Thirteen drifted down to a level where the foliage was not so thick, then followed a path between globular scabrous peartrunks from which bark had been ripped so that now green sap oozed out like engine oil. On the other hand, reporting those deaths would not help the dead… Thirteen bobbed in the air—the only outward expression of the frustration the little drone was feeling. Really, the presence of a hostile alien life form on Spatterjay did come somewhere within the Warden’s remit, even though it was no longer Thirteen’s responsibility to report it. The little drone just feared contacting the Warden because, even though now a free drone, Thirteen still feared subsumption. Eventually it braced itself and opened a channel. The reply was immediate.
‘What is it, Thirteen?’ the Warden asked.
Thirteen transmitted a copy of the image file recorded last night, and waited.
‘I am aware of the hooder’s presence, but wonder why it should be my concern?’
‘I just thought you’d better know,’ said Thirteen grudgingly.
‘I know. The creature was transported here in the cargo aboard the Gurnard. That ship is a free trader and so the Polity has no responsibility for its cargo.’
‘I thought… alien life forms down here…’
‘The hooder is merely a dangerous animal. If I took responsibility for every dangerous animal on the surface of Spatterjay I would probably need a couple of SMs down there covering every square kilometre of land and every cubic kilometre of sea.’
‘What about the Prador when it came?’
‘Do you need a lecture in precisely what comes within a Warden’s remit?’
‘Perhaps I do.’
‘The relevant sections stipulate that I am to watch for anything representing a danger or a potential danger to the Polity, and I am empowered to intervene when any such danger generally threatens the population or the biosphere of Spatterjay, but especially when caused by anything proceeding from the Polity itself. The Prador, Ebulan, fell under both sections.’
‘Ebulan came from the Prador Third Kingdom.’
‘Then the danger he represented was general and not especial.’
‘Seems a bit specious.’
There came a long pause from the Warden, then, ‘I could stretch the terms of my remit and interfere, but I do not want to, in a situation where the danger to this small group—which they dealt with adequately enough—was brought on by themselves.’
‘And the Hoopers?’
‘Unfortunate, but I cannot take responsibility for the individual lives of any who are not citizens of the Polity.’
Feeling a sudden daring, Thirteen said, ‘You’ve changed.’
Again that long pause, then, ‘I may send Sniper, when he is available.’
‘Sniper? What’s Sniper doing?’
The communication link cut and now, as well as being free, Thirteen realized it was completely out of the circuit. Perhaps this was why drones like Sniper sought employment with AIs like the Warden. Independence did have its drawbacks.
Eventually Thirteen dropped lower, entered an area where a stand of putrephallus plants had been crushed, and viewed the discarded dead segment of hooder lying on the plant’s stinking phallic bed, then it slowly turned in mid-air. This was where the drone had tracked the hooder to last night, before returning to the compound. The creature had been moving very slowly, and because of its starveling condition and the damage inflicted on it by the APW, the drone had not thought it would be going much further for a while. It was gone now, however. Thirteen rose up from the trees, turned on all its scanning gear, and began to search.
You’ve changed. The Warden came at that statement from every angle. It was specific enough to be worrying, yet vague enough that no clear confirmation seemed possible. The AI ran diagnostic programs through itself, ran system comparisons between its backup memories and present attitudes. There seemed a vague indication that it had returned to an earlier mindset in which it more closely adhered to its Polity remit, and was generally more circumspect. This could have been caused by the compression process it had undergone to escape being subsumed by the drone, Sniper. That had certainly been hurried, after the shock of discovering the ancient war drone possessed a larger and more powerful mentality than itself—built upon the foundation of a life centuries long. Perhaps that was the problem: the whole experience had been humbling. However, a further possibility was that Thirteen’s own perception had changed: becoming a free drone could prove both an illuminating and frightening transformation.
‘Yes, what is it, Seven?’
The submind had been trying to attract the Warden’s attention for some microseconds.
‘Captain Sprage, boss. He’s opened a channel up here again through that conferencing link of his.’
‘Then you can again inform the Captain that whilst Erlin Taser Three Indomial is a valued Polity citizen, her stepping outside the Line and putting herself in danger is none of my concern. And, Seven, I am not your “boss”. I am the Polity Warden of Spatterjay.’ As the Warden finished speaking, it felt something akin to a flush of embarrassment. Would I have said something like that before?
‘He’s not calling about that. He’s calling about a missing ship.’
‘That happens. Again, it is not my concern.’
‘But… Warden, he’s got some coordinates from the point where the conferencing link to the Vignette went offline. He’s very concerned about it, but only wants to know if you might have seen anything with any of your eyes.’
The Warden did a fast scan through its Polity remit and found that this situation fell in one of those grey areas. Though this might concern only the loss of a few individuals, it had been communicated to the AI via one of the sort-of rulers of the human population here, and so might pertain to something important.
‘Very well.’
Seven transmitted the coordinates and the precise time when the link went off. The Warden scanned the memory of the satellite eye concerned—it was memory they held for a few days before deleting. The coordinates centred on a cloud mass, which immediately aroused the AI’s suspicions—if anyone wanted to hide their actions from it, they would perform them underneath such a mass. Searching through the range of the eye’s scan, the AI found very little until moving into infrared. There—the vague blob of the ship, an explosion then a fire, then the heat flickering out, along with that blob itself, as the ship no doubt sank. An accident? Hoopers were not particularly prone to them, though they did carry gunpowder, explosives and sometimes Polity weapons aboard. Moreover, the Vignette’s record was not a good one. The Warden ruminated over the response it would give, before reluctantly packaging the relevant information and transmitting it.
‘Sniper, check this out will you,’ the AI also sent—then fretted that it might be sending napalm to put out a fire.
The industry of the Golem and other Cybercorp machines was fast and frightening. Ron had earlier expressed an interest in being involved in the construction, but Bloc had told him no humans were allowed on site—it was just too dangerous for them. As he saw a skeletal Golem rush past with a ten-metre beam on its shoulder, halt abruptly, spin the beam round then throw it up through a gap in the hull planking, Janer now understood why. A moment’s inattention might result in a human ending up smeared into the woodwork.
‘You note, they are not only using wood,’ said Wade, pointing through the perimeter fence.
Janer scanned the site, noting composite beams resting on a row of trestles nearby. A spiderlike robot was hauling a sheet of some sort of metal up the side of the ship. The huge rudder, which even now was being swung into place and hung from a crane located on the deck above, bore the logo of a company Janer knew specialized in the production of bubble-metals—alloys foamed with inert gas and cast in zero-G so the bubbles remained evenly dispersed. The air around him was also redolent with the smell of fast-bonding epoxies.