No matter how much shielding a ship used, passengers always felt the transition from U-space to realspace—or the reverse. Why this was so, no one had explained, though Mika felt sure some would attribute it to the belief that humans were more than mere material substance—an idea she found objectionable. Climbing out of her bed in the quarters Jerusalem had recently provided for her, she gazed up at a screen that was always set for external view, and observed starlit space rather than any planetary system. The Jerusalem was no longer in U-space.
‘Jerusalem, what’s happening?’ she asked.
There was a pause before the AI replied, ‘So it begins.’
‘Pardon.’
‘We will not be going to Masada. We will now be going to a sector of space in which the source of so much of what we study has been located.’
‘Skellor’s been found.’
‘Not precisely, but we may close him in our grasp.’
Abruptly Mika felt that sensation of transition again and, looking up, saw her screen showing the bland grey representation of U-space. Normally, while a ship was under, its human passengers and crew would go into cold sleep, but aboard the Jerusalem there was an urgency to learn all about that thing that might kill the Polity. Having slept four hours, which was ample for Mika, she showered, dressed, and immediately went out into the main corridor and headed for the refectory. Though machines in her own quarters could supply all her nutritional needs, she always took her meals elsewhere. In the refectory, like-minded people bounced ideas about and did quite a lot of the planning and more imaginative work there. Entering the large room, with its scattering of tables and chairs, she saw that Susan James, D’nissan and Prator Colver were all seated around one table and, after making her selection from one of the food dispensers, Mika collected her tray and went over to join them.
The man, Colver, was Life-coven like herself: a stocky ginger-haired individual who was prone to sudden enthusiasms and who had long ago learned how to ask questions. ‘Have you heard?’ he asked as she sat down. ‘We’re going to Ruby Eye.’
Mika looked across at Susan James and raised an eyebrow.
‘It’s a research station in orbit around a red dwarf. Been there for fifty years—long-term study,’ she explained.
Susan was a standard-format human; in appearance almost a female version of Ian Cormac, though certainly not as deadly. Mika turned her attention to D’nissan, the low-temperature ophidapt man from Ganymede. His visor was down in the neck ring of his hotsuit, and he was drinking what looked like a raspberry coolie through a straw—a drink that would have been hot to him. His pronouncements were usually concise and apposite, which was why, when the situation warranted it, he was Jerusalem’s chief researcher, but he didn’t have anything to say just then.
‘To get Skellor,’ Mika said.
‘It’d be great to get hold of the source of the Jain tech we’ve been studying,’ said Colver. ‘I’m sure there are controlling mechanisms we haven’t seen yet.’
Now D’nissan observed coolly, ‘That’s like studying venom, then wishing to get hold of a snake.’
Mika thought that a bit rich, coming from a man with diamond-scaled skin and fangs.
He looked at her directly. ‘Of course we haven’t seen it all, because what we have got is just a… cutting. If it were rooted and allowed to grow, we then perhaps would.’
‘Yeah, but Skellor… he direct-interfaced with a crystal matrix AI…’ said Colver, apropos of nothing.
‘I would like to see Jain technology operating,’ said Mika.
‘Haven’t you heard?’ Colver asked, interrupting D’nissan, who had been about to speak. ‘We’re going to see that.’
Mika stared at D’nissan.
‘The asteroid,’ he explained, ‘it would have had to be destroyed by imploder anyway. So why not use it to grow some of our specimen?’
‘In red sunlight,’ Mika suggested.
‘Precisely,’ said D’nissan.
Mika was not sure how to react. This was what she had wanted, but she was also aware that they were playing with something substantially more dangerous than fire.
In the invisible grid, Crane shifted a blue acorn to a position adjacent to the lion’s tooth, then moved the coin ring adjacent to the piece of crystal. The rubber dog remained constant beside the laser lighter. This elicited a fragmented image of the same grid occupied by the shells of penny oysters, the interstices of which dying pearl crabs were exploring. Blood dripped from his fingers onto the crushed-shell beach, black in the silver moonlight.
‘Did they all get in his way?’ Angelina asked, looking at the corpses scattered across the sand.
‘Apparently so,’ said Arian. Three of his men moved ahead, spreading out as they stepped into the creosote bushes, while the other eight split into two groups of four, to head in either direction along the beach.
‘Two more here,’ said one of the men, pushing aside a bush with the barrel of his pulse-rifle. Angelina moved up beside Arian as her brother gazed down at the mess. The tangle of blood, bones and torn flesh seemed only identifiable as human because there was clothing mixed in there as well.
‘Two?’ she asked.
‘Well I count two heads,’ the man replied.
Angelina did not like this at all. With Alston dead they could have just moved in and taken over his operation, perhaps having to pay the man’s people over the odds for a while until they got things under control. But there had been no reaction to their approach of the island. The scanners aboard the boat had detected very few heat signatures, and those few detected were fading. It was beginning to look as if no operation remained here.
They moved on through silvery moonlight, and it was only fifty metres inland before they found the next corpse. This man was impaled on the snapped branch of a tree, his feet dangling two metres from the ground, where his blood had pooled.
‘Where exactly is he?’ Angelina asked. ‘We wouldn’t want him to make a mistake about us.’
‘On the other side of the island, on the beach. He’s not moving and all I’m getting is “objective achieved” and some weird images. He won’t move.’
‘Perhaps we should just turn around and leave him here?’
Arian lowered his hand from his platinum aug and stared at her. ‘I think it may be the second link to his control module from my aug. We need a direct optic link to get the bandwidth, and some military programming. Someone like Sylac could do the job.’
Angelina could hear the doubt in his voice. Personally she had no wish to see herself, or her brother, under Sylac’s knives, since the surgery he performed might not render the intended result. The surgeon was a law unto himself and considered the human body a testing ground, or even a playground. Nor did she want either of them to be more closely connected to the scrambled insane mind of the Golem, no matter how much more control they might thus obtain. And the idea of putting that kind of power into the hands of one of their employees would be sheer madness. Already she was beginning to see that Mr Crane was like a black-market pulse-gun from one of the less reputable dealers on Huma—it might work, but was just as likely to blow up in your face. When she saw the mound, she felt her thoughts confirmed.