Brass Man (15 page)

On his remaining arm he levered up his now reduced body weight. Glancing down he saw that his legs had separated at the knee joint and that only his bare hip bones protruded from the remains of his suit. The magma had melted the components in his knees, but not the ceramal of his bones. Looking up and seeing that Crane was now only a couple of metres above him, he began to swing himself from side to side to get up enough momentum. He released just as a boot slammed down towards his wrist.

He hit the edge of the lava tube, groped inside it, his hip bones scrabbling away below him like a dwarf’s legs; then he was inside and turning himself round—the tube, as expected, being only a metre deep. Shortly, Mr Crane’s head appeared upside-down in the tube mouth, peering in through the visor of his hotsuit. Cento finally admitted to himself that he was dead: there was no escape. The big Golem, with his full complement of limbs and obviously superior strength, would just reach inside and drag him out, probably to send him after Ulriss. Sure enough, the big hand now groped inside like a fat spider, slapped away Cento’s defending hand, and closed over his face. There came a long pause, then the hand released him.

What now?

It wasn’t possible to read the expression on that brass face. Mr Crane suddenly reached down to the bottom of the lava tube, to the layer of crystal that formed its floor. He groped to the edge, where the crystal was jagged, and snapped a piece off, which he brought up and held before his visor for inspection. He then closed his hand around it, holding out only one long forefinger, which he brought back to his visor. He placed it vertical to his mouth:
Shush now, be quiet.

Mr Crane hauled himself out of view.

* * * *

While the metallier licked his lips and weighed yellow jade, Tergal studied the display of weapons in the cracked glass case and speculated on what Anderson’s reaction might be to learning how he had obtained that precious stone. He realized the knight did not trust him, had been keeping a close eye on him. And well he might. Though the attraction of the knight was that he was everything Tergal wanted to be, as soon as that attraction waned, Tergal would rob him and move on. It was what he did—he was scum.

Tergal had not told Anderson the entire truth. The minerallier Fround had been a hard man yet an honourable one, and Tergal’s mother, after birthing the bastard Tergal so young, had been considered spoiled goods, so Fround’s offer for her had been more than generous. He had paid for her in the yellow jade, of which only he knew the location. In the months that followed, Tergal’s mother, though not loving the man, had come to respect him—and, Tergal knew, would come eventually to that other state too. Tergal now understood that his dislike of Fround had been rooted in jealousy—in having to share the mother who had once been all his own—and that his subsequent behaviour had been contemptible.

Fround’s attempts at gaining the boy’s friendship had only increased his dislike. Those attempts had included the free use of Stone, one of Fround’s three sand hogs; a generosity in money and clothing; and finally sharing the knowledge of the location of the precious jade. In his jealousy, Tergal had only construed that the man had been trying to buy him. Now he recognized Fround’s bewilderment at such a reaction: the man had been according Tergal equal status when he might so easily have rejected him. He had only been trying to act like a good father.

Tergal sighed—too late now to put things right. He truly regretted stealing both jade and hog, yet not his departure. In the years that had passed since, thieving or exchanging some of the jade or even working his way across many lands, he had experienced much more than would a parochial minerallier, and now was actually travelling with a Rondure Knight—the kind of man he had once thought only the inflated province of history and myth.

‘Getting more frequent now,’ the metallier said.

Tergal turned to him. ‘What?’

‘The quakes—getting one just about every twenty days.’

Tergal nodded, then looked pointedly at the jade. He wasn’t going to get carelessly chatty with someone who was undoubtedly preparing to sting him.

‘I can give you a thousand pfennigs,’ said the minerallier eventually, as he began racking his weights.

Tergal turned from the case. ‘There’s seventeen standard ounces of jade there, and the usual market price is between eighty and a hundred pfennigs an ounce. At the lowest rate, that’s thirteen hundred and sixty.’

The minerallier shrugged. ‘You would deny me any profit at all?’

‘I would deny no man profit, only limit the extent of it.’ Tergal stabbed a finger down at the glass case. ‘One thousand one hundred, and
this,
and we have a deal.’

The minerallier came out from behind his counter, and walked over to stand beside Tergal. He peered down at the weapon indicated.

‘That is worth two hundred and fifty alone, and you will require ammunition. I can let you have two spare clips, a hundred rounds, and nine hundred pfennigs.’

‘You’ll wait until jade is a hundred pfennigs an ounce,’ Tergal observed.

The man shook his head. ‘There you are wrong. Observe the grip. I obtain these from Central Manufacturing, then make such fine additions. I would use the jade for the same.’

The lapis lazuli grip had been what had first attracted Tergal’s attention. He might find a better deal elsewhere, but not this particular handgun.

‘Make that a hundred and fifty rounds and you have your deal.’

‘Very well,’ said the minerallier, reaching into his pocket to take out a roll of money. Quickly he counted out the notes and handed them over. Tergal counted them again and slipped them into his own pocket, noting just how small a proportion they were of the man’s entire roll. From under the case, the metallier removed three heavy paper boxes of ammunition, which he placed on a table nearby. From the case he removed the gun itself and two clips. He handed them to Tergal.

‘Are you with the knight?’ he asked.

‘I am.’

The man reached over to where some leather items hung in a jumble behind the display case. Sorting through, he eventually found a plain belt and holster.

‘How much?’ Tergal asked.

‘Gratis,’ said the man. ‘If you’re with him,’ he gestured to the sunlit street, ‘you’ll need to get to your weapon fast when he takes on his next commission.’

‘You think?’ Tergal was confused. The roll of money had certainly attracted his attention, and now this unexpected generosity had defused his growing speculation about how he might get his hands on the rest of that roll.

‘Oh yes, not much call for them round here now, with most people carrying weapons like this.’ The man slapped a hand against the weapon holstered at his own hip—perhaps reading some of Tergal’s intention. ‘But elsewhere the work of a knight usually involves sleers and apeks, when it doesn’t concern the bounties set on human killers and thieves.’

Over the last few days, Tergal had not even stopped to consider that. To him Anderson had been just a figure out of a story, and what with coming into Golgoth and the talk of dragons, that feeling had only increased. But, of course, Anderson must have some way of putting the pfennigs into his pocket, and probably he was well used to dealing with
scum.
It now occurred to Tergal that he would not be telling the knight the full story of his own past—that perhaps he did not even need to.

‘Thank you.’ Tergal took his acquisitions out into the sunshine.

* * * *

6

Usually initiated by some technological innovation, the colonization of the Human Polity has run in successive waves, with intervals of fifty to a hundred years between them. The first of these innovations was the invention of a very powerful ion drive, which resulted in the colonization of the solar system as far out as Jupiter. The efficient fusion drives coming into use after this resulted in establishing the further-flung colonies in the solar system, and a wave of generation ships making the first leap to the stars (some of these slow-moving behemoths are still in transit). The advent of Skaidon’s interfacing with the Craystein Computer created a completely new technology from which, long before the first runcible was built, resulted the first U-space drives. This was a chaotic period in the solar system: governments and corporations competing for power and seemingly unaware that the tools they were using, the AIs, were becoming more powerful than them. It’s not known how many colony ships—both the generation kind and ones utilizing U-space engines—escaped while AI fought its ‘Quiet War’ for dominion. We are still finding colonies established during this time, and many speculate that there may be hundreds more yet to locate.

- From
Quince Guide
compiled by humans

Once the ground tremors eased, Cento pushed his head and upper body out of the lava bubble and fruitlessly tried to use his internal radio to contact the survey ship, but there was just too much stone sitting between him and where that vessel rested up on the ridge. Further attempts to contact the orbiting carrier shell also produced no result, but then that could now be on the other side of the planet. He estimated that only twelve metres above he would be able to obtain a sufficient direct line to the landed vessel, but even then he wondered ... The layer of crystal below him seemed to be doing things to the signal that defied analysis. When he first felt the groping for contact, he dismissed it as part of this same effect. When the attempt at making a connection became more insistent, he considered shutting down his radio, fearing that this might be another attack upon him. But Mr Crane had let him live—taking a piece of crystal rather than Cento’s artificial life—so, as far as the other humanoid was concerned, Cento was long gone in the river of magma.

He tuned to the groping signal, and made contact.

Who are you?
he asked over the link.

Vulture . .. ship . .. Skellor. . . came the reply, along with corrupted code and a weird whining note like a child crying.

Cento absorbed that last name and immediately knew who the second humanoid was. Cento had taken much interest in the events on Masada, and with his ECS clearance he had obtained the full story. That a copy of himself had died aboard the
Occam Razor
had greatly focused his interest. So, somehow, Skellor had escaped, still possessing Jain technology. This also explained Crane’s resurrection and superior strength and speed: Skellor had obviously made him something more than a merely boosted Golem Twenty-five.

Skellor’s ship?
he asked.

Salvor burned now . . . take download . . . going U-space ... it coming.

I’m prepared for the download, but any attempt at subversion and
—

The download came anyway: jumbled information, hints of exchanges of information, views of Skellor standing behind a pilot’s chair containing the burnt-out husk of a human being, Mr Crane squatting on the floor with objects arranged in front of him like chessmen. Then, in one brief burst before the signal cut off: coordinates.

Cento knew that information like this was critical, for with the sheer size of the Polity and all the methods of transportation available, ECS might never find Skellor. But how to convey those coordinates to somewhere they might be of use? The Golem surveyed his surroundings and ran diagnostics on himself. Quite apart from the fact that he only had one arm and was trapped in a rock bubble at the bottom of a steep slope, the heat from the nearby river of magma was beginning to affect some of his systems. Already memory storage was becoming dubious, as the crystal matrix of his mind distorted, the motors in his hips had ceased to function, and those in his remaining arm were into amber. His sight was also going. Infrared was unusable in this situation, but he was also losing the other end of the spectrum. His internal radar suffered the same distortions from the crystal lying below as did his radio. Apart from those latter badly distorted two, he in fact only possessed now the senses of a human being. He had to try for the survey ship again, and to do that he had to get himself higher.

Cento reached above him and was thankful that what remained of his hotsuit had preserved the syntheflesh underneath; this at least meant that he retained a sense of touch. Groping about, he found a crevice—which he tested by wrenching hard against its sides to make sure the rock would not break away. He shut off that part of his emulation program that prevented his joints moving more than was
humanly
possible. Planning every move in advance, he reached higher, jammed his hand in, then using the full swing of his shoulder joint, hauled himself out of the bubble like a winkle from its shell. For a second he was suspended over magma, then using his wrist joint and elbow, he pulled himself up to the point where he could lodge the knee end of his right thighbone in the lower part of the crevice and then lay his torso fiat against the slope. This he did just in time, as another tremor tumbled loose stone down all about him.

He kept his head down until the cascade had ceased, then looked up. Now he could see that the crevice ran at an angle up the slope and would take him about five metres higher. The problem was that each time he released his hand, he would be supported only by his hipbone and by his weight pressing against the loose stone of the slope. But there was no choice: this close to the magma, the heat would destroy him eventually. He turned and withdrew his hand, reached higher and jammed it in, and maggot-like hauled himself up and up, pausing every time the ground shook, clinging as tightly as he could while falling stone threatened to dislodge him.