
.

Mark recoiled, astonished at her sudden emotion. Apparently, Zoe hadn’t managed the experiences of the last twenty-four hours without scars. Was he really surprised?

Without another word, he lifted her gently and placed her in the couch. She hunched forward over the touchboard and started typing furiously before he’d even finished setting her down.

‘Can you at least explain what you’re doing?’ he said.

‘I’m going to set up a satellite link to the
Gulliver
via Britehaven,’ she said. ‘I’m using Vartian Institute codes that will force the ship to listen without cluing that motherfucker in. Get ready with your interface.’

Mark dived into his sensorium and followed the link she sent. A cut-down representation of the
Gulliver
’s helm-space formed around him.

‘I’m in.’

‘Good,’ said Zoe. ‘Now lock down both the shuttle and the ship before they can think of a way to block you. We need wings off this planet and a way out of this fucking mess. The
Gulliver
is still our best bet because we both know that Sam will take out any messenger drones we send.’

He gave her a worried glance. ‘Have you been thinking about this or are you just improvising very fast?’

‘I’ve had plenty of time to think about this moment,’ she said. Her eyes narrowed. She didn’t look well.

Mark reached out and asserted control over both vessels, being careful not to raise any warnings as he did so. The shuttle was still at the New Luxor spaceport, where a group of Colonial dignitaries were preparing to embark.

Mark explained the situation to Zoe. The evacuation was in full swing.

‘Great,’ said Zoe. ‘Let those fuckers in and then lock the doors. We can use that. Do you see Sam with them?’

Mark scanned around. ‘No.’

He checked the
Gulliver
. To his astonishment, he found Ash’s command codes still active. He froze. Had Ash actually survived that neural surge? He couldn’t imagine how. Or had the surge itself been faked?

Mark felt a hot stab of betrayal and checked for evidence of his subcaptain interfacing with the ship but found nothing – not even a remote pulse from one of the security-locked cabin sections. The only recent data on Ash he could locate was a stack of very basic life-signs reports filed by the med-bay.