The Line of Polity

9

The image of the room and all its contents, excepting the creatures, faded away, to then be replaced with an image of a bedroom with three beds, and Brother Malcolm, hugely asleep. The woman glanced at her son, perhaps considering showing him this, herself certainly understanding where the story was now going. The boy was busy playing with his macabre toys and probably wouldn't notice if she stopped reading. However, she wanted to carry on because she was enjoying the story herself.

" 'Who's been sleeping in my bed? asked Daddy Duck, upon finding the sheets of his bed rumpled and crumpled," she said — over-egging the self-parody.

Her son glanced up at her and frowned. She continued in a more normal tone, " 'Who's been sleeping in my bed? asked Mummy Duck, finding her sheets all rumpled and crumpled too. 'Mffuful coffle foofle, said Baby Duck."

The woman stared at the picture of the smallest of the three gabbleducks — that is to say one that was only about three metres tall — as it ground its jaws from side to side, two feet clad in filthy red and white striped bedsocks sticking out the side of its bill, and blood running in rivulets down its breast. The boy would like this picture, but was too intent on his toy, which had now pulled its victim out from underneath the carpet and was using it in the same way as Brother Malcolm had been used. As, on the final gulp, the two feet disappeared, she finished the text of the story:

" 'Don't speak with your mouth full, said Mummy and Daddy Duck together."

In the morning, they pushed through the flute grass for only an hour before coming to a crushed-down clearing in which something had obviously pounced on and devoured a grazer. Old grass and new, the latter being now even in these wetter areas up to waist-high, was spattered with a treacly substance that Fethan told her was grazer blood. Also scattered all around were regurgitated piles of white bone flakes and chewed skin, and stinking worms of excrement — whether this last was from the grazer or the thing that had eaten it was debatable. The most eye-catching item left was the grazer's skull, which sat at the precise centre of the clearing as if carefully placed there. This object was as large as a man's torso, and possessed a jaw set with three rows of flat grinding teeth that worked against a flat bony plate. There were four eye-sockets on either side of the long skull — one still holding an eye that was the colour of iron and contained a double black pupil.

Eldene noticed movement amid the treacly blood and dark flesh still clinging to white bone, and on closer inspection saw this was due to small black crustaceans similar in shape to sprawns — but without the wings — that had come to feed. Stepping back, she realized that the entire clearing was swarming with these creatures. Wordlessly she hurried after Fethan, who now took the track that led from the clearing towards the mountains.

By mid-morning they were on high ground yet again, and the going became much easier. As they drew closer to the mountains, the landscape and vegetation began to change drastically. Lizard tails grew in big clumps encircling some kind of huge flower or fruit with the appearance of a mound of raw liver; stubby flute grasses grew in hollows, but the rest of the ground was covered by blister mosses ranging from blue to green, with the occasional red pod-spike rearing up to a metre in the air; plants like giant thistles encroached., as neatly ranked as marching armies, clad in finger-length thorns and bearing furred heads of deepest purple over bodies of pale green; rocky outcroppings became commonplace and a wider variety of molluscs clung to them. And the ground sloped ever upwards.

"I've never seen this, any of this before, not even in a book," Eldene commented, after she had stopped to inspect some of the rock-clinging molluscs gathered on a large flat stone. Their shells were seemingly enamelled in Euclidian patterns of black and yellow, as if someone had spilt a jewellery box there.

"How many books have you actually seen?" Fethan asked her. Eldene began to count them up, but before she could answer Fethan continued, "If you can even count them, then you haven't seen enough. The Theocracy doesn't allow many anyway, and the only ones you will have seen will be copies of the few brought here by the first settlers, or else the subversive versions smuggled in by the Polity. I'm surprised you've seen any at all."

"They had some at the orphanage," Eldene said.

"Then they are probably a well-kept secret which, if revealed, would get someone into a lot of trouble," Fethan replied. Then, as if this had only just occurred to him: "Were these paper books?"

Eldene stared at him in confusion. "Paper books? They were memory fabric, just like any other book."

Fethan shook his head. "Damn, I'm getting old."

Soon they were high enough to look back across the sweep of grasslands, and the settlement areas beyond. Through the mist of distance, Eldene could just make out the city and, still further, something glinting in the sunlight as it rose from the spaceport. She gazed up at the stations silhouetted against the face of Calypse, and supposed that what she had witnessed was either a trader's ship taking essence of squerm to some faraway port, or a Theocracy transport taking the same luxury protein, in its unrefined form, to the tables of the Theocracy. Much, she knew, was grown up there, in crop cylinders, but the religious hierarchy that ruled their lives had a special taste for such products resulting from the killing labour of the surface dwellers.

"I've often wondered what kind of lives they lead up there," Eldene said.

"Oh, they do very nicely. They wear the trappings of theism and they violently debate the tenets of their faith, but meanwhile they live like primitive kings." Fethan turned to her. "Do you believe in this god your Theocracy has you worship?"

Eldene nearly gave the automatic: "I believe in the one true God whose prophet is Zelda Smythe. I believe in the Creation and the truth of Human Ascendance. I believe…" The entire list usually took fifteen minutes to recite, and Eldene remembered how on only one or two occasions had she been made to go right the way through it. Anyway, a proctor usually demanded such recitations as a prelude to some punishment, and would usually find a mistake within the first twenty lines as an excuse to inflict a beating. For the first time Eldene actually stopped to consider her own belief. All it had ever been to her was the memorizing of religious texts, morning and evening prayers recited below the Theocracy cameras, beatings for infringements she did not understand: all a framework that tied her to the grinding toil and misery of her life.

"Yes, I do," she replied, because she could think of no other answer.

"Of course you do — it's been ground into you since you were born. But do you then believe in the god-given right of the Theocracy to rule your life?"

After a pause Eldene replied, "No, I do not. There has to be something better."

"Yeah, there is," said Fethan, turning to continue climbing the slope.

"Do you believe?" Eldene asked, following him.

"I believe only in those things that can be proven empirically. There has never been any proof that a god exists, and if such proof was found why the hell should we worship him? Organized religions are just elaborate con-tricks. Take the Christian religion from which yours is an offshoot: 'Obey me throughout your life, give me the product of your labour, and you will go to Paradise when you die. Disobey me and you will go to Hell and burn forever. Of course I cannot prove that this is what will actually happen — you just have to have faith. That was a good one, and it worked well enough in a society that still believed the Earth was flat."

"But… what happened here?"

"An isolated group of fanatics, with sophisticated psychological programming techniques… This place would never have survived in the Polity, and it is breaking down even now as the Polity gets closer and information filters through."

"But the universe… how do you explain it? When did it begin? What existed before it? Where does it end, and what lies beyond it?"

Fethan glanced at her. "Questions that might similarly be asked about this god of yours?"

Eldene considered that. Of course: what was before God and what lies beyond God?

Fethan continued, "The greatest admission a human can make is that perhaps he does not have the intelligence, the vision, the grasp to fully understand the universe, and that perhaps no human ever will. To put it all down to some omnipotent deity is a cop-out. Factor in fairy tales of an afterlife and it becomes a comforting cop-out."

Eldene had always been clever — it had been her ability to memorize and understand things that had enabled her to avoid many of the punishments her fellow workers had received, except when that punishment came from a proctor or orphanage administrator who had taken exception to her very cleverness. Now she sank into deep contemplation of the issues raised. Fethan had quite bluntly just stated things that she had never before heard stated. Surface dwellers hated the Theocracy and the yoke they laboured under with vehemence, but belief in God or the necessity of worship never came into question. With discomfort she realized that since their escape she had not prayed once, nor thought about God, and that discomfort increased when it struck her she had never felt happier. She was deep in thought when Fethan gripped her arm.

"Believe what you want, girl," said the old man, "but don't let it master your life. Do you think that if there is a god who created the universe he would be the petty vindictive god of your Theocracy? They're just people like you or me. Life's precious and short, girl. Just enjoy it."

Eldene looked around at the weird plants, the molluscs clinging to the rocks. She thought about the heroyne and gabbleduck she had seen in the night. Halting, she pointed at a hemispherical shell patterned with beautiful green, yellow, and white geometric shapes.

"Life," she said, "it's so complex — someone must have made it?"

"Ah, Creationism," said Fethan. "Let me tell you about evolution and a blind watchmaker…"

Eldene listened and grew angry. It seemed that everything Fethan said was empirically true, yet that all that had been beaten into her was also true — if you had faith. She grew angry because at her core she did have faith, and she was coming to realize just how that crippled her, and she envied Fethan's freedom of thought.

For a moment the grav in Medical went off, then it came back on and climbed to what felt to Cormac about one and a half gees, before dropping back down to about half a gee.

"What the hell?" he asked of the air. "Tomalon?"

He looked around at the others and saw that both Aiden and Cento had collapsed, and were showing no sign of getting up. Stepping over to Aiden, he looked down and saw that something had charred the syntheflesh of the Golem's forehead, burning and blistering it away to expose heat-tarnished metal. Gant quickly joined him in a crouch and helped him turn Cento over onto his back — the same was found there.

Gant gazed at him in bewilderment. "They just went out. I felt them go out."

"Tomalon!" Cormac bellowed.

In answer, Tomalon's hologram appeared in the middle of the room, cut in half by a surgical table, faint images of complex systems etching the air all around it. "This is recorded, so attempt no communication," said the Captain's voice.

Cormac buttoned down the question he had been about to ask.

The Captain went on, "Skellor is subverting the Occam Razor with Jain technology. It is an old ship and, in the event of attempted AI takeover, has the system facility for complete AI burn, which I initiated. This burn has not been wholly successful and he now has control of twenty-two ship's Golem, as well as life-support and the U-space engines."

Tomalon's mouth opened as if he was screaming, but no sound could be heard. His eyes suddenly became blackened pits and a complex grid-work of black lines traversed his holographic body from head to foot. "You must escape. You must escape," came his grating whisper. Then, "Occam… Occam… Occam…"

The Captain flickered and went out.

"What's happening? What's going on?" asked the Outlinker boy as Mika assisted him to his feet.

Cormac stared at Gant, then nodded towards the fallen Golem. "They were all downloaded, but their bodies were ship Golem so the burn program would have been hard-wired. They're dead," he said, wondering if it was correct to have described those two recordings of Aiden and Cento as alive, but deciding that would not be the best thing to say to Gant. Standing up again, he went on, "Well, you heard the man: let's get the hell out of here."

Standing also, Gant said, "All the Occam's shuttles will be in storage, and it takes the ship AI to get them out of it."

"Fuck," said Cormac.

Relentlessly Gant went on, "They'll also be mindless. You'd have manual control, but no automated systems."

"Your point, if one needs to be made?" said Cormac.

"No navigation," Gant replied.

"Double fuck," said Cormac succinctly. He considered for a moment, then gazed at Apis. "The Masadan landing craft. It's our only option."

"No U-space engines," said Gant. "It'd be years before we reached anywhere."

"Our main concern at present is staying alive," Cormac replied.

"Perhaps we should pay the bridge pod a visit?" suggested Gant.

"Much as I feel that we have made a most effective team," said Cormac, gesturing to include Scar in this statement, "I do not think we stand much chance against twenty-two Golem. We go, now." He headed for the door.

"Wait!" Mika yelled, grabbing up some equipment and throwing it into a case.

Turning, Cormac said, "Is that irreplaceable?"

"Yes," she said firmly, knowing precisely what he would have said next if she'd said otherwise.

Cormac turned to Gant. "How long would it take the Golem to get here from the bridge pod?" he asked, Gant being an expert on Golem capabilities.

"Ten minutes if the drop-shafts are working." Gant shrugged. "Ten to fifteen minutes longer if they're not."

Cormac stomped a foot against the floor. "Well, if the shafts are operating as well as these grav-plates, it's more likely the latter — the safeties would have cut in. I want you to hit the weapons locker on this level, then join us by my own and Mika's cabins. Bring as much armament as you can, and make sure that includes APWs. Go!" Only anti-photon weapons were truly effective against Golem — so at least they would have that edge.

Gant proceeded to demonstrate just how fast a Golem could move.

"You ready?" Cormac asked Mika.

She nodded, dragging a heavy case along the floor until Scar very kindly took it off her and tucked it under his arm as if it weighed no more than a polystyrene block.

Cormac studied Apis. The boy looked bewildered — no sooner had he learnt that his mother was dead than this chaos had hit.

"You have to stay with us, Apis," said Cormac. "We have to get off this ship, otherwise we're dead. I have no time to explain to you what is happening now."

Apis nodded. "Yes, I understand," he said, which was the best Cormac could hope for.

The grav-plates outside Medical were fluxing, and navigating their way down the corridor was no easy task, but this made it more likely the drop-shafts were in fact out. The drop-shaft at the end of this corridor confirmed Cormac's supposition, so they climbed a side ladder leading up to the residential level. It was only as they were exiting this that Cormac wondered how Scar was managing with that case tucked under his arm. Glancing down he saw that the dracoman was managing just fine one-handed — with his legs hinging in the opposite direction to humans, he almost did not need to use hands at all. Within a few minutes, they reached their first intended destination, and soon Gant was hurtling towards them loaded down with an assortment of weaponry, and concomitant power packs and other consumables. He skidded to a halt and dumped the weapons on the floor.

As Cormac stooped to see what had been acquired, he was annoyed to see Mika diving into her cabin — no doubt to collect more essential items. He handed Apis one of the APWs, and was about to point out to him how to operate the weapon when Apis shook his head.

"I know how this works," the boy informed him. "Are those who are coming against us responsible for my mother's death?"

"Sort of," Cormac replied, realizing the boy had obviously not taken in much of what had occurred so far.

Apis's expression hardened and Cormac was gratified to see that though the lad might be a physically weak Outlinker, he had some steel in him. Glancing over to Scar, he saw that the dracoman had managed to find a pull-out strap on Mika's large case and had now slung it across his back. The dracoman was stooping to make his selection from the mound of weapons.

Gant handed Cormac a pack. "I brought these along too. I can't use them myself as they're coded, but you're an ECS agent."

Cormac opened the pack and grinned. Inside, along with extra power cells for the weapons, were two small polished cylinders with twist timers set into the touch-consoles affixed to their ends. He took one out, pressed his thumb against the largest touch-pad, and a micro-screen lit up displaying seven zeros. Using two further touch-pads — one to advance each digit and one to move that control on to the next — he punched in a seven-digit number, then pressed once more with his thumb. The screen now displayed 'PRIMED'.

"Probably take them about ten minutes to get here. It's only a demolition charge but that should be enough to gut this part of the ship — should slow them up a little." He twisted the dial round then tossed the cylinder past Mika into her cabin, as she stepped out with a carry-pack slung over her shoulder. "Let's go," he said, as the door slid shut.

Now, as they travelled the convoluted corridors through the ship, they heard sounds as of distant objects falling, the drone of motors starting intermittently, and an occasional resounding boom that shook the vessel's entire structure. At the next shaft that would take them up towards the shuttle bay that contained the landing craft, Cormac held out his hand to Gant. "APW," he demanded.

Gant unslung one of the weapons and handed it across.

Cormac inspected the weapon. The APW had a folding stock of some light plastic, and a wide but short barrel with a polished interior. Its main body was fashioned of chainglass, and inside it gleamed pinhead green lights and a chamber apparently filled with swirling fire.

"One G canister," Cormac now demanded, holding out his hand again.

Gant rooted around in the pack and handed across a squat cylinder the size of a coffee mug, which Cormac screwed into place just before the two triggers. Manipulating switches and buttons on the side of the weapon — touch-pads were not an option on a weapon that might require resetting in darkness — he switched it to stealth mode, thus darkening the glass to hide the gleam of its lights. Further manipulation caused the weapon to emit a cycling whine.

"That a good idea?" asked Gant.

"Yeah," Cormac replied. "I'll save the other CTD for the shuttle bay." He tossed the weapon into the shaft and it dropped out of sight. As he stepped in after it and began to climb the side ladder, he heard the boy Apis ask, "What did he do?"

Gant's reply was a terse, "Set it to dump its load. Should take out most of this shaft."

They climbed quickly, gravity waves fluxing up and down the shaft so that one moment they weighed nothing and the next they were hanging on under two gees. Cormac glanced down to see how Apis was handling this and saw that the boy, in his exoskeletal suit, was perhaps doing better than the rest of them. Moving into a wide service area, Cormac checked the time on his wristcom and hurried the others out of the shaft.

"Back against the wall," he ordered, as soon as they were all out. He was about to check the time again, but there was no need. From below, there came a hollow roar, then a sudden rushing sound. The blast wave came up out of the drop-shaft, carrying with it glittering metallic fragments and a smell like that from a forge.

"That was the CTD," he said. "Come on, the APW will go soon and we don't want to be here then."

They hurried through the maintenance area where various shuttle engines and other heavy equipment were awaiting repair. Halfway through they had to pull themselves along wall bars, where a huge thruster motor was dangerously drifting above negated grav-plates. Soon they reached the end of this area, then entered a tunnel that led to the shuttle bay. The tunnel was wide — for the transportation of engine parts — with sealed double doors at its end. Reaching these, Cormac thumped the palm lock, but nothing happened.

He glanced at Gant. "Vacuum?"

Gant stepped close to the edge of the doors and peered closely at where they met the jamb. After a moment, he stepped back shaking his head. "No, the seals aren't down." Then he turned and faced back the way they had come, and tilted his head to listen. "They're coming," he said. Just then, there was another explosion behind them as the APW dumped its load.

Cormac stepped back. "Scar, the door!"

With the others hurrying to get safely behind him, the dracoman moved back from the doors and fired. Purple flame ignited the air between his weapon and the obdurate surface. The explosion was deafening and blasted a hole perhaps a metre across. The second explosion took out a similar amount of material above this, blasting metallic smoke and fragments into the shuttle bay beyond.

Meanwhile, with cold precision, Cormac primed the second CTD and set the timer for five minutes. Then came further flashes and explosions as Gant fired back the way they had come. Cormac glanced in that direction as he propped the CTD above a console set into the wall. Back at the further edge of the maintenance bay a gleaming skeletal shape flew apart in proton fire — gleaming bones and a polished skull clanging across the floor plates — just as another one came swiftly in behind it. Himself firing in short bursts, Cormac glanced to the doors and saw that Mika and Apis were through them and that Scar was on his way.

"You go on through," said Gant, then abruptly fired up at the ceiling as one of the ship's Golem came scuttling across it like a spider. The explosion took out ceiling panels and caused sparking cables, insulation, and structural members to rain down. Half the lighting panels went out. Cormac did not hesitate — Gant could move a damned sight faster than he could, so it was logical he should come through last. Cormac was already running for the landing craft when to his horror he saw that blast doors were slowly drawing across the shimmer-shield maintained over the mouth of the bay.

"Move it, Gant!"

Behind him there were further explosions. He reached the craft just behind the others and looked back just as Gant dived through the doors, rolled, came upright and turned and fired at the ship's Golem following close behind him. Then Gant was running for the landing craft. Cormac went down on one knee and took careful aim at the doors — subliminally seeing Scar doing the same beside him. At his back he heard thrusters starting on the landing craft and felt a side-wash as the grav-plates underneath it disengaged. Two Golem came through the doors, both of them with pulse-rifles. Scar and Cormac's fire intersected on one and blew it to scrap. The second one fired at Gant, and had him stumbling with smoke exploding from his back. But Gant was Golem too and soon regained his balance and continued. Scar now hit the second Golem, while Cormac tracked other movement to his right. More Golem over there, and he felt a sinking in his stomach when he saw what they were carrying.

"Into the ship, now!" he bellowed, Gant being close enough.

They piled into the landing craft even as it began to lift and turn. Cormac glanced ahead, saw Apis at the controls, and thought it superfluous to urge him to get them out of there. He hurried forward, dropped into the seat beside the Outlinker, strapped himself in, and glanced down at the screen giving a rear view, as the craft tilted nose-down and headed for the shimmer-shield. But there were Golem back there, aiming APWs, so this was not fast enough. Purple flashes igniting the bay, the craft lurched as if a giant hand had slapped its back end.

"Use the ion drive," Cormac instructed — calm and cold.

Apis hit the control for ion drive but, obviously damaged, it blew out its grids and hot metal exploded back into the bay — straight into the faces of the Golem. There was some satisfaction in that, but now nothing but the thrusters operated, and it seemed to be taking forever to reach the shimmer-shield. Cormac noticed that the outer doors had ceased to close, it now being evident that they would not close in time to prevent the landing craft getting out of the bay. Behind, more Golem with APWs were gathering. Skellor did not want those doors now closed between themselves and the Golem. Purple flares again, and again the ship lurched, pieces of it blasting forward, away past the cockpit, in a glittering shower out into space. Then white light filled the bay behind them as the second CTD detonated, and the craft tumbled out through the shimmer-shield on a plume of fire.

"Perfect timing," opined Gant, as he grabbed Scar and pulled the dracoman down into a seat, before strapping himself in. Scar dropped his seat back as far as it would go, for only like this would it accommodate him, and he snarled as he too strapped himself in. Mika muttered something, turned pale, then grabbed up a sick-bag from the compartment on one side of her seat — with grav-plates being so common in Polity ships, there were not many who'd had the microsurgical alteration to their inner ear that prevented motion sickness. Apis, of course, was now in his element.

"Yeah," said Cormac, glancing back at Gant. "But Skellor got control of the doors, so how long before he gets control of the weapons systems?"

All of them gazed at the screens as the craft's thrusters propelled it with painful slowness from the vast ship, so that they rose almost like a drifting balloon from a metal plain. Cormac wondered how long it would take. Tomalon had said Skellor now controlled the Occam's engines, so he could trundle along behind them while he got the dreadnought's weapons online. In fact he probably wouldn't even need to move the Occam — they weren't exactly escaping at any great speed.

"Perhaps we should have stayed in there?" Gant suggested.

Difficult call: if they had stayed, the Golem would have killed them; escaping like this the Occam's weapons would kill them. With his emotions under a mental boot heel, Cormac realized he had lost, and that he and these people with him were soon to die.

Then something occluded their horizon: a moonlet of scaled flesh rolled down on them and engulfed them in wombish blackness. Momentarily they were slammed from side to side, and the landing craft groaned as if it might break. Then there was that familiar dislocation, that strange sideways pull into the ineffable, and Cormac knew they had entered U-space. He reached out to the console before Apis, and clicked down the button for external com.

"I thought you'd lost your ability for trans-stellar flight," he said.

"I lied," Dragon replied.

Enough of what it was to be human remained in him for the need to verbalize orders rather than assume complete control of their recipients. He gazed down at the Occam Razor's Captain and saw that the man had managed to crawl as far as the door since being dethroned, leaving a snail trail of blood and plasma.

"Kill that," Skellor instructed, and both Aphran and Danny walked across to the man and fired into his body simultaneously. Tomalon hardly moved — perhaps he had died already.

Skellor now gazed down at himself and realized that he would have to be permanently enthroned so long as he wanted to control this ship. Initially the Jain substructure had sent filaments into the connections, and down the optic cables and ducts that spread from this point, to control the disparate elements of the Occam Razor. But as he had sought to refill those spaces where the burn program had taken out essential AI subsystems, it had been necessary for him to thicken those filaments for the transference of information and power — to grow outwards into the ship. Now he sat enfolded in thick ligneous growths, like some woodland statue long abandoned in the roots of an oak. With every effort he made to take control of a system, this structure grew and thickened.

He looked up at Aphran and Danny. The boy wore no expression as, even though not directly linked, he was now a part of the structure — of Skellor. Aphran, however, bore an expression of barely contained horror.

"Go and find those of your group who have survived, and return with them here," he instructed, then silently watched as they turned to the doors. With a microscopic part of himself, he opened those doors ahead of them. That had been one victory, one small system he had overcome. But not enough.

Still Skellor struggled to worm through the hardwired security that remained in place throughout the ship — integral to the control of the weapons systems — and still he was not quite there. So Cormac and his companions had escaped — just when he thought he had them, they had slipped from his grasp. And that both angered and scared him.

Skellor understood that no one must ever know of what he had done. ECS would hunt him down forever, and thus he would never be able to settle and find his strength. All those who had escaped must die — including Dragon. But before he killed them, he must first gain full control here. Connecting to cameras one after the other, he tracked the progress of Aphran and Danny through the ship, just as he tracked them from the inside through their augs. It occurred to him then that the two Separatists were operating like submind-directed ship's drones, and that this was a much more efficient option than him trying to completely control everything. He could have called the remaining Separatists to himself, but that would have required him to personally direct each one here, which used up processing space. Yes, a certain amount of self-determination in those units underneath him was a good thing; that would free him up to concentrate on other tasks. He understood that there was a limit to just how much he could be aware of. It was not so much a case of processing power and memory space, but almost one of having some sort of emotional investment in every situation or system he controlled or viewed.

Turning his head as much as the Jain structure allowed, Skellor viewed the other chairs in this bridge pod, and understood what he must do — there was a rightness to it, almost as if preordained. Seven chairs — and through Aphran and Danny's augs he sensed that — including themselves — seven of the Separatists remained alive.

With an effort that momentarily blinded him to the continuous input of information from that part of the ship he did control, he grew spurs from those roots of Jain structure below the floor. He felt them rapidly growing, feeding on and converting the surrounding material as they did so — insulation, plastics, metals, chainglass. From the skein of optics he was already tracking out to the navigational instruments scattered about the surface of the ship, he sent a spur to one of those chairs. From the monitoring systems for the engines, another. From weapons control, life-support, internal security, ship's maintenance, and shield control. Other smaller systems he attached where appropriate — structural integrity to ship's maintenance, a split spur for control of the ship's reactors to all of them… Command was totally his own, but each of the others would possess what autonomy he allowed them. Glancing down he watched these growths breaking through the floor below the seven seats and spreading underneath them. Then he stared at the doors and waited for his command crew to appear.

The utter stillness was familiar and Thorn immediately became aware that he was waking from cold-sleep. Running through mental routines inculcated into him over the many years of his training, he tried to remember just what his and Gant's assignment was this time and, as had happened before, he remembered that Gant was dead. Confusion reigned for a moment as he tried to place himself — to remember where he was and what he was doing. Moving forward from the moment of Gant's death, he remembered his return to Earth and the attempts by a Sparkind general to dissuade him from transferring out, next the retraining in both VR and the field for undercover duties in ECS, and a couple of infiltration missions in the Sol system before shipping out to Cheyne III. Then he remembered what had happened there.

There came a buzzing click, then a crack, and a pale line of light cut down to the left of him. Knowing what came next in no way ameliorated the sudden feeling of pins and needles as the nerve-blocker detached from his neck — it felt as if someone had been rolling him in cactus spines. The lid of the cold-coffin swung away from him — a man-shaped impression in hoared metal. This being a coffin that was upright in relation to ship's gravity, handles extruded from the metal on either side of him and he grabbed them as soon as he was able to move his arms. The needles retracted, to be replaced by the sensation of his skin having been rubbed raw — burnt even. He gasped his first breath, fluid bubbled in his lungs, and he coughed and swallowed. Looking to his left, he saw John Stanton step out of his own coffin and begin isometric exercises — obviously the man was a veteran of travelling this way. It took Thorn a while longer, as he lifted each leg alternately and flexed it, stretched his back and neck, then stepped out as if onto ice, with one hand still gripping a handle for support.

"It never gets any better," he commented.

After touching his toes a couple of times, then running on the spot for a moment with his breath gouting in the cold air of the hold, Stanton replied, "Never really bothered me. Sometimes you welcome the oblivion on long hauls." Stanton moved down past Thorn and headed towards the entry to the ship's living quarters. Over his shoulder he said, "Only one shower here, so you'll have to wait."

Thorn now tried a few exercises himself. Even though normal sensation had mostly returned, the ends of his fingers were still numb from the nerve damage done by the toxin Brom had used on him. Another session with this ship's autodoc seemed likely, he realized, as he went to a locker beside the coffins to find himself disposable overalls to wear while he awaited his turn in the shower. Donning the compressed paper fabric, he glanced round as Jarvellis stepped out of the flight cabin, heading for the living quarters.

"Where are we?" he asked her.

She halted and studied him. "Just coming insystem. The gas giant Calypse sits between Masada and us at the moment. It'll take about six days." She gestured towards the flight cabin. "By all means go and take a look. John and I need a little privacy for a while."

Closing the stick-strip of his coverall. Thorn nodded and, after slipping on the deck shoes that came in the same packet, headed towards the flight cabin. He understood her perfectly: obviously she had come out of cold-sleep some time before himself and Stanton, and he well knew how the body's normal function kicked in over a very short period of time — he himself had often felt unbearably horny in the hour after thaw-up. What he did not understand was why the two of them hadn't left him on ice for a while longer. Looking around, he was suddenly aware of how cramped the cargo area now was. With only small chagrin, he realized that Stanton and Jarvellis had been out of cold-sleep at least once since he himself had gone into it.

In the flight cabin, Thorn dropped into one of the command chairs and gazed at the main screen. Displayed there was the gas giant Calypse, with the corona of the sun glaring to the right of it — its main light muted by a black reactant disc. As Stanton had explained before they had gone into cold-sleep, Masada was surrounded by the laser arrays and cylinder worlds of the Theocracy, with the planetary population held in constant thrall by the ruling caste's technological advantage. This being the case he wondered how his colleagues intended to get Lyric II down to the surface. Admittedly, there were often holes through which a small ship could slip, since in any space-borne civilization there had to be a lot of traffic. But this ship, though it could be mistaken for an insystem hauler, was not exactly small. He thought he might as well experiment.

"Lyric, are you able to respond to me?" he asked.

"I can respond, though you might not like the response," the ship AI replied.

"I'm a little puzzled about how Stanton intends to get this ship down to the planet's surface undetected. He told me that there's just one spaceport and that's only for Theocracy military or cargo traffic, and I've every reason to suspect that the cargo on board here is not for them."

"And what was your question?" Lyric asked him.

"How does he intend to get this ship down to the surface of Masada undetected?"

"Sorry, can't tell you that."

"Do you have Theocracy security codes?"

"Didn't last time I looked."

Sitting back Thorn grimaced to himself: only the terminally naïve believed that AIs did not lie. In fact, in his own experience AIs made better liars than human beings.

"What's your cargo?" he asked bluntly.

"Do get real, Mr Polity agent."

"Okay, what can you tell me about Masada?"

"I've got about ten thousand hours on the subject. What do you want to know? Political system, ecosystem, symbiotic adaptation, religion? About half of what I have covers that last subject alone."

"How about half an hour's eclectic selection? I should think I'll be able to get use of the shower by then."

"All right, I'll begin with the planetary ecosystem prior to the arrival of human beings, findings of the first surveys, then subsequent occupation, and then the history of the Theocracy. Would that be sufficient?"

"Yes, thank you."

With Thorn asking questions, the film show lasted an hour. The two items that most fascinated him were the natural ecosystem and the odd life system introduced by the Theocracy: in the former case the tricones, heroynes, gabbleducks and terrifying hooders; and in the latter the adapted crops and protein sources that were a product of the toil of most of the surface inhabitants. Also the symbiotic life-forms created as a cheaper alternative to breathers and environment suits, as well as being more dogmatically acceptable to the Theocracy than any adaptation of the God-given human form. He was just asking about the Underground when Stanton entered the flight cabin.

"Not a very stable situation," Thorn observed to him.

"No, but stable enough to last for another fifty years, without a sufficient push to topple it meanwhile," Stanton replied.

Thorn gestured to the cargo hold. "And all that stuff's part of the 'push'?"

"It is," said Stanton. "And, do you know, when I bought the main bulk of this cargo on Huma, that planet was undergoing Polity subsumption."

"That normally takes some time, but obviously you found an opening?"

Stanton shrugged. "So I thought. Things were chaotic there, but not very much so. When I found out how tight the security was, I was tempted to go somewhere else, but then a dealer approached me."

"But you risked the deal anyway?" Thorn asked.

"I had a way out but, strangely, I didn't need it. The Polity agents I could see watching my every move did not even attempt to intervene."

"You're saying you have Polity sanction?"

"It was known who I was buying this cargo for. What I am saying is that it's in the interest of the Polity for things to become as unstable as possible on Masada. ECS intends to draw the Line across the world, and most of its population will welcome them gladly."

"Will you?"

Stanton stared at the screen, now showing a lurid but almost rustic scene on the surface of the planet — except for the proctors watching over all from their aerofans, with rail-guns trained on the people below.

"As a child here I always felt there had to be something better than Theocracy rule, but while here, and for some time after, I never saw how you could get beyond the sordid facts of human nature. I've since learnt that the way you do get beyond is by removing human nature from the equation."

"So you are a reformed Separatist?" said Thorn.

Stanton glared at him. "I have never been a Separatist. I'm a mercenary, and that's all."

"Why this, then?" Thorn gestured first at the screen, then at the hold.

"Because I have scores to settle and debts to repay."

Thorn stood and moved to the door, and Stanton walked with him to the ship's living quarters. They entered an area laid out like any planetary house, with a kitchen and eating area, and for the second time Thorn studied his surroundings with some surprise. Most ships possessed automatic food dispensers, yet Lyric II had both this and a small galley, which was an expensive option. He felt a surge of nostalgia at the smell of grilling bacon, and also had to swallow a surge of saliva.

"How do you get down to the surface of the planet without being detected?" he tried.

Stanton went over to check the grilling bacon. Jarvellis, who was going through the complicated process of grinding real beans for a filter coffee maker, glanced at her man with interest — no doubt wondering how much he was prepared to tell this ECS agent.

"Take your shower now, then we'll talk while we have breakfast. Your clothes are in there." Stanton pointed.

Thorn moved through into the bathroom of this thoroughly domestic section of the ship, and was further surprised to find luxuries more commonly associated with the huge holiday cruisers found in populous systems like Sol's. There was a shower set over a wide tub big enough to take two people comfortably, and though the shower itself had the usual ultrasound settings and air-drying heads, there were big fluffy white towels on a heated rail nearby. Obviously these two enjoyed their comforts, but comforts like these on a spaceship cost a lot of money.

He pondered the probable source of that money, and recalled the findings of the investigation on planet Viridian. They had revealed that, though the Separatist mercenary Pelter had destroyed the original Lyric, Jarvellis had escaped and managed to rejoin her lover Stanton on Viridian itself. But Pelter's money — some millions in the form of etched sapphires — had never been recovered. It would now seem there had been enough for them to buy a larger trispherical ship like this one, and have it fitted out to their requirements. Thorn found he could not resent them their windfall, for Stanton's betrayal of Pelter had enabled agent Cormac to kill the rogue Separatist and concentrate on the larger mission in hand — which was investigating the Samarkand disaster. It was then that Cormac had encountered the alien called the Maker, and finally learnt of the legendary Dragon's responsibility for the destruction of all life on Samarkand. With the Maker he had connived in inflicting a suitable punishment for this crime — one which reduced the first Dragon sphere to orbital debris.

When he stepped into the shower, Thorn was further surprised when a shimmer-shield came on around the edge of the bath. As he luxuriated in needle jets of hot water, soaping himself down with a rough bar of real soap, he was puzzled to note a couple of toys sitting on the edge of the bath: a small submarine, of the type used in the strange sea inside Europa, and a dark-otter — both obviously operated by a small remote affixed to the porcelain-effect tiling along the adjacent wall. Neither Stanton nor Jarvellis struck him as the type to play with these sorts of toys; he imagined their toys would be of either the erotic or the lethal kind.

After his shower, he found his clothes waiting in an automatic cleaner inset in the wall. All the blood and filth had been removed, and rips invisibly repaired. It was almost a relief to recognize that this had been entirely done by machine — he could not stand the mental image of either of the other two sewing up his trousers with a needle and thread, since it would mean they were entirely insane. Over disposable underwear, he donned the same fatigues, white shirt, and denim jacket he had been wearing when Lutz and Ternan had taken him to meet Brom. Then he pulled on his favoured leather boots — special issue to ECS, and so hard-wearing that they normally only required replacement for the same reason their possessor might require the replacement of a foot. Suitably clad he moved out into the eating area to be presented with a plate of bacon, egg, garlic-fried mushrooms and a large mug of real coffee. Stanton and Jarvellis, he suddenly decided, had made the successful transition from criminals into saints.

"You asked me how we intend to get down to the surface of the planet undetected," Stanton said. "We'll tell you this, and anything else you want to know, if you're prepared to throw in with us — to help." Before Thorn could reply, Stanton held up an eggy fork to silence him and went on, "Before you answer that, there's some things you need to know. You already know what the situation is on Masada, but what you perhaps don't realize is that Polity agents have already been distributing the electronic ballot, and filtering in what technical support they can for the rebellion. Masada is probably no more than a few years away from sub-sumption."

"How have they been getting stuff in?" Thorn asked.

"It's not entirely closed there," Stanton replied. "The Theocracy manufacturing base is not efficient, so they trade luxury proteins and food essences in exchange for tools and equipment — and wherever there's trade there's smuggling."

"I see," said Thorn — and he did see. If the Polity supported this rebellion, then it was his duty to do the same. He would first have to confirm what Stanton was telling him, but otherwise saw no problem about throwing in his lot with them. In fact he quite looked forward to the prospect as, from what he knew about Stanton, the man was a consummate professional. "If what you say is true, then I'm with you. It is in fact my job."

"Well, that's nice," said Jarvellis, staring directly at Thorn. "Of course, if you betray us in any way, one of us will kill you."

"Likewise," said Thorn, grinning at her.

She tilted her head in acknowledgement, then with a glance at Stanton went on, "We have chameleonware."

"That won't cover an AG reading," Thorn observed.

"Not quite," she said. "But it can blur it for over a quarter of a kilometre, and the Theocracy don't have anything sophisticated enough to pick that up. Our only problem really is the braking burn, as this 'ware isn't sufficient to cover the heat signature and ionic trail that leaves."

Thorn considered what she had just told him. Polity chameleonware could never cover AG readings, which was why, for a hidden descent onto a planet's surface, ECS used stealthed dropbirds to glide on in.

"Is this the same 'ware as they used on Brom's barge?" he asked.

"It is," Stanton replied. "I was there making the second payment for it, which was why there was no tight security around me, and why I could do what I did."

"I thought you were there after Deacon Aberil Dorth?"

"Coincidental. I'd intended to get him on Masada all along."

"I guess I was lucky he was there, then. Perhaps if you hadn't been intent on demolishing Brom's barge, you wouldn't have released me."

"Oh, I intended to fuck Brom over anyway. Poisonous insects like him are best stamped on quickly," Stanton replied.

Thorn studied him for a long moment. What were this man's motivations now? Before the events on Viridian, his only apparent motivation had been money. Why had he changed so much since then? Thorn let the thought go — he never felt inclined to analyse too closely someone else's character, just as he never felt inclined to ask similar questions of himself.

"Do you know the original source of this chameleon-ware? Brom was a little reticent about it and, as you know, I never really got a chance to ask him about it later."

"Separatist research base — and before you ask, no, I don't know where it is. They apparently have a topflight biophysicist working for them. He was also the one who made Brom's poisonous little toy. I only got a name: Skellor."

Thorn vaguely recalled something about that name — something in connection with another operation. That being the case, he supposed ECS had — or were about to — put a terminal brake on the man's activities.

Thorn turned to Jarvellis. "You were telling me about the heat signature and ionic trail."

Having finished her breakfast, Jarvellis sat back with her mug cradled in her hands before her. "Well, most of it we are doing now, shielded by Calypse. The rest we do in atmosphere over Masada itself."

"How the hell do you cover that?"

When she told him, Thorn thought perhaps these two were a little insane.