There was little sign of the drastic procedure Gant had described, but then, as Cormac knew from personal experience, it was possible to cell-weld the most severe injuries so that no visible sign remained. Apis lay flat on the surgical table with thin optic wires leading to probes in his body, and the various tubes connecting him to the area of the autodoc Cormac recognized as containing its filtration equipment. Eldene glanced up from the chair she had sprawled in beside the supine Outlinker, before returning her attention to her lover. She looked tired — worn out by worry.
‘So you’re back,’ was all she said.
‘What is Mika’s prognosis for him?’ Cormac asked. At her puzzled expression he added, ‘Does she say he’ll recover?’
‘She doesn’t know. She said broken and dying filaments inside him will perpetually poison him, while others still alive may start to grow out of control,’ Eldene replied, then looked past him as the door behind opened.
Cormac looked round and studied Mika as she entered the room: tired, obviously, and perhaps a little guilty. She gazed at Apis, then turned her attention to Cormac.
‘The quarantine is over,’ she suggested.
‘Not entirely. First all the Jain technology here must be secured and made safe.’
‘All Jain technology,’ Mika stated, again trying not to make it a question.
Cormac nodded towards Apis and Eldene. ‘These two will have to stay under observation here in a Polity base. You and Thorn will also remain under observation while you accompany me.’
Eldene abruptly stood up. ‘Apis cannot be moved.’
‘He won’t be moved, not until it is safe to do so,’ Cormac replied.
Eldene looked at Mika, seeking some kind of support, some reassurance from her.
Mika said, ‘There will be doctors and surgeons coming here with abilities equal to if not in excess of my own, and with more… more Polity technology to employ. I am primarily a research scientist. He will do better with them.’
This seemed to satisfy Eldene and she just as abruptly sat down again.
Cormac again studied Mika’s expression. ‘What went wrong?’
Mika rubbed at her face. ‘In the days when we couldn’t correct them, faults in DNA led to cancers. The chemical machinery of the mycelia I made is not DNA, but is just as complex.’
‘Faults?’ Cormac raised an eyebrow.
‘There’s something you must see,’ said Mika, gesturing for Cormac to follow her. When Gant and Thorn also moved to follow, she held up her hand. ‘This is for the agent only.’
The two seemed set to object, but with a look Cormac stilled any protest. He then leavened this by leaning in close to them and whispering, ‘Get your stuff ready—we ship out as soon as possible.’
Mika led him out of the surgical facility and into a room kitted out much like a research laboratory aboard a spaceship. Once Cormac closed the door, she indicated a cylindrical chainglass tank standing on one of the counters.
‘That’s what I took out of him,’ she said.
Cormac studied the tank’s contents. The mycelium was moving slowly and in some places had etched marks into the tough chainglass. He noted the woody, fibrous structure of the thing, and the nodal growths within it.
‘Interesting, but what is it you want to tell me?’
‘It is difficult to admit to error, sometimes.’
Cormac instantly understood why she had not wanted the others present, and he waited for her confession.
She continued, ‘The mycelia I made, or rather transcribed, must have been faulty, though I’ve yet to discover what that fault is. Certainly it is some kind of copying error in its contained blueprint—its DNA, if you like.’ She gestured at the writhing mycelium. ‘These are becoming cancerous. I can only surmise that the nodes you see there are tumours.’
‘You said the mycelia you made?’
She nodded. ‘Probably this is not the case in the original, and the four I made are all exactly the same.’
‘So what happened to Apis, will happen to Eldene, Thorn and yourself?’
‘Yes, it’s happening now.’
Cormac considered her guilt. ‘Apis would have been dead by now without it, as would you after being shot by that Theocracy soldier.’
‘But Thorn and Eldene…’
Cormac grimaced. ‘You made a mistake, Mika.’ He thought about Elysium and the deaths he himself had indirectly caused there. ‘But in your time you have saved more lives than you have taken—that’s the best any of us can hope for.’
‘But I still made a mistake,’ Mika said woodenly.
5
Artefacts (pt 16): The three ancient races, the Atheter, Jain and the Csorians, are named after, respectively: a kind of ceramic blade; the daughter of Alexion Smith (she was the first to discover a Jain artefact); and an archaeologist sneezing as he named his new discovery (though that’s probably apocryphal). The Jain breathed their last over five million years ago (supposing they breathed at all); for the Csorians it was maybe a million; and the jury is still out on the Atheter, as some artefacts apparently attributable to them have been dated at both three million years and half a million years. Huge efforts are being made to find anything left by these races. There are whole industries involved in the search. Rumour abounds, some of it quite ridiculous: is it true that a fossilized Csorian has been found; that a Jain was found in stasis, floating in space, revived and then killed; what about this evidence that they actually altered the shape of star systems; is it true that ancient and lethal technologies have been tested on condemned prisoners on deserted worlds? The subject of these three, in massive virtualities both fictional and scientific, takes up an appreciable percentage of Polity processing space. Mere written scientific dissertations and fictions amount to trillions of words. Quite a furore really, considering the physical evidence for their existence would not fill even the smallest room in the British Museum.
— From Quince Guide compiled by humans
Out of necessity, Mr Crane wore a protective suit. The blasts of searing gas from the many volcanic vents, as well as the spills of glowing magma across the hellish landscape, were bad enough and would eventually have melted his brass outer covering despite its inlaid s-con grid, but there was also the acidic atmosphere that might have etched away that covering first. Skellor also wore a suit, but one he had extruded from inside himself. As the two of them trudged towards the wedge-shaped survey ship perched on the glowing ridge ahead, Skellor wondered if he was foolishly wasting time with this side jaunt—and if that sense of aesthetic correctness might prove his downfall.
Skellor knew that though he possessed huge abilities to interact with and alter his environment, this was simply like possessing hands and eyes—for being able to use them did not necessarily mean you knew precisely how they operated. And though he could acquire information, knowledge, skills, he did not possess enough of them to take overt actions while ensuring sufficient personal safety. Some proof of this was how Cormac’s simple ruse had lured him to Elysium, to within range of the sun mirrors. Then, Skellor’s lack of knowledge and his subsequent actions, which he equated to those of an impulsive adolescent, had nearly been fatal to him. Admittedly, it would have been difficult for him to know about Cormac’s previous dealings with Dreyden, the erstwhile ruler of Elysium, but thus putting himself within range of weapons capable of obliterating him had been stupid. He remembered, almost with a wince, the pain he had suffered while his Jain substructure in the Occam Razor burned. Someone would pay for that.