Alston carefully opened the box on his desk and spilled out a glittering pile of etched sapphires, then with a shaking hand he spread them out across the oak surface. He deliberately didn’t look at Chaldor, not that there was much recognizable about her: perhaps the clawed hand caught in the curtain, that length of bare thigh that was the largest part of her remaining, or a scrap of bloody clothing.
‘I know you can understand me. I know that behind that plastic face is a brain probably more sophisticated than both Angelina’s and Arian’s put together.’
The sapphires had definitely caught its attention, this thing that had shut down, one after another, the comunit transmissions from every single person on the island. Alston stared at the giant, raggedy, blood-soaked scarecrow as it tilted its head to one side, birdlike.
‘You must be a free Golem who, for whatever reason, Arian has managed to employ. That bullshit about a “broken” Golem is for scaring the children—it’s the sort of story he likes circulating to try to frighten his people. It doesn’t have that effect on me, because you’ve stopped, which means that something more than a simple kill order must be functioning.’
The Golem took a step into the room and looked around, obviously curious about the otter-bone sculptures, the imported antiques, the general decor. Then its attention swung back to Alston and his sapphires. Alston could feel sweat trickling down his back.
‘These?’ he waved a hand at the jewels’ scattered before him. ‘These are nothing. Pelter thinks he’s in control here, but his organization is located in only three of the main cities. To control this planet you have to control the papyrus harvest and the seas. I’ve got so many crop managers in my pocket, I can’t count them, and I run all of the otter-bone smuggling. Pelter’s annual turnover wouldn’t even reach ten per cent of the interest on mine.’
Alston leant forward. There was something in that plastic face—he was getting through! He knew it: you could always make a deal with anything that had a mind.
‘Think! Working for me you could have anything. I’ll give you Pelter’s entire organization. You could come in with me. Anything, anything you want.’
Alston felt his mouth suddenly go dry. What to offer a Golem android?
‘Any upgrade you want. You could load the best software, add memory crystal, get yourself Cybercorp syntheskin.’
The Golem reached up with one gory hand and touched its face.
‘That’s right, the best!’ Alston slid the jewels across towards the Golem. ‘Take these as a down payment. Go and get me Arian’s head, and that of his damned sister.’ He slid his chair back and stood. ‘Then we can begin. You can bring in other free Golem, buy up the contracts of any still indentured. Together we could have this world. And all our enemies…’ Alston flicked his fingers.
The Golem now stepped up until it was directly opposite Alston, looming over the desk. It reached down, picked up one of the sapphires and held the stone up to its eye.
‘They’re the best—one hundred thousand New Carth shillings each.’
The other hand snapped out so fast Alston had no time to react. Gripping the front of his jacket it pulled him close, then with bloodied fingers opened Alston’s mouth and shoved the sapphire inside, before picking up another. At four million shillings Alston finally died. He never yelled or screamed—was too full.
Tabrouth kissed the lion’s tooth he wore suspended from a chain around his neck, and sensed the growing fear in the network. They all knew what had happened on B-deck, and what was happening in the arboretum. The android was so damned fast that no way was it some primitive metalskin—it had to be a military-spec Golem, and that meant ECS must be on to Nalen. The APW autogun should have been enough to take it out, but just when they got a fix on it, the tracking system packed up and they missed. Now they were dying.
Tabrouth was frightened, but also relieved that Nalen’s control seemed not so firm. Yes, it had been great in the beginning, taking control of the station syndicate and being part of so superior an aug network. But gradually Nalen’s orders began to carry more weight until his merest whim became an order, and his orders became impossible to disobey. And there was that other thing: Nalen had been a small-time crime boss, stealing tech and information to sell under the nose of Ruby Eye, though all but ignored by her. Now he was manufacturing arms and using the sun-surveyors to run them to black ships arriving from out-Polity to the other side of the sun. That was something the station AI could not ignore for long. Anyone caught doing so would receive an automatic death sentence; consequently, that wouldn’t be something in which Tabrouth would involve himself. But Nalen’s control gave him no choice—Nalen who no longer really looked like a man.
Movement to his right. Tabrouth whirled and aimed his pulse-rifle—not that it would do him a lot of good if the Golem was coming for him. But it was only Paulson and Shroder shoving through the briars and simnel bushes growing below a line of nettlelms. Tabrouth stopped and waited for them. He noticed they were both blood-spattered.
‘What happened?’ he asked.
‘Tore the fucking autogun in half, then did the same to Alain and Solnek,’ said the hermaphrodite Shroder.
‘We got away when others opened up on it with the second gun. It went after that,’ Paulson explained. The man looked sick—and very tired. ‘It’s going. Nalen’s grip is slipping,’ he added.
‘So it feels,’ said Tabrouth. ‘Maybe it’s time for us to get the hell out of here.’
Tabrouth waited for some response to that, but noticed the two were staring past him, their faces white with fear. Tabrouth had heard nothing, but then that didn’t surprise him.
‘It’s standing right behind me, isn’t it?’ he said.
Paulson and Shroder both gave the same slow nod as if invisible rods joined their heads. Tabrouth sighed and turned.
The Golem loomed before him, its coat neatly buttoned, undamaged and clear of any unpleasant stains. This made no sense, after many had hit it with pulse weapons; though its adamantine body might itself remain undamaged, its clothing should at least be ripped and burnt. And where was the blood, and the other fluids and tissues? You did not do to a human being what this Golem had been doing without getting in a horrible mess. But then, he thought, what did it matter about such inconsistencies? The Golem’s eyes were obsidian in its brass face; its massive hands were capable of tearing a man like tissue paper. And now Tabrouth was about to die.
‘You are one big ugly murderous bastard, aren’t you?’ he said, deciding that to beg would be futile. He raised his pulse-rifle and aimed it at the Golem’s chest. Just as he did this, Paulson and Shroder opened up with their own weapons, both also pulse-rifles. Bluish fire and metallic smoke flared and exploded all down the front of the Golem. Seemingly oblivious to this, it stepped forward, then reached out and gripped the barrel of Tabrouth’s weapon in its big hand, so that he was now firing directly into its palm. Tabrouth stared down disbelievingly at the sun glare reflected in that hand as he continued holding down the trigger. His weapon heated rapidly, then molten metal sputtered out of its side as its coils blew. Tabrouth released his hold and staggered back, his hands seared. After-images occluded his vision, and only subliminally did he see his weapon spiralling away. Other firing ceased. He supposed Paulson and Shroder had run away, and didn’t blame them in the least.
The same big hand closed on his neck, its brassy metal not even warm, and hauled him into the air, choking. Then something snapped and tore and, gasping for breath, Tabrouth hit the ground on his feet and fell over backwards. He groped at his neck, sure the Golem had crushed it and that he was yet to feel the killing pain, but found only that his lion’s tooth, his good-luck charm, was gone. Through shadowed vision, he saw the big Golem striding off after the other two. When he finally recovered his breath, he ran just as fast as he could for the nearest exit. The only time he looked back was when the blast from an ECS riot gun spun him off his feet, and even then he did not see Paulson and Shroder hot on his heels, relieved respectively of a ring with a pre-runcible coin set in it and a cheap scent bottle.