Brass Man

4

Cormac knew how many said that, in the eternal instant of runcible transmission, the travellers screamed. That being the case, Cormac must have screamed himself raw over the thousands of such journeys he had made. This time, strangely, as he stepped through the shimmer of the Skaidon warp of the first-stage runcible on the small Masadan moon, Flint, it was with a grey and distorted recollection of that eternal instant, of groping to comprehend madness, and nearly understanding it.

‘Are you all right?’ a woman asked him.

His visual cortex still trying to play impossible images, he blinked and stared down at where he was supporting himself on a cylindrical cleaning robot, which was obviously confused about what it should be cleaning up in such chaotic surroundings, so was perhaps glad of an excuse to stop.

‘Yeah, okay, just a bit dizzy.’

The woman said, ‘You want me to get you to an autodoc? Perhaps it’s the low gravity here. It can’t be the transmission—even first-stage runcibles are utterly safe.’

Cormac looked up and was unsurprised to see that she was wearing the overalls of a runcible technician, since such people were always highly defensive of a technology they themselves could not wholly understand. Only AIs possessed a full understanding—the human brain had not evolved that way. He pushed himself away from the cleaning robot. Yes, the gravity was very low here, but he had become accustomed to such changes over the many years he had travelled like this. That wasn’t the problem.

Any problems with this runcible while I transported? he asked.

No problem, agent. Nor with the one in Elysium, replied the Flint runcible AI.

‘Shit, I did it again!’

‘I’m sorry?’ said the woman.

‘I gridlinked. I gridlinked again!’

‘I’m sure you are very proud to possess a gridlink, but you should remember that most people in my trade now possess such technology as well,’ the woman lectured him, before flouncing off.

Cormac peered down at the cleaning robot, which was observing him with its binocular lenses—the irises inside whirring wide as if the machine was suddenly worried about him. He closed his eyes and concentrated, trying again to question the runcible AI. Visions of impossible shapes fled through his mind, and he felt a hint of some huge complex intelligence, then it was all gone and there were no more voices in his head. He opened his eyes and, after locating his position in the temporary dome, headed in long bouncing strides for the exit tunnels that led to where the shuttles would be waiting. He felt he must put aside this strangeness, and concentrate on the job in hand. He felt sure this inadvertent gridlinking somehow related to Blegg and, that being so, its cause would not become clear either soon or easily.

The exit tunnel was cylindrical, the bottom half of this cylinder being tough ceramoplastic, with a flat diamond-pattern floor, the top half being polarized chainglass. Gazing out to the tightly curved horizon, Cormac observed a twisted and monolithic metal beam protruding above a thin smear of sulphurous atmosphere, its jagged end silhouetted against the green and orange swirls of the opaline gas giant, Calypse. Other wreckage was strewn across the barren surface of this little moon: the huge cored-olive shapes of thruster motors, seared skeletons of ships and ground bases, glittering craters where molten metal had splashed, human bones. Destroying the shipyards here had been Dragon’s first blow against the Theocracy, before moving on to obliterate the weapons satellites that had held the surface population of Masada in thrall. Dragon’s subsequent fall to its death had produced the strangest and most controversial result of its arrival here: the birth of the race of dracomen from its own substance.

‘Ian Cormac?’

‘Yes,’ Cormac replied, as he ducked into the low structure from which other short tunnels branched to insystem shuttles crouched around the facility. The questioner he instantly recognized as a Golem.

‘I’m to take you to Masada. We have a shuttle with U-space facility available.’

The Golem, in appearance a squat man of endearing ugliness—obviously from a later series made when Cybercorp discovered that Apollonian perfection made potential purchasers nervous, if not jealous—gestured to a nearby tunnel and led the way. ‘This will be our first landing on the planet itself—a partial quarantine still exists, but it has been decided we can’t learn anything more from up here. There are more ships ready to follow us down.’

‘How will you proceed from now on?’

‘Establish a base on the surface, then limit transport thereafter. Our first job will be to secure all Jain artefacts, then ensure that there has been no further… contamination.’

‘That could take some time.’

The Golem shrugged. Cormac guessed ECS would prevent free travel of the Masadan population to and from their own world until telefactors and AI probes had finished deep-scanning the single continent and ocean thereon. Masada could remain partially quarantined for centuries yet. He surmised that these new members of the Polity would not be allowed to object too strongly.

‘Would those artefacts include the mycelia inside Asselis Mika?’

The Golem glanced at him. ‘Your needs have primacy. If you wish to take all of those containing Jain mycelia with you, then you may. There will certainly be enough other stuff down there to keep us occupied for a long time.’

‘And the dracomen?’ Cormac asked, as they entered the airlock into the shuttle and headed for the cockpit.

‘They have been deemed innocent of the crimes committed by their forebear and so have been urged, separately from the human population of Masada, to join the Polity.’

‘They might refuse,’ said Cormac, thinking ‘innocent’ might be stretching the term.

‘They have already accepted.’

Cormac took the co-pilot’s seat, while the Golem took the pilot’s. They both strapped in.

‘Very wise of them,’ he remarked.

‘Yes, quite.’

Gazing ahead as the shuttle launched and rose from the barren moon, Cormac observed the glint of other ships in the darkness of space. Soon after he arrived on Masada, the place would be swarming with ECS troops and monitors, technicians, research scientists and Golem. He had no doubt that the dracomen were more aware of the actual realities than were the planet’s inhabitants. Simply put, Masada must be controlled by ECS because of the potential danger from Jain artefacts on its surface, and the dracomen must join the Polity, for such dangerous creatures could not be allowed to choose a side that might be against it. The alternatives were numerous and lethal. The Jack Ketch AI had earlier enumerated them for Cormac.

Skellor smiled to himself as he pressed together the seventeen fragments of the crystalline Golem mind. Obviously, the Golem—Aiden and Cento—had torn the object from Crane’s body and smashed it irreparably with a blast from a pulse-gun. But what was irreparable to Polity technology was not necessarily beyond Skellor’s ability. What most amused him was that the mind had broken along established virtual fractures, for Mr Crane’s mind had always been in seventeen fragments—this was the nature of the Golem’s madness and, strangely, what had made sanity and autonomy a recoverable objective. His mentality fragmented like this, Mr Crane operated as the killing machine the Separatists required, committing the most horrifying crimes and maintaining them in memory as disjointed unrelated incidents, meanwhile always attempting to reconnect the seventeen fragments and regain self. This he would perhaps have done sometime in the next thousand years. Thus it was that the Golem had obeyed his Separatist masters—in that dangerous and erratic manner entirely his own.

Roughly holding the fragments in the lozenge shape they had once formed, Skellor began to send Jain nanofilaments into it, clouding the crystal as they penetrated between the lattices. Concentrating on a single clean shear, he pulled the two faces together. Pecking along them on an atomic level, he cleared away oxygen atoms from the oxides formed on each surface, also organic dirt and minerals—anything that should not be there. Drawing this detritus away, he found all the major neural pathways, cooling nanotubes and s-con power grid wires, and aligned them. There was some distortion caused by relieved stresses in the crystal, which he recreated. The two faces, drawn together by the Van Der Waals force of atomic attraction, snapped back together as if they had been held apart by elastic, and it was all he could do to pull the filaments out of the way to prevent them from being trapped and crushed. Two of the fragments had become one, and now he detected the nightmarish mutter from this piece of a mind.

For a moment, Skellor refocused his awareness on his surroundings. Not having acquired the same resources he had possessed on the Occam Razor, he was unable to split his awareness during such an operation, which was as intricate as anything he had done before. He briefly noted the man Inther, lying naked on his side nearby, bleeding to death from where Skellor had torn his arm away. Marlen was motionless in his hole, though Skellor’s control of him was not so strong as to prevent the man from showing by his expression the terror he felt. Mr Crane’s body stood perfectly poised, its balance system operating as if he was already alive. The human arm Skellor had grafted on to replace the missing ceramal one only looked out of place at the raw shoulder joint, with its swollen organo-optic interfaces. Inside that body Skellor had built a device acting as a heart, lung and nutrient supply—pumping round the arm an artificial blood supply. The human limb would last perhaps six months like this, but hopefully Skellor would not need it for so long. He returned his attention to Mr Crane’s mind.

Interface after interface bonded, and the mutter of the Golem’s mind grew loud to Skellor’s senses. Delving into this he replayed scenes of murder and atrocity and perpetual imbalance. Quite often, Mr Crane had been as much a danger to the people who tried to control him as he was to those he was sent out to kill. Skellor noted how Crane disobeyed some direct orders when the program, aimed at regaining the Golem autonomy, interfered with the task at hand. Sometimes this program could briefly displace an order to do murder so that, rather than kill, Crane found external iconic representations of each virtual fragment of his mind. Rather than kill a man, Crane had once stolen a pair of antique binoculars. Rather than kill he had once taken a Tenkian dagger. Even with the Separatist orders re-establishing, Crane would not carry out the kill order, for, in the twisted logic of this insane Golem, the theft became the killing.

As the final physical fragments of the mind came together, Skellor decided that his own orders must not be disobeyed in any manner, so he proceeded to wipe the program intended to reassemble the virtual fragments of the Golem’s mind. But he couldn’t. As soon as he attempted to wipe the program, the mind began to break in other places, in a way that would make it unusable. Annoyingly, what could make Crane whole and sane and autonomous was also preventing him from sliding into true oblivion. Remove it, and the mind would fall apart. Skellor realized he could erase everything and start again, but doing that would result in the loss of the Mr Crane he wanted. This he found aesthetically displeasing. To possess godlike powers, Skellor felt, meant he should please the poetic as well as the pragmatic part of his soul.

With the mind now cupped before him like an offering to this brass god, Skellor stood and approached Crane’s body. There was a Jain substructure inside the Golem: it supplied the power lost by two broken micro-piles, and was mopping up spilt radioactives. It would also repair him, just as similar mycelia had repaired the calloraptor creatures Skellor sent after Ian Cormac on Masada. Mr Crane, dangerous though he used to be, would now be formidable.

Skellor reached out and pressed the lozenge into its recess inside the Golem. It snicked into place, light flickering around it as the structure inside him made optic connections. The Jain substructure, taking on a brassy hue from its surroundings, reached out like sharp fingers and drew closed the ceramal torso as if it was made of rubber. The superconducting grid then rolled across and joined, then finally brass melted and flowed across the surface. After a moment Mr Crane—not Skellor—opened those black eyes.

‘Welcome back to your life,’ Skellor told the Golem.

‘Mr Pendle…’ began Agent Bryonik, leaning back, his fingers interlaced beneath his chin.

‘Is this entirely necessary?’ Pendle interrupted, waving a hand at their surroundings.

Bryonik wondered what his problem was: this was genuinely in the style of a premillennial police interrogation cell, with a scarred and coffee-stained plastic table, magnetic tape recorders, strip lights…

Pendle went on, ‘Do you know how many times I’ve sat in rooms like this?’

‘Enlighten me.’

‘Precisely seven hundred and twenty-three.’

‘There are worse alternatives.’

‘And do you know how many times that has been said to me?’

Bryonik grimaced, and through his gridlink accessed Penal Storage to change the VR format. He didn’t like being predictable, so rather than go for the Caribbean island, bright shirts, and drinks with umbrellas in them, he cobbled his own scenario. Now the two men stood in the uppermost viewing gallery of the Eiffel Tower. Pendle eyed the bank of screens to one side, showing a steel-recrystalizing robot as it slowly traversed one of the ancient structural members.

‘This is a new one,’ commented Pendle. ‘In my time the damned thing had fallen down. When did they put it back up?’

‘About seven years after you died.’

Pendle’s case had a certain historical significance — one of a defining variety of crimes committed around the same period. Prior to then it would have been called what—assault?

‘Thirteen years ago, then.’

Bryonik raised an eyebrow.

‘You know I’m real-timed. Believe me, I’ve been counting the years in here.’

‘How long have you got?’

Pendle shrugged. ‘It varies. I’ll never be loaded to a Golem chassis while there’s someone more deserving, and that’s the way it always seems to be. I could be in here until the sun goes out.’

‘Is that so bad?’

‘I can experience all the virtual worlds imaginable, but one thing I can never do is forget that none of it is real. It’s a kind of hell.’

‘Will you tell me about your crime?’ Bryonik asked.

‘No,’ said Pendle, stepping to the window and gazing down. ‘Why don’t you tell me what you want with me. You’re not a student, you’re ECS down to the virtual chainglass shiv in your virtual boot.’

‘Again, it’s probably somewhere you’ve been before. Your memplant was loaded to main storage before we discovered you had sabotaged five Golem minds. Your history being non-technical and all your employment the same, it took a while to establish that you designed a program capable of all that it did. Luckily, we recovered the five before they killed anyone. The idea of five Golem Twenty-four schizoid psychopaths wandering around the Polity gets people in a cold sweat even now.’

‘Good enough summation—though I’d dispute “psychopath”. Sociopath is probably nearer the mark.’

Agent Bryonik held out his hand and an old memcrystal storage box appeared in it. ‘The deal brokered for you was that you told us everything. That’s how you escaped direct mind-to-mind AI interrogation.’

Pendle grinned nastily. ‘It’s how the AIs avoided it too. Knowing I’d designed that program, none of them really wanted to get inside my head—might have been dangerous for them. Even now, I’m in isolated storage. At least other souls-in-waiting get a social life.’

‘You lied, Pendle.’ Bryonik opened the box to reveal the eight empty compartments inside.

Pendle eyed the box. ‘I told you people back then: three crystals were destroyed in the process.’

‘The prototype Golem Twenty-five… You were at that launch for more than the free drinks and a chance of throwing elephant shit at Corp execs. We know that now.’

‘I was nothing to do with the attack.’

Bryonik was sure he could see a touch of panic in Pendle’s expression—understandable. If Pendle was found to have been involved in that act of terror, in which eighteen people had died unrecoverably, no deal could prevent him from being utterly erased.

‘The Golem was seen on the out-Polity planet Huma—the location, for the last twenty years, of a lot of illegal arms trading. Was the idea to break the Golem for Separatist reprogramming? This is something that has occurred since then.’ Bryonik could now see that Pendle really was scared. He might call his confinement in VR storage hell, but it seemed he preferred it to death.

‘Look, I wasn’t connected to the Separatist cause at all.’

‘As far as we could work out, you never had any training in designing sanity-smashing programs for AI.’

‘Okay, I admit it, I fucked up their prototype, but do you think, if I’d anything to do with the Separatists, I’d have been there to get nerve-gassed too?’

Bryonik decided to let Pendle sweat a little more, even though the man possessed neither pores nor skin. ‘Seems a good cover to me. And it’s surprising that you were memplanted. Not many there were—it was new technology then, and not wholly trusted.’ Bryonik shrugged. ‘All you sacrificed was your body.’

‘Honestly, agent, the program I loaded would not have broken the Golem to a reprogramming level. It would have been schizoid and maybe a touch sociopathic, and would have just become more difficult for them to handle. I never intended to make killers! You have to understand that innate Golem intelligence would have prevented any Golem, just for their self-preservation, from taking that path.’

Bryonik raised a hand. ‘Okay, calm down. We know you weren’t in with the Jovians. We just wanted you to admit you screwed with that particular Golem.’

‘Good.’ Pendle nodded to himself. ‘Good…You say it was on Huma?’

‘Yes, there, as far as we can gather, it received what is called by those in the know as an in-Kline. A memcording of the killer Serban Kline is looped into a Golem’s mind until there’s not a great deal left. Reprogrammed and remotely controlled, it makes a handy killing machine, though not a particularly efficient one. Mostly captured Golem are mind-cored and the chassis used as a telefactor.’

Bryonik then noted Pendle’s puzzled expression. ‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘It wouldn’t… The Golem.’

‘Wouldn’t what?’

‘It would use my program… the schizophrenia. Multiple personalities locked into a whole.’ Pendle looked thoughtful for a moment, then suddenly worried. ‘I can’t be blamed for this!’

‘For what?’ Bryonik asked dangerously.

‘For what it would have become.’

‘Pendle…’

It was some time before Bryonik got Pendle to explain. ‘It could be all of them: Serban Kline, Polity Golem, Separatist slave. It could be a most efficient and ruthless killer… immoral and amoral… and also utterly moral. I don’t know if it could be controlled.’

‘Dangerous then?’

White-faced, Pendle laughed weakly. ‘Oh yes, definitely that.’

Thorn felt a fierce delight as he watched the shuttle descend, a feeling reflected in Gant’s expression, even though his friend’s features were artificial. Yes, Thorn had definitely been very much interested in Lellan, the rebel leader—she was some woman—and had pursued that interest to a conclusion he and she found agreeable. But as the months dragged on, his discontent grew. He had been Sparkind—one of the elite soldiers employed by Earth Central Security—for most of his life and an ECS agent for the last few years, so was not the sort to sit on his hands at the bottom of a gravity well while things were happening out there. He wanted to be at the sharp end, no matter if it left him bloody.

Drifting down on AG, correcting only occasionally with the fire-blades of thruster motors, the delta-wing shuttle settled on already crushed-down flute grass at the edge of the dracoman town. The air disturbance elicited odd whistlings from some still-standing grass that was beginning to lose its side-shoots and thus take on the properties of the musical instrument after which the first Masadan colonists had named it. Dracomen of both sexes were now coming out of their dwellings to see what all the commotion was about. Mika, Thorn guessed, was probably still sound asleep after the hours of work she had put in on Apis, and Eldene still remained at her lover’s side.

‘Well, let’s go greet the boss,’ said Gant, heading towards the shuttle.

Following him, Thorn reached into his pocket and took out an item he had been saving for just this moment. He studied the circular wrist holster with its inset console and was unsurprised to see that it indicated some activity from the contained micromind. But then Shuriken, Cormac’s lethal little weapon, did have some strange bond with its master.

The airlock opened and Cormac jumped out, a slight shimmer over his face evidence that he was wearing Polity breather gear. As the agent came over, Thorn noticed other ships descending.

‘Im not being told much,’ said Gant, also looking skyward.

‘Well,’ said Cormac, ‘ECS will be establishing a facility down here, but we won’t be here to see it.’

‘What fish are we frying then?’ asked Thorn.

‘Curious expression, but perhaps apposite.’ Cormac told them who the fish was.

‘He survived it. The bastard,’ said Thorn.

Cormac nodded. ‘We go after him. I want you two with me. I also want Mika, for her expertise. You’re prepared to come?’

‘Damned right I am,’ said Thorn.

Cormac nodded. ‘The alternative is that you stay here under observation to make sure that mycelium inside you doesn’t pose a danger.’

‘A danger has already been revealed,’ Gant said, ‘though not one to others.’

But Cormac wasn’t paying attention. Thorn was holding out the Shuriken holster. Cormac took it and in one swift movement strapped it on his wrist. He grinned, then abruptly turned to Gant. ‘What danger?’

Gant showed him.

A low muttering vibration transmitted up through the soles of his boots, and Anderson wondered just how safe this place was, ever since the quakes began. No doubt, many would be glad to see it fall, as many blamed the quakes on the increased mining engendered by metallier expansion. Looking round, Anderson also wondered if people lived like this on old Earth, or out there amid the stars. He took in the crowds, the tall metal pillars supporting oblate houses of anodized metal and glass, the numerous walkways and floors all supported by webworks of steel trusses. He guessed not, for the purpose of suspending dwellings like this was to keep out some of the less welcome sand-crawling denizens of Cull, and by night these people would be safely sealed up in their homes.

‘And what did this Lafrosten see?’ Tergal asked him from the other side of the cafe table.

Still studying his surroundings, noting dust being shaken down from high surfaces, Anderson continued his tale: ‘Lafrosten saw a moon descend upon the Plains, but when he journeyed there he found no sign of it. Wounded by sleer, then deserted by the gully traders he had promised a fortune, for he was sure that rare metal ores would be found at the point of impact, he struggled on foot across the Plains. In the wilderness, a dragon came out of the ground and spoke to him. It said, “Come no further, this is now my realm and no man may walk here.” Lafrosten returned to the city of the metalliers, but none here believed his story. He told it then in all the towns from Bravence to the mountains of Rondure where, as a boy, I heard it. When the time of my trial as a Knight of Rondure came, I chose to retrace his journey and slay the dragon.’

Anderson turned to observe a long vehicle, segmented like a louse, labouring up the street, its vibration adding to that of the quake. Mostly the vehicles here were personal transports, like the one in which Laforge had brought them here, and he wondered at the purpose of this one. He then transferred his gaze further down the street and up to where, through the industrial fug and dust, the Overcity rested on the Sand Towers like some fairy castle, but with tangles of suspended roads leading to it. How big a quake would it take to bring that down?

Tergal regarded Anderson over the rim of his glass of lichen beer. ‘Why do you want to kill a dragon?’

Anderson returned his attention to the boy, then glanced aside at the boxes containing his own recent purchases. ‘Call it the impetuousness of youth.’ Anderson rubbed at the scars either side of his top lip where his lip tendrils had been removed. He grimaced, remembering the pain of the manhood ceremony and the joyful arrogance that came after. ‘In many of the ancient stories that’s what you do to dragons, slay them, though in many others they are companions and friends of man. It was the course I chose and, having chosen it, must pursue it, as that is the nature of the trial. Twenty years of travelling have changed my attitude somewhat.’

‘It doesn’t take twenty years by sand hog to get from Rondure to here,’ Tergal observed.

‘No, let’s say my journey has been rather convoluted and interesting, and I’ve learned a lot.’

‘But you still intend to slay the dragon?’

Anderson grimaced in irritation. ‘I’m too close now to turn aside. I’ll provide myself with the means of dragon slaying, and I will find the dragon. I rather suspect that what happens then depends on what the dragon itself does. Again, it is the nature of the trial—the journey being more important than arrival. But tell me, Tergal, what about your journey?’

Tergal sipped his beer, then gestured airily towards the window. ‘I’m a gully trader by birth. We don’t need any “trial” to set us travelling.’

‘Yes, but normally in caravans, not alone. Anyway, you said your stepfather was a minerallier,’ Anderson observed.

‘My birth father was sucked down into a sand maelstrom, and my mother then hooked herself to a man I had no liking for. I took Stone, my sand hog, and left to go take a look at the world. My journey has been aimless, but I wonder how much more so than yours.’

Anderson nodded, then picked up a roasted rock louse, broke it open, pulled out the thumb of flesh it contained, ate it. He eyed the ripples in his shot glass of quavit, before picking it up and taking a sip. ‘True, this has been a journey I’ve not wanted to end—but I don’t consider the acquisition of knowledge to be aimless.’

Just then, something crashed down amid the buildings on the other side of the street. Anderson noted that many citizens were now picking up their pace and looking about themselves nervously. But it seemed the quake had reached its peak, for it now began to tail off.

‘So why are you going to end your journey?’ Tergal asked—pretending negligent unconcern about the vibrating ground, Anderson thought.

‘I don’t think I will, really. I’ll travel through the Sand Towers up onto the Plains and find my dragon, then I’ll probably just carry on. I guess the reason I’m going is that I’ve seen all I feel inclined to see this side of the Towers.’

‘What about money?’ Tergal asked.

Anderson did not feel inclined to answer that. Being kind, he could suppose the boy was discomforted by the fact that Anderson had paid for their room, for the hog corral, and now for this food and drink. But, being himself, he also felt sure the boy was in the process of deciding whether or not Anderson was worth the risk of robbing. He’d made no move so far—Anderson had been watching—but then perhaps he was a meticulous and careful thief.

‘I suspect I won’t be requiring much money until I reach the other side of the Plains. There’s not many people live between here and there,’ the knight replied.

‘But you’ll be needing supplies.’

‘Yes.’

‘Then so will I.’

Anderson watched as the boy picked up the small rucksack he had brought along in Laforge’s small diesel car, and opened it on the table to reveal some fine lumps of yellow jade. He felt a sudden tiredness at this intimation of Tergal’s past, combined with a hope for the boy’s future. That he intended to use his ill-gotten gains to obtain supplies perhaps meant he did not intend to rob Anderson, at least yet.

‘You think I’ll find a buyer for this here?’ Tergal asked.

‘I should think so. You intend to accompany me then?’

Tergal replied, ‘I’ve seen a maelstrom and a singing tornado, and I once saw the Inconstant Sea fleeing between dunes. But I have never seen a dragon.’

Was that it? Was the boy now attracted to a different and less criminal adventure? Anderson hoped so but, knowing human nature so well, he did not have much faith in redemption. As Tergal stood, Anderson returned his attention to his surroundings, and then, as the boy moved away, turned his mind to other thoughts.

The quake had ceased, and as always Anderson wondered what was causing them. He had read about earthquakes in the library of Rondure, just as he had read about so many other things that for many years had no bearing on the people of Cull. Here, on this old world, the radioactives cycled up from the planet’s core were all but spent, and as the magma cooled, the crust just grew steadily thicker. Plate tectonics were nonexistent—the crust was one big plate. There should be no earthquakes.

There was little sign of the drastic procedure Gant had described, but then, as Cormac knew from personal experience, it was possible to cell-weld the most severe injuries so that no visible sign remained. Apis lay flat on the surgical table with thin optic wires leading to probes in his body, and the various tubes connecting him to the area of the autodoc Cormac recognized as containing its filtration equipment. Eldene glanced up from the chair she had sprawled in beside the supine Outlinker, before returning her attention to her lover. She looked tired — worn out by worry.

‘So you’re back,’ was all she said.

‘What is Mika’s prognosis for him?’ Cormac asked. At her puzzled expression he added, ‘Does she say he’ll recover?’

‘She doesn’t know. She said broken and dying filaments inside him will perpetually poison him, while others still alive may start to grow out of control,’ Eldene replied, then looked past him as the door behind opened.

Cormac looked round and studied Mika as she entered the room: tired, obviously, and perhaps a little guilty. She gazed at Apis, then turned her attention to Cormac.

‘The quarantine is over,’ she suggested.

‘Not entirely. First all the Jain technology here must be secured and made safe.’

‘All Jain technology,’ Mika stated, again trying not to make it a question.

Cormac nodded towards Apis and Eldene. ‘These two will have to stay under observation here in a Polity base. You and Thorn will also remain under observation while you accompany me.’

Eldene abruptly stood up. ‘Apis cannot be moved.’

‘He won’t be moved, not until it is safe to do so,’ Cormac replied.

Eldene looked at Mika, seeking some kind of support, some reassurance from her.

Mika said, ‘There will be doctors and surgeons coming here with abilities equal to if not in excess of my own, and with more… more Polity technology to employ. I am primarily a research scientist. He will do better with them.’

This seemed to satisfy Eldene and she just as abruptly sat down again.

Cormac again studied Mika’s expression. ‘What went wrong?’

Mika rubbed at her face. ‘In the days when we couldn’t correct them, faults in DNA led to cancers. The chemical machinery of the mycelia I made is not DNA, but is just as complex.’

‘Faults?’ Cormac raised an eyebrow.

‘There’s something you must see,’ said Mika, gesturing for Cormac to follow her. When Gant and Thorn also moved to follow, she held up her hand. ‘This is for the agent only.’

The two seemed set to object, but with a look Cormac stilled any protest. He then leavened this by leaning in close to them and whispering, ‘Get your stuff ready—we ship out as soon as possible.’

Mika led him out of the surgical facility and into a room kitted out much like a research laboratory aboard a spaceship. Once Cormac closed the door, she indicated a cylindrical chainglass tank standing on one of the counters.

‘That’s what I took out of him,’ she said.

Cormac studied the tank’s contents. The mycelium was moving slowly and in some places had etched marks into the tough chainglass. He noted the woody, fibrous structure of the thing, and the nodal growths within it.

‘Interesting, but what is it you want to tell me?’

‘It is difficult to admit to error, sometimes.’

Cormac instantly understood why she had not wanted the others present, and he waited for her confession.

She continued, ‘The mycelia I made, or rather transcribed, must have been faulty, though I’ve yet to discover what that fault is. Certainly it is some kind of copying error in its contained blueprint—its DNA, if you like.’ She gestured at the writhing mycelium. ‘These are becoming cancerous. I can only surmise that the nodes you see there are tumours.’

‘You said the mycelia you made?’

She nodded. ‘Probably this is not the case in the original, and the four I made are all exactly the same.’

‘So what happened to Apis, will happen to Eldene, Thorn and yourself?’

‘Yes, it’s happening now.’

Cormac considered her guilt. ‘Apis would have been dead by now without it, as would you after being shot by that Theocracy soldier.’

‘But Thorn and Eldene…’

Cormac grimaced. ‘You made a mistake, Mika.’ He thought about Elysium and the deaths he himself had indirectly caused there. ‘But in your time you have saved more lives than you have taken—that’s the best any of us can hope for.’

‘But I still made a mistake,’ Mika said woodenly.