Neal Asher: Shadow of the Scorpion

"Digging up dinosaur bones," he told her, which wasn't strictly true, but sounded great. "And I am to be called Cormac from now on," he added. Seeing her fascination with both the bone digging and the name change, he began telling her all about his trip to Montana as they walked outside into the playground. What he found difficult to talk about was the name change, and how it had stuck when, just before their return here, his mother had started treating it with an almost frightening seriousness.

"Hey, Cormac!"

A ball was heading directly towards his head. Almost without thinking about it, he snapped up a hand and caught it. He glanced up, seeing that a security drone had spun on its post above. Had it decided the ball was going to hit him in the face it would have knocked the object out of the air with a well-aimed projectile of its own, or safely incinerated it. The drone, which was a submind of the school AI, would have had plenty of time to do this, since in the time it took Cormac to raise his hand to catch the ball it could probably have completed a couple of crosswords and read a book.

Cormac gazed across at Meecher, the boy who had thrown the ball. Meecher was one of the oldest boys in this school. Cormac wondered if, in another time, he would have been a school bully. Such a creature could not exist here, since the AI just watched too closely.

"There, I told you," said Meecher to a couple of his oppos.

Cormac threw the ball back, hard. The drone swivelled again. Meecher reached for the ball, but didn't get his hands together quick enough and it thumped into his solar plexus. He oomphed, then after a moment shrugged that off and went running after the ball. For reasons beyond the comprehension of an eight-year-old, the AI did not intervene all the time.

Rugged carpet grass coated the playground, and upon this rested play equipment in abundance including climbing frames and slides, and access to bats and balls, grav-skates and much else besides—though no information access since this was all about exercise and "interaction." Already someone was crying because he'd miscalculated a jump on one of the frames and a human attendant was hurrying out. The AI did not intervene in such circumstances: injury by malice was mostly not allowed, injury by stupidity was a learning process.

Running around the perimeter of the ground was a high fence, mainly to prevent balls from bouncing out onto the nearby road still traversed by some hydrocar ground traffic even though most people were now buying gravcars. Cormac joined in with a game of catch, in which the initial aim was to try and get the drone to intervene, but it turned its sensors resolutely away until Meecher tried a throw at the back of Culu's head, whereupon the ball disappeared in a puff of smoke and Meecher shrieked as briefly he became the target of an electron beam stinger. This hadn't happened for a while, since Meecher had been learning to control those impulses stemming from his stirring hormones.

Now the ball game was over, Cormac climbed a nearby frame and gazed about himself. Across the road was a row of balconied three-storey apartment buildings, roofed in photoelectric tiles and with self-contained waste composting and incinerating plants, and water recycling plants filling the gaps between blocks. Wide tree-lined pavements stretched in a curve round to a large water-park, and beyond that rose the mile-high edifices of city central. Gazing in the other direction, Cormac observed suburban sprawl which he knew ran all the way to the coast and beyond, where an underwater city lay. He continued staring in that direction until something began to nag at him, and he finally returned his gaze to the curving pavement.

At first glance it had looked like a car, but now it rose up onto its many legs, and waving its antennae, swung its head from side to side as if trying to pick up some scent. Two green eyes, peridots, seemed blind. It possessed what looked like short mandibles, but they probably weren't used for eating, more likely they were used to clean and maintain the particle cannon and two missile launchers residing where its mouth should have been.

War drone!

Surely this could not be the one they had seen in Montana? Ian Cormac felt certain it was, and he felt certain that it was looking for him.

The ship loomed like some tarnished bronze mountain, slowly being exposed as autodozers cleared the charred earth and stone around it. Some of the cleared areas were fenced off, but such was the work still to do that numerous points of access had to be left open for the equipment being used—hence the mosquito autoguns now replacing the guard units that had been ensconced in the surrounding spill piles.

Before a deep hole excavated in the ground—apparently where a main hold entrance had been opened—was a small town of bubble units. ECS personnel, not all of them in uniform, swarmed busily like ants before this behemoth.

"There's still Prador in there?" enquired Yallow.

"Certainly," Olkennon replied. "Too many hiding places and the exotic metals used in the ship's construction make it difficult to scan effectively."

"There have been problems?" Cormac suggested.

"Two of our people from Reverse Engineering disappeared about a month ago. We found their bones dumped below a hatch on the other side. Prador second- and third-children have been seen—usually running away."

"Hence our presence," said Cormac.

"Hence your presence," Olkennon agreed noncommittally.

Cormac was not so sure he believed her. Since the installation of the autoguns in the area they had been guarding, it was inevitable that they would be reassigned, but he felt a suspicion that their reassignment had something to do with Carl and the subtle interrogation they had undergone from Agent Spencer. She had wanted to know every detail of recent events, and much detail of their past association with Carl; then, with a smile and a wave, she departed—giving them no explanation for her questions. He guessed that being grunts, it was not necessary for them to know.

Departing the gravcar that had brought them down by the ship, Yallow and Cormac followed Olkennon towards the bubble-unit encampment. The soil here was orange and dotted with flintlike rocks and pieces of what looked like petrified wood. Such details Cormac took in, but his eyes kept straying back to the Prador vessel. Some structures on the exterior had survived the impact. He recognised the stubs of once-jutting frameworks that surrounded the throats of rail-guns, the remains of reflector shields around lasers—some for communication and some for combat. Inset ports gleamed like spider-eyes around a jutting section like a balding head—the upper part of the squashed pear-shape of the vessel.

Soon they arrived at the encampment, where a man wandered out to meet them. He looked old, which was an uncommon occurrence with the treatments available nowadays. Cormac had seen people like him before and usually found that their lives were so busy they didn't get round to taking the treatments until something actually pushed them into it. His head hair was as grey and wiry as his beard, and his civilian clothing showed signs of wear and the occasional chemical stain—sure sign that he was the type who didn't give a fig for physical appearance.

The man held out a grubby calloused hand, which Olkennon shook, then he turned to study Cormac and Yallow. "So these are the two who will be going in with me."

"They will, Professor Dent."

"Very well," he sighed, "let's get moving."

Olkennon turned to the two of them. "You understand your duties?"

Both Cormac and Yallow nodded.

"Keep him alive," she said, then abruptly turned on her heel and marched off.

Professor Dent led the way into the encampment of bubble units, onto main gratings, then to a narrow packed-soil alley, finally stopping at a door and opening it. They all trooped inside and, scanning the cluttered interior, Cormac felt his assessment of the man confirmed. However, no matter how apparently slovenly his appearance or how messy his dwelling, Cormac knew that the professor would not have been here had not some high-level AIs considered his presence important. Dent picked up a large case with a shoulder strap then pointed to two large backpacks resting beside a desk occupied entirely by a tangled mess of Prador technology.