Dark Intelligence (31 page)

Sverl’s initial instinct had been to leave the first-child to it. But his second instinct, surely a result of his ongoing transformation, had been to stop any killing before it started. It was just so wasteful to allow the few prador here to start tearing each other apart. Using his single Golem and his children he intervened and took control of Vlern’s ship systems. The drive and weapons were then unavailable to the five, who were all transforming into adults. He divided living space on the destroyer for them, then divided up Vlern’s second-children, drones and other resources amongst them. All first-children and young adults had necessarily been required to fight their instincts during the war—so they were to behave or pay the penalty.

Over the ensuing years, there had always been trouble from these five. The trade in human blanks they’d conducted was a case in point, blanks being humans cored of their brains and subsequently controlled by prador thrall technology. This trade might not have been so dangerous here where the Polity supposedly couldn’t reach, but it had brought some very unsavoury characters to this world. Their constant infighting and attempts to murder one another had often seemed about to get out of control. And one attempt to assassinate Sverl had resulted in the loss of one of his own children, which could never be replaced. Now there was more trouble on the horizon.

“So tell me what you want,” he clattered, his on-screen image one of himself from over fifty years ago. It would not do to let any of the prador here see his true appearance, for they thought his behaviour alone dubious enough.

Sfolk shifted his feet about and snipped at the air with one claw. He was frightened of Sverl’s reaction, but for the moment Sverl wasn’t angry at all. He was still slightly amazed that the five had come to an agreement and chosen one to present their request.

“Our population only grows smaller,” said Sfolk.

“Very true,” Sverl replied. “And as I recollect you and your brothers have played no small part in that.”

Again the snipping. “You are
wrong.”

Sfolk wasn’t denying the truth of Sverl’s words, just expressing what many prador here now felt. Sverl just didn’t speak or behave as he should. Sverl was all
wrong
. It was also a protest from the young adult, because Sfolk clearly didn’t know how to approach the matter in hand with someone who didn’t
feel
like a prador.

“Just get to the point,” said Sverl. “I promise I won’t crack your shell for anything you say now, but I will crack it if you continue wasting my time.” Of course Sverl hadn’t delivered a cracked shell for decades. If he felt the need to do so, he would send in his drone with the big manipulator arms, currently sitting in an adjunct to the audience room.

“We want to go,” said Sfolk, now cringing.

“Go where?” Sverl asked distractedly, glancing at those screens not occupied by Sfolk. Some interesting stuff was going on in the human realm and the petty politics down here were annoying him.

“To the Kingdom.”

Now Sfolk had Sverl’s complete attention.

“You want to return to where you’ll be stripped of your limbs, attached to a grav-plate, then injected with hydrofluoric acid, before being skimmed out over the sea?” he enquired.

The old king died like that, so rumour had it, and it was now the favoured punishment for renegade prador.

“We are not our father,” Sfolk asserted.

“True enough …” said Sverl.

“Our children are not our children,” Sfolk added.

Ah
.

So that’s what all this was about. The second-children Sfolk and his brothers controlled were in fact their brothers. They had no offspring of their own. Sverl emitted a very unpradorlike sigh and settled lower on his limbs, resting the tips of his claws against the floor. Perhaps it really was time for the likes of Sfolk and his sibling to go. Certainly, living here under Sverl’s regime, they were losing touch with the realities of the outer universe. If they truly thought they could go back to the Kingdom with protestations of innocence they were being very, very naive. Their father had been the rebel and they had been under the control of his pheromones when he rebelled, but in prador terms, thinking those excuses would work just made them a little bit crazy.

Admittedly, it was possible that the new king, who had made some decidedly odd decisions himself, might give them amnesty. But that the five’s mindset even allowed them to think it was a possibility showed they weren’t fit to join prador society. That they supposed there might be justice or mercy there at all had to be Sverl’s fault. They had found it here and so expected it was normal, little realizing how human softness had infiltrated their world. But, of course they weren’t thinking straight. Sfolk’s last comment implied that they were thinking about what was completely lacking here: females.

“Return to your ship,” said Sverl. “Tell your brothers that I am thinking about it and will give them a decision within five days.”

Sfolk’s shock was comical. He had come here expecting to leave at least with a cracked shell if he managed to leave at all. In a way that was a good thing—it showed that Sverl’s rule over them had not completely killed their survival instincts.

The audience chamber doors opened and Sfolk whirled round and departed, two second-children waiting to conduct him from the ship. Sverl waited until the doors had closed before switching the ten screens back to more interesting views, and began contemplating possible futures.

Not counting Sverl, this enclave under the sea included seven adult males in total, plus their children in various forms. But there were no females and as such it was a dead end. Sure, there seemed to be evidence that Cvorn—one of the other prador—had growth tanks. However, that just made the dead end an inbred genetic one. With the five new adults now wanting to leave, there was definitely going to be trouble. Why should Sverl fight it? He had himself been contemplating leaving to go in search of Penny Royal. For he was at last coming to appreciate that his feelings about that AI were far stronger than his attitude towards the Polity or the prador king—or even the war itself.

In deep introspection, and with a degree of depression, Sverl continued gazing at his screens. Then he began to perk up as members of the local human mafia beat up another human. This was not uncommon and usually only evinced a passing interest from Sverl. But in this case the victim was a servant of Isobel Satomi who, in a way, Sverl felt might be a kindred spirit.

Sverl had never quite been able to nail down when Satomi had visited Penny Royal—whether it was before or after Sverl himself—but similar results had ensued. She had asked for haiman abilities and Penny Royal had granted its own interpretation of her request. Penny Royal’s dubious activities were fairly well known to the prador nowadays and so it was generally avoided. Yet humans didn’t seem as cautious, even thought what it did was firmly embedded in their history and mythologies. A large proportion of the human race had once believed in supernatural beings—a belief that generally did not survive interstellar travel. Some had believed in entities who granted wishes—for which the price was always too much. One of these scenarios involved paying with your soul, a mythical form of consciousness that could survive the death of the body. Hence a human phrase, “Selling your soul to the devil.” But the whole idea of getting more than you bargained for was entrenched in their psyche with other cautious phrases like, “Be careful what you wish for.” This perhaps explained why the many stories about Penny Royal didn’t quite match up to the reality as Sverl had found it.

If all Penny Royal’s deals were the equivalent of that curious human term “a poisoned chalice” for the other party, Penny Royal wouldn’t have been able to do business in the Graveyard. Yet the AI had acquired wealth and power and resources. Certainly some did end up regretting their bargains. Sverl’s searches had turned up a few cases where some had been driven to take their own lives or had returned to the Polity for help. Nevertheless, there were nowhere near as many as rumour would have it. Sverl had located four, possibly five twisted agreements, if the rumours about Mr Pace were true. But right now, in the Graveyard, there was only one example other than Sverl, and that was Isobel Satomi. Now she was here again.

On her last visit, Sverl had discovered that someone connected to her wanted to buy one of his second-child minds. Sverl had immediately decided one of the
specials
should be provided. Now she was back again. And, judging by this Trent’s replies to Stolman’s questions, the deal had gone drastically wrong.

As he reviewed recorded footage transmitted via his Golem, which he had allowed Stolman’s people to find and apparently activate, Sverl’s fascination increased. This Thorvald Spear was seeking Penny Royal and had apparently recommissioned the AI’s old destroyer using Sverl’s
special
second-child mind. He had also left on this destroyer, having reneged on his deal with Satomi and sabotaged her ship. Satomi now wanted to hunt him down. She knew he’d gone to Penny Royal’s planetoid—presumably mistakenly as the AI was now aboard a small salvage vessel called
The Rose
. It also seemed, from some of Trent’s garbled comments, that Satomi had encountered
The Rose
and quite possibly the black AI. This apparently explained how Isobel’s drive was functional again, following Spear’s sabotage.

Sverl settled down on his legs, resting the bottom of his bloated body on the floor. He felt tense, excited, and confused. He could perfectly understand that Satomi was out for revenge on Spear. He could also see why Spear was out for revenge against Penny Royal, judging by the potted biography he’d checked. But he couldn’t fathom Penny Royal’s motivations. Certainly they had changed—else the Polity wouldn’t have accepted the AI back into the fold. And now Sverl was questioning his own way forward. His earlier feeling that his long sojourn under this ocean was coming to an end was growing stronger. In fact, he was starting to feel puzzled as to what had motivated his own century-long procrastination on this world.

BLITE

Penny Royal had become decidedly chatty. Well, in its terms, Blite felt. As the
The Rose
approached the AI’s nameless planetoid—a place Blite had sworn never to visit—the AI had made an announcement: “I am here to obtain information about a human called Thorvald Spear, who it is likely has visited this place.” Terse replies then ensued to Blite’s further questions. He learned that this Spear was now travelling the Graveyard aboard Penny Royal’s former destroyer. Perhaps the AI had given Blite and his crew information to reassure them in some way. It wasn’t really working.

“So what’s it doing down there?” Brond wondered, when Penny Royal had left the ship.

“Obtaining information,” Blite replied, to which Ikbal issued a snort.

When Blite had seen Mona and her salvage crew down on the planet, he had felt a sudden altruistic impulse. He would talk to her and try to obtain the information Penny Royal required, whatever it was. That way the crew might be more likely to survive the experience. They might not have to go through the terror he and his crew had faced and, to a limited extent, learned to live with. However, he just wasn’t quick enough.

“Shit,” said someone called Tanner, on the surface. “Oh shit.”

Mona hadn’t been using particularly complex coding for their suit transmissions, so it hadn’t been difficult to listen in. They’d heard Mona tell those inside the cave system to get out just as Penny Royal was going in. Had Tanner just run into the AI? Would he survive the experience?

Blite fixed his gaze on the screen, which showed a close-up of Mona’s ship and the entrance the crew had been using to access the cave system. He watched as four space-suited figures stumbled out.

“Shit—I’m alive,” Tanner added.

“Let’s hope it lasts,” replied one of the others.

“Get back now,” instructed the one called Gareth, who was monitoring from their ship. The instruction was hardly necessary, because the four were already running towards it. “Where’s Mona?” Gareth asked.

“She was behind us,” Tanner replied.

After a long pause Gareth just repeated, “Get back to the ship.”

“I wonder what it’s doing with her?” asked Brond.

Greer, who had just entered the bridge with Martina, said, “Do we want to know?”

“We do want to know,” said Martina as she inserted herself into one of the seats. “Penny Royal seems to have changed. It seems to be showing none of its previous nasty inclinations. Even what it did to us, it quickly corrected. But let’s see how it behaves with other people. Let’s see if the change is real.”

“Golem,” said Brond.

Blite swung back to the screen to see five skeletal Golem marching out of the cave entrance, just as the four crewmen entered Mona’s ship. Two grav-sleds, with just a few chunks of salvage on each, trailed after them. They walked in lock-step over to the cargo cage, and waited as the two sleds slid into the cage, whereupon they followed them inside. Blite worked his controls, trying to focus in closer on their activity. They unloaded the meagre salvage from the sleds, then loaded one with other items already within the cage. Then all five seated themselves in the cage, while the reloaded sled floated back out and headed over to the cave entrance.

“Uh?” said Brond.

“Beats me,” Blite replied.

“I’m okay,” said a space-suited figure, now walking out of the entrance. Mona’s voice was shaky and she’d spoken as if she disbelieved her own words.

“What happened in there?” Gareth asked.

“Yeah,” said Blite, inserting himself into their space suit com, “what happened?”

“It’s rude to butt in like that, Blite,” said Mona, now walking towards the spaceship. “And what the hell are you doing ferrying that particular passenger about?”

“I didn’t have much choice in the matter—I don’t really control my own ship anymore.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said, the implication there that she couldn’t do anything about that. “Anyway, Penny Royal just read me like a book and now has all the information it requires. It informs me that we can take everything we have in the cargo cage right now and that we can return if we wish, but we won’t find anything of value.”