‘That is a very dangerous course.’
‘Yes, it is, but we can isolate the technology from the media it requires to spread and, if that fails, you’ve got ships out there with imploder missiles…’
‘This has already been discussed,’ said Jerusalem.
‘And a conclusion was come to,’ Mika stated.
‘Yes.’
‘Dammit! What was the conclusion?’
Jerusalem replied, ‘That unless we learn quickly, we die quickly.’
Gravfields of four gees, the maximum the dropshaft could attain, tried to snatch them from the ladder. Crane closed his hands with enough force to crush the metal rungs, his coat sagging about him and his hat stretching low over his forehead. Skellor gripped hard as each wave swept past them, then continued to climb once it was past, treacly fibres snapping from each hand as he released it from where he had bound himself to the ladder. From below came the screams of those who—not warned through the Dracocorp network—had stepped unthinkingly into the shaft. Further below, impacted human debris accumulated.
Skellor and Crane reached the next floor and stepped out into an arboretum. The foliage of chestnuts, towering nettlelms and oaks concealed the far wall. Where they stood, the floor was slabbed granite in a semicircle, with paths of the same leading to the right and left alongside the near wall. Between this path and the trees was a strip of grass ten metres wide, nibbled, between pink and blue crocuses, by miniature beetle-mowers. In the forest, an interference field blurred scan, but Skellor picked up enough to know that Nalen’s people were bringing weapons to bear. He nodded to Crane, then, initiating his chameleonware, followed the path to his left. Moving away from him, towards the trees, Crane crossed the grass, kicking up huge clods with each loping stride and slowed only a little by the softness of the ground. A flashing in the trees: autogun. Skellor put out his own interference field, to foil any tracking of Crane. Lavender explosions stitched along the ground towards Crane, but kept going when he veered. Behind Skellor, a section of wall erupted into molten plasteel and incandescent gas. A glasshouse now ahead; the nexus—Nalen—retreating back beyond. Shots tracked manually along the wall behind as Skellor ran into a pane of chainglass, his hands issuing a decoder molecule. The glass collapsed into dust; he went through just as the screaming, and the firing of hand weapons, came from the trees.
Alston carefully opened the box on his desk and spilled out a glittering pile of etched sapphires, then with a shaking hand he spread them out across the oak surface. He deliberately didn’t look at Chaldor, not that there was much recognizable about her: perhaps the clawed hand caught in the curtain, that length of bare thigh that was the largest part of her remaining, or a scrap of bloody clothing.
‘I know you can understand me. I know that behind that plastic face is a brain probably more sophisticated than both Angelina’s and Arian’s put together.’
The sapphires had definitely caught its attention, this thing that had shut down, one after another, the comunit transmissions from every single person on the island. Alston stared at the giant, raggedy, blood-soaked scarecrow as it tilted its head to one side, birdlike.
‘You must be a free Golem who, for whatever reason, Arian has managed to employ. That bullshit about a “broken” Golem is for scaring the children—it’s the sort of story he likes circulating to try to frighten his people. It doesn’t have that effect on me, because you’ve stopped, which means that something more than a simple kill order must be functioning.’
The Golem took a step into the room and looked around, obviously curious about the otter-bone sculptures, the imported antiques, the general decor. Then its attention swung back to Alston and his sapphires. Alston could feel sweat trickling down his back.
‘These?’ he waved a hand at the jewels’ scattered before him. ‘These are nothing. Pelter thinks he’s in control here, but his organization is located in only three of the main cities. To control this planet you have to control the papyrus harvest and the seas. I’ve got so many crop managers in my pocket, I can’t count them, and I run all of the otter-bone smuggling. Pelter’s annual turnover wouldn’t even reach ten per cent of the interest on mine.’
Alston leant forward. There was something in that plastic face—he was getting through! He knew it: you could always make a deal with anything that had a mind.
‘Think! Working for me you could have anything. I’ll give you Pelter’s entire organization. You could come in with me. Anything, anything you want.’
Alston felt his mouth suddenly go dry. What to offer a Golem android?
‘Any upgrade you want. You could load the best software, add memory crystal, get yourself Cybercorp syntheskin.’
The Golem reached up with one gory hand and touched its face.
‘That’s right, the best!’ Alston slid the jewels across towards the Golem. ‘Take these as a down payment. Go and get me Arian’s head, and that of his damned sister.’ He slid his chair back and stood. ‘Then we can begin. You can bring in other free Golem, buy up the contracts of any still indentured. Together we could have this world. And all our enemies…’ Alston flicked his fingers.
The Golem now stepped up until it was directly opposite Alston, looming over the desk. It reached down, picked up one of the sapphires and held the stone up to its eye.
‘They’re the best—one hundred thousand New Carth shillings each.’
The other hand snapped out so fast Alston had no time to react. Gripping the front of his jacket it pulled him close, then with bloodied fingers opened Alston’s mouth and shoved the sapphire inside, before picking up another. At four million shillings Alston finally died. He never yelled or screamed—was too full.
Tabrouth kissed the lion’s tooth he wore suspended from a chain around his neck, and sensed the growing fear in the network. They all knew what had happened on B-deck, and what was happening in the arboretum. The android was so damned fast that no way was it some primitive metalskin—it had to be a military-spec Golem, and that meant ECS must be on to Nalen. The APW autogun should have been enough to take it out, but just when they got a fix on it, the tracking system packed up and they missed. Now they were dying.
Tabrouth was frightened, but also relieved that Nalen’s control seemed not so firm. Yes, it had been great in the beginning, taking control of the station syndicate and being part of so superior an aug network. But gradually Nalen’s orders began to carry more weight until his merest whim became an order, and his orders became impossible to disobey. And there was that other thing: Nalen had been a small-time crime boss, stealing tech and information to sell under the nose of Ruby Eye, though all but ignored by her. Now he was manufacturing arms and using the sun-surveyors to run them to black ships arriving from out-Polity to the other side of the sun. That was something the station AI could not ignore for long. Anyone caught doing so would receive an automatic death sentence; consequently, that wouldn’t be something in which Tabrouth would involve himself. But Nalen’s control gave him no choice—Nalen who no longer really looked like a man.
Movement to his right. Tabrouth whirled and aimed his pulse-rifle—not that it would do him a lot of good if the Golem was coming for him. But it was only Paulson and Shroder shoving through the briars and simnel bushes growing below a line of nettlelms. Tabrouth stopped and waited for them. He noticed they were both blood-spattered.
‘What happened?’ he asked.
‘Tore the fucking autogun in half, then did the same to Alain and Solnek,’ said the hermaphrodite Shroder.