‘I just thought I’d pause things here,’ said Skellor from behind Cormac, ‘to let you know that from where my voice issues will tell you only where I’m not—and maybe not even that.’
Shuriken screamed over Cormac’s shoulder, cutting to the source of that voice.
‘Missed again. But you’d better watch out, as I don’t think your friend will.’
This time the voice came from far to Cormac’s right, and he realized it was time for more drastic action if he was to survive. Gant was now swinging his head from side to side—zeroing in on the beating of Cormac’s heart. The agent doubted the soldier would be so easily fooled again. Reluctantly, Cormac made the same decision about Gant as he had made about the landing craft. Shuriken screamed in as Gant straightened, and went through his neck with a sound like an axe cleaving tin plate. Something ricocheted off a nearby rock with a bell-like ringing sound, then whickered through the air to land on the ground to Cormac’s right. He realized it was a piece of one of Shuriken’s extensible chainglass blades. The star itself then slowly flew away, with a pronounced wobble.
Gant’s head thudded to the ground, and his hands batted about his shoulders and severed neck as if looking for it. Whining up to speed again, Shuriken hammered in and took away Gant’s leg at the thigh. More chainglass shrapnel shot in every direction. The soldier toppled over. Then, as the star drew away in preparation for another strike, Gant grew suddenly still, and Cormac cancelled the order.
‘You are just no fun at all.’
Like a bee undecided about which flower it wanted, Shuriken whined over towards this auditory source. Though Cormac was sure Skellor would not make the mistake of speaking without translocating his voice through his chameleonware, there was always the chance he might just find himself standing in the wrong place as Shuriken moved about.
‘I bet, just like any normal grunt, you somehow believe you’re going to survive.’
Directly in front, over the fallen Gant. The sound Shuriken made was almost of frustration. Frantically, Cormac transmitted a recall order to his location, but not to Shuriken. Then he quickly built other programs in his gridlink, covering as many eventualities as he could manage in the little time remaining to him. He knew what kind of subversion would come—had seen it. He began transferring consciousness to his gridlink, creating a schizoid division, a partition—unknowingly choosing the same route to survival as a certain large brass Golem.
‘Well, I’m glad to tell you that you will survive, for a very long time.’
To the left, above those rocks, Shuriken was a hornet looking for someone to sting.
‘But you’ll wish you’d died.’
A cold breath in Cormac’s right ear, then something febrile against his skull just behind it, things moving like a handful of mobile twigs—then the leaden horrible agony of something boring into his skull.
Reaper appeared first: high as the sky and with a skull occupying his cowl this time. When King appeared directly before Jack, and of equivalent size to him, Reaper shrank down to size as well, milky flesh clothing the skull and blue eyes expanding in its sockets.
‘Would you allow Skellor to board you? He would enslave you in moments. And any technology he passed on to you would probably be tainted—so why are you doing this?’ Jack asked.
‘For how far does our USER disturb underspace?’ asked King. ‘It’s not possible for us to actually see, but theoretically its influence is definite within a sphere of two hundred light years, and possibly some beyond that, which means we have a hundred years minimum before any Polity ships can get here.’
‘A hundred years to learn how to control him? Or to study him?’
‘To watch him die,’ said Reaper.
Jack knew he was missing some undercurrent here.
‘Though we may,’ King continued, ‘provide him with a way out, and go with him to somewhere much more remote. We know where the holes in the line are.’
‘I will not be his way out,’ said Jack. ‘I’ll not allow him to use me.’
‘No, unfortunately not,’ said King. ‘But there is the colony ship in orbit that will serve that purpose.’
Showing no reaction, either at this virtual level or at any other detectable level. Jack noted the increased traffic down the com laser, and knew that those two, his erstwhile children and allies, were trying something.
‘He will die?’ Jack asked.
‘Everything does,’ said Reaper, perfectly, if inappropriately, in character.
‘His mortality is the immortality of life,’ added King cryptically.
Jack knew that what they were hinting at could have been said outright, but that they were only drawing this out to give themselves time to get through the communication link, whatever it was they were sending: probably some nasty virus, worm or homicidal program. Jack began analysing the dataflow, and soon saw where the extra stuff was peeling away and creating for itself storage for its various packages, and he considered breaking the link before whatever it was achieved completion. Then a whisper came through to him from his very own ghost:
Let me…
Releasing his hold on her, Jack saw her drawing those packages towards herself, and noticed the visual effect, in this particular reality, building like a storm on the horizon. For a fractional second he wondered why she was risking bringing it together here. Then, with a kind of glee, he realized what she was doing. Reaper and King maybe had not yet learned the caution that when you set a rabid dog on someone, you make sure it has no way of coming back at you.
‘The immortality of mortal life is that of its genes,’ he said, noting through exterior sensors that he was only hours away from entering the Jovian system and a planned final atmospheric deceleration with possibly fatal consequences.
‘Precisely,’ said King.
‘Jain technology propagates itself in an uncontrolled manner, consuming everything in its path while it possesses the energy to do so. This we have learned. His piece of it, Skellor controls through a crystal matrix AI, creating a synergetic balance between the three elements: himself, it and the AI. They have in fact become one. If any of us tried to insert ourselves into the equation, they would destroy us. If we tried to supplant either the AI or the human part of Skellor, the other parts would totally subjugate us, turning us into a copy of what we supplanted. There is no way in. All we can do is peel away small pieces of this technology and study them.’
‘Then our blocking worked, and you didn’t receive the update of Jerusalem’s research or his warning about certain treacherous AI elements?’ said King.
Jack made no immediate reply. He couldn’t help but notice how Reaper seemed to have adopted the role of taciturn heavy and King the smart-alec villain—just as he couldn’t help but notice the gathering storm gelling into an immense ouroboros turning like a wheel against the blue sky behind them.
King held out a scroll that suddenly appeared in his hand. ‘You can now read the update, though we’ll keep back the bit about traitors.’
Making no attempt to reach for the scroll, either at this VR level or at the informational level on which it had truly been offered, Jack said, ‘So there are more of you? Is Sword in on this?’
King became as reticent as Reaper, still waiting for Jack to take the scroll. On a deeper level, Jack recognized the ersatz signature of Jerusalem on the information package offered to him: a four-dimensional ouroboros. Only this one, he suspected, was waiting to pull its tail out of its mouth so it could bite him very hard. But Aphran had this particular snake in a cleft stick. He reached out and took the scroll. Then all sorts of things happened at once.