The Line of Polity

2

With the boy on her lap, leaning back against her breast, the woman continued, "And then there was the brother who built his house from grape sticks, and who sat safe while the heroyne ate his friend and clacked its beak in satisfaction. So proud he was of what he had built… and don't we know all about pride?"

In all seriousness the little boy said, "Big trouble."

The woman bit her lip trying to keep a straight face, then sat upright. "Yes, 'big trouble'," she concurred.

In the picture book propped on the console before her, the long-legged bird creature was frozen at the point where it pinched the previous brother's head in the end of its beak. As she clouted the book, the picture continued running through its animation. The creature tilted its head back and swallowed the man whole… then the picture clicked back to where it was gripping his head again, and had clearly gone into a loop.

"Bugger," the woman muttered, clouting the book a second time. Now the animation resumed as it should, and proceeded to the house of sticks.

The woman went on, "That very night the heroyne came to stand over his house of sticks. And what did it do?"

Together, woman and child said, "It huffed and it puffed, and it puffed and it huffed, and it blew his house down."

"And what did the brother say when his house was gone?" the woman asked, checking her watch.

"Don't eat me!" was the boy's immediate reply.

"And I'm sure you're eager to tell me what happened."

"It gobbled him all up!"

"You can't run, girl. None of us can run." Those had been Fethan's early words to her, shortly after she had crossed the short space from the hover bus that had transported her and five others from the city orphanage to this farming co-operative. Fethan had gone on to explain that euphemism to her: "You co-operate on the farm or they kill you."

It seemed Fethan was an old hand. Some time in his youth he had got on the wrong side of some member of the Theocracy, but not far enough on the wrong side to end up dead — only as a virtual slave.

"Why?" she had asked him. "Why all this?"

"Just the way it is, girl. The Theocracy have all the cream, and if we so much as think of licking it, we get trod on well and good."

"It's not fair," she had said. "My parents were executed, but I've done nothing wrong."

"Right and wrong don't come into it. It's a shit situation and y'gotta make the best of it." Later it would be platitudes like this one that would precede Fethan's oblique references to the Underground. "You gotta find an entrance in the mountains first, and no way we'll ever get there with these fellas hanging on us." Fethan slapped at the scole nestling on his chest. "You don't take your pills regular and your body'll reject the bugger. You don't get in the air at night to build up the surplus it feeds to you in the day, it'll die on you and you'll suffocate."

Remembering such past conversations, Eldene finished her meal of nut-potatoes and bread, then went into the chapel adjoining the canteen to say her evening prayers, under the gaze of the Theocracy cameras, before heading for the bunkhouse. Most of the other workers were already asleep, not having had the extra tasks allotted to herself and her three companions, but there were still one or two muted conversations in progress. Seated on her own bunk, as she tiredly removed her boots, Eldene considered her bleak future — if it could even be called a future. Most workers did not last as long as Fethan, since accident, exhaustion, or proctors killed them before they got to enjoy grey hair for long. Escape was not an option, as without their scoles they would suffocate outside in minutes, and the Theocracy rigidly controlled distribution of the anti-rejection pills. Only stowing away on a trader's ship, or rescue by the fabled Underground, offered any chance of getting away, and all that Eldene knew of the latter seemed rumour and myth. There was one other option for her — the same one many female workers chose upon entering puberty. Eldene hoped she would never be so desperate as to take that route, then wondered if she would be given a choice.

"You ever work the sprawn ponds?" Fethan asked her from the bunk above.

"You know I haven't," Eldene replied.

"Yeah… right, of course."

Eldene felt a sinking in her belly. Fethan was getting forgetful, slow, old. With horrible certainty she knew that sometime soon she would see the old man die, and would probably have to drag his corpse back for processing into fertilizer — which was the best in the way of a send-off any of them could expect.

"What's it like there?" she asked.

" 'Tain't as bad as the squerms. Hard work, but they ain't vicious." Fethan swung his spindly legs over the side of his bunk and dropped down to sit on Eldene's bunk, beside her. "Only trouble is that you gotta wonder why Volus had us moved."

Eldene stared at him. "What do you mean?"

"Well, Ulat was skimming, but you don't get to do that without some help from higher up. Reckon Ulat was paying off Volus, and Volus decided it was time for the arrangement to end once he received his Gift. We're trouble for him now 'cause we might have seen things we oughtn't."

"But he could have easily killed us out there… claimed we tried to escape," said Eldene.

"Nah, he's smarter than that. He can easily blame any shortfall on Ulat, but if us four got done as well, things might start to look a bit too suspicious to the Vicar."

"So he's just moving us conveniently out of the way."

"Yeah, let's hope so," muttered the old man.

The calloraptors had taken to feeding on their seared brethren, so did not get as far as the guard perimeter set up by the new autogun. Cormac observed the insectile machine as it patrolled its allotted area, swivelling its chromed barrels hopefully, and he swore yet again. He raised his gaze to the incandescent sky, where the iron wing of a heavy-lifter was silhouetted on its way down, and he wondered what the hell Tomalon was playing at. Then he marched over to the shuttle that was now powering up.

"Still no sign of Skellor, and we've got probes out as far as twenty kilometres in every direction," said Gant, over Cormac's comlink.

"What about the stratospheric probes?" Cormac asked.

"No sign of a ship, and they've covered most other possibilities. They've been surveying from the moment we arrived," Gant replied.

"Could be under another chameleonware shield."

"Yes, there is that."

Cormac looked around for Gant, and spotted him over by one of the barracks buildings, where a team was stripping out and crating everything, including those damned coralline fragments. He considered going over and joining the Golem, then rejected the idea. He had to find out what all this was about, why Tomalon was being so difficult. Then he would find out what the hell Skellor had been up to.

Jain… Cormac tasted the word as he walked to the shuttle. The name had been that of a member of an ancient Hindu sect believing the material world eternal, and seemed suitable for a race with a seemingly numinous technology. It was also suitably ironic considering the race no longer existed. The first fragmentary coralline artefacts had been discovered before Cormac's birth and had immediately been a sensation, for though alien life was common in the Polity, sentient alien life was rare. Interest had waned when the fragments were dated at over five million years old, then resurged when further examination revealed some of them to be the product of advanced nano- and even pico-technology. That discovery had consequently impelled huge advances in Polity technology. Ever since, the hunt had been on for similar remains, but the sum total of fragments found weighed less than ten kilos. Of the Jain themselves, little more was known than that they had occupied many worlds, had actually rearranged solar systems to suit their requirements, and were now gone. No one knew what a Jain looked like. It was speculated that like humans they had adapted themselves to their worlds when the reverse could not be done. And knowing of what those aliens had been, capable, AIs and humans alike expressed the sentiment that perhaps it was a good thing that they were no longer around.

"Tomalon, can't you transmit the message down here to me?" Cormac asked, suddenly feeling frustrated.

"No," replied the Captain of the Occam Razor. "It is for your eyes only and it cannot be retransmitted. You have to come here to read it."

"You say there's no information as to why we have to pull out so fast?"

"None, unfortunately."

"What about Occam, has it got anything to say?" Cormac asked, as he reached the lock of the shuttle. The lock irised open and he stepped inside. He was removing his breathing gear and goggles when the Captain's reply came through the shuttle's comlink — the craft's hull otherwise being impervious to radio transmissions.

"Occam says that Earth Central is aware of the importance of capturing Skellor."

"That's it?"

"That's it," Tomalon confirmed.

Cormac dropped into the seat next to the pilot, and turned to the woman herself. She was Golem, he realized almost immediately. She watched him enquiringly until he impatiently pointed upwards, before strapping himself in — this being a military craft it did not have the luxury of internal grav-plates. She cursorily scanned the instrumentation then lifted and tilted the joystick. With a deep AC hum the craft rose and turned, the screen polarizing as it partially faced towards the sun. To one side Cormac saw the heavy-lifter coming down to collect, piecemeal, the entire Separatist base. For someone the future would involve a great deal of deep forensic scanning, as they extracted every mote of available information concerning what Skellor had been up to from the material of this base. And the deepest and most rigorous scanning would certainly be concentrated on those small fragments of coralline material.

The sky turned from an inferno to that abrupt blue twilight, as the shuttle outdistanced the sun and continued to ascend. Soon stars became visible, their light punching through the glassy sculpture of a not-so-distant nebula.

"The Occam's coming up," said the pilot, pointing at a distant speck, perhaps emulating discomfort at Cormac's silence.

Cormac felt himself relenting: it wasn't her fault that this mission was being screwed, whether she was Golem or not.

"You know," he said, "when I was first shuttled out to that ship, the pilot pointed it out to me then." She looked at him inquiringly and he went on, "More precisely she said, 'We'll be there soon, and I suggested the figure of twenty minutes. When she told me forty minutes, I was quite surprised — I hadn't realized just how big the damned thing was."

She nodded her agreement. "The Occam Razor is a delta-class dreadnought."

Cormac continued, "You discover, in such situations, that you still have the capacity for awe." He watched the speck as it grew in the screen. Later he discovered his capacity to feel awe was undiminished. The Occam Razor hung utterly still in space: a golden lozenge spined with sensor arrays and weapons, four kilometres long, and one and a half wide, and one deep. He felt a moment of disquiet when he remembered that this was not the largest of the Earth Central Security dreadnoughts. It took its place in the Greek alphabet after three other classes.

"You have to wonder how big alpha-class dreadnoughts are," he said, as they passed below a sensor array the size of a cathedral.

"That's something we'd all like to know," said the woman. Cormac glanced at her in surprise: it was not often that a Golem admitted to any lack of knowledge. She went on, "Information on alpha and beta dreadnoughts is restricted. But I know that the gamma dreadnought Cable Hogue is not allowed to orbit any world with seas."

Cormac looked at her and waited.

"Tides," she explained. "Cable Hogue masses the same as Earth's moon. It's a lot bigger, though."

"Shit."

"Of course, it's only a dreadnought. There are reputed to be others."

"Let me guess: planet breakers? Popular fiction has a lot to answer for."

The Golem woman just stared at him for a moment, before manoeuvring the shuttle into an open bay. A gnat flying into a lion's mouth. And this lion had sharp claws indeed.

Disembarking from the shuttle, Cormac gazed around at the huge cavern of the shuttle bay and at the activity therein. There were other shuttles clamped to the acres of ceramal flooring, and a maintenance team was working on one of these — a team consisting of humans, Golem, and various esoteric designs of robot. As he moved out across the floor, one of these devices — a remote drone — flew an erratic course towards him.

Once the drone was close he said to it, "I want you to take me to the bridge." For he had already experienced disorientation at the shifting of the internal structure of the ship. Occam, the ship's AI, often rearranged that structure for supposed optimum efficiency, though Cormac suspected the intelligence had other reasons.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," said the drone impatiently, and began its wavering flight away from him. He stared at it in annoyance, and it halted ten metres away. "Come on then," it said, and a clawed arm folded out from its flat body and gestured impatiently for him to follow. He did so, remembering that warship AIs and their various subminds were reputedly cranky. It had something to do with getting a shitty deal as far as employment was concerned. A ship like the Occam Razor was effectively its controlling intelligence's body, and was built for wholesale destruction and slaughter. Occam, the AI, spent most of its time twiddling metaphorical thumbs.

The drone led Cormac to a drop-shaft, up which he was propelled at more than usual speed. The drone hovered near him like the carapace of a crab, its metal arms folded underneath. For all that it only had black button eyes evenly spaced round its rim, it seemed to be glaring at him disapprovingly. The irised gravity field slowed him at the requisite level, and the drone led him out into Tomalon's abode.

Sticking out like the head of a thistle from one side of the ship, the bridge was roofed entirely in chainglass, and walled with consoles like compressed masses of fairy lights. Fixed to columns sunk into the black glass floor, in which the spill of optics flickered like synapses, was an arc of command chairs facing the chainglass windows to Cormac's left. The central one of these was the only one occupied.

Tomalon sat there like some ancient king upon his throne, only both king and throne were one. He was a swarthy and thickset man who was utterly hairless — probably because hairs might interfere with the many metallic and crystalline connections all over his body, which in turn made him appear to be suffering from some exotic skin complaint. The surface of Tomalon's body was a plug, and the socket was this crystal and ceramo-composite chair he occupied. It joined him — as closely as it was safe to be joined — to the Occam Razor's AI. From amidst his casings and skeins of optic cable, the Captain glanced at Cormac.

"This message," Cormac said.

"The drone," said Tomalon, tilting his head, "will take you to it."

Cormac glanced aside as the drone slid forward and turned towards him.

"What do you mean take me to it?"

Tomalon explained, "The message you have received is a total-immersion VR package. Beyond that, I know nothing other than its source at EC. Occam knows more, but I am not permitted to tell you what he knows."

Cormac stared at the Captain for a moment, as the man settled back in his chair and his eyes slowly went opaque white — some kind of reaction to direct optical linking — then glared out of the chainglass windows towards the planet below. More pointless delays — why all this unnecessary drama?

"Let's get it done then," he muttered, and turned away.

Cormac moved into a standing position, with his hands arranged as a Pharaoh's and his eyes closed. He held that position for one even expulsion of air, then moved into a sequence of punches, kicks and head-butts to take out five opponents. He finished the kata in the Pharaoh position again, took one steady breath, relaxed.

"You're very fast," someone said.

Oh shit.

The gym was supposedly closed to everyone but Scar and himself, so somehow this man must have got past the dracoman. He appeared young and very fit, which did not mean he was necessarily either, and he wore a gi, so it was clearly not his intention to spectate. Cormac watched him approach, noticing a strong hint of Japanese about him, and something familiar. Five paces away from Cormac, the Japanese bowed in a fighter's fashion — that is, he did not once take his eyes from Cormac, who returned the courtesy.

"Who are you?" Cormac asked.

The man grinned and slid into a fighting stance. Cormac did the same. He felt easy about this: he knew he was good and he was already warmed up, whereas his adversary might only have the benefit of the former. They closed, exchanged a few testing punches, all easily blocked. Out of the corner of his eye Cormac saw Scar step into the gym to stand watching with his arms folded like some paternal sensei. Curiouser and curiouser.

"Scar let you in here?" said Cormac, flicking his foot up at the side of his opponent's head as if to emphasize the point.

"He knows I have nothing but the best intentions," said the man, after successfully ducking the attack. He then countered with three kicks in quick succession, the last of which — a thrust kick turned into a reverse roundhouse at the last moment — nearly taking Cormac's head off. Cormac leapt back, countering the rapidly following punch with a crescent kick. He then himself went into the attack — and meant it. That last kick could have caused him some real damage. This was to be no game. They proceeded to exchange blows too fast for the casual observer to follow. Cormac felt his opponent's rib give under one of his strikes, then felt one of his own go immediately after. The next thing he knew, a foot cracked against his temple, then swept his feet away. He was now on his back, a straight-fingered strike poised, withheld, but ready, over his throat.

"You are fast," he admitted, panting.

The 'Japanese' stepped back, shrugged, and suddenly appeared a lot older. Cormac immediately recognized him.

"You're not so slow yourself, Ian Cormac. You're the first to manage that in a long time." He pushed his hand against his ribcage and there was a click. He shrugged again and stood upright. That he had a cracked rib showed not at all. Cormac pushed himself laboriously to his feet. His own busted rib was just beginning to hurt.

"Here, let me," said Blegg, and reached out to press his palm against Cormac's chest. A flush of warmth, the pain went away.

"How the hell did you do that?" he asked.

Blegg smiled and waved a hand at their surroundings. "I can do anything here — as can you, should you will it," he said.

Cormac walked to the side of the room and picked up a towel to wipe his face.

He gave the dracoman a calculating look. "Learnt anything interesting?"

Scar showed his teeth.

Cormac turned back to Blegg, who had followed him, and seemed to be sweating not at all. What did he mean, 'I can do anything'? Then Cormac suddenly realized what the comment might indicate. He held out the towel and let it drop, then, with a small exertion of will, stopped the fabric in midair.

He glanced at Blegg. "Total immersion?"

Blegg nodded once.

"How much of my memory is repressed?" Cormac asked.

"Enough for the civilities, but now you will remember where and when you are."

And Cormac did. He remembered his mission on Samarkand — that world devastated by the alien entity calling itself 'Dragon' — then his long sojourn on Earth after having spent far too much time trying to find the source of a contract that had been put out on his life — only to discover it was Dragon who wanted him dead. But whether that contract had been put out by the sphere he had killed or another, he did not know — for Dragon was now essentially four entities, each a living sphere a kilometre across. During that sojourn he had, not for the first time, considered retirement, then quickly rejected the idea. Thereafter had come the quick resolution of a problem involving a small group of amphidapt Separatists on Europa, which had then resulted in his pursuit of a biophysicist called Skellor, whom Earth Central Security had been watching for some time. This pursuit had been long but not particularly troublesome — Skellor having a tracer layered in a memplant he had purchased while watched by ECS. Then on to the Line-patrolling dreadnought the Occam Razor — and now here…

"Get to the point," said Cormac, regaining his impatience.

"As you will," said Blegg, waving a hand.

Instantly a black line split this reality, opened and swept away the entire dojo, and the dracoman along with it. Now Cormac found himself standing on a floor of glass in open space. He gazed down to where Blegg pointed and saw the huge Outlink station Miranda, suspended there. Around it, in speeded time, gathered a fleet of ships, and before his eyes the station began to come apart.

"This was Outlink station Miranda five solstan days ago. It was destroyed by a mycelium similar to the one used to destroy the Samarkand runcible," said Blegg.

"Deaths?" inquired Cormac, his urgency to find Skellor now seeming childish to him.

"Twenty-three of the Outlinkers refused to leave, but there was time enough to evacuate the rest."

"Did Dragon plant the mycelium? Are we talking outright hostilities with it now?"

"One of the spheres — it is well to remember that they are separate entities now — may have been involved. You will travel to this place in the Occam Razor, and you will find out what is happening, then take whatever action you deem necessary."

Cormac stared thoughtfully at the Outlink station as great swathes of its hull unpeeled and explosions sparkled its surface. "If Dragon really is involved, I could do with some assistance out there."

"You are thinking of Mika, the life-Coven woman from Circe."

"I am," said Cormac.

"You are also thinking of what she might learn from the materials gathered from that base on Callorum," said Blegg. Cormac shrugged, and Blegg went on, "The nearest Polity outpost on your direct route to Miranda's last position is the asteroid smelting station, Elysium. Mika will be there when you arrive."

"What about the rest of the Sparkind?"

"Once you are at Elysium, copies of Aiden and Cento, having been transmitted through the runcible there, will upload to memory space in the Occam's AI and, should you require them, they can be downloaded into spare Golem bodies that the ship carries. You already have Gant and Scar with you. Thorn, unfortunately, is otherwise engaged."

Cormac nodded, good enough — though working with Golem copies always made him edgy. The minds of Aiden and Cento would be no different from those of their originals, only the bodies would be different, though not visibly, so there was no logical reason for his edginess — just a personal quirk he supposed.

"Anything else I should know?" he asked.

"The nearest inhabited world outside the Line to where Miranda was destroyed is one aptly named Masada. It is interesting to note that the theocracy ruling that world ordered, some time ago, the construction of a kinetic missile-launcher, ostensibly to defend Masada against Dragon."

"What might they hope to achieve with it otherwise?" asked Cormac.

"The utter suppression of a rebellion that is, literally, underground."

"Explain."

"The rebels live in caves. And a kinetic missile-launcher of sufficient power can penetrate deep into the ground."

"I see."

Cormac stared at Blegg, trying to see the wheels within. The ancient Japanese was unreadable but then, in Cormac's experience, Blegg was only as readable as he wanted to be. He was named agent Prime Cause. He would perhaps better have been named Prime Manipulator.

"Is this another of your games?" he asked.

Blegg gazed at him with eyes like enamel buttons.

"The Occam Razor is not actually the nearest Line patrol dreadnought but, considering the possible involvement of Dragon, you are the most suitable choice of investigator and… facilitator." As Blegg spoke, the dojo once again folded in around the two of them, only this time minus the dracoman. "No games, agent Cormac. We have no time for them now." And, with that, Blegg walked to the door of the dojo. Cormac paused for a moment before following him. There were other questions; there always were. When he stepped into the corridor beyond, Blegg was gone: the Cheshire Cat and the Mad Hatter rolled into one. Cormac returned to the dojo, and closed his eyes.

"End program," he said succinctly.

Now he felt his body assume its original pose: the Pharaoh position, as in the kata. The temperature changed abruptly and he felt a tingling stinging at the sides of his head. When that sensation ceased — signifying that the nanofibres had been withdrawn from his cortex — he reached up and pulled aside the auging clamp. Opening his eyes, he saw the ship's drone hovering before him and, glancing around, he once again located himself in the Occam Razor's VR suite.

"We go to Elysium, and from what I know of the place, that is certainly the most inapt description," he said, stepping from the support frame.

The drone dipped in midair as it, no doubt, relayed this information to Tomalon.

The entire Separatist base lay packaged and strapped down in one small section of one of the huge holds. A shimmer-shield, from ceiling to floor, divided off this section from the rest of the hold, no doubt to prevent wastage of the inert gas that was now being pumped in. Skellor observed the security drone suspended from the ceiling like some art deco light fitting and, whilst sweating in his environment suit and watching in panic the count trickling away on the air-supply indicator displayed in the bottom corner of his visor, called up a specific viral subprogram in his aug. It was getting easier to do this now. No longer did he feel the crystal matrix AI as something separate from himself — it was he who was remembering the program, and he who was opening the soft link to the security drone.

The link established itself with a click that was almost audible to him. He felt the subprogram uploading through it, and he observed that program draining from the temporary memory spaces in his crystal matrix aug like acid from uncorked carboys. Letting his attention follow it through, he observed the drone's internal defences spiralling out like informational smoke, and in virtual space he erased them. Then he killed the drone and withdrew, subverting its uplink to Occam, to leave only a program to respond to the constant query signal from the ship's AI that the drone was still functional.

Skellor let out a gasp and reached down to fumble for the shut-off button. Around him, the air flickered and he was revealed standing by a stack of crates below the drone. Looking down at the chameleonware generator on his belt — an object like a large white snail shell with a touch-console mounted in its mouth — he noted that he had shut it off just minutes before it would have done so itself. He rested his hand against its glossy surface and felt the heat of it — he had not yet found a way of running a personal generator for longer than a few hours without overloading it, as the power required to run such a device was huge.

He moved away from the crates to stand before the shimmer-shield, still keeping an eye on his air supply. Probing into the walls of the hold, he soft-linked, but was gratified to discover that the shield only linked back to Occam to inform the ship AI that it was functioning, not whether someone had stepped through it. Skellor then stepped through, the shield tugging and pressing against him so that it felt as if he were pushing through thick jelly. Once he was through, another display in the corner of his visor, which heretofore had only read 'Argon', now showed that the usual mix of breathable gases surrounded him. He removed his mask and took a deep breath of air redolent of metals and warm electronics, which was always the recognizable taint of ship air. Moving to the wall of the hold, he sat and closed his eyes to more closely explore his relationship with his crystal matrix AI, and found that, of course, it was killing him.

It was a given that direct interfacing with an AI would kill the human participant by blowing each synapse like a fuse in an increasing cascade, and would also drive the AI into its own particular version of insanity. For centuries, researchers had tried to construct AIs more amenable to the joining, but had always failed. This was unsurprising as such a joining was comparable with attempting to weld a lump of steel to a candle — it didn't matter what you did with the steel: the welding process would always be too hot for the candle wax. Skellor's answer to this conundrum was that you didn't weld, you used glue instead. Presently he had yet to use the glue — and the AI had yet to completely burn him out, because it was not fully online. He had also only been directly interfaced for an hour before that bastard Polity agent had turned up.

Now it was time for Skellor to use the glue.

The egg-shaped container he cupped in his hand was as much Jain technology as was its contents, for the contained nanotechnology would overrun even an inert material. Lining the inside were billions of nano-constructs whose sum purpose was to deliver the message 'not yet' to the living node they surrounded. Skellor turned the egg so it stood on its end, and linked through to it. Immediately he felt poised at a portal into a vast space crammed with a tangle of glittering and vastly complex shapes. Pulling back, he paused for a moment and considered his options. If he remained linked to the AI, without using this Jain node, he would die within a few hours. If he disconnected from the crystal matrix AI aug, he would return to his previous state, and that was unacceptable. Even with the AI not fully online, he found himself easily capable of working through formulae he had been unable to even begin with before; his memory was now eidetic, and his grasp of his own work huge. Disconnection would also lead to his capture, and for some of the things he had done he would most certainly end up being forcibly mind-wiped. His remaining choice rested in the palm of his hand.

Skellor sent the initiation code and watched as the egg opened like the petals of a flower, to expose the Jain node. It was another egg, a smaller version of its container — a metallic egg mottled with complex cubic patterns. It didn't look much, even in this age when a planetary governor could fit into an ashtray, and when a weapon of planetary obliteration was not necessarily much bigger than that. But, in its own way, it was immense. It was still a source of amazement to Skellor that he, of all people, had found this object, when people all across the Polity had been searching for such things for centuries. He knew that corporations spent billions on Jain research, that whole planets had been the subject of archaeological digs, that there were some truly titanic AIs whose only purpose was to find something like this. Yet where had he found it?

The world was wintry, but not killingly cold. Across its mainly oceanless surface grew forests of deciduous trees, none more than fifty years old, as it was only fifty years before that the orbital mirror had been moved into place and the planet heated enough to sustain Terran life-forms. Great canals directed water down from the slowly melting poles to fill up those cavities in the land earmarked as future oceans. It was beside one of these nascent oceans that a spaceport had been established, and where it was rumoured that a runcible facility would soon be installed. Skellor found the market on one of the huge jetties under construction on the yet-to-be-filled ocean's bed. The stall was one of the few not doing very much business, it being cluttered with items that most Polity citizens would discard without a second thought. He had been on the point of heading back to his hotel, for the day was cold and drizzly, and a storm was predicted to drift in from the northern outflow — but a grubby hand reached across and clasped his jacket.

"I got some good stuff that ain't on display, my friend," said the owner of the hand.

Skellor studied her: she looked of a type — those who bought passage to new worlds, then couldn't be bothered to work hard enough to make a decent life for themselves, or to raise enough money to move on. Her cosmetic work was out of date, her clothing shabby, and she had that look of perpetual anger at circumstances she did nothing to correct.

"Like what?" he asked.

Quickly she pulled three plastic cartons from under the table and opened them on its surface. The first carton contained artificial gemstones suitably adulterated to make them look like the real thing, the second contained a selection of augs of the type that would scramble your brains within a week, and the third contained a grey egg and a bag of broken coral.

"See," she said, holding up a Sensic augmentation.

Skellor turned to go, but then allowed his attention to stray back to the third carton.

Where had he seen coral like that before?

"What's that?" he asked, pointing.

She picked up the bag and shook it. "This is real coral, from the Barrier Reef on Earth."

"How interesting," said Skellor, knowing that the chances of stealing coral from that place were equatable with the chances of beating the Earth Central AI at chess. Again about to turn and leave, he remembered where he had before seen coralline objects such as these. In the Tranquillity Museum on Earth's moon: in a chainglass case inside a security chamber everyone was aware could be ejected from the Museum at a moment's notice, to be obliterated in space by CTD — Contra Terrene Device — that euphemistic term for an antimatter weapon.

"All right, how much do you want for them?" he asked.

"You have to buy the whole carton," she replied. "Twenty shillings."

"I don't want that egg thing, so I'll give you ten."

Glancing at the purple swirl of cloud to the north, the woman agreed.

The node was changing colour and there seemed to be movement: interchange within the cubic patterns on its surface. A year of research had revealed to him that the coralline objects were certainly Jain, and certainly useless. Fifteen years of research had revealed perhaps one per cent of the secrets of the node, but enough to put him way ahead of any competitors in his field, and to give him an understanding of what he was dealing with. Tipping the object into the gloved palm of his hand, he raised it to his lips.

Then he pushed it into his mouth.