‘This may take some time,’ said the voice of Asselis Mika. ‘I don’t think there’s an unbroken bone in his body.’
Another voice, the resonant iceberg tip of vast intellect, noted, ‘The inside of his head is not much better.’
The lights went out again.
When humans referred to something called a ‘cold sweat’, Dragon had formerly known what it meant only on an intellectual level. Now the entity understood what it meant on a visceral level. In its dealings with the Polity, it had always purposely encountered lesser entities than itself. This was why it had always kept away from the larger-capacity runcible AIs—sector AIs—and tried not to operate within twenty light-years of any place in which Earth Central had shown the slightest interest. Jerusalem was precisely the kind of Polity AI that Dragon had therefore always avoided. Now the entity was reminded why, for Jerusalem possessed the sheer mental power to beat Dragon at its own games whilst also inhabiting a ship body possessing the physical size and power to render it unnecessary for it to play such games.
This was why Dragon had found itself unable to conceal certain facts for very long. The essence of the transmission, after the initial fencing, had been: ‘Tell me everything, and fast’—along with the blueprint of one of the Jerusalem’s internal chambers and an overview of the equipment that could be used there. Dragon was left in no doubt that the ship could encompass, immobilize, then dismantle it to see how it ticked.
That the Jerusalem had dropped into U-space upon learning about the Ogygian was less than reassuring. It meant the AI certainly knew that Dragon would not be escaping and could be dealt with at leisure. The thought of such an AI gaining access to Skellor was frightening. The thought of it obtaining certain items that Skellor would soon be shedding, like a dandelion scattering its seeds in the breeze, was enough to give even a dragon nightmares. But Dragon had no power to affect those events, though one such item, close by, it had aimed to put in safer hands.
Still on course for Cull, the entity linked through to the flying lizard, which had coiled up to sleep in a sulerbane leaf, the recent stress of expected extinction having obviously exhausted it. Receiving instruction, the creature reared up, shook itself and flew over to the carapace remains of Skellor’s last meal on Cull, landed and looked to where the golden egg had fallen. Dragon was so amused it decided to let the lizard live despite its near contact with Jain technology. Where the egg had lain in the dust, now rested a blue acorn.
Dragon wondered what the brass man would make of his new toy.
Others might wonder at the entity’s definition of ‘safer hands’.
Epilogue
Fethan stooped down by the dismembered Golem and thought, with morbid humour, I don’t hold out much hope for his recovery. But in this case that might not be true. Gant may have been missing one leg and his head, but memory crystal should contain his essential being inside his Golem chest. However, Jain growth marred that chest, and the Golem had shut down. What this growth might portend was why Fethan and Thorn had insisted on searching alone, and why they had allowed Tanaquil and the boy Tergal to return to Golgoth in the blimp. Fethan contemplated that. The Chief Metallier’s cry of anger on reading that the colony ship Ogygian no longer occupied the sky had been heart-wrenching — seeing that his one contact with that human civilization he craved to return to had taken his wife and his dreams. Perhaps he might dream new dreams? Certainly the Polity was not finished with this world.
‘Are you getting anything?’ Thorn asked.
Fethan shook his head. ‘I haven’t tried yet.’ Now he did attempt to make contact through Gant’s internal radio—perhaps the dead soldier’s only remaining link to the outside world. But, as before, he found there something vicious that made him jerk away. It was like placing his hand in a dark burrow and hearing some animal snarl. Viral subversion then tracked his signal back—alien Jain code. He shut down his transceiver and isolated it, killing the power to his primary decoder as well.
‘I don’t think he’s in there,’ he said.
‘We have to be sure,’ Thorn said.
Fethan shrugged. He liked Gant and had no wish for him to be irrevocably dead, but he had not known the man or the machine for as long as Thorn had. Reluctantly he sent an internal signal and detached the syntheflesh covering of his fingertip. Then, studying Gant’s neck, he discounted all the severed optics. Selecting instead a small duct containing hair-thin superconducting filaments, he pressed his fingertip against the break. Through nerve linkages in his fingertip, the kill program made connections and found its way through to the Golem’s crystal storage. The program did not transcribe this time, as it only needed to look. Fethan felt an ache growing in his right shoulder and arm. Psychosomatic it might be, but it still bothered him. Finally the program made its assessment:
Your friend is gone. There is nothing recognizably human in here, only Jain code and its need to survive and spread.
At that moment the Golem’s hands came up, tracked up Fethan’s arm by touch and closed on his throat. But this availed it nothing, for the old cyborg’s throat was hard. He caught both wrists and pushed the groping hands away, propelling himself rapidly backwards.
‘Gant is gone,’ he said.
With a metallic crunching, the Golem body folded back on itself, then arched up and thrust itself towards Fethan. This, more than anything, confirmed the program’s diagnosis: for the Jain inside was forcing the Golem body into something tripodal, something with no physical relation at all to the human race. Thorn immediately swung Fethan’s APW to bear and opened fire. The three-limbed beast bounced in red flame. Syntheflesh burning away, it hopped and bounced like a spider in a lighter flame. Thorn hit it again, and again. Limbs came away until eventually it was still. Thorn then approached the broken torso and, drawing a knife he had acquired aboard the blimp, probed inside and at last levered out the lozenge of Gant’s erstwhile mind.
‘What are you going to do?’ Fethan asked.
Thorn did not reply. He placed the mind on a rock, brought the butt of his weapon hard down on it. Then, perhaps remembering Mr Crane, he ground the fragments to dust and scattered it.
‘We’ll leave the rest for the clear-up crews,’ said Thorn. ‘They’ll be all over this place soon. Let’s head back to the city.’
Yes, thought Fethan, realizing he would not himself be leaving any time soon. Tanaquil would be needing some help during the time to come.
The sun was setting in a greenish explosion, and occasional stars beginning to brave the firmament. His armour stripped off and hanging, along with his other belongings, on temporary pegs epoxied to the side of Bonehead’s carapace, Anderson Endrik trudged towards a new horizon. His legs were aching from this unaccustomed exercise, but he would get used to it—it wasn’t as if he was old or anything. He had just gone a few rounds with one of the fiercest creatures on this planet. However, he was averse to stopping again, no matter how entitled he was to rest. It was difficult pretending not to notice how, each time he did stop, the sand hog extruded its sensory head to observe him and tapped a little tattoo on the ground with the tip of one crawler limb.
The devastation of broken rock on the draconic plateau was far behind, which was annoying as it now took him a little while to spot a suitable rock on which to sit. When he did see one, he sank down with a sigh — his back towards Bonehead—then used a cloth to mop the sweat from his bald pate.