Obtaining the nanochanger had been easy. A simple instruction to Bloc, and the reif had been forced to toss one over the sailing ship’s side. Setting it working, however, had not been so simple. Vrell quickly realized that opening or scanning the device would destroy or corrupt its delicate internal components. In the end he instructed Bloc to next throw a reification cleansing unit over the side. Now the changer was plugged into the cleansing unit and working: injecting microscopic nanofactories into the fluid Vrell was passing through the cleanser. This fluid was then circulated through a vessel which took the place of a human body, and inside that the factories clung, just as they would attach inside human veins: little volcanic limpets pumping out masses of complex nanomachines. After hours of scanning these, Vrell selected one variety of machine particularly suited to his purposes.
Now, before Vrell, in the laboratory he had recently opened, antigravity containment suspended a mass of nanites cultured from his original selection, in a saturated solution of salts within a study pit. Vrell peered down at the watery lens-shaped mass. It was white but with a metallic hue, and shifted slightly as the nanite clumps inside it readjusted. While operating the pit through his control units, Vrell assessed a virtual representation of one of the nanites in his mind. The nanite came with its own toolkit, which could be programmed by radio. It was a supreme technological creation, and only by now using the system of ship’s computers and human minds, earlier put together for U-space calculations, could Vrell fully interpret it, and change it.
The original nanites, on activation, replicated a millionfold before searching for bone. This they bored through in search of marrowbone stem cells. Their purpose was then to deliver this base genetic template to the other nano-builders throughout the human body. Stripped down to its skeleton, one of these nanites formed a perfect framework to take other molecular tools. However, its present tools could serve the Prador’s purpose: the catalytic debonding molecule made to bore through bone could, with a small alteration, be changed to bore through Prador shell—merely a bonus, as Vrell expected them to gain access through the Prador lung. Those tools which enabled the nanite to recognize marrowbone stem cells could be adjusted to detect genetic sequences Vrell had obtained from the dead Prador in the drone cache.
The tools that then enabled the nanite to locate other builder nanites and home in on them Vrell altered to locate certain potassium compounds found in Prador nerve tissue, and other tissues in the Prador lung. Upon finding a nerve, it then travelled along it until it hit a synapse, then it returned to its replication stage digesting surrounding tissue to build copies of itself. Finding lung tissue, it did the same. While dying, the victim would be breathing more nanites into the air.
Once the virtual shape was performing to Vrell’s satisfaction, he loaded its parameters to the pit, before turning his attention to the delivery system. Some hours later he held a small wedge-shaped container that fitted perfectly between the faces of one claw. Gaseous dispersion. A few nanites settling on Prador shell or in the lung would be enough, for the right Prador.
With black amusement, Vrell well understood the King’s need to destroy any Prador, outside his own family, potentially infected by the Spatterjay virus. Such a creature would undoubtedly make a lethal enemy.
Through omniscient senses from a commanding position Zephyr understood that Death—the enemy—took many forms and realized that he must defeat every one of them. The creatures that had died in the sea all around him were just the result of a concentration of Death’s forces in this area; elsewhere in the ocean that was going on all the time. But then creatures did not count as life, so did their passing count as dying?
‘What about hornets?’ asked his other half, Isis Wade, from somewhere down below.
Zephyr shook his head, but the question would not go away. He smacked his head against the mast a couple of times, but that did not help either, only dented the mast.
‘Individual hornets are insentient, yet the whole can be ourselves,’ Wade persisted. ‘You cannot make arbitrary distinctions like that.’
‘Then they died,’ Zephyr replied out loud, ‘and I must do what I must do.’
‘You can’t fight Death, nor kill it. Death is an absence of life not the presence of a tangible something.’
‘I have the means of striking a blow here.’ So saying, the Golem sail again cracked his head against the mast.
‘Assume that everything you say is correct,’ said Wade. ‘Surely you see that by killing you serve Death, even if it is Death itself you kill.’
Zephyr’s head felt strange now, and that had nothing to do with its recent impact with the mast. The Golem sail looked up as shadows occluded the morning sky and both Huff and Puff came in to land on nearby spars.
‘What’s that about striking blows?’ asked Puff.
‘I will strike a blow against Death, my enemy,’ Zephyr replied.
The two organic sails turned to look at each other. Huff shrugged, and Puff turned back to Zephyr. ‘We’ve been hearing bits of your conversation with that Wade fella when he climbs up here. Death is an enemy of us all, I suppose.’
‘Exactly,’ said Zephyr.
‘But it’s not a thing you can kill,’ Huff added. ‘Without it there would be no life.’ Huff pointed down to the roof of the midship deck cabin.
Zephyr peered down and observed a pile of meat—juvenile rhinoworms the two other sails had bitten into pieces.
Creatures… not alive … alive?
Zephyr felt a coil of angry buzzing inside himself. Hornets killed to find food for the hive. Was that wrong then? If hornets did not feed, the hive died, and so served Death. If hornets fed, then they killed, and again served Death. By living, all creatures served Death
‘You know, somewhere in your heart,’ interjected Wade, ‘that your belief is paradoxical.’
‘But it is my belief!’ Zephyr bellowed.
‘You what?’ asked Huff.
‘And thus we get to the heart of the issue,’ said Wade. ‘I’ll have to leave you for a moment — the damned winch just jammed.’
Focusing on Huff, Zephyr shouted, ‘If I don’t believe I can kill Death, I will not be me! I will be only part of something!’
‘You’ve lost me there,’ replied Huff.
Extruding his silvery eye from a metre down in gritty mud, Sniper observed the spaceship, now visible through the settling murk. It extended out of sight to his right and left, and the side of it rose like a steel cliff before him. Having got this close he wondered What next? If he could get inside, there was no problem: what he would then do involved every missile left in his weapons carousel. The problem was penetrating that armour.
Sniper listened to the sea-bottom sounds at the lower end of the aural spectrum. Somewhere below him, the seismic activity of packetworms; a kilometre back he heard the scuttling of prill and glisters returning to the area, attracted by the organic detritus; and somewhere far to his left the whooshing and snapping sounds of a turbul shoal already feeding. Also, from somewhere above, there came rhythmic crumps as if someone were walking on the spaceship’s upper hull. Now extruding one of his main spatula-ended tentacles, he activated the scanning devices it contained, modifying the emitted infrasound to mimic the other sounds around him. It took some minutes for him to clean up the return signals, in which time he also detected ultrasound and infrasound scans from the ship itself. In his mind he built up a fuller picture of what lay before him, and felt a sudden surge of excitement, though quickly curtailed.