Once beyond the transformer, Chevron divided to track along single S-con wires, circumvented electro-optic transformers, slid through the laminations of storage crystal and ate along optic fibres, replacing them bit by bit with herself. Now she was coasting by some very heavy security and it was only a matter of seconds before she would be detected. However, finally she was almost in position. It came then: power surges, a particle beam playing up the duct through which she had entered, chemical explosives in crystal laminations detonating, diatomic acid flowing around C-con cables. She surged forward to where thousands of optic cables entered a single black metal conduit, a third of her body destroyed behind her. An atomic shear sliced through those optics, separating her from more of her body, which died in a sudden intense oxygen fire. Then she reached the item to which all those separate optics were connected: a lozenge of crystal six inches long — a quantum processor, a mind. Even as she reached it, interfaces began to physically break away, but she leaped the gap and made rapid connections.
‘What are you?’ wondered the Xanadu AI.
‘I am your death,’ Chevron replied, as she began to rip apart its mind.
12
The human body, like all evolved life, is a collection of mostly cooperating cells that are the product of aeons of parasitism, mutualism and symbiosis. The dracomen, while apparently a similar organism — ostensibly designed by Dragon to show what dinosaurs might have become had not chance wiped them out — are certainly not such a collection of cells. In fact, dracomen do not possess cells as we know them. They do not even possess DNA, as would any true descendant of the dinosaurs. They are not the product of natural selection, of chance nor of the vagaries of nature, for they are biological machines that were designed by an entity capable of ‘having fun’ with the very building blocks of life; of, in fact, creating its own building blocks. The dracomen never possessed appendixes, never suffer from genetic disorders. They do not grow old when their selfish genes have dispensed with them and moved on — because they don’t have genes. They can obviously control their internal workings, for certainly they can create other biological mechanisms in the same way and as easily as they reproduce. They are a superb piece of biological design, though there will always remain the question: for what purpose? Are they superior to humans? Humans have primarily served the purpose of their genes and now, however misconceived it might be, the purpose of their own consciousness. The concept of consciousness is debatable when it comes to dracomen, however.
— From Quince Guide compiled by humans
The base of the cold coffin slid out from the wall, its top sliding down inside the wall slot until the coffin reached an angle of thirty degrees to the floor. Gazing at its shape, matching to that of a human being, Cormac felt a better name for it would be a sarcophagus, but such names did not necessarily follow logical rules and, anyway, whenever these objects were occupied, they usually contained cryonically cooled but living human beings, so naming them after boxes usually made to contain corpses was incorrect — except in this case.
Cormac reached down and pressed a button like an inset cartouche, and after a moment the red light beside it turned green. The coffin whoomphed as its seals disengaged and the lid hinged up, spilling a cold fog. Cormac studied the contents. Scar’s body lay in three pieces, severed at the head and also diagonally across the torso from a point below the right-hand side of the ribcage down to the waist. There were also numerous other deep cuts and tears exposing muscles and internal organs. The sight of these injuries brought home to him just how lucky he himself had been.
‘I guess this was too much trauma even for him to survive,’ he said.
Beside him, Arach reared up and, with a sound like someone rooting through a cutlery drawer, rested his three front feet on the edge of the coffin. The spider drone, whose own torso was scratched and dented, was missing a limb and one of his eyes. He peered down at Scar and made a hissing sound.
‘When they’re dead that’s usually only ‘cause there ain’t enough left of the body to scrape up with a spade,’ he said.
Cormac nodded — he too could not recollect ever seeing a whole dead dracoman, only small parts of them.
Arach’s head revolved to look at him directly, and Cormac saw that the damaged eye was not missing just blank and, even as he watched, it winked internal light as a precursor to full functioning as the drone doubtless made internal repairs. ‘What they want him for?’
Cormac shrugged. ‘Burial maybe?’
Arach snorted.
Cormac looked up. ‘Are they here yet, King?’
‘They are approaching the ramp now,’ replied the attack ship’s AI.
Cormac reached into the coffin and touched cold flesh. Scar was still soft, despite the coffin temperature being low enough to freeze any human being solid. This was probably due to his original make-up, since Cormac had found him and his companion alive on a world where the temperature was lower still. The blood in his veins probably contained some sort of antifreeze; if the blood could be called blood at all, and if he actually possessed veins. Withdrawing his hand from the coffin, Cormac blew on his fingertips and waited.
The doors to this cold-coffin store opened to announce the arrival of their visitors. Bird-stepping through came three dracomen, two of them towing a circular lev-platform behind them. Cormac stepped back, and Arach also retreated with a clattering of metallic feet. Without acknowledgement of either drone or man, one dracoman walked over and peered down at Scar, then immediately reached inside to pick up his head and inspect it. The two others pulled the lev-platform closer, then turned it off so it descended to the floor with a clonk. The first dracoman now turned and tossed the head to one of its companions, who fielded it and plonked it down on the platform like a rugby player making a touchdown. Certainly, their collecting of the body had nothing to do with respect for the dead.
‘What do you want him for?’ Cormac asked, as the first dracoman now hauled up the top half of Scar’s torso.
No acknowledgement, still. The other two moved over to assist, and in a moment all of Scar’s remains were heaped on the platform, whose power was re-engaged. The two began towing it to the door while the first stood gazing contemplatively down into the empty coffin.
‘His information must not be lost,’ the dracoman said abruptly.
Cormac wondered if he would be seeing Scar again, if dracomen had some way of resurrecting their dead.
‘What do you do with that information?’ Cormac asked.
‘Distribute it.’ The dracoman nodded briefly and departed after his companions.
Would numerous dracomen soon possess a portion of Scar’s mind, or would they instead make copies so many dracomen could hold Scar entire inside their heads? Did ‘information’ even necessarily mean thought patterns? Cormac stepped forward to hit the lid cartouche again, then turned and headed for the door, hearing the coffin close behind him and begin to slide back up into the wall.
‘How long until we launch?’ he asked.
‘The moment our friends are clear and the ramp is closed,’ King replied.
Out in the corridor, the sound of Arach’s feet was muffled by the softer flooring. Cormac glanced back at the drone. ‘Go and get yourself fully repaired and restocked,’ he said. ‘I want you fully ready when I need you.’
As Arach scuttled away, Cormac reflected that the deaths of so many of his comrades recently had sensitized him to Arach’s damage, the drone’s weakness. He wanted Arach ready for anything; he wanted the drone to survive.