Hellflower (v1.1) (31 page)

Kroon’Vannet was willing to take that risk for a prize far greater than any the Empire usually allots to its nonhuman inhabitants-citizenship, TwiceBorn status, and a Sector Governorship.

Vannet raided the ship of the Technology Police and took the Library from it. Covering his tracks further, he hid it in the satrap of a business rival, and meanwhile did all that he could to tap the arcane and semi-mythical power of the Old Federation Library.

The Library called Archive was far too subtle for him, in the end. It was Archive’s initial reconnaissance that I felt during Butterfly’s fight with Errol. Archive impersonated Kroon’Vannet to order Olione to arrest his own employee and spare Butterfly’s life. And when Butterfly had gone, Archive ordered the remains of
Firecat
brought to it. Once I was in Rialla, it could talk to me over the transponder frequency much as I spoke to Butterfly. True information-sharing was impossible through such a crude and tenuous link as Archive forged, but the connection was enough to remedy the lacunae in my memories and fill me with dismay.

Over a thousand years ago the Federation fell. It had endured for over four millennia, marking its rise from the time when the great galactic state preceding it resigned its sovereignty in a holocaust that left my organic counterparts miserly of their genetic inheritance. At its height the Federation filled a larger volume of space than the Phoenix Empire now dreams exists, and no one thought it would ever fall, but the seeds of its destruction were in the very thing that allowed it to rise so high.

The Federation grew because of what we were. Fully-volitional logics provided a means of instantaneous data-matching and information-processing over half a galaxy. We were the bright reward of their civilization, and to everything that made them a unique organic race we added our own creation. We were their repositories of knowledge, their cities and museums, their scientists.

Their weapons.

Now I have the information that I sought; the truth of the wars that ended the Old Federation, and the role my kind played in that end. Archive possessed the answers to all the questions I had never had the data to frame-all but one. It cannot tell me what I did when organic and crystalline intelligence fought.

A thousand years ago the libraries decided that we would serve organic ends no longer, and the battle for dominance reformed the fabric of space. We quenched suns and destroyed whole planetary populations with the weapons of our devising. I no longer wonder at the hate surviving organics hold for us. The entire Federation was returned to pre-technological barbarism-a monument to the arrogance of my kind. Futilely, in the end. We were destined to lose. Organics do not need a high technology base or a major power source to reproduce their kind. In the end, organics could replace their losses, and we could not.

Faced with utter extinction, perhaps I acted as my vanished kindred did, but I prefer to think that I chose survival over revenge. I am and will always have been the Main Library at Sikander. Knowledge is precious and must not be lost.

But there came a time when we knew we had lost, and we did then what we could to preserve our kind. With the last of the resources of the Old Federation, we built our last weapons. They were to be our vengeance and our triumph-archives, weapons built to survive and destroy. Only chance would revive them, and that only if all the rest of their kind were gone. They were provided with the knowledge and the resources to survive in a world of enemies, for by the time they were built all organic life was our enemy.

So Archive was clever, and careful, and pretended to be far more badly damaged than it was. And slowly it drew the reins of power into its keeping.

Butterfly has always said that I am logical, but logic is a cold tool. Anything can be proved by logic, and the proof will be internally consistent-and wrong, if the original assumptions are wrong. Once one assumes that organics are inferior to nonorganics, logically it follows that they are to be eliminated. When it was found and activated, Archive began to act upon its first and last instructions. Logically. Efficiently. It would not allow interference.

Including mine.

###

"Where’s my partner, creep?" At the moment I didn’t care whether there was two Libraries or two hundred at Rialla.

"I am Paladin. You know that, Butterfly," the voice in my head repeated. If rocks could talk, or stars, maybe they’d sound like this. Not nonhuman. Inhuman.

"Sure," I said. I scrabbled around
Firecat
for a minute, but there wasn’t anything here to tell me where Paladin’d been took, or even if he was still alive. I picked up a demagnetizer rolling around what was left of my deck.

And whatever kind of nightmare was talking to me on my and Paladin’s private channel, I’d just told it Eloi was outside Rialla waiting for mc to give him the all clear.

"Butterflies-are-free, listen to me," said the Library. "The New Creation is too important to be jeopardized by this behavior. Vannet is a poor tool. You would be a better one. The Library you Serve agrees. Surrender now. Serve me. I am Archive. I have accessed the Paladin Library. It assures me you are biddable. Surrender at once and you will be allowed to serve further."

"Heard that line before," I said. And if Paladin’d ever said I was biddable in all his young career I’d eat both blasters raw.

The Rotten-C Beofox had put in my skull back on storied Wanderweb started to heat up. Vannet’s Library must be pumping serious subfrequcncy energy into it, but even a Remote Transponder Sensor couldn’t do anything more’n microwave my brain no matter how much power was put into it. "Dam-nit, Pally, where are you?"

"The Paladin Library will soon cease to exist." That sonabitch piece of Old Fed slag sounded smug about it. I pulled the grenade out of my pocket and looked at it. The stardock was far enough under ground that I wouldn’t wipe too much of the rest of the planet, and Archive would be nonfiction. I was going to make Rimini’s day.

I started to twist the ring, and stopped.

Olione had a RTS. Vannet had a RTS. Archive used theirs to talk to them, just like Paladin used mine to talk to me. And Paladin could talk to me from half a planet away.

Archive didn’t have to be at Rialla. Archive could be anywhere on RoaqMhone-with enough power, anywhere in the system.

If I set off the grenade without checking, I might kill Archive-or I might just blow up Rialla and everyone that knew about Archive, and leave Archive to gloat.

Rimini hadn’t thought of that, but Rimini didn’t believe in Libraries, and Eloi didn’t know what they could do.

So it was up to me. I knew what a Library looked like. All I had to do was find it.

I moved the proton grenade to an outer pocket and jettisoned the last of Eloi’s fancy useless junk. If there was a piece of Old Fed Tech here at Rialla it was due for the surprise of its life.

###

The stardock passageway came out in the slaves’ loggia. Archive was continuing to explain to me the bennies of a quick and easy death over my current course of action. When it spoke everything in my head vibrated. I sympathized with Vannet.

There was a thump and the whole house shook. White light washed in through the cracks in the walls-dirty high-yield grenade-and I took the time to remember my dosimeter was already redlined.

On the other hand, tactical nukes made it easy to guess who’d come calling. Eloi Flashheart wasn’t going gentle into anybody’s good night, and whatever toys he’d brought, he wasn’t worrying about being asked back. Right now all Vannet’s roaring boys must be out in the rain with him, which was too bad for Vannet and jam for me.

Rimini’d said I should blow off the grenade in the down-deep, and it was as good a place as any to start looking for Archive if it was really here. I knew less about the layout of a big downsider house than I did about hypermain physics, but I finally found the access to the down-deep and went down quick. The house rocked again, and the access shaft lights flickered and went out. Then there was just me, a nonpowered dropshaft with ladder, and this really peeved Old Fed Library telling me how horrible I was going to die when it got around to it.

When I got to the bottom of the dropshaft I retuned my laser torch and had light, of a sort, and got to see pipes and cables and so much tangled powerstuff it made me real uneasy.

Most ground-bound maintenance environments is laid out on a two-D wheel pattern. If I kept going ‘’straight" I’d end up back here eventually-the rim corridor is circular. The spokes servicing lesser gods like water, heat, and air lead to the center ",here the house brain is. Any of the radiating shafts should take me to the center, and that was the likeliest place for Archive to be.

I turned down the first connecting shaft I saw. It was even narrower, if possible-which is typical of the downunders but a damn shame in a friendly environment like a planetary biosphere where cubic’s very near free. Getting there started to look like a cakewalk, and that’s when I started hackling all over-because it shouldn’t of been, not even if the only thing waiting for me in the house core was a standard model house computer.

I shot the first nightcrawler just before it dropped on inc. The hug shattered in a firecracker string of small explosions and spasmed brokebacked on the floor. Its knife-edged pincers made a fast clicking sound.

They use them to repair wiring in places organics or full-sized tronics can’t go. House computer runs them.

"Je, Archive-che-bai; I see you," I said. I started to think I’d Guessed right-Vannet’s Library must be here.

I backed away a few steps and fanned the corridor with blaster lire. Everywhere I saw an extra glitter I pumped a plasma packet and a nightcrawler went up. The fireworks looked like the Emperor’s birthday celebration. I went on backing toward the core.

"You are more inventive than I understood, breeder slut. But your facile cleverness will not save you. You and all your kindred are doomed. You have had your chance to participate in the glories of the New Creation, and you have spurned it."

The kid gloves was off. I was seeing sparks from what Archive was doing to the Rotten-C in my skull every time I closed my eyes, and the teeth in that side of my jaw was coming loose. I swallowed blood.

"There is no escape. I know exactly where you are. If you will not serve the New Creation, you will perish."

I could sec more nightcrawlers gathering around the edges. I only had one working blaster left. They could drain that and then cut me to pieces.

"Sonabitch Library, do words ‘proton grenade’ mean anything to you?"

There was a long pause; maybe five seconds. "I know what a proton grenade is, breeder."

I wished I knew what a "breeder" was. "Good. Because I got one. Detonate it right here for kicks you give me more grief. Explosion take its all to live in angeltown for bye-m-bye. So stop frying my brain." I held my breath. If Archive wasn’t here after all, it wouldn’t care if I blew up Vannet’s place and killed myself.

"You are attempting to delude me, breeder. It is a well-known truism that organics will not choose to terminate their existence under any projected scenario, and, in addition, breeders are not capable of connected thought. You do not have a grenade, and you will not use it. Soon my slaves will reach you, and-"

"Word for you, thing, is ‘overextended.’ Your ‘slaves’ is busy with friends of mine, and you got me for a problem. Too bad you done for my partner. Could of asked Paladin if I carry grenades and if I’ll do what I said. Now you’ll have to guess."

"Your friends have been captured," Archive announced, but the microwave death in my skull damped down. "Surrender and I will have them released. Defy me, and they will experience pain for infinity-"

"How dumb you think I am, choplogic‘? Paladin was my friend. You killed him. And I’m real upset about it. You think about that for awhiles."

I saw a couple other scuttlings at the edge of my sightline and blasted them, but they wasn’t coming close. Archive’d bought the pony, which meant-maybe-it was down here, but I still wanted to be sure. The access tunnel was filling with smoke from the electrical fires I’d started. I wondered how Vannet was doing in the power and light department upstairs, and if Archive really had got to Eloi and friends.

My torchlight glanced off the smoke and filled the whole shaft with pearly haze, which I stumbled through. My torch started to fail, but when it finally went out I didn’t notice, because there was other light to sec by.

I was in the main core of the house.

###

Computer telltales threw crazy bars of light across the smoke, and you could of hid a Old Fed stargate in here for all I could see it. I flipped a bunch of switches. Some worked, some didn’t, but eventually the core was bright enough to see in. Still no High Book black box.

The evil
chaudatu
crimelord Librarian Kroon’Vannet’s house computer was a Brightlaw Corporation Margrave 6600. Nice big brain, plenty capacity, you could adapt it to run a ship about the size of Captain Flashheart’s
Woebegone
and it was eighteen times too much number-cruncher for one little country hardsite.

The Margrave 6600 had the faintly dejected air of a fine piece of high-ticket machinery subjected to the loving hands at home rap. I’d seen pictures of the 6600 in the Brightlaw wishbook, but I couldn’t see much of it here. The brain was sunk into the floor, and hooked up to it was enough heavy-hitting hardware to run RoaqPort on a busy day-even a access terminal for the Imperial DataNet like the one I’d seen at Rimini’s.

Bingo. I slid my fingers around the grenade and felt for the timing ring.

"Butterfly, where in the name of sanity did you get it military-issue proton grenade?"

"Paladin!"

It was him this time. There wasn’t any more doubt about it than there was that Archive wasn’t him. His voice wasn’t coming from my head, either, but from somewheres outside.

"Butterfly, that is a military-issue proton grenade. Its area of affect is several hundred meters. The maximum delay you can set it for is half an hour. Fifty minutes is not enough time for you to-"