Caught, hanging in the convoluted branches, legs dangling down the spiral trunk, the burned and broken corpse seemed a crucified pearly king, or some macabre decoration in a casino town. Crane recognized Semper only after a recognition program propagated across five of his mind fragments, which connected to his library of human biology and physiology, and Crane then worked out how the man had looked. He reached up and tugged at one skinless foot. Semper dropped from the sea tree and, trailing pearl crabs and a small shoal of steel-blue fry, slowly sank to the bottom. What Alston had done to this man, Crane recognized. How could he not recognize Serban Kline’s gift to himself? How could he fail to recognize that thing he had fragmented himself to escape? He moved on.
What was it that coloured his actions when he finally reached the island shore? The emulation of the emotion—or rage itself?
16
A spaceship, even a clunker centuries old, is a complex and valuable piece of hardware, so most owners of such, including private individuals, ECS and the many other organizations gathered under the Polity AI umbrella, work on the principle of ‘If it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ and ‘If it works don’t throw it away.’ That is the reason for the wide variety of interstellar and in-system ships now prevalent. It is why you will see old ion-drive landing craft operating alongside craft exclusively using antigravity — and every evolution of landing craft in between. In interplanetary space, you’ll find ancient ion-drive liners operating beside the most modern fusion-drive craft, great ramscoop cargo haulers, or survey craft propelled by chemical rockets. Crossing interstellar space are ships centuries different in design using all the aforementioned engines for their in-system work, plus radically different U-space drives, too. In the most modern ships, that drive will be a discrete machine contained at the core. In the older ships, balanced U-space engines are in dual, triform or quadrate format. These are normally positioned outside the ship, on piers, to distance the mind-bending drive energies from the ship’s crew and passengers — who often need also to travel either in hibernation or sedated.
— From How It Is by Gordon
The plain was an ancient seabed scattered with salt pans left as, over many centuries, the sea had evaporated. Weathering had revealed fossil remains, boulders containing crystals of smoky quartz like inset windows to a cold furnace, and fields of stones sieved out of the ground by the perpetual wind. Arden, during her long sojourn here, had journeyed a great deal within the perimeter allowed her. She had found a wonderful fossilized twelve-metre ancestor of an apek, all glittering iron pyrites and opalized carapace, and, acceding to her request, Dragon had sealed it under a layer of some rough substance similar to chainglass. She had found diamonds, emeralds, star rubies and sapphires, as well as other nameless gems and, with the disquietingly organic mechanisms Dragon manufactured for her inside itself, had cut and polished them. For a woman whose lifetime areas of study had been xenobiology and xenogeology, it had been an interesting time, and only as a matter of principle had she regularly protested against Dragon’s imprisonment of her. She supposed her patience stemmed from having been born within the Polity. With all the benefits of a genetically enhanced body and a seemingly limitless lifespan, what was the hurry?
Because of Arden’s long and detailed study of the plain, she knew precisely when she reached the area Dragon had excavated and then replaced above itself—not because the land level was higher here, as there were many such areas across the plain, but because of the meticulousness of the geology. The boulders with their quartz inclusions were placed just so, the stone fields looked as if they had been raked, and single fossils were placed artfully on dusty surfaces. There seemed something akin to a Japanese stone garden about it all, or of some display in a Polity museum. Trudging back from the edge of the plain, her pack of light camping equipment slung from one shoulder, she recognized a particular boulder with a seemingly wind-excavated hollow under one side of it, and veered from this signpost to head for her home—the one she possessed here anyway. Then she jumped in surprise, dropping a lump of pale yellow beryl she had just found, when one of Dragon’s pterodactyl heads slid out from underneath that same boulder and rose above her with a hissing roar.
‘No Jain, just Crane,’ it said cryptically, gazing back the way she had come.
‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’ Arden hissed, stooping to pick up the fallen beryl. ‘You said this Skellor guy is loaded with the stuff.’
The head swung towards her. ‘He is, but the Golem android he has sent here as his ambassador, though showing signs that it once contained Jain mycelia, is now free of that parasite.’
‘Ah, the “metalskin android” Vulture mentioned? He’s called Crane?’
‘Mr Crane—he’s very specific about that.’
‘Should be interesting,’ Arden opined.
Dragon blinked. ‘You intend to remain?’
‘You want me to go, just when things are livening up?’
‘Maybe too lively,’ said Dragon. ‘Polity ships now.’
‘Here for that Skellor?’
‘The ship is called the Jack Ketch’
It took Arden a moment to dredge her memory for what that name meant. She remembered the historical context, and rumours of other things—hints of AI atrocities, brief and bloody annexations and border wars. But, then, it gave some Polity citizens a bit of a buzz to talk of such things—it was like sitting round the campfire telling ghost stories.
‘Ah,’ she said.
‘A telefactor comes, watched by Vulture.’
‘Will you let it through the barrier.’
‘Maybe… And now a landing craft has launched.’
Events, it seemed, were moving apace, and Arden realized that her long stay on this plain with her enigmatic companion was ending. As she continued towards her comfortable cave, she could not help but feel a little sad about that.
Anderson gazed over to the other side of the corrals, recognizing the vehicles from the mineralliers’ encampment. No doubt the moisture-induced growth spurt had driven them away from their excavations.
‘Why do we have to leave so early?’ Tergal complained.
Because Unger Salbec is deeply asleep, but I don’t know how much longer that will be the case, thought Anderson. Because I want to get through all the greenery before it makes travelling difficult,’ replied the knight, as he paid off the bleary-eyed corral-keeper.
‘It’s because of that woman,’ said Tergal. ‘You want to avoid a confrontation with her.’
Anderson turned away, ostensibly to watch Bonehead peek his sensory head from under the skirt of his carapace, then jerk it quickly back in the hope Anderson hadn’t noticed. He had rather enjoyed his confrontation with Unger, but it was not something he wanted to extend. As soon as immediate lust was gratified, he knew she would begin slowly extending their brief encounter, querying his choices, lightly discussing future scenarios in which they would be together, elbowing her way into his life. He justified his abandonment of her by telling himself there was something a bit twisted about a woman loving the killer of her brother, but that did not entirely assuage his feeling of guilt. Entering the corral to thump his foot against Bonehead’s shell, he wondered briefly if his fleeing the situation here might be more to do with its possibilities than its perversity. Such an inclination to escape complications had separated him from Unger on five previous occasions, and was probably the reason he had been on the road for most of his life. Climbing up onto the sand hog’s back then plumping himself down in the saddle, he recognized that cowardice came in many forms. With a reluctant hissing and creaking, Bonehead lurched to his feet.