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  The dropbird had the appearance of a winged egg, when you could see it at all. Stanton found that if you stared up at it for too long, it faded into the background of the warehouse. It was only by glancing down at its landing skids and reacquiring it from them that you could make it out again. Of course, while dropping through atmosphere, the skids would be inside it and the bird would be invisible to the naked eye. It was also radar inert, and pretty difficult to nail down with any other kind of scan. It was laughable, Stanton thought, that the likes of Pelter believed they had any chance of beating the Polity. This was Polity manufacture and it was out of date, yet it was far in advance of most things Separatist groups could obtain.

  ‘What are those?’ asked Mennecken, pointing at the objects underneath each wing. This was the first time he had seen the bird.

  The objects were visible. If you stared at them too long, it seemed as if they were floating in midair.

  ‘AG lifters for transporting it,’ Stanton replied.

  ‘It has no AG at all?’

  ‘No, grav motors are heavy and it needs to be as light as possible. Also, even when they’re not operating, grav motors give off a recognizable signature. Of course, when they’re operating you might just as well come in ringing bells and letting off fireworks.’

  ‘It isn’t completely necessary to state the obvious. I was just thinking of safety,’ said Mennecken.

  ‘There should be no problem. This is, as Svent would say, good tech.’

  ‘If there is a problem?’

  ‘Then there’ll be a crater,’ Stanton replied, turning away.

  Corlackis stopped by a long open crate and inspected its contents. The rest of them were moving on to where the fat man was waiting with his two shaven-head heavies. Stanton did not trust Grendel at all, but then there were few people he did trust. He shoved his hand into his pocket and strolled casually after. He glanced at the crate in passing. Four missiles lay there. Each was two metres long and a handbreadth wide at its widest point, which was the middle. Each end of the missiles came to a needle point.

  ‘Hyper compressed-gas drive,’ said Corlackis, joining him. ‘Nice.’ This too was Corlackis’s first time here. Only Stanton and Pelter had come out the first time.

  ‘Again no AG. It would be detected on the way down,’ said Stanton.

  Mennecken gave him an annoyed look as they approached the others.

  ‘It’s all here, then,’ said Corlackis, waving a hand at the other crates.

  ‘Oh, yes, friend Grendel certainly knows how to lay his hands on some hardware,’ said Stanton. ‘By the way, get ready for the shit to hit and watch Svent and Dusache.’

  Corlackis gave him a puzzled glance and clamped down on a question. They were too close. He slid his finger down the seam of his jacket and let it drop open. Mennecken saw him do this and did the same. The three of them came up behind Svent and Dusache.

  Grendel was speaking. ‘Then you are satisfied?’ the fat man asked, holding his hands out before him as if measuring a fish.

  ‘I am satisfied with the goods, but not where they are,’ said Pelter.

  Grendel shrugged and pointed to the ceiling.

  Pelter went on. ‘We can take the crates out to the Lyric. By the time we’ve done that the storm should have eased enough for us to move the bird.’

  ‘As you wish. They are all your property now,’ said Grendel. He was now puzzled. ‘What else is it that you require?’ he asked.

  ‘Your position with your client assures me of your silence in this matter,’ said Pelter. ‘Unfortunately, though the information with which he has provided me is good, I am still prone to distrust.’

  ‘I know you have spoken with . . . him,’ said Grendel.

  Stanton looked from the fat man to Pelter. Who the hell was this client? What was this all about? He closed his sweaty hand round the handle of his stun gun. From the corner of his eye he noted movement. Mr. Crane putting down the briefcase. Pelter turned and looked at Stanton.

  ‘Now,’ he said.

  Stanton drew his gun and fired twice. Svent and Dusache gasped as if they had been gut-thumped and went face-down on the plascrete. Corlackis and Mennecken had pulse-guns, but seemed not to know where to point them. They backed up, trying to cover everyone. Stanton ignored them.

  ‘Your client has told me that, in due course, Ian Cormac will go to the planet Viridian,’ said Pelter. Grendel was moving back. His two heavies had their hands poised over their stomach holsters and were looking questioningly at the back of Grendel’s head.

  ‘What is this, Pelter? You’re offline,’ Grendel said.

  Pelter went on. ‘On Viridian I will be waiting for Cormac and there I will kill him. Your client’s intentions in this matter are not clear to me.’

  Suddenly Mr. Crane surged forwards, his shoes kicking up sparks from the plascrete. As he had before he grabbed the two shaveheads by the fronts of their shipsuits and lifted them high in the air. A gun clattered to the ground and a second one flashed. There was a thump and smoke rose from Mr. Crane’s coat. There was no visible effect on him. He slammed the two men together and dropped them. One of them lay with his skull distorted and an eyeball displaced. Blood poured from his nostrils. The other man had managed to get his arms up in time. He was still alive and trying to drag himself away with two broken arms. Grendel turned and looked with horror at his two protectors. He turned back to Pelter.

  ‘You can’t do this. My client . . . they will come for you,’ he said.

  Pelter shook his head. He tapped his organic aug. ‘You are the control here. I said I would not be controlled. Your client—’ he spat the word ‘—is too far away to have that much influence. Without you, there is no one here to give orders.’ He looked round at Mennecken and Corlackis. ‘Kill him,’ he said.

  The two mercenaries straightened up. Stanton saw the confusion leave their expressions. Now they knew what they were doing. Two pulse-guns thumped as Grendel gave a frightened yell. The two hits caved in his chest, but such was his bulk that he did not immediately go over. A third hit took his arm off at the elbow, and a fourth took off the top of his head. Amazingly he walked a couple of paces after this before going over and sagging on the ground like a rotten fruit.

  ‘What was that all about?’ Stanton asked Pelter.

  The Separatist tapped his organic aug. ‘Dragon, trying to get control of me through him.’ He pointed at the sagging bulk. ‘He already had Svent and Dusache and a few hundred others here.’

  ‘Dragon. You mean that Aster Colora—’

  ‘Yes, I mean precisely that.’

  ‘What about the others now?’

  ‘It’s subtle control. He no longer has it.’

  There was the thump of a pulse-gun to Stanton’s left. He looked over and saw that Mennecken had finished off the remaining shavehead. Mr. Crane was standing close and gazing down at the body, his head moving birdlike. Pelter glanced at him and Crane froze.

  ‘Now we load up these crates. You will come in the dropbird with me, John. The rest of you go over in the transporter.’

  Stanton nodded.

  ‘What about these?’ Corlackis asked, pointing his pulse-gun at Svent and Dusache.

  ‘Remove their augs,’ said Pelter.

  ‘Could be dangerous without shutdown.’

  Pelter just stared at him. Corlackis shrugged, then pulled something from his pocket. There was a click, and chainglass glittered. He stooped over Svent and Dusache.

  ‘What about yours?’ Stanton asked.

  Pelter closed his eyes. In that moment he looked as if he was about to throw up. He reached up and gripped his second aug. It seemed to be squirming in his grip.

  ‘This, you mean?’ he asked, his voice tight and vicious.

  Stanton stepped back. No telling how Pelter might react. He gripped the handle of his stun gun and kept his face expressionless. Abruptly Pelter snarled and tore the aug from his head. He threw it hard against the floor and stared at it. After a mome
nt he stamped on it, then again and again. Finally he ground the fleshy remnants to pulp under his heel.

  ‘That—about mine,’ he said.

  * * *

  The layer of cloud was breaking like a crust, to expose lemon cracks. Pelter eased forward on the controls and the dropbird slid away from the warehouse, then up into the air. All its lift came entirely from the AG transport plates, and all its forward motion from the tilting of those plates. Because there were no turbines and no thrust from any other quarter, and because of the bird’s aerodynamic shape, it was eerily silent. There was also something spooky, Stanton felt, about looking through the side of the screen and not immediately being able to make out the body and wings of the craft in which he was travelling.

  As the bird picked up speed, there at last came sound: a high keening of the wind. Pelter eased off on the controls, tilting the plates to brake speed while engaging the airbrakes along the wings. Stanton gripped the back of the pilot’s seat with one hand and pressed his other hand against the roof of the cockpit. There was no co-pilot’s chair here, so it was necessary to stand up to obtain a good view. Ahead of them was the transporter that Corlackis was piloting. By comparison it was an ugly lump in the sky—if you could make a comparison with something practically invisible.

  Pelter eased the joystick over, and the bird banked over Port Lock. Stanton held himself in place and looked down. From here the arcology buildings were a blocky maze interspersed with the blue-green of acacias and the harsh green of new growth, which had not been there before the storm. All across this area, flood pools and drainage dykes mirrored the breaking sky. There was also a lake cut with the wakes of water scooters. The citizens of Port Lock were coming out to play now, after their confinement. Stanton envied them their small concerns. It was easy to feel a kind of superiority from invisible heights.

  As the bird banked over onion towers and the disparate blocks of hotel towers and offices he took a firmer grip. The lake slid from view and ahead he saw the band of wasteland between the city and the spaceport. Two ships, one the featureless grey tank of an insystem carrier, and the other a bulbous wedge of a metallic green, were settling towards the crowded field. The spaceport, with its many ships, had the appearance to Stanton of a small baroque town on the outskirts of the city, where perhaps an alien race dwelt in its distorted houses.

  ‘You’ll have to watch those as we come in,’ he said.

  ‘I do know what I’m doing,’ Pelter replied.

  He took the bird to one side of the port over the acacias and tangled hulks, and brought it down in a tight spiral. Stanton glanced at him and saw, for the first time since Cheyne III, an expression on his face that might be interpreted as enjoyment. Pelter brought the bird down slow and easy, only a few metres above the tops of the trees. They soon came to the fence and eased over it. Stanton looked to his right at the gate. Four guards were watching the transporter landing by the Lyric. They were oblivious to the bird.

  ‘By law, all cargoes should go in through the gate. Overflying a landing field carries a heavy penalty. How do you want us to deal with this?’ Stanton asked.

  Pelter leant forwards in the pilot’s seat, a nasty expression on his face.

  ‘They’re coming over,’ Corlackis said through the open com from the transporter.

  The four guards were walking across the open ground towards the Lyric. Stanton wondered just how much they were thinking of charging for this particular infringement. He looked at Pelter.

  ‘You could pay them off,’ he said.

  Pelter eased the bird down over the other side of the fence. He brought it lower and lower and slowed it almost to a walking pace.

  ‘Stay in the transporter. Don’t go out to meet them. I’m just going to try something,’ he said.

  Stanton ran his hand down his face. He knew precisely what Pelter was going to try. Since he had removed that aug, something vicious had risen inside him and now demanded satisfaction.

  ‘Did you know,’ said Pelter, ‘that this bird is made almost entirely of chainglass?’

  ‘I know, Arian,’ said Stanton.

  The dropbird was about a metre from the ground now, and the guards were walking in a tight group only 100 metres ahead. Pelter eased it up to something above walking pace and quickly closed in on the four men.

  ‘It’s almost like one big blade.’

  At the last moment he tilted the two plates at odds to each other. The bird spun. Stanton saw one man cartwheeling through the air, another cut in half, but didn’t see what had happened to the remaining two. Pelter levelled the plates, tilted them back the other way to stop the spin, and then eased the bird onward to the Lyric. Stanton could see the wings now. They were red.

  ‘What you have to understand, John, is that I win because I think quickly and can work out the fastest solution to a problem,’ Pelter said.

  And there I was assuming it was because you’re a ruthless psychotic bastard, thought Stanton. He kept that thought to himself, and looked ahead at the open A hold of the Lyric. The entire sphere had been split horizontally in half, the top half held up ten metres above the bottom by hydraulic rams. Pelter eased the bird up and into the gap. Inside, the clamps and straps to fix the bird in place were ready. Pelter eased it down into place with a delicate clonk, then he shut off AG. Stanton moved back through the cabin to the side door, as the Separatist unstrapped himself. He eyed Mr. Crane squatting in the middle of the cabin and just wished that things could end right now. He was going soft; he knew it. He had seen the signs in others. He popped the door and climbed out onto the transparent part of the wing, then slid to the deck. Further along the wing he saw that a pair of overalls were stuck in place with blood. He walked across the deck to the open hatch to the sound of Crane, then Pelter, emerging from the bird behind him. On the ramp he stared outwards as lemon sunlight broke through the clouds.

  He saw that the two customs officials were walking towards the Lyric, and had yet to spot the remains of the guards. Mennecken and Corlackis were already on their way out to greet them.

  Stanton turned and went to help Svent and Dusache load the crates into Hold B.

  17

  Golem Series: This is the series of androids, or human emulations, that were first manufactured by Cybercorp in 2150. The Golem One—there was only one ever made—was reported to have lasted only four hours under its own impetus. Attacked by breakers, or organ thieves, it apparently caught fire under stun fire. Subsequent recovery of its core memory led to the arrest of its attackers. The second Golem was more sophisticated and strong, but was not a successful emulation. Only by Golem Eight did Cybercorp attain near-perfect emulation. Sales of the Golem Series then lifted Cybercorp to system corporate status. The androids were used by World Health, Earth Security, and by various religious organizations. At Golem Fifteen, with the 107th revision of the Turing Test, this android series came under the artificial intelligence charter, and attained thrall status. Since then, every Golem made has had to work out an indenture in which it pays for its construction and earns a suitable profit (set by Trading Standards) for Cybercorp or its purchaser. The Golem Series is still successful. Cybercorp is now an interstellar corporation.

  From Quince Guide, compiled by humans

  It seemed as if they had been descending for ever, but, from counting the evenly spaced lights that hovered like luminescent bees, Cormac knew they had only gone down half a kilometre. The shaft had not deviated one whit. Ahead of him he could see Gant and Cento approaching the next light, and beyond them more lights stretching out in a line, to be finally lost in a distant haze. The size of the tunnel had not changed. Only the ice on the walls looked any different. There were both flat, white blooms of water-ice and impurities of green and blue patterning the walls like alien cave paintings.

  ‘I’m picking up some strange readings,’ said Carn, checking an instrument strapped to his arm.

  ‘What sort?’ asked Cormac.

  ‘Minor temperature fluctuatio
ns and some alterations in air density. Something moving.’

  ‘Could it be a machine or lifeform?’

  Carn looked at him. ‘What’s the difference?’

  Cormac seemed to remember getting into a similar conversation before. He could not resist making some attempt at an answer. ‘Self-determinism?’ he tried.

  ‘Only machines can have that. Name me a lifeform that’s not a slave to genetically pre-programmed drives?’

  ‘Yes, all right . . . So do you have any idea of what’s down there?’

  Carn inspected the detector again. ‘Not really. I’m bouncing the signal over Cento and Gant’s heads, but there’s still interference. Difficult to tell.’

  ‘Perhaps the lights disturbed something . . . Gant, do you have any feedback from your lights?’

  Gant glanced over his shoulder. ‘The three lower ones had no return signal from the start, but we can transfer some down to the chamber.’

  That made Cormac edgy. What had knocked out the lights? Some sort of automated system? Or something trying to give itself cover?

  When they were a kilometre down, it became obvious they had reached the point where the probe had been destroyed. Pieces of wreckage were imbedded in the rock, and the ice was blackened by smoke. Beyond this point there were long score marks in the ice, and splinters of the glassy rock itself had been broken away.

  ‘Looks like the probe dislodged something,’ said Gant.

  ‘Some sort of grating—a barrier?’ Cormac wondered.

  ‘The probe would have halted at it,’ Carn said. ‘Anyway, no sign of any fixings.’

  Cormac studied the gouges. They were almost like claw marks and he did not like the image this conjured up. It seemed that whatever had been dislodged had scrabbled frantically to maintain its position. It had failed, but left marks all round the shaft, which gave an indication of its size. Cormac began to have serious misgivings.