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.
Drawing closer to the ship, Skellor saw two people clad in reflective hotsuits heading down towards the plain of ash. It amused him that there were four people here searching for Jain artefacts. They would be very surprised, and very chagrined, when living Jain technology found them. Skellor pondered that irony.
Though that was not his purpose here, he needed information about what he carried inside him—the Jain technology that was mutating in a way somehow hidden from him—and that information was not something he could acquire from the Polity. However, one brief exchange between Cormac and Dragon—absorbed as part of his memory from recordings inside the Occam Razor—had told him where to obtain such information. Dragon knew about Jain technology, and somewhere — probably on the perimeter of human space—two Dragon spheres still lurked. But how to find them? As he and Crane began to climb the slope, Skellor reviewed what he thus far knew about Dragon.
The creature in its initial form of four conjoined spheres had been a probe, a data-gatherer sent by the Makers—a race of energy-based life forms located out in one of the Magellanic clouds. But it malfunctioned and started interacting with humanity, setting itself up as some sort of demigod on the planet Aster Colora. Upon delivering some obscure judgement, it had then apparently destroyed itself. But, as far as Skellor could work out, it had actually separated itself into four entities to surround and attack the Maker ship sent to retrieve or destroy it. The drastic events at Samarkand had then proceeded from there: one sphere destroyed by Cormac in the process. Events at Masada had since accounted for another sphere. From both farragos, Skellor could see that these entities liked to meddle in human affairs. Dragon now even had its own corporation operating in the Polity, and its own networks of humans coming under its control via the Dracocorp biotech augs. How these networks connected back to their controlling Dragon spheres was the only firm lead he had and, with this small piece of business out of the way, would be the one for him to pursue. But now… now it was time to look inside the survey vessel.
There was no special code to operate the outside door, just a simple inset handle easy to operate for someone in a hotsuit. Skellor had already observed the carrier shell in orbit above, and with an earlier probe he had discovered that neither the shell nor this survey vessel it had transported here were run by AI; therefore such a simple door mechanism confirmed for him that both shell and vessel were old and privately owned. He pulled the handle up and, as the door swung open, he waved Crane ahead of him. The Golem almost had to crouch to fit himself inside the airlock. Skellor followed, pushing up close to Crane and pulling the outer door closed. In a minute, the lock had filled with cooled air and the safeties preventing him opening the inner door cut out. Crane was the first to duck inside.