Neal Asher - The Gabble

‘So a hive mind got into space long before we did. I find that gratifying to hear,’ said Daes.

The Golem gazed at him speculatively. ‘Your misanthropy is well understood. You do realize that if you’d had it corrected you would not be in the situation you are now in.’

‘I liked my dislike of humanity. It kept me sane.’

‘Very amusing,’ said the Golem, turning back to the screen. The picture she now called up was of a small ovoid with complex mottling on its surface. Daes noted it, then gazed through the windows and saw the sky becoming dark blue and stars beginning to show. The planet had now receded. He pushed his face to the window to try and get a look down at it and saw only a shuttle glinting like a discarded needle far below.

‘This is the node. We know that it contains picotech and likely biofactured connections to its host’s brain. We first thought it some kind of augmentation.’

‘Well that seems the most likely,’ said Daes, turning back.

‘Yes, but this node is three centimetres long, two wide and has a density twice that of lead.’

‘So?’

The Golem looked at him. ‘Every cubic nanometre of it is packed with picotech. Under scan we have so far managed to identify two billion picomachines with the ability to self-replicate. They also all cross-reference. There is a complexity here that is beyond even Geronamid’s ability.’

There was a sound, slightly like a groan, from within the workings of the gravcar. Daes felt the artificial gravity come on and when he gazed out the windows now saw nothing but starlit space. As he turned to fire another question at the Golem his seat slapped him lightly on his back and the gravcar surged towards a distant speck. He decided to be annoyed.

‘Am I supposed to be impressed by all this?’

‘No,’ said the Golem. ‘You are just supposed to be thankful that you are still alive.’

Daes grimaced and peered ahead at the speck as it drew closer. ‘When can I speak to Geronamid?’

The Golem looked at him.

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘You never told me your name.’

‘It is my conceit to name this part of myself Hera,’ said a very small part of the AI Geronamid.

The speck resolved into a flat disc of a ship whose size did not become evident until they drew very close. What Daes had first taken to be panoramic windows set in the side of the vessel soon resolved into bay doors the size of city blocks. The ship had to be at least two kilometres in diameter.

‘This is where you are,’ said Daes.

‘Yes, the central mind is here,’ replied Hera.

The bay doors drew aside and the gravcar sped in then landed on a wide expanse of gridded bay floor. The moment the doors closed behind there came a boom of wind as atmosphere was restored in the bay. The car’s seals automatically disengaged and Geronamid’s Golem opened her door. Daes quickly opened his door and followed.

‘Is the node here?’ he asked as they approached a dropshaft.

‘It is, as are the remains of the Csorian, and much of their recovered technology.’

They stepped into the irised gravity field and it dropped them down into the ship. Ten floors down they stepped out into a wide chamber filled with old-style museum display cases.

Hera led him past an aquarium containing corals in pastel shades of every colour, past a tank containing plants that bore translucent fruit like lumps of amber, a case containing pieces of coral with something like circuitry etched or grown on their inner faces. She brought him finally to the tank containing the remains of the Csorian — whole and almost lifelike.

‘It wasn’t in this condition surely?’ he said.

‘No, only four per cent of it was recoverable.’

‘What about DNA?’

‘Scraps only. Not enough to build up a large enough template.’

‘AIs did it with dinosaurs.’

‘In that case there was more material to work with. What is in this case is all we have of the Csorians.. Here, this is what we have come to see.’

She led him past the Csorian to a small bell jar over a jade pedestal. Underneath the jar lay the node — in appearance a simple pebble. Daes stepped closer. As he did so he felt a slight displacement, a sense of dislocation, and from this he knew that the ship was on the move.

‘Where are we going?’

‘A living world without sentient life. You must be isolated while the node does whatever it does.’

‘What?’ Daes turned to her to protest. Her hand moved so fast he hardly registered it moving. Fingertips brushed his neck and from that point he felt his body turning to lead.

‘Don’t worry. I’ll be with you,’ said Hera, as he slipped into darkness.

Something huge was poised on the edge of his being, not inimical, but dangerous and vast and ready to drown him out of existence. Anton was a small and insignificant thing on the ground at his feet even though armies were marching out of his severed neck. Daes decided to laugh and leap into the sky, and this being his wish he did so, for he knew this was a dream. When he woke, though, that huge something was still there.

‘How do you feel?’ asked Hera.

Daes opened his eyes and stared at the domed ceiling. He turned his head aside and saw the Golem sitting in a form chair beside the sofa he lay upon. They were in a comfortably furnished house of some kind. Greenish light filtered in through the wide windows.

‘Where are we?’ he asked.

‘The world only has a number.’

‘I thought you said this was uninhabited,’ said Daes, sitting up and studying their surroundings.

‘Geronamid prepared this place for you some time ago,’ said Hera.

‘For me?’

‘Well, for the next person under a death sentence when it decided to implant the node.’

‘I was lucky that time occurred when it did.’

‘Yes, five seconds later and someone else would have been chosen.’

Daes stood and stretched his neck. ‘It’s in me then?’

‘Yes, you will not know it is there until the picotech starts to work.’

‘And when will that be?’

‘We do not know. It is not working at the moment, though.’

‘How can you be sure of that?’

‘I am taking readings from numerous detectors implanted in your body.’

‘I didn’t give permission for that,’ said Daes.

Hera shrugged. ‘To put in a suitable parlance,’ she said, ‘tough.’

Daes stared at her for a long moment. It was all perfectly clear to him: Geronamid could do with him what it liked now.

‘What do I do while I wait for this node to. . activate?’

‘Explore, sleep, eat, all those things you would not be doing had your sentence been passed either five seconds later or earlier.’

‘Do you need to continually remind me?’

‘Yes, it would seem that I do.’

Without responding to that Daes turned and walked to the window. He gazed out at a wall of jungle twenty metres away. The intervening area had been scorched to grey ash, but even there the ground was scattered with reddish-green sprouts, and fungi like blue peas. A bewildering surge of feeling hit him: he wanted to be out there, to drive his fingers into the black earth, and to see and feel growing things.

‘You say that picotech isn’t working yet?’ he said.

When Hera did not reply he turned to her.

‘No, I said it wasn’t working, now I say that something is happening,’ she replied.

Daes swallowed a sudden surge of fear. What the hell was he doing here? He should have gone to the disintegrator. At least that would have been clean and quick, and right now he would know nothing, feel nothing.

‘What’s happening?’

‘I do not know,’ said Hera. ‘The node is reduced in size and picomachines are diffusing through your body. What they are doing will become evident in time.’