Neal Asher: The Engineer Reconditioned

“Another fucking drill?” she spat.

“The crew are gating aboard at the moment. We leave the system in one hour.” The voice was different all of a sudden. Diana realised the Hogue AI had just spoken to her and that it sounded excited. Usually it was locked into the net and too busy in other pursuits to even talk. Diana dropped her spear gun and opened up with her fastest crawl for the shore. She kicked off her flippers in the surf then ran down the grey strand to her beach house. She delighted in the strength of her body. To be this fit compensated for the times she had spent in hospitals being cell welded back together, just as the captaincy of the Hogue compensated for the years she had spent taking orders. She grinned to one side at the drone as it overtook her, carrying her flippers and spear gun. Her beach house was made of pine shipped around from the other side of the planet and was a replica of the chalets they built in Siberia in the twenty-second century shortly after the permafrost melted. At least, that’s what the catalogue said. Diana did not care so long as she had room for her weapon collection and gym — not for her the augmentations that were so popular in Security, as she considered it better to know her own strength.

Inside the chalet she stripped off her swimsuit and stepped under the shower. As she did this she heard the thump of her spear gun and flippers hitting the floor. Out of the shower she dried, pulled on her jump suit, looked around for anything she might need. There was just one thing. She took a large ceramal commando knife down from its wall display and slid it into her boot. It was unlikely that she would use it; she just took it because she felt uncomfortable without it.

In the back of the chalet stairs led down into an underground chamber that had been carved out of yellow rock of Callanasta. It always gave Diana a thrill to come down here. She rated this, her own runcible. The floor of the chamber was dark glass underneath which could be seen the shapes of machines and ducts. At the centre of the floor was a circular dais of black glass three metres in diameter. At the centre of this stood two nacreous bull’s horns three metres high between which shimmered the cusp of this Skaidon gate. No living human understood the science. Iversus Skaidon had, for the brief time he survived directly interfacing with an AI. The whole science was created in a matter of minutes. Diana watched the drone shoot into the cusp and disappear. There were people who used it just as casually, but Diana could not. Always there was a moment of reflection before she stepped through. She stepped through.

No time. No space, nor pain. Just a feeling of strangeness that came not from the transference itself but from the dislocation. The air was different, as was the gravity, sounds, smells, tastes. All in an instant.

“Captain, it isn’t a drill.”

Weapons comp: Eric Jabro.

“I figured that,” said Diana, striding away from the gate to the screens that showed Callanasta below. She needed that momentary reassurance. “Is everyone aboard?”

“I’ll check.”

They would be. Whatever this was, they had trained for it for the last eight years. She stared down at the planet. For eight years the planet had had tides, now it would have to do without for a while. The suit blew cold air up under her hood. Every so often a feather of the air in the room got through. It felt as if someone had passed a red hot iron near her face.

“If the air temperature is taken lower, vision will be restricted.” Chapra stood with her back against the lock door. Judd stood a pace or two ahead of her. Was this such a good idea? She looked down at the case of hexagonal containers she held. It weighed heavy on her arm. Would the creature understand the gesture? Would it even recognise what was in these containers?

“Let’s do it,” she said, her words disturbing the air in front of her face and letting some of the heat in. She started to sweat.

“The creature is aware of our presence,” said Judd. The Golem was linked in to Box and to the control room where Abaron sat biting his nails. Box had arbitrarily decided not to speak to them while they were in the isolation chamber as this might confuse the creature.

“There,” Judd pointed to where three triangular tentacles broke the surface and zeroed in on Chapra. The fronts of these tentacles were equilateral triangles about ten centimetres on the side. Contained in these triangles was an organic complexity that had something of a lamprey’s mouth, the underside of a starfish, and a computer interface plug.

“It is physically motionless now, though Abaron informs me that there is huge sensorium activity.”

“Fine,” said Chapra. She walked to the end of the jetty, lowered the case to the floor, then walked back to stand beside Judd. There was something strange… something made her shiver.

“We are being ultrasound scanned,” the Golem observed.

Chapra nodded. That was what she was feeling. Her partial catadaption made her more sensitive to some things. She thought about some of the structures they had studied in the creature’s head. There had been much they had been unable to fathom, but now they at least knew it used ultrasound. Just by looking at a human’s hands, eyes, and the structure of the brain it is not possible to know all of what a human is capable.

“Something like a dolphin,” said Judd. “There are also complex pheromones present in the air.”

“It’s talking to us,” said Chapra.

“It is scanning the case,” said Judd.

Before Chapra could think of any reply to that the creature propelled itself to the edge of the jetty. A tentacle poised above the case, came down, pulled the lid to one of the containers, hovered above it. Something like a butterfly’s tongue flickered from the end of the tentacle. There was a pause, then the creature sampled the other cases so fast its movements were a blur. The hand came out then snatched the case into the water, gone.

“Well, thank you, too,” said Chapra, but she was euphoric.

Back in the control room Abaron watched, fascinated as the creature coiled around its strange device and worked upon it in some strange manner. It opened the pots one at a time and fed tastes of the various compounds into it with its tentacles. It reached inside with its long fingers and shifted things, reached deep inside with dabs of the compounds. This was causing reactions inside the device and turning the surrounding water cloudy. Abaron could see it was growing rapidly. When it reached twenty centimetres across, the creature snared more crustaceans, feeding itself on their flesh and their shells into the device, which continued to grow. After one sleep period it lay a metre across, and was like some enormous seashell bearing the shape of a wormcast. Its outer surface was red and rough, but what he could see of the interior was iridescent white, smooth, with the tube ends turned out like lips. Movement was visible far inside, which under scan seemed the interplay of complex mechanisms, or the internal function of a living creature. The line was blurred.

“Have we any idea at all what that is?” asked Abaron.

“Could be anything. It might use it to prepare its food, make drugs, or it might even serve no purpose at all. Imagine an alien watching a human paint a picture… ”

“I think it serves a function.”

“It’s a step or two beyond complete analysis,” said Box in an unusual interruption. “But there are nanomechanical structures in there and as a consequence we must limit scan.” Chapra said, her voice flat, “Then its function could be anything, and might even be everything.”

“What do you mean?” asked Abaron.

“Nanomechanical — it’s likely it can make whatever it wants from the molecular level up. I would guess the only constraint to be materials, environment, and the size of those tubes.”