The Line of Polity

3

With the slightly bored tone of an adult who knew what was coming, the woman said, "The brother who had built his house from blocks of limestone and roofed it with slabs of the same, already knew the dangers of pride and, hearing that his friends had been eaten by the heroyne, he prayed for them." She glanced at the child in the hope that he had fallen asleep at last, and that she wouldn't have to read the rest. One read-through was enough to get the heavy-handed message and, even though she had been told to persevere, she was contemplating dumping the damned book. The boy, unfortunately, was as wide-eyed as ever.

"For his house was built with the stones of the Satagents, cemented with Faith, and the roof was tiled…" She trailed off into silence when she realized that what she was saying bore no relation to the words the book displayed. Thinking that she must be getting ahead of herself, she started again:

"But neither pride nor prayer have influence on the heroyne," she said, then leant forwards to more closely study the text.

"I'm sure it didn't say that yesterday," she muttered. Half closing the book, she was surprised to see that the tide of Moral Fables had just acquired a 't' and changed to Mortal Fables.

"Mum?" said the boy impatiently.

"Naughty," she said with a grin, as she opened the book again.

The boy gave her a puzzled look, but she continued reading:

"For it came to stand over his house that night, as he prayed to his god. Then it huffed and it puffed, it puffed and it huffed, then it kicked down his walls."

The boy looked even more puzzled at this.

"What do you think the last brother said to the heroyne when his house was gone?"

On more familiar territory now the boy replied, "Don't eat me!"

"And let's see you make a stab at guessing what it did do."

The boy gave the usual reply whilst the heroyne in the picture book repeatedly gobbled down a man in priestly attire…

It started after the first sleep period, when the clans came groggily from, in most cases, drugged slumber. Apis had woken before most of the others. Yes, the destruction of the station was terrible, but it was also the most exhilarating thing that had happened to him. His mother woke shortly after, and studied him speculatively as he gazed at the other clan members rising and beginning to move about. No one had an individual cabin. They were in a huge hold, and what privacy they had was provided by plastic sheeting easily suspended in low gee — probably created by slow acceleration of the ship rather than any grav-tech, as Peerswarf informed him.

"Go and find a food dispenser," his mother ordered him, and he quickly went, not being inclined to disobey when her voice took on that tone. Apis soon found a machine set in the wall, and collected a ration of food bars and a container of some sort of hot drink — there had been no labels on the machine. He was on his way back when he heard the uproar. Immediately curious, he went over to investigate.

Two full-gee men stood uncomfortably by doors at the back of the bay. There was something quite odd about their identical dress: they wore white shipsuits that appeared to be padded and armoured, and down one side from armpit to ankle were words in no language Apis understood. They wore visored helmets that armoured one side of their faces, and joined to a ring of the same white metal around their necks. On the exposed sides of their heads they each wore scaled augs with an organic appearance. They both also carried weapons of some kind. Apis realized that these men wore military uniforms — but no Polity uniform that he recognized.

"We want five of you — now," one of the men said, his voice seeming almost disinterested.

The rousing Outlinkers ignored what he had just said, and bombarded him and his comrade with questions. Apis glanced aside and saw that several other Outlinkers were standing back with their heads bowed and fingers pressed to their own augs — none of which had the organic appearance of those worn by the guards. They all bore expressions of puzzlement.

"Nothing," said the old man standing next to him. "I'm getting nothing."

As the questioning grew more insistent, the Outlinkers drew closer to the two soldiers, who simply seemed puzzled by this behaviour. Apis did not see or hear what initiated action. All he saw was the soldier — who had not spoken — swing his weapon, and all he heard was the sickening crunch of breaking bone. The crowd parted around a clanswoman falling slow, and foetal, to the floor. Afterwards, there was silence.

"We want five of you," said the speaker, in that same disinterested tone, and the Outlinkers began to move away. "Now," the man added, pointing his weapon at the crowd for emphasis. One of the crowd stepped forward. It was Peerswarf, the man Apis liked to think was his father.

"We demand you let us speak with the ship AI. This is intolerable. Are we animals to be treated like this?" Peerswarf watched as others tended to the woman. There was an expression of disbelief on his face. Apis stared at the woman, and saw that her skull had a cavity and she was not breathing. It seemed that no one wanted to admit she was dead.

The speaker raised his tinted visor and gazed at Peerswarf. Now a sneer twisted the soldier's features.

"We do not allow idiot silicon to order our lives. There is no AI on this ship. Under God, men fly it, men control it, men operate the guns."

Silence of shock, more profound than the assault had caused, met this statement.

"She is dead," said one of those who had stooped down to the woman.

Peerswarf glanced down at him as if he had said something illogical, then he returned his attention to the soldiers.

"You killed her…"

"Yes, and more will be killed if five of you do not come with me now."

"What… what for?"

"We need five able hands to work in the engine room."

"Engine room?"

Since when had anyone worked in the engine room of a ship? Automatics handled such things. Robots normally did the work in such places.

"Now!" yelled the soldier, and with that raised his weapon upwards and pulled the trigger. There was a low thrumming and something crackled across the ceiling. Apis heard the caroming of ricochets, and noted the line of dents in the metal. Rail-gun, primitive.

Hesitantly at first, several Outlinkers stepped forward, to be directed through the doors. More soldiers waited beyond. Apis turned to hurry back to his mother, but she was already standing at his shoulder. They gazed at each other but they did not speak. Later, when the five returned, dirty, tired, and with the radiation tags on their belts into amber, they exchanged that gaze again. All their lives they'd had information access. They now knew the score: they were in the hands of barbarians.

"I am Deacon Chaisu of the warship General Patten," the face on the screen informed them later on. "It is unfortunate that a member of your group was killed today — may she rest in the arms of our Lord — but it must be understood that you are indebted for your lives to the people and planet of Masada and to the God of the Faithful. A small portion of this debt can be cancelled by your work upon this ship, and finally in the yards on Flint…" The Deacon went on and on about the wonderful things they could do, and the projects in which they might become involved. He then told them they were the defenders of humanity.

"Perhaps you are unaware of what caused the destruction of Outlink station Miranda… Some of you may know the story of the system of Aster Colora, some of you may know of the more recent events on the way-station world of Samarkand. On the latter world, thousands of people were killed by the transgalactic servant of Satan that names itself Dragon. It used a nanomycelium to destroy the buffers of an interstellar runcible so that a man arrived on Samarkand as photonic matter. His arrival was the cause of a fusion explosion that killed many. Many more died in the aftermath, for Samarkand was a cold world heated by energy build-ups from the runcible. The rest of the population froze to death. Know now that the nanomycelium used to destroy Miranda was the same one — that Dragon destroyed your home. You must work now to…"

So it went on and, each time they thought it had finished with a 'God defend the faithful', Deacon Chaisu would start up again.

"Propaganda officer," said someone nearby.

"They're religious," observed Apis's mother.

"So?" asked the speaker.

"They believe their own propaganda. It's where the word originates," she replied knowledgeably.

Apis asked, "What is going on?"

"There is an old word for what we are to become," said the man nearby.

"What is that?" asked Apis.

"Slaves," his mother told him.

The sprawns were the blue of tool steel and over ten centimetres long. Their wings made it necessary for nets to be stretched across their ponds at all times, to prevent them flying off to die in an environment hostile to them. As Eldene understood it, they were another expensive delicacy destined both for the tables of the Theocracy and for them to trade in exchange for luxury goods from other worlds.

"They say these are an adaptation from an Earth creature," Fethan said as he and Eldene laboured at digging a sluice ditch leading to one of the ponds.

"I might like to believe your stories about the Underground, but I don't believe the ones about Earth, old man," Eldene replied.

"Why not?" Fethan sounded hurt, as he shovelled out another clump of black mud.

Eldene watched the nest of green nematodes the old man had uprooted, as they writhed and burrowed back into darkness. "The great mythical empire where everyone is free and everyone has their portion of plenty. I know the difference between what's possible and what's wishful thinking. If this Earth even exists, it's far from here and not doing anything to help us. And as for this Human Polity run by godlike AIs…" She snorted and shovelled more mud.

"But it's true," Fethan protested.

"Oh yes, then why aren't there Polity ships amongst the traders?"

"How do you know there are not?" Fethan asked.

"Well, if some of them are Polity, they seem glad enough to buy refined squerm and sprawn essence," Eldene spat, thinking of the buyers the Vicar of Cyprian Compound sometimes brought out on tour, who did not seem overly bothered by the penitential lot of the pond worker.

Fethan said, "Most of 'em are scum of the Line."

"Yes, and I'm a gabbleduck's mother," said Eldene. And there the conversation ended, as it was drowned out by the racket of Volus's aerofan landing nearby. Now silent, the two of them dug their way closer and closer to the heavy iron sluice gate across which they must fit nets before draining the pond. Before they reached the gate, a shriek had them peering over the edge of the ditch.

"That's where Cathol and Dent are digging!" shouted Fethan.

Eldene glanced round and was surprised to see the old man nimbly leap out of the ditch and head in the direction of the sound. Upon tiredly following the old man, she saw Volus standing over by the sluice that the other two had been digging, with Dent sprawled at his feet. The rattling of sprawn wings filled the air, the strange creatures having escaped through the sluice and uncovered ditch. Eldene quickly followed Fethan who seemed, surprisingly, intent on finding out what was going on. Soon they arrived at the side of the ditch, only to see Cathol trapped underwater beneath the collapsed sluice gate, sprawns swarming in the water all around him.

"He's… going to… kill… us," Dent managed to gasp from where he lay at the Proctor's feet.

"Get back to work, brothers," said Volus, turning round from his cold studying of Cathol.

The worker, Cathol, looked dead to Eldene, but it seemed unlikely that the collapsing gate would have killed him or his scole, and his scole would have prevented him from drowning. She could only think, then, about what Fethan had told her the night before, and assume this to be murder. With no idea what she intended, she took a step forward. Volus whipped his stinger across, hitting her arm and then her scole, and she went down with a yell, the entire side of her body feeling as if dipped in acid, and her scole jerking against her. Crawling along the ground, she saw Volus draw his gun, point down, and casually shoot Dent dead. The man slammed face-down, his head opened, and its contents spattered across the black loam. Gasping, and beginning to black out from both pain and oxygen starvation, Eldene stared at Fethan and willed him to run.

Fethan stared straight back at her. "You know," murmured the old man, "there's only so much undercover work I can stand." Then he walked towards the Proctor, jerking but not falling as two shots slammed into his chest, then halted, and speared his hand straight through the man's body.

Twenty of the Outlinkers had their radiation tags into amber when, with a terrifying wrenching feeling of dislocation, the General Patten dropped out of U-space. Over the intercom, the speechifying continued, but they had all, after the first repetition, learned to ignore it. The twenty told of the primitive conditions, the lack of automatics, the weaponry openly carried, the radiation leaking into the engine hold. On the face of it, their situation seemed quite clear, yet some aspects Apis found confusing.

"They called AI 'idiot silicon' — like Separatists would — yet they are auged," he said to his mother.

Peerswarf, who had come over to share food and conversation with them, smiled and nodded at Apis, then said, "Looks like biotech to me, so, as such, it's definitely not silicon. Anyway, they 'do not allow it to govern their lives' which is not to say that they will not govern it."

How plausible all that sounded, yet Apis picked up on the worried look flashed between Peerswarf and Apis's mother, and he knew that plausibility did not make truth. He listened to further discussion of the augs these people wore — how there was absolutely no connection to be made with those the clans wore — but in the end sleep became more important to him than eliciting whatever truth there might be, and he turned towards his hammock. He was just resting his hand on the edge of it, ready to pull himself in when a surge of gee threw him to the floor, then slid him against a wall. There was a crash, followed by pressure on his chest.

"Fast manoeuvring," someone gasped. "An AI would have compensated."

A siren started wailing and red lights strobed in the ceiling above the bay's inner doors. Another crash. The ship shuddered.

"Oh no," someone said, quite simply; there was terror and fatalism in the voice. Apis looked round and realized it was his mother who had spoken. She was staring at the ceiling. He looked up also, and immediately saw how the metal was twisting across its entire length.

"What do we do?" he asked her.

Another crash… the ship slewing sideways… people's belongings flying through the air. His mother tilted her head to listen to the distant sounds of distorting and shattering metal, screaming, explosions.

"Something's tearing this ship apart," she said, more puzzled now than fearful. "It must be in gee… a black hole? They can't have got too close to a planet. Even they could not be so incompetent."

The ceiling then split, and something surged through: a tentacle as thick as a man's body, and terminating in a flat cobra head with a single blue eye where a mouth might have been.

"Dragon," said his mother. "Run!" But where was there to run to? Apis saw it happen, along with many others: the buckling and splitting of the ceiling had pulled open the back doors of the bay. Beside his mother, Apis was one of the first to reach those doors.

"Soldiers," he said, after sticking his head through the gap, and seeing uniformed men half running and half dragging themselves down the corridor by the evenly spaced handrails. Turning to his mother he said, "They don't have grav-plates out there."

"Primitive," she replied as other Outlinkers pushed up behind them. They all turned and looked up, as another pseudopod squirmed through the split in the ceiling. The ship shook once again; emergency lights began flashing in the corridor. Apis checked the corridor once more and saw the last of the soldiers disappearing around a bend in it. Again the ship lurched, sending people floating — observed by the blue eyes of Dragon — towards the broken ceiling.

"We can go through!" Apis yelled, and hauled himself into the corridor.

"No, not yet!" his mother yelled too late.

Apis was halfway to the bend when the others began to follow. His mother reached him ahead of the crowd. Most of them did not reach him. To one side, something distorted and broke, and fire spewed through — flame hanging in the air like layers of fog, with no gravity to give it shape. Apis heard screaming, saw shapes…

"Come on." His mother grabbed his shoulder and pulled him onwards. With others, they reached a side shaft that ran through the ship. Uniformed people were floating and propelling themselves up it, aiming for an access way above.

"They'll be heading for craft to escape in," she said. They flung themselves up the shaft, and followed the crowd. No one took any notice of them. Terror had become a taste in the air. Vacuum could claim them all at any moment. The access way opened in another corridor leading to an airlock. Apis and his mother followed the uniformed personnel through it. Three others also in uniform followed them, before a sucking explosion and the sudden slamming of the airlock. One got halfway through, but he did not stop the lock from closing.

The hull of the landing craft clanged as the clamps let go, and all was free-floating chaos as it dropped away from the mother ship. Orders were bellowed and soldiers pulled themselves down into seats and strapped themselves in. Apis and his mother did the same, and only now that the craft was moving away from the ship did they get some strange looks. Glancing back he took in the soldiers there, the mixture of uniforms — in some cases the lack of a uniform, in other cases uniforms soaked with blood. Forward, some sort of commander floated between the passenger area and the cockpit, surveying the cabin. Behind him the pilot and navigator sat at the controls, the curved chainglass screen before them displaying pinpricks of stars and the occasional hurtling pieces of wreckage. Apis stretched himself up to try to get a view of the camera-fed screens below this — those that showed other views. He glimpsed fire, and the hardly recognizable shape of the ship that had ostensibly come to rescue them from Miranda, a chaotic tangle of pseudopods, and the dark-scaled moon that was Dragon. When the commander's gaze fixed on him and his mother, he pulled himself back down in his seat.

"Secure those two," said the man, pointing. Heads turned in their direction and soldiers came towards them with plastic ties to bind their hands and feet.

"This is not necessary," said Apis's mother. "We can cause you no harm. We have not the strength—"

A soldier struck her across the face to silence her. It was a blow any normal-gee human could have taken with ease, but it knocked her unconscious. The soldier stared at her in surprise, then turned to his commanding officer, who merely nodded for him to continue. Apis held out his hands to be tied, and looked worriedly at his mother. It was only when he was certain she was breathing that he took any further notice of his surroundings. She needed medical attention, that was all he could think. He had to find a way to get it.

The dark-otter facility sat on the edge of the papyrus-choked bay, before a backdrop of rounded mountains that resembled crouching animals. These slopes were predominantly mottled with heathers, bracken, and other Terran plants that filled the few niches not already occupied by native species. With a few exceptions adapted to a sea full of copper salts, the water beyond the papyrus swarmed with all the strange creatures found on Cheyne III when it had been colonized centuries before. The flatlands that curved back from the bay, on either side of the mountains, grew only papyrus and other native species that could tolerate the poisonous soil.

The killer set up his tripod on a raft of stone protruding from the side of one of the mountains. Bushes lush with cloudberries surrounded him and, up behind him, thick bracken hissed in a constant wind blowing down from the higher slopes.

Sure that the tripod was firmly set and unlikely to rock, the killer — whose name was ostensibly Stiles — stooped down to his case and began to lovingly assemble the weapon it contained. It looked like a hunting rifle, yet the barrel was a metre long and as narrow as a pencil, and the stock and main body were inset with digital displays and touch controls. Stiles mounted the weapon on the tripod and peered through the X10000 image intensifies before locking the small motion dampers in place. He then scanned the facility.

The perimeter fence stood half a kilometre from the buildings, and he knew the intervening ground was loaded with motion sensors capable of picking up even the breath of any intruder who might penetrate beyond the autogun towers. Guards, and one or two of the new security drones, irregularly patrolled the area outside this fence. But no security was sufficient to prevent someone such as Stiles from taking a four-kilometre distance shot. He grimaced to himself, and directed his weapon towards the facility's back doors.

Now sighted in, Stiles had nothing to do but wait. He lit up a cigarette and gazed out at the adult dark-otters sporting in oily grey water beyond the papyrus. He was well aware of the two watchers hiding in the bracken on the slope, but not worried about them. They would have nothing damning to report to their masters, and he would comment on their presence later to show just how professional he was — all part of the image.

The doors opened and two women in monofilament diving suits wandered out, carrying haemolungs and separate recycling packs for deeper work. They headed for one of the facility's antigravity cars and loaded their stuff up. Not them he was waiting for. John Spader would not be out for another twenty minutes at least. The chief of the facility was very regular in his habits — not a safe way to be for anyone in authority on a world like Cheyne III; it made one a viable target for assassination, kidnapping, whatever the Separatists were into at any particular time. Assassination today, and unusually an outsider was being employed for the hit, but they knew Stiles by reputation and had wanted him signed up.

Spader stepped out of the building precisely to the minute. Stiles sighted on him, got the man's head easily centred in the intensifier, initiated one of the touch-pads on the side of his weapon, and waited until the word 'acquired' appeared below the targeting frame. When he fired, there was no sound, and no immediate effect. Stiles kept Spader centred, and waited. It took a long moment for the subsonic bullet to reach its destination and, even though Spader moved in the intervening time, it remained on target. Stiles watched Spader's head gout a cloud of bone and brain, while his scalp and the remaining side of his face spun away. As the target went down, Stiles smiled and scratched at his Van Dyke beard. When he smiled like that, he looked truly evil. Those who were watching from the slope felt a certain amount of fear of him, and hoped he would not spot them. It was rumoured that before he went private he had been Sparkind — not someone to mess with.

After packing away his weapon and folding up its tripod, Stiles trekked back over the mountain, giving every appearance of being an enthusiastic bird-watcher — had there been any birds on Cheyne III. In half an hour he arrived at his antigravity car and, below a sky scudded with sooty clouds, headed back to the city. Police AGCs passed him from the other direction, but he was now one of many, and the police would assume that all AGCs were logged with the AI, so they could easily get a checklist.

Gordonstone consisted mainly of ground-level arcologies seemingly nailed in position with plascrete towers — usually of hotels or the offices of wealthy Polity corporations. Stiles brought his AGC in at high speed, as to travel any slower would betray the fact that it was not under city control. He brought it down in the park next to the swimming pool of his arcology hotel, and was careful to set the vehicle's security device when he climbed out. Should anyone try to break into it, a brief plasma fire in the boot would turn the weapon concealed there into unidentifiable slag.

The man and woman, in appearance members of the runcible culture, watched him from the bar by the pool. Stiles noted the scaled augs they wore as he went directly to the bar counter beside them and ordered himself a cips from the metalskin barman. The ice was astringent on his tongue as the mild narcotic, which gave it its rainbow hue, melted out. After he had paid for the drink and received his chipcard back, he turned to the couple and held the card out to them.

"I believe you have something for me," he said.

The couple glanced at each other. Then the woman removed her sunglasses and turned her attention to Stiles. She was an attractive sort, but then, any woman could be. It was the ones who did not bother with surgery you had to watch.

"What makes you think that?" she asked.

Stiles put his card on the bar, waving away the chromed hand of the metalskin bartender.

"You work for Brom and you've been watching me for ten days now. Have your two operatives at the otter facility reported in yet?"

The two did not manage to conceal their annoyance. Perhaps they had thought their surveillance invisible. Stiles did not betray the contempt he felt for them. Amateurs — how they had managed to survive for so long was a wonder.

"You think you're really good, don't you?" said the man, his head jutting forward. Stiles considered dropping him there and then, but rejected the idea: he did not have his money yet. He shrugged, keeping his expression blank. The woman shook her head and reached down into her bag to remove another chipcard. She stepped closer to Stiles and pressed her hand against his chest.

"A job well done," she said, before taking his card, pressing her card on it, and tapping an amount across to his account. Stiles finished his cips, retrieved his card.

"Wonderful place," he said after tie had checked the amount. He turned to go.

"We'll be in contact. We may have something more… challenging for you," said the woman,

Stiles nodded once and continued on his way. Passing the pool, he studied with interest the naked bodies sprawled under the sun-tubes, before sauntering into the arcology hotel and heading to his suite.

Once within, he locked the door and placed a sensor device against it. Any movement outside it and he would have plenty of warning. A quick scan of his rooms revealed five bugs, two of them microscopic. He disabled them all, including the one the woman had placed on his shirt. A small vibrating pad against the window glass prevented any possibility of his speech being read by laser-bounce. Another scan: no optics in the wall. His final precaution was to take a shower, as he was old-fashioned about such things. Under the spray of water he activated his wristcom.

"Thorn here. Has the death been reported?"

"Yes," replied the Cheyne III runcible AI, its voice faint since Cereb, the moon on which it was situated, was now only just above the horizon. Use of a satellite to bounce the signal would have been too risky.

"They'll be in touch. Apparently something more challenging for me."

"Another killing?"

"Maybe. If it is I may have to refuse it, as that gets me no closer to Brom."

"That is your decision," the AI replied — its voice clearer now. "Understand though that your mission is now of limited duration, since you may be required elsewhere."

"Why's that?"

"An Outlink station has recently been destroyed and one of the Dragon spheres may be involved."

"Cormac?"

"Is on his way."

Thorn whistled then said, "Layer upon layer. I wonder if there's some connection to the Dragoncorp augs, or to that other tech?"

"Dracocorp," the AI corrected. "The name of the corporation was changed."

"Is there a connection?" Thorn persisted.

"Almost certainly, but your primary mission here is to locate Brom's hideout and call in your team to… deal with it. Let others deal with the bigger picture."

"Oh, I won't forget," said Thorn, switching his wrist-com to another channel. He smiled to himself, thinking how euphemistic AIs became when discussing these matters. It surprised him that the Cereb AI had not used that other favourite: 'field-excision'.

"Thorn speaking. Where are you now?" he asked.

"Floor below you," replied the leader of the four-man team that was covering him in the hotel.

"Okay, stay close and wait for my signal. If I do give that signal, I want you to come in hard and fast. None of this 'You are under arrest' bollocks."

"You're the boss," came the reply.

After shutting down com, Thorn finished his shower and, again as Stiles the wealthy killer., went to find some entertainment with one of the bodies lying by the pool. It was not the same as in the old days. It would have been just he and Gant covering each other. But in the old days he had been a soldier, not an undercover agent for Earth Central. He missed Gant, he missed the way things used to be. Samarkand had changed him.

With increasing confusion, Apis listened in to the sporadic talk around him. Who were these people talking to? Did they not have the facility to run silent queries through their biotech augs? His education was broad enough for him to know of prayer, but his experience was narrow and he did not immediately recognize it. He stared at the man seated next to him, who was holding a blood-soaked wad of cloth to his stomach. In his left hand the man held a ring of beads fashioned in the shape of tiny skulls. These were caked with dried blood, and hung still on his fingers. He was muttering to himself in a language Apis did not understand, so he tried to ignore it. Madness. Speaking to gods? It was only real conversation between individuals Apis was prepared to acknowledge:

"How long?" the commander asked another officer, who seemed all efficiency as he ran through some sort of inventory — kneading at his aug as he checked lockers and displays.

"A year, nominally, though there are alternatives."

"Lang, I don't want to hear about alternatives. It is Masada or nothing. How are we for supplies?"

Lang said, "The water we can recycle indefinitely. With fifteen in the cryopods, the food should get us through — just. There will be deficiencies."

"Hardship refines the faithful," said the commander.

His way of speaking confused Apis. The man seemed to use a whole sentence to say one word, when not using a whole sentence to say nothing.

"Yes, I imagine it does, but we have more than hardship," said Lang.

"With prayer no problem is insurmountable."

Lang stared at his commander and it was evident that some silent communication passed between them. After this, the commander swung his attention to the wounded soldiers, then to Apis and his mother. The Outlinker was young and inexperienced, but he immediately knew he was in danger, just as others on that ship knew they also were. The prayers got louder and louder and some men were on their knees working themselves into a frenzy. The commander turned back to Lang and paused for a moment before nodding. Apis shoved at his mother to try to rouse her, but she would not be roused, not then — nor when the four soldiers grabbed them and dragged them to the airlock. Perhaps it was the arrogance of assumed superiority that made Apis speak out, even though he knew a casual blow from them might kill him.

"We mustn't die in bonds," Apis said to the white-faced soldier who held his frangible arms in hands like steel clamps. They were now at the airlock, where another soldier was spinning the wheel. A wheel? A manual airlock! Madness. Apis improvised in the pause his words had caused. "Would you have us come before Him in bonds?" It sounded right anyway. With his expression revealing shame, the soldier drew a knife and severed the plastic ties on Apis's wrists and ankles. The same was not done for his mother, though. Together they were shoved into the cramped space, the door wound shut behind them.

Apis hyperventilated at a rate abnormal in any normal human being, and wished his mother could do the same. He was dizzy by the time the air started to be pumped out of the lock — his cells now fully charged with oxygen. He linked one arm round the tie on his mother's wrists and linked the other round one of the bars set in the side wall of the airlock. It was good that those inside were so short of air, otherwise they might have opened the outer lock directly, and nothing would have stopped him being sucked out into void. He allowed the small amount of air in his lungs to eject, then closed his nostrils, ears, rectum. His saliva turned to resin and sealed his mouth. He inflated, and his nictitating membranes closed over his eyes. Against him his mother grew to twice her normal size as her body did those same things unconsciously. She would have forty or fifty minutes. He would have a little longer. Now, as the outer lock opened onto vacuum, he considered what he must do with that time.

Apis wanted to act immediately, but knew that this would gain him nothing. Instead, he thought his way through it. If he and his mother were found still alive inside the airlock, the soldiers would likely make sure they were not alive the next time the lock was opened. Apis studied the interior and noted a storage space set in the wall. He opened it to find inside two emergency suits with small oxygen packs, some lines, and a couple of large canisters of breach sealant. He pulled out the two suits and two lines, and was about to pull one of the suits onto his mother when he saw the outer lock closing. He quickly towed her through it and outside.

With no air to distort distance, the stars shone as bright as arc lamps, and the exterior of the landing craft was revealed in harsh clarity. Apis saw pieces of wreckage floating on a parallel course to it, but the ion engine on this side of the craft blocked his view behind, and he tried not to think about what had happened to the other Outlinkers. To be able to survive vacuum for almost an hour would be no mercy in such a situation. After attaching himself to the hull of the craft with a line, he completed the laborious procedure of pulling one of the suits onto the inflated body of his mother. With everything at full stretch, it only just fitted her. When he turned on the oxygen, the suit mimicked the body it contained and went rigid. Inside, Apis knew, his mother would be returning to normal. Hence, if she became conscious, she would find herself inside a suit much too large for her. He attached her to the hull of the ship with a line, just in time to return to the edge of the outer lock as it began to reopen.

It was the same man who had been sitting next to him, Apis realized, and only because of the skull beads and his injury. The man came out with his arms flailing weakly, propelled by the blood vaporizing from his stomach wound. His eyes were bulging, bloody vapour wreathed him, his mouth was open in a scream no one would hear. Apis caught hold of him for a moment, before sending him on his way, dead already, or in just a moment.

The other corpse was clinging inside the airlock, another man — it seemed that no women wore this uniform, which was another pointer to the primitive culture it had come from. This man was missing one arm, his other arm being linked round one of the bars, and perhaps his face had worn a look of terror before it was blown away from his skull to hang in frozen tatters around his head. Apis saw that he had a weapon and reached in to pull it from his holster, before studying the man. He possessed a laser, yet had not drawn it. Had he gone into the airlock willingly? Or had he been too badly injured to resist? Madness. Apis inspected the weapon then studied the primitive locking mechanisms inside the airlock. He too must join in this madness if he was to survive.

Quickly he pulled himself outside, grabbed the bloated suit containing his mother, and dragged her back inside. Once he had secured her, he pointed the weapon at the autosystems on the wall and pulled the trigger. In eerie silence each box melted, vaporized, fell apart. The outer lock, which had been slowly drawing closed, juddered to a halt. Apis pocketed the weapon and tried the manual control on the outer lock, finding it worked. He turned to the inner lock and inspected the manual controls there, but before he could do anything a glare of light shone in from outside, and gee force dragged him to one side of the lock — the ion engines had been started. Pulling himself back into position, he again eyed the controls, hardening himself against the horror of what he must now do.

Both sets of controls were hydraulically assisted, so it would not take brute force to open or close each lock. There were only a couple of vacuum sensors visible, which he studied for a moment before fusing them. The lack of safety devices did not surprise Apis — obviously these people had a low regard for human life. He pressed the pistol to a stick-pad on his belt, and began to turn the wheel that opened the inner lock… while the outer lock still lay open.

She heard a brittle rattling all around her, and was aware of soft earth against her face, before fragments of memory began to intrude into consciousness. Her body felt numb, and she suddenly remembered the agony of being hit by the stinger, of fighting for breath… Dent casually blown away while he lay on the ground… then Fethan walking towards Proctor Volus, being shot, attacking… Eldene just could not make those last images make sense, and felt a horrible sinking terror when she thought about what she must face when she opened her eyes: it would be the cage, or perfunctory execution.

Upon opening her eyes she only felt confusion at what she was seeing.

Before her, the ground was thick with cobbles of blister moss, the occasional empty tricone, and turgid circular pools reflecting Calypse, the gas giant, so they seemed a scattering of coins made from slices of opal. Raising her head slightly she saw now a stand of flute grass — and it was from this came the brittle rattling as the hollow white stems were disturbed by a breeze. At the foot of this stand the ground was heaving up, and she guessed that a live tricone must be near the surface, feeding on soil rich in organics. What the hell was she doing here? This looked like one of the wild areas she had only ever seen when sent in a work party on clearance duty. Then she felt a sudden dread: of course, as punishment Proctor Volus had dumped her out here where she would die without the supplements that kept her scole attached to her. No doubt the Proctor would manufacture some suitable story to transfer blame for her death from himself…

Metallic sounds, behind her.

For a moment Eldene dared not move, then she felt an anger and determination to survive building up inside herself, and slowly rolled over to see where the noise was coming from. Immediately her confusion returned. Fethan was squatting beside Volus's aerofan, with its control column in pieces while he worked on the complex tech inside. Fethan was alive, so that meant… no, it wasn't possible. All Eldene could assume was that the Proctor had missed, even at that range, and that Fethan had somehow retaliated with a concealed knife. Eldene sat up and the old man glanced at her.

"Feeling a bit more with it now, girl?" said Fethan.

"I've felt better," Eldene replied, her voice catching in her dry throat.

There was something odd about the old man, something out of place. Then Eldene saw that the top of Fethan's coverall did not bulge as it had previously done. His scole was gone! Eldene instantly realized that this was what she could see on the ground beside the pieces of control column. She stared at it in shock, trying to equate its presence there with Fethan's apparently easy breathing — but coming up only with puzzlement. Fethan should be dying. She stared at the old man, hoping for some explanation, but what happened next only increased her perplexity.

"They'll get tracking on this soon," said Fethan, waving at the aerofan with a cylindrical hand tool containing lines of red light. "I want it up in the air by then so that when the hit comes they'll think they got us." With that, the old man glanced at the tool he was holding, then reached down and pressed his finger against the side of his scole, whereupon the baggy insectile thing split and hinged open, revealing itself to be a cleverly camouflaged case. Fethan placed the tool inside and took up another to continue with his work.

"Why are you alive?" Eldene asked.

"Now there's a question that's puzzled philosophers for centuries," quipped Fethan. "Of course, in my case there's many would argue that I ain't."

Eldene contained her annoyance. "Volus shot you twice, and now you do not have a scole." Eldene glanced again at the open case, realizing that Fethan had never possessed a scole. She continued, "You killed him, with your hand… just killed him."

"Well, girl, you're gonna find this hard to take, but everything I told you is true: there is a Human Polity, there is an Underground, and there is hope," Fethan replied.

"That doesn't tell me why you are still alive," Eldene persisted.

"True." Fethan shrugged. "Thing is, I ain't completely human. I'm mostly machine, built long ago in that Polity. Right now I'm here to help you people with your revolution."

"Bullshit," said Eldene, which had often previously been her reply to some of Fethan's more outrageous stories.

Fethan stared at her for a long moment, then reached up to grip one of the steel rails of the aerofan. Still staring at Eldene, he twisted until one end of the rail snapped out of its post, and coiled the metal around his hand as if it were wet clay.

"Okay," the old man said, "I ain't mostly machine, but I'm a pretty tough old stick, so you'd better watch your mouth, girl."

Later, when Fethan used another tool from his kit to dig the two small iron slugs out of himself, Eldene became inclined to believe the old man's stories.

First, his mouth turned dry as a sun-baked tile, then it was as if the saliva the node leeched away had been returned to his mouth acidified. Automatically he tried to spit the thing out when the pain became too intense, but it swelled in his mouth and entirely filled it. Drawing deep painful breaths through his nose, he hammered his fist against the wall behind him. His eyes filled with tears. He couldn't scream, he could do nothing about the pain, just as he could do nothing about the horrible sensation that followed it as something oozed down his throat. Gagging now he fought not to vomit, for such a reaction would kill him now. Pain bloomed in his chest, just as it also started to bloom in his sinuses and in the back of his head.

It's going to kill me.

Skellor fought for clarity of vision, and found it in that crystal part of himself, even as pain became suddenly intense around where the aug linked into the side of his head, and where its cooling tubes linked to the arteries in his chest to provide oxygenating and cooling blood to the chemical interfaces within the aug itself. With an all-or-nothing intent, he initiated the start-up package to put the AI aug fully online. A low droning vibrated his skull and glancing down he saw the two chainglass tubes penetrating his chest, fill with blood, and knew that now his aug would be webbed with red veins like something living. And so it was.

His clarity of vision was huge now, and with distant coldness he observed the Jain substructure penetrating and killing his body as it grew. As filaments backtracked the aug connections in his brain and finally penetrated his aug itself, he observed their progress to the chemical interfaces. This Jain technology was subversive: like a parasite it sought to control the system it found itself within and utilize it to its own advantage. It just did not know what was to its advantage, for it was a mindless mechanism. By providing chemical interfaces within his aug, Skellor sought to give it a mind: his own — for Jain technology needed to be tamed.

Finally the Jain substructure began to connect and Skellor began to work at decoding programs and backup systems, to catalogue first trickles of information, then surges of it, in his huge memory. He, for Skellor and AI were now both the same being, worked upon the substructure with the capacities of some huge research establishment. The synergy achieved between crystal and organic brain became vast, and questions collapsed like origami sculptures before an avalanche. But the structure grew fast and destructively. Skellor's heart and lungs ceased, on one breath, and his organic brain began to die. Minutes now, only minutes… He tried shifting the focus of his attention entirely into his aug as his body died, but he failed. For a moment he was poised on a precipice, then:

Just so.

Skellor halted the random searching growth of the substructure.

Just so.

He cleared it from his mouth, used it to restart his heart and lungs, and set it to repairing the damage it had done to his body.

And thus.

Now he began to improve on nature and grow those devices and biomechanical tools within himself that he knew he would require. Glancing down he observed a tendril break out of his gut and through the fabric of his environment suit, as it sought out the chameleonware generator. It penetrated, deconstructed and read and, as it did so, Skellor built a much improved version of the device inside himself. And whilst all this was occurring, Skellor came to understand the Jain.