Brass Man (23 page)

The same big hand closed on his neck, its brassy metal not even warm, and hauled him into the air, choking. Then something snapped and tore and, gasping for breath, Tabrouth hit the ground on his feet and fell over backwards. He groped at his neck, sure the Golem had crushed it and that he was yet to feel the killing pain, but found only that his lion’s tooth, his good-luck charm, was gone. Through shadowed vision, he saw the big Golem striding off after the other two. When he finally recovered his breath, he ran just as fast as he could for the nearest exit. The only time he looked back was when the blast from an ECS riot gun spun him off his feet, and even then he did not see Paulson and Shroder hot on his heels, relieved respectively of a ring with a pre-runcible coin set in it and a cheap scent bottle.

* * * *

9

The kind of AI used in smaller human-partnership survey ships is contained in crystal similar to that of the Golem, but with computing capacity a Golem would use for emulation, devoted to U-space calculations, and extra capacity allotted for a greater array of senses. IQ 185 (whatever that means). Your basic attack ship AI can function at a human level, or create and assign subminds to this tedious task. As well as the required ability to make U-space calculations, it can run complex internal repair and modification programs, operating through multiple subminds, installed in everything from ship Golem to nanobots. It can operate complex and powerful weapons systems, make high-speed tactical decisions in fractions of a second. Its IQ would be about 300. Then we come to the runcible/planetary governor AIs. Most of these intelligences run in crystal, but at a vastly greater capacity than even attack ships. They can run subminds of full AI Golem level, balance the economy of a planet, make millions of U-space calculations for the operation of a runcible . . . The list goes on and on. Such AIs are omniscient and omnipotent, and any attempt to measure IQ is laughable. Yet even these are not at the apex. Some AIs run differently; using etched-atom processing, quantum computing . . . These are often sector-class AIs of almost mythic status, like the awesome Geronamid and that roving AI Einstein Jerusalem and, of course, Earth Central itself. We could never have imagined such gods .
. .

-
Excerpt from a speech by Jobsworth

After carefully rereading the instructions in the fading light, Anderson detached the breech clamp, set the lever over to single shots, and cocked the carbine. He then aimed at the sulerbane plant below the nearest butte, squeezed off one shot and, even after firing off five shots, was still surprised at how little smoke the gun emitted. The noise, though also less than that generated by his fusile, was vicious enough. He peered thoughtfully at where the bullet had struck the ground, to the left of the plant. Behind him, he heard Bonehead sigh as it sank down on its belly plates. Tergal raised his handgun and fired twice, knocking off one of the plant’s hard resinous leaves.

‘I think I’m getting the hang of this,’ the boy said smugly.

Anderson removed his helmet and dropped it beside his feet, then turned and stared hard at where his fusile was holstered on Bonehead’s back.

‘I’m overcompensating. I should just follow the instructions and use the sight,’ he said, expecting Tergal to make some sarcastic quip, for this was what the boy had already advised him twice. When no comment was forthcoming, he glanced over to see Tergal staring at him in amazement. With a grimace, Anderson reached up and rubbed his perfectly bald head.

‘Fell out when I was a boy and never grew back,’ he said. ‘My mother said it’s because I think too much.’

‘Oh, right,’ said Tergal, embarrassed.

Anderson raised his weapon and fired again, but again the plant remained untouched.

‘I thought you were going to use the sight?’ Smug again.

‘I did.’

The sleer thudded down next to the plant, a hole perfectly positioned between its extensible antlers. It writhed on the ground, its segments revolving independently, then it separated. Its rear section got up on four legs and attempted to make a break for safety. Anderson put a shot into its raw-looking separation point and it collapsed. He turned to Tergal, allowing himself a sly smile. ‘Now we’ve got something to cook on the fire you’re about to make with all those leaves you just slew.’

Tergal stared back, but Anderson saw that the boy had got the message. He humphed, holstered his weapon and walked over to the sulerbane plant and the dead sleer. Frequently glancing above him for any sign of other creatures, he began collecting thick dry leaves. Meanwhile, Anderson returned to Bonehead, clambered up on the creature’s carapace, and unstrapped his packs from behind the saddle. As Tergal returned with a stack of leaves, Anderson was driving posts into the sand -setting up the perimeter of their camp. While the boy then arranged the leaves around a wax firelighter and ignited that with smoky sulphurous matches, Anderson unreeled wire and secured it to the posts.

‘This won’t be enough,’ said Tergal, gesturing at the small stack of leaves heaped beside the fire.

‘You’re sure to find shed carapace around here—that burns good and slow,’ Anderson replied. It was evident to him now that, though Tergal had been travelling for some time, he had never really camped out in wilds like this. He watched as Tergal retrieved his own pack from Stone, and dropped it by the fire before going off in search of more fuel. By the time the boy returned with old sleer sheddings and more of the thick resinous leaves, Anderson had erected the two wires to make a fence a metre high, though with a gap through which Tergal could re-enter, and was now levering off the head from the front end of the dead sleer with his heavy steel knife.

Securing the wires across the gap, Tergal glanced up at the sky, which was now dark green swirled with the red of interstellar gas clouds. The stars had yet to appear and the first impression was of a ceiling carved of bloodstone. He then reached down to turn on the charge generator standing beside one of the posts.

‘Not yet,’ said Anderson, finally levering the sleer’s head off and pulling it away—dragging out a tangle of intestines. Then reaching inside the cavity with his knife, he cut, grabbed and pulled, and out came the translucent internal belly plate, with other gelatinous organs attached. ‘The batteries are low—only got half a day’s charge .’They had left the roadhouse at midday, and only then had he laid out the solar panel on Bonehead’s carapace, and attached the batteries.

‘They’ll last the night?’Tergal asked.

‘Mostly. Anyway, once a few of the buggers have taken a few belts from the fence they tend not to come back.’

Anderson stood up and, carrying the offal and head of the sleer, walked to the fence and tossed them over it for Bonehead and Stone. Not bothering to attach it below its sensory head, the old sand hog folded out its feeding head, extended it on its second hinged neck to suck down the offal, then knocked the remainder across to Stone, who crunched the sleer’s head like a boiled sweet. They both ate seemingly without much appetite, but then this meat was rather too fresh for their taste.

With the fire burning well, Anderson set up his iron spit and roasted segments of sleer from the meatier tail section. The stars came out and, in the stark shadows of the buttes, the relatives of the two travellers’ dinner came out for their nightly game of murder in the dark. Bonehead and Stone folded their heads and legs away, and sank down onto the sand: two long teardrop domes with saddles still in place.
Ogygian
was poised on the horizon, glittering in reflected sunlight, and distantly the lights of Golgoth cast an orange glow into the dusty sky.

‘Other worlds have moons,’ said Tergal. ‘I wonder what that’s like.’

Anderson, after chucking onto the fire the carapace from the segment of meat he had just eaten, said, ‘More light at night, but little more beyond that, unless the world itself has oceans.’

‘I wonder what that’s like, too.’

‘Wet, probably.’

Beyond the fence, the movement drew closer, as chitinous bodies scuttled from shadow to shadow. Anderson stood up, walked over to the charge generator, and switched it on. The two of them were laying out their bedrolls when a second-stage sleer came to investigate this attractive cluster of heat sources. Its antlers extended themselves out from its nightmare head like long thin black hands, then touched a wire and jerked back. The creature held its ground for a moment, its feet rattling against the earth and its carapace saws scraping against each other, then with a hiss it retreated.

‘Your first watch?’ Anderson suggested.

Still clutching the gun he had drawn, Tergal eventually nodded. Anderson shook out his blankets, to be sure they had not acquired unwelcome guests, before lying down with his head resting on one of his packs. Through half-closed eyes, he watched Tergal light a smoky candle, and immediately the smell of repellent invaded the air -keeping away smaller denizens that might crawl under the wire. The boy then bowed his head and listened to the sounds of hard limbs rasping against sandy surfaces. Anderson closed his eyes fully and allowed sleep to take him. Tergal would not be robbing anyone tonight—he had other things to occupy his attention.

* * * *

The first view showed the world only lightly crusted with black, with frequent cracks and volcanic eyes appearing and fading constantly. With his hand inside a projected virtual control, Cormac doubled the magnification, and now saw plumes of gas, ash and magma spewing into the poisonous atmosphere. It was hell—with all the sulphur and fire you could want—but until only a month ago had been lacking in devils. Then two had arrived.

‘Show me the carrier shell,’ he said.

A square appeared, picking out a dot, and the magnification increased to show the wrecked shell poised above the inferno.

Ticking slowly while standing beside Cormac’s chair as if to keep an eye on the virtual control the AI had loaned, Jack’s automaton intoned, ‘Cento urges that we leave him and go at once to the coordinates he has given us. He does have a point. We shall achieve nothing by this rescue that cannot be achieved by the other ships on their way here.’

‘Try to think like a human,’ said Gant, lolling in one of the club chairs.

‘Why should I restrict myself so severely? Cento has told us everything, and logically there is no reason for delay,’ said the ship’s AI.

‘But Cento is still Cento,’ Cormac supplied, and then left Gant to cobble together the explanation he himself could not be bothered trying to verbalize. He just knew it was right to have Cento along with them.

‘Yes, he’s told us everything,’ said Gant. ‘And from what he has told us we know that Skellor will assume Cento was utterly destroyed. That’s an advantage, since in some situations his presence might pause Skellor for half a second, and that could mean the difference between life and death.’

‘The same rules apply to Aphran,’ Cormac added.

‘More advantage might be gained by not wasting hours picking up a Golem android who would be picked up anyway,’ observed Jack.

Cormac relented and explained, ‘It’s about
weapons,
Jack. In you we have everything we need in the way of bombs and missiles, but that might not be enough.’

‘You’re rationalizing,’ said Jack.

‘Attempting to rationalize something I feel instinctively—and it has been trusting such feelings that has kept me alive, and has made me as successful as I have been.’

‘Granted,’ said Jack.

The sun was a blue boiling giant glimpsed after thaw-up, as the
Jack Ketch
entered this barren system.

Now it was out of view, for they were approaching in the planet’s shadow so as not to overheat the ship. The carrier shell, since Skellor had hit it with a kinetic missile of some kind, had lost its geostationary position and, as Cento explained, was now orbiting the planet. Over the next hour they drew even closer, and Cormac saw that parts of the shell were still glowing red hot. They reached it just as it was coming back into the sun’s actinic glare and, through niters, Cormac observed grapples—towing braided monofilament cables—fired across from each of the attack ship’s nacelles. Closing by hydraulics these ceramal claws drove sharp fingers into the charred hull. Then came a droning as the
Ketch’s
engines took up the strain and dragged the shell back into the planetary shadow.

‘I have apprised Cento of our position, and he is now making his way to where I will place the airlock,’ Jack informed them.

Cormac observed the docking tunnel extruding towards the shell. He noted that it was heading towards bare hull, and surmised that this was an injector lock -for inserting troops, probes, war drones, or even poison gas, into a hostile ship. He saw it contact, and the flare around its rim as it cut into the hull.

‘Come on,’ he said to Gant.

As they entered the dropshaft, and it shifted them to their destination, Cormac had to wonder if this was the only shaft the
Jack Ketch
contained, as he had yet to discover any other. He and Gant moved into a short corridor decorated with metallic Greek statues and with reed matting on the floor. This took them to the chamber preceding an airlock—also lined with statues but with a bare metal floor. Shortly the displays on the exterior touch panels showed that the lock was cycling. Within a minute the inner door whoomphed open. Leaning on one hand, what remained of Cento looked up at them.