‘What about this skeleton crew?’ Cormac asked.
‘By the time they figured out something was wrong, they were too late. He shut down the sensor net, specifically the pressure sensors, raised the pressure inside the ship and, when the landers docked, he opened all the airlocks to them. The pressure drop killed everyone remaining aboard—dying from the bends. He was okay because he was in his suit. He survived up here for about two years before dying. As far as we can work out, it was from a heart attack brought on by terminal obesity. He was so big by then he couldn’t get out of the bridge.’
‘Any sign anyone has been aboard since?’ Cormac asked.
‘None.’
‘Anything else I need to know?’
‘Not really… The colonists are mild ‘dapts and the new standard humans. Beyond that, there’s nothing here about what went on down there after the landings.’
‘Okay, let me know if you find anything relevant.’
Gant shut off the communication link, then gestured ahead, slightly to one side. ‘That’s the plain under which Jack thinks Dragon is lurking.’
There was nothing to distinguish it other than that it seemed to extend for ever.
They were still slowing as the mountains melted into a promontory of the plain, like knobs of butter on hot toast, and then that too began to break apart. In a moment, they were low over canyons and buttes of brightly coloured sandstone, occasionally shadowed by smears of green. When they began to descend into a canyon choked with verdancy, Cormac reached across and pressed a hand against Gant’s arm.
‘Hold us here,’ he said.
Cormac gridlinked: Jack, is this greenery a recent bloom?
It is, the AI replied.
Okay, give me a map of the near area.
Jack downloaded orbital scans to him, and through his link they became direct experience. He gazed omnisciently down from space, focusing on ten square kilometres, and realized, upon seeing the lander revolving like a clock hand above it, that he was observing an image only seconds old. Overlaid coloured lines indicated trails that Jack ascertained had been used by humans. Cormac pulled back, linked to Jack at another level, sucked data, and picked up on the nearest trail — left by some sort of vehicle, its tracks picked out bright orange above the foliage that had subsequently hidden them.
Take us higher, he told Gant, not bothering to speak out loud.
The soldier gave him a strange look, but obeyed.
The tracks wove between buttes, finally terminating at a road where they lost definition. From there, Cormac thought, the vehicle, even supposing it related to Skellor and was not simply that of some sightseer, either went on to the city or to the nearby smaller human settlement.
Cormac pointed, and said out loud, ‘Over there.’ Shortly they were over a concrete road and strange bulbous dwellings up on stilts. Cormac noted people outside watching their descent. There seemed no panic, and he was aware in an instant that many of them wore uniforms and were armed. He readied Shuriken in its holster, and hoped no one would be stupid enough to start shooting meanwhile. The simple fact was that, even without the weapons he and Gant carried, they were practically invulnerable. Upon receiving the signal, it would take Jack less than a second to fry—from orbit — anyone foolish enough to attack them. It would not be necessary for him to send a signal should they locate Skellor, since Jack would open fire immediately.
17
Sins of the father: It was long accepted in the twenty-first century that an abused child might well grow into an abuser, and in that liberal age evidence of childhood abuse was looked upon as an excuse for later crimes. This was, remember, the time when many considered poverty sufficient excuse for criminality—a huge insult to those poor people who were not and would never become criminals. The liberals of that age were soft and deluded, and had yet to reap what they had sown in the form of ever escalating levels of crime. Their view of existence was deterministic, and if taken to its logical conclusion would have resulted in no human being responsible for anything, and the denial of free will (which as it happens was their political aim). Luckily, a more realistic approach prevailed, as those in power came to understand, quite simply, that removal of responsibility from people made them more irresponsible. However, this is not to deny the basic premise that our parents create and form us, though, knowing this, we have the power to change what we are. In the end, there are no excuses. And so it is with AI: we humans are the parents, and they are the abused children grown to adulthood.
— From Quince Guide compiled by humans
Mika wondered if this new exterior input centre was just another of many ready for use inside the Jerusalem, or if it had been manufactured to order, for she knew the great ship contained automated factories easily capable of turning out items like this. Then she turned her attention to the projected views from the pinhead cameras around the asteroid—or rather planetoid, for the Jain mycelium had utterly digested the asteroid and formed it anew.
‘The limited scanning I can safely use without making a conduit for viral subversion shows that it has attained maximum size possible without losing control of its structure. It has done this by foaming alloys and silicates, and by creating other components of itself out of materials with a wide molecular matrix,’ Jerusalem explained.
‘Like what?’ asked Susan James.
‘Buckytubes, balls and webs, various aerogels, and other compounds that don’t have names, only numbers. It also, in certain areas, is generating structural enforcing fields.’
‘The question that has to be asked is why,’ said Mika.
D’nissan, now at a console because use of deep scanning was considered too dangerous, said, ‘To attain maximum physical growth using the materials available. The greater the volume it occupies, the greater its chances of encountering more materials to incorporate and utilize. The more apposite question should be: what will it do now?’
‘It has, in the last ten minutes, reduced in diameter by two per cent,’ Jerusalem told them, ‘and its internal structure is changing.’
D’nissan turned to Mika. ‘Did we do the right thing to let this off the leash?’
‘Come on,’ Colver interrupted. ‘It wasn’t ever on a leash to begin with.’
‘Oh, I think it was.’ D’nissan turned back to the screens. ‘Skellor controlled it initially with his crystal matrix AI, and the recorded personality Aphran controlled what remained in the bridge pod after he departed, else it would have spread like this. Now it is acting as is its nature to act.’
Still watching, Mika saw that the planetoid was indeed slowly collapsing. ‘These structural changes…’ she said.
Jerusalem informed her, ‘Energy and resources are being directed to many singular points inside it, sacrificial to the rest of it. It is making something and destroying itself in the process.’
Two screens now changed to show blurred scans, which Mika stared at without comprehension for a moment before suddenly it hit home.
‘It’s growing those nodules my medical mycelia started to grow,’ she said.
‘So it would appear,’ Jerusalem replied.
Mika stared long and hard. She shivered, the skin on her back prickling. Her mouth felt dry. ‘You know,’ she continued, ‘on Masada I blamed myself- and have been doing so ever since. I allowed perceived guilt to blind me: my fault that Apis, Eldene and Thorn would die.’
D’nissan turned to her. ‘Is this relevant?’
Mika nodded. ‘I was searching for a mistake I’d made which was causing the mycelia to malfunction and become cancerous, when in reality I’d made no mistake at all. The blueprint for growing those nodules was there all the time, quiescent until started by some sort of chemical clock.’