Gridlinked

7

A ball flung through a curtain of black cobwebs, the starship Hubris entered real space. For an instant, the starship, a kilometre-wide pearl, was poised ahead of spacial distortions like a mutilated finger, then the invisible wings of the ram-fields folded out, and caught-hydrogen phased to red and hid the ship. The pearl was lost in the flaw of some vast jewel, decelerating from dark, down into the system. Then, a pin-wheel of lasers striated a blood-drop of hydrogen and it became a different plasma: a fusion flame like an orange segment cut from a small sun, blasting against the same spacial distortions that collected the hydrogen. Into the gravity well, Hubris dropped: three-quarter light, half a light, then speeds measured in a mere few thousands of kilometres per second. The fields weakened as the quantity of hydrogen increased. Finally the hydrogen ceased to phase, and the ship became visible again. The fusion reaction shut down and was gone like a droplet of milk swirled away in water. The pearl that was the ship rolled round the edge of the gravity well: a ball cast into the roulette wheel that was the Andellan system.

Cormac stared out onto the cold emptiness, and felt it was mirrored in himself. What was it the shuttle pilot who had taken him from Minostra to the Hubris had said?

'You OK? You look half dead.'

Apposite - so very apposite. Cormac couldn't remember what his reply had been, something trivial, something unassured, verbal. There had been other exchanges, each trailing away into banality until he was glad of cold-sleep's oblivion. Now, two hours since thaw-up, feeling was really returning. He looked down at his hands, concentrated until the quiver stilled, and wondered. Was he feeling embarrassment now or some aspect of link withdrawal? Truly, how fucked up was he that he could not identify his own emotions? He lowered his hands to his sides. It was recorded somewhere. It had to be. He turned from the portal and studied the touch-console in the corner of his room. Yes, he did feel embarrassment. He recalled the look Chaline, the science officer in charge of re-establishing the runcible link, had given him when he had asked for instruction on the console's use. For thirty years he had been out of phase. Having instant access to information had stunted his ability to learn. He again lived through her patronizing explanation, then went over and studied the console. The touch-controls were stacked and very complicated, but there was always an easier way for less complex access.

'Hubris, display anything you have on gridlink withdrawal… please,' he said.

The screen flickered and one word appeared: Searching…

In a couple of seconds a number of file headings appeared. He sat down at the console and with unpractised fingers began to work through each file. What he read there only confirmed things he already knew: long-term linking was much like drug addiction, and like drug addiction it could be broken with willpower, with inner strength. The situation as it stood was unacceptable, and Cormac intended to rectify it. He sat with his fists clenched until there was a knock at the door. It might have been only a few seconds; it might have been for minutes. He unclenched his fists, wiped the screen and stood.

'Enter,' he said.

The woman who came through was tall and classically beautiful. She had luxuriant black hair, skin that seemed unnaturally white, a ripe and muscular figure only just covered with clinging body suit, thin but perfect features and striking green eyes. Only she was not a human woman.

'You are NG2765?' Cormac asked.

'I am Jane.'

'My apologies, I did not know your name… but you are a Golem Twenty-seven?'

Jane smiled evenly, and then looked with a raised eyebrow at the lurid pot plant Cormac had shoved behind the sofa. Cormac swallowed annoyance: the Golem series was too damned good. In a way he preferred the other makes; the ones that appeared less human and less than perfect.

'Yes, I am.'

'I require assistance. It was the science officer's suggestion that you be assigned to me.'

Damn it! Why did he feel so uncomfortable? He had to remember she was an Al-run machine, albeit an extremely sophisticated one.

'What kind of assistance do you require?'

Cormac took a slow breath and wondered if his hands were shaking again. He did not look. 'I wish you to accompany me to the surface. I am without information access and there are many questions…' He realized, even as he was saying it, that it was wrong.

'Have you considered an aug? Mika could fit you one.'

Cormac clamped down on a sudden surge of longing. No, an augmentation would be no good. It would be like having alcohol instead of heroin. He had to beat this. 'I will not have an aug,' he said.

Jane nodded thoughtfully, then said, 'You will be going down with the investigative team, I presume?'

'Yes.'

'Well, any questions you may wish to ask me might as easily be addressed to them. Many of them have augs, and Chaline has recently been gridlinked.'

Cormac shook his head. Chaline gridlinked? He did not want to get anywhere near how that made him feel. He focused on the problem at hand. How could he tell this… woman that without information access he found it difficult to talk to people? To real live people. He did not feel… superior. He had wanted a thinking machine, yet the only ones on the Hubris were the ship's AI and the Golem androids. There wasn't a lowly drone robot or metal-skinned android in sight. They were all stored away for emergency use.

'Please, hold yourself in readiness,' he said, his jaw locking up. "That will be all.'

Jane smiled, nodded, and left him. He stood there feeling gauche and confused. He had expected something else. She was too human.

Beyond the angled windows of the shuttle bay, Samarkand was a yellow onyx marble wrapped in filaments of white cloud and Andellan burned with a distant cold light. Thus would Sol appear from an orbit just beyond Jupiter. Only because this was a very uncrowded area of the galaxy could the sun be distinguished from the other faint stars. This was a remote place: a place where help would always come too late.

Cormac pulled on his coldsuit and wondered if he would find anything unexpected down there. Survivors, for example. Even from here the brownish ring of the ground-zero was visible at the centre of the planet - a cankerous iris - Hubris being poised over it, geostationary. He turned as Chaline came up beside him.

'For our initial study we're putting down outside the accident site. There's an undamaged heat-sink station on the edge of New Sea. We might be able to get some information from the submind there, though we get no response from it on the usual channels.'

She looked at him warily with wide green eyes as she tied back her curly black hair. Her features were very fine and her skin black as obsidian. When he first saw her, he thought her black skin a cosmetic effect or alteration. It came as a great surprise for him to discover it was natural, not even an extraterrestrial adaptation. It made a change from the olive-brown of the run of humanity, or the luridly dyed skins of members of the runcible culture, and it was unusual to come across any of the old-Earth racial types this far out. Blegg was an exception, in every area.

'Yes, OK,' he said, his thoughts still on the subject of 'race' and groping after answers from a link that was no longer there.

With the explosion of the human population across the stars, the gene pool had been thoroughly stirred. There had been a song, something about 'chocolate-coloured people by the score'. Really ancient. Cormac had not understood it until he had learnt from his link what a 'score' was, and that chocolate had once come in only one colour. The song had been right in one sense: the 'melting pot' had occurred, but now, with adaptation and alteration, skin colour was spread across the spectrum and was the least of differences between human kinds.

'We can't bring down the runcible until we find out what happened to the one here. Your concern is who. My concern is how, as my command area is mostly runcible installation,' she said, studying him dubiously.

'Of course,' he said, and turned back to the window. He sensed her standing at his shoulder for a moment, then turning away to rejoin the others. Was he so short with her because she was linked? Was he that petty? Christ, where was his self-control?

Two of the group behind him were Earth Central soldiers. He could assume command of them whenever he needed, but for the moment he left them to operate independently. They had the training. Crisis would stratify the command structure. He wondered if the setup had been Blegg's idea: to give him time to readjust. He turned and surveyed them all as they fixed and clipped up their coldsuits, and he noted how the two women avoided his gaze. The soldiers seemed oblivious to his attention.

As the last seal was closed and hoods were pulled up, Jane entered the shuttle bay. She still wore her clinging bodysuit. For a moment Cormac had thought she might not be coming. Then he remembered: what need did she have of thermal protection? He strapped on his face-mask and put up his hood before joining her and the others. He felt more comfortable that way. People, damned people. He noticed Chaline give Jane a strange look.

'We can board now,' said Chaline.

The wing was a small carrier, its span only 150 metres or so. It sat on the polished floor of the bay like a grounded raptor. Once they had entered it and taken their places, Cormac was glad to see Jane move to the fore and take the pilot's chair. He felt foolish in her presence. She left the doors between the cockpit and passenger area open. This gave them all a good view through the chainglass screen. Cormac sat and Chaline sat down next to him. He noted that he was the only one wearing his mask. He removed it and studied the people with him - hardened himself against the urge to just shut them out.

The two soldiers were both big, fit-looking men. Brezhoy Gant, the one who was sitting beside the door, was either completely shaven or just naturally hairless. Cormac noted that his skin had a slightly purple tinge, and wondered if some ancestor had used adaptogens. He felt a return of that empty feeling when he realized that if he wanted to know he would have to ask - politely.

Patran Thorn was an evil-looking man with a Vandyke beard and hooked nose. Cormac thought he had an appearance more suitable to someone wielding a cutlass than the high-tech, cold-adapted weaponry he was carrying. Mika, the other member of the party, was crew. She was a medical and life-sciences officer, and was along in the unlikely event they might find survivors. She was a diminutive woman, who appeared little more than a girl, and was a complete contrast to Chaline. Her hair was pale orange and closely cropped, and her skin was very pale. Her eyes were the demonic red of an albino. She looked fragile, whereas Chaline looked vigorous. But Cormac had seen the tattoo on the palm of her hand and knew that she was Life-coven from Circe. She had his respect, as did all who graduated from that secretive place.

'I wonder why Jane isn't wearing survival gear?' Chaline asked of anyone.

This annoyed Cormac. She had a link; why didn't she use it?

'She has no need of it,' he said.

Chaline looked at him as if he was an idiot. Cormac was about to say more, but closed his mourn before he could cram his other foot in it. Of course, he should have realized. Androids normally tried very hard not to display what they were, so Jane was going down onto the surface dressed as she was, only for his sake - to give him the comfort and crutch of knowing he was with a machine. Cormac felt horribly embarrassed, then in turn extremely angry. It was about time he started thinking for himself, about time he regained some independence. What had he lost? Just a voice in his head that could answer a few questions - information as easily obtainable from any console. He no longer had that facility now, so he would make do with what he did have. He leant back in his seat and strapped himself in. The shuttle shuddered as the gravity in the bay went off, and they all lifted against their straps. Under air-blast impellers, the shuttle began to drift towards the irised door at the end of the bay.

'Chaline.' He turned and faced her directly. No more masks. 'Jane is not wearing survival gear so that I might be more aware of her unhumanity…'

Don't overplay it. This woman isn't an idiot.

'I was gridlinked, previously'

Chaline stared at him for a moment until realization hit her. 'I see… Hence the… console.'

Mika spoke up then. 'You were linked for a long time.'

It was a statement, not a question. Life-coven did not often need to ask questions.

'How long?' asked Chaline.

'Thirty years. You lose sight of humanity in that time - and certain manual skills.' He tried a tentative smile.

Chaline smiled back and nodded. 'The opinion was that, as an agent of Imperial Earth Central, you were too high and mighty to associate with mere runcible technicians and crew.'

'My apologies,' said Cormac. It was autonomous politeness, and he saw that it was taken as such.

Ahead of the shuttle, the door irised open on a shimmer-shield: a direct offshoot of Skaidon tech. The shuttle passed through it as if through the skin of a bubble.

'Acceleration,' said Jane. If she had listened in on the conversation, she showed no sign. The conversation had been low, but not beyond her hearing. Few sounds were.

The slight thrust pushed them back into their seats, and Samarkand slid to one side of the front screen. Andellan came into view, tracking a black spot across the screen as the chainglass reacted to blot out damaging UV.

Chaline spoke again, obviously a rehearsed speech. 'As acting science officer I am directing this, and you are along as an advisor, though I know you have veto and can assume command in a crisis. However, I would like to know, do you have any idea as to what we may find?'

Cormac considered for a moment. This was a thought that had been occupying him in those moments when he had not been feeling sorry for himself. He cleared his throat and concentrated on turning his unspoken thoughts into spoken words.

'Well, we might get something from the submind at the heat-sink station, but I doubt it. The destruction of the runcible AI will have… damaged it. That's the problem with centralized processing. Any information it might have retained will be badly scrambled. What we need to get a look at is the buffers, if there's anything left of them.'

'Sabotage?' wondered Gant.

Cormac looked across at him. 'That is considered likely'

Gant nodded ponderously and removed a packet from the top pocket of his coldsuit, and from that a thin white tube that he placed in his mouth. He held a small chrome device up to it and a small flame nickered into life. Cormac realized with a feeling of shock that the tube was a cigarette, and Gant was smoking. He had not seen anyone smoke since he was last on Earth, twelve years ago. It had been all the rage then. He noted that Mika and Chaline were eyeing the soldier with fascination. Gant was aware of them all watching him as he puffed out a fragrant cloud of tobacco smoke.

'Sorry.' He removed the packet and offered it. Mika and Chaline refused, not offensively - there was no social ostracism of those indulging in this now harmless habit - but with surprise. Obviously they had never been to Eardi. Cormac accepted both a cigarette and Gant's lighter to light it. It was only another method of communicating.

'Thank you.' He lit the cigarette and drew on it, then in a tight voice went on with, 'You know, out here these things are not often seen?' He held up the cigarette. Gant shrugged and leant back, after retrieving his lighter. The comment did not seem to bother him.

'I take it you come direct from Earth?' said Cormac.

Gant nodded. 'Yeah, Ukraine - fifteen hundred kilometres from the original Samarkand.'

'Fifteen hundred,' Cormac repeated.

'Yeah,' said Gant, studying the tip of his cigarette. 'You know it was established by Uzbeks and was a major stopping point on the Great Silk Road. That's why this place was named after it: it was also a stopping place, a way station. I always wanted to see what it was like.'

Cormac was not sure if he was talking about the ancient city or the planet. He also wondered what was buried underneath that rambling. He left it.

'Your friend?' Cormac looked across at Thorn, who was gazing out a window, his expression pensive.

'English.'

'A long way to come.'

Cormac drew on his cigarette and stifled a cough. A very long way to come. There was something more to these soldiers, if Central was prepared to send them all this way. He entertained a suspicion.

'You're Sparkind.'

Gant grinned at him, and Cormac repressed the urge to swear. Blegg had made this as difficult for him as he could without compromising the mission. It seemed that everything he needed to know he would have to learn. He suspected this might be Blegg's idea of a recovery programme from Cormac's gridlinking.

'What are Sparkind?' asked Chaline.

Gant's face fell.

Cormac explained, 'Kind of soldier. They have a certain reputation.'

Mika said, "They dealt with the situation on Darnis; twelve of them against a unit of cyborgs and a small army. The name is the same as that of an ancient race of fighters.' Her expression was blank.

Gant's smile returned. 'No, they were called Spartans - and we don't live like them,' he said.

Mika frowned. She obviously did not like to be found wrong.

'How many of you are there on the Hubris?' asked Cormac.

'Just one group,' replied Gant.

Four of them. Not inconsiderable. What was Blegg expecting?

Gant continued. 'The other two are Golem Thirties.' He was still smiling.

Cormac tried not to let his annoyance show. This was information he should have received long ago. Had he been gridlinked, of course, he would have already known. He also reckoned he would have directed things with all the sensitivity he had shown on Cheyne III. Damn Blegg.

Samarkand grew and grew until an arc of it filled the screen; frozen oceans of a sulphurous yellow edged with shores of pure malachite; rolling mountain ranges that seemed made of desert sand. Chaline pointed out a spreading stain of reddish-green across the surface of one ocean. It issued from one point on the shore.

'Heat-sink station,' she said. 'The colouring is from adapted algae. They should survive the freezing process and start oxygenating, once the seas thaw out.'

'That will take a lot of energy,' Cormac observed.

'Well, you've seen how much energy one human body can carry in.'

She looked to the side, where the brown ring at the edge of the blast-site could be seen. It was just coloration to the level ground and over a nearby range of hills, from fallout - from the heat flash. They all knew that nothing could have survived within it. Cormac pursed his lips in thought for a moment, then turned to the two Sparkind.

'What was your brief,' he asked, 'exactly?'

Thorn said, 'Quite simple, my friend, we are here to make sure nothing… military gets in the way of reestablishing runcible link. Beyond that, we were told to do whatever you tell us to do. There was a briefing that, for this initial survey, only Gant and I would be needed, and that further orders from you might be… lacking.'

He gave a crooked grin, to which Cormac could not help but respond.

'Anything else?' he asked.

'Only that the other two were to hold themselves in readiness. I suppose you don't need the big guns yet. Anyway, they were orders that were surprisingly lacking in detail. I hope that what detail there is doesn't conflict.'

'It won't,' said Cormac, and clamped down on his frustration. He had learnt nothing. Only two for the initial survey. Where or when would all four be needed? Cormac cursed Blegg's reticence. It seemed to him now he had only been sent here to learn something which was probably already known, and to be rehabilitated. He did not like playing this sort of game.

A dull droning sound told them they were entering the thin and frigid atmosphere. The droning grew to a roar as cloud whipped against the shutde. The shutde banked and spiralled down towards the planet. This noise precluded speech, but it seemed no time before they were hurding above a mountain range under a sky the colour of old brass, and before the roar became a dull and distant thunder.

'We'll be approaching the station shordy. The weather is very bad. Ground temperature one-seventy Kelvin. You'll need your suit heaters on, and full seal on your masks,' Jane told them.

'Those are the mountains the runcible energy-surplus used to heat. There was a line of big microwave dishes transmitting the surplus energy,' said Chaline. 'On a busy day the rock used to melt. The heat-sink stations at New Sea were intended for the next stage of terraform-ing. They had recently come into operation and were melting the seas.'

'It wasn't just algae they introduced. There were moulds, lichens and planktons round the station, and even adapted angel shrimp. Whoever did this wrecked much more man a runcible,' said Mika.

Yes, Cormac realized, what had happened here must seem doubly painful to someone trained on Circe. Not only had there been a huge loss of human life, but also the loss of a nascent ecology. There had probably been many from the Life-coven working here on Samarkand.

Soon the station came into sight. It had the appearance of an iron cathedral on the shore of the frozen sea. It had spires and arches in its makeup, but none of them were for decoration. The arching structures that clawed into the ground and the sea carried heavy-gauge superconductors and the spires and turrets were microwave receivers that employed field technology rather than the bulky dishes used heretofore. Jane guided the shuttle close over the structure itself, then down into the cleared area that ringed it. Here were parked private AGCs, and to one side was the wreck of a carrier. Perhaps it had just been landing or taking off when the blastwave hit. They all saw it, and made no comment. Without a doubt it contained bodies; but a fraction of the total dead.

The shutde settled a hundred metres from the doors of the station. As the rest of them unstrapped from their seats, Cormac remained where he was and stared thoughtfully at the carrier. It occurred to him then that the cold would not have returned here immediately. When Jane came up beside him he caught hold of her arm. Through his gloves it felt like any other arm.

'How long would it have taken?' he asked.

She looked at him with a quizzical expression.

'The cold. How long to get down to say… minus fifty?'

'Three solstan days.'

'That quick?'

'Yes, the installation here, all of it, might be equated to a very small speck of warm sand on an ice cube.'

'I see,' said Cormac, and then studied her closely. 'I realize I've been a prat.'

'It is something we all realize at one time or another.'

Yeah, like you'd ever do anything foolish.

'Let me put it another way then,' he continued. 'I miscalculated. Unless you feel you might be needed out here you can stay with the shutde.'

Jane smiled at him. 'I think I might as well come along. I might be of use.'

Cormac nodded and let her continue to the exit. Before he followed, he removed his shuriken holster from within his sleeve and strapped it on outside. He had already practised using it whilst wearing a thermal mask and gloves. Blegg might have expected little danger here at first, but that did not mean he should consider the place safe. When his life was at risk, Cormac never liked to rely on the judgement of others, even an immortal Japanese demigod. He placed his mask over his face and closed the seals that connected it to his hood. He knew it was fully sealed when a small

LED went off just at the edge of his vision. Once that light disappeared, he allowed himself a small smile.

Outside it was like a harsh winter on Earth, only the snow blowing past them consisted of carbon-dioxide crystals, and the ice under their feet was water-ice as hard as iron. Cormac felt no hint of the cold. Had he done so, it would probably mean his suit was failing and that he would shortly be dead. Jane stood brushing the snow from her hair, as if it was flower blossom dropping on a spring day. In this setting, dressed in her thin bodysuit, she did look unhuman. There was no billowing cloud of vapour as she breathed. She did not flush, nor did she shiver.

They trudged through the snow to the main entrance. Off to one side Cormac observed the huge super-conductor ducts that led to heat-sinks under the frozen sea. From the shutde these ducts had appeared to be the thickness of old oaks. Here, now, he could see they were large enough to run a motorway along. There the surplus energy, converted from microwave beams transmitted from the runcible buffers, was conducted as electrical energy to the heat-sinks, where it was converted into terraforming heat. Fifteen months ago much of this sea had not been frozen, and, as Mika had said, angel shrimps had been introduced.

Once they reached the doors, Chaline hit the touch-plate. Nothing happened. She and Gant pulled on the handles, which had probably never been used before.

'Dead, and frozen shut,' came her voice over the com. 'This place was powered by a bleed-off from received energy.' She turned her masked face to Jane. 'Can you do anything?'

Jane stepped forwards and took hold of the handle. She pulled and ice shattered under her feet. The door opened a little way, then the handle snapped off.

'The metal's recrystallizing with the cold,' she said, her voice coming to them with a radio echo. She stepped to the gap she had made, inserted her fingers, and pulled. The door ground open and a chunk snapped off in her hands, but it was wide enough open for them to enter. As he went through, Cormac glanced at the broken metal and realized that at these temperatures even Golem might be vulnerable. Their synthetic skins, he knew, could handle a wide temperature range and provided superb insulation, but he wondered just how close they would get to the lower limit of that range here.

Inside the building they walked down frost-coated corridors to a drop-shaft. Luckily there was an inspection ladder down one side of it. Jane checked it with a tug or two, then descended. It was thick ceramal welded to the side of the shaft, so was unlikely to give way. As it took her weight without cracking, they all soon followed her down to the bunker where the submind was kept.

'I'm getting something,' said Chaline, as they swung away from the shaft and into a dark corridor. Cormac flicked his goggles to infrared, but vision was even poorer. Someone switched on a torch. He saw it was Thorn, and that the torch was an integral part of the weapon he held. Gant had also drawn his gun. Perhaps they trusted Blegg's judgement as much as he did, Cormac thought. He turned to Chaline, who was peering at some kind of detector.

'Is it still active?'

'Seems to be, though its power source must be getting low. Perhaps that's why it didn't transmit,' she said, then added, 'I hope to link up the new runcible with these stations.'

Runcibles were obviously her favourite topic.

The end of the darkened corridor revealed a sliding door, which Jane opened with studied nonchalance. Beyond it lay a circular room that seemed to be lined with polished copper bricks.

'Let's see what we can get here,' said Chaline, then took another instrument from her belt and moved her fingers over the touch-pads. A voice spoke to them through their comunits.

'—the brick-red song each block is dried blood frozen in perspex the windows are a thousand stitched-together eyes house is pain lord of pain lord of nightmares—'

'Very poetic,' said Chaline dryly.

'Nuts,' said Gant.

Cormac was not so sure. 'Try it again. At least it's retained something.'

'—batshapes with translucent white teeth and eyes in fevered flesh swooping madness yelling hate itself sinter sinter burnt mounded bones—'

'Try transmitting to it here.'

'It should be able to hear us anyway. Jane?'

'I've tried. Seems completely internalized.'

'AI, respond!' shouted Cormac.

'—screaming shape fire green men lizards help me plague dogs war flung to our coasts night dark rats disembark with their translucent teeth—'

'No good,' said Chaline. 'Best we shut it down and get out of here.'

'—plinking rain hell dark spaces think something abyss gestation outcome—'

'No,' said Cormac. 'I veto that. We take the core brain and main memory with us.' Chaline turned her masked face to him. He was glad he could not see her expression.

Mika said, 'There was something…'

Chaline turned to her. 'What? This submind's crazy.'

'Stream of consciousness. It may reveal something.'

'OK… OK, no problem.'

Chaline moved to the centre of the room and lifted a circular cover. Ice-blue light glared out as she inserted another instrument from her belt. There was a number of strange clunks. She lifted the instrument out and attached to it was something metallic and lens-shaped. She detached it and tossed it to Cormac. He caught it.

'There's your core brain and main memory. It's only a submind, so they're all in one. Don't worry about dropping it. Nothing short of an atomic explosion will destroy it,' said Chaline. Then she realized what she had said. 'But, then, we are all well aware of that. It was the destruction of the main runcible mind that… internalized it.'

Cormac was glad to hear a little humour in her voice, even though it was somewhat acid. He did not need any enemies right now.

'Let's go. There's nothing more for us here,' she finished.

As soon as mey stepped beyond the shielding of the room, Jane halted and tilted her head. They all watched her, knowing she was receiving some message, and knowing that the tilt of her head was for their benefit. Abruptly she turned.

'That was from the Hubris. It's picked up some kind of heat source to the south of here.'

'People?' asked Cormac.

'Not determined.'