Gridlinked (39 page)

'Then cut,' replied a woman's voice. 'She's probably still bleeding in there.'

A dentist-drill whine quickly followed on the words. She felt the Outlinker tugging at her suit. While he was doing that the edge went off the pain, but Jarvellis knew she needed more than a patch to block it completely. She was in a bad way. She didn't need to see her injuries to know that.

'That's got it. Get Sam over here.'

The suit seal crumpled as it disengaged and she felt the motors in the back of the suit hinging it open.

She screamed as something ripped in her hip.

'Shit, a lump of chainglass. Sorry, darlin'. Close off that artery, Sam.'

Jarvellis clamped down on another scream as something cold went into her hip. She heard wet slicing sounds and the pain became more intense. Another patch went down on her stomach and another on her knee. When she thought she could bear the pain no longer it started to fade a little. Now she felt something else pressed against her breast. A blessed cold numbness suffused it. She felt herself beginning to drift on the load of painkillers pumping round her blood supply. But the narrow hand would not allow this; it patted at her face.

'Stay with us. I want you to lift your head and look,' said the gruff voice.

Jarvellis just lay there. She didn't see any incentive to move. John was dead. The
Lyric
was gone. It was all over. The patting turned to a slap and the voice got angrier.

'Wake up, damn it!'

This seemed too cruel after all that had happened. Why couldn't they just leave her alone? She opened her eyes and raised her head to tell them to do just that, but in the end could not even manage to.

She lay on the ceramal floor of an airlock. To her left crouched a little robot the shape of a limpet. It had two multi-jointed arms, and she almost chucked when she saw how it had opened her leg to reach in and clamp the artery. The thigh, pad it was reaching over had a bloody dagger of chainglass right through it. Jarvellis did not want to know what might lie under the dressing on her breast. She inspected the other two occupants of the lock.

They were Oudinkers and they were old. The man and the woman were both dressed in baggy garments that failed to conceal how incredibly thin they were. Here were people whose forebears had gone in for radical adaptation. They were perfectly adapted for station life, for weighdessness. Put mem on a planet with anything approaching Earth gravity, and they would collapse like dolls made of tissue paper. Jarvellis noticed that the man had a crust around his mouth, and there were specks of blood on his bluish skin. She remembered now that Oudinkers could survive in vacuum for a short period of time. It must have been he who had retrieved her.

'This station is still revolving,' he informed her.

She tried to understand what he was getting at. The woman, standing nervously behind him, was holding a nerve-blocker. Why the hell didn't she use it?

The man went on. 'Listen carefully. You will the without proper medical attention. Out here on the edge we're at about a quarter of a G. I got you into here using a cable winder. I cannot get you further into the station by myself, and I do not have the equipment set-up to do so. It would take too long.'

Jarvellis let her head drop back. So that was it. Out here, for them, she was an impossible weight to move. They were probably having enough trouble keeping themselves upright. Habit took over then: the habit of survival. She licked dry lips and spoke with a cracked voice.

'My leg.'

The man said, 'I'll have Sam place a clamp, but that's all we can do for now.'

'Hell,' said Jarvellis, and looked up at the wall behind her. Cable snaked up from the back of her suit to a winder that had been hastily welded to the wall. with her right arm she reached up and gripped the cable. She did not look down in response to the sudden pain in her thigh as the littie robot called Sam placed the clamp. Inch by agonizing inch, she hauled herself back until her lower legs were free of the suit. Her right leg was no problem; her left leg was dead weight. When it came free she yelled, but just kept going. The Oudinkers moved back. An accidental blow from her - if she stumbled, anydüng - would snap their bones like sugar sticks. Finally she slid sideways from the suit. Actually standing was out of the question.

The man moved further back and pressed a button by the inner door. The door irised open with a cacophonous shriek. This place
was
old.

'There's an elevator fifty metres round from here. We'll walk just ahead of you. I'll not ask you if you can make it, because you have no other options.'

Jarvellis felt that she did have another option, but she began painfully dragging herself across the floor on her side. The litde robot zipped around in a U beside her and behind her, as if enjoying düs one chance of experiencing its true calling as a sheepdog.

Z

Skaidon was a genius. At age six he took one of the old-style IQ tests and was rated at 180. After he was congratulated, it is reported that he said, 'If you like I'll do a test to 190, now I know how they work.' Throughout his life Skaidon mocked those he called, 'Hard-wired lead-asses' Should you wish to know more about this, I direct you to one of his numerous biographies. This book is about runcibles. Today we are aware of the dangers of directly interfacing a human mind with a computer (not to be confused with the less direct methods ofauging or gridlinking). Skaidon was the first to do this and he died of it, leaving a legacy to humanity that is awesome. It took him twenty-three minutes. In those minutes, he and the Craystein computer became the most brilliant mind humankind has ever known. He gave us Skaidon technology, from which has come instantaneous travel, antigravity and much of our field technology. The Craystein computer, in its supercooled vault under the city of London on Earth, contains the math and blueprints for the runcible (for reasons not adequately explained, Skaidon loved the nonsense poem by Edward Lear and used its wording

in his formulae to stand for those particles and states of existence we until then had no words for, hence: run-cible - the device; spoon - the five-dimensional field that breaks into nil-space; pea-green is a particle now tentatively identified as the tachyon) and to begin to understand some of this math let us first deal with that nil-space shibboleth wrongly described as quantum planing…

An Introduction to Skaidon Formulae
by Ashanta Gorian

Two splits, outlining an area like the outer surface of a segment of orange, appeared in the hull of
Hubris.
The section of hull pushed out and from the poles of the ship it hinged round, exposing a play of light and shadow in the guts of the ship. Slowly, as of a cub coming from its burrow for the first time, the gleaming front surface of the heavy-lifter became exposed. Then more quickly, confidently, its impellers brought it out. It was in appearance a giant metal boomerang. From wing-tip to wing-tip it measured half a kilometre. Free of the
Hubris
it turned at ninety degrees to the rapidly closing split. Its impellers drove it on, and then, far enough away for safety, its ionic boosters jetted pulsed orange fire and blasted it for the horizon of Samarkand. Far to the side of it, Dragon sat on the horizon, watching.

Standing in the shuttle bay, while another minishuttle was being taken from storage, Cormac watched the heavy-lifter depart. It carried autodozers and line-laying moles for the clearance of a site to the west of the orig- inal one, which was still far too hot, and for the laying of's-con cables to directly draw off the heat energy from the buffers. Dragon had not left much of the original network intact. Chaline, who was on the lifter, was in her element.

When the heavy-lifter was a speck against Samarkand, Cormac went to the drop-shaft and from there to Isolation. The dracomen had been returned to their original quarters, where Mika continued her study of them. As far as he was concerned, they could stay there.

Mika was not at the viewing window where he expected to find her, but in the small control centre for all the isolation chambers. She was seated before a bank of screens and watching the one with IsolI imprinted above it. Two side screens to this one were giving a continuous readout of information.

'Do you have anything for me?' Cormac asked.

'Yes… yes, I think I do.'

Cormac dropped into the chair next to her.

She went on. 'They have been altered. I'm not even sure if they're the same ones. Their bone and muscle structures are lighter. If before they were made to be strong, now they have been made to be fast.'

Cormac looked at the two dracomen on the screen. Why? What was Dragon up to now?

Chaline watched the moles set off on their long journey to New Sea, and smiled under her mask. Improvisation under difficult circumstances: proof of a technician's abilities. Without the microwave receivers of the stations, they could not use the transmission dish that came with the runcible. But, as always, another way had been found.

Like giant silver woodlice with treads, the moles bumbled forwards in relentless slow motion, dragging their moling attachments along two metres below the surface as they laid the's-con cables. It would take them twenty hours to reach their destination. Hopefully the site here would be cleared by then. Chaline turned and watched the autodozers at work as they shoved huge mounds of dust and flaked stone before them and exposed the clean basalt below.

'Nadhir, is that second shuttle down yet?' she said, over the roar of heavy machinery.

The reply from her comunit was immediate. 'Down and ready.'

'Tell Dave to get over to New Sea and get things ready for the moles' arrival. He should be able to have the heat-sinks ready to be connected up by then. Those's-con cables out there weren't too badly damaged.'

At least Dragon had left them the heat-sinks. The heat-sink stations were now just metal-lined craters, but the sinks themselves were under half a kilometre of ice.

'He'll start moaning again.'

'Then he can moan. At least he won't be here doing it… Did the lifter get away on schedule?'

'It did, and by the time it returns we should have enough clear bedrock to offload the runcible onto.'

'Fused and levelled?'

'Yes, we're keeping up with the dozers. Should be able to drive in the bracings for the containment sphere by the time the lifter goes up for the prefabs.'

'What word from Jane?'

'The AI's ready, just has to be brought down and keyed in. The hour-eater's going to be setting up the horns and aligning the fields. The AI can do the fine tuning.'

Chaline nodded to herself in satisfaction: all according to plan. Fifty hours she had estimated, and fifty hours it would be. Chaline prided herself on her estimates.

'—lined in lies hurled grey-suited arms flapping wings of ashen crow cage him in screaming orbit cast and broken in sum beauty of chaos calm eye of storm hub fulcrum—'

'
Hubris
just does not have the processing power to unravel this mind without the danger of scrambling it further,' said Jane.

She and Cormac were seated before a bank of controls - grudgingly allowed them by the frenetic runcible technicians - in Downlink Com.

'Then that is a risk we must take. I've got my back to a wall here. I think Dragon is lying about an awful lot, but I've got no way to prove it, and this is a life-and-death situation. If I fuck up, people are going to die, and the killers are going to go unpunished. Remember, there were ten thousand people out here.'

'You do not have to remind me,' said Jane with something approaching anger.

'Sorry,' said Cormac.

'—axis screams roar of own might swastika purge emetic sponge of obscene colour blowing across lizards light fleeing sinter sinter fell into new day skulls satchel leather fetid hollows wasp eaten apples pork bone-exposed crackling… dying… black rats—'

'There, damn it. There!' said Cormac. 'Lizards could easily be the dracomen. Light fleeing could be the Maker escaping. And the skulls and crackling… ten thousand people.'

'Somewhat interpretive… But there may be a way…'

'—chewing rotating heart in assonance chained before red-hot grate spitting intestines died died am—'

'Sorry, what did you say?'

'I said there may be a way to unscramble it. Though Chaline won't like it,' said Jane.

'Tell me. Don't tell her.'

'The new runcible AI might be able to do it. It is not keyed into the grid yet, and has fifty times the processing power of
Hubris
. It needs that to sort out the five-space math and nil-space co-ordinates.'

Cormac was silent for a while, staring off down the room at a screen showing the heavy-lifter coming up from Samarkand.

'Of course,' he said. 'Of course.' He turned and stared at her fiercely. 'Now - we do it now.'

Jane looked at him carefully for a moment before speaking to
Hubris. 'Hubris
, the new runcible AI is in Hold 5A. Can you link with it there, or will there have to be a direct line?'

'A direct line is not necessary. Once initiated, the new AI would be able to access all systems. It would be able to compensate for any error I might make in transmission and reception.'

'Initiation would be immediate,' said Jane.

Hubris
said, "There are dangers. This AI has been prepared for immediate installation in the grid.'

'The danger will be brief.'

'It will last for ten seconds. It will take this long for the AI to access all systems and ascertain its situation. Should I initiate, I will first sound a hold alert on all workstations.'

'Initiate then.'

'I cannot do this without a direct order from Agent Cormac.'

Cormac turned to Jane. 'Why the danger?'

'In an unprogrammed situation at initiation, the AI will immediately act to protect itself. It will take control of all accessible systems.'

Cormac turned to study the consoles. '
Hubris
, initiate runcible AI.'

Hubris's
voice sounded throughout the ship. 'All workstations, this is a hold alert. All robots will be going onto hold. All transient information is now in protected storage. I repeat…'