Anderson took up his pack from behind his saddle, stood up, and walked to the edge of his hog’s carapace, from where he dropped to the ground.
‘That I am,’ he replied.
Walking over to the nearest corral, he pulled the steel draw bolt and opened the gate. Bonehead, seeing the opportunity for food and sleep, required no urging and, still on its crawler limbs, slid past into the corral. Tergal led his own younger hog by hooking his goad under its carapace’s skirt. Anderson walked over to the feed shed, opened the door and stepped back to allow a swarm of warple bugs to scuttle for cover. Breathing only through his mouth, he could almost taste the stench. He reached in, grabbed a carapace rim, and dragged out the suppurating carcass of a rock crawler. Joining him, Tergal grabbed the other side, kicking the door closed behind him, and they heaved the carcass over the rail into the corral. Both hogs moved in, sensory heads swinging up from underneath their bodies, then their feeding heads also swung up to engage with an audible crunch below the first heads. The younger hog gave Anderson’s precedence, but there would be enough there for both of them.
‘What’s your name?’ Anderson asked, as they returned to the metallier.
The man held out his hand. ‘Laforge.’
Anderson shook his hand, replying, ‘I’m Anderson Endrik and my companion is Dound Tergal.’
Tergal gave a half-hearted wave, but showed no inclination to take the man’s hand.
‘Where do we go?’ Anderson asked the metallier.
‘I’ll show you.’ The man turned and led the way. ‘The refectory is open all the time, so you should be able to get a meal.’
‘Not at these damned prices,’ Tergal muttered as they followed.
They entered the roadhouse through metal doors inset with rough green glass filled with bubbles.
‘A room each?’ Laforge asked them.
‘One will do,’ Anderson replied, glancing at Tergal for confirmation before holding out the ten-pfennig note he had pulled from his belt pouch.
‘Tell me, where did you obtain that weapon?’ he asked, as Laforge pocketed the note.
The man turned, selecting a key rod from the bunch hanging on his belt as he led them to the nearest door.
‘In the city. Central manufacturing produces them, but every metallier shop carries a stock.’ He glanced round. ‘If you’re interested, I know the best place to go.’
‘I’m interested. I take it sand hogs are not usual transport in the city itself?’
‘Not really—but I’m going in tomorrow morning. My brother runs just the establishment you require on Second Level. You may find cheaper, but you won’t find better.’ He opened the door.
The room was a five-metre box with a single window set high up, and they walked in over the suction of a sand grid by the door. There was a carpet and four bunks. In an alcove to their right were a washbasin, a toilet, and even a roll of paper towelling. Anderson was surprised at the luxury—he had expected the price to pay for only the four protective walls.
Laforge detached a key rod and held it out to the knight. ‘This opens your door and turns on the water supply.’ He gestured to the alcove. ‘As I said, the refectory is open.’ He closed the door on his way out.
‘A little more than we expected,’ Anderson suggested.
‘I’ve been in worse places, I suppose,’ Tergal allowed.
He turned to Anderson. ‘I didn’t know you were coming here for weapons.’
‘How long have you travelled with me?’
‘Two days.’
‘There’s a lot you don’t know about me. Just as there’s a lot I don’t know about you.’
‘I know now you’re a Rondure Knight who is on his trial.’
‘But not what that trial is.’
Tergal waited.
Anderson went on, ‘I need the best weapons I can find, because I am heading to the Plains, where I intend to kill a dragon.’
4
A quarter century after the creation of the first AI, and after cloned whole-body swapping had been going on for fifty years, people finally realized the legal system required a severe upgrade. Legally, it was still possible to end up on a murder charge for turning off the life-support of a human vegetable, yet no such laws applied to AI or even to some animals whose intelligence was demonstrably higher than that of many humans. Having human DNA should not immediately grant an individual inalienable rights. Rights, it was decided, and equivalent responsibilities, should be given to ‘citizens’, and only those above a certain level of intelligence could become citizens. Protests did result when some humans failed to qualify, whilst all AIs and some particularly bright pigs did, but I am not discussing that today. I’m here to talk about a particular corollary that can be traced back to these legal changes.
After the events on the world of Masada, and in the cylinder worlds called Faith, Hope and Charity, there was what our more mealy-mouthed ancestors would have called a ‘humanitarian disaster’. Many of those wearing the biotech augs (I can’t say too much about them as there’s still an ongoing investigation) were brain-burnt—becoming human vegetables. In a less enlightened age these bodies would probably have been kept alive for as long as possible, causing a huge drain on the rest of human society. Luckily, we see things differently and, other than simple disposal, have some better options. The advent of memplant technology and newer and more accurate loading techniques has resulted in millions of people outliving physical death. Many of them are being held in memstorage because we cannot produce enough bodies, tank-grown or Golem, to keep up with demand, so…
— Excerpt from a speech by Jobsworth
Cormac knew how many said that, in the eternal instant of runcible transmission, the travellers screamed. That being the case, Cormac must have screamed himself raw over the thousands of such journeys he had made. This time, strangely, as he stepped through the shimmer of the Skaidon warp of the first-stage runcible on the small Masadan moon, Flint, it was with a grey and distorted recollection of that eternal instant, of groping to comprehend madness, and nearly understanding it.
‘Are you all right?’ a woman asked him.
His visual cortex still trying to play impossible images, he blinked and stared down at where he was supporting himself on a cylindrical cleaning robot, which was obviously confused about what it should be cleaning up in such chaotic surroundings, so was perhaps glad of an excuse to stop.
‘Yeah, okay, just a bit dizzy.’
The woman said, ‘You want me to get you to an autodoc? Perhaps it’s the low gravity here. It can’t be the transmission—even first-stage runcibles are utterly safe.’
Cormac looked up and was unsurprised to see that she was wearing the overalls of a runcible technician, since such people were always highly defensive of a technology they themselves could not wholly understand. Only AIs possessed a full understanding—the human brain had not evolved that way. He pushed himself away from the cleaning robot. Yes, the gravity was very low here, but he had become accustomed to such changes over the many years he had travelled like this. That wasn’t the problem.
Any problems with this runcible while I transported? he asked.
No problem, agent. Nor with the one in Elysium, replied the Flint runcible AI.
‘Shit, I did it again!’
‘I’m sorry?’ said the woman.
‘I gridlinked. I gridlinked again!’
‘I’m sure you are very proud to possess a gridlink, but you should remember that most people in my trade now possess such technology as well,’ the woman lectured him, before flouncing off.
Cormac peered down at the cleaning robot, which was observing him with its binocular lenses—the irises inside whirring wide as if the machine was suddenly worried about him. He closed his eyes and concentrated, trying again to question the runcible AI. Visions of impossible shapes fled through his mind, and he felt a hint of some huge complex intelligence, then it was all gone and there were no more voices in his head. He opened his eyes and, after locating his position in the temporary dome, headed in long bouncing strides for the exit tunnels that led to where the shuttles would be waiting. He felt he must put aside this strangeness, and concentrate on the job in hand. He felt sure this inadvertent gridlinking somehow related to Blegg and, that being so, its cause would not become clear either soon or easily.