Cormac wondered if Chaline could smell the garlic on his breath and see the flecks of gold in his eyes.
'Right,' said Chaline tighdy.
Blegg had a mandate from Earth Central. He could be argued with - but it was a poindess exercise.
'Will you arrange all that, then? I want a proton weapon left in the containment sphere. You'll have to turn off any proscription device in the sphere for that. I also want a fast AGC beside the runcible, with a covered walkway leading to it. Put three coldsuits in it as well.'
'We'll contact y'when everything is ready. Dragon will be told.'
'Good, after you make contact with us, we'll be flushing the Maker out with the CTDs. That's all.' Cormac rested his fingers on his bottom lip and stared at the console until the transmission was broken. 'Dragon probably heard every word of that,' he said. 'It put a lock on the information concerning the arrival of its dracomen on Samarkand, so it has access to the grid, and I think its tracking down of this Maker to Samarkand confirms that. It will, accordingly, discover all that has happened here. Very little information will escape it.'
'Are you going to tell us what you're up to?' asked Thorn.
'I haven't quite got it all sorted myself. I am, as Blegg might say, giving myself leeway for subterfuge. I'm afraid you'll have to be content with that for now. What you heard then is all you need to know.' He centred his attention on Aiden. 'Aiden, I want you to open a channel from my comunit to Viridian. Preferably through underspace, coded and random scrambled.'
Aiden nodded. They all waited for Cormac to say more.
Thorn became impatient. 'Now?' he prompted.
'Now? Well, I haven't eaten since yesterday and I'm hungry. I suggest we eat before heading out. Pelter needs to be dealt with. I can't have an imponderable like him about while I'm dealing with… other things.'
27
Politics (An excerpt): Everybody knows that we are living in a meritocracy and that those in charge are not human. Everybody knows that AIs are running the show. Who would trust a human planetary governor? Who would trust humans with controlling the vast spread of human migration and trade? Certainly not other humans. As that sublime AI, which is referred to as 'Earth Central', once put it, 'Humans: fast machines that serve the purpose of slow genes.' Most right-thinking people would agree that we are not to be trusted with our own destiny and are glad things are the way they are. Our history should be a salutary lesson held at the forefronts of our minds when we consider these matters. Nowadays you do not see such bloody resolution to events as was seen in the past. I mean, you don't see the machines killing each other, do you?
From How It Is by Gordon
The magnetic rails lifted the shuttle from the bay floor, just like AG.
'That's it,' said Tull over the intercom. 'Now you just ease it straight out. You'll be going out opposite to the station's rotation, so you should have no problem. Obviously, once you're out, you'll fall away at one-quarter G.'
'In what direction?'
'Depends when you get through the door. I'd suggest you do this next time Viridian comes into view.'
Great, real technical.
Jarvellis kept her eyes on the door and her hand on the slide control as she waited. Already space beyond the door was taking on a blue-green haze. Any time now, then.
When the arc of the planet slowly climbed into view, she quickly pushed the control forward. She did not really fancy hurtling directly towards the planet at one-quarter G while still trying to figure out how to operate the controls of this thing. The shuttle slowly accelerated for the door, and more and more of the planet was revealed. As it went out into space, it immediately dropped and she rose against her seat straps. A glance up showed her the station now retreating with dismaying rapidity. She moved the control column and was rewarded with a cacophonous creaking as the ion engines moved in their housings.
'All or nothing,' she said, and pressed a button marked 'Grids'. Nothing happened. There was no flare, no surge of power. She leant forward and round, so as to see the ion engines. There was a glow underneath them no more vigorous than that from a faulty toaster. Jarvellis studied the other buttons available. 'Gas feed' seemed the most likely, so she pressed it. A pump started up somewhere behind her, and there was a stutt- ering roar to her right. Her view of Viridian tilted, kept on tilting. The roar started to her left, but the tilt did not correct and now the horizon was dropping away. She eased the column over, corrected the tilt. How the hell did she ease off on the power, though? It took her some minutes of frantic searching before she realized her foot was flat down on a floor pedal.
'This is Viridian control calling Nix shuttle. Answer, please.'
Jarvellis ignored the radio and concentrated on flying the shuttle. She could not figure out how to get back towards the planet. The settings of the engines seemed to be designed for re-entry only. Think! It occurred to her then that she was thinking like someone who had lived with gravity for too long. She was thinking in terms of up and down. She moved the full column over and nipped the shuttle so that Viridian was now directly above her, and then applied some power.
'This is Viridian control calling Nix shuttle. Answer, please.'
There was the airspeed indicator, and there was an altimeter giving a very strange reading. Slowly Jarvellis began to understand what each of the meters and small screens signified. She had got the shuttle in a stable orbit when a completely different voice spoke from the radio.
'This is Viridian. Will the lunatic flying that antique please respond. I have no objection to you killing yourself, but you are now entering occupied airspace.'
Shit, it was the runcible AI. Jarvellis searched for a switch to turn off the radio. She found none. What she did find was a screen that folded out from the old console. The screen flickered on to give her the same view as she had out through the front screen. She pressed a button and that view flicked to one that was identified - in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen - as infrared. She clicked along the buttons and called up all sorts of interesting views, but none of them would help to prevent her spreading herself across the surface of the planet if she didn't figure out how to land this thing.
They put the carrier down in a valley in the foothills of the cave-riddled Thuriot mountains. These mountains were not like any mountains he had imagined; they were the slabbed and laminated masses he had seen from the runcible facility. Perhaps it was the case that on a heavier-gravity planet like Earth such strange formations could not exist. He sited the camp a short distance from where the blue oaks and chequer trees of the Magadar forest petered out, on level ground thick with Arctic lichens and the chewed sprouts of new trees.
'If they come on foot, they'll come from the forest,' Cormac told Thorn. 'Sergeant, I want someone at the turret gun at all times. Organize a shift if necessary. I want you in there at the command console, co-ordinating all scan input. We'll keep channels open so you can relay everything you get.'
'So too.'
'Your gunner must take out anything airborne. Anything that even hints at being a surveillance drone, I want hit. Obviously if we get any AGCs coming in without ID, I want them hit as well. Go there now. I'll relay any further orders.'
As the sergeant moved on, Thorn said, 'The other lot came in on foot. They didn't risk coming in airborne. I doubt this Pelter chap will, either.'