LED went off just at the edge of his vision. Once that light disappeared, he allowed himself a small smile.
Outside it was like a harsh winter on Earth, only the snow blowing past them consisted of carbon-dioxide crystals, and the ice under their feet was water-ice as hard as iron. Cormac felt no hint of the cold. Had he done so, it would probably mean his suit was failing and that he would shortly be dead. Jane stood brushing the snow from her hair, as if it was flower blossom dropping on a spring day. In this setting, dressed in her thin bodysuit, she did look unhuman. There was no billowing cloud of vapour as she breathed. She did not flush, nor did she shiver.
They trudged through the snow to the main entrance. Off to one side Cormac observed the huge super-conductor ducts that led to heat-sinks under the frozen sea. From the shutde these ducts had appeared to be the thickness of old oaks. Here, now, he could see they were large enough to run a motorway along. There the surplus energy, converted from microwave beams transmitted from the runcible buffers, was conducted as electrical energy to the heat-sinks, where it was converted into terraforming heat. Fifteen months ago much of this sea had not been frozen, and, as Mika had said, angel shrimps had been introduced.
Once they reached the doors, Chaline hit the touch-plate. Nothing happened. She and Gant pulled on the handles, which had probably never been used before.
'Dead, and frozen shut,' came her voice over the com. 'This place was powered by a bleed-off from received energy.' She turned her masked face to Jane. 'Can you do anything?'
Jane stepped forwards and took hold of the handle. She pulled and ice shattered under her feet. The door opened a little way, then the handle snapped off.
'The metal's recrystallizing with the cold,' she said, her voice coming to them with a radio echo. She stepped to the gap she had made, inserted her fingers, and pulled. The door ground open and a chunk snapped off in her hands, but it was wide enough open for them to enter. As he went through, Cormac glanced at the broken metal and realized that at these temperatures even Golem might be vulnerable. Their synthetic skins, he knew, could handle a wide temperature range and provided superb insulation, but he wondered just how close they would get to the lower limit of that range here.
Inside the building they walked down frost-coated corridors to a drop-shaft. Luckily there was an inspection ladder down one side of it. Jane checked it with a tug or two, then descended. It was thick ceramal welded to the side of the shaft, so was unlikely to give way. As it took her weight without cracking, they all soon followed her down to the bunker where the submind was kept.
'I'm getting something,' said Chaline, as they swung away from the shaft and into a dark corridor. Cormac flicked his goggles to infrared, but vision was even poorer. Someone switched on a torch. He saw it was Thorn, and that the torch was an integral part of the weapon he held. Gant had also drawn his gun. Perhaps they trusted Blegg's judgement as much as he did, Cormac thought. He turned to Chaline, who was peering at some kind of detector.
'Is it still active?'
'Seems to be, though its power source must be getting low. Perhaps that's why it didn't transmit,' she said, then added, 'I hope to link up the new runcible with these stations.'
Runcibles were obviously her favourite topic.
The end of the darkened corridor revealed a sliding door, which Jane opened with studied nonchalance. Beyond it lay a circular room that seemed to be lined with polished copper bricks.
'Let's see what we can get here,' said Chaline, then took another instrument from her belt and moved her fingers over the touch-pads. A voice spoke to them through their comunits.
'—the brick-red song each block is dried blood frozen in perspex the windows are a thousand stitched-together eyes house is pain lord of pain lord of nightmares—'
'Very poetic,' said Chaline dryly.
'Nuts,' said Gant.
Cormac was not so sure. 'Try it again. At least it's retained something.'
'—batshapes with translucent white teeth and eyes in fevered flesh swooping madness yelling hate itself sinter sinter burnt mounded bones—'
'Try transmitting to it here.'
'It should be able to hear us anyway. Jane?'
'I've tried. Seems completely internalized.'
'AI, respond!' shouted Cormac.
'—screaming shape fire green men lizards help me plague dogs war flung to our coasts night dark rats disembark with their translucent teeth—'
'No good,' said Chaline. 'Best we shut it down and get out of here.'
'—plinking rain hell dark spaces think something abyss gestation outcome—'
'No,' said Cormac. 'I veto that. We take the core brain and main memory with us.' Chaline turned her masked face to him. He was glad he could not see her expression.
Mika said, 'There was something…'
Chaline turned to her. 'What? This submind's crazy.'
'Stream of consciousness. It may reveal something.'
'OK… OK, no problem.'
Chaline moved to the centre of the room and lifted a circular cover. Ice-blue light glared out as she inserted another instrument from her belt. There was a number of strange clunks. She lifted the instrument out and attached to it was something metallic and lens-shaped. She detached it and tossed it to Cormac. He caught it.
'There's your core brain and main memory. It's only a submind, so they're all in one. Don't worry about dropping it. Nothing short of an atomic explosion will destroy it,' said Chaline. Then she realized what she had said. 'But, then, we are all well aware of that. It was the destruction of the main runcible mind that… internalized it.'
Cormac was glad to hear a little humour in her voice, even though it was somewhat acid. He did not need any enemies right now.
'Let's go. There's nothing more for us here,' she finished.
As soon as mey stepped beyond the shielding of the room, Jane halted and tilted her head. They all watched her, knowing she was receiving some message, and knowing that the tilt of her head was for their benefit. Abruptly she turned.
'That was from the Hubris. It's picked up some kind of heat source to the south of here.'
'People?' asked Cormac.
'Not determined.'
8
Huma: That they named this rather hot and arid planet after a fabulous bird that equates with the phoenix is rather ironic, in that it has been impossible to establish even adapted bird species here. The reason for this is that ninety per cent of the surface of Huma lies outside the green belt in which Earth species are able to live. In this area even the native plant species are prone to combustion, and huge swathes of the planet are 'burn zones'. Ash carried from these zones is the reason for the distinctive filthy rain that falls on the remaining ten per cent of the planet, at the poles, which are habitable. These storms, though rare, are of such severity that during them no Earth species can survive outside of the accommodation built for humans.
From Quince Guide, compiled by humans
Cormac was directly in front of Pelter, the barrel of his thin-gun connected by an invisible rod to the Separatist's forehead. The expression on the agent's face said all that needed to be said, and all that would be said. Pelter was a hindrance the agent must remove so he might continue his work. Easier to just kill him and move on. It was that he had begged in the face of this lack of regard, that he was irrelevant to the central issue, just something to be killed and discarded, that brought to Pelter an almost rabid anger. Of course, in this instance the killing pulse never came. It was as Sylac had said: visual hallucinations through the link. He tensed himself- it always seemed to take such an effort of will -and used his aug to switch through to Crane. Immediately the link became an icicle through his left eye, and through glassy light the rectangular barrel of the thin-gun closed against his forehead.