Dark Intelligence (7 page)

Half an hour later I was sitting in a chair in an aseptic room with an autodoc poised over me. The thing was specialized for the procedure. No humans were involved. Perhaps this wasn’t a job where you got to meet interesting people. The aug was cold against my skull as the bone-anchors went in with a crunch, and the connection routine followed. I ignored the instructions package surfacing in my mind and engaged on an almost instinctive level. The aug had been made to accommodate varying levels of intelligence and it responded perfectly. I felt a joy at the ramping up of mental function as I overrode the block on net connection. Just minutes into the fitting, I began uploading data on my interests, updating myself on augmentation, nanotech, adaptogenics and thousands of branches of biology. This ability to integrate knowledge rapidly was of course precisely the reason AIs took an interest in me, over a century ago.

While all this was occurring, lights began flashing on my wristcom. I peered at them, not really sure what they might mean.

“This is too soon!” Bob exclaimed from the device.

I simply reached over and turned off the wristcom, even as I mentally made purchases of increased memory and processing for my aug. A moment later, I updated myself on what was known about the prador and our history with them since the war. I also collected from my hotel data store everything I had gathered on Penny Royal, now setting my aug to update constantly, or at least when netlinks were available. This last required uploading a quasi-AI search engine to sort rumour and legend from hard fact.

The fitting finally completed and the autodoc withdrawing, I realized I now had all the essentials for my quest. I possessed money and the aug on my skull was constantly updating my knowledge-base. But most importantly my determination to hunt down and destroy Penny Royal remained. There was no reason to return to my hotel, for I was finally ready to leave Earth. Even as I went out of the aug fitting room, I abandoned Bob, leaving the wristcom on the chair.

Once the fitting room was behind me, I trudged the high-towered streets, looking for a taxi to take me to the nearest runcible. En route, I used my aug to book a four-jump transit—the first one from Earth to the main interstellar runcible on the Moon. From there, I chose a world halfway across the Polity, then a newly built outlink station which sat on the Line dividing the Polity from the Graveyard. I felt excited and determined but knew that, despite everything I had uploaded and integrated so easily, I would have to be cautious. Such an expansion of knowledge and the ability to process it could easily lead to overconfidence. I had to remember that such options were available, sometimes within constraints, to everyone. Though, admittedly, I was confident of the workings of my mind. It was just that the content needed a major update.

During a flight in a driverless aircab, my mind worked overtime and soon after I was walking towards the shimmering meniscus of a London runcible. These instantaneous matter transmitters enabled the massive spread of humanity throughout a large portion of the galaxy. But this device had also been the reason for our near-defeat by the prador, because our spaceship technology had been so behind theirs. During my allotted slot I stepped through, and felt no transition as I stepped out into the massive interstellar runcible complex on the Moon. I was still uploading and integrating knowledge, fascinated by new research and new takes on the old. I sought out the eclectic and the prosaic, selecting what would be of most use to me.

When I finally arrived on Outlink Station Par Avion, I booked a room in a local metrotel and spent time refining those plans made throughout the journey. I now needed to finesse the physical preparations required to enact them. From the data I’d accrued on Penny Royal, I had found a valuable lead. Because of her particular connections, I felt sure this woman would know the location of the AI, or at least would have some information about it. This woman could also get me to a particular abandoned spaceship. This vessel would be a further source of needed data—and my main weapon. I then learned, upon checking the lie of the Graveyard, that the ship was conveniently within it. But now I needed to ensure I knew everything about the woman. I needed to understand her perfectly, to be able to predict how she would act. And I also needed to understand her unique condition.

This last required, in addition to everything else I had loaded, all available information on creatures called hooders. These were hostile alien creatures resembling centipedes the size of monorail trains. They were also the devolved descendants of war machines, or biomechs. These had an interesting heritage, being made by one of three extinct alien races that had spanned the galaxy before humans even appeared on the scene.

I also had to get data on some of the more esoteric research in adaptogenics, and information on a field of human adaptation which was new to me: haimans. My driver from Krong Tower had mentioned them. It turned out that they took augmentation right up to its present limit. Haimans were human cyborgs with highly expanded sensoriums and mentalities. This took them as close as a human mind could get to computing, just a spit away from AI.

All this extra research did slightly extend my stay on Par Avion. But I could feel my mind climbing towards a zenith I had known before and didn’t begrudge the time. Also, the woman was dangerous. If you’re going to play with fire, you should know the location of the extinguisher.

ISOBEL SATOMI TRANSFORMED

Landing coordinates arrived, and Isobel Satomi gazed at them for a long time, before staring out through the cockpit screen at the black planetoid looming out there. Was she doing the right thing?

Why did anyone make a deal with the devil? Desperation, pursuit of power and wealth … Or perhaps a mistaken confidence in one’s ability to avoid pitfalls, to take something worthwhile from that deal and not be, as some would have it, “royally screwed.” Some managed to achieve this, it was rumoured. Janger had his vengeance on the father-captain responsible for killing his family and returned to the Polity. It cost him his massive personal fortune, but he got what he wanted. Jean Fraser had her dead child restored to life from its fifty-year-old mummified corpse. And Mr Pace, of course, became all but indestructible—defeated his enemies and established himself as the premier crime lord.

Isobel considered her deal worth the risk. And, really, if she didn’t go for it, she would probably end up dead at the hands of Copellian or one of his killers. Mr Pace encouraged infighting between lower echelon crime lords like herself and Copellian—it kept them at heel. Copellian had been several rungs of the ladder below her just a few years earlier, but had now become a serious threat to her. His power and reach were expanding rapidly and his killers and contacts were everywhere—and the bounty on her head increased every day. Running was one option, but not a good one. She might survive if she headed into prador territory, but if she did she’d be beating the odds. Prador rules also applied to humans there: they were either predators or prey. She could also head for the Polity, but it was likely she’d be picked up by AI surveillance, whereupon Earth Central Security would be after her as well as Copellian’s people. And ECS’s AIs, assassin drones, monitors and agents tended to be even less forgiving than the crime lord’s killers. She could run elsewhere, but no, she had too much invested here. She had to stay.

As instructed, she took her smallest shuttle—a vessel not much larger than a gravcar—down to the surface. She landed it near the edge of a crater where sparkling grey and silver dust had spilled like river sediment from gaps in the rim. New coordinates now appeared on her com-screen and she uploaded them to a guidance program in her suit, before pulling on and dogging down her helmet. Isobel then voided her shuttle of air, creating a brief mist all around, opened the single circular door beside her and stepped out into darkness. Her visor then shifted to the same maximum light amplification as her cockpit screen, revealing her surroundings, then blinked up a guide arrow for her. She followed this across rock strewn with flat hexagonal crystals like coins, finally arriving at the elliptical entrance to a cave.

The opening, as she understood it, was one of many such entrances to Penny Royal’s domain. This wormed throughout the crust of the planetoid like the burrows of bark beetles. As she stepped inside, she spotted something poking up from a hollow in the rock—an appendage like an eyeball, impaled on a thin, curved thorn of metal. Whether it was part of the rogue AI itself or just part of its security system she had no idea, but the thing gave her the creeps.

Ten metres into the cave she came to a ceramal bulkhead with inset airlock, but this wasn’t the main focus of her attention. Either side of the bulkhead, trapped in snakes of stone that had liquefied and flowed around them in a Medusa tangle, were space-suited figures. She walked up to the first, noting the old design of the suit, and peered into the visor. Light-amp wasn’t high enough so she reached up and clicked on her suit light. The face inside was female, the eyes open and the expression slightly puzzled. No sign of decay, no sign that this woman was either dead or alive. Feeling further doubts about coming here, Isobel turned to the airlock, remembering a recent conversation with Trent—an employee who had been with her from the start.

“So it’s dangerous, lethal even, but all I have to lose is my life,” she had said, when he had argued against her coming here.

“No,” he had replied. “Get on the wrong side of Penny Royal—and I’ve yet to know if there’s a right one—and dying will be the least of your problems.”

“Yes, but Mr Pace got what he wanted …”

Trent had frowned in puzzlement. “I’m not so sure Mr Pace is happy with what he is.”

She had no idea what Trent was on about. Mr Pace was wealthy beyond measure and simply could not be killed. She had dismissed Trent in irritation. He hadn’t understood.

The outer airlock door opened automatically as she approached. She stepped inside and it slammed shut, like a trap. Isobel tried to stay calm and checked the atmosphere reading as the lock pressurized: high in inert gases but still breathable. As the inner door opened, she stepped through, immediately undogging her helmet, then hanging it from her utility belt. Now that she was inside, she felt that she had taken an irrevocable step, and that the time for precautions was over.

The cave smelled of metal, with a hint of putrefaction and hot electronics. She advanced, then halted abruptly when a figure stepped into view. The skeletal Golem, wearing a silver face, gestured for her to follow as a ribbed umbilicus attached at its waist reeled it in. It led her through a triangular cave where she had to duck to avoid hitting her head, around a mummified human corpse seemingly pinned to the floor by a metre-long chunk of I-beam, then into a circular chamber. The place seemed like a junkyard for spaceship hardware—including fusion reactors and a whole ecology of robots. Except much of this stuff was actually connected and powered up, nestled in a web of s-con and optic cables. In the centre rested a sphere of more apparent junk, impaled on a mass of black spines. The tubing attached to the Golem originated from this sphere and reeled it right in. Here, it seemingly faded from view, but for its face. Then the sphere rotated, bringing that face to centre on her.

Penny Royal.

Isobel had heard many descriptions of this rogue AI. That it was a collection of interlinked Golem, or a steel octopus, or perhaps a spiny black flower on a strangler fig. It had even been depicted as a glittering cloud of crystal shards. Every description had been from someone who had actually encountered the AI, and had been verified either by aug-interrogation or from other accounts. She’d soon realized that Penny Royal did not maintain a single form, or perhaps it disguised its true form. Why it would do so was a puzzle, since there was very little in the Graveyard that could cause it harm.

“You want?” said the Golem.

Penny Royal, it seemed, did not engage in small talk.

“I want to be a haiman,” she replied.

The thugs at his beck and call, his ships and his contacts were not why Copellian was winning. It was his facility with data and planning. He’d installed the latest Polity aug tech within both himself and his lieutenants, and apparently they were now all mentally interlinked. As a result, his operations were always tight, always perfect, and he had grown in power until he felt safe enough to start attacking her. He’d also publicly announced a contract on her. In essence, he was smarter than her, and that had to change.

“You want to be more powerful and dangerous than Copellian?”

“I do,” she replied, unsurprised that Penny Royal knew why she was here. “And I have a half-ton of prador diamond slate up in my main ship to pay for that.”

“Yes,” said Penny Royal.

“Can you make me into a haiman?”

“You want to be the predator and him the prey?”

“Damned right I do,” Isobel replied, feeling slightly bemused by the odd way this exchange was going and Penny Royal’s strange intonation. She decided to affirm her aims: “I want to rip the flesh from his fucking bones!”

“Ah,” said the black AI, and Isobel wondered if she had overstepped in some way.

“Shall I get my people to bring that diamond slate down?” she asked.

“You will be satisfied,” the AI replied.

It expanded, then came apart. The seeming junk of its outer structure spread to reveal hard-edged blackness and a sinuous, tentacular movement. She began moving backwards as it advanced and turned into a wave of intricate movement, silver and black. She halted and waited. Too late to back out now. The wave fell on her.

When the agony came she thought it was her punishment for dealing with the devil, especially when she was so powerful and precise afterwards, her haiman augmentations raising her to a mentality she hadn’t even imagined. That the visible hardware on her body wasn’t metallic but organic she just accepted.

Taking apart Copellian’s operation was simplicity itself after this encounter, so much so that she deliberately complicated it to make it more interesting. The man’s downfall was protracted and humiliating, but he cheated her at the end by taking his own life before she could capture him. Isobel Satomi became a legend in the Graveyard—but her legend soon grew in unexpected ways. It became apparent that what she’d bought from Penny Royal was still changing her, and she joined the ranks of the damned.