‘Hey, Logan,’ Harris squirmed, rubbed at his face, scratched the crook of his arm—generally gave a good impression of what Miranda was doing as she sat beside Logan. ‘I need a private word.’
Doctor Logan took up his kitbag and followed Harris into the gloom under the pines. It did not take long and was surprisingly easy. Harris chopped him across the throat, swept his feet out from underneath him, then came down with a full-force axe kick on his chest. While Logan gurgled and gagged, Harris turned him over on his front, grabbed his elbows and with a knee pressing into Logan’s back, pulled hard, snapping the man’s spine. He pocketed the gun and threw the kitbag into a stream as he walked away. But that night he knew, another Logan would be along some time soon.
The world was full of Logans.
7
Much has been theorized from the Darson/Dragon dialogues, but with Dragon’s pronouncements being Delphic, convoluted and sometimes just plain crazy, really not much has been learned. Dragon has claimed to be an emissary from an advanced civilization, also something that just grew on Aster Colora and outlived all other lifeforms there (though there is absolutely no fossil evidence of this) and on one memorable occasion claimed to be God. On another occasion, driven almost mad by his lack of progress and on the worst side of a bottle of BelaVodka, Darson began screaming and throwing rocks at Dragon.
‘You are upset,’ Dragon noted.
Darson’s reply is not worth recording here, suffice to say that it demonstrated his facility with languages. Later, when he calmed down a little, he asked, ‘Why always so fucking Delphic? Are you incapable of giving a straight answer?’
Dragon replied, ‘I am the white stone bound with the red ribbon.’
Though Darson returned to the city, where he further exercised his liver, some very high-level AIs got rather excited about that particular statement. A little research reveals that the temple at Delphi contained a white stone bound with a red ribbon — the former said to represent a navel and the latter said to represent an umbilicus. The AIs felt this proved that Dragon did indeed represent some civilization, to which it was somehow still connected, bound.
- From ‘How it Is’ by Gordon
‘Maker technology is based on Jain technology,’ Cormac suggested. Waving a hand, he dispelled the two holograms and inserted another one in their place. Now hovering in the air was the guardian creature that killed Gant on Samarkand. ‘You are based on Jain technology.’
‘There went something else,’ said Mika.
Through his gridlink Cormac sent, ‘I understand the Delphic pronouncements, the lies, the half truths. Do you understand what is happening now? What has always been happening?’
‘I understand,’ Jerusalem replied.
‘Would somebody explain?’ asked Mika.
‘Dragon is, and has always been, fighting its Maker base programming,’ Jerusalem told her.
‘Oh,’ said Mika, and nothing more.
After a pause Cormac went on, ‘We could give Dragon a weapon with which to resist that programming. It might not make it any more truthful, but we won’t know until we try.’ Through his link he summoned up another projection next to the guardian: one of the creatures Chaline had seen. Dragon abruptly swung two more pseudopods towards this, then became very still.
‘Note the similarity between these two,’ said Cormac.
‘You could not have been there,’ said Dragon.
‘Time-inconsistent runcible,’ explained Cormac. ‘Eight hundred years in the future we found this.’ The two made-creatures disappeared. In their place, a ruined world, a station infested with Jain substructures, spreading clouds of Jain nodes. Then more views in the same vein, one after another after another.
‘The Maker civilization no longer exists,’ Cormac told Dragon. ‘Even the one who came here, pursuing you, sacrificed itself. The energy from the inconsistent link backlashed into the Small Magellanic Cloud, hopefully obliterating most if not all of these remnants.’
While the pictures ran, Cormac began transmitting to Dragon files compiled and still being compiled ever since the events on Celedon station. The sheer weight of information should convince Dragon—there should be images of other sights unknown to any who had not visited the Small Magellanic Cloud, also the Maker codes, and other minutiae from which Dragon could draw only one conclusion: it was being told the truth.
‘I’m told’, Cormac went on, ‘that maybe in a few million years some of those Jain nodes may drift into Polity space. It is to be hoped we’ll be sufficiently advanced by then for them not to cause any bother. Either that or extinct. But what concerns me is the Jain nodes that are already here now.’
‘Multiple power surges inside it,’ Mika told him. ‘Some kind of crisis.’
Cormac observed an electrical discharge arcing from one of the cobra pseudopods down to polished ceramal. That pod began to shrivel, its sapphire eye went out, then it abruptly collapsed out of sight. The room began vibrating, as if in an earthquake.
‘Could there be a self-destruct pro—’
Jerusalem interrupted, ‘Ejecting CTDs.’
In his gridlink Cormac sent an instruction to the surrounding machinery: Exterior view. He turned in his chair as the walls and ceiling apparently disappeared to reveal the living landscape outside, showing the manacle extending equatorially. Ports were opening along the metallic strip, and objects hurtling out of them and away. As he turned back, the main dragon head abruptly withdrew from him, turned and bit down on the neck of one attendant pseudopod and shook it like a terrier with a rat. The pseudopod died and dropped away as soon as released.
‘It occurs to me that indirect communication might have been better for my health,’ Cormac observed out loud.
‘Areas burnt out inside Dragon,’ Mika informed him.
Cormac continued to Dragon, ‘The Makers were at war with Jain technology, then at peace with it, and thought they had mastered it. Evidently they had not.’
The dragon head swung back towards him. As it did so, more pseudopods rose from the cavity behind it. A smell filled the building—frying squid. The Dragon head blinked, its mouth seemingly twisting with distaste. A long still pause ensued—a silence Cormac felt no urge to break. Eventually the dragon head dipped and spoke.
‘I am based upon Jain technology,’ it concurred. ‘As you surmised, the Makers investigated it and fought against it for thousands of years. They conquered it, assimilated it, and thought to have a perfect understanding of it. They then considered themselves ready for massive expansion into the main galaxy, but an alien civilization was already rapidly expanding in that galaxy.’
‘That would be us, then.’
‘Yes. As you also surmised, my base programming could not permit me to tell you the whole truth: only give hints, half-truths, evident lies. Now the Makers no longer exist, the foundation of my base programming no longer exists. All that remained was the self-destruct, which I have defeated. You were only seven seconds away from me using my gravtech weapon, and thus detonating those CTDs.’
‘You can tell me the truth now, but will you?’ Cormac wondered.
One of the newly fledged pseudopods surged forwards until its cobra head hovered just over the floor right before Cormac, its hood folded underneath. It came down until resting on the surface and reopened its hood. Objects rattled on the ceramal. Four spheres lay there, conjoined like the four Dragon spheres originally were.