Gridlinked

When he had done this, Jarvellis carefully took it from him, being careful only to touch the sheath. She tossed it down to the foot of the bed.

'What now?' he asked.

She replied, 'The green ring turns in the gold one. Just give it a flick with your thumb.'

Stanton did as instructed. There was a sound as of a wasp shooting past. Stanton saw a flash of yellow and, before he could react, the handle of the dagger slapped into the palm of his hand. He held it there and turned to Jarvellis, a grin on his face.

'I like it,' he said.

Jarvellis shrugged. 'That's all it does, I'm afraid. It's got just about enough intelligence not to cut your fingers off in the process.'

'That would be quite enough in some situations,' said Stanton. He retrieved the sheath and slid the dagger back in place. This and the box he placed on the bedside table before reaching his hand behind Jarvellis's neck and pulling her in close. They kissed long and hard before eventually pulling apart. Stanton held up his hand and wiggled his index finger.

'Does this mean we're married?' he asked.

Jarvellis stared at him seriously for a moment, then she grinned and threw herself back on the pillows. 'Tell me again how much,' she said.

Stanton closed his hand into a fist, a smile quirking the corners of his mouth. 'I've told you once.'

'I don't care. I want to hear it again.'

'All right… In the top layer there's about three million left, I think. There are definitely more layers in that case, maybe five of them, I can't be sure. I'd estimate that with the kind of armament he's after, and with what he pays Corlackis and crew, he'll be shelling out about five million. There'll have to be upward of ten million left.'

'Very nice, but how do we make it our ten million?'

'Difficult. With Crane next to him at every moment, it doesn't leave much room to manoeuvre. When we go after this ECS bastard he'll have to send Crane in, and I should have my hands on some hardware by then. I'll have to take him then, and you'll have to come in and get me.' Stanton stared at her, but she did not meet his look.

'What about the other four?'

'Well, diey'll be going in as well at some point. I'll choose my moment. Damn, I wish I'd taken him just after he withdrew it. I was stupid.'

'No, John, you were loyal. Why not admit to yourself that you were loyal up to a point - and that point was Air Crane.' Jarvellis looked at him now and smiled. 'You know, John, that this is the break. We pull this off and we can get an Aquarius-class upgrade. That means ram-scoop and all the speed we'll ever need, unless ECS want to come down on us. How long do you mink before we buy into a consortium and start pulling in some real wealth?'

'Still want to buy that planet, Jarvellis?'

'Nobody can own planets, John, but we could own enough of one not to know the difference. A planet a few centuries from the Line, well away from Polity interference. Think on that.'

Stanton reached for her and pulled her close. He loved her foolish dreams and, just so long as she stayed with him while she dreamed them, he didn't mind. Sometimes, the diought that she might take her dreams elsewhere frightened him.

11

Cormac sat before the viewing screen in the recreation area and let out a deep sigh. He toasted Horace Blegg, men put his glass down on the table beside him. He felt very tired, but had been unable to sleep and a drink seemed the best way to unwind.

'Ship AI…' Cormac began, then paused in chagrin and started again. 'Hubris, is this screen voice-activated?'

'It is,' replied one of the many voices of Hubris, this one more relaxed and easy-going because of the surroundings.

'Give me a view into Isolation Chamber One, please.'

The screen flickered on and showed the two draco-men squatting on the floor of the chamber. They were eating slabs of recon' protein and drinking water from tall beakers. The scene was reminiscent of something from an ancient fairy tale. Cormac winced to himself at that diought, and did not carry it any further.

'Very efficient creatures diese,' said Hubris.

'What do you mean?'

'They are decontaminating themselves. They're using some method of regeneration. There is a high level of damaged and radioactive material from their bodies in their excrement.'

'Nice,' said Cormac. The injection Mika had given him had hurt, and was still hurting. He wondered if she had taken some obscure form of vengeance on him by using it. There were other less painful methods of getting antactives into the bloodstream.

Hubris went on. 'It is an extremely rapid process. They eat as much as is given them and convert it very quickly. They will be wholly regenerated within two days.'

'And should we let them out then?' wondered Cormac.

'That is for you to decide. It is relevant to note that Dragon always served its own purposes, and with little regard for human life.'

Cormac nodded, more to himself than the ship AI. He remembered the two-kilometre perimeter around Dragon on Aster Colora. Dragon had said, 'No machines inside this perimeter.' People had tried, as people do, and that perimeter had become a ring of smashed vehicles, some still containing human remains.

Where are you, Dragon? What do you want?

Cormac turned as the door slid open behind him and Chaline walked in. She looked as tired as he felt, and obviously had the same intention in mind. She got herself a drink from the autobar, then slumped into the seat next to him. As she sipped her drink she studied him with an intensity he found unnerving. He felt compelled to talk.

'Couldn't sleep?' he asked.

'No.' She turned away with a slight smile and rubbed at her eyes with her forefinger and thumb. 'I was readying a probe to go into the blast-site and search out some fragments of the runcible buffer. It seems there's a chance it was not all vaporized.' She looked up at the screen. 'How are our friends getting on?'

Cormac told her what Hubris had told him.

'Dracomen… I had a quick look in the reference section but all I could come up with was this text called 'The Dragon Dialogues'? It read like a philosophy thesis and ran to about ten million words. Fascinating stuff, but I don't really have the time to read it…' She turned to Cormac. 'What was this Dragon then? Not a fire-breather, I gather?'

Cormac hesitated, and then grimaced. 'No, Dragon was the name the creature gave itself, for whatever reason… Hubris, do you have any film of Dragon?'

'Enough to last a lifetime.'

'Show us some, please.'

The screen flickered and showed a contorted rocky plain below a metallic red sky. On that plain stood four vast spheres joined in a row. Pink snow was falling.

'There's Dragon. Each of those spheres is a kilometre across.'

'It was all alive?' asked Chaline incredulously.

'Oh yes, very much so. Xenologists thought it might once have been mobile, but when discovered it was like this. It had pseudopods rooted into the ground for kilometres all around. It must have extracted minerals or something to feed on. No one can say for sure, but later examination of the site found the ground riddled with tunnels and lacking in certain minerals found elsewhere.'

'Later examination?' Chaline asked.

Cormac closed his eyes as a memory, clear as day, flashed into his mind. He remembered a fantastic road made for him, two kilometres long, marked out by pseudopods five metres high and half a metre wide, each one like a white cobra, but with a single blue crystalline eye where its mouth should have been. That had been a long walk.

Chaline returned her attention to the screen again and continued before Cormac could answer. 'It must have been made of more than flesh and bone. At that size it would have collapsed in on itself…'