Gridlinked

16

Pelter was not good at waiting. He sat in a form chair by the window of his room and stared at the storm. It was like staring into a deep green fish-tank. He accessed the local server to see what he could find out about this weather that the people here so readily accepted. As with any aug, the information scrolled up on his visual cortex. It was like having a third eye directed at a computer screen, and it took some getting used to. The background of this screen, unlike for other augs, was now a vast wall tegulated with hand-sized scales.

The information he was viewing was not what he wanted. He did not want to know how many thousands of litres were hitting the ground every second, nor did he want to know about the giant fire far to the south which was feeding the weather system. With a thought he initiated one of the aug's search engines, and, with another thought, primed it and sent it on its way. The information he wanted clicked up: a few numbers on a white background. Two hours, then. He closed off the link to the server and began to disconnect from the aug.

If you are gridlinked, the information is downloaded directly into your mind.

'Who said that?'

No need to speak out loud, Arian. I can hear your thoughts.

'Dragon,' Pelter said. He did not want to just think what he had to say; that was too intimate.

Yes.

'I've been waiting for this. Is he still on Samarkand?'

He is, but that is not where you must go.

'I go where I choose.'

Hubris is at Samarkand. Do you think you could avoid being detected?

Pelter crushed the rage that rose up inside him. The storm - the green beyond the window - was taking on shape. It now had scales.

'What would you suggest then?'

/ will tell you where you can wait for him. Where, when the time is right, you may kill him.

'When the time is right?'

/ too have a purpose.

Somewhere a pterosaur head was speaking against red light. The smell of cloves, so strong it made Pelter wince, invaded his room. Behind him he heard Mr Crane move.

'Your purpose is to see him dead?'

Of course.

The hesitation was fractional, but Pelter was too close to miss it. Almost instinctively he activated Sylac's aug and his connection to Crane. Something had been touching that connection. He knew it just as someone knows when a thief has been in their private residence. The scales before him, he now realized, were the other augs, close and intimately linked.

'Where should I wait?'

Again that hesitation. Viridian. Ian Cormac will come, eventually, to Viridian. You will wait for him there.

'Thank you. Do you know what he will be doing there?'

He will be going to kill someone.

'Who?'

That is not your concern, Arian. Just let him complete his mission, then you can kill him.

Pelter used Sylac's aug to interpret the chaos of scales. A sorting program gave him the form of a web. At the centre of that web was an obese shape, a human taking on the form of his master. From this shape he felt the controlling link and the force of alien personality.

'What forces will he have with him? Do you know that much?'

There may be four Sparkind. Perhaps he will have others, but they are inconsequential.

'Sparkind are not.'

You have substantial weaponry. You also have Mr Crane.

'Don't worry. When he sets foot out of the runcible installation he is a dead man.'

On Viridian, Arian Pelter, I want you to wait. Let him do what he has come to do.

'Merely an expression. He will be a walking dead man. I will hold back for you, for all that you've told me. But tell me, how is it that you know all this?' The scales were fading now and Pelter could see his own bitter expression reflected back at him. The reply he got now was faint.

Their runcible AIs, Arian Pelter, so arrogant and so sure that they cannot be overheard. I listen to them all the time and, sometimes, I find things even they have missed. I wish I had found it earlier. Samarkand would not have been… necessary…

The personality turned away. The pterosaur head faded. But the links, all through, remained. Pelter summoned up an image of a thin-gun pointed at his face, and used it as an anchor. It took a huge effort of will as he fought the cold pain in the side of his head and disconnected from the Dragon aug. Scales faded, links that had been growing ever stronger faded. He snorted the smell of cloves from his nostrils and stood.

'Like hell I will,' he said, and walked over to his bedside table. There he picked up his comunit and made a particular connection.

'Arian,' Grendel said to him. 'Do you have what you… need now?'

'In one respect, yes. In others, no.'

'I do not understand.'

'It's a matter of hardware again,' said Pelter. 'Can you meet me at the warehouse.'

'The storm…'

'This is important, Grendel, and the storm's nearly over.'

'Very well. I'll see you there in an hour or so?'

Pelter clicked off the unit and turned to Mr Crane. 'Nobody controls me, and nobody controls you but me. Did they think I was so stupid?'

He gazed through the window. His problem did not lie in the aug, but in the force of the personality behind it. Dragon, he knew, could swamp him with a direct connection. Here, of course, the connection was not direct. Dragon was somewhere deep in the Polity. The link was an obese man who called himself Grendel.

The muted roar had been constant over the last fifty solstan hours. Storm gullies in the old hydrocar streets could barely contain the consequent torrents, and a long night had come to Huma. Occasionally, when the wind parted the curtains of rain, you could see the layer of cloud poised above like a ceiling made of old green jade. Stanton looked down. A hydrocar was edging across the AGC park. He saw that there were few AGCs left there, and that those remaining had been secured with the car clamps that had so puzzled him. Under each of those covers, about which he had asked the drunk outside The Sharrow, was a grav coil that interacted with the car's AG. It effectively stuck the car to the ground. A precaution he understood perfectly when he saw a driver-less AGC being shunted down one of the streets by the wind. He stepped back from the window.

'Come back to bed,' Jarvellis said.

'You know,' he said, 'I'm getting impatient. And I would reckon Arian is probably spitting magma by now. This is bad. We don't need this, not after wiping out a covert ECS group here.'

Jarvellis sat up and slid back so she was resting against the headboard. Almost without thinking about it she started playing with her right nipple. Stanton had been in battles that were less exhausting than twenty hours in a room with this ship captain.

'Bad,' she said. 'You didn't have to close up one of the Lyric's holds, then clear out a few thousand litres of water and storm sludge. I've had more fun—' An abrupt beeping stilled her tirade for a moment. 'What the fuck is diat?' she said, releasing her nipple and scratching at her belly.

Stanton walked over to the bed, reached under the pillow and pulled out his small comunit.

'You bring it to bed?' Jarvellis said, her voice rising.

Stanton held his finger to his lips and pressed his diumb to the pad on the side of the unit.

'In the bar, five minutes,' said Pelter.

Stanton removed his diumb and dropped the unit on the bed.

'Woof, woof,' said Jarvellis.

Stanton gave her a dirty look. 'Any more of that and I can always tell him you're here. Even though he's agreed to your extortionate price, I'm sure he'd still like to talk about it.'

'He is not getting anywhere near me, nor is that lump of homicidal scrap.'

Stanton grinned and began pulling on his clothes.

The metrotel was primitive by Polity standards. The rooms had no sleepfields, the showers only squirted hot water, room service came by way of a grumpy robot trolley and, rather than drop-shafts for transport, the building merely had express elevators. Stanton hit the pad beside the sliding doors and waited impatiently. Shortly the doors hissed open to show Dusache and Svent. Stanton felt uncomfortable getting into an enclosed space with them.

'Action, do you think?' he asked them.

'Yes,' they said simultaneously, then looked at each other. Svent went on. 'The hotel server has it that the storm should be finishing soon.'

The doors hissed open onto the lobby and they walked out across thick carpet. By the glass frontage a beetle-shaped robot was droning back and forth, cleaning up the mess tracked in by the hotel guests. Dusache glanced through that frontage before turning towards the bar.

'That isn't rain, it's a vertical sea,' he said.

To a certain extent Stanton agreed with him: it was a vertical sea, except when the wind turned it into a horizontal one. He followed the two mercenaries into the bar area and looked around. Corlackis and Men- necken were sitting playing cards at a low table. Corlackis had a stack of coins next to him and Men-necken a murderous expression on his face. He was gambling, and losing as usual.

'Where's Pelter?' Stanton asked. Corlackis shrugged and continued dealing out the cards. Svent and Dusache moved over to join the school. Svent looked up.

'He's on his way down,' he said.

The communication between the three of them was obvious, and why not? Any augs could link together like tfiat. What bothered Stanton was that such linkage was out of character for botfi Pelter and Dusache, just as wearing an organic aug was an odd thing for Svent to do. He walked over to the bar, where a metal-skin was waiting in obedient stillness.

'Give me a vodka cool-ice,' he said.

The skin immediately took up a glass and held it to the vodka optic. Stanton wondered if the ill-fitting shirt, bow-tie and black trousers it wore were an example of what passed for humour here. He watched the skin open the ice dispenser and select two of the rainbow cubes to drop into the vodka. It didn't need tongs - its metal fingers were tongs. Stanton was taking his first sip when Pelter walked in, Crane's presence behind him so expected now that Stanton found himself beginning to ignore the android. Perhaps not a healthy habit to get into.

'We go to the warehouse now,' Pelter said.

'You sure that's a good idea? It's only a little while until this shit stops,' asked Corlackis, glancing up from his hand.

Pelter moved further into the room. He stared at

Corlackis until the mercenary looked up again. There was a brief uncomfortable silence until Pelter spoke.

'Whether or not it is a good idea is irrelevant. You will go outside and get the transporter round to the front here. You will do it now.'

Corlackis dropped his cards on the table and stood. He glanced past Pelter to Mr Crane, then headed from the bar. Mennecken stood and followed him. Stanton watched the two of them go. Corlackis would do what he was told. He would complete whatever task was given to him and he would take the money. He would not try to kill Pelter; he was not that stupid. Pelter now looked at Stanton.

'A word,' he said and nodded over to the bar. The others watched them with curiousity as they moved beyond hearing range. By the bar Stanton waited on what Pelter had to say. Pelter reached up and touched the organic aug. Strain further distorted his features. He lowered his hand and glanced at Mr Crane. The android had now reacquired those small movements it had been devoid of over the last few days.

'You have a stun pistol?'

Stanton tapped his trouser pocket. 'I liked that one Corlackis has. They're cheap here,' he said.

'Very well. When we are at the warehouse and when I give you the signal, I want you to hit Dusache and Svent with it.'

'What?… Why?'

'Just do it,' said Pelter.

'As you say, Arian.'

Pelter closed his eyes for a moment and then glanced across at the two mercenaries. They were looking back with puzzled expressions.

Pelter went on. 'Contact Jarvellis. Have her at her ship within the hour. If she wishes she may stay in her cabin, but just make sure she has the B hold open for us, and is fully prepared to open the A.'

Stanton moved off to one side to do as bid, while Pelter returned to the others. He was starting to get an uneasy feeling about all this. Jarvellis, of course, greeted his news with a stream of very colourful invective. He grinned, pocketed his comunit, and joined the others.

'Is Grendel meeting us out there?' he asked Pelter.

'He is.'

That ended the conversation, but gave Stanton an inkling of what was going on. They waited in silence until the transporter glided in from the AGC park to the front of the metrotel.

The trip out to the warehouse was a risky venture. The old AGC transporter, effectively a long alloy box with a cab bolted on the front and turbines on the side, swayed and plummeted as the walls of water it passed through confused its ground-level detector. The noise was tremendous, but not enough to cover Corlackis's quiet swearing at the controls.

'We could take it up,' Mennecken suggested, after an errant and ferocious gust of wind tried to slam the vehicle against a building.

'Not one of your best ideas, brother.' Corlackis said.

Stanton, who along with the others was clinging to the webbing straps distributed along the inside of the box, had to agree. If Corlackis lost control here, they at least had a chance of getting out alive. He looked at Mr Crane, who was standing alone in the middle of the floor, and wondered if the android had magnetic feet. He appeared to have been welded there.

Eventually they left the old hydrocar streets behind and came to a wide scattering of buildings like giant Nissan huts. Through the front screen Stanton saw a crack of light opening out, as the doors of one warehouse slid aside. Corlackis brought the transporter in through those doors and landed it on the plascrete flooring. As Stanton followed Pelter out into the warehouse, he looked with renewed wonder at their most recent acquisition.

The dropbird had the appearance of a winged egg, when you could see it at all. Stanton found that if you stared up at it for too long, it faded into the background of the warehouse. It was only by glancing down at its landing skids and reacquiring it from them that you could make it out again. Of course, while dropping through atmosphere, the skids would be inside it and the bird would be invisible to the naked eye. It was also radar inert, and pretty difficult to nail down with any other kind of scan. It was laughable, Stanton thought, that the likes of Pelter believed they had any chance of beating the Polity. This was Polity manufacture and it was out of date, yet it was far in advance of most things Separatist groups could obtain.

'What are those?' asked Mennecken, pointing at the objects underneath each wing. This was the first time he had seen the bird.

The objects were visible. If you stared at them too long, it seemed as if they were floating in midair.

'AG lifters for transporting it,' Stanton replied.

'It has no AG at all?'

'No, grav motors are heavy and it needs to be as light as possible. Also, even when they're not operating, grav motors give off a recognizable signature. Of course, when they're operating you might just as well come in ringing bells and letting off fireworks.'

'It isn't completely necessary to state the obvious. I was just thinking of safety,' said Mennecken.

'There should be no problem. This is, as Svent would say, good tech.'

'If there is a problem?'

'Then there'll be a crater,' Stanton replied, turning away.

Corlackis stopped by a long open crate and inspected its contents. The rest of them were moving on to where the fat man was waiting with his two shaven-head heavies. Stanton did not trust Grendel at all, but then there were few people he did trust. He shoved his hand into his pocket and strolled casually after. He glanced at the crate in passing. Four missiles lay there. Each was two metres long and a handbreadth wide at its widest point, which was the middle. Each end of the missiles came to a needle point.

'Hyper compressed-gas drive,' said Corlackis, joining him. 'Nice.' This too was Corlackis's first time here. Only Stanton and Pelter had come out the first time.

'Again no AG. It would be detected on the way down,' said Stanton.

Mennecken gave him an annoyed look as they approached the others.

'It's all here, then,' said Corlackis, waving a hand at the other crates.

'Oh, yes, friend Grendel certainly knows how to lay his hands on some hardware,' said Stanton. 'By the way, get ready for the shit to hit and watch Svent and Dusache.'

Corlackis gave him a puzzled glance and clamped down on a question. They were too close. He slid his finger down the seam of his jacket and let it drop open. Mennecken saw him do this and did the same. The three of them came up behind Svent and Dusache.

Grendel was speaking. 'Then you are satisfied?' the fat man asked, holding his hands out before him as if measuring a fish.

'I am satisfied with the goods, but not where they are,' said Pelter.

Grendel shrugged and pointed to the ceiling.

Pelter went on. 'We can take the crates out to the Lyric. By the time we've done that the storm should have eased enough for us to move the bird.'

'As you wish. They are all your property now,' said Grendel. He was now puzzled. 'What else is it that you require?' he asked.

'Your position with your client assures me. of your silence in this matter,' said Pelter. 'Unfortunately, though the information with which he has provided me is good, I am still prone to distrust.'

'I know you have spoken with… him,' said Grendel.

Stanton looked from the fat man to Pelter. Who the hell was this client? What was this all about? He closed his sweaty hand round the handle of his stun gun. From the corner of his eye he noted movement. Mr Crane putting down the briefcase. Pelter turned and looked at Stanton.

'Now,' he said.

Stanton drew his gun and fired twice. Svent and Dusache gasped as if they had been gut-thumped and went face-down on the plascrete. Corlackis and Mennecken had pulse-guns, but seemed not to know where to point them. They backed up, trying to cover everyone. Stanton ignored them.

'Your client has told me that, in due course, Ian Cormac will go to the planet Viridian,' said Pelter. Grendel was moving back. His two heavies had their hands poised over their stomach holsters and were looking questioningly at the back of Grendel's head.

'What is this, Pelter? You're offline,' Grendel said.

Pelter went on. 'On Viridian I will be waiting for Cormac and there I will kill him. Your client's intentions in this matter are not clear to me.'

Suddenly Mr Crane surged forwards, his shoes kicking up sparks from the plascrete. As he had before he grabbed the two shaveheads by the fronts of their shipsuits and lifted them high in the air. A gun clattered to the ground and a second one flashed. There was a thump and smoke rose from Mr Crane's coat. There was no visible effect on him. He slammed the two men together and dropped them. One of them lay with his skull distorted and an eyeball displaced. Blood poured from his nostrils. The other man had managed to get his arms up in time. He was still alive and trying to drag himself away with two broken arms. Grendel turned and looked with horror at his two protectors. He turned back to Pelter.

'You can't do this. My client… they will come for you,' he said.

Pelter shook his head. He tapped his organic aug. 'You are the control here. I said I would not be controlled. Your client- he spat the word ' - is too far away to have that much influence. Without you, there is no one here to give orders.' He looked round at Mennecken and Corlackis. 'Kill him,' he said.

The two mercenaries straightened up. Stanton saw the confusion leave their expressions. Now they knew what they were doing. Two pulse-guns thumped as Grendel gave a frightened yell. The two hits caved in his chest, but such was his bulk that he did not immediately go over. A third hit took his arm off at the elbow, and a fourth took off the top of his head. Amazingly he walked a couple of paces after this before going over and sagging on the ground like a rotten fruit.

'What was that all about?' Stanton asked Pelter.

The Separatist tapped his organic aug. 'Dragon, trying to get control of me through him.' He pointed at the sagging bulk. 'He already had Svent and Dusache and a few hundred others here.'

'Dragon. You mean that Aster Colora—'

'Yes, I mean precisely that.'

'What about the others now?'

'It's subde control. He no longer has it.'

There was the thump of a pulse-gun to Stanton's left. He looked over and saw that Mennecken had finished off the remaining shavehead. Mr Crane was standing close and gazing down at the body, his head moving birdlike. Pelter glanced at him and Crane froze.

'Now we load up these crates. You will come in the dropbird with me, John. The rest of you go over in the transporter.'

Stanton nodded.

'What about these?' Corlackis asked, pointing his pulse-gun at Svent and Dusache.

'Remove their augs,' said Pelter.

'Could be dangerous without shutdown.'

Pelter just stared at him. Corlackis shrugged, then pulled something from his pocket. There was a click, and chainglass glittered. He stooped over Svent and Dusache.

'What about yours?' Stanton asked.

Pelter closed his eyes. In that moment he looked as if he was about to throw up. He reached up and gripped his second aug. It seemed to be squirming in his grip.

'This, you mean?' he asked, his voice tight and vicious.

Stanton stepped back. No telling how Pelter might react. He gripped the handle of his stun gun and kept his face expressionless. Abruptly Pelter snarled and tore the aug from his head. He threw it hard against the floor and stared at it. After a moment he stamped on it, men again and again. Finally he ground the fleshy remnants to pulp under his heel.

'That - about mine,' he said.

The layer of cloud was breaking like a crust, to expose lemon cracks. Pelter eased forward on the controls and the dropbird slid away from the warehouse, then up into the air. All its lift came entirely from the AG transport plates, and all its forward motion from the tilting of those plates. Because there were no turbines and no thrust from any other quarter, and because of the bird's aerodynamic shape, it was eerily silent. There was also something spooky, Stanton felt, about looking through the side of the screen and not immediately being able to make out the body and wings of the craft in which he was travelling.

As the bird picked up speed, there at last came sound: a high keening of the wind. Pelter eased off on the controls, tilting the plates to brake speed while engaging the airbrakes along the wings. Stanton gripped the back of the pilot's seat with one hand and pressed his other hand against the roof of the cockpit. There was no co-pilot's chair here, so it was necessary to stand up to obtain a good view. Ahead of them was the transporter that Corlackis was piloting. By comparison it was an ugly lump in the sky - if you could make a comparison with something practically invisible.

Pelter eased the joystick over, and the bird banked over Port Lock. Stanton held himself in place and looked down. From here the arcology buildings were a blocky maze interspersed with the blue-green of acacias and the harsh green of new growth, which had not been there before the storm. All across this area, flood pools and drainage dykes mirrored the breaking sky. There was also a lake cut with the wakes of water scooters. The citizens of Port Lock were coming out to play now, after their confinement. Stanton envied them their small concerns. It was easy to feel a kind of superiority from invisible heights.

As the bird banked over onion towers and the disparate blocks of hotel towers and offices he took a firmer grip. The lake slid from view and ahead he saw the band of wasteland between the city and the spaceport. Two ships, one the featureless grey tank of an insystem carrier, and the other a bulbous wedge of a metallic green, were settling towards the crowded field. The spaceport, with its many ships, had the appearance to Stanton of a small baroque town on the outskirts of the city, where perhaps an alien race dwelt in its distorted houses.

'You'll have to watch those as we come in,' he said.

'I do know what I'm doing,' Pelter replied.

He took the bird to one side of the port over the acacias and tangled hulks, and brought it down in a tight spiral. Stanton glanced at him and saw, for the first time since Cheyne III, an expression on his face that might be interpreted as enjoyment. Pelter brought the bird down slow and easy, only a few metres above the tops of the trees. They soon came to the fence and eased over it. Stanton looked to his right at the gate. Four guards were watching the transporter landing by the Lyric. They were oblivious to the bird.

'By law, all cargoes should go in through the gate. Overflying a landing field carries a heavy penalty. How do you want us to deal with this?' Stanton asked.

Pelter leant forwards in the pilot's seat, a nasty expression on his face.

'They're coming over,' Corlackis said through the open com from the transporter.

The four guards were walking across the open ground towards the Lyric. Stanton wondered just how much they were thinking of charging for this particular infringement. He looked at Pelter.

'You could pay them off,' he said.

Pelter eased the bird down over the other side of the fence. He brought it lower and lower and slowed it almost to a walking pace.

'Stay in the transporter. Don't go out to meet them. I'm just going to try something,' he said.

Stanton ran his hand down his face. He knew precisely what Pelter was going to try. Since he had removed that aug, something vicious had risen inside him and now demanded satisfaction.

'Did you know,' said Pelter, 'that this bird is made almost entirely of chainglass?'

'I know, Arian,' said Stanton.

The dropbird was about a metre from the ground now, and the guards were walking in a tight group only 100 metres ahead. Pelter eased it up to something above walking pace and quickly closed in on the four men.

'It's almost like one big blade.'

At the last moment he tilted the two plates at odds to each other. The bird spun. Stanton saw one man cartwheeling through the air, another cut in half, but didn't see what had happened to the remaining two. Pelter levelled the plates, tilted them back the other way to stop the spin, and then eased the bird onward to the Lyric. Stanton could see the wings now. They were red.

'What you have to understand, John, is that I win because I think quickly and can work out the fastest solution to a problem,' Pelter said.

And there I was assuming it was because you're a ruthless psychotic bastard, thought Stanton. He kept that thought to himself, and looked ahead at the open A hold of the Lyric. The entire sphere had been split horizontally in half, the top half held up ten metres above the bottom by hydraulic rams. Pelter eased the bird up and into the gap. Inside, the clamps and straps to fix the bird in place were ready. Pelter eased it down into place with a delicate clonk, then he shut off AG. Stanton moved back through the cabin to the side door, as the Separatist unstrapped himself. He eyed Mr Crane squatting in the middle of the cabin and just wished that things could end right now. He was going soft; he knew it. He had seen the signs in others. He popped the door and climbed out onto the transparent part of the wing, then slid to the deck. Further along the wing he saw that a pair of overalls were stuck in place with blood. He walked across the deck to the open hatch to the sound of Crane, then Pelter, emerging from the bird behind him. On the ramp he stared outwards as lemon sunlight broke through the clouds.

He saw that the two customs officials were walking towards the Lyric, and had yet to spot the remains of the guards. Mennecken and Corlackis were already on their way out to greet them.

Stanton turned and went to help Svent and Dusache load the crates into Hold B.