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  ‘There’s more?’

  ‘Endless. I could make a lifetime of study out of them. Their bones are solid; calcium laminated with something similar to tooth enamel, and about twice the size and density of ours. They’ve got a digestive system which could extract nutrition from a stone.’ She turned to him again. ‘But, as we know, they take the easy option.’ She turned back. ‘And their musculature is as dense as old oak. We are lucky they felt no inclination to leave this isolation chamber when we first put them inside. The door would not have stopped them.’

  ‘Perhaps they’re different from the one I saw before.’

  Cormac remembered his fight in the shadow of Dragon. He had defeated that dracoman quite easily, but perhaps that was what Dragon had wanted. ‘Theatrics’ are how he had described Dragon’s actions to Chaline. It occurred to him that the whole performance had been a cover for other actions; to leave humankind believing Dragon had destroyed itself. Had it been scared, or just a lover of subterfuge?

  ‘Quite likely.’

  ‘What . . . sorry?’

  ‘These are probably different from the one you saw on Aster Colora. Dragon probably makes them to suit its current requirements,’ said Mika.

  Cormac cogitated for a moment. ‘How did they survive the cold?’ he asked.

  ‘Now, that is where things get really interesting. They use protein replication, but I have yet to find any kind of template. Their physiognomy will take years to unravel. But . . . their brain structure is completely different from ours. My theory is that the template is a mental one and that they can alter it at will, within limits. When Thorn said they must have antifreeze for blood, he was probably not far wrong. It would also be interesting to have another look at where they were sheltering.’

  ‘Why? Some evidence there?’

  ‘Just to see how much they ate over the last fifteen months. I bet they ate a phenomenal amount to maintain their body temperatures, and that those corpses we saw were perhaps just a couple of days’ supply.’

  ‘Is there anything about them that might indicate their purpose?’

  ‘Nothing really, except maybe their strength. Perhaps they were made to tolerate heavy G . . . But such strength could pertain to anything.’

  ‘You said the door would not stop them. Just how strong are they?’

  ‘Have you been to the Sparkind quarters?’

  Cormac shook his head.

  ‘Well, you remember Gant telling you they had Golem Thirties? Do you know what they are?’

  ‘Cybercorp combat androids. The best.’

  Mika pointed at the dracomen. ‘These two would be a match even for them.’

  ‘Bloody hell! We should move them to a security section.’

  Mika smiled. ‘I doubt the security section would hold them either. Anyway, the cell has been armoured since they were first moved in, and there’s shutters to come down over this window. Half a second and they end up in a box of ten-centimetre-thick case-hardened ceramal.’

  ‘Will that be enough to—’ began Cormac, but was interrupted by Hubris’s voice.

  ‘Notification: there will be a slight adulteration of the air supply. This is not a cause for alarm. Counteragents are being spread through all systems. I repeat, there is no cause for alarm.’

  Cormac felt something loosen its hold on the inside of his chest; until then he had not quite realized how worried he had been about the nanomycelium. He looked back to the dracomen and saw that Smiler was standing. For a moment he thought food was being delivered. Then he saw that the dracoman was sniffing at the air. He watched, and while he watched he became aware of a bitter metallic taste in his mouth and a pungency to the air that reminded him of the smell from a cold-forge.

  The counteragents.

  ‘Chaline works quickly,’ he said to Mika, and wondered at the precise meaning of his words.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mika, something in her voice. Cormac studied her suspiciously, but she was watching the dracoman.

  Cormac felt uncomfortable for more than one reason. It was disconcerting to think that the air was filling with little mycelium-killing machines, and that they were on his tongue and in his nostrils. The dracoman seemed to find the whole thing amusing. It grinned, then walked to the viewing window and stared directly at Cormac, which was disconcerting as well, as the window was set for one-way viewing. He had nearly convinced himself the dracoman could not see him, when it pointed up at the intercom speaker.

  ‘They do have vocal cords. They should be able to speak,’ said Mika.

  Cormac reached across and switched on the intercom. ‘Have you something to say, my friend?’ he asked, trying to appear unruffled. This could be what he needed. At last he might begin to unravel this mystery.

  ‘Dragon coming,’ said the dracoman, and turned away.

  ‘Wait!’

  The dracoman returned to the middle of the floor and sat down, and from there it just grinned at him.

  ‘I don’t think you’re going to get any more than it wants to tell you. Remember, its motivations are not the same as ours.’

  Cormac contained his anger. ‘Yes,’ he said.

  But Dragon was coming, and had never been shy of communication, even in its Delphic and sometimes explosive fashion.

  14

  Many lifeforms have hitched a ride with us and been part of our successful spread into the galaxy. From the beginning it was decided that quarantine strictures were an exercise rendered pointless by the huge advances being made in bioscience. If you have a creature’s DNA or whatever other template it might use, what matter if it is wiped out? You can re-create it if you want. Also, it is a fact that this is the way life works: species have been wiped out for millennia by more successful contenders. Some have bemoaned the loss of variety, but this is a specious argument at best. Genetic adaptation and straight biotechnological creation have brought newer and more interesting forms. Sorry, people, but we are improving on nature all the time. My only complaint in this matter is that some of the older and more unpleasant forms are as successful as those we adapt and create. Why is it that on worlds that are wet I so often end up tripping over ground skate? Why hasn’t someone come up with a competitor less lethal to us than the blade beetle? And who the hell decided it was OK to let mosquitoes colonize just about every damned world?

  From How It Is by Gordon

  The rain was flecked with black dirt blown up from the burn zones on the edge of the equatorial deserts and though it slid from the repelling charge on the screen of the old Ford Macrojet, a line of sludge was gathering at the join between screen and bonnet. Daven stared at the sludge for a moment, then across the expanse of streaming slabs of the AGC park to the entrance of the metrotel. It was all bright and warm beyond the glass panes and there was a party going on in the lower bar. Two hours earlier a load of aircabs had come in to land to belch the revellers. It seemed as if someone had taken out a marriage contract during the long day and was now celebrating that idiocy.

  ‘They have contracts?’ Pellen asked yet again.

  ‘They have contracts,’ Daven confirmed. ‘They still have them in a lot of places, but more often out here beyond the Line. You must have seen it?’

  ‘Never occurred to me,’ Pellen said, shaking her head. Daven inspected her. She was an attractive woman and he wondered why she had felt the need to go catadapt. She was also, he felt, a bit naive for this sort of operation. People who had spent most of their formative years on an Outlink station tended to be that way. No doubt ECS had sent her out here as part of her training. Easy way in, trying to track down a few arms runners, especially with Jill, the Golem, to dig her out of any pit traps. The stakes had gone up though as soon as Jill had seen Arian Pelter coming out of Grendel’s place. Now things might just get a little sticky.

  ‘Two of them. Three o’clock,’ said Pellen abruptly.

  Daven lifted his attention from the sludge below the screen and looked where directed. It was the slick mercenary with a rainfilm over
his business suit, and the heavy who had met Pelter outside The Sharrow. They were sauntering towards the metrotel. Velet and Jill should be along behind them any time now. As he reached for the intensifier on the dash, Daven heard a low thump, then rain and warm damp air gusted into the AGC. Rear-door lock blown, shit! He had no time to get to his stomach holster. A hand closed in his hair and cold metal pressed into his throat.

  ‘Now, that nasty little thin-gun you have down there you can carefully pull out and drop on the floor,’ said Mennecken.

  Daven saw that the other two mercenaries were now quickly coming in their direction. ‘What do you want?’ he asked, carefully moving his hand towards his gun. He glanced at Pellen, who was staring in horror at the both of them. If she did anything, he was dead. He gave a slight shake of his head and was rewarded with a touch of keen pain at his throat.

  ‘The gun,’ Mennecken repeated.

  Daven slowly pulled the gun from its holster and let it drop. ‘Just tell me what you want,’ he said.

  ‘I want you to be quiet,’ said Mennecken. He shoved Daven’s head forward and drew the razor-sharp ceramal blade back, and then he turned with a smile to Pellen. She stifled a scream as Daven fumbled at his throat trying to stem the blood gushing on the floor and all over his discarded weapon, then she reacted. Claws, which were not normally part of the cat adaptation, extruded from the ends of her fingers. She swiped Mennecken hard, opening deep slices on his face. Mennecken reeled back and swore, and in that moment Pellen popped the door and was out of it.

  ‘Bitch!’

  Mennecken opened the door he had blown, rounded it and leapt onto the bonnet. He glanced aside at Corlackis and Stanton, who were now running towards the car, then he leapt down. His feet came down on something soft and went straight from under him. He went down flat on top of a ground skate and it bubbled at him and tried to drag itself on. He yelled with pure rage and drove his dagger into the creature. Its only reaction was to bubble some more and to keep attempting to move. Four deep stab wounds seemed to have no effect on it. It did not even bleed.

  ‘Get after her!’ yelled Corlackis as he came to the car.

  Mennecken slid off the skate and stood. His clothing was covered with slime and he stank like something rotting in a tideline. ‘Fucking thing!’ he yelled and kicked the skate before turning and running into the alley along which Pellen had fled.

  ‘We’ll deal with the other one, then go after him,’ said Stanton, slapping his hand on the bonnet. ‘We’ve got about three minutes.’

  Corlackis opened the passenger door and Daven slumped out of it. He raised an eyebrow. ‘Did you have to cut so deep, brother mine?’ he asked.

  ‘He could have taken them both with a gun. What the hell’s wrong with him?’ Stanton asked, a bad taste in his mouth.

  Corlackis hit a release inside the car and the boot popped. He got hold of the corpse and dragged it out, then round to the back. Stanton helped him tip the man inside.

  ‘Mennecken can look after himself,’ Corlackis replied.

  Stanton shook his head as he slammed the boot shut. ‘That wasn’t what I meant and you know it.’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  Stanton checked his watch, then looked behind. ‘We haven’t time for this,’ he said.

  Corlackis nodded to him, then moved back. He took off his rainfilm and fastidiously draped it over the passenger seat. Stanton moved round to the driver’s side. As he got in he thought that this was the price you paid for using the most efficient killers; quite often they enjoyed it. He looked at Corlackis, who had yet to get in.

  ‘Come on. He’ll be here in a minute.’

  Corlackis shrugged and climbed in. Stanton set the vehicle on low hover. The old grav motor had a hum with a slight edge to it that grated on the nerves. He turned off the charge on the screen and watched as dirty rain smeared it, before he set the vehicle drifting forwards.

  ‘There,’ he said, pointing, then looking at his watch. ‘Right on time to the second.’

  The man they’d had trailing them all over Port Lock had just appeared.

  ‘Lucky it wasn’t the Golem,’ said Corlackis.

  ‘Calculated,’ Stanton replied. ‘The Golem had to stay with Pelter and Mr. Crane. It’ll be the senior here, and the only one capable of dealing with Crane if things went wrong. As they will.’

  The man halted out on the slabs and raised his hand. No doubt he was expecting to be allowed into a nice dry car, his watching at an end for a while. Stanton drifted the car so the passenger side would come up to him. Corlackis touched a door control and the window slid down at an angle. He removed from his jacket pocket a fat little gun with a barrel wider than it was long.

  ‘In the back seat,’ said Stanton. ‘We’ll be needing the room left in the boot.’

  ‘As you say, John,’ said Corlackis.

  They drew abreast of the man and he ducked down to peer in the window, a friendly grin on his face. Stanton felt sure he was about to say something about the weather. But he lost his grin when Corlackis shot him in the face.

  ‘Shit, we wanted him alive,’ said Stanton.

  ‘Credit me with some intelligence, John. Short-acting neural poison in pellet form. He won’t be pretty, but he’ll be alive,’ Corlackis replied.

  ‘Right . . . right,’ said Stanton. He checked his watch, then took a small comunit from his top pocket as the AGC settled. ‘Svent, how is it?’ he asked.

  ‘He’s heading for the café. We’ll take him there.’

  ‘Don’t worry if we’re a little late. Mennecken’s gone walkabout after the catadapt,’ said Stanton.

  ‘That’s OK,’ said Svent. ‘I wanted a coffee anyway. See you shortly.’

  Stanton made an adjustment and spoke again. ‘We got all four and are holding them,’ he said.

  Pelter’s voice in reply was cold and correct. ‘That was the easy part. Now we have this ECS machine to deal with,’ he said.

  ‘Where are you now?’

  ‘I’m at the dump outside the spaceport.’

  ‘The Golem still with you?’

  ‘As far as we can ascertain. It is very good. Maybe it has chameleonware.’

  ‘Need any help?’

  ‘I have Mr. Crane.’

  Stanton shut off the unit. That was all Pelter had wanted him to say. He popped his door and walked round to Corlackis, who was searching the man he had stunned. Corlackis removed a thin-gun which he tossed in beside the one in the passenger foot-well. He then removed a small flat comunit which he studied closely.

  ‘Chuck it,’ said Stanton. ‘Might have a tracer.’ He looked around. Still no one in sight, but it was best to get this sort of thing done quickly. He opened the back door, which no longer closed properly anyway since Mennecken had blown the lock, then got hold of the man’s shoulders and dragged him back to it. He then caught hold of his collar and belt and tossed him onto the back seat. Corlackis simply watched. He knew that with his boosted musculature Stanton was more than able for this task.

  ‘Now let’s find that brother of your’s,’ Stanton said.

  They got back into the AGC and Stanton reversed it back to its original location.

  ‘How long will he be out for?’ he asked, stabbing a thumb to the back.

  ‘Half an hour to an hour,’ Corlackis replied.

  Stanton watched him carefully. ‘Right then. You stay here and keep an eye on him. I’ll go and see what your brother is doing,’ he said.

  ‘I could do that,’ said Corlackis, returning his look.

  ‘Yes, but you’re not. You’ll stay here.’

  ‘As you say.’

  Stanton opened the door and got out. As he headed for the alley he noticed that the ground skate was now at the edge of the flooded gully and was there squeezing out a long and slimy white worm. Further down the gully more of these worms were wriggling in the torrent. From what he recollected of these creatures, this meant it was male. The worms were motile sperm packets on their way to find an e
gg-laden pool to burst in. The wounds Mennecken had made were superfluous. After this effort the creature would die anyway. Leaving it to do this, Stanton went to find more death.

  Stepping into the darkness of the alley Stanton intensified his vision. He pulled his comunit and keyed it to pick up the signal from Mennecken’s. A small arrow behind the transparent touch-console indicated Mennecken was ahead and to the right. The numbers below showed him to be eighty-five metres away and receding. Stanton set out at a jog, careful of his footing. Here there were more skate, and the ground had been slimed by their passage. This was a nightmare. He had water running down the back of his neck and soaking into his clothing despite the rainfilm. It occurred to him that, though Mennecken was an efficient killer, his enjoyment of the act was probably becoming a liability. Stanton now realized he should have refused when the man volunteered. He himself, or Corlackis, would simply have got into the back of the car and shot the two ECS watchers.

  A yell cut the night and Stanton accelerated. A glance at his comunit showed him Mennecken was no longer moving away. Soon he came to a side branch to the alley, lined with walls made of welded-together slabs of plascrete. The swing of the arrow showed him this was where Mennecken had gone. Another yell and Stanton saw the mercenary grappling with the catadapt. Obviously, with them not being so far from the car, Mennecken had been playing a stalking game with her. Stanton supposed she must have been hiding behind the old hydrocar that was rusting here. As he approached, Mennecken back-handed the woman and laid her out on the filth-caked ground.

  ‘Want to play, little pussy?’ he asked.

  Still moving in, Stanton drew his pulse-gun and let it hang at his side. Mennecken pinned the woman down and started to cut away her clothing. She shrieked as he started to work the point of the knife into the skin between her breasts. Stanton aimed and then hesitated. At the last he hardened himself and pulled the trigger. The woman jerked under Mennecken as most of the contents of her head sprayed out across plascrete. Mennecken leaped up and around, a snarl on his face and his dagger held ready. Stanton readjusted his aim. He reckoned Pelter’s team was just about to be short by one member.