Charles Stross - Singularity Sky

Shadows fell across the gray cylinder like the edge of eternity, sharp-edged with the unnatural clarity of vacuum. Inspection plates hung open at various points along the hull of the ship; disturbingly intestinal guts coiled loose, open to the remote manipulator pods that clung to it by many-jointed limbs. It resembled a dead, decaying whale being eaten by a swarm of lime green crabs. But it wasn’t dead, Vassily realized: it was undergoing surgery.

The ship was like a marathon runner, being overhauled by surgeons in hope of turning him into some kind of cyborg prodigy to compete in the ultimate winner-take-all sporting event. The analogy with his own, slightly sore head did not escape Vassily: it struck him that the most radical preparation was essential for the struggle ahead. He could already feel the new connections, like a ghost of an undefined limb, firming up somewhere just beyond the edge of his perceptions. Another three days, the medic had assured him in the morning, and he’d find himself able to start training the cranial jack. They’d given him a briefcase full of instructions, a small and highly illegal (not to say horrifically expensive) tool kit, and a priority travel pass to the orbital station on an Air Defense shuttle, bypassing the slow space elevator.

“Procurator Muller, I presume?” He turned. A trim-looking fellow in the pale green uniform of His Majesty’s Navy, a lieutenant’s rings on his cuffs. He saluted. “At ease. I’m Second Lieutenant Sauer, shipboard security officer for the Lord Vanek . Is this your first time up here?” Vassily nodded, too tongue-tied to articulate a response. Sauer turned to face the window. “Impressive, isn’t she?”

“Yes!” The sight of the huge warship brought a great wave of pride to his chest: his people owned and flew such ships. “My stepbrother is on one of them, a sister ship — the Skvosty .”

“Oh, very good, very good indeed. Has he been there long?”

“Three — three years. He is second fire control officer. A lieutenant, like yourself.”

“Ah.” Sauer tipped his head on one side and regarded Vassily with a brightly focused gaze. “Excellent.

But tell me, how good is this ship, really? How powerful do you think it is?” Vassily shook his head, still dazzled by his first sight of the warship. “I can’t imagine anything grander than a ship like that one! How can anyone build better?”

Sauer looked amused. “You are a detective, and not a cosmonaut,” he said. “If you had been to naval college, you would be aware of some of the possibilities. Let us just say, for the moment, that they wouldn’t have named it after old Ernst Ironsides if it wasn’t the best ship we’ve got — but not everyone plays by the same rules as we do. I suppose it’s only fair, then, for us to play a different game — which is of course precisely why you are here and we are having this conversation. You want to protect that ship, and the Republic, don’t you?”

Vassily nodded eagerly. “Yes. Did my CO let you know why I’m here?”

“I have a full briefing. We take anything that might compromise shipboard security extremely seriously; you won’t be able to work in restricted areas, but as far as I’m concerned, you’re welcome to go anywhere that isn’t controlled — and by arrangement, I’m sure we can help you keep an eye on your yard-ape. To tell the truth, it’s good for us that you are available for this duty. We have more than enough other problems to keep track of without stalking contractors on the job, and as long as the problem gets wrapped up satisfactorily in the end, who cares whose turf is turned over, eh?” At this point, Vassily realized that something odd was going on, but being inexperienced, he didn’t know quite what could be the matter. Nor did he want to push Sauer, at least not this soon in their acquaintance. “Can you show me where Springfield is working?”

“Unfortunately”—Sauer spread his hands—“Springfield is actually on board at this very minute. You realize that he is working on the interstellar propulsion system itself?”

“Oh.” Vassily’s mouth made a round “O.” “You mean I’ll have to go aboard?”

“I mean you can’t go aboard — not until you’ve been checked out by medical, received security clearance, gone to three orientation briefings, and been approved by the old man — which won’t be until tomorrow at the earliest. So, for the time being, I had better show you to the transient officers’

quarters — you have the same privileges as a midshipman while you are on Admiralty turf.”

“That would be great,” Vassily agreed earnestly. “If you’d lead the way …?” Meanwhile, the first of the Festival’s entourage of Critics was arriving in orbit around Rochard’s World.

Once part of a human civilization that had transmigrated into its own computing network, the Festival was a traveling embassy, a nexus for the exchange of cultural information between stars. It was primarily interested in other upload cultures, but anyone would do at a pinch. It had zigged and zagged its way through the sphere of inhabited worlds for a thousand t-years, working its way inward from the periphery, and all the time it had asked only one thing of its willing or unwilling hosts: Entertain us !

The Festival was sharply constrained by the density of information that could be crammed into the tiny starwisps that carried it across the interstellar gulf. Unlike a normal upload civilization, the Festival couldn’t manufacture its own reality with sufficient verisimilitude to avoid the normal hazards of life in a virtual universe; it was a desert plant, existing as a seed for years at a time between frantic growth spurts when the correct conditions arose.

Like most circus caravans, the Festival accumulated hitchhikers, hangers-on, and a general fringe of camp followers and parasites. There was room for millions of passengers in the frozen mind-cores of the starwisps, but no room for them to think between stations. Trueminds aestivated during the decade-long hops between planetary civilizations; simple, subsentient supervisors kept the starwisps on course and ran the autonomic systems. On arrival, the servitors built the necessary infrastructure to thaw and load the trueminds. Once contact had been achieved and a course of action decided upon, any residual capacity would be made available to the passengers, including the Critics.

A foam of diamond was growing in orbit around Sputnik, the outer moon of Rochard’s World. Strange emulsions stirred within some of the bubbles, a boiling soup of nanomachine-catalyzed chemical reactions. Other bubbles faded to black, soaking up sunlight with near-total efficiency. A steady stream of tanks drifted toward the foam on chaotic orbits, ejecta from the mining plants in the outer system.

Within the bubbles, incarnate life congealed, cells assembled by machine rather than the natural cycle of mitosis and differentiation. Thousands of seconds passed, an aeon to the productive assemblers: skeletons appeared, first as lacy outlines and then as baroque coral outcroppings afloat in the central placentory bubbles. Blood, tissues, teeth, and organs began to congeal in place as the nano-assemblers pumped synthetic enzymes, DNA, ribosomes, and other cellular machinery into the lipid vesicles that were due to become living cells.

Presently, the Critics’ bodies began to twitch.

The door to the study opened and a liveried footman entered. “Commodore Bauer to see the admiral,” he announced.

“Sh-show him in, then!”

Commodore Bauer entered the Admiral’s study and saluted. Seated behind an imposing hardwood desk in the center of the huge room (paneled in ferociously expensive imported hardwoods, with raw silk curtains and not a little gold leaf on the cornices), the admiral looked tiny: a wizened turtle sporting a walrus moustache, adrift on a sea of blue-and-silver carpet. Nevertheless, he was in good condition today, wearing his uniform, resplendent with decorations and ribbons, and seated in a real chair.