Neal Asher - The Engineer Reconditioned

“What has it got in there now?” Chapra asked the empty air. The projection flickered and changed, showed the creature harvesting some of the water weed and feeding it into the machine. The projection then flicked back to real time showing the creature uncurling and moving back from its machine. A cloud of small objects gusted from one white mouth.

“What is that?”

“Seeds and spores,” said Box. “Initial analysis shows—” Box’s voice abruptly cut off.

“Yes… shows what?”

The silence lasted for racked-out seconds. Chapra felt a chill. It was not often that an AI did not reply, was not there. To her knowledge this could only mean that Box’s entire processing power had come on line. And that power was phenomenal.

Box said, “I am sorry to delay. There are seeds and spores for one hundred different varieties of water weed.”

“But there was only one,” said Chapra, and only after she had said it did she realise what Box had told her. “Jesu, it can do that?”

Box said, “From the plant material it placed in the device the creature has made seeds and spores for one hundred different varieties of water plant. The genetic coding for sixty-four percent of these plant seeds is close enough to the original plant code for it to have altered that genome. The rest fall outside that area of probability as they are bihelical DNA.”

“It’s an engineer, a fucking genetic engineer.”

“Shall I continue?”

“Yes, sorry.”

“Many of the seeds seem to have their origins in a completely different environment from what is likely the creature’s native one but have been altered to survive in it. Five of the seeds are from Earth seaweeds.”

“You mean Earth-type?” asked Chapra, even though she knew an AI did not make that kind of mistake.

“Earth seaweeds, specifically three types of kelp and two bladder wracks. The kelps are Furzbelows or Saccorhiza Polyschides, Sea Belt or—”

“Yes, yes, you’ve made your point, but what does it mean?”

“You require my answer to that?”

“I would like it. I know what mine is.”

“Very well, this creature is or was a member of star-spanning race with a technology comparable if not superior to our own. At some time it or its kind visited Earth.”

“Is or was?”

“We have never before encountered a creature like this yet it has obviously travelled in human space. If its point of origin does turn out to be the system for which we are heading, then the creature might post date the extinction of its own kind by as much as five million years.”

“How long now until we get there?”

“Forty-eight solstan hours.”

Chapra nodded to herself and returned her attention to the projection.

“Hell,” she said. “What now?”

The creature had placed the sample pots on the jetty, each of which contained something.

“I’m going down there.”

“Judd is on his way.”

“Yes, I’m sure he is.”

Diana unclipped the restraining bar from her seat as the interface helmet automatically disconnected itself from her head, from her mind. Abruptly she was human again; limited to a small and fragile bipedal form. It was to be a god to interface with the Cable Hogue . It was also very tiring.

“Everything nominal,” said Jabro, as if he expected no answer.

“Nominal,” said Diana, still seeing the shore scenes from Callanasta’s surface. The tsunami had been ten metres high, but the shore baffles had absorbed most of its energy. There had been only minor flooding in some coastal areas. No deaths. But then not many people lived on that world.

“We should do a weapons test before arrival,” said Jabro. Behind his back Orland grinned at Seckurg, the token Golem on the bridge.

“Why should we?” asked Diana, her face straight.

“We don’t want anything to go wrong at the other end,” said Jabro, just as straight-faced.

“Hogue,” said Diana, addressing the ceiling as was the wont of any addressing an AI, the location of which they were unsure. “Give us a vector on something to blast.”

“Asteroid field two hours away at present speed. Navigation hazard and mostly the size of Separatist dreadnoughts. Nice that,” said Hogue with relish.

“How long with the Laumer engines?”

“One hour. Engines still on diagnostic.”

“Take them off that and put them online. This is a priority mission.” Deep in the guts of the Cable Hogue , banks of crystalline cylinders phased red-violet then off the visible spectrum. The force holding the ship under the surface of underspace dragged it deeper and slammed it forward. The energy expended was such that the ship left a visible trail behind it in realspace; self-created antimatter sparkled into oblivion as it connected with stray hydrogen atoms and left black lines like stretch marks across vacuum.

One hour later the Cable Hogue flashed into existence in a field of asteroids with a dispersion of thousands of kilometres. Asteroids glowed and bloomed into expanding spheres of plasma. Jabro segmented an asteroid the size of Earth’s moon, then hit each segment with quark bombs. The resultant flash was mistaken as a nova on a distant world, a hundred years on.

“That cost us,” said the ship AI, but Jabro was laughing like a maniac and did not hear. Diana smiled to herself, knowing Hogue would not have allowed Jabro access to that particular weapons bank if the cost had been prohibitive. The cost later turned out to be a twenty minute stopover in the troposphere of a gas giant for refuelling, then the Hogue really opened up with its Laumer engines. The result was called The Cable, and it glowed in the skies of many a world for decades.

The heat licked at the edges of the air blast on Chapra’s face as she entered the isolation chamber. It almost seemed malevolent. Judd walked out ahead of her, to the edge of the jetty, and studied the containers. The creature was floating about ten metres out and Chapra felt that faint sensation that told her she was being ultrasound scanned. After a moment she followed Judd and peered down into the containers.

“A gift?” she wondered. She squatted down and looked closely. Three of the containers held small quantities of metallic powder. There were small quantities of crystalline substances in a couple of others, and in the remaining three were minute copies of the containers themselves. Chapra reached inside and took one out. Like the originals it was transparent. There was a mere fleck of something inside it. Judd said, “The creature showed increased scanning activity when you spoke and it is showing it again now.”

Chapra stood up. “Perhaps it understands that this is how we communicate. I imagine that it communicates using ultrasound and pheromones — not an easy language to translate.” She stooped and took up four of the containers. Judd took up the other four.

“I don’t think these are a gift,” she continued. “I think the creature is letting us know its requirements.” She turned to the door then and halted in surprise. Abaron, dressed in a totally-enclosing environment suit, stood just inside the chamber.

“Abaron.” She could think of nothing more to say.

“There is a communication for you,” he said, his voice grating from the PA of the suit. He quickly turned back to the door, hit the control to open it, went through. Chapra and Judd followed him through the lock. In that little chamber Abaron removed his mask while Chapra flicked back her hood. His face was pouring with sweat.

“Is that suit malfunctioning?” asked Chapra sweetly, then damned herself for insensitivity — at least he was trying. She shook her head. “What do you mean ‘a communication’?”

“A priority message from a place called Clavers World,” he said.