Somehow the barrier had remained: a shimmering silk meniscus between Mr Crane and everything real. Yet, strangely, by this separation he could view the world and his worlds and discern what was now and what was then. The surreal battle between a knight mounted on a giant crustacean and the ziggurat-headed droon was real and was now. Briefly, it reflected on the etched game board, before the vulture brought her players back to order with a sharp peck and a lengthy swallowing. Crane moved the piece of crystal and gazed up at the sea’s surface. It was fantastically bright up there, almost as bright as revelation. Inside his head he felt something turn and clunk into place with all the positivity of a ship going into a docking clamp. Tearing off the aviapt’s head had not been a particularly moral act, nor had Crane’s killing of Stalek been particularly nice, but for what they had done to him—and likely done to others—they deserved death. Also they had been outside the Polity, and Crane had been under instruction…

In some part of himself, Crane recognized the mealy-mouthed dissimulation of a coward. Though ordered through the Pelters’ control unit to kill those two, he had not needed to be quite so bloody. He reached down to move a blue acorn. A beak intervened and he instead moved the scent bottle. Taut excitement filled him, and imminence—that was the only way the various parts of his mind could see it. Something of all his parts was poised on the edge of the real, waiting to come into focus.

The sea’s surface drew no closer—he knew he was not ready for that. But some bright structure like a vast glassy plankton turned in electric depths and presented itself to another mass of the same. It keyed in, locked into place, took on the same spectral pulsation as all the rest. Mr Crane stared down at one brass hand. It was utterly real, and utterly right there and then. Folding in his thumb, he saw himself tearing people apart on Cheyne III. Those were Arian Pelter’s orders, and the man had been nested close in Crane’s mind, his control through a military aug all but absolute. How could the Golem have done otherwise?

Lies lies lies …

Crane folded in a finger, remembered killing policemen, then killing one of Arian’s allies. But one of those policemen had survived. Out of an impossible situation, Mr Crane had allowed someone to live. The antique binoculars he had taken in place of the life now replaced by the scent bottle he had just moved. Hadn’t he saved so many lives? But counting the deaths he soon ran out of fingers.

The little knight, mounted on a miniature sand hog, charged the lion’s tooth, and, prodding it with his lance, moved it to a new position. Two bright structures mated with a satisfying click and the gratifying alignment of the last turn on a Rubik’s cube.

What Crane had done… He could have done nothing else.

Crane could have done nothing else.

Rising, nemesis from the sea, Mr Crane was angry. He raged at a life denied him, howled inside at the Serban Kline they wanted him to be, was rabid because there was nothing inside or out to prevent him killing. But there was justification. The people on this island had done those horrific things to Semper. They had unmade a human being piece by piece, scream by scream, and left him to marine crucifixion for Crane to find. Oh, how they would pay.

The man on the shore—a bloody rag—gone, others the same. Crane walked slowly through silver moonlight, glints like pearl crabs at the corners of his eyes. Alston was at the centre of the island and Crane was told to go to him, to kill him, but also to kill any who stood in his way. No one had said how he should go to Alston. No one had said he should walk a straight course. Crane walked a spiral, killing as he went and leaving hellish art behind him, till coming to the final poetry of making Alston’s fortune utterly the man’s own.

We had no choice.

You could have shut down completely, abandoned any chance at sentience, not been so good a tool for them to employ. You put your survival above that of many many others.

We are unusual?

There was nothing now to prevent wholeness, only will and choice. Mr Crane could be complete in that moment or, with the horror of memory swamping him, could rest, cease to be. Choice: the machine was there, but yet to be powered up. Internally, he watched a tall brass man in a wide-brimmed hat throw across the final circuit breaker. The image, his ego, flipped a salute to him before being sucked into the machine. From that moment on, Crane was wholly and utterly himself.

‘Ah,’ said Vulture, stepping back a little. ‘I see you’re with us, but I wonder just what is with us.’

Mr Crane began picking up his toys and returning them to his pockets. The battle nearby was over, and here the battle was over too. He paused; he did not need these toys. But then again that did not mean he could not have them. As he contemplated this concept, his hands worked before him without conscious volition. While he was methodically attempting to stack the blue acorns, a flying lizard landed in the middle of the board, scattering both the acorns and other remaining pieces.

‘A message, I suspect,’ said Vulture.

Crane held out his palm and the lizard scuttled onto it. He raised the creature up to his face, listened to its chittering, and recognized the flashing in its eyes as a direct visual transference of code. Eventually he tossed the lizard into the air and watched it fly away. Then his hand snapped out, faster than any snake, and closed around Vulture’s neck.

‘I chose,’ said Mr Crane.

He released his hold. Vulture was unharmed.

Mr Crane stood, put on his hat and tilted it rakishly. He paused for a moment, examining the board before him, then swept up the remaining pieces and deposited them in his pocket.

‘I choose,’ he said, as he walked away.

24

The virtuality Mika had created was an aseptic milky plateau bounded by a cliff, beyond which was a contracted view of the system they now occupied. Seemingly only a few kilometres out from the cliff edge hovered Dragon. She reached up and took hold of an apple-sized model of that entity, and moved it closer to herself. The full-sized version then drew in with alarming realism until it was only a few hundred metres from the plateau’s edge. She turned the model, thus bringing into view on the other version a great trench burned into its flesh, then pulled it right up to the edge of the cliff. A writhing mass of pseudopods inside the trench was drawing layers of flesh across. For a moment she listened in on the opaque conversation between Jerusalem and the entity.

‘Where are you going?’ Jerusalem asked.

‘I return.’

‘To the planet?’

‘Not by choice.’

‘By choices made at Samarkand and Masada.’

‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’

‘Part of yourself.’

‘Separate.’

‘To employ Occam’s razor?’

‘Funny Polity AI.’

As the conversation continued, Mika tuned it out. The words she heard were only the surface of an exchange, a communication that went very much deeper. Perhaps only D’nissan with his recent augmentations might be the one to plumb it entirely.