Creation Machine (6 page)

But, as Alameche knew, life is cheap and renews itself once a generation whereas mineral resources are limited and valuable. None of the five planets was especially rich in anything, but provided you didn’t mind working their populations to death and leaving their ecosystems in ruins, you could extract enough from them to provide for a decent lifestyle and a growing military strength for their rulers.

Bootstraps, as the Patriarch said. Or stepping stones, as Alameche preferred to think of it. Five – hopefully soon to be six – planets to begin with, and then outwards, with a little external help.

And that, Alameche assumed, was what this summons was about. A visit from some friends. The same friends, come to that, who had provided the maglev, as well as a few other comforts. Alameche wondered what they had in their pockets this time. And, of course, how much it might cost. In view of recent discoveries, that was the most interesting question of all.

Normally Alameche would have stopped by his residence to freshen up before going on to meet the Patriarch but the summons, even if coded, had been unambiguous. Be here, now. So he was here, dusty clothes and grimed face notwithstanding. ‘Here’ was the outer Palazzo of the Citadel Reception Suite, and ‘now’ was just over an hour and a half after the summons had reached him in the middle of the Distal Plains. Alameche was thinking of claiming some sort of record.

His Excellency Chast, the Final Patriarch of the People’s Democratic Republic of the Planet of Taussich and the Fortunate Protectorates of the Spin Centre, looked up from the board game he had been peering at. ‘Ah, Alameche,’ he said. ‘Thank goodness. You rescue me from certain defeat. May I introduce Ambassador Eskjog, who is here representing some friends of friends and who is, well, who at least is much better at Baffle than I am.’

Alameche bowed. ‘Ambassador.’

A small spiky object about the size of a human head was floating on the opposite side of the game board. The spikes, which ranged in length from fingernail to hand’s breadth, were mainly shades of grey. Alameche thought it looked like a gothic cross between a sea creature and a mace. It rose to head height and turned so that one of its longer spikes was pointing at Alameche. ‘A pleasure,’ it said, in a voice far deeper and somehow more
human
than Alameche was expecting. ‘I have heard a great deal about you.’

‘Oh dear.’ Alameche lowered his head. ‘I hope it is to my credit?’

‘It depends what you mean by credit.’ The machine sounded amused. ‘By any human standards, and I assure you that I am legally human where I come from, you sound ghastly. But I expect that is part of the job description.’

Alameche bowed deeper and the Patriarch laughed. ‘My colleague thinks you have paid him a compliment,’ he told the machine.

‘Good. That’s what I intended.’ The machine floated towards Alameche, and he thought he caught the smell of ozone. He held his ground as the machine came closer and closer, and allowed himself a smile.

‘That you
did
pay me a compliment, Ambassador, or that you want me to
think
you did?’ he asked.

The machine continued its float until it was only a hand’s breadth from his face. Then it stopped, hanging quite still in front of him. The smell of ozone was unmistakable, and Alameche felt his face prickle faintly as his bristles tried to stand out from his skin.

Despite its spikes the little machine somehow managed to be oddly featureless; Alameche could as easily have been squaring up to an ornament. But nevertheless he felt . . .
studied
. He met the blank non-gaze as inscrutably as he could.

Eventually the machine dipped a little and drew back. ‘Exactly,’ it said. ‘One of those two.’ It waggled from side to side in a gesture Alameche could have sworn was laughter. Then the waggle stopped. ‘Right,’ it said, and now the voice was businesslike, ‘let’s not delay, especially as you seem to have come in something of a rush. I have some information to impart, and I would like to do so somewhere secure. And believe me, where we are at the moment doesn’t count.’

Alameche opened his mouth, but the Patriarch was quicker. ‘With regard to security, Ambassador, I can assure you—’

The machine cut him off. ‘With great respect, Your Excellency, I’m afraid you
can’t
. As we speak this chamber is watched by several entities, some less friendly than others. If I were not preventing them, they could easily tell how thoroughly you had bathed this morning, and where. And feasibly even with whom. Now get us somewhere underground with some good thick rock above us, and I might be able to do something about that.’

It turned and floated, not towards the grand exit from the chamber but instead towards an insignificant door in one corner. For a moment neither Alameche nor the Patriarch moved, and the machine turned back. ‘Well,’ it said, ‘are you coming?’ It bobbed towards the little door. ‘I think this is the best way, don’t you?’

Alameche gathered himself. ‘Precisely,’ he said, while making a mental note to find all the staff who had any knowledge of that particular passage and have them publicly flayed. He turned to the Patriarch. ‘Excellency?’

‘What? Oh. Yes. Quite so.’ The Patriarch set out for the door, directing an angry glare at Alameche as he passed. Alameche waited until machine and Patriarch were through the doorway, and then followed them, shaking his head.

As he went he amended his plans. Flayed, and then dipped in something corrosive.

The room they arrived in was square, windowless and about thirty paces on a side. The floor was a polished glassy black; the ceiling a matt white disfigured by a lot of purposeful-looking steps and bulges, and the walls a dull grey dotted with flecks, possibly a rock containing mica. A round table in the middle of the room had chairs for twenty, and a screen – presently inert – occupied most of one wall. It might have been a rather dated interpretation of a conference room.

In fact it was an attack-and data-hardened command space, eight storeys below ground and almost half a kilometre to one side of the shaft that led down to it. It dated back a few hundred years, to one of the more paranoid periods in the history of the People’s Democratic Republic, and it was one of six similar, and completely unconnected, such spaces, distributed across the Citadel in a random pattern that appeared on no maps, anywhere. Only six people knew of all the spaces, and each of those six thought he – naturally, they were all men – was the only one.

Ambassador Eskjog swivelled from side to side as if surveying the room. ‘Shall we sit down?’ it asked. It lowered itself towards the conference table, halting just above the table-top. ‘Just a minute,’ it said, and there was a
fuff
like someone blowing. A cloud of dust rose from the table below the machine, leaving a darker circle on the surface. Eskjog settled itself down in the middle of the clean circle with three of its spikes slightly flexed to form a tripod. ‘Someone needs to have a word with the cleaners,’ it said.

Alameche glanced at the Patriarch, who looked as if he was about to explode, and cleared his throat. ‘This space is rarely used, as I have no doubt you know, and dust is not a priority. Security is, and I am expecting to be asked how you breached it.’ He looked at the Patriarch again. ‘Very soon. So please, before you tell us anything else, tell us that.’

‘Yes, well. Security is relative. Relative to your tech level, this space is secure. But – and I don’t mean to patronize – relative to the average tech level in the Outer Spin, it is less so. And relative to mine, it is like a clean glass of water: transparently innocent.’ Eskjog rose off the table and turned towards the Patriarch. ‘Therefore, Excellency, if you are inclined to take out your disapproval on your servant here, I beg you to think again. He really couldn’t have prevented intrusion.’ It paused. ‘Not without my help.’

The Patriarch looked at the machine. ‘Are you offering your help?’

‘Well, yes. Amongst other things.’

Alameche and the Patriarch looked at each other and the Patriarch nodded slightly. Alameche turned to the machine. ‘Well?’ he said.

‘Right. Let’s start. Oh, you might want to sit down. This will take a little while.’

Alameche waited until the Patriarch had pulled out a chair and lowered himself into it before doing the same. When they were both seated Eskjog floated to a position between them. ‘I’m going to tell you a story,’ it said. ‘If you listen through to the end, then a year from now you will probably still have what you think of as a civilization, and possibly your position in the Spin will have been enhanced dramatically.’

‘And if we don’t listen?’ asked Alameche.

‘Ah.’ The machine sagged a little. ‘Almost certain annihilation. Want me to go on?’

The word ‘annihilation’ hovered in the room.

Alameche and the Patriarch exchanged a look. The Patriarch frowned. ‘Annihilation? Ambassador, I hope you’re exaggerating.’

‘Not really. Look, hear me out and then judge for yourselves.’

The Patriarch compressed his lips. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Tell us.’

‘All right. Before I start, do you mind if I patch in to your display? It’ll make things easier.’

The Patriarch raised an eyebrow towards Alameche, who shrugged. He turned back to Eskjog. ‘I don’t suppose we can stop you, can we?’ he said.

‘No you can’t, but I always think it’s polite to ask.’ There was a soft chime. The room darkened and the big screen on the opposite wall flickered and settled down to show an image of a star field. ‘The Spin, of course,’ said Eskjog. ‘Perhaps we should say, both of the Spins. Outer, and Inner.’ As it spoke, the screen divided into two colour fields, with the Outer planetary systems forming a bulbous green crescent wrapped round the red of the Inner. ‘Your good selves, here.’ Near the centre, Taussich flashed a brighter red. ‘What you euphemistically call the Fortunate Protectorates, here.’ The five planets of the Spin Centre flashed. ‘And something very interesting
here
.’ Four of the planets faded, leaving one which flared quickly through orange, yellow and green to a fierce, blue-white point.

The Patriarch leaned forward. ‘What planet is that?’ he asked.

Alameche squinted at the burning dot. ‘Silthx, Excellency.’

‘Ah. Our most recent converts.’ The Patriarch nodded. ‘What makes them interesting?’

‘Well, lots of things. To you lot, slaves and mineral resources, obviously, plus strategic location and a good fertile agriculture.’ Eskjog made a noise like a sigh. ‘Although the manner of your conquest didn’t do much for that last bit. The word “converts” seems a bit optimistic.’

The Patriarch shrugged. ‘Insurgency has to be tackled. Eh, Alameche? That was one of yours, I believe?’

Alameche inclined his head. ‘Yes, Excellency.’

‘And you did it so well,’ said Eskjog. ‘Most of the population dead or enslaved in only a few weeks, and four fifths of the productive farmland radioactive for generations. That makes it interesting to other people, of course. Environmental catastrophes always attract attention and a bit of genocide just adds sauce.’

The point on the screen was painfully bright now. Alameche looked away from it and down at Eskjog. It suddenly looked different, but at first he couldn’t see why. As his eyes adjusted, he realized that in the near-darkness of the room the little machine was surrounded by a faint violet penumbra. The effect was sinister; he found himself wondering exactly what Ambassador Eskjog really was, and if it was as potent as it seemed to be. And if it really was, what did that mean about the abilities of its distant masters?

He suppressed a shiver.

Eskjog went on, its voice even. ‘Make no mistake, Excellency, you have attracted attention. There are two strands of opinion. One, that you should be blown out of the sky; two, that you should be walled up in your own nasty corner of the Spin and left to fester.’

‘And which strand do you represent?’ The Patriarch’s voice, too, was quiet, but Alameche recognized the chilly edge in it. He had heard that tone only a few times, and each time he had hoped never to hear it again.

‘Neither, happily.’ Eskjog sounded amused. ‘First, don’t be misled by what I said earlier. I may be legally human, but I am
not
human. The opposite, in fact. Inhuman. I really don’t care about the fate of biological beings; for my money you can rape, starve, enslave and irradiate each other as much as you like.’

‘How kind.’ The Patriarch’s voice was still icy.

‘Not at all. Frankly, your Alameche could say the same.’ Eskjog rose a little and repeated the waggle that Alameche had suspected meant laughter. Then it floated to the middle of the conference table and settled itself down, this time without bothering to clear the dust. ‘Blowing you out of the sky has been discussed at high level, but it was rejected. Partly squeamishness, and partly because the irony of wiping you out because you had wiped other people out seemed a bit extreme.’

‘So where does that leave us? Stewing in our own juice?’ The Patriarch was sitting well forward in his seat. Alameche thought he looked as if he wanted to pounce on something.

‘Until a while ago, yes, so everyone left you to it. But now, no.’ Eskjog rose a finger’s breadth from the table and turned so that one of its spikes pointed first at the Patriarch, and then at Alameche. ‘Leaving you alone is no longer an option. That’s where the story comes in.’

The image on the screen faded so that the room was completely dark, except for Eskjog’s ghostly fetch-light glow. Alameche leaned back in his seat, and sensed the Patriarch doing the same. Eskjog remained silent for a few seconds more. When it began to speak it sounded more purposeful.

‘You invaded Silthx two years ago. Close to a billion corpses, atmosphere zapped with some
very
dirty old nukes, you cheeky monkeys, environmental catastrophe, yada yada. Much liberal hand-, tentacle- or flipper-wringing. You enslaved nearly all the remaining population, plundered the planet pretty well to the core and bought yourselves a ten-year future in rare-earth elements that will fund the next phase of your nasty little expansion. But – and now I am partly guessing – you also tripped over a local rumour. Yes?’