‘Whasss…?’ Cormac paused for a moment to work up some moisture in his mouth. ‘What do you mean, my gridlink is offline?’
While unplugging the fibre optic from his aug, the man gave Cormac a puzzled look. ‘Are you feeling okay?’
Cormac glanced down at the larger autodoc, now retracting from his leg. ‘I’m fine, as far as it goes.’
‘Memory loss?’ the man enquired.
‘Some, but it’s coming back fast.’
‘Well… you’ll get these momentary glitches after a head injury like that.’
‘Why are you saying my gridlink is offline?’
It had been taken offline by an AI once it was decided that, after thirty years of access, he had been losing his humanity and thus his effectiveness as an ECS agent. However, it had since spontaneously reinstated itself, though no one seemed able to provide a good explanation why. He supposed that, being simply grateful for its restoration, he had not made sufficient enquiries. Anyway, it was certainly functioning right now.
‘Erm…’ The man blinked and tilted his head, obviously accessing data through his aug. ‘Definitely no other damage…’
‘Just answer the question please.’
Sensation abruptly returned to the rest of Cormac’s body, and he slowly eased himself upright.
‘I’m saying it’s offline because the bio-haematic power supply is disconnected and all the laminar storage within the link itself is dead.’
‘Thank you,’ said Cormac, now looking round for his envirosuit. Unable to locate it, he decided it had probably been cut away from his body and discarded. However, he did see other familiar items lying on a steel tray on a work surface over to one side: Shuriken, his thin-gun and some spare clips, that Europan dart.
‘Are you sure you’re all right?’
‘Certainly.’
‘I’ve got other patients—’
‘Please, don’t let me detain you then.’
The surgeon gestured towards the door. ‘One of your—’
‘Yes, I know,’ said Cormac. ‘Hubbert Smith is waiting outside.’
His expression even more puzzled, the medic departed. Cormac lay back again and considered what he had just been told. Either the gridlink was still on in some way that seemed to defy possibility, or else he was gridlinking without the intervention of the technology implanted in his skull. And either this was a new occurrence or the AIs had been lying to him. He was rather uncomfortable with this second option, not because he thought AIs only ever told the truth but because he immediately felt it was the most likely answer. So, not only was he able to perceive things in a way theoretically impossible for a human being, he was even gridlinking bare-brained.
Then full memory returned: And I can move through underspace.
He shuddered, suddenly also remembering his mentor Horace Blegg’s last days while he and Cormac were being pursued by Erebus’s biomechs. Blegg had believed himself able to step through U-space, for that was how, apparently, he had escaped the Hiroshima nuclear bomb at the beginning of his incredibly long life. Blegg could also mentally access the AI nets and talk mind-to-mind with AIs. Only at the end had Blegg learned the truth: he was a construct of Earth Central, his memories of stepping through U-space had been falsified to give the impression of continuity — such a U-space jump usually occurring when that construct faced destruction, when its mind was uploaded, edited, then placed in another construct.
Am I just the new Blegg?
This thought had occurred to Cormac before, but really it was pointless speculation of the same kind as that of some people who wondered if their lives were just virtual realities. He must continue living in the belief that his memories were true, else he would despair. And succumbing to the idea that the next time he faced death he would be uploaded and put into a new body would certainly have fatal consequences if he was wrong. He would continue to live to the best of his abilities — that was the only choice.
‘Smith,’ he said quietly, knowing full well that he did not need to shout in order to attract the attention of a machine capable of hearing the impact of snowflakes.
Hubbert Smith opened the door and entered. He had a standard-range envirosuit draped over his arm, and in one hand held a pair of enviroboots and a sealed pack of disposable underclothes.
‘All better now?’ the Golem enquired.
Cormac still felt battered, perhaps more so mentally than physically, but he had felt worse. The repairs performed by the medic and the autodocs would still take a little while to settle. Though most physical injuries could be repaired, breaks in bones and tears in tissue being welded, there was a point beyond which it was better to let the body itself, and whatever suite of personal nanites that body possessed, take over, with the result that no one leapt up in prime condition from a surgical table.
‘Getting there,’ Cormac replied. ‘Scar and Arach?’
Smith shook his head. ‘They’re both back aboard the King of Hearts. Arach is a little dented but otherwise fine. Scar… Scar is in cold storage.’
Cormac just stared at the Golem for a long moment. What was there to say? All humans and Golem working for ECS knew the risks they ran, and could choose not to undertake them. Cormac liked to think that Scar, even though a construct of Dragon’s, had possessed the same choices, though in that respect he could only rely on the assessments scientists like Mika made. But, that aside, he had obviously lost another friend and comrade, and it hurt. He could not help feeling paranoid about how such comrades were continually being stripped away from him, and about how he himself continued to survive — and change. After a moment he turned his thoughts away from such introspection, instead lifting up his hand and studying it, which just like the rest of his body was utterly and aseptically clean. He peered closely at his fingernails, just in case.
Smith said, ‘Don’t worry — we got the sample. It’s been properly analysed, and now search engines are checking ECS records. If she was a Polity citizen, we’ll soon learn her identity.’
Cormac lowered his hand. ‘Remes said something odd just before that shock wave hit us. Apparently we weren’t supposed to be here at all.’
‘Wild goose chase seem to be the right words to apply.’ Smith placed the garments down on the surgical table.
Cormac slid off the table and stood upright, then opened the pack of underclothes and quickly began pulling them on.
‘So who sent us after the goose?’
‘One of Erebus’s agents operating in Jerusalem’s camp, apparently,’ Smith replied, ‘but I don’t know any further details. When we get back to the ship, you’ll be able to talk to the one investigating this.’
Obviously there was still Jain-tech in the area, and therefore com security was still an issue, otherwise Cormac would have been able to connect to the King of Hearts directly from here by using his gridlink — the one that wasn’t supposed to be functioning. He quickly pulled on the envirosuit and boots, then went to gather his meagre belongings. Strapping on Shuriken and pocketing both the gun and the dart, he briefly wondered what such a scarcity of personal possessions said about him.
As they exited the medbay, Cormac noticed his surgeon in a side room with another patient before the door was quickly closed. All that was left of the individual on the surgical table had been a partially cooked torso and a head. Maybe one of those with a ‘little doctor’ inside keeping him alive? Besides the medical staff there were numerous walking wounded here. He spotted a woman with her right arm missing at the elbow, brain-like tissue sealing the stump, indicating that she also contained a little doctor, and before long he realized that thus far he had not seen a single human being on this world without some kind of augmentation — either visible or embedded like those little doctors or a gridlink. Those gridlinked were evident simply by the way they carried themselves, though Cormac could confirm the presence of the hardware by a quick peek inside their skulls.