After the events on the world of Masada, and in the cylinder worlds called Faith, Hope and Charity, there was what our more mealy-mouthed ancestors would have called a ‘humanitarian disaster’. Many of those wearing the biotech augs (I can’t say too much about them as there’s still an ongoing investigation) were brain-burnt—becoming human vegetables. In a less enlightened age these bodies would probably have been kept alive for as long as possible, causing a huge drain on the rest of human society. Luckily, we see things differently and, other than simple disposal, have some better options. The advent of memplant technology and newer and more accurate loading techniques has resulted in millions of people outliving physical death. Many of them are being held in memstorage because we cannot produce enough bodies, tank-grown or Golem, to keep up with demand, so…
— Excerpt from a speech by Jobsworth
Cormac knew how many said that, in the eternal instant of runcible transmission, the travellers screamed. That being the case, Cormac must have screamed himself raw over the thousands of such journeys he had made. This time, strangely, as he stepped through the shimmer of the Skaidon warp of the first-stage runcible on the small Masadan moon, Flint, it was with a grey and distorted recollection of that eternal instant, of groping to comprehend madness, and nearly understanding it.
‘Are you all right?’ a woman asked him.
His visual cortex still trying to play impossible images, he blinked and stared down at where he was supporting himself on a cylindrical cleaning robot, which was obviously confused about what it should be cleaning up in such chaotic surroundings, so was perhaps glad of an excuse to stop.
‘Yeah, okay, just a bit dizzy.’
The woman said, ‘You want me to get you to an autodoc? Perhaps it’s the low gravity here. It can’t be the transmission—even first-stage runcibles are utterly safe.’
Cormac looked up and was unsurprised to see that she was wearing the overalls of a runcible technician, since such people were always highly defensive of a technology they themselves could not wholly understand. Only AIs possessed a full understanding—the human brain had not evolved that way. He pushed himself away from the cleaning robot. Yes, the gravity was very low here, but he had become accustomed to such changes over the many years he had travelled like this. That wasn’t the problem.
Any problems with this runcible while I transported? he asked.
No problem, agent. Nor with the one in Elysium, replied the Flint runcible AI.
‘Shit, I did it again!’
‘I’m sorry?’ said the woman.
‘I gridlinked. I gridlinked again!’
‘I’m sure you are very proud to possess a gridlink, but you should remember that most people in my trade now possess such technology as well,’ the woman lectured him, before flouncing off.
Cormac peered down at the cleaning robot, which was observing him with its binocular lenses—the irises inside whirring wide as if the machine was suddenly worried about him. He closed his eyes and concentrated, trying again to question the runcible AI. Visions of impossible shapes fled through his mind, and he felt a hint of some huge complex intelligence, then it was all gone and there were no more voices in his head. He opened his eyes and, after locating his position in the temporary dome, headed in long bouncing strides for the exit tunnels that led to where the shuttles would be waiting. He felt he must put aside this strangeness, and concentrate on the job in hand. He felt sure this inadvertent gridlinking somehow related to Blegg and, that being so, its cause would not become clear either soon or easily.
The exit tunnel was cylindrical, the bottom half of this cylinder being tough ceramoplastic, with a flat diamond-pattern floor, the top half being polarized chainglass. Gazing out to the tightly curved horizon, Cormac observed a twisted and monolithic metal beam protruding above a thin smear of sulphurous atmosphere, its jagged end silhouetted against the green and orange swirls of the opaline gas giant, Calypse. Other wreckage was strewn across the barren surface of this little moon: the huge cored-olive shapes of thruster motors, seared skeletons of ships and ground bases, glittering craters where molten metal had splashed, human bones. Destroying the shipyards here had been Dragon’s first blow against the Theocracy, before moving on to obliterate the weapons satellites that had held the surface population of Masada in thrall. Dragon’s subsequent fall to its death had produced the strangest and most controversial result of its arrival here: the birth of the race of dracomen from its own substance.
‘Ian Cormac?’
‘Yes,’ Cormac replied, as he ducked into the low structure from which other short tunnels branched to insystem shuttles crouched around the facility. The questioner he instantly recognized as a Golem.
‘I’m to take you to Masada. We have a shuttle with U-space facility available.’
The Golem, in appearance a squat man of endearing ugliness—obviously from a later series made when Cybercorp discovered that Apollonian perfection made potential purchasers nervous, if not jealous—gestured to a nearby tunnel and led the way. ‘This will be our first landing on the planet itself—a partial quarantine still exists, but it has been decided we can’t learn anything more from up here. There are more ships ready to follow us down.’
‘How will you proceed from now on?’
‘Establish a base on the surface, then limit transport thereafter. Our first job will be to secure all Jain artefacts, then ensure that there has been no further… contamination.’
‘That could take some time.’
The Golem shrugged. Cormac guessed ECS would prevent free travel of the Masadan population to and from their own world until telefactors and AI probes had finished deep-scanning the single continent and ocean thereon. Masada could remain partially quarantined for centuries yet. He surmised that these new members of the Polity would not be allowed to object too strongly.
‘Would those artefacts include the mycelia inside Asselis Mika?’
The Golem glanced at him. ‘Your needs have primacy. If you wish to take all of those containing Jain mycelia with you, then you may. There will certainly be enough other stuff down there to keep us occupied for a long time.’
‘And the dracomen?’ Cormac asked, as they entered the airlock into the shuttle and headed for the cockpit.
‘They have been deemed innocent of the crimes committed by their forebear and so have been urged, separately from the human population of Masada, to join the Polity.’
‘They might refuse,’ said Cormac, thinking ‘innocent’ might be stretching the term.
‘They have already accepted.’
Cormac took the co-pilot’s seat, while the Golem took the pilot’s. They both strapped in.
‘Very wise of them,’ he remarked.
‘Yes, quite.’
Gazing ahead as the shuttle launched and rose from the barren moon, Cormac observed the glint of other ships in the darkness of space. Soon after he arrived on Masada, the place would be swarming with ECS troops and monitors, technicians, research scientists and Golem. He had no doubt that the dracomen were more aware of the actual realities than were the planet’s inhabitants. Simply put, Masada must be controlled by ECS because of the potential danger from Jain artefacts on its surface, and the dracomen must join the Polity, for such dangerous creatures could not be allowed to choose a side that might be against it. The alternatives were numerous and lethal. The Jack Ketch AI had earlier enumerated them for Cormac.