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  A dull droning sound told them they were entering the thin and frigid atmosphere. The droning grew to a roar as cloud whipped against the shuttle. The shuttle banked and spiralled down towards the planet. This noise precluded speech, but it seemed no time before they were hurtling above a mountain range under a sky the colour of old brass, and before the roar became a dull and distant thunder.

  ‘We’ll be approaching the station shortly. The weather is very bad. Ground temperature one-seventy Kelvin. You’ll need your suit heaters on, and full seal on your masks,’ Jane told them.

  ‘Those are the mountains the runcible energy-surplus used to heat. There was a line of big microwave dishes transmitting the surplus energy,’ said Chaline. ‘On a busy day the rock used to melt. The heat-sink stations at New Sea were intended for the next stage of terraforming. They had recently come into operation and were melting the seas.’

  ‘It wasn’t just algae they introduced. There were moulds, lichens and planktons round the station, and even adapted angel shrimp. Whoever did this wrecked much more than a runcible,’ said Mika.

  Yes, Cormac realized, what had happened here must seem doubly painful to someone trained on Circe. Not only had there been a huge loss of human life, but also the loss of a nascent ecology. There had probably been many from the Life-coven working here on Samarkand.

  Soon the station came into sight. It had the appearance of an iron cathedral on the shore of the frozen sea. It had spires and arches in its makeup, but none of them were for decoration. The arching structures that clawed into the ground and the sea carried heavy-gauge superconductors and the spires and turrets were microwave receivers that employed field technology rather than the bulky dishes used heretofore. Jane guided the shuttle close over the structure itself, then down into the cleared area that ringed it. Here were parked private AGCs, and to one side was the wreck of a carrier. Perhaps it had just been landing or taking off when the blastwave hit. They all saw it, and made no comment. Without a doubt it contained bodies; but a fraction of the total dead.

  The shuttle settled a hundred metres from the doors of the station. As the rest of them unstrapped from their seats, Cormac remained where he was and stared thoughtfully at the carrier. It occurred to him then that the cold would not have returned here immediately. When Jane came up beside him he caught hold of her arm. Through his gloves it felt like any other arm.

  ‘How long would it have taken?’ he asked.

  She looked at him with a quizzical expression.

  ‘The cold. How long to get down to say . . . minus fifty?’

  ‘Three solstan days.’

  ‘That quick?’

  ‘Yes, the installation here, all of it, might be equated to a very small speck of warm sand on an ice cube.’

  ‘I see,’ said Cormac, and then studied her closely. ‘I realize I’ve been a prat.’

  ‘It is something we all realize at one time or another.’

  Yeah, like you’d ever do anything foolish.

  ‘Let me put it another way then,’ he continued. ‘I miscalculated. Unless you feel you might be needed out here you can stay with the shuttle.’

  Jane smiled at him. ‘I think I might as well come along. I might be of use.’

  Cormac nodded and let her continue to the exit. Before he followed, he removed his shuriken holster from within his sleeve and strapped it on outside. He had already practised using it whilst wearing a thermal mask and gloves. Blegg might have expected little danger here at first, but that did not mean he should consider the place safe. When his life was at risk, Cormac never liked to rely on the judgement of others, even an immortal Japanese demigod. He placed his mask over his face and closed the seals that connected it to his hood. He knew it was fully sealed when a small LED went off just at the edge of his vision. Once that light disappeared, he allowed himself a small smile.

  Outside it was like a harsh winter on Earth, only the snow blowing past them consisted of carbon-dioxide crystals, and the ice under their feet was water-ice as hard as iron. Cormac felt no hint of the cold. Had he done so, it would probably mean his suit was failing and that he would shortly be dead. Jane stood brushing the snow from her hair, as if it was flower blossom dropping on a spring day. In this setting, dressed in her thin bodysuit, she did look unhuman. There was no billowing cloud of vapour as she breathed. She did not flush, nor did she shiver.

  They trudged through the snow to the main entrance. Off to one side Cormac observed the huge super-conductor ducts that led to heat-sinks under the frozen sea. From the shuttle these ducts had appeared to be the thickness of old oaks. Here, now, he could see they were large enough to run a motorway along. There the surplus energy, converted from microwave beams transmitted from the runcible buffers, was conducted as electrical energy to the heat-sinks, where it was converted into terraforming heat. Fifteen months ago much of this sea had not been frozen, and, as Mika had said, angel shrimps had been introduced.

  Once they reached the doors, Chaline hit the touch-plate. Nothing happened. She and Gant pulled on the handles, which had probably never been used before.

  ‘Dead, and frozen shut,’ came her voice over the com. ‘This place was powered by a bleed-off from received energy.’ She turned her masked face to Jane. ‘Can you do anything?’

  Jane stepped forwards and took hold of the handle. She pulled and ice shattered under her feet. The door opened a little way, then the handle snapped off.

  ‘The metal’s recrystalizing with the cold,’ she said, her voice coming to them with a radio echo. She stepped to the gap she had made, inserted her fingers, and pulled. The door ground open and a chunk snapped off in her hands, but it was wide enough open for them to enter. As he went through, Cormac glanced at the broken metal and realized that at these temperatures even Golem might be vulnerable. Their synthetic skins, he knew, could handle a wide temperature range and provided superb insulation, but he wondered just how close they would get to the lower limit of that range here.

  Inside the building they walked down frost-coated corridors to a drop-shaft. Luckily there was an inspection ladder down one side of it. Jane checked it with a tug or two, then descended. It was thick ceramal welded to the side of the shaft, so was unlikely to give way. As it took her weight without cracking, they all soon followed her down to the bunker where the submind was kept.

  ‘I’m getting something,’ said Chaline, as they swung away from the shaft and into a dark corridor. Cormac flicked his goggles to infrared, but vision was even poorer. Someone switched on a torch. He saw it was Thorn, and that the torch was an integral part of the weapon he held. Gant had also drawn his gun. Perhaps they trusted Blegg’s judgement as much as he did, Cormac thought. He turned to Chaline, who was peering at some kind of detector.

  ‘Is it still active?’

  ‘Seems to be, though its power source must be getting low. Perhaps that’s why it didn’t transmit,’ she said, then added, ‘I hope to link up the new runcible with these stations.’

  Runcibles were obviously her favourite topic.

  The end of the darkened corridor revealed a sliding door, which Jane opened with studied nonchalance. Beyond it lay a circular room that seemed to be lined with polished copper bricks.

  ‘Let’s see what we can get here,’ said Chaline, then took another instrument from her belt and moved her fingers over the touch-pads. A voice spoke to them through their communities.

  ‘—the brick-red song each block is dried blood frozen in perspex the windows are a thousand stitched-together eyes house is pain lord of pain lord of nightmares—’

  ‘Very poetic,’ said Chaline dryly.

  ‘Nuts,’ said Gant.

  Cormac was not so sure. ‘Try it again. At least it’s retained something.’

  ‘—batshapes with translucent white teeth and eyes in fevered flesh swooping madness yelling hate itself sinter sinter burnt mounded bones—’

  ‘Try transmitting to it here.’

  ‘It should be able t
o hear us anyway. Jane?’

  ‘I’ve tried. Seems completely internalized.’

  ‘AI, respond!’ shouted Cormac.

  ‘—screaming shape fire green men lizards help me plague dogs war flung to our coasts night dark rats disembark with their translucent teeth—’

  ‘No good,’ said Chaline. ‘Best we shut it down and get out of here.’

  ‘—plinking rain hell dark spaces think something abyss gestation outcome—’

  ‘No,’ said Cormac. ‘I veto that. We take the core brain and main memory with us.’ Chaline turned her masked face to him. He was glad he could not see her expression.

  Mika said, ‘There was something . . .’

  Chaline turned to her. ‘What? This submind’s crazy.’

  ‘Stream of consciousness. It may reveal something.’

  ‘OK . . . OK, no problem.’

  Chaline moved to the centre of the room and lifted a circular cover. Ice-blue light glared out as she inserted another instrument from her belt. There was a number of strange clunks. She lifted the instrument out and attached to it was something metallic and lens-shaped. She detached it and tossed it to Cormac. He caught it.

  ‘There’s your core brain and main memory. It’s only a submind, so they’re all in one. Don’t worry about dropping it. Nothing short of an atomic explosion will destroy it,’ said Chaline. Then she realized what she had said. ‘But, then, we are all well aware of that. It was the destruction of the main runcible mind that . . . internalized it.’

  Cormac was glad to hear a little humour in her voice, even though it was somewhat acid. He did not need any enemies right now.

  ‘Let’s go. There’s nothing more for us here,’ she finished. As soon as they stepped beyond the shielding of the room, Jane halted and tilted her head. They all watched her, knowing she was receiving some message, and knowing that the tilt of her head was for their benefit. Abruptly she turned.

  ‘That was from the Hubris. It’s picked up some kind of heat source to the south of here.’

  ‘People?’ asked Cormac.

  ‘Not determined.’

  8

  Huma: That they named this rather hot and arid planet after a fabulous bird that equates with the phoenix is rather ironic, in that it has been impossible to establish even adapted bird species here. The reason for this is that ninety per cent of the surface of Huma lies outside the green belt in which Earth species are able to live. In this area even the native plant species are prone to combustion, and huge swathes of the planet are ‘burn zones’. Ash carried from these zones is the reason for the distinctive filthy rain that falls on the remaining ten per cent of the planet, at the poles, which are habitable. These storms, though rare, are of such severity that during them no Earth species can survive outside of the accommodation built for humans.

  From Quince Guide, compiled by humans

  Cormac was directly in front of Pelter, the barrel of his thin-gun connected by an invisible rod to the Separatist’s forehead. The expression on the agent’s face said all that needed to be said, and all that would be said. Pelter was a hindrance the agent must remove so he might continue his work. Easier to just kill him and move on. It was that he had begged in the face of this lack of regard, that he was irrelevant to the central issue, just something to be killed and discarded, that brought to Pelter an almost rabid anger. Of course, in this instance the killing pulse never came. It was as Sylac had said: visual hallucinations through the link. He tensed himself—it always seemed to take such an effort of will—and used his aug to switch through to Crane. Immediately the link became an icicle through his left eye, and through glassy light the rectangular barrel of the thin-gun closed against his forehead.

  No, go away.

  Pelter tried to shake the image away and found he was paralysed. The image slid then, like a mote in his eye, and fell to a position somewhere on the edge of his vision. Now he had a view of a piece of crystal, a plastic dog, and an ancient pair of binoculars. Using the command program in the module, he took control of Crane. There was nothing to feel, only things to see and hear, and an emulation of movement that sat in his skull like something theorized. He lifted Mr. Crane’s head and looked around.

  The hold looked very different, simply because there was a light hoar of frost on every surface. He turned Crane’s head to the sound of swearing. Stanton was sitting up in his cold coffin and rubbing at his arms. His skin was covered with the fine dots of needle penetration. There were smears of blood on the sides of his neck. Pelter relaxed his control and inevitably Crane’s attention returned to his toys. Pelter maintained a tenuous link.

  ‘You’d think the price would have included fucking heating!’ Stanton shouted.

  The intercom crackled, and Jarvellis spoke. She sounded slightly dopey. ‘Sorry, John. I used a timed drop from underspace here. No asteroids to hit and not much else that the automatics couldn’t handle. I’ve only just thawed up myself,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah, and I bet it’s nice and warm where you are.’

  ‘Give me a chance. I’m not up to speed yet.’

  ‘Well, get up to speed. It’s warmer in these coffins than in the hold.’

  Immediately there came the drone of fans. Pelter turned Crane’s head to watch the frost disappearing in waves across the walls.

  ‘We’re insystem, then?’

  ‘Insystem and coming up on Huma.’

  Stanton surveyed the hold. Of course, there were no portals, so he could not prove, disprove, or appreciate that statement. He glanced at Pelter’s coffin, then across at Mr. Crane. He shivered, maybe in response to the cold.

  ‘What about Arian?’

  ‘I set your coffin to open first, John,’ said Jarvellis. ‘Perhaps we can—’

  Stanton interrupted. ‘Best you get Arian’s coffin open now. I don’t want any misunderstandings with Mr. Crane here, and Arian has that command link with him fed in through his optic nerve. I’d rather Arian was awake and controlling him.’

  Pelter reassumed control and turned Mr. Crane’s head. Stanton was now standing beside his cold coffin, trying to shake frozen stiffness from his shirt. He was also looking at Mr. Crane. Yes, thought Pelter, that’s the way it is. He returned Mr. Crane’s attention to his toys and cut the link.

  There was a sound, a deep crack, and a line of brilliance cut to the left of him. His whole body suddenly had severe pins and needles as the nerve-blocker detached and feeling returned. This feeling slowly ebbed, only to be replaced with a sensation as of his entire skin having been burnt—and he knew how that felt. Suddenly he gasped, and fluid bubbled in his lungs. Until then, he realized he had not been breathing.

  ‘Best to get moving,’ said John Stanton, looking down at him.

  Pelter sat up and looked at himself. His body, like Stanton’s, was covered with pinheads of dried blood. He lifted his legs from the coffin and tried to stand. His legs started to give way and Stanton caught hold of his arm.

  ‘Takes a moment for the blood sugars to kick in. Your blood is full of food, but the cells of the rest of your body are starving. You’ll know when it happens,’ he said.

  Pelter tried standing again and this time got control of his legs. The burning sensation began to retreat like the frost on the walls. The feeling that replaced it was an endorphin rush. For a brief minute he got the buzz that turned people into heroin addicts. He hated it. He shook off Stanton’s supporting arm and carefully stooped down to take up his frigid clothing. The intercom crackled its phoney crackle.

  ‘We’re into atmosphere now and will be landing in about an hour. As part of the service, you’ll find a wallet of Carth shillings in the black holdall. It’s your entry fee. They’re desperate for Polity currencies. Customs here are pretty relaxed, but it’s best to lubricate the wheels of their bureaucracy,’ Jarvellis told them.

  Pelter looked at Stanton. ‘Customs?’

  ‘Yeah, we’re not in the Polity now. You’ll find that if you want anything done here, you’
ll have to do a fair bit of lubricating,’ Stanton told him.

  Pelter nodded thoughtfully as he pulled on his jacket. ‘Tell me about this place,’ he said.

  ‘Nothing much to say,’ Stanton replied. ‘The only habitation here is at the poles. At the equator the average temperature is not far below the boiling point of water. They’re eight solstan years prior to Polity subsumption, and what government they have is on the edge of collapse. It’s completely corrupt and therefore just what we need. You can do anything you want here, if you have the money.’

  ‘Dealers?’ Pelter asked.

  ‘You’ll be falling over them. You can get just about anything. Fortunes are made out here on the edge, through technologies coming out of the Polity and proscribed weapons going in. Huma’s become a trading outpost.’

  ‘I’ll want a dropbird, seeker bullets and missiles—proton guns as well.’

  ‘You’ll be able to buy all that. Not cheap, but anything you want. We should be able to get it all through the dealer Jarvellis used.’

  Pelter nodded and looked closely at John Stanton. ‘I’ll find a dealer. I’ll want you to find the boys and sort out one or two other things,’ he said.

  ‘Whatever you say, Arian.’

  As they sat out the hour until landing, sipping from self-heating soup cartons, Pelter could almost feel the image in his missing left eye. The thin-gun. It seemed to push a cold ache through the centre of his head, and he knew that place to be the hole the pulse would burn right the way through.

  * * *

  The door irised open and bright lemon sunlight flooded the hold, before a wave of heat and spicy perfume. Pelter led the way out into that light, with Mr. Crane walking a step behind him, holding the briefcase. Stanton paused at the lip and glanced back in, before hurrying after them.