The Line of Polity

1

With the small blond child balanced on her knee the woman managed the awkward task of one-handedly turning a page of the picture book, and ran her finger down the border between text and picture, to set the superb illustration moving — the long legs striding through the reeds, and the sharp beak snapping in silhouette against a bruised sky.

She continued, "For the brother who had built his house out of flute grass there came misfortune indeed; that very night a heroyne came to stand over his house… and what did it do?"

The child reached and stabbed down with one stubby finger, leaving a jammy imprint on something that bore only a passing resemblance to a wading bird. "Heroyne," he said, blue eyes wide at his own cleverness.

"Yes, but what did it do?"

"It huffed and it puffed, and it puffed and it huffed," said the boy.

"And it blew his house down," the woman completed. Then, "Now, do you remember what the brother said when his house was gone?"

The boy frowned in concentration, but after a moment grinned with delight, knowing the best bit was coming. "Don't eat me!" he said.

"And what did the heroyne do?"

"It gobbled him up! It gobbled him up!" the boy replied, bouncing up and down with the excitement of it all

"Once more: tell me of your death."

Gazing at the weird view of pink striated sky and twisted shapes, and seeing more with his new eyes than ever before, he clearly recalled the words. Because memory to him could be only as fallible as he wished it, he knew every intonation, every nuance — just as he remembered every vivid second of his own demise:

"I was leading the way down, when it came up the shaft and hit me…"

And thus it had gone: words spoken while his senses came online, sounds impinging, light illuminating the map of artificial veins in his eyelids, gravity holding him down on a warm but hard slab. He never heard the beat of his heart, never would again. His speech finished; he'd paused before saying, "Value judgements."

"You are no longer in virtual mode. The reality you will now experience is really real."

Oh, he was a joker that one. Gant remembered the feel of human bones breaking in his hands, the screams, the blood — the sheer terror of movement, past now.

"There's a difference then," he'd asked with some sarcasm.

"Virtual mode is fine for physical training — in it you have been made aware of your capabilities, but too long in it can affect value judgements. In virtual mode you have learnt that you can kill a human being in an eye-blink, and you have learnt how to control your new body. You learnt nothing of consequences though."

"You think I don't already know?" he'd asked, then thinking: human being. The AI had been way ahead of him though.

"Yes, in VR you have killed twenty people, many of them by accident, and there have been no consequences. All the time you have been aware that these people are not real. It would have been possible to quell this awareness, but the disorientation can sometimes drive a mind into paranoid schizophrenia."

"My mind is made of silicon," he pointed out.

"Your brain is made of silicon. Your mind is made of memories and patterns of thought little different from how they were in your organic brain."

"I can't hear my heart beat."

"You chose to have the memplant, trooper Gant. Would you prefer termination?"

"No… I guess not."

Gant remembered opening his eyes and staring at the tiled ceiling. He'd sat upright and, out of old habit, moved his head from side to side. There was no stiffness, though, no aches or pains of any kind — not a trace of humanizing weakness. He could feel, oh yes he could feel, and it was with a clarity that was as hard and sharp as broken flint. Scanning the room, he'd flicked his vision to infrared, ultraviolet, wound his hearing to each limit of its scale, before abruptly leaping from the slab and standing beside it. He'd been naked, his body free of scars. Touching his genitals he'd found them no less sensitive than he remembered.

"I'm not really Gant any more," he said.

"No, you are a recording of Gant."

"I mean, all that was Gant: the glands, the aches and pains, the body. I'm not human, so I won't act the same."

"Does that matter?"

"I wanted immortality."

"You have it."

"Gant does not."

"There is no such thing as immortality: death is change. A human being is dying every day that it lives. The material of its body is exchanged for other materials, its thoughts change. All that lives is the DNA, and what does that matter to you? In the end it is your mind that is important. The mind you have now is closer to the mind you had when you died on Samarkand — than the mind you would have now, had you not died. The memplant crystal does not get everything, but the margin for error is smaller than the alterations to an organic brain in—"

"Oh yeah," Gant interrupted, chuckling inside.

A taste he could replay was the one in his mouth when he had taken his first ever breath with this artificial body. The air tasted sweet, though he did not require it then, nor did he now. And he'd thought somewhat on what lay ahead — a future that death had not denied him. Now, still gazing at the horizon, he breathed air that would have killed the man he had once been.

Cormac clicked his intensifier into place on the goggles of his hotsuit and then, from the tracer clipped on his utility belt, uploaded the signal code to the image intensifier's CPU. As he increased the magnification by several orders of magnitude, chameleon lenses whirred and shifted as they compensated for the involuntary movements of his head, and in his visual field a frame was thrown up, centred on the shimmering horizon. Nothing came into view other than tilted slabs of rock that were harsh white in the scalding sunlight, plasoderms rooted like giant metallic birds' claws in the arid soil between, and the occasional flickering movement from the abundant lethal fauna. It was, Cormac felt, the calloraptors that made this place such a hell, not the temperature that remained constantly above fifty degrees Celsius, not the desiccating air laden with cyanide compounds, nor the gravity of two gees. The calloraptors were what could tear your suit and expose you to the killing conditions; they were the creatures that would chew you down to the bone even while your flesh poisoned them. All things considered, he was glad of the pair that accompanied him, though he wondered what Earth Central had thought was the benefit in partnering these two.

"Nothing yet," said the first of those individuals.

Cormac unclipped the intensifier and returned it to his belt. Of course, Gant had no need of an intensifier, as he had one built-in. Cormac glanced at this Golem with its human mind uploaded from the dead soldier: Gant did not wear the mask or the hood of his suit, and it was this that revealed his unhumanity as he casually surveyed their surroundings, his multigun resting across his shoulder. Had he himself done the same, Cormac wondered what would kill him first: asphyxiation or desiccation. He studied the individual with whom Gant had been partnered. This one's unhumanity was mostly concealed by his hotsuit, until he moved legs that were hinged the wrong way — birdlike. But then the dracoman was, by a convoluted route, descended from the same ancient species as birds.

"No sign," Cormac agreed. "I thought they'd have towers up. You'd think they'd have autoguns for our friends here." He gestured to their right where a raptor had leapt onto a rock slab and was inspecting them with its bright orange eye-pits. He inspected it in turn. The creature could, with a stretch of the imagination, have been a relative of Gant's partner. Its name was an amalgam of the name of this planet, 'Callorum', and of the dinosauroid raptors that had once roamed ancient Earth. It stood a metre and a half high, on two legs, but closer study revealed forelimbs branched at the elbow into two forearms, which each in turn terminated in three bladed fingers. Its mouth, below the disconcerting eye-pits, opened into three independent jaws lined with back-curved slicing teeth, and its utterly smooth skin was a dark purplish red.

"Mine," said Scar, the dracoman.

Gant, who had lowered his multigun, gave a deprecatory smile and waved him on. With his strange reverse-kneed gait the dracoman advanced on the creature, his own multigun held at his hip. Cormac wondered why Scar found it necessary to be so confrontational. The raptor made an easy enough target where it was, so there was no real need to provoke it.

As Scar reached the edge of the slab they were presently upon, the calloraptor opened its mouth and no doubt emitted the subsonic groan that was the challenge of its kind. When it attacked, it came in with a kangaroo-bouncing from slab to slab. The triple thud of Scar's multigun came as the creature was in midair between two slabs. It shuddered at the terminus of a broken blue line, then hit the next slab on its back, its head missing and its internal fluids streaming into the thirsty air. Then it rolled down to come to rest at the base of a plasoderm.

"Are we all having fun?" Cormac asked.

Gant, grinning, glanced round at him, then wiped away the grin and shouldered his multigun. Scar swung his toadlike head from side to side, searching for something else to shoot, before giving a grunt and returning to join them.

"We'll get on now, shall we?" said Cormac, and led the way onto the next slab.

Even though his clothing effectively kept out the searing heat, Cormac felt hot and tired. Despite the exoskeletal help he was getting from his hotsuit — it was set to multiply his strength sufficiently to compensate for the doubled gravity — he was really feeling his weight. The other two, of course, made this particular mission seem like a jaunt in holiday sunshine.

"You never explained why Central paired you with chummy here," Cormac said, before leaping a gap from which a somnolent raptor observed him for a moment, before returning to sleep. Its bulbous stomach attested the fact that it had recently eaten one of the root-suckers. It would now, if the survey probe's information was correct, be digesting its meal for a solstan month.

Gant followed him across the gap, then said, "Even though Scar is now considered a free citizen of the Polity, he's not entirely trusted. We work together, and I watch him."

They both glanced back as Scar hesitated at the same gap, his muzzle directed towards the sleeping raptor. When this provoked no action, the dracoman followed on.

"Should we trust you, Scar?" Cormac asked.

Scar growled but offered no other reply — as talkative as ever.

Cormac felt that whether or not to trust the dracoman was a tough call, as he was the creation of a transgalactic being calling itself 'Dragon' — a being as untrustworthy as it was immense. Dragon had first proclaimed itself as an emissary of an alien race, but had then caused wholesale destruction and slaughter on a world called Samarkand, in its anxiousness to kill one of the aliens searching for it. It was during a mission to that world, led by Cormac, that Gant had died, so perhaps Earth Central's choosing him to keep an eye on Scar was not such a bad idea after all.

It took the rest of the Callorum afternoon for them to cross the slab-field and come at last to an easily traversable saltpan. Here plasoderms had spread like a marching army of avant-garde sculptures and amongst them could be seen the occasional timorous root-sucker. These were utterly strange creatures: three-legged — a truncated tail forming the rear one of the three — and almost lacking in anything that could be called a body at the juncture of these three legs, merely having an eyeless oval head from which extended a long curved snout terminating in a ring of black tentacles. The creatures were harmless, subsisting as they did on sap tapped from the roots of the plasoderms.

Cormac again studied the dracoman as they moved on across the weird and arid landscape. Scar now purportedly had self-determination, and was no longer controlled by Dragon, for Cormac's mission had resulted in that entity's destruction…

Partial destruction, Cormac reminded himself. When the human race had first found Dragon on the planet Aster Colora, it had consisted of four conjoined and living spheres, each a kilometre in diameter, with pseudopods like giant snakes rooted in the two-kilometre perimeter all around it. There it had apparently destroyed itself, at the termination of its supposed mission to deliver a warning to the human race. And that had seemed the end of it until one of those spheres turned up at Samarkand. During that same encounter they had learnt that out there somewhere were the three remaining spheres. That they had indeed been parts of an emissary had turned out to be true. But now they were rogue biological constructs — like three round dots below three huge question marks. And a similar question mark hung over Scar himself.

The sun, which was so bright that one glance at it left the reactive glass in a hotsuit's goggles black for some time afterwards, ate into a chain of globular mountains eviscerated from the white crust of the planet, then blinked out. The blue twilight was an immediate thing: there was no gradual change. In this light, the grazers headed for the shadows, and the raptors followed after them to play the nightly lethal game of hide-and-seek.

"I see a tower," said Gant.

Cormac clipped his intensifier into place, and at the centre of the signal frame he spotted the squat tripod with its swing-ring-mounted autolaser. Even as he watched, the two rings shifted to bring the gun to bear on something near to it, and there was a brief ruby flash.

"Okay," said Cormac, lowering the intensifier, "nothing fancy. We'll find out what their perimeter is, and spot that tower for the Occam, Once it's down we go in. You two find their 'ware generator and take it out. I'll go after Skellor."

"If he's still alive," said Gant.

"Will Occam see?" asked Scar, his muzzle pushed forward as he peered into the twilight. Cormac wondered if the dracoman could even see the tower. It was possible: the dracomen had certainly been made with combat in mind.

"That we won't know until we try it," Cormac said.

"Never expected them to become this sophisticated. Even our chameleonware isn't that good," said Gant.

"That'll be Skellor, and he is still alive. His implant signal would have changed, otherwise."

Gant nodded, then said, "I still don't understand what all the anxiety is about this guy. I'd have thought if he'd been that dangerous, Earth Central would have had him whacked long ago."

"Skellor's a top-flight biophysicist, highly rated even by an AI like Earth Central, but his methods have always been dubious to say the least. It was rumoured he was using human subjects in some of his experiments, but insufficient evidence was found for any kind of prosecution… or whacking as you so charmingly put it. I think EC was reluctant to act against him because of the possible huge benefits deriving from his research. Now the Separatists have him it's a different matter. He was screwing around with nanotechnology and biological systems — and it doesn't take much imagination to work out what our home-grown terrorists might do with such tech."

"Well, best we resolve the issue," said Gant, unshouldering his multigun and swiftly tapping a new program into its side console.

"Whacking Skellor is not an option yet," Cormac told him. "We still don't know if he was kidnapped or went willingly."

"Gotcha," said Gant, clicking the three barrels of his multigun round by one turn, before swapping magazines. He glanced at Scar. "Night work," he explained. The dracoman likewise adjusted his weapon.

"What setting?" Cormac asked.

"Rail," said Gant.

Cormac nodded before moving on. Rather than firing bright pulses of ionized aluminium dust, their guns would now be firing tipped iron slugs; whether those tips were ceramal, hollow, or mercury was a matter of choice. He of course had his own preferred armament. He initiated the shuriken holster strapped on his wrist, and the weapon gave a buzz of anticipation — something he suspected was not in the user's manual. He then drew his thin-gun and wondered just how many Separatists he would kill tonight.

It seemed that his work for Earth Central Security consisted mainly of such killing. Expanding into space the human race brought with it all the traditional troubles of old Earth, and it seemed that all who had once been labelled 'terrorist' now called themselves 'Separatists' as if that would provide their nefarious activities with some cachet. In Cormac's experience they only really wanted wealth and power — as always. This swiftly became evident on any world that seceded from the AI governance of the Polity when, usually, the inhabitants started screaming for the Polity AIs to be brought back in.

"Gant, I want you to spot the tower for me," Cormac said, glancing at the Golem.

Gant grimaced, peered at his own weapon, then shrugged. "Never really aligned it," he said.

With Golem eyes, he had no need of a laser sight.

Cormac turned to Scar. "I take it the sight on your weapon is aligned?"

"It is," Scar grated.

"Well, you can spot the tower for us."

Scar gave a sharp nod in reply. Cormac felt that the mask of his suit probably disguised the dracoman's characteristic gnathic grin.

Hot darkness swamped the blue twilight, however through his intensifier it seemed almost daylight to Cormac, but with an odd lack of shadows. In this weird gloaming, the perimeter of the autolaser tower soon became evident. Thinking of other perimeters he had known, Cormac involuntarily glanced over at the dracoman. Scar was obviously fascinated by a curving line of hollowed-by-fire corpses of calloraptors. It was fast becoming apparent to Cormac where the dracoman's interests lay.

Beyond the tower, three geodesic domes had been erected amongst a scattering of low barrack-like buildings, and beyond these the other perimeter towers were just visible. At the centre of this encampment stood a complicated scaffold. It held something canted above the ground so it was possible to see it was a huge flattened spiral of reddish metal, wavering behind distortions like heat haze. The frame cast up by the intensifier had narrowed and centred on one of the domes. Cormac signalled a halt and pointed to the centre of the encampment.

"That thing in the scaffold has to be your target. Skellor is in the dome on the far left," he explained, before squatting down and turning on his suit's comlink. "Tomalon, do you still have a position on us?" he asked.

"I do," came the reply. "You're about two hundred metres in from the edge of the 'ware effect. By my scanning, all that lies beyond you is empty saltpan."

"Scar," said Cormac, nodding to the dracoman, "is going to send his multigun code to you, then range-spot an autolaser tower. On my signal I want you to take it out."

"Understood," replied Tomalon.

"Is the shuttle in position?" Cormac asked.

"In position, yes. It can be with you in five minutes."

"Well, you'll have to wait until we lose that 'ware. There's no telling what else they have in there. Even these autolaser towers are pretty sophisticated, and they're only for the local wildlife. Also, I want Skellor secured before things get… frantic."

"I do know what I'm doing," growled Tomalon.

Cormac supposed he must: you didn't get to be the Captain of a ship like the Occam Razor without having some grasp of combat realities. He glanced at his two companions.

"Ready?"

Both Gant and Scar gave him affirmative nods.

"Well, let's get in there then," Cormac said.

Scar raised his multigun and aimed at the tower. He did not fire, but merely held the laser sight on-target and transmitted the required information from his gun up to the ship.

"Acquired," Tomalon told them.

"Hit it," said Cormac.

As painful seconds dragged out, Cormac hunkered down, realizing because of the delay that Tomalon must have fired a kinetic missile rather than one of the Occam's beam weapons. He was proved right when fire stabbed down through the tower and it lifted up on a blast. The air-rending sound of the explosion rolled out to them as the tower came apart on the expanding surface of a ball of fire — and disappeared. Globules of molten metal pattered on the ground fifty metres ahead of them, and a dust cloud rolled past them as they rose and ran towards the encampment.

Gant and Scar immediately outdistanced Cormac, as they sped towards the strange object in the centre of the encampment. Now, people were coming out of one of the barracks buildings. Two explosions followed — grenades tossed by Gant — and a man was running and screaming, with most of his suit ripped away. Someone else was turning and pointing a weapon. Observing the shock-absorbing side cylinders and the cable leading down to a belt-mounted power supply, Cormac realized they were using rail-guns here too, though of primitive design. He fired once and that same someone went over on his back, with vapour jetting from his head. Then Cormac was at the wall of the dome. Not far away he could hear the stuttering fire of Separatist weapons, and the sonic cracking of Gant's and Scar's weapons in reply. Over com he could hear Scar growling with enjoyment. To his right: three people running towards him. Something was punching a line of cavities from the plascrete wall of the dome. He drew Shuriken and hurled it. The throwing star shot away, with its chainglass blades opening out in bloody welcome — through one attacker then another, both of them keeling over, a limb hitting the ground here, blood jetting and vaporizing; then, on its return, the third man losing his head before even knowing his companions were dead. From its holster Cormac sent new instructions: a program he had keyed in earlier. Shuriken swooped away from its three dead victims, then hit the wall of the dome with a circular-saw scream. While it was providing this distraction, Cormac used a smart key on the airlock. As he entered, it was to the welcoming light of the explosion that toppled the 'ware device from its supporting scaffold. And Gant's "All yours, Tomalon," coming over com.

A moment's pause as the lock cycled. When the inner door opened Cormac went through, keeping low, and dived to one side, rolled and came up in a crouch, with his thin-gun aimed and ready. To his right, two men and a woman were struggling into environment suits, to the sound of Shuriken's cutting.

"On the floor!"

One of the men started groping for something at his belt, before toppling over with a hole burned in through the bridge of his nose and out through the back of his head. The woman's eyes flicked towards something on Cormac's left. Turn. Someone on a gantry positioned round a silo, aiming a rifle at him. Four shots slammed the marksman back against the silo, then he followed the rifle to the ground.

"I said on the floor!"

The remaining man and the woman obeyed, and Cormac hit the recall on his shuriken holster. The screaming noise stopped and suddenly Shuriken was hovering above him. From behind it came a thin whistling of pressure differential, through the slot it had cut. Checking a readout at the lower edge of his vision, Cormac saw that the atmospheric pressure here was higher than that outside, so there would be no danger just yet of cyanide poisoning for anyone going unsuited in this dome. He keyed another program from the holster menu, and Shuriken advanced to hang threateningly over the prostrate man and woman.

"If you try to get up, you die," he said, coldly.

The two of them stared up at Shuriken, and showed no inclination to move from where they lay. Meanwhile Cormac scanned around to pick up Skellor's trace just beyond the silo. He ran to the edge of the silo and peered past one of the pipes running down the side of it. A plascrete wall cut across in front of him. Inset in this was a wide observation window, and what appeared to be another airlock. Judging by the equipment he could see through the window, the room beyond was a laboratory, so the lock was probably a clean-lock. Checking to either side as he passed the silo, Cormac slammed into the plascrete wall before peering round through the window again. The room was bright and aseptic. Esoteric equipment cluttered workbenches. Cormac identified a nanoscope, a huge surgical robot, cryostasis vessels, and a surgical table holding what appeared to be the corpse of a calloraptor. Cormac slapped a contact charge against the window and stepped away. The charge blew, and its metal disc went clattering across the floor. The glass remained intact until the decoder molecule began unravelling the tough chain molecules of the glass. After a minute the entire window collapsed into powder, and Cormac leapt through.

"Skellor!"

Cormac hesitated before moving beyond the corpse, as now he saw that he had been mistaken in thinking it a calloraptor. He had never seen anything quite like it: greyish veins seemed raised up from the inside, and had a slightly metallic hue; the face was also distorted — much more flattened than a calloraptor's and of a simian appearance — and the forearms were bigger, the claws more like hands. It had also, obviously, been able to walk more upright, and in its ocular hollows gleamed a line of pinhead eyes. He recognized that there was much of calloraptor in this corpse and also something of human being, and surmised that this creature must be the result of some experiment of Skellor's. He moved on and scanned his surroundings further.

There.

Skellor stepped out from behind the insectile chrome nightmare of the surgical robot. The hologram Cormac had studied earlier had not shown a particularly distinguished-looking individual: he was short, muscular, with brown hair and brown eyes. Fanatical as Skellor was about his work, he had apparently never bothered with cosmetic alteration, nor any form of augmentation. The latter situation, Cormac now saw, had changed: a crystalline aug curved from the man's right temple, down behind his right ear, and terminated in three crystalline rods that entered the base of his neck. Recognizing just what this device was, Cormac felt inclined to put numerous holes in him right there and then. He restrained himself.

"Cormac, Earth Central Security. I've come to get you out," he said, going for the less confrontational option.

Skellor snorted a laugh, then shook his head. "You're outside your jurisdiction here," he said.

"You're a Polity citizen and you were kidnapped. That puts anywhere you are found inside Polity jurisdiction," Cormac replied.

"Wrong, citizen, I am here of my own free will, and you are over the Line. But I don't suppose that'll make any difference to your actions. The arrogance of ECS has always been unassailable — hence their insistence on hindering my work."

"If I recall the file correctly, the hindrance was regarding your choice of experimental subjects, not of the work itself. The Polity does not prevent research into anything so long as it doesn't impinge upon another individual's rights."

Skellor gestured to a nearby bench, upon which rested a completely sealed chainglass cylinder supported in a ceramal framework that seemed excessive for the task. Inside the cylinder lay a scattering of pinkish coralline objects.

"Perhaps you should ask your superiors about research into items such as those," Skellor said, "should you survive."

As Skellor turned away, something slammed into Cormac's back and bore him to the floor. Cormac shifted as he went down and fired three shots from under his armpit into the assailant behind him. The only response was a grating hiss — then he was hurtling through the air to crash down onto the equipment lying on one of the benches. The creature from the surgical table. After rolling from the bench, Cormac put three shots into the sharp double keel of its chest. The creature opened its three-cornered mouth and hissed again, as something pinkish welled up to fill the holes the shots had made — and it just kept advancing. This time Cormac shot it in the head, putting out some of those pinhead eyes, which paused it for all of a second or two before it caught hold of the bench, and hurled it to one side. Just then, there came a low sucking boom, and a wind suddenly dragged across the laboratory, towing pieces of cellophane and paper. Dome breach — a large one this time. Cormac leapt over the next bench, turned and concentrated his fire on one of the creature's leg joints. Four shots should have blown away enough of its knees to sever its lower leg, yet the limb clung on as rapidly expanding strands of the pinkish substance filled the gaping wounds.

"Right, point taken," muttered Cormac, slapping the recall on his shuriken holster. Shuriken arrived as Cormac was backed up against the wall of the dome, emptying the last of his thin-gun's charge. It took the creature's head off on the first pass, hesitated when it just remained standing, then — with two hatcheting thumps — cut its torso in half at chest level, then curved back through to take away its legs.

As Shuriken hovered and bobbed, whirring with irritation above the dismembered body, Cormac advanced for a closer look. There was no blood, just pink strands creeping across the floor between body parts, before freezing and fading to a bone white. He prodded at one of these strands with the toe of his boot, and it curled up briefly before shattering into glassy fragments.

"Gant, where are you?"

"Heading your way," came the immediate reply. "The shuttle's down and the unit's clearing up the stragglers."

"There's two inside the dome here. I had Shuriken guarding them, but then I ran into a little trouble."

"Gotcha."

Cormac hit recall again, and held up his arm. Shuriken returned reluctantly to its holster, retracting its chainglass blades at the last moment before snicking itself away. Cormac stepped over his recently demised enemy and trotted over to where he had last seen Skellor. Beyond the surgical robot there was a hole in the wall of the dome, out of which gyred all the loose rubbish sucked from the laboratory. Cormac stepped through it and saw the shuttle — a U-shaped lander twenty metres long — resting at the edge of the encampment to the side where the autolaser tower had stood. A pulse-gun was firing intermittently from one of the shuttle's turrets, bringing down calloraptors that were coming in to see what all the excitement was about. Cormac walked on until the frame in his intensifier closed to a line, and then he peered at the ground. Lying in the dust was the small black button of a memplant — Skellor's implant, the one from which issued the tracer signal. Cormac could only suppose it had been removed some time earlier, and only now — because Skellor had realized what danger it represented — had it been discarded. He picked the object up, then surveyed his surroundings. It seemed to be all over. The Sparkind were herding prisoners out into the open — those of them that had hotsuits — and Cormac could hear no more shooting.

"What happened in there?" Gant asked, coming up behind him.

Cormac glanced round at him — and at Scar, who was following closely behind.

"It would seem that friend Skellor is going to be more of a problem than we thought."

"How so?"

"Well, from what I can gather, he is interfaced with a quartz-matrix AI," said Cormac.

"Shit, that's bad," said Gant.

"Is it?" said Cormac, slipping the memplant into one of his belt pouches. "Would it be as bad as him having got his sticky little fingers on Jain technology too?"

"Double shit," muttered Gant.

The silence of space should have made the destruction seem unreal, but the picture of the station — without atmosphere to spoil the clarity — brought reality home. With kin and clan, Apis Coolant hung in the air before the great screen and watched his world tearing itself apart. As he watched, he picked up snippets of the conversation from the rainbow crowd gathered around him, and they seemed a suitable commentary.

"… nanomycelium…"

"… too much time. The counteragent too late…"

One individual, with emerald skin and pure black eyes, pressed her thin fingers to the chrome aug she wore.

"Miranda just resorbed the subminds. The servers are getting cranky," she said.

"Confirmed… Miranda just transported out," said another.

"Where do we go now?" someone whispered.

The Outlink station Miranda seemed to be sparkling, but close-up views showed that each glint was either an explosion or where a misaligned gravity field collapsed part of the hull. The stalk of the station was twisting as well, and gaps were appearing in the structure. Debris orbited it in ring-shaped clouds, and beyond this the other ships that had helped take off the last of the survivors were poised like silver vultures.

"Ten minutes to fusion engage," a voice told them.

The clans ignored this and continued to watch the dramatic destruction of their home. For a moment, the screen blanked out. As it came back on, they saw a star-glare going out. Part of the station had disappeared.

"What was that?"

"It's where the runcible was," said someone knowledgeably. "Probably antimatter."

Others felt inclined to argue.

"No, foolish — not antimatter. Collapse of spoon."

"Rubbish. That was flare-off from the buffers. The energy had to go sometime."

An involved argument followed that Apis ignored. What would happen now that his home was gone? Another station? He did not know. All he did know was that he felt a deep anger at what had happened. A nanomycelium had been used, so there must have been forethought. Someone had deliberately destroyed his home. The room jerked and people looked around in confusion, before returning their attention to the screen and continuing their arguments. Talk was a shield against the reality of what had happened.

"Fusion drive engaging in ten seconds. Entering underspace in twenty-two minutes," the voice told them, but was ignored by all but Apis and the woman next him. She seemed confused and kept touching her aug as if probing a sore.

"Don't seem to be receiving anything on this ship," she said.

Apis agreed: there was something strange about this situation — the voice had sounded too mechanical to be the voice of an AI. It sounded more like the voice of a bored human. Peculiar job for a human to have. There was also a slight jerk as the drive engaged, as if something might be functioning a microsecond out — something that should not be.

The picture transmitted by the remotes at the Outlink station remained as good as ever. Apis could see that it had now twisted in half, and that the two halves were starting to revolve in the same direction, like the needles of a dial. They had completed three revolutions, and were upright on the screen and parallel to each other, when the ship entered underspace. The picture then blinked out. When Apis glanced around, he saw that he was one of only a few who remained, everybody else having gone to their allotted hammocks.

"Leave your basket here, but bring your pole-grab and net," said Ulat, standing beside the pond with three other pond workers. Eldene glanced at him, then carefully made her way to the edge of the pond, towing her net full of broken deaders behind her. The squerms in this pond were only small ones — less than the length of her arm and only the thickness of her thumb — but you never dared take your eye off them for long. Even ones this size could writhe up the side of a wader to tear holes in a worker's body.

Reaching the bank she climbed out of the water and emptied her net. As Ulat and the others began to move away, she took up her pole-grab then hurried to catch up, falling in beside Fethan. The man was an old hand who had been working the ponds for more than half his life, hence the huge bulge apparent on his chest — over which his ginger beard spread — where his scole lay feeding under his shirt.

"What's happening?" Eldene hissed.

Fethan glanced at her with bloodshot eyes, then twisted his face in a parody of a grin, exposing his lack of front teeth — apparently lost when he had taken a beating from one of the town proctors. "Tricone. Musta been a faulty membrane. Broke through into one of Dent's ponds and drowned — poisoned half the squerms."

Eldene felt fear clenching her gut: that meant half a pondful of deaders to remove. "What size?" she asked.

"Full-grown squerms," Fethan replied, then lowered his voice. "Now'd be a good time to go under. Guarantee one of us'll get scraped today."

Eldene considered that. Fethan had teased her remorselessly about 'the Underground' — occasionally saying something to pique her curiosity, then dismissing it all as rumour and myth. Eldene thought it likely that it was all myth. She had so far seen no sign of a resistance movement, but plenty of signs of something to resist. She glanced up at the satellites and stations of the Theocracy glinting in the now lavender sky, or across the face of the gas giant, all reflecting the light of the sun that would shortly break from behind the horizon. Then she gazed out across the ponds, to where Proctor Volus was rapidly approaching in his aerofan with its side-mounted rail-gun. What chance did any resistance movement stand with satellite lasers poised overhead, and the Theocracy's religious police below constantly watching the planet-bound population?

It was evident they had reached the pond in question when Ulat halted and stood gazing at the water, with arms akimbo. Dent stood at the foreman's side, wringing his hands, his balding head bowed. That a tricone had broken through the membrane separating the pond's water from the deep planetary soil was not due to any fault on his part. In fact it was more likely due to skimming on Ulat's part — trying to make a membrane last for three seasons, rather than the usual two, and pocketing the consequent saving. But, as Eldene well knew, blame always devolved on the workers, no matter how innocent.

"You checked it before it was filled?" Ulat asked, after hinging down his mask. Because he used such breather gear showed he was a citizen, rather than just a worker, but it did not raise him to the rank of a true brother. All that could impart that lofty status was the Gift, which only those of religious rank above vicar could bestow.

"I did, Ulat," replied Dent.

Ulat flipped his mask back up as he studied the pond again. In the shallow water rested a mollusc the size of a man's torso. This creature consisted of three white cones of shell closely joined, like panpipes, but with nodular fleshy heads resting deep within each shell mouth. All around it the water was discoloured, bluish, and the only squerms anywhere near it were either unmoving or breaking up into individual segments. The rest of the squerms were gathered around the edges of the pond, tangled in the mat of weeds in a hissing and flicking, vicious metallic spaghetti. As Ulat glanced round to where Volus was landing his aerofan, the mask did not conceal an alarmed but furtive expression. Eldene understood that, with the Proctor being here now, Ulat had no chance to cover up the disaster and put the loss down to the natural wastage entailed by deaders. Someone, she knew, was going to be punished.

"I think not," said Ulat, and abruptly struck Dent across the face. When the man went down, Ulat kicked him in the stomach. Then, as he coiled around this pain, Ulat stamped down on the scole attached to his chest — which soon had Dent gasping for breath as the creature ceased to oxygenate his blood.

"What has happened here, brother?" asked Volus, approaching, his voice echoey behind his tinted visor.

Eldene studied the new arrival, with his stinger resting across one shoulder and his pistol drawn from its recharging holster, and realized that the rumours were true: Volus had received the Gift from this work-compound's Vicar. She could see the large bean-shaped object attached behind his ear, scaled and reddish green, and looking alive as any scole. Now he truly was a member of the Theocracy, in his white uniform with sacred words written down the side and down one leg of it, his higher-status visored breather apparatus, and now his connection to all brothers and his access to all channels of prayer.

Dent was still gasping for breath as the Proctor glanced unconcernedly down at him, then returned his attention to Ulat.

Ulat gestured down at Dent. "He punctured this pond membrane with his pole-grab, Proctor, and did not bother to report it." He pointed to the pond. "Now you see the result."

"You were required to increase the production of squerms, Ulat. This does not look like any increase to me. The Vicar will not be happy," said Volus.

"What can I do?" Ulat whined.

Now Dent slowly began to breathe more easily, as his scole recovered from the blow it had received.

"You can begin by keeping your workers in order. Those of the Hierarchy are not best pleased by the shortfall of trade essence, so their displeasure is focused on the Deacon, the Deacon's displeasure is focused on his vicars, and theirs on us proctors. We have been instructed to take measures. So must I take measures now, or will you get this mess cleaned up!"

Ulat whirled on his workers. "You four, get in there and clear out those deaders!" He kicked Dent until the man stood up, then gave him a shove towards the pond. Eldene caught Dent's arm before he stumbled into it, and got a brief nod of gratitude before he stooped to retrieve his net and pole-grab.

"Work the edge for a moment," Eldene whispered to him, before leaving her own pole and net on the bank and following Fethan into the turbid water. Dent moved off along one side and began using his pole to pull out all those deaders he could reach.

It was back-breaking and dangerous work. Twice Eldene felt the brush of feeding hooks close to her face, as she and Fethan stooped to lift the tricone from the water and carry it to the bank, before returning with their nets to scoop up the swiftly decaying segments of squerm. Cathol, fourth member of their group, swore quietly, and Eldene noticed that he had not been so swift and had lost a piece of his cheek to one of the creatures. The man continued working, though, blood soaking into the collar of his coverall and dripping into the water. After a short time, Volus departed in his aerofan, leaving Ulat nervously patrolling the bank. Hours later, when the team had cleared the pond of deaders, and were mounding them on the bank for collection, the Proctor returned.

"Come here, all of you!" Volus bellowed.

The four workers gathered before him, with Ulat standing at their backs.

"You have done well, brothers, in your labour for the Church of Masada," said the Proctor, strolling along their line. "But it is a shame that it has even been necessary for you to labour like this." He came to stand before Dent, and gestured Ulat to come and stand beside him.

Ulat pulled his mask down. "Yes, Proctor?"

"What do you think is a sufficient punishment for his infringement?" Volus asked.

Ulat took another deep breath from his mask before replying. "I think a few days in a cage should do the trick. We don't want to ruin him completely."

Eldene glanced aside nervously. It was coming now. Volus was bound to suggest a more vicious punishment. Quite likely Dent would soon be dead, and Eldene could see the man knew that: he looked terrified.

Volus nodded slowly. "I see… So, that being his punishment, what do you think yours should be, Ulat? Your own crime has been theft from the Church… hasn't it?"

Eldene could not help but feel a species of joy at the sudden panic in Ulat's expression.

"I have done nothing, Proctor, I assure you!"

"No, of course not," said Volus, but now his hand snapped out, and he struck Ulat across his legs with the stinger. Ulat shrieked and went down, and Volus immediately stooped over him. Eldene watched in amazement as the Proctor tore away the foreman's breather gear and stepped back.

"Now, brothers," continued Volus. "A new work party will be taking over here from tomorrow. So tomorrow morning you four must report to the ponds on South-side, to join the sprawn harvest. Return to your barracks when you have finished here."

As the Proctor returned to his aerofan, Ulat crawled after him, his breathing heavy at first, then gasping and choking as he tried to summon the breath to beg for the return of his mask. It was a horrible and rare justice, Eldene felt, watching Ulat die, while the Proctor took his aerofan into the air. They loaded Ulat into a basket along with the other deaders — asphyxiated blue under the lurid sky.