Gridlinked

(Solstan 2407)

A scream, silent in underspace: a flicker of existence between the shadows of stars. It is known, the scream, but quince never remember. For Cormac there was merely a flash of black and red, a Dante glimpse, and he was completing his diought far from where he began it.—on mince and slices of quince, which they ate with a runcible spoon. Is that right?

Times change: terms change, and it was an ancient nonsense rhyme. He was well aware of that as he fought to overcome the disorientation of mitter-lag.

And the runcible spoon flicks them across the galaxy… Hah! Myths rewritten. I'm a knight in shining armour only my hardware's on the inside.

Caught in the flaw of a jewel Cormac considered dragons. Ten seconds and 400 light-years later his mind caught up with his body. The scream was lost in a twilight place. Echoes. He stepped from the shimmer of the cusp. Down the steps from the pedestal, across the black-glass floor, then out of the containment sphere.

'Ian Cormac?'

'Yes.'

The sky was metallic red, the land pink rock with black striations. The horizon was more tightly curved than that viewed from the balcony of his 200th-floor apartment in New York. You noticed things like that, just as you noticed other immediacies. He sneezed, then breathed deeply. The air tasted of salt, and silica dust coated his tongue. After a moment of deliberation he turned his attention to the speaker.

'I am Maria,' said the girl, whose hair was red with no white light to show him different. Cormac held out his hand to silence her as his breath billowed in the chill air like lung-blood. He continued to survey the wasteland.

He gestured back at the runcible.

'Only one. Quince and light cargo. Few people come here,' he observed.

'Yes, Dragon set a limit of twenty thousand visitors a year.'

'Solstan year?'

'No… Colora,' she said, annoyed.

Cormac stared at her. 'I require assistance, not impatience,' he said, and waited.

'Yes, Ambassador,' she said grudgingly, rubbing her hand on a leather-sheathed hip. Cormac accessed his link and immediately had a report up in his visual cortex. Rather than download it into his memory, he speed-read it while he studied his surroundings.

Maria Convala. Born on Aster Colora 2376 solstan, exobiologist attached to the Earth Central study team, ambitious, has connections with the Separatist movement, is rumoured to have been involved in the third Jovian putsch…

He smiled bleakly to himself and thought about his other operation in this sector. Earth Central had only chosen him to come here because he knew the systems, the people, those most likely to cause trouble. Even now the agents he was running were uncovering Separatist cell after cell in that razor-walk of undercover work. As soon as the first cover was blown, the whole investigation would collapse, but a huge proportion of the Separatist network would fall with it. Of course, what was going on here was different - wasn't it? Files blinked out and dropped away as he dismissed them as irrelevant. He allowed the smile to fade from his face and slid his attention to the iron slug of an AGC that had been left on hover nearby. He noted the rust streaks, and the plates welded to its underside. It was old. Such was always the way this far from Earth; things broke down, wore out, were infrequently replaced. He should consider himself lucky they had AGCs here at all. Was that why this sector was a hotbed of Separatism? Not enough luxuries?

'Shall we go?' he said, after a pause.

As they slid above the desolation, Cormac accessed information more relevant to his task. There was no life here but for the human colony, the sentient Dragon and the insentient Monitor (the latter two leviathans), nor had there been. There were no fossils, chalk deposits, or life-based hydrocarbons - nothing. Billions had been expended in deep-coring projects, sifting machines and lengthy geochemical studies. The questions remained: where was the ecology from which Dragon and Monitor had evolved? Was it on Aster Colora?

Dragon had immediately communicated with those first to arrive through the seed-ship runcible, and had been in continuous communication with the colony ever since, yet little had been learnt about it. Dragon relished oracular pronouncements and Delphic replies.

'Has Dragon given reasons for its request?'

'It was more of a demand than a request.'

'Clarify that.'

With her hand resting on the guide-ball of the AGC, Maria glanced at him. 'We have always been here on sufferance. It said, "Send me an ambassador"; there was no request.'

Cormac noted the bitterness. As a Separatist, he realized, this put her in an intolerable position. How could she campaign for political independence while Aster Colora could not rise above colony status? He wondered just how deeply in she was and how far she was prepared to go. He didn't want to have to kill her.

The red land flowed under the rock of the AGC until at length Cartis, like a spreading fungus, came into view. Like any tourist, Cormac booked into the metrotel. In his room he slumped on his bed and accessed Dragon/ human dialogue. Human politics were irrelevant in this case which, for Cormac, was a novelty.

'You continue to evade our questions concerning yourself,' asked a man only just holding on to his temper.

'Yes, this is true,' came the indifferent reply.

'Yet for years you have had access to our information systems. You know our history, the level of our technology… You perhaps know more about the human race than any single member of it. Why will you not tell us about yourself? Surely, this is little to ask?'

'You are correct: I know more about you people than any single member of your kind.'

'You have not answered my question.'

'Yes, I have.'

'I do not understand.'

'A very human trait.'

'Please explain.'

'The runcible has been developed to the stage where it is near perfect in function. Humankind can now step from star system to star system with ease. On Earth, contra-terrene power is about to be introduced. In the system of Cassius the first Dyson sphere is under construction. The matter for this project came from a planet of Jovian size, demolished by a contra-terrene missile.'

'Do you fear us?'

'Should I?'

'Many assume that this is the reason for your reticence.'

'How old are you, Darson?'

'One hundred and seventy, solstan.'

'It is likely that you will live to be over eight hundred years old and then only to the of ennui.'

'Perhaps. How old are you?'

'Do you represent your race, Darson?'

'In the sense—'

'No, you do not represent your race. I cannot sit in judgment on you. Send me an ambassador.'

After the dialogue had ceased, Cormac opened his eyes and scratched at his head. He was tired; he had, after all, travelled a long way. He got off the bed and shed the clothes he had been wearing only a few hours earlier, personal time, in New York, and wondered, as always with cold humour, what the morning might bring. Of course he did not know whether it was day or night here, but such things he had for quite some time dismissed as irrelevant. He lived by personal time. It was the only way to stay sane.

The morning brought Maria with an analysis from Darson, the Dragon expert. Cormac read it over a breakfast of spiced eggs, honey fish and two pots of tea.

Darson's conclusion was that Dragon, in human terms, was insane. After reading it, Cormac dressed in his shabby survival suit and placed in his rucksack the single device he might need. On his way out he consigned the report to the waste disposal. Shortly he was sliding above redland, red under a bloody sky.

'What is your opinion of Darson?'

'He's a pompous old fart,' Maria replied, and Cormac liked her for that.

'He believes Dragon is psychotic,' he said.

'I am not qualified to judge,' she replied.

Expressionlessly Cormac watched pink sleet slide off the frictionless screen of the AGC. 'You are qualified to have an opinion.'

Maria hesitated before replying. Cormac glanced at her and could see her discomfort. She was, he knew, trying to decide how to influence him and what opinion it would be best to own. He repressed a smile. She was in a difficult position. Instructions had preceded him: no unnecessary contact, straight to Dragon, the crux. He could see that she was unnerved.

'The dialogue with Dragon is deceptively human… Darson seems to find it difficult to accept the alien.'

Cormac chuckled. The AGC dipped as Maria glanced at him. Unable to find any way of applying leverage, she had answered with the truth. He nodded to himself and looked ahead as she slowed the AGC and began to power it down. Before them lay the Junkyard: the tangible result of people's flouting of Dragon's rule of no machinery larger than a man within a two-kilometre radius. Many people had died here. Maria put the

AGC on hover. Cormac tapped the com on his belt as the door slid open.

'I'll contact you when I want picking up,' he said and left her.

After reaching the line of smashed AGCs and hover scooters that marked the two-kilometre boundary, Cormac shouldered his rucksack and climbed a rusting hulk. Even through the snow the four spheres were visible, standing like vast storage tanks on a plain of broken rock. After a moment he clambered down the other side of the boundary, peeking in the wrecked AGC at its occupants, whom no one had bothered to retrieve. As his feet touched the ground, the ground itself moved.

Pseudopods.

He stood very still and waited, the taste of salt turning acrid in his mouth. Five metres to one side of him the ground rippled and a thing like a metre-wide cobra exploded into the air. Cormac dropped to avoid a flying rock, then rolled, looked up. It arched above him, a single crystalline blue eye where a cobra's mouth should have been. The ground tilted and another explosion followed. Then another. Cormac put his rucksack over his head as explosion followed explosion and he was pelted with shards of rock. Then it ceased, and he stood in the silence.

Arrayed and curved like the ribs of an immense snake's skeleton, the pseudopods had become his honour guard. He walked down the spine.

In the face of total disaster, defiance is the only recourse… crazy street-lamps they have here.

Cormac allowed his mind to wander; random-access on subject:

Monitor: Insentient autochthon of the planet Aster Colora. It has the appearance of a Terran monitor lizard, but is a kilometre long and weighs an estimated 4.5 million tonnes. It is a silicon-based lifeform with an alien physiognomy…

Dragon… Monitor… What connection?

Why does Dragon want an ambassador?

Questions.

Answers?

Damn!

The two kilometres unrolled and eventually Cormac came before the curving edifice of tegulate flesh within an amphitheatre of pseudopods. He noted, to one side, a piece of machinery that could have been the comlink for Dragon/human dialogue: the one exception to its rule about machines. It was scrapped. He looked up at the pink-and-red-stippled sky, half cut by the cloud-tangled flesh mountain, and he waited.

'Ambassador.'

The voice came from the undershadows of the sphere, resonant but conversational.

'Ian Cormac… yes.'

'Names. All things can be named.'

As of skis on granular snow, a hissing issued from the undershadows. Cormac saw a swirl of movement, then a monstrous head shot towards him, propelled by a ribbed snake body. He stumbled back, fell. It rose above him; a pterosaur head with sapphire eyes.

'Are you afraid?'

Cormac choked back his immediate reply and said, 'Should I be?' His tone betrayed nothing of what he felt.

The head lunged at him, then jerked to a halt two metres above him. It smelt of cloves. Milky saliva dripped on him.

'Answer my question.'

'Yes, I am afraid. Does that surprise you?'

'No.'

The head moved up and away. Cormac stood and brushed himself off.

'I fail to see the purpose of that litde scene,' he said.

'You represent your race,' Dragon replied, 'and you can die.'

More than personal, then. Cormac did not react to the implications, but steadily returned the stare of those sapphire eyes.

'Why did you send for an ambassador.'

'Ah… you are human then?'

'Of course.'

'You do represent your race?'

'Such is my position, though I cannot speak for every individual in it.' He emphasized individual - why? He did not know; it had almost been instinctive. The Dragon head swayed, then twitched, shaking off an accumulation of snow.

'Running round the inside of your skull is a net of mycorhizal fibre optics connected to etched-atom processors, silicon synaptic interfaces and an underspace transmitter. Evolution is a wonderful thing,' it said.

That gave Cormac pause. Smoothly he said, 'They are the tools of my trade. I am human. I am a member of the races of homo sapiens, meaning "wise man", and a wise man will use what tools he can to make his tasks easier.'

'I am glad you are sure of your integrity.'

The head swayed to one side, then looked back. The tegulate skin of Dragon's body bulged and quivered as if it were taking a breath. There was a liquid groaning, then skin and flesh parted like that of a rotten fruit. Unable to hide his reaction Cormac retched at the stench that wafted from the pink vagina of a cave that appeared before him. There were more liquid sounds driven by deep rhythmic pulses. Cormac watched in fascination as a jet of steaming amniot ejected the foetal ball of a manthing wrapped in a caul. The caul burst open, spilling more of the Dragon's juices. Dracoman; Cormac named it instandy.

'A trifle dramatic,' he managed.

The manthing continued to moVe. It stood, showing no sign of imbalance. Again that sound: something else born; a flattened ellipse. The manthing picked it up and stripped away its caul. Legs dropped down from underneath it. Cormac could hardly believe he was seeing a table. The man approached and placed the table between them.

'To be human is to be mortal,' said Dragon. 'Do you play chess?'

'Yes, I…'

Movement from the table: a bulging, bubbling, like sprouting mushrooms and a Dragon chess set grew from its surface.

'Your move.'

For a moment Cormac could think of nothing else to say or do. He reached down and took hold of a pawn.

The tiling writhed in his hand, bit him. He yelled and dropped it. On the board it slithered forwards to a tegulate square.

'There is always a price for power,' said Dragon.

Cormac swore, then waited for his opponent's move, his confusion growing. What the hell was this? Some sort of megalomaniacal game or a test?

He hoped for the latter.

As he thought, he studied his opponent. The draco-man betrayed nothing, even when he suddenly moved and brought his fist down on Cormac's pawn. Cormac was taken aback.

'That is not in the rulebook,' he said, then damned himself for saying it. He knew what Dragon's reply would be.

'There are no rules here, just judgments.'

Cormac decided to react. He brought his fist down and crushed his opponent's king. 'Check,' he said dryly, and watched his opponent.

The dracoman stared at the board for a moment, then methodically began to crush every one of Cormac's pieces. White gore dribbled off the side of the table. Cormac turned towards the head.

'Surely by now you have enough insight into basic human reactions? You've been studying us for centuries,' he said.

'Every human is an individual, as you so rightly indicated,' observed Dragon.

Cormac was not sure he had done any such thing. He turned back to his opponent. 'I do not like subjective games,' he said, and knocked the table aside. The dracoman went for him with frightening speed. The hands reaching for his throat he was able to knock aside, but he was still driven to the ground. The hands reached for his throat again. He brought his knee up, then flung the clammy body from him. He regained his feet as his opponent did. The attack was still without finesse, and this time, not caught unawares, Cormac used his feet to counter it. The fight was over in seconds, the dracoman gurgling on the shale.

'Your second-to-last move was the wrong one,' said Dragon.

'I won.'

'That is not the issue.'

'What is?'

'Morality.'

'Hah, it is the winners who write history and it is the winners who invent morality. Existence is all the reason for existence any of us has, unless you believe in gods. I think you set yourself up too high.'

'No higher than an executioner.'

'You threaten again. Why? Do you have the power to carry out your threats? Do you think that you are a god?'

'I do not threaten you.'

'You seek to judge me then - to judge what I represent.'

'In the system of Betelgeuse there is a physicist working on some of the later Skaidon formulae. I predict he will solve some of the problems he has set himself.'

'And…?'

'Within the next century the human race will possess the intergalactic runcible.'

'What?'

The ground shook. A vast shadow blotted out half the sky. With his skin crawling Cormac turned, and there, making its ponderous gargantuan way across the rock-scape, he saw the Monitor; long as a city, its legs like tower blocks. Cormac watched it pass, knew its destination.

'Another threat?' he breathed. 'What is it that you want?'

The head rose higher and turned in the direction the Monitor had gone.

'Go back to Cartis. When you have seen what you must see, return here.'

Suddenly the head dropped down, and was hovering before Cormac.

'I control Monitor; without me it is mindless, but you know that,' it said. 'I have the power, the power to destroy. Could it be that you know what I mean?'

'I know the substance of your threat… your warning?' was Cormac's reply. After a pause he glanced down at the now unmoving dracoman. Then he swung his attention to his rucksack, back up at Dragon, shrugged and walked away, random accessing as he did so, so that nothing could be read from his expression:

Aster Cobra: A planet on the rim of the galaxy.

Maria had been waiting for him at the two-kilometre boundary. She was panicked, out of her depth.

'The whole city… Monitor…'

Cormac silenced her and took her place in the driving seat of the AGC. Halfway back to Cartis she had calmed enough to be coherent.

'Pseudopods broke through all round the city. I was outside when it happened… No one can escape and Monitor is heading in that direction. It has never done that before.'

'Dragon controls Monitor.'

'Why…?'

'Either it tests us or Darson is right.'

'Thanks for the comfort.'

Cartis was indeed ringed by pseudopods, but they parted to allow the AGC through. At the metrotel, Cormac used Maria's intentions and fear to get her to bed. He felt no remorse. She had been quite prepared to use him in any way she could for the Separatist movement. Lying on his bed he listened as the rumble of Monitor's arrival ceased, then he inspected the naked form lying beside him. An affirmation of humanity? he wondered. The question was irrelevant. All waited on him. Careful not to wake Maria, Cormac got off the bed and went to the bathroom. Ritualistically he shaved, cleaned his teeth and dressed. He then sat down and accessed the runcible grid.

Earth Central.

Dragon intergalactic.

Proven?

To my satisfaction.

With that he sent all he had learnt and surmised to the AI. It took less than a second. A test. Morality base evident, came the terse reply. Threat/warning?

Also.

Obliterate? Not feasible. Obviously has knowledge of device. ?

Part of the test.

It is disposable then? As me.

'Yes,' said Cormac out loud.

Go back, react, returned the silent thought of the AI. Cormac closed his eyes and closed access. Then, abrupdy, he departed the metrotel.

The honour guard remained and Cormac was soon back before Dragon. The dracoman was gone, the cave gone, the head a black silhouette against the red sky.

'Have you seen?' it asked.

'You can destroy Cards.'

The head turned. 'I mean - have you seen?'

Cormac squatted down next to the rucksack he had left. 'Yes,' he said, 'if we are judged and found wanting, what happens?'

'You have been judged.'

Cormac waited.

'I have been watching for twenty million of your years. I have seen every sparrow fall.'

'Yes… that is enough time to come to a conclusion,' said Cormac dryly. He entertained doubts, then, about Dragon's sanity.

'You will live,' Dragon said.

Cormac allowed the rigidity to leave him. 'Cartis… the Monitor… they were the final push, just to see…' he said, fully understanding now.

'Your AIs are extensions of your own minds, as I am an extension of other minds. Had you destroyed me for the few petty threats of this day, without regard or understanding of what I truly am, every one of your runcibles would have been turned inside out: converted into black holes.'

Cormac reached across and opened his rucksack. From it he took an innocuous blue-grey cylinder of metal. With a thought he deactivated it, then he put it away again. A similar, if somewhat larger device, had been used in the system of Cassius to demolish a gas giant.

'Now?' he asked.

'Now you must leave and I must leave. Your kind will meet mine. My task is done.'

'How will you leave?'

'I will not leave this planet.'

And Cormac knew. He left Dragon, and on his way saw Monitor come and lie down at its side like a faithful dog. Once in the AGC he did not look back.

Lest I be turned into a pillar of salt.

A white sun rose over Aster Colora, and hard black shadows were cast, like dice. Cormac later learnt it had been a contra-terrene explosion beyond mere human abilities to generate and contain, as it had been contained, in a two-kilometre radius.

It was Dragon's last message.

Not a trace of Dragon remained.