The Flint AI had already emptied the place, and Cormac knew that it was training just about every detector available on his companions. It had shut down all computer access other than the voice link to itself, and there were no robots present—nothing that Jain technology could subvert.
‘But there’s no record of the Vulture having landed there?’ he suggested.
‘No record of that ship’s presence, true,’ replied the Flint AI. ‘But three ships did land that could easily have been the Vulture. Also, Viridian did detect a U-space signature unrelated to any ships that landed in the designated areas. The most likely explanation is that Skellor has installed chameleonware on the Vulture, and brought it down somewhere else.’
‘And the essence of the message?’
‘Vulture is managing to retain some independence by shifting herself into a memory sector not occupied by a Jain thrall program. Each time she does this and initiates some independent action, the program occupies that sector, forcing Vulture to move on. Obviously there is a limit to how many times she can do this. She also detailed the events on the asteroid—which we had already surmised.’
‘Is there anything to suggest where Skellor is going?’
‘All she knew was that he went to Viridian to obtain a “pathetic metalskin” to “complete”. These are Vulture’s words, though I gather the information was obtained by translating Jain code bleeding directly from Skellor’s nonverbal thought processes.’
Cormac was surprised. He had expected the pursuit to be a ship-borne one rather than one through the Polity runcible network, because if it was true that Skellor was after the Dragon spheres, he’d more likely find them on the Polity border or beyond.
‘You can get hold of metalskins anywhere in the Polity,’ said Gant.
‘Viridian seems an unlikely place to go looking for one,’ Thorn added.
Cormac looked at Mika, waiting for her opinion. She appeared ill to him, but perhaps that was imagination after all that she had told him.
In measured tones she said, ‘Viridian is where we encountered the Maker. It is also where you killed Arian Pelter. There was a metalskin Golem there with Pelter — that brass killer of his called Mr Crane.’
‘That’s true,’ said Thorn, ‘but Cento and Aiden seriously fucked up that one.’
Cormac glanced at him. ‘You’re right, they tore it apart and then shattered its mind. There should be nothing there for Skellor. However…’ He turned and looked towards the runcible. ‘Flint, I need you to reset to Viridian. I have to go there to find out what this is all about.’
‘Unfortunately I cannot do this until after your companions have departed. They must go to Elysium, where precautions have been taken, and then on to the Jack Ketch.’
It made sense: Mika or Thorn could rush at the interface, once it was reset, and end up on a world where no precautions had yet been made against Jain-tech subversion. Earth Central was now taking precautions over anyone who had merely come in contact with that tech, but those two, who definitely carried it inside them, the AI was treating like possible plague carriers.
‘Okay.’ Cormac turned to his companions. ‘Mika, once you’re on the Jack Ketch, get aboard what you require—it can be sent by robotic craft from the Jerusalem. Make sure you get everything, as we’ll likely be in for a long haul afterwards, without further physical contact with any Polity worlds.’
She nodded thoughtfully. ‘The Jerusalem?’
‘It’s there at Elysium, grabbing anything Jain-related—I’ll explain later.’ He turned to Thorn, who also, he thought, looked unwell. ‘Thorn, no fuck-ups during transit, as I’ll bet that any breach of the precautions will result in atomic sterilization.’
Thorn nodded.
‘Flint, is there any restriction on trooper Gant?’
‘None that I am aware of. Like yourself he has been scanned and found to contain nothing… anomalous.’
‘Okay. Gant, you’ll come with me.’
Cormac stepped to one side and waved the others ahead of him. Gant moved to his side and watched them go. Mika glanced round, still looking thoughtful, then stepped up onto the dais and approached the shimmer of the Skaidon warp contained between the bull’s horns of the runcible. She stepped through it and was gone. Thorn then guided the gravsled ahead of him, causing it to rise higher and positioning it centrally to the warp. Before sending it through, he gave Gant a meaningful look.
‘I’ll get Mika to memplant me on the Jack Ketch, but I don’t suppose we’ll be celebrating in Elysium,’ he said.
‘If she thinks it advisable,’ Gant replied woodenly. ‘But it might be better to wait until your mycelium is removed.’
Thorn nodded, and himself stepped through.
After a pause Cormac asked the runcible AI, ‘Are you reset?’
‘Destination Viridian now open,’ it replied.
Stepping onto the dais, Cormac asked Gant, ‘What was all that about?’
They approached the shimmering wall of energy, its light playfully batting their shadows about behind them.
‘Feeling his mortality,’ Gant replied.
‘That’s a first.’ Cormac stepped through.
The ash was five hundred metres thick in places, accumulated on this volcanically active planet’s single small tectonic plate, which slid around its surface like an ancient stone ship. There were no artefacts preserved in the ash, nor in the underlying stone, rather the artefact was the cause of both, requiring nothing to preserve it even here. Having resilience greater than any other material on the planet, it had neither melted nor broken, and the stone had accreted around it and the ash built up on top of it over the aeons.
Cento considered how, for many years, researchers had come to study what they considered a natural phenomenon: a large layer of thermocrystal carbon within this small tectonic plate. Only recently had a scientist noted that the dense structure of this substance, which was similar to diamond, also bore a molecular resemblance to memory crystal. The woman, Shayden, then tried an optic interface, and was astounded by the reams of code feeding back. Some of it looked like genetic data, but most of it was scrambled and as yet indecipherable. Polity AIs were now studying the download from the fragment of crystal Shayden had used, in the hope of determining whether it was memory storage of the Jain or perhaps of some other ancient race. Cento was here for the more prosaic purpose of ensuring that Shayden, who now waited back at her ship with her research assistant Hourne, had not falsified her results.
‘We should see the layer further down,’ said Ulriss.
Cento turned away from peering over the edge of the plate, and glanced to where Ulriss indicated. The dip, further down, would indeed bring them closer to the layer of thermocrystal carbon, just as it would bring them closer to the river of magma boiling through the crevasse beside them.
‘Then let’s hurry,’ he said, checking the timepiece set in the wrist of his suit, not because he needed to check the time but because he wanted Ulriss to remain aware of how little of it they had left.
‘We should get some out-gassing before it blows.’ Ulriss gestured to the hellish plain beyond the river of molten rock, where a perfectly curved cliff, almost like a hydroelectric dam, occasionally became visible through the pall of smoke. This was just one edge of a massive caldera which, every five hours for the last twenty years, had blown out a few million tonnes of rock—molten and solid—and ash, and a cornucopia of poison gases to contribute to the volatile and lethal atmosphere.