Skellor stood up from the pilot’s chair and turned to regard Mr Crane. ‘Now, time to go to work.’
Crane swept up his toys and pocketed them. Skellor could not resist another probe inside the Golem, for he was learning—from a mind filled with disconnected but bloody memory—that Mr Crane was very good indeed at the profession to which he had been perverted.
It was night and, in the shallows that lay beyond the channel excavated into the seabed alongside the jetty, pearl crabs gleamed like underwater stars. Striding out along the gritty strand, his pulse-rifle propped across his shoulder, Evans thought Alston was overreacting. The Pelters just did not have the firepower to come in here mob-handed. Maybe they had more men than the two hundred guarding this island. But they would not be as well trained as Chaldor’s mercenaries or Evans’s own men.
‘Clear here,’ he said into his comunit.
It seemed pointless to eyeball the beach when no craft could come within twenty kilometres of the island without being picked up on radar. Yes, they might come in underwater, but that way would be unable to bring in anything to deal with the autogun emplacements set into the mountainside below Alston’s fortified home. By air was of course out of the question, as that would bring Polity monitors in here quick as blade beetles.
‘There’s a small cat about fifteen kloms out,’ Chaldor replied. ‘Tell your men to stay alert.’
‘What’s it doing?’
‘Nothing as yet.’
‘Probably just an otter hunter.’ Evans glanced along the beach to where two of his men were invisible in the low scrub of creosote bushes just back from the jetty. He had groups of five men spaced at intervals of a hundred metres all around the island. All of them were bored with waiting and itching for a fight, but he suspected there would be no fight here, and that the final showdown would be in Gordonstone. He turned from the sea, intending to head over and speak to his men, but just then, out of the corner of his eye, spotted something in the water.
‘What in hell’s name?’ He swivelled and peered directly at the object. At first, it appeared to be merely the top of a post revealed by one of the quick ebb tides generated by the fast transit of the moon, Cereb. But it kept rising as it headed inshore till a rim became identifiable. It took a moment for Evans to admit to himself that what he was seeing was a large, wide-brimmed hat. He lowered his pulse-rifle into position by his hip, and set it whining as it topped up the charge in its capacitor.
‘What is it, Evans?’ Chaldor asked him over com.
‘A hat, ah… with a head underneath it.’
Evans felt his skin crawl as the huge man rose higher and higher out of the waves. He wore no breathing gear, and his skin looked rubbery—false. Had Semper actually been telling the truth? Evans pulled his flare goggles down over his eyes and, as soon as the man was out to his waist, he fired. The goggles prevented the strobing flash from blinding him, thus allowing him to see the flames and the glowing impact of each shot in turn. But the big man just came on.
‘Shit, Semper was telling the truth—we’ve got one big-fuck Golem coming ashore!’
Evans fired again, holding the firing button down. Suddenly the Golem was up onto a ledge and taking huge strides through shallows scattered with pearl crabs, leaving milky footprints behind as he crushed the myriad creatures. Evans turned to run back towards his men. Perhaps more firepower might… A heavy thumping tread behind him—he couldn’t believe it; this was wrong, too quick…
Evans’s men heard the scream—and turned just in time to see the Golem discarding something ripped and bloody. They came out of cover, confidently aiming their pulse-rifles.
Guilt, Mika found, was an unfamiliar and uncomfortable emotion for which her Life-coven training had ill prepared her—and now she felt doubly guilty. She reached out to touch a finger to the hard-field that overlay the chainglass window, and found it slippery to the touch. Beyond the window, the asteroid was held central in the vast containment sphere by gravplates generating antigravity mounted all around the sphere interior, countering the minimal gravity of the asteroid itself. In the intervening space the vacuum swarmed with machines and suited figures, skinless Golem and complex telefactors operated by the Jerusalem AI. Already Jerusalem had separated the bridge pod of the Occam Razor from the surface, and sometime hence it would eject the asteroid into space in order to destroy it with an imploder missile.
‘He will not be pleased,’ she said.
The voice that replied was mild and conversational, but then you didn’t need to shout when you were a demigod. ‘Ian Cormac’s requirement for an expert in matters concerning the Jain and Dragon is not of prime concern. His singular mission is to catch and/or destroy a criminal. Our concern is to contain and understand a technology that could obliterate the Polity. Your abilities, as you surmised, will be more usefully employed here.’
Mika turned and surveyed the quarantine pod she had been allotted, with its intrusive scanning gear and the huge cowled surgical robot poised over a slab with drain channels around its edges, and felt a sudden lethargy overcome her. The nerve blockers and analgesics were not so effective now, and soon it would be time. Whether or not she would survive was open to question. The reports received from the medical team on Masada told her Apis had not yet revived, and that they were still removing further mycelial growths from him but, on the plus side, he had not yet died.
‘I’ve uploaded the recording of the operation.’ she stated.
‘I have,’ Jerusalem replied, ‘studied it in detail, Asselis Mika, and will be able to make some improvements. Presently I am designing T-cell nanobots for the finer work.’
Mika gritted her teeth and asked, ‘Will I be clear then?’
‘This method has a good chance of success. Disconnected filaments of the mycelium will not be able to transmit defensive information to each other, and so the nanobots should be able to destroy them. They will work in the same manner as the counteragent still being used to rid Samarkand of the ceramal-eating mycelium there.’
‘Disconnected filaments?’
‘The mycelium is killing you, so immediate surgery is necessary. However, I am capable of more invasive surgery than you performed on the outlinker, so I should be able to remove more of it.’
Mika shuddered. She wasn’t usually squeamish about such things, but she did not intend to ask the AI just how invasive it intended to get. The result, she suspected, would look rather like an explosion in an abattoir.
‘Might it not have been better to have Thorn here as well?’
‘The procedure I am about to undertake can also be carried out aboard the Jack Ketch. Thorn can then be kept in cold sleep until such a time as the nanobots can be conveyed to that vessel.’ Jerusalem paused. ‘There is, Mika Asselis, no further reason for delay.’
Mika knew she was procrastinating, and was doing so because she was scared. She discarded her robe, walked over to the surgical slab and sat naked on the edge of it. It was very cold. As she lay back and the surgical robot raised a nerve blocker to her neck, she thought that perhaps, like Thorn had intended, she should have had a memplant installed so that the step over death and into artificial life would be available to her too, but it was too late for that now.