Strata (27 page)

Then Kin said, ‘Marco, can you see that round screen from your couch?’

‘I see it.’

‘It’s radar. Keep an eye on it. And now, perhaps I owe you an explanation …’

HELP
, said the screen.

Trying not to think about it, Kin lifted the occupant out of the chair, and sat down in front of the pleading letters. Keeping the hovering helmet in the top of her eye, she ran her hand over the arm.

Nothing happened, except that the screen now read
YOU
ARE
KIN
ARAD
.

‘That’s—’ Kin’s voice sounded faint in the closeness of the room. She cleared her throat. ‘That is correct,’ she said. ‘Who are you?’

WE
BELIEVE
YOU
HAVE
REFERRED
TO
US
AS
THE
DISC
MASTERS
,
ALTHOUGH
WE
CALL
OURSELVES
THE
COMMITTEE
.

‘It’s got a nice democratic ring about it. Let me see you.’

IS THAT AN EXPRESS WISH
?

‘Well, I’ve come a long way to meet you. This is hardly an intimate conversation, you must admit.’ Kin looked around; looking for doors, hidden cameras. The walls were blank.

YOU
MISUNDERSTAND
US
,
WE
ARE
MACHINES
.
COMPUTERS
,
JAGO
JALO
CALLED
US
,
WE
FAIL
TO
UNDERSTAND
YOUR
SURPRISE
.

‘I’m not surprised,’ lied Kin.

THEN
WE
SUGGEST
YOU
SUE
YOUR
FACE
FOR
SLANDER
.

‘Why do you need help? It’s me that needs help. What has happened to my friends?’

THEY
ARE
SAFELY
IN
PROTECTIVE
CUSTODY.
THEY WERE
TOO
VIOLENT
TO
BE
ALLOWED
TO
ROAM LOOSE,
OF
COURSE.
DO
YOU
WISH
THEM
TO
BE FREED,
AND
FOR
US
TO
PROVIDE
YOU
WITH
TRANSPORT
TO
YOUR
HOME
WORLD?
IF
YOU
SO
ORDER,
IT WILL
BE
DONE
.

‘I can order you?’

YOU
SIT
IN
THE
CHAIR.
THERE
IS
NO
OTHER INCUMBENT.
YOU
ARE
THE
CHAIRMAN.
THEREFORE YOU
CAN
GIVE
THE
ORDERS.
WE
IMPLORE
YOU
TO DO
SO
.

‘You can build me a ship?’

WE
BUILT
A
SHIP
FOR
JAGO
JALO.
WE
ASSISTED HIM,
DESPITE
ALL
THAT
HE
DID.
CHOICE
DOES NOT
EXIST
FOR
MACHINES
IN
MATTERS
OF
THIS NATURE.
JALO
CHOSE
TO
FLEE
THE
DISC
RATHER THAN
LEARN
MORE
ABOUT
IT
.

Kin considered this carefully. When she spoke, she spoke slowly.

‘You will give me a ship, but if I chose to leave the disc you won’t tell me any more about it?’

YES
.

‘But you said I could give the orders.’

YES.
HOWEVER,
WE
BELIEVE
WE
WILL
SHORTLY EXPERIENCE
A
SLIGHT
MALFUNCTION
IN
OUR AUDITORY
CIRCUITRY.
IT
MAY
PREVENT
US
FROM HEARING
ANY
SUBSEQUENT
ORDERS
.

Kin smiled. ‘Then there’s no choice, is there? Not against blackmail. Tell me about the disc.’

‘Kin,’ said Marco urgently. ‘There’s something on the screen.’

‘It’s about time,’ replied Kin. ‘Don’t worry.’

‘Yeah, I remember. Trust you. It’s bloody big.

What is it?’

‘It’s our launch vehicle.’

Kin leaned back in the oh-so-easy chair and stared at the blank screen for a long time.

‘You’re wearing out,’ she said. ‘That’s why the seas are going mad and the climate’s shifting. I understand that. The disc is a machine. Machines have a finite life. That’s why the Company builds planets.’

PLANETS
HAVE
A
FINITE
LIFE
.

‘A longer one. They don’t start to squeak on their bearings after half a million years.’

YOU
GLOAT
?

‘No. I keep thinking of a few hundred million people on a spaceship the size of a world, and then I think of all the things that can go wrong with a ship. I don’t gloat, I tremble with fear. And rage.’

She stood up and stomped across the room to ease the cramp in her muscles. It had been a long session, a subterranean travelogue of disc machinery. The earthquake machines stuck in her memory. All that ingenuity, to reproduce what any half-sized world did naturally. And the demons … well, at least she’d put a stop to the demons.

There was a click as Marco undid his straps and leapt towards the horseshoe panel. He peered at the screen, then glared out of the cabin.

‘Where the hell is it? It’s gone off the screen. What was it, Kin? The blip was bigger than a—’

Whump
. Beyond the windows the seashore exploded into a sandstorm.

Marco craned his head and looked up. Darkness filled the cabin as the sun was eclipsed.

Whump
.

Marco looked up at talons dropping out of the sky when the impossible bird stooped. Talons big enough to grip a ship. He made a small noise in his throat and took a dive in the direction of his couch.

Whump. Scrabble. Whump. Whumpwhump. Whumpwhump
.

The ship creaked as the claws took it gently. Then it bounded upward in a series of bone-shaking jerks.

The dome of the hub swung crazily below, and whirled away. The disc dropped after it, teetering across the sky until it was a blue and ochre wall. It paused there, then plunged back under the ship to loom for a moment on the other side.
Whump
.

Kin concentrated on the view above, to take her mind off the lurching, jerking universe. The talons all but covered the roof port, but she got occasional glimpses of the huge white wings, beating now with the slow rhythm of a tide.

Sound filled the cabin. It began in the painful ultrasonic, swooping down the scale like wet fingers being dragged across the windows of the soul.

High above the disc the roc stood on the air and sang.

There would be no more demons. She could see why there had been demons, demons were an idea that worked, but there would be no more.

The ones Kin had met had been almost human compared with some of the things force-bred in the quiet green laboratories under the hub. They policed the disc, haunted the hidden air vents and access shafts to the machinery, chased the venturesome from the rim. Occasionally they kidnapped a new Chairman, for the Committee.

The Chairmen. Kin stared at the blank screen, then glanced up at the hovering direct-link helmet over the chair. She had no intention of trying it for size, and the Computers hadn’t pressed her, but they had shown her how it was used.

The Computers ran the disc. They adjusted its tides, circulated its waters, counted its falling sparrows, toiled and spun for the lilies of its fields. But the disc’s builders had constructed them as servile mechanisms, lest the disc become too mechanical. A human had to tell them what to do.

In the seventy thousand years of the disc’s history there had been two hundred and eighty Chairmen, thrust in terror under the helmet. It gave them cold new knowledge.

Kin said she didn’t believe it.

‘You couldn’t take a Neolithic farmer and turn him into a planetary engineer,’ she protested.

WE
COULD.
THE
DISC
BUILDERS
CONSTRUCTED US
CLEVERLY
.

‘You won’t even tell me about the builders!’

The screen went blank.

Whump
. Kin gripped the edges of the couch.
Whump
. The roc didn’t fly, it simply bullied its way through the upper air, shovelling it aside with a sneer.

Talking was difficult when g-forces slapped and banged with a horrible rhythm. Silver managed it with the least discomfort.

‘I don’t believe it either,’ she said. ‘I can see what a device like the Disc would need.’
Whump
. ‘Needs a sapient caretaker. No machines could handle all the problems that might crop.’
Whump
. ‘Might crop up. But unless the creature was already a technical sophisticate, he would simply become mad.’

Kin braced herself for the next wingbeat. It didn’t come. Beyond the window she could see the roc’s wing outstretched, the tips of the huge feathers vibrating in the slipstream. The bird was starting its glide.

Half the Disc was spread before the canted cabin. Kin rolled out of her couch and swayed across the trembling deck until she could grasp a bulkhead.

The world was a bowl of jewels flung across the sky. Ahead, wearing the setting sun like the gemstone on a ring, was the Rim Ocean.

Roc slid on down the sky, staring at the sun with terrible bird eyes. Sometimes she shrugged her shoulders to dislodge the ice, which flashed and tumbled as it began the long fall.

Kin knelt on the floating platform and watched the microfigures of Silver and Marco thread their way through the tunnels.

Elsewhere Disc machines were lurching into action. She wondered what would have happened if some medieval farmer was Chairman now. Could he have helped the Computers start the long repair?

She stood up and ordered the platform to the walkway at the rim of the map hall, and hurried up the worn stairs to the interface room.

HALLO
, said the screen.

‘You don’t need me,’ said Kin. ‘I’ve given you all the instructions you need to repair yourself. It will take you a long time, but you can do it without affecting the biosp – oh boy, the biohemisphere, I suppose – too much. But you can’t go on like it – not unless you get fresh materials from outside.’

WE
KNOW.
ENTROPY
IS
AGAINST
US
.

‘You can’t go on cannibalizing old machines for spare parts. You may last another hundred years, that’s all.’

WE
KNOW
.

‘Do you care about the people on the surface?

THEY
ARE
OUR
CHILDREN
.

Kin stared at the glowing letters. Then she said softly: ‘Tell me about Jago Jalo. He must have seemed a godsend.’

YES.
WE
WERE
ALREADY
AWARE
THAT
THE
DISC WAS
DOOMED.
IN
THOSE
DAYS
WE
MAINTAINED
AN ARRESTOR
SCREEN
AGAINST
METEORITES.
IT
WAS COMPARATIVELY
EASY
TO
EXTRACT
THE
RESIDUAL VELOCITY
FROM
HIS
SHIP.
WE
WATCHED
HIM BRING
HIS
SMALLER
SHIP
WITHIN
THE
VAULT
OF HEAVEN.
UNFORTUNATELY
WE
COULD
NOT
CONTACT
HIM.
THAT
SHOULD
HAVE
MADE
US SUSPICIOUS
.