Cento would have breathed a sigh of relief if he had not turned off his lungs while in the previous bubble. After using his head to break away more of the thin crust, he peered inside and saw that this cavity formed the terminus of a lava tube extending up the slope. Pulling himself inside, he began to inch his way up the smooth interior, using thighbones, head and arm as four limbs. Here he took more risks, as a fall now would only result in him ending up back at the bottom of the tube, not trying to swim in molten rock, and consequently he traversed its twenty-metre curving length in a matter of minutes. Now all he had to do was get out of there.
Wedged on his back, braced by head and thighbones, Cento drove his fist outwards at what he estimated to be an angle of ninety degrees to the slope itself. Stone shattered under this piledriver blow, and fell in on him to reveal a bruised sky into which poured black smoke and fountains of magma. Of course—the eruption about which they had been warned. Early. That figured.
Skellor stepped back and inspected his handiwork. Mr Crane raised his replacement arm and closed his hand into a fist. Fastidiously he then reached out and took up first his hat then his coat from where he had draped them over a nearby console. Placing the hat on his head, he tilted it to the required angle before donning his coat and with slow precision fastening each button. Why, when given limited freedom to act, the Golem had spent much of the voyage either using equipment and materials found aboard this ship to fashion such clothing, Skellor could not fathom. But it was part of the weird fascination Mr Crane held for him.
‘Quite the dandy, aren’t you,’ muttered Skellor, discarding the arm replaced down beside Salvar’s corpse—both now just organic detritus. Now Skellor smirked as he watched Crane step back, squat down on the floor and pull out his various toys. Joining the rubber dog, the acoms from blue oaks on Viridian, five cubes of survival rations and various other items gathered from inside this same ship, was now a piece of green crystal. Briefly linking inside the Golem, Skellor observed that the crystal and the dog had found their places in the matrix, which drastically increased Crane’s chances of putting the rest together in the right order. However, though the odds against him achieving the right combination before had been 3.6 x 1014 to one, they weren’t that much better now. Probing inside Crane to see how he had managed to achieve even this reduction of odds, he encountered a resistance that was integral to Crane’s entire mind. Skellor could easily have broken it, but in doing so he would lose that essential, fascinating Mr Crane. He turned away, stepped over the human remains on the floor, and seated himself in the pilot’s chair. If Crane ever managed to reduce the odds to, say, the chances of a meteorite striking him on the head, Skellor would take action. But now to the task in hand.
There were two areas of space, two possible destinations—one inside the Polity and one beyond its border. This much he had learnt from the Reverend Epthirieth Loman Dorth before killing the man. The network of Dracocorp augs that had been coming under the man’s control at Masada had initially seemed a complete entity. Further probing its structure, Skellor had ascertained it to be a slave cell that, upon reaching maturity (that point where Dorth gained absolute control over the other minds in the network), would link via other networks to an autocratic control. There were two such centres of control, with only vague locations—the two Dragon spheres. Skellor had of course already chosen the one outside Polity space. Even so, that particular area extended a hundred light years across, so locating Dragon inside it would be no easy task.
Skellor considered how he might achieve his ends. Previously, the most likely way of locating Dragon had seemed to be to find a Dracocorp facility and work from there, but his probes into the AI and virtual networks from Viridian had quickly disabused him of this notion. Dragon had foreseen that enemies would follow this trail and so, rather than erase it, had concealed it under a thousand false trails. Gaining information concerning even these had also quickly turned into a risky option when his searching attracted the attention of some seriously dangerous hunter-killer AI programs engaged on the same search. Obviously, ECS also seriously wanted to know Dragon’s location. No, he must use a different approach: tracing Dragon through the augs those facilities manufactured, and which were now in use.
The running of Dracocorp was not something Dragon had to remain wholly engaged in, but slow accretion of control through the networks thereby generated required it. To find the link from this distance Skellor needed to infiltrate network after network to follow it home. Better then to find such a network much nearer to that same home—nearer to Dragon. So thinking, Skellor affirmed the coordinates already input, and dropped the Vulture into underspace.
Alston supposed various factors were interacting in the man’s mind: obviously, the longer the interrogation, the longer he would stay alive. However, the longer he delayed answering questions, the greater would be his agony. Alston was therefore beholden to increase the man’s agony to that point where, in the hope of a quick death, he would become more forthcoming. Alston always loved the way his victims reacted when, having obtained what he wanted, Alston continued with the torture. There was horror and a kind of indignation at this betrayal of the unspoken contract between torturer and tortured.
‘I’ve been aware for some time that Arian wants me dead. That is hardly news to me, but I want details. When does he plan to launch an attack on my island? How many of his people will he send? What kind of armaments will they be carrying?’
Semper, suspended upside down from the boom at the back of the fishing barge, bubbled something. Alston wondered who had first worked out that suspending someone by their feet increased the blood pressure in their head and thus prevented them from fainting. He again reached out with the wire cutters to where Semper’s hands had been nailed to the stern rail, and with one crunching snip sent a little finger bouncing across the deck.
‘What was that?’
When he had stopped yelling, Semper articulated more carefully.
‘Not… sending… his men.’
Alston passed the wire cutters over to Chaldor—the woman who had been so proficient with the nails and who had earlier burnt out Semper’s right eye with a red-hot kitchen fork.
‘What do you mean, “Not sending his men”? You told me earlier that an attack is planned…’
Gazing at Alston with his remaining eye, Semper managed, ‘Today… maybe tomorrow.’
Alston peeled the surgical glove from his right hand, then reached up and turned on the comunit attached to his collar. ‘Evans, take us back in.’ Immediately the boat’s engine droned, and below Semper the water boiled as the craft began to come about. Alston glanced at the box of gloves open on a table nearby, then peeled off the other glove and went over to get a fresh pair.
‘What do you think?’ he asked Chaldor.
Chaldor, as attractive as she was mean, with her red hair plaited intricately against her head and containing as much concealed weaponry as it did jewellery, gazed at him with her pure-purple eyes. ‘I think he has a lot more to tell us. What’s this machine he was babbling about?’
‘Yes, I think you’re right.’ Alston took the wire cutters from Chaldor and once again turned to his victim. ‘Now, Semper, please tell us about this machine of Arian’s.’
‘It’s a Golem… a Golem!’
From Semper there then issued a piggish squealing. Alston counted fingers and saw that he had enough left for five further questions.