Line War (46 page)

‘You must go to
Trafalgar
for me,’ said Dragon. ‘I am fairly certain that it lies at the centre of this particular bloom of Jain technology.’

Mika felt a rumbling vibration through the floor and, when movement at the horizon attracted her attention, she looked over to see a pseudopod tree spearing towards the bone forest. She watched as it reached the Jain coral and penetrated, fraying and spreading out as it did so. The vibration steadied at a low note and, checking scan returns, Mika saw that, in relation to the mass before them, Dragon was now stationary. The sphere had clearly moored itself to their destination.

‘Let me get this straight,’ she said. ‘You want me to fly my little intership craft right into that
mess
- and to the very centre, about two and a half thousand miles in?’

‘Yes.’

Mika glanced across at the flapping skatelike guide that had led her out from the interior of Dragon, and it returned her gaze steadily with its blue palp eyes. She then thought about dracomen, those entities Dragon created with the same ease that a human would fashion a clay doll. ‘Why don’t you send a probe?’

‘But I
am
sending a probe,’ Dragon replied. ‘You.’

‘It’s very dangerous out there. I’ve already witnessed that.’

‘It is not so dangerous out there now.’

‘You still haven’t told me why you aren’t sending your own organic probe,’ Mika insisted. ‘If you don’t tell me why, I won’t go-’

Of course she knew Dragon wanted her to go because of the new memories sitting like lumps of rock in her skull, but she wanted certainties.

‘Very well,’ said Dragon, almost resignedly. ‘Because you are an evolved creature. You are not a product of Jain technology, in fact you are not a product of any technology.’

‘That’s as clear as mud.’

‘Perhaps you have not vocalized it yet, Mika,’ said Dragon, ‘but you
know
what is in there.’

Gazing at that tangled forest of Jain substructure, she surmised that here it formed only a thin surface over something else. ‘I feel something . . . but I don’t really understand.’ Mika turned her attention to the blue palp eyes still staring at her. ‘Can’t you for once explain clearly?’ However, even as she made this request, she stood up, checked the integrity of her spacesuit and turned towards the airlock.

‘Long ago when all four of my spheres still existed and I myself was sited on the planet Aster Colora, I summoned a Polity ambassador to me. I was still struggling with my Maker programming then, and trying every method I could manage to circumvent it - hence my history of Delphic and obscure pronouncements.’

Reaching the airlock, Mika glanced round to see the remote flopping along the floor behind her. ‘Is this story going anywhere?’ she enquired.

‘The ambassador sent was Ian Cormac,’ said Dragon. ‘He solved the problem I set him in his usual inimitable manner, with cold logic and with a CTD concealed in his rucksack. He would
not
be suitable for this purpose.’

‘What purpose?’

‘Being demonstrably human.’

With her helmet and visor closed up Mika stepped through the shimmer-shield towards the outer door. The remote flopped after her.

‘You’re saying Cormac isn’t demonstrably human?’

‘The matter is open for debate.’

Mika grimaced. She did not want to be distracted from the main thrust of her enquiry.

‘Still too much mud,’ she said.

‘It is your turn to be the ambassador, but this time neither concealed threats nor a propensity for solving puzzles will help,’ said Dragon. ‘Your own experiences were perfect for convincing my twin sphere that the evidence I presented regarding the death of the Maker civilization had not been fabricated. Those memories, along with further evidence of the same events and evidence of what happened to the Atheter, all reside inside your head alone. You are also the best human that I know and are therefore the right example of humanity for the task of presenting . . . humanity.’

‘Meaning we’re the next civilization in danger of being destroyed, I presume?’

‘Yes.’

‘And I’m presenting this evidence to what?’ Mika asked.

‘To the Jain AIs,’ Dragon replied.

As she stepped out onto the surface of Dragon, she was grateful for the transition to lower gravity, for her legs felt suddenly weak. She halted for a moment, watching the remote haul itself up then fling itself into gliding flight which terminated against the side of the intership craft. It amazed her that the vessel was still intact. Initiating the gecko function of her boots, she walked over to touch the door control and watched the wing door rise. While she waited she noted flickering changes in the light as of an approaching thunderstorm, then spotted a shower of meteors stabbing up beyond Dragon’s horizon. Had there been air to carry sound, she knew she would now be hearing a roar like that of warfare.

‘Tell me about Jain AIs,’ she said.

‘I can give you the few cold facts I have uncovered, and I can give you speculation . . .’

‘Give me both.’

‘The Jain were warlike. I surmise that they were not as social as human beings, and that what society they did have was as hostile and competitive as that of the Prador. However, they were more technically advanced than the Prador - perhaps like those particular aliens might be in some thousands of years, if their loose-knit society does not self-destruct and if they are not meanwhile exterminated by some other race.’

‘Like maybe the human race?’ Mika ducked into the craft and strapped herself in while the door closed. The remote was now clinging to the canopy above and behind her. When she looked up its blue eyes were peering in at her. It would be accompanying her, it seemed.

‘Like the human race,’ Dragon confirmed. ‘Though you have thus far shown great restraint.’ It continued, ‘The Jain were advanced enough to create their own AIs, and I imagine that those AIs were as hostile and independent as the Jain themselves. I speculate that they were of necessity kept under strict control for a very long time and that their own “Quiet War” against their masters was of a rather different nature than that started by human artificial intelligences.’

‘So they had to be more subtle,’ Mika guessed.

‘Yes. While the human AIs were a critical component in their expansion into space and thus in an easy position to take over, I suspect the Jain AIs were never placed in such a tempting position within Jain society. They were used merely as tools to create other tools . . . like weapons. The quiet war they conducted was through those weapons, and it was the main weapon, this thing we name Jain technology, that won the war for them.’

Mika said, ‘You mean the Jain employed it in civil war and thus managed to wipe each other out?’

‘That is what I mean.’

‘And the AIs?’

‘Once Jain technology was constructed, it would have been evident that at the end of any conflict it would be the
only
thing to survive.’

Mika disconnected the craft’s anchors lodged in Dragon’s skin and, using compressed-air impellers, lifted slowly from the surface.

‘I think I begin to understand,’ she said.

‘Do you? Do you really?’

‘They made themselves part of that technology, a component of that technology. It’s just like Polity AIs supposedly being integral to the technology used for travel throughout the Polity. Apparently it is impossible to run a runcible or a U-space engine without an AI in there to control it - and obviously this was something the AIs neglected to mention to the Prador since they themselves travel through U-space and have no AIs.’

‘Yes,’ said Dragon. ‘I see you do understand. However, I must add that, to place themselves where they did, they must first have melded with each other, which must have been difficult for AIs modelled on hostile individualists.’

Mika now lit up a thruster and sent the craft gliding towards the bone forest. She knew she would have to navigate very carefully in there, since it would probably be just as difficult as flying through any normal forest.

Dragon continued, ‘The AIs deliberately made the Jain technology unstable and prone to breaking down without some form of control exercised at a very basic level. That basic level is not even in realspace, but instead is mapped over the impression Jain-tech makes in U-space. This is why it is possible to detect Jain nodes through U-space; this is why the signature is so strong. The Jain AIs are there, wherever Jain technology grows; they propagate one phase space away in order to stabilize it. It is as if the technology is a plant, and the AIs are its roots.’

‘How did they meld then - being such individualists?’ Mika asked.

‘This is now all speculation, you understand?’

‘It’s all we’ve got right now.’

‘They managed their meld through U-space, before they created the technology to wipe out their masters. AIs on different sides created the same thing and became part of it as their masters unleashed it. They put aside their hostility and their individualism. To survive, I believe they put aside their consciousness. Perhaps it was their way of surviving that the Atheter mirrored when they threw away their minds to be mere beasts, to become gabbleducks - not the best option really.’

‘So the Jain AIs are as mindless as the technology they stabilize?’

‘They function like your autonomous nervous system.’

‘Then what use is the evidence I’m carrying inside my skull? This still does not really explain why we are here, or why I must find
Trafalgar
for you.’

‘The Jain AIs are sleeping, Mika, and it’s time for you to wake them up.’

‘And this will be a good thing?’

Dragon did not reply.

* * * *

‘Okay, what’s his story?’ said Orlandine.

‘Quite a lot of it is known,’ replied the AI in the docked ship.

The brass Golem, Mr Crane, had become something of a legend, though how the story had percolated out into the public domain remained a mystery. In her position as overseer on the Cassius Dyson Project, Orlandine had learned about Crane through ECS channels, for her security clearance had been such that she was entitled to know. In the public domain it was known that this Golem was a prototype corrupted by separatists and then used to commit murder - a prototype that was then destroyed. However, the legends stemmed from later sightings and rumours of him being involved in border conflicts. These weren’t far from the basic truth, though the number of sightings and the events he was supposed to have been involved in were just too many. It seemed that, in the public consciousness, Mr Crane had become a combination of both avenging angel and senseless demonic killer. Orlandine wondered if the stories had been purposely allowed to flourish or were just a particularly successful meme.

‘The information I have is incomplete,’ said Orlandine. ‘I know that he accompanied the separatist biophysicist called Skellor, and that Skellor ended up impacted into the surface of a brown dwarf star - but that’s all I know.’

It made her slightly nervous having the legendary Golem out there only paces away from her interface sphere, even though two war drones were watching him closely. However, the information he had supplied, and continued supplying, was gold, so it seemed churlish to have him confined elsewhere on the war runcible. Also, here she could keep a close eye on him.

‘Skellor sent Mr Crane as an envoy to Dragon,’ said Vulture. ‘And, with a little assistance from me, Dragon helped him put his fractured mind back together.’

‘So he’s a good guy now?’

‘I guess . . .’

The recognition codes and chameleonware formats the Golem had supplied would give her a critical edge. like anyone dealing with this technology she had always understood that, through competition, chameleonware evolved in parallel with the sensors and scanners used to penetrate it. However, in truth, chameleonware could not conceal everything, so it was a case of knowing what
needed
to be concealed.

‘Then what?’

‘Do you want chapter and verse?’ Vulture asked. ‘I can give you it all.’

‘Give me it all,’ said Orlandine.

Vulture immediately sent over an information package that Orlandine opened in a virtuality so as to make the usual security checks. Then, rather than go through the package chronologically, she instantly absorbed it whole into her mind. Now she knew Mr Crane’s entire story - as Vulture presented it - from the moment the Golem walked out of the Cybercorp headquarters just outside Bangladesh right up until the present. It was a long and bloody tale and did not dispel the mystery surrounding this brass killing machine. She observed him seat himself cross-legged on the floor before taking out that strange collection of toys that had featured so much in his history. Did he need to bring them out and play with them every so often to prevent his mind from fragmenting?

‘I cannot say I’m reassured,’ she opined, then focused her attention elsewhere on the changes she was already making at the instigation of this strange Golem.

The chameleonware presently spread throughout the war runcible had been the best Orlandine could contrive with the technology she possessed. Now she was copying the ‘ware used on the wormships she had just destroyed. Also, knowing Erebus’s recognition codes it was now possible for her to send signals that basically said ‘friend’, so that autonomous sensors picking up detection anomalies would ignore them, thinking they had found one of their own or, rather, would ignore them for long enough. She hoped.