Neal Asher: The Voyage of the Sable Keech

‘What else have we got here?’ he asked, eyeing his notescreen manifest.

‘A really big lump of wood,’ replied Forlam. ‘I think you’ll know what it is as soon as you see it.’

‘I’ll be buggered,’ Ron later said, while eyeing the huge ship’s keel they had transported to Spatterjay.

By all Polity definitions Taylor Bloc knew he was an AI: the memcording of the man running entirely in crystal. That cyber mechanisms moved his dead and chemically preserved body was irrelevant for definition. But he retained his flesh, his skeleton, and his own peculiar belief in resurrection. Bloc’s beliefs ran contrary to those of others and, as always, they were trying to thwart him. He was angry, he was always angry.

In the embarkation lounge on Coram, the moon of Spatterjay, he walked jerkily around a bumbling beetle-bot that was meticulously polishing the floor, and stepped into a private conferencing booth, where he removed his mask and slid back his hood.

‘I must speak to the Warden,’ he said succinctly, as soon as he saw that the privacy field had come on.

‘Hello, dead man,’ said a submind.

Bloc was momentarily taken aback. After a pause he went on, ‘I said, I want to speak to the Warden.’

‘Can do, but I warn you he’s not the soul of patience nowadays—not that he ever was.’

‘Okay, I’ve got it now, Seven. What do you want, Bloc?’

‘I’ve been informed that my cargo is not to be delivered to its intended destination.’

‘Yeah, no shit?’ replied a bored voice.

‘That is breach of contract.’

‘Spatterjay is not a Polity world, reif. You don’t talk to me, you talk to the Boss.’

‘Boss?’ Bloc paused, then continued regardless, ‘The agreement was that we would lay the keel on Chel—the Embassy Island.’ He blinked and his spectacle irrigator started working. He shut it down and his constant internal diagnosticer immediately threw up the message in his visual cortex: IRRIG @@#* SHUT??DOWN. Such corruptions were the inevitable result of the additional hardware his dead body now contained, but still it took him a moment to register what the Warden said next.

‘What?’

‘I said: have you got that in writing?’ the Warden repeated.

‘I can send you the package right now.’

‘I mean, have you got that in writing on paper signed by both parties?’

‘Paper?’

‘That’s how it’s done down on the surface. Now, why don’t you get yourself and your friends down there—you’re stinking up my base.’

Bloc took a step back. No AI had ever spoken to him like that before, though admittedly his experience of them was deliberately limited, as there were certain things about himself, and his companions, best kept secret from the artificial intelligences that ruled the Human Polity.

‘I am not… stinking,’ he said carefully. ‘My anosmic receptors are the most advanced, and I would have detected—’

‘Too late, Blocky boy. Old Sniper ain’t got much of an attention span.’

‘Sniper?’

The conferencing booth shut down and the privacy field turned off. Bloc stepped out backwards, then turned to his two companions. ‘We have to speak to the “Boss” apparently,’ he said.

Aesop replied, ‘That means we have to go down to the surface and take a ride on a ferry.’

‘Ferry?’ Bloc repeated.

‘No antigravity transport is allowed on the surface,’ Aesop continued. He and Bones remained securely masked and hooded, as Bloc had decided that to be best. Although he felt their kind should not have to hide themselves from the rest of humanity, the appearance of his two reified companions tended to draw more unwanted attention than even he himself.

‘No AG transport,’ Bloc repeated stupidly.

Aesop and Bones obeyed orders and provided information when it was lacking, but they were never solicitous in such service. Aesop said flatly, ‘If you recollect, that is why we chose to build a ship, for the mass transportation of reifications and amniotic tanks. It is also to be a monument to the Arisen One, and yourself of course.’

IRRIG. WARN: CELLULAR DAMAGE IMMINENT

Bloc turned his irrigator back on. He eyed his two companions through the spray, and his mind started working properly again.

‘Thank you, Aesop, I recollect precisely,’ he said, and began leading the way to where the planetary shuttles docked. He showed no sign of his earlier confusion, and now showed none of his present chagrin, which was easy enough when you were dead. But something was wrong. That glitch with his irrigator warning was a familiar one, but his memory lapse was something new, for Bloc’s memory had been perfect for two hundred years, ever since Bones and Aesop had murdered him back on his home world.

As the door to the coldsleep coffin crumped open before him, and as the feeling began painfully returning to his limbs, Janer told himself, ‘Never again.’

The mind had not wanted him to come here via the runcible for three good reasons. Something he was carrying came under the weapons proscription—which prevented travellers carrying arms above a certain power level through that same matter transmitter. Secondly, the ruler of Spatterjay might object to him coming here with hornets, and so block him. And, lastly, the mind did not want any Polity AIs nosing in on its business, since this was a private matter between hive minds.

‘You brought them buggers back with you?’ said a familiar voice.

‘Ron? Captain Ron?’

Establishing control over his limbs, Janer took a shaky step from the cold coffin. Cryogenic Storage was a chamber ringed with upright coffins similar to his own. The Old Captain was stooping over one of the cryocases stacked haphazardly in the centre of the room. He appeared little different to how Janer remembered him: bald-headed, leech-scarred and massive. He stood upright and grinned.

‘What the hell are you doing aboard?’ Janer asked.

‘I’m the Captain.’

‘I know that, but why are you aboard this old lugger?’

‘I’m the Captain of this old lugger.’

As far as Janer understood it, captaining a sailing vessel on the surface of Spatterjay did not qualify one to run a spaceship. Numerous questions came to mind, but all he managed was, ‘Uh?’

‘Been looking around for a few years,’ Ron added unhelpfully.

Janer turned to a nearby dispenser and took from it a disposable coverall. He then punched in for a hot coffee before donning the garment. This gave him time to get his thoughts in order. After sipping coffee he couched his question.

‘How come you have the know-how to run one of these?’ He gestured about him with the cup, spilling coffee.

‘Oh, I learnt all this stuff years ago, just never had the money to buy passage off-planet. But things have changed under the Boss, and now Hoopers can afford more than their next sack of dome-grown grub.’

Years ago.

Of course, that was it about the Old Captains: they were old. Ron had lived on Spatterjay for a very long time. Knowledge had always been accessible to him, if the means of employing it had not, since this world had been visited by space travellers for long before the runcible was set up here over two centuries ago. How much knowledge could you pack into your skull over such a period of time? Maybe, to Ron, the complexities of space travel were not too much of a bother. Then Janer remembered something else: Ron had fought in the Prador War. Perhaps he had known how to run spaceships even before coming here, the best part of a thousand years ago.

‘You’ve been on a trade route between here and somewhere else?’ Janer asked.

‘Nah, more of a circuit.’ He beckoned to Janer. ‘Come on.’