Shadow of the Scorpion

13

As Cormac stepped outside the school he scanned around eagerly for a sight of the war drone—the one they had seen in Montana and which now seemed to be here—but there was no sign of it.

"Bye bye, Cormac!"

He glanced round and saw Culu standing with her father.

He waved. "Bye, Culu!"

Her father was a bulky bald-headed man in baggy pyjama-like clothing that disguised the physical cybernetic additions to his torso, but which could not disguise his twinned augs, shiny chrome additions on either side of his head. Cormac's mother, on one of the few occasions she met Cormac outside the school, said Culu's father was a «traditionalist» because he felt the necessity to pick Culu up every day, and it had taken Cormac some time to figure out what she meant. Only stumbling across a historical text about twenty-first-century paedo-hysteria did he understand the old tradition of always picking up one's daughter at the school gates. His mother also said something about minority-group paranoia also being traditionalist—a comment he still did not quite understand.

The only other individual being picked up at the gates by his parents was Meecher, but Cormac suspected that had something to do with Meecher's behaviour today. He watched as Meecher's mother smacked him hard across the back of the head then pointed to their hydrocar. Meecher climbed in and sat down, while his father and mother stood outside discussing him. Cormac watched them until they climbed into the car and headed off. He waited a little longer, dawdled for a while because he did not much enjoy sharing public transport with his fellow pupils, which was apparently a trait that worried the school authorities.

Eventually he began heading down the pavement in the direction many of the other pupils had gone—towards the nearest bus stop. Still scanning his surroundings for some sight of the war drone, he noticed the presence of numerous gravcars parked here and there in the area, most of which seemed to be occupied by one or two individuals. This was odd, since usually such vehicles occupied the roofports of the residences here, or if from outside the area, they parked on public roofports. Then a shadow loomed above and he glanced up expecting to see yet another car coming in to land, only to see a scorpion, black against the bright sky.

The drone descended fast and landed hard in the road flinging flakes of plasticrete and gritty dust. Simultaneously, surrounding gravcars accelerated, blocking the road in either direction, and the occupants began piling out. With a surge of sheer excitement Cormac realised that many of these people wore ECS uniforms and were brandishing weapons, which they rested across the roofs and bonnets of their vehicles. These weren't any kind of weapon he recognised, having long, arm-thick barrels and heavy, wide breach sections covered with cooling fins. The drone spun in place, its sharp-pointed limbs scoring the plasticrete, until it came to face Cormac, then it surged forwards to loom over him.

"I do not have much time," it stated.

Cormac just gaped.

"You need to know."

"Amistad!" came a bellow from some public-address system. Now more shadows drew across and Cormac looked up to see some huge vehicle hovering above. It looked like a floating barge, but with all sharp corners and flat surfaces, all a dull greyish green he recognised as military ceramal armour.

"Amistad! Move away from the boy!" A woman in ECS uniform had approached, her hands on her hips.

The drone turned slightly to peer at her, then quickly swung back to Cormac. "Your father—" The drone seemed highly agitated, and Cormac was reminded of his mother's archaeologist friends who visited; men and women who were not accustomed to talking to children. "Your father is gone."

"He's dead?" Cormac asked.

Further agitation from the drone. Its feet were beating a tattoo against the ground, its antennae quivering and it kept extending and snipping its claws at the air as if it could find the words there. It never got the chance.

There came a thrumming from above, a deep sonorous note, and it seemed as if something invisible but incredibly heavy and substantial slammed down from the vessel above. The drone was crushed flat on its belly, its legs spread out about it and its claws immobilized. An invisible wall of air hit Cormac in the face and shoved him straight back against the wall of the building behind. He tried to fight his way free, but the air seemed to have coagulated around him, turned into a cloying sheet.

"Is my dad dead?" he asked, but knew at once that his words reached no further than his lips.

Then came a blast, excavating a great crater in the road underneath the drone. Somehow, this gave it enough freedom to move and it dropped down into the hollow then bounced out sideways. Beams of a deep red radiation stabbed through the dusty air from those weapons resting across the gravcars, but the drone avoided them all, moving almost too fast to follow. Coiled into a ring it rolled and sprang open, landed on the face of the building opposite and leapt again, crashed against the side of the ship above and bounced off again. The bright light of a fusion drive ignited in atmosphere lit the street, and the drone hurtled away.

The ship above also accelerated away, the invisible force pinning Cormac against the wall immediately relinquishing its grip, so he slumped to the pavement, and some of the people in the street leapt into their gravcars and they too sped away. His ears ringing, Cormac gazed down at the pavement, then after a moment noticed a pair of enviroboots nearby. He looked up at the woman who had addressed the drone and she reached down and helped him to his feet.

"You mother will be here shortly," she said.

"My dad is dead," he replied.

She gazed up at the sky in the direction of the departing vessel and gravcars. "So that's what it's about," she said. "You can never be sure with them, and it's best not to take any chances." She peered down at him. "They can be so dangerous."

He tried to learn more, but everything he asked was referred to his mother, who soon arrived looking worried and angry and quickly led him to her gravcar.

"It said that Dad is dead," he told her.

"And that's all?" she enquired, handing him a bottle of fruit juice.

"It didn't get time to say much," he replied, uncapping the bottle. He took a long drink, for he was very thirsty. "I think they used a hard-field to try and capture it."

"It should not be here, and it should not interfere in things it is not equipped to understand," Hannah told him, watching him carefully.

He suddenly felt incredibly tired, and leant back in the seat.

Hannah continued, "It knows about fighting and killing, but like them all is emotionally stunted." She seemed to be speaking to him down a long, dark tunnel. "How can one like Amistad explain the truth when even I, your mother, can think of no way?"

Everything faded to black.

Feeling utter betrayal, Cormac opened his eyes.

"She drugged me," he said, just a second prior to an invisible dagger stabbing in through his forehead. He glanced at the side table and reached out to pick up the roll of patches, his biceps still stiff under the length of shellwear enwrapping it. He took one patch only this time, since he felt that using two last time might have contributed to his nausea, and stuck it on the side of his neck. Now familiar with this process he then took up a sick bag, and tried to order the detach sequence in his aug for the optic connection. It was a struggle, but this time he managed it. After a moment he reached up and pulled the fibre optic strands free, then glanced aside as the machine wound them in.

"I am not aware of what these mem-loads contain," said Sadist. "I would require your permission to load them myself."

Cormac wasn't sure how to react to the AI's evident curiosity, however, he really wanted to talk to someone about all this. Gazing about the room he half expected to find someone standing by his bed, then felt a sick sinking sensation in his stomach. The only one who might possibly have been there was Crean, but she had confined herself to her cabin ever since they boarded. Sadist, having now scanned much of the area around the blast, had reported finding only a heat-distorted ceramal blade belonging to Spencer, the surprisingly intact brass buckle from Gorman's belt, and Travis' legs. All three of Cormac's companions had been vaporized. Crean had survived only because a chainglass wall had peeled up and slammed into her, acting like a sail on the blast front and carrying her two miles from its hypocentre. Total unlikely luck, coincidence.

"I give you my permission to load them." He paused. "But for the last one—you can load that only when I do."

"Thank you," said the ship AI, then, "Done."

Cormac was only momentarily surprised; of course an AI could encompass those memories in a moment, it was a reminder of the difference between himself and the intelligences that ran the Polity, between himself and the likes of Crean too.

"I note that each chapter also has attachments and you have only been loading the chapters themselves," Sadist added.

"Attachments?"

"They are incompatible with your mind, apparently." Sadist paused. "They are cleaning-up exercises. It seems apparent to me that your mother at first did not think your initial encounter with the drone, out in Montana, of any significance, though she did think your more traumatic encounter with it outside your school should be edited out at once. After seeing Dax's problem with not fully editing his mind, she then decided to remove that earlier encounter from your mind as well."

"Cleaning-up exercises?" Cormac asked, though he had some intimation of what the ship AI was talking about.

"All those times you thought deeply about that encounter with the drone out in Montana, all those times you talked about it to others. Other less formative occasions were not removed, but the human mind tends to self-edit those memories that do not match up with the life's narrative."

Now that was a statement that would require some thought, and he wondered just how much that lay between his ears truly reflected reality even had it not been deliberately tampered with. But his head was aching, he again felt nauseous, and what had once been shock at the loss of his friends was turning to a deep sadness. Was it grief? he wondered. He did not know if it was, for «grief» was such a vague term. Did it require howling tears from him, irrational behaviour? He didn't know. But certainly he did know the feeling of betrayal.

"As you saw, she drugged me," he said.

"It seems extreme to have done so, just as it seems extreme to edit the mind of a child to prevent him knowing about the death of his father, but it was not so uncommon," said Sadist. "During the war, when pain was a frequent companion of many, many took the easy route of excising it from their minds."

Cormac sat upright, tightly clutching the sick bag. This time there seemed to be no visual effects, and despite the sudden surge in his nausea he did not vomit, but maybe that was because he had deliberately forgone eating anything for a day before doing this.

"But was it right?" he wondered.

"In itself there is nothing uplifting or virtuous about suffering," Sadist stated. "Whether it makes its recipient a better person often depends upon whether that person has the ability to change that way. There were those during the war who were turned into monsters by it."

"Do you think she did the right thing?"

"No, I cannot see how the death of a father you had not seen since you were five years old would be so damaging. Rather, I think she was transferring her own grief onto you. I also think that there is more involved here than mere death."

"What do you mean?"

"Her last statements to you, before you blacked out, seem to indicate this," said the AI. "If forced to guess, without seeing the last chapter of these mem-loads, I would say there is something about the manner of your father's death that is being concealed."

Cormac swung his legs off the surgical table and stood. He seemed to have gained some control over his insides and so discarded the sick bag before leaving the room. He would have liked to have taken on the next mem-load, but knew Sadist would not allow it. Walking slowly he returned to his cabin, lay down on his bunk.

The attack ship had left the orbit of that ruined world over twenty hours ago now, and struggling to mesh with the ship server he discovered that they were in transit through U-space, though where to, he had no idea. Doubtless, information would become available.

Cormac abruptly glanced towards his cabin door, feeling the oddest sensation that Gorman had just stepped inside to chivvy him out of bed. No one there. Phantom presences of the dead—a sign of grief. Cormac could feel something leaden in his chest and tight in his throat. He felt on the edge of tears yet, as had occurred two or three times before, they just did not surface and ebbed into a cold and distant sorrow. His headache was definitely fading now and he wondered if his mind was becoming accustomed to the mem-loading process. He sat upright.

"I've been mooning around in this ship so wrapped up in my own concerns," he said abruptly. "How is Crean now?"

"Crean has ceased to communicate," Sadist replied. "As is her right."

"Where are we going now?"

"I am to deliver you both to the nearest Polity world, where you are to rest and recuperate for a period not less that three months, after which you will be reassigned."

"What?"

"Was that not sufficiently clear for you?"

"What about Carl Thrace?"

"Did you think ECS would allow you, a new recruit to the Sparkind who has just lost most of his unit, and a Golem that looks likely to self-destruct, to continue the pursuit of this criminal?"

"I… don't know."

Sadist continued, "For you, the trail after Carl Thrace ended with that explosion. It is possible he is still hiding on that world but, if so, it would take a massive search to find him—one that ECS AIs consider a waste of resources. It is more likely he boarded one of the seven ships departing that world during the time between his and our arrival there."

"Do we… does ECS know the destinations of those ships?"

"It is understood, from information obtained by Adsel, that two of the ships are heading for unknown destinations within the Graveyard and five are heading to a selection of three Polity worlds. Carl could be on any one of them, and there is no guarantee that their intended destinations are their actual ones. ECS personnel are watching for those ships, and for Carl. Your involvement in this is now at an end."

Cormac felt a sudden obstinate anger at this decision, despite the fact that it was perfectly logical.

"I am presuming," he said, "that the nearest Polity world might also be one of the three that Carl is heading for?"

"The likelihood that Carl has not headed off into the Graveyard is considered low. The likelihood of you encountering him on one of those three worlds, each of which is moderately to heavily populated, is nanoscopic. Also, Cormac, if it came to the attention of ECS that you were making personal enquiries about this, you would be disobeying a direct order to rest and recuperate, and so apprehended and sent out of this sector. This is now out of your hands."

"So what are the names of these three worlds?"

After a long pause his room screen blinked on to show three planets, with their names printed below them. One world was called Tanith, which he knew: a terraformed place of damp moors, dark forests and ersatz gothic castles. It was a tourist place for those with an inclination for such things. The one called Borandel he had never heard of, though wondered if he should have, it being so close to the border with the Prador Kingdom. But it was the last world that riveted his attention: it was called Patience.

He whispered the name to himself, then aug-linked to the room screen to take control of this access to information about that world. First to come up was news on current events there, which he quickly scanned through. Areas denuded of life during the war were recovering well and other areas rendered highly radioactive by bombardment, or unsafe because of the possible existence of human-specific engineered viruses, had been declared safe after many years of decontamination. The building of a massive city, upon mile-high stilts, was nearing completion in the Cavander mountains located in Hessick County, which eventually terminated in the Olston Peninsular; such a project apparently being an assertive declaration of the new optimism on this world, as was the arrival of the supposedly famous Thander Weapons Exhibition—something he had heard of before. But they needed to be forward looking and optimistic here, they needed to put behind them the memories of bitter battles fought against the Prador. Battles like the Hessick Campaign, in which Cormac's father had died.

"Crean wants to see you," Sadist unexpectedly announced.

Cormac continued staring at the screen, the skin on his back crawling. Of course he had known this world lay out this way, and of course he knew that odd and mysterious coincidences were an inevitability when billions of humans occupied so many worlds, but seeing this was creepy.

"What does she want?" he asked, perhaps rather too abruptly.

"She has come to a decision," Sadist replied, "and wants to acquaint you with it."

With a thought, Cormac shut off the screen, then sat staring at the blank surface for a long moment. He recalled now where he had heard of the Thander Weapons Exhibition. It was during his basic training, from Carl Thrace. Cormac stood and headed for the door. For now he would keep that particular bit of information to himself, though it was essential he get Crean to agree that they should head for the world called Patience.

Shortly he had reached the door to Crean's cabin, rapped his knuckles against it and waited. After a moment the lock in the frame clunked, and he pushed the door open.

Crean sat on her bed, utterly motionless. She was clad in a white disposable ship-suit, and with syntheskin and synthetic hair replaced, her appearance was much improved. Last time he had seen her she had been sitting in precisely the same position, but still skeletal and charred from the CTD blast, still minus one arm. Glancing round he noted burned remnants still strewn on the floor and over the bed sheets. Why she possessed a cabin and a bed was a mystery to Cormac, since she required no human comforts or even essentials like food or sleep. He guessed it was all about emulation—everything was with Golem. However, he did notice that her ship-suit hung loose and baggy and that her hands, though clear of burnt matter, were still bare of syntheflesh. The bones of her hands gleamed in her lap like steel spiders.

"How are you?" Cormac asked, irritated by the politenesses. Why should Golem have any problems related to flesh they could replace and minds they could reformat like the drives on primitive computers? Why was he playing the emulation game with her?

She looked up, and once again seeing her face reminded him how he had very much reacted to her on a human level. Remembering their erotic encounters here and in his own cabin irritated him too, for after recent tragic events, that now all seemed a childish game.

"I am what I am," she said, "and to be better, to be recovered, it would be necessary for me to cease to be what I am."

"I don't understand."

"Of course you don't," she said. "You still think that Golem are something less than human. You still view Golem as mere machines. You still retain a primitive archaic belief that the mind produced in flesh is something more. It's almost like a religious belief in souls. You cannot seem to accept that we are as complex as you, if not more so. Nor can you accept that you are merely a machine made out of different materials."

He wanted to argue, but she had nailed it. He did feel that way, no matter how foolish it might seem. It was all about emulation, he guessed. What use is emotion if it is something you could turn on and off? What is the use of ersatz humanity when it is something you can dispense with? It is a falsity. Yet, in humans, it had become possible to edit the mind and as a corollary, the emotions. Even now it was becoming possible to turn on and off the emotions in creatures of flesh; and soon memcording of all the data in that lump of flesh enclosing bone would be refined enough for humans, if they so choose, to become something else.

He shrugged, embarrassed. "I will learn."

Crean gazed at him for a long moment, said, "Perhaps I can help you." Then she smiled, closed her eyes and bowed forwards, once again freezing into immobility.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

No response.

"Crean?"

"She will not reply," Sadist informed him.

"What?"

"Crean has chosen to erase herself rather than reformat herself to a condition in which she could bear to be without her companions."

Cormac found himself backing towards the door. "What?"

"She has suicided."

He stumbled out into the corridor, the nausea earlier generated by the mem-load, returning in spades. Going down on his knees he vomited, then rested his head against the wall and wished he could cry. But something in him wouldn't permit that, and he wondered if those early edits of his mind had damaged it. He remained in the same position for some time, then slowly eased himself to his feet as a beetlebot peaked out of its home low in the wall.

"Do you want me to move her?" Cormac asked the AI.

"I will send one of my telefactors to deal with her," Sadist replied.

Cormac gazed down at the beetlebot as it hoovered up the thin bile he had spewed, erasing it to leave clean carpet behind. Wipe these things out, clear the slate, leave it clean and ready to be written on again. He understood his mother now, but refused to choose her course.

It was different this time. He felt no sense of being a child and, though he recognised his surroundings as his mother's home, the place had been redecorated and modernized. He walked into the living room and sprawled in one of the armchairs, just like Dax used to do, and even reached over to take up the conveniently placed bottle of whisky and glass, and pour himself a drink. When his mother walked in, she studied him for a moment before seating herself in the sofa adjacent, her legs crossed and her fingers interlaced over one knee.

"I don't know how you commenced loading your edited-out memories back into your mind, Cormac," she began, "but it is certain that the mem-file I provided was broken into three chapters, since there is not yet the means to load a file of that size without causing brain damage."

Cormac sipped the whisky, and found it fiery and good, yet he had only tried whisky once before and found he disliked its medicinal taste, and the way it ate into his self-control.

"You are therefore," Hannah continued, "on to the third and final chapter after having discovered some things about your past."

Cormac wanted to reply, but though he placed the glass down on the table beside him and returned his hand to the chair arm, he possessed no control over his movements. His present mind was here, and aware, but he could no more change what played out here than he could have while experiencing his childhood memories.

"You have discovered that I edited your mind twice… only twice." Hannah frowned. "The first time was when that drone tried to speak to you while you walked home from school. The second time was when I realised how unstable so limited an editing could be and had our encounter with the drone in Montana edited out in Tritonia."

So, Sadist had been exactly right about that.

"I have to say that on the second occasion I thought Amistad had told you everything, but the AI who conducted the editing process informed me otherwise."

Everything? Cormac wondered. What else was there to know?

"The drone of course told you enough for you to infer that David—your father—was dead, apparently." She now paused, a strange unreadable twist to her expression, which she concealed by looking down at her hands. "Amistad did not really understand much about human affairs and human emotion, but perhaps he did understand that what I was doing was wrong. It remained my choice, however, and Amistad had no right to go against my wishes in this matter."

Why did you do it, Mother? Was it because you controlled so much in your life and his death lay out of your control? Was it the past you really wanted to edit?

"However, your father's death was by no means the whole story. It was only when Amistad tried again to get to you while we were in Tritonia that I managed to confront him and persuade him to leave you alone, though only with the direct intervention of the AI running Tritonia and the near shores of Callais." She looked up. "There is much more you need to know about what happened to your father, but you were never told, so that story is not contained in these pieces excised from your memory. You deserve to know, I guess, and if you are anything like David I imagine you will not rest until you do know. But I am not going to tell you. I'm sorry, but I feel another has earned that right."

Again a long pause, while she stared directly at him. How, he wondered, had this mem-load been put together? Had she sat someone down before her and told him this story, then had it edited out of that other one's mind to be sent to him? Was the person who had sat here Dax?

"You are out in a particular area of space I have not wanted to visit, ever since the end of the war. I don't believe in fate, destiny or any of that rubbish, but the workings of coincidence can sometimes be frightening. Amistad has been lurking out that way for many years, for reasons I… know. He learned of your presence out there and, I understand, managed to intervene in some small way during a military operation you were involved in? Whatever…"

Cormac felt a momentary huge amusement: it seemed the drone had at last learned to be diplomatic and had not gone into detail about that particular operation. But why had it contacted his mother?

"You told me you discovered that your mind had been edited when you were fitted for an aug, but I have to wonder if the drone's presence is really what set you to wondering… and perhaps checking." She shook her head, and he noticed that her eyes were glistening with tears.

"Cormac, you are near the world called Patience, where the Hessick Campaign was fought and where your father… died. Amistad never managed to tell you the truth, so I will let him do so. He wants to tell you the truth there, on that world. I am sure, given the circumstances, you can ask for a leave of absence… Attached to this mem-load is a net address via which the drone can be contacted. Just call for Amistad, and he will find you on Patience… And please forgive me."

The scene blanked out and for a second it seemed as if he were just hovering in blackness, still ensconced in that chair. In that moment he felt a dread of the ill effects to come. Then all at once he was again flat on his back on the surgical table, an invisible dagger poised over his forehead. Now he felt a surge of anger and instead of just lying there waiting to feel pain and nausea, he thrust himself upright.

The optic threads linking him to the machine that had loaded that ersatz memory, drew taut, and without concentrating too hard he managed to order detach and they snapped out of his aug to be wound away. He reached up and slapped the aug cover closed, glanced aside at the roll of analgaesic patches, then swung his legs off the table and stood. Dizziness and nausea hit, but he just stood there breathing evenly and by force of will pushing those ill effects away. Next he checked his aug's inbox, and there found a small file awaiting his attention—it would be interesting to see what a war drone kept on its net site.

"Interesting," said Sadist.

"Oh really?"

"However," the AI continued, "the coincidence of the world Patience being one of our possible destinations is not such a great one. Trainees are generally brought into this area because this is where ECS is still most needed, and it is also essential for would-be soldiers to see the effects of war which, in the final analysis, is what they are being trained to prevent."

"You're preaching," said Cormac.

"Is it so obvious?"

"Yes."

"And you still intend to resign from ECS?"

"I do, when you can finally bring yourself to tell me what I need to do."

"I felt it necessary for you to at least have a cooling-off period," said Sadist. "I do understand that Crean's suicide hit you rather hard."

It had seemed the final straw, and Cormac had never known such mental pain, as everything finally impacted on that moment: Carl's betrayal and murder of Yallow, the injuries Cormac himself had suffered and the effect on him of killing his would-be murderers, the deaths of Gorman, Spencer, Travis and Crean, the discovery of his mother's betrayal. Now he felt bruised, things inside him broken, and of course it was plausible that this pain had been enough to drive him to resign his position in ECS. It was perfectly understandable, perfectly, yet a complete lie. He knew that as an ECS soldier, under the "rest and recuperation" order, there were things he would not be able to do, things he needed to do, on Patience. And how utterly fortuitous that this last mem-load had given him an unquestionable reason to go there.

"My decision to quit need not be a permanent one," he said. "But I do desperately feel the need to be out of it now… Sadist, we have had this discussion before and my opinion has not changed. Tell me what I must do."

"Very well," said the AI, sighing like any human. "There are no documents to sign, nothing like that. You merely have to state your intention to me."

"I resign from ECS," said Cormac immediately.

"Very well," the AI's voice now took on a different tone. "In four hours I will be landing at the Cavander spaceport on Patience. When you depart this ship you may take with you only those items not directly issued to you by ECS. Here." An information package now arrived in his aug. "This is the coding sequence you can use to access your back pay. And please, Cormac, remember that at any time you can rejoin ECS in the same manner as you have just departed it."

"Perhaps I will, but I need time."

"Very well, Cormac," said the AI, and it seemed like both a goodbye and a dismissal.

Cormac pushed himself away from the surgical table and headed for the door, and it was only as he stepped out into the corridor did he realise his head did not ache, and he did not feel sick. Perhaps this was because this last mem-load had not been a chunk edited from his own mind, was in fact no more than a message delivered through the same medium.

He headed for his cabin, and immediately emptied his pack onto his bed and began sorting through the pile. It did not take long. In the end his own possessions formed a very small pile on the pillow: a few items of clothing, a carbide-bladed knife, a palm-top and finally Pramer's thin-gun. Why was it, he wondered, that he did not feel any great need for possessions? Even when he lived at home, with his mother, and later when he lived away for a while working autohandlers in Stanstead spaceport, the belongings he treasured would only ever fill a small suitcase. All the ECS stuff went back into the pack, which he placed to one side of the room, with his pulse-rifle resting on top of it. He changed out of his fatigues into his jeans, T-shirt, enviroboots and jacket, and everything he truly owned went into the jacket pockets.

The Cavander spaceport rested in the mountains on a platform below and to one side of the city it served, which loomed above on mile-high legs, each of which was a vertical city in itself. Cormac walked slowly down Sadist's ramp, carefully taking in his surroundings: the sky a slightly orange-yellow and the shocking pink clouds, the smell like vinegar in his nostrils and the taste of metal in his mouth, the bounce to his walk as he departed Sadist's Earth standard one gravity to this world's point nine, things like gulls drifting through the air, which he knew, from having studied information about this world when a teenager, to be strikingly similar to miniature pterosaurs, and of course that wonderful fantastic city itself.

"Goodbye, Cormac," Sadist's voice echoed from the interior of the ship.

"Goodbye," said Cormac, glancing back as the ramp-hatch drew closed. Even as he set out across the spaceport he heard the ramp clonk into place and saw the ship's shadow speed across the plasticrete as Sadist ascended silently. He turned to watch it float higher and higher, then with a burst of thrusters accelerate into the sky. It receded rapidly to a black rod against those blousy clouds where its fusion drive ignited and it sped away. Now he returned his attention to his immediate surroundings.

This spaceport almost looked like a city itself, what with the enormous ships down here like curved edifices. He eyed two great cargo haulers, like blunt bullets stood on their back ends, about them swarms of autohandlers trundling between blocky mountains of plasmel cargo crates, and people clad in overalls striding about importantly, clutching manifest screens or handler control modules. Beside one of these behemoths, a huge lading robot—a tall four-legged monstrosity with crane arms extending down underneath it—squatted over some vast cathedral of a container to attach numerous hooks in order to lift and shift the massive weight. Perhaps the container held something for the Thander Weapons Exhibition, which had apparently only just opened to the public.

There were also numerous smaller vessels on this spaceport platform, many of which bore the standard utile shapes seen anywhere, but others that were utterly exotic. One he recognised as a replica of a World War II aircraft carrier and another as a war barge, probably a restoration job, of the Solar System corporate wars. Still others were ECS fighting ships of one kind or another, probably decommissioned and voided of their original AIs, or self-decommissioned, their resident AIs deciding to go independent. On the whole, it seemed, that there were few private ships here without some sort of military connection.

They were all here for the exhibition.

Though that same exhibition was not Cormac's only reason for being here on Patience, it was the reason he had resigned from ECS, for he wanted freedom to move, to investigate. He had known Carl for two years and though so much about the man had been false, one thing certainly wasn't—his fascination with weapons. Perhaps it was foolish of Cormac to feel so certain that Carl had made this world, and the exhibition here, his destination, but it was a certainty he could not shake. Though this whole thing came under Polity aegis, and remained closely watched, he had divined from the stories about this event that a lot of illegal arms deals went down. Carl, he was sure, would have come here to sell his remaining two CTDs. Of course, certainty about that did not insure Cormac would find him, because there were hundreds of millions of people on this world, millions here in this city, and millions more who would be visiting the huge displays and demonstrations of armaments.

Spotting the exit buildings along the far edge of the spaceport nearest the city, Cormac set out towards them. He knew there would be no need to present identification because Sadist would already have informed the port or city AI of his presence, which would be automatically confirmed either by scan or a bounce query to his aug as he passed through that building. However, he did not want to pass straight through that building, for there he must begin his search.

Numerous chainglass doors gave access to a lounge two miles long and half a mile wide, and scattered with bars and eateries. Net consoles adorned every one of the pillars supporting a chainglass roof that was a confection of moulded-glass girders, spires and hexagonal sheets. The moment Cormac entered the area an ident-query arrived in his aug and he responded by allowing his aug to send its brief summation of who he was. The lounge area, though huge, was very crowded and he noticed numerous security drones folded out from their alcoves in the heads of the pillars, and other floating drones of a bewildering variety of shapes zipping back and forth above the crowd. Even as he watched, a number of these drones converged above where four individuals, probably plain-clothed security personnel, politely detained a lone traveller and separated him from his luggage. Cormac wandered over in time to see one of them opening that luggage and taking out a hand-held missile launcher—the kind sporting a ring-shaped magazine. He had trained with similar devices and knew their missiles could cause enormous damage.

"We'll keep this for you until you depart, Mr Kinsey," said the one holding the launcher. "I hardly think this falls under the specification of personal defence."

Though the AIs did not proscribe personal armament, there were limits. Cormac moved on, finally locating a netlink terminal that wasn't occupied. Though he could have done what he was about to do by aug, that would have necessitated him making a request through the local AI or one of its subminds, and he did not want to subject himself to the potential of scrutiny. Working the touch controls and the simple keyboard, he accessed spaceport information, specifically a record of all arrivals and departures. Eight ships had come in from the Graveyard within the required time period and because of that were subject to greater scrutiny than any other vessels. Making a file containing a copy of all the information obtainable about them, including links to related sites on the net, he then sent that file to his personal net-space, before finally turning away and giving the console up to the first in the queue now gathering behind him. He then headed for the anachronistic-looking lifts on the other side of the lounge to take him up to the city proper.

It was evident, the moment he stepped out of the lift, that Cavander city remained a work-in-progress. Though complete buildings rose all about him, the skyline beyond was webbed with scaffolds, cranes, and here and there big grav-barges loaded with construction materials. The street he stepped out upon was lined with all the usual eateries, bars and shops, interspersed with numerous entrances to towering apartment complexes above. Down the centre of the street, set about twenty feet above the ground, were the two tubes of a fast-transit network, with escalators leading up to platforms arrayed about them. Cormac swung his gaze along the street, studying the crowds, noticing a preponderance for military dress, though not necessarily the contemporary kind. He recognised uniforms from the ages of Earth extending back centuries, and fashionable variations on such uniforms. He hadn't realised he'd needed to come in fancy dress.

An enquiry through his aug of the local server gave him lists of hotels still with accommodation available. Downloading a map from that same server, he used it to locate himself and then headed for the nearest hotel. The lobby was automated and he paid from his back pay, pleasantly surprised upon seeing the quantity of money available to him. And soon he ensconced himself in a small but luxurious room. Pulling up a comfortable chair by the window he gazed out across the busy city and now accessed his own net-space, cast a swift eye over the messages therein, seeing one from his brother Dax and another from an old school friend, Culu, who was now a haiman working on some project in a distant reach of the Polity. He left these and instead downloaded to his aug the information he had sent there himself about the Graveyard ships on Patience.

Upon checking their departure points, where listed, he was surprised to find that one of them had recorded its departure world as Shaparon. It seemed too good to be true, for surely Carl would not have wanted to leave any trail, but then perhaps he had no choice in the matter and was relying on ECS being unable to trace every ship that left that world, on ECS expecting him to run for cover in the Graveyard, which would of course have been the most sensible move. Relaxing back, Cormac learned everything else he could about the vessel: it was owned and operated by an individual called Omidran Glass, an ophidapt, and it was then little problem to trace her net-space and find out how to send her a message. He contemplated this for a long moment; it all seemed just too easy. Surely ECS would be onto this already? Deciding to give the matter further thought, he now considered another message he needed to send, and going to his inbox opened the information package giving him Amistad's net address.

The drone's website was nothing like a human one. It contained no biography, no public images nor any of the usual drivel humans were fond of collecting in their net-spaces. The first page gave communication links, but the pages behind this were loaded with machine code, links to weapons sites with occasional pictures or schematics of some esoteric piece of hardware, and numerous vast and inaccessible files—perhaps stored parts of the drone's mind it no longer felt the need to carry about with it.

Cormac spoke a message, recording it in his aug, then sent it to the first com address given: "Amistad, I am on Patience, and I think there's something you want to tell me, something you have been wanting to tell me for a long time."

Then, having done that, he immediately went back to Glass' site and recorded and sent another message, deciding to be utterly blunt: "Hello, Omidran Glass. You don't know me and of course I will understand if you tell me to go to hell, but I'm trying to trace someone who was recently on the world Shaparon, who I think may have taken passage on your ship. I would like to speak with you."

With the message on its way he set about running searches to try and ascertain this ophidapt woman's location, because he half expected her to reject his request. He also tried to find her passenger lists, but had no luck there. Then, surprisingly, he received a request for linkage from Glass. He accepted it and immediately an image of her appeared to his third eye. This being an aug communication, the image was obviously computer-generated, but her lips moved in perfect consonance with her words. She too would be seeing an image of him, recorded aboard the Sadist.

"I see by your image that you're wearing an ECS uniform," she observed.

"It's an old image—I've resigned," he replied.

Her shoulders were bare and she seemed to be wearing a top of pleated blue fabric cut low, with twin straps around her upper arms. It looked like the top half of a ball gown, which seemed utterly incongruous on someone whose skin bore a greenish tinge and was spangled with small scales. Her jet-back hair flowed down behind her head, her eyes were those of a snake, and as she spoke he could occasionally see her fangs folding down a little as if she were preparing to bite.

"So who is this person you are seeking?" she asked.

"I know him as Carl Thrace, though he may possess a different identity now and even a different appearance, since he's shown an aptitude for that sort of thing. What I do know is that he was likely travelling with a large piece of Loyalty Luggage, probably in the shape of an antique sea chest."

She seemed to gaze at him for a long moment, but he realised her image had frozen. Obviously she was doing something else behind this. At that moment an icon lit in the top right of this third-eye image: message pending. Then her image abruptly reanimated. "I am presently aboard my ship and will be departing this world in two hours. There is no way you can get to see me, and this is certainly the last time we will talk like this."

Her link cut.

Cormac sat in tired frustration. His one possible contact was gone. In annoyance he opened the other message, but his anger evaporated as he listened to a sonorous voice. It made the skin on his back crawl.

"I have been waiting. Meet me at Vogol's Stone." Appended to this was a time… time to talk to a war drone, he guessed.