Dark Intelligence (39 page)

Amistad snipped a claw in the air, and his eyes gleamed red for a moment. I realized this wasn’t a threat, just annoyance.

“And, of course,” said Riss, rising up beside me, “in the case of Penny Royal you screwed up.”

“That is as yet to be determined,” the scorpion stated.

“Face up to it, Amistad, Penny Royal played you,” said Riss.

I turned to peer at the drone, not sure what she was implying. Was she talking about Penny Royal escaping on Blite’s ship? The AI had made its move while Amistad had been dealing with some difficult compromises on Masada—arising from this human-occupied world now containing a sentient alien autochthon. This autochthon would have been quite within its rights, under Polity law, in ejecting the whole human population. But, going back to Penny Royal, whether the AI had committed some crime in boarding
The Rose
hadn’t been proven. For me there was no doubt: the crew of that ship had probably been killed by the AI or transformed into something terrible. I considered what was running inside the fossil I now carried in my pocket.

“Not so. Penny Royal was free to depart at any time it chose.”

“You know that’s not what I’m talking about,” said Riss. “The data, as you said, is available. This includes all the files pertaining to your encounter with Penny Royal on the edge of the caldera.”

While the assassin drone and erstwhile war drone settled to glaring at each other, though perhaps there was more going on than I could see, I again accessed that same data and quickly ran through it. Penny Royal had learned the location of its missing “eighth state of consciousness” at the bottom of the sea here, seized it and brought it back inland. Amistad had tracked it down to the edge of a caldera where, in a dramatic diorama, Penny Royal had destroyed the container that housed its eighth state. I was still none the wiser.

“You’re a one-trick pony, Riss,” Amistad eventually replied. “And you can’t kill an AI with an injection of parasite eggs, even if you had any.”

“Admit it,” said Riss, “you fucked up.”

I’d had enough of this.

“What the hell are you two on about!” I snapped. “Riss?”

“Tell him,” the assassin drone said, her gaze still locked with Amistad’s but her head flicking briefly towards me.

Amistad again clicked a claw at the air as if trying to sever some thread—perhaps the one of his own involvement. As this world’s warden, he was effectively stuck here for now, though he could never cut the ties of responsibility.

“Okay,” he said, “I fucked up.”

“I’m still as clueless as before,” I stated.

Amistad swung towards me, breaking the staring contest with Riss, who now deflated a little.

“There is evidence to indicate that Penny Royal did not in fact destroy its eighth state of consciousness, but had uploaded it from its container before I arrived at the caldera.”

“Which means,” said Riss, stretching up again, “that it’s still subject to a death sentence.”

“It means that portion of Penny Royal is still subject to such a sentence,” Amistad shot back.

“Look, fuck all that!” I interjected, “Penny Royal, whether it’s divided into eight fucking states or suffering a psychotic break, is guilty of exterminating Berners’ division on Panarchia!” I paused to pull up some other figures. “Since Panarchia, it is directly guilty of having killed three thousand five hundred and twenty-three human beings and forty-seven AIs.” I groped in my pocket and held up the ammonite fossil. “This is what Penny Royal does—it’s a sadistic torture-loving machine! This is what that fucking thing is!”

Amistad, who until that moment had been in constant, if minimal motion, now froze.

“What is that?” he said.

“This,” I waved the fossil at the warden of Masada. “This is quantum storage giving the location of Penny Royal’s planetoid, but it has room in there for something else. A torture virtuality. You have no idea—”

Amistad moved, fast, the sound of its feet like a series of firecrackers going off, and was looming over me in a second. His massive claw came down and with a delicate precision, which seemed impossible for something so large and heavy, it plucked the fossil from my hand. I took a step back, half expecting an attack, but the big scorpion just retreated. Then, as if sampling some delicacy, it inserted it into its preoral cavity, turned it with mobile setae, then swallowed it.

I turned to glance at Riss, who was now facing me.

“I never saw that,” said the assassin drone. Saw what? I wondered.

“It’s always recording,” said Amistad, as if agreeing with Riss. “So are the dead actually dead?”

I turned back to Amistad who froze again. Noting my attention, he snipped the air again then said, “It’s a self-referencing time crystal. The human mind within is a recording, running in a simplified state. I will transmit it to the Soulbank.”

“So now you see the kind of thing Penny Royal does,” I said, feeling I had somehow lost impetus.

“As you should know too, personally.”

“What?”

“Since learning of your pursuit of Penny Royal, I have taken an interest in you, Thorvald Spear,” said Amistad. “Have you yet admitted to yourself that your memories have been added to and tampered with?”

“I don’t know for sure …” I didn’t want to tell the warden that, though I agreed all the evidence pointed that way, I just couldn’t
feel
it to be true.

“You have memories of being captured by the prador, with a companion,” Amistad stated. “The prador tried out a full thrall on your companion, who died during the process and whose body died shortly afterwards. They then tried out a spider thrall on you. You survived for a while, in a great deal of pain, and were dying when those same prador were ambushed.”

“By Jebel U-cap Krong,” I replied.

“No, just by a squad of ECS commandos led by someone who’d never met Jebel U-cap Krong. The man with the spider thrall was called Jasper Frettle, not Thorvald Spear. While his companion, who was killed by full thralling, was a woman called Yonella Frettle—his wife. They weren’t soldiers, but citizens on a Polity world. The planet was just being settled when we first encountered the prador and the two were captured when the prador later conquered their world. They were only some of those on which the prador attempted to use thrall devices before they finally admitted that normal humans were too weak. They realized that their limited supply of humans from Spatterjay were the only subjects robust enough to take thrall technology.”

“What?” I said stupidly.

“Jasper Frettle couldn’t live with those memories, so when the process became available he had them edited out of his mind,” Amistad continued relentlessly. “Some may consider that weak, but others consider it a necessary requirement given a potentially unlimited span of life. Just like all such edited memories, his were stored. They still exist in what might be called the miscellaneous files of Soulbank. Those previously inhabiting your memplant, and now also in the soft matter of your brain, are an edited and distorted copy. I have to wonder when Penny Royal managed to get hold of them—and how long that AI has been making its plans …”

“What!”

“They never actually told you where your memplant was found, did they?”

“It was in a shop … jewellery …”

“Yes, Markham’s Exotica lies about two hundred miles from here, in the coastal town called Chattering. Though I do believe she’s opened a branch in the space port’s shopping complex which you recently left.”

I just gaped at Amistad, aware that Riss was studying me very closely. Maybe the assassin drone was again wondering whether she should kill me. Maybe, in her position, I would be wondering the same.

“Of course,” Amistad continued, “there’s no actual proof that Penny Royal visited Markham’s. However, Penny Royal was sighted by one of the clear-up teams on Panarchia after the war—in fact most of that team did not survive the encounter.”

“Returning to the scene of its greatest crime,” I spat, at a loss for anything else to say.

“Doubtless,” Amistad agreed. “After the war, it was discovered that one bio-espionage expert in Berners’ division possessed an early Sylac memplant. Instructions were transmitted to the clear-up teams there to scan for that memplant’s beacon, but it wasn’t found. It was assumed that it must have been destroyed in the CTD conflagration. The old ruby memplants are rugged, but did get destroyed.”

I knew it would take me a long time to agonize over all this and incorporate it. Penny Royal had found my memplant, jiggered with my memories, then placed it in a jeweller’s?

“This changes nothing,” I said. “Penny Royal still has to pay.”

“Of course,” said Amistad. “But first you have to find it or, perhaps, wait until it finds you.”

“I am going to kill Penny Royal,” I affirmed, feeling the hate in the pit of my stomach. But, even as I turned away, I felt that hate briefly transform into a miserable emptiness. If some of my memories weren’t my own, would I discover the same about my emotions?

15

ISOBEL

As the
Moray Firth
reached orbit, Isobel fervently rejected Trent’s advice. It was true that to kill Spear she’d probably have to destroy his ship and so gain no revenue from acquiring it. And it was also the case that killing him that way would be impersonal and without satisfaction. However, there was one factor which Trent had neglected, which was very important to her business in the Graveyard—reputation. When the changes to her body were noticed by her competitors and the words “she was fucked over by Penny Royal” were finally spoken, her enemies had immediately grown bolder and had needed slapping down. The reaction to her being duped by a mere mortal would be so much worse. She might even draw the attention of Mr Pace, and she couldn’t allow that. At least, that is how Isobel justified her intentions to herself, to bring Spear down and rip him apart.

But now she had to cease questioning that goal and decide how it might be achieved. Gazing at a screen showing the Rock Pool below, she believed her decision to leave the surface was the right one. If things were blowing up between the prador it would get mighty unhealthy down there. In that respect, it was also likely to be dangerous up here too. However, she had her reasons for not leaving the system. She had instructed Morgan to take the
Caligula
and the
Nasturtium
to the coordinates of Penny Royal’s planetoid, because that had been Spear’s next known location. From there she had hoped to find a way of tracking him down. She had known that salvagers had been working there and they might have information about Spear they could pass on. That was irrelevant now, what with her learning that he’d gone to Masada, where it would be suicidal to pursue him. However, Penny Royal was Spear’s target, so if she stayed with the AI, currently onboard
The Rose
, then certainly Spear would come to her sooner or later.

It all seemed perfectly logical, so why did she feel a deep core of frustration on leaving the Rock Pool? It stemmed from the predatory part of her—a part of her that was getting increasingly aggressive. Spear was her target, but he had only taken advantage of her condition—which was caused by Penny Royal. Actually, the black AI had always been a target for her vengeance, but an unattainable one. Her realistic side had always known that she stood no chance against the AI. Only that logical side of her was not so strong now. Not only did she see Spear as prey—as someone to hunt and tear apart—she saw Penny Royal in that way too. Moreover, now she was putting distance between her and that prey.

Isobel bit down on her frustration, mentally opened up a U-space com to the
Nasturtium
and waited, only to receive no response. Next she tried the
Caligula
, but no luck there either. Morgan must be on his way to the planetoid, meaning she wouldn’t be able to contact him until he next came out of U-space.

She left the com channel open, so the man would know she wanted to talk to him at the first opportunity. And with another mental instruction, she increased the magnification through her sensors to give her a close-up of Carapace City. She then tracked down Blite’s ship’s current position.
The Rose
rested in a clear area just at the edge of the Carapace itself. She had no idea why the black AI had chosen that location, nor what its involvement in the coming storm might be, though it was surely involved.

“So,” said Trent, walking into the bridge, “what’s the plan?”

She whipped round towards him, stopping herself from falling on him at the last second. He jerked away from her, his expression frightened as his hand dropped to the butt of his gun. He took his hand away while allowing himself a steadying breath and stepped on into the bridge, pausing for just a second to eye the Golem standing back against the rear wall.

“Snickety snick,” it said, but even with her close connection to the thing, Isobel couldn’t fathom where that had come from.

She returned her full attention to Trent. He was moving with care, looked exhausted and had lost a deal of body mass. He seated himself carefully in a chair, then sipped from the cup he was carrying. To distract herself from the attractiveness of his vulnerability, she assessed the damage done to her bridge door. When she entered the ship most recently, it had been a squeeze to get through the airlock. The internal corridors had also felt claustrophobic. The dents and scratches around the door were inadvertent, but a sure sign it was time to start remodelling the internal spaces of her ship.

“Was it such a great idea bringing that thing aboard?” he asked.

“I control it completely,” she said, “and it may provide some … connection to Penny Royal.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

He grunted doubtfully, then said, “I’m guessing you think that staying on Penny Royal is a sure route to Spear?”

“I sent Morgan and the bulk of our muscle, along with the
Caligula
and the
Nasturtium
, to Penny Royal’s planetoid. The moment I am able to contact Morgan again I’ll summon him here—if we’re still here then.”

“So we’re staying,” he said.

She dipped her hood in response, already remodelling the blueprint of her ship in her head as she turned back to study the screen. She had to suppress thoughts about how enjoyable it would be to peel the flesh from Trent’s bones and how
good
he would taste. Internal walls would have to go, she decided, leaving structural members in place. She would leave Medical and some other human areas in place, but the rest would have to be opened out. She wouldn’t use the human airlocks any more, but the hold doors. Perhaps she should turn one of the holds into an airlock itself? Trent’s cabin would stay—even if he didn’t survive to occupy it, then someone else could use it …