The Line of Polity (36 page)

"How large and how fast?" Thorn asked.

"I'm told that a hooder once grabbed a proctor, plus his aerofan, from a hundred metres up in the air. As to how fast they move — faster than a man can run, and they hunt grazers that move at a similar rate to the grazers on Earth."

"Like gazelle?"

Stanton glanced at him. "If that's a grazer on Earth, then yes."

"This is all very interesting," said Jarvellis, "but what do we do now?"

Standing up, Stanton replied, "I'm for stretching my legs outside. Anyone coming?" He looked from Thorn to Jarvellis. "Lyric can listen for any signals coming in from them."

As he headed away through the entrance tunnel, Jarvellis turned to Thorn. "You know, every time I land here it confirms for me that the Theocracy has the right idea."

"Living safe in their cylinder worlds?"

"Safe anywhere you're not likely to get eaten," she replied.

Aphran and Danny entered the bridge pod first, soon followed by five other Separatists who looked both tired and frightened. Skellor observed them as they halted just inside the doors and showed no inclination to come further in, and through their augs he sensed the gritty taste of their fear and their confusion at what they were seeing.

Nodding to the command-crew chairs he said, "Take your places."

With their eyes widening in horror, they stared at the chairs with the growths poised underneath them like grasping claws. Through most of them, he sensed continued fear and confusion, but from Aphran he felt sudden panic at her partial understanding of what he wanted. He reinforced the order with something like a mental slap that jerked them all into motion. Inevitably it was Danny who responded first, and was soon in the seat nearest to Skellor.

"You don't need to do this," said Aphran tightly, fighting all the way but unable to stop herself from sitting down.

Skellor did not bother to reply. Whether or not he actually needed to do what he was doing was irrelevant — he was doing what he
wanted
to do, and because he could. With the seven now seated, he started the Jain structure growing again, observing it climbing around the backs of each chair, fingering over the arms, and fumbling at the clothing of the seven Separatists. At the first penetration of his skin, the man on the end groaned in pain, then his groan was cut off as the filaments penetrated his spine and rapidly made connections as they sped up to his brain. Skellor then shunted over programs to run the man and programs for him to run. Where the man's own experience or memory or skill conflicted with what was now required of him, it was erased — chalk wiped from black slate. Drooling in his chair, the Separatist took control of the almost irrelevant systems of life-support.

Aphran, Skellor noted, was making weak whimpering sounds as an extension of the structure slid over her shoulder and rose up by the side of her face and hung poised there like a cobra. She showed the whites of her eyes as she tried to peer round at it, but was unable to turn her head. She yelled once when it struck, and thereafter lost herself as she unwillingly gained control of the weapons systems of the
Occam Razor
. But she did not control them as a human being — she controlled them as a submind of Skellor, an extension, a useful tool that possessed as little self-determination as a trigger. Aphran did not drool; she just slumped in her seat and her face lost any vividness of expression it had once possessed.

The others followed, one after the other, and as he delegated control of systems, Skellor freed up much processing power within himself in which to more fully view and understand his conquest. The
Occam Razor
was a formidable ship, but it was not yet entirely his. Such had been the destructiveness of the burn Tomalon had initiated, there were huge sections of the vessel that Skellor could not yet even see, let alone control. He realized now that he needed a breathing space in which to grow the Jain structure throughout the whole ship, and he understood that here was not the best place to initiate that chore. Using another member of his crew as a sophisticated search-engine — an informational bloodhound — soon revealed to him a simple recording of a conversation that gave him all the information he required. He smiled nastily to himself: so Dragon was going there, outside the Polity, to a world that was utterly primitive by comparison — a place where it would be easy to still the wagging of tongues. With a half-nod to that member of his crew who controlled the U-space engines, he had the
Occam
taken under, and away. Then, when — through the Jain substructure — he experienced underspace utterly unshielded, he screamed. And one second after, his command crew mimicked him exactly.

12

As she read she could see it would soon be time for the boy to go to bed, for his expression was becoming increasingly glazed. Checking ahead she saw that there wasn't all that much more to read and realized that the boy would soon be taking a greater interest

"On the third day he came into the realm of the gabbleduck, and found that many years had passed since the faithless had come to test themselves, and it had also been many years since the creature had fed, and to Brother Serendipity it seemed but a mound of skin and bone." The woman bit her lip, then pulled her chair round beside her son's, so he could see the picture in the book. The gabbleduck appeared as a pyramidal monstrosity looking down on the little man. Behind the man the heroyne towered hugely, and coiled on the ground behind it rested the siluroyne, picking at its hatchet teeth with one claw. All three creatures had in their expressions something like suppressed amusement. The boy indeed started to pay more attention now.

" 'Please feed me for I have not eaten in many a year and am fading away,' spake the gabbleduck. 'Why should I feed you when, strengthened by my food, you might riddle me to my doom?' asked the good Brother. 'You have my promise that it will be otherwise,' the gabbleduck replied. 'Swear in the name of God and in the name of his prophet Zelda Smythe,' the Brother demanded. And so swore the gabbleduck, and in recompense ate the last third of the meat cake gifted by the old woman. That night none dared approach Brother Serendipity and his three protectors as they came at last in sight of the boundary stone of Agatha Compound."

As the cold-coffin opened, Cormac saw a pterodactyl head poised over him, as if contemplating the opening of a can of food. For a second he felt utterly vulnerable, but his previous assessment of their current situation inside the landing craft — inside Dragon — had not changed. If Dragon wanted to kill them, then there was nothing they could do about it. Ignoring the head, he pushed himself up from the coffin and to one side. Turning in midair, he also ignored the always painful return of feeling as he reached over to the adjacent locker and removed his clothing. Only when he was dressed, and with Shuriken strapped to his arm and his thin-gun in his pocket, did he turn to observe Dragon.

"You interfered with the timings on the coffins," he said.

A mass of tentacles once again filled the airlock, but some of them, he now saw, snaked through the air to penetrate much of the craft's instrumentation.

"Your timings were wrong. We are already off Calypse and you would otherwise have slept for one solstan week more," Dragon replied.

Cormac rubbed his arms and, after pulling himself down to the floor with one of the many wall handles, he stamped his feet on the deck. Glancing around the inside of the craft, he thought for a moment that Apis had also thawed up, then realized that what he was seeing was the boy's exoskeletal suit strapped upright to a handle right by his coffin. He next saw Gant sitting utterly still in the co-pilot's chair: he too had shut himself down for the duration of the journey, but it seemed strange that he had not roused by now, for surely any unexpected sounds or movements would have woken him instantly. Cormac noticed that one of the draconic tentacles had snaked up the side of the chair and penetrated the Golem's side.

"Why have you woken me alone, then?" Cormac asked.

"The only way to win is to become."

Ah, it was going to be one of those conversations — a kind of verbal chess in which he did not know the value of the pieces played. Cormac decided not to dignify such an opaque comment with a reply.

"You referred to 'the enemy' being aboard the
Occam Razor,
and I presumed that to mean the Jain. Were the Makers — your makers — once at war with them?" he asked.

"It is not
they
any more."

"You mean the Jain are a dead race?"

"I mean it is not a race."

"Is the rumour true that you enjoy speaking a lot and saying nothing?" Cormac asked, getting irritated.

The head turned towards the cockpit, where a mass of something with the consistency of raw liver darkened the front screen. However, one of the lower screens came on, to display a view
outside
Dragon. It revealed the swirled opal face of the gas giant Calypse, with two moons poised nearby. From the nearest of these moons, some sort of structure feathered out into space, small ships moving about it like beetles over a pile of twigs.

"That's Flint — and that structure some sort of shipyard, I would guess. Why did you come into realspace out here? Surely closer in would have been better? You could have hit the laser arrays and been out before they had a chance to respond."

"I am not planning to leave."

Great.

"That still doesn't tell me why you're this far out."

"Let them tremble at my presence. Let them see!"

Its final bellow had Cormac clapping his hands over his ears. He saw tentacles retracting; Gant jerking, then abruptly whipping his head round. Behind him, the cold-coffins began to open.

"What the hell?" asked Gant.

"I begin," said Dragon, quietly now, and suddenly the very air in the craft seemed taut with energy. Behind him, Cormac heard Mika groan, then Apis asking a question — but he could not distinguish the words because they became so distorted. Huge pressure built, so it felt to him as if his head must implode. Then there came an immense sound, as of two seconds broadcast from inside a hurricane, and in this vast exhalation the tension and pressure drained away. The screen became a distorting lens showing the view down a long tunnel towards the shipyard. As it settled back to a normal view, the yard disappeared inside a pillar of fire, ships tumbling out into space, some burning and some breaking apart, a crater now glowing in the face of the moon.

Then they were moving, Calypse and its moons dropping behind.

"Vengeance is mine, saith Dragon," the head intoned.

The shaking of her room had been enough to bring Eldene to the surface of slumber, but not enough to hold her there. It was the constantly increasing cacophony in Pillartown One that finally dragged her back to the surface and held her there. She had been lying awake, but just too comfortable to move for quite some time, when the door opened and the lights came on.

"Come on, slugabed, you've slept long enough I think," said Fethan.

Feeling a sudden flushing of guilt at her unaccustomed laziness, Eldene quickly sat up in bed and observed the old man unshouldering first a rifle then a heavy backpack and depositing them on the floor. Now finding she was completely naked, she realized Fethan must have undressed her after she had collapsed into this bed last night. Embarrassment added to her discomfort.

"How long have I been asleep?" she asked, clasping the clean pale blue sheets about herself, and noticing how filthy were her hands in comparison.

"About half as long again as you're used to."

Wiping a hand over her face Eldene studied her surroundings with somewhat more attention than previously. That this — the largest and most airy room she had ever slept in — should be found underground was a constant surprise.

Fethan pointed to an arched entrance over to one side. "There's a shower in there with hot water and other luxuries you could easily get accustomed to. You've got an hour before we set out again, so you'd best get moving, girl."

Eldene glanced in the direction he indicated, but felt little inclination to get out of bed naked — even if the old man had undressed her last night.

"Where are my clothes?" she asked at last.

"Threw 'em away," he replied. "There's some new kit in this pack for you."

"What's the hurry? And where are we going?"

Fethan stepped over and sat on the edge of her bed. "A ship's just come in with new supplies, and I thought you'd like to see it. It's not far to go, but Lellan's limiting the number of trips out to visit it in case the activity is spotted, so this'll be our only opportunity." He then abruptly stood up, perhaps finally realizing why Eldene seemed uncomfortable. "Did you get all that Carl was telling you when we arrived here?" he asked.

"Some of it," Eldene replied, for she had been almost dead on her feet whilst Carl lectured her.

"So do you remember where tunnel seventeen is?"

"Where the river comes in?"

"That's it," said Fethan. "If you're interested, be there in one hour." He grinned slyly and headed for the door. As soon as he was gone, Eldene kicked the covers back and went to use the shower. She had to stay with Fethan, for without him she just did not know what to do — this was perhaps the most difficult aspect of going from a life of virtual slavery to one that offered choices. In the shower, she was delighted to discover the hot water, scented soap, and large warm towels, though she could not spare the time to luxuriate. She washed quickly and methodically, dried herself thoroughly, then hurried over to the backpack he had delivered. Before opening it, she picked up the rifle — the same sort as those carried by Lellan and the others — and inspected the thing. She doubted this was Fethan's own, and left here by mistake — she was coming to realize that Fethan did not often do anything without purpose — so he must have specially left it for her. She dropped the weapon on the bed, and tried not to wonder what the provision of this object might mean about her life from now on.