10

 

BLITE

The coordinates of their destination lay forty light years out from the Rebus system, and even further from Crispin Six, so Blite could not see why Penny Royal had directed his attention towards these places, unless it was to find a safe distance from which to watch their destruction. Nevertheless, he decided to search their data, starting with the first of them. The Rebus system lay just ten light years beyond the Polity border. The sun was a blue giant orbited by two gas giants, with a scattering of other smaller worlds closer in. One large moon orbited the closer gas giant and had been listed by Polity surveyors as occupied by an interesting and thoroughly alien silicon-based ecology. Closer still to the sun was a green-belt world where conditions were Earth-like. The surveyors had listed this as possessing a carbon and silicon-based ecology. Blite was still at a loss as to why Penny Royal had sent him here. Then he noted the link to a historical file attached to the initial survey, and opened it.

“One hour until we’re there,” said Brond, now back on the bridge.

“And then we end up skating down the probability slope . . . or something,” Greer added. She was off watch now and it was her time to head for her cabin, but she was lingering to see what would happen when they finally surfaced from U-space, carrying all that negative energy from their time jump.

“If you believe the multiverse theories,” said Brond.

“This kind of science is now like religion,” said Greer. “You can choose the theory that best suits you.”

“Only of the theories you don’t understand.”

“You understand them, then?”

“Keep it down,” said Blite. “I’m concentrating.”

“Sure thing, Captain,” said Greer, and they both returned to contemplating their screens.

Apparently, these worlds were both of enough interest to Polity AIs for them to have sent an AI science ship to observe and gather data. The ship’s mission was to map out the ecologies at both the moon and the green-belt world, and to gather and preserve samples of every single life form. This massive task required a ship’s crew of war drones repurposed for the job, and Golem, perpetually visiting both the world and the moon to observe and record the fauna and flora in their particular habitat, record that habitat in detail and gather samples. Checking through some of the data on this, Blite came across a highly technical report from a Golem android who had for a number of years watched a silicon-based plant growing until it shed spurs into a methane storm to seed itself. As he read he kept stamping down on his growing frustration and anger. This all had to mean something.

Next, he came upon a mission conducted by two drones and a Golem who, of necessity, wore a strange form of syntheflesh and skin. A human community on the green-belt world, of over fifty thousand, struggled constantly to survive. Being highly adapted and living in a mutualistic relationship with a silicon-based mould enabled them to digest a wider spectrum of the local fauna and flora. The mould also grew tough armour over their skins to protect them from a local combination of social insect and parasite that injected eggs that grew into nests inside their victims.

“Forty minutes,” said Brond, alerting Blite to just how absorbed he had been in his reading, and how successfully he had suppressed his impatience.

“Shut up,” the captain replied.

Checking further, he found that this human society was the result of the pre-Quiet War diaspora, for its members were descendants of colonists who had been brought here by a cryoship. The colonists had almost destroyed their vessel in the process of landing it, and during their first years on the world had cannibalized it. Their history was interesting and grotesque. None of the original colonists remained alive because the adaptations they needed to make to survive were far too radical for an adult, with the technology they had available. Instead, they made the adaptations and introduced the mutualistic mould to their children, most of whom were foetuses in amniotic cryo-tanks when they landed. The adults had to spend their remaining lives in sealed buildings—only venturing outside in armoured space suits. Some of them might have survived until now—the gerontological science of the time would have enabled this—but their children, upon reaching adulthood, rebelled, introducing a nasty social parasite to their parents’ living quarters.

This was all very interesting, but was still irrelevant to the Black Rose’s arrival so many light years from their world. Blite now focused his attention on Crispin Six.

Crispin Six had been a planetary system until its sun went supernova six years ago. It fried its planets in the first day, and the blast wave had been steadily expanding ever since. This front had already passed over a binary system close by and given it a toasting, causing one ice giant there to lose a couple of worlds and itself expand into something more gaseous and hot. It had also swept away the cometary cloud surrounding that system and destabilized one of the suns—an average G-type—which it had left poxed with sunspots and hurling out tentacular flares. But no life existed there, and the blast hadn’t fried any ecologies so far. That would change with devastating effect, however, when it finally reached Rebus.

Blite experienced a moment of cold sweat until he rechecked the realspace coordinates of their destination. Thankfully, it lay behind this blast wave. However, he still couldn’t see why these worlds Penny Royal had highlighted were of any relevance to the AI. Certainly it now seemed unlikely that it wanted to destroy them, since their destruction was imminent anyway. He next quickly checked for status updates on this story—his new ship had updated itself from the Polity net when they were at the border. He discovered that of course the Polity AIs were aware of the inevitable destruction of Rebus, and they were acting. The human population of the world wasn’t too large for evacuation by ship. But such an operation would be difficult, and an easier method was available.

“Twenty minutes to our destination,” said Brond.

Blite just glared at him for a moment, then returned to his studies.

A Polity stellar incident centre had dispatched a cargo hauler called the Azure Whale. Aboard, it carried three runcible portals. Runcible technicians would position one on that gas giant’s moon and two on the green-belt world. Once they activated these, thoroughly prepared incident teams would come through. On the moon their job was, like megascale gardeners, to dig up every element of a whole ecology. Apparently, the AIs concluded that samples were simply not enough and the silicon-based ecology was too precious to lose to the blast. On the green-belt world, their job was also to gather large elements of the ecology, but the main task was to round up all the humans there and dispatch them through the runcible. To this end, Sparkind forces and grappler robots were to be deployed—obviously, they expected some resistance.

“Captain,” said Leven.

“Yes,” Blite replied distractedly.

“We just deployed U-space disruptor mines.”

“What?” Blite looked up. “Why?”

“I don’t know,” said Leven, “perhaps you would like to ask Penny Royal.”

Blite felt no inclination to do so, as he was sure he’d be finding out within minutes. He sat back, still pondering on the world of Rebus. Was this rescue attempt normal Polity behaviour? The world wasn’t quite within the Line so wasn’t the AIs’ responsibility. He grimaced. It struck him as more likely that the Polity actions had more to do with the interesting silicon ecology and adaptations of the human society. He then wondered when it was he had become so cynical.

“And we’re arriving,” said Brond.

Blite felt the distortion from the top of his head to his toes. Leven cast the local view up in the screen laminate: just dark starlit space. But Blite already knew that they were not arriving in any planetary system.

“So what—” he began, then felt further twists in the pit of his being.

“The mines,” said Leven.

The view on the screen swung round and, checking the figures along the bottom of it, Blite saw that they were under heavy fusion acceleration. Another jump ensued, brief—feeling as if it was on the edge of turning him inside out. White lightning webbed the area of space now centred on the screen—and out of it nosed something immense. Out into the real came a great slab of a ship that looked unnervingly like a pre-Quiet War gravestone. And Blite recognized it at once from his investigations.

“The Azure Whale,” he said.

“What?” Brond turned to look at him.

“Seen it before?” asked Greer.

He just gestured to his aug. “I saw it just a few minutes ago.” He requested a link to them and, when they enabled it, he shot over the data on the Polity rescue attempt. It would take them a while to digest it, by which time, he reckoned, Penny Royal would have finished doing whatever it was going to do here.

“We’re using particle beams now, apparently,” said Leven woodenly, even as those beams cut across from the Black Rose to the big ship. They picked over its surface—hitting here, carving a line there, centring on one point and burning right through the big vessel in several places. The Whale, which immediately after exiting U-space had fired up a powerful fusion drive array, bucked. Then something exploded out of its side, and its drive went out.

“Evacuate,” hissed a voice—Penny Royal of course. But it didn’t seem to be addressing them.

After a few minutes, a square on the screen etched out a point on the ship and brought it into focus. Two objects shot out of an ejection port. The view next swung across to show castellated shuttle bay doors opening, then a couple of wedge-shaped evacuation shuttles blasted out into vacuum.

“I’m getting queries from the captain of the Azure Whale,” said Leven. “He wants to know why they have been attacked and why he, his crew and the ship AI were ordered to abandon ship.”

“Beats me,” said Blite. “Penny Royal, what the hell are you doing?”

The screen view changed again and, on checking, Blite found it was unmagnified this time. They were now right over the hauler and its upper surface spread below them like a massive steel plain.

“Do you want to speak to them?” Leven asked.

“Not yet,” said Blite.

He gazed at the view for some while longer, glanced at Brond and Greer and saw they had a glassy look as they worked through the data he had auged over to them.

“Bay doors are open,” Leven noted.

Blite watched and in a moment saw a large shadow falling down towards that massive ship.

“I take it our passenger just left us?” he asked.

No reply.

“Leven?”

Still no reply as the shadow settled on the hauler.

“Leven?” Blite asked again.

“Yes,” Leven replied, sounding distracted and odd.

“Focus in on that.”

The view from the surface of the hauler shot towards them. The rippling spiky mass on its hull was certainly Penny Royal and, even as he watched, it sank into the surface, leaving a hole filled with glittering darkness. After a few minutes, the view retreated again to show much activity on and about the ship. Robots had swarmed out of some of the holes, making rapid repairs, while debris spewed from various ports.

“So Penny Royal is over there, Leven?” Blite asked again.

“Yes and no,” the Golem mind replied.

“Explain.”

“A U-space connection I cannot explain occurred just after those first mines were deployed. The AI’s mass increased two-fold, then it separated. One portion is aboard that ship while the other one remains here.”

Blite mulled that over as they watched the activity aboard the hauler. After twenty minutes it began to wane, despite just a little of the damage having been repaired. The fusion drive fired up again and began to draw the big ship away. Blite thought about talking to that captain aboard one of those escape shuttles, but couldn’t think what he would say. A short while later, as the hauler grew increasingly distant, he felt the twist of U-space and watched it finally fold out of existence. It seemed that Penny Royal had just stolen a massive hauler with three runcibles aboard.

“You’ve just condemned over fifty thousand people to death in a supernova blast,” he said.

“Not quite,” the AI whispered, and then with an unnecessarily violent wrench took the Black Rose under too.

SPEAR

So, the Lance was a wreck and Riss and I had been rescued from imminent destruction by Sverl, who had sent us into firing range of Cvorn’s ST dreadnought in the first place. It was all just a little puzzling.

“Perhaps, if you would explain what you want with us?” I suggested.

The chain-glass box holding Riss now stood open and Sverl was peering inside. After a moment, he reached in to take hold of Riss, then with the drone’s inert form hanging from one claw, he headed over to a low work surface on which various clamps had been mounted. He dumped the snake drone there, then moved back, as a multi-manipulator robot immediately descended like a spider on a thread from the ceiling.

“I check all information pertinent to my interests,” said Sverl, “but only when I was updating from Flute, did I learn about the assassin drone Riss—and this object.” Sverl gestured with one claw to Penny Royal’s spine, now in the claws of a second-child. He was placing it in a series of clamps at one end of the work surface.

“I still don’t understand what you intend to do here,” I said.

“The spine, as you are aware, contains copies of the essential formative memories and mental patterns of most of Penny Royal’s victims,” said Sverl.

“I wasn’t sure,” I said. “Riss tells me there is quantum entanglement involved—that the spine is linked to my mind and to another location that might be Penny Royal. I wondered if it was just a relay for information stored elsewhere.”

“No, those memories are here,” said Sverl. “The spine contains more than enough storage for that purpose, and there is no reason for the memories to be relayed. I would suggest that Penny Royal is influencing the order and intensity of the memories you experience. But most importantly, it is using the spine to keep apprised of your location, mental state and what actions you intend to take.”

I should have dumped it in a sun, I thought . . . Shouldn’t I?

“I still don’t know, however, what this has got to do with Riss,” I said.

“The spine contains those memories, but it also contains the technology for manipulating them, erasing them, cutting, pasting and, most importantly, transferring them,” Sverl explained. “It is a key that will unlock Riss’s mind, penetrate it as it was penetrated once before by this same technology—perhaps by this same piece of Penny Royal.”

“So the fact that we are all together, now—does this mean what you intend to do was planned by the AI?”

“Planned, foreseen, caused . . .”

The robot had now lifted up the snake drone and fixed it into the series of clamps in line with those holding the spine. I noted that it firmly fixed the drone’s head and had used retractor hooks inside a metal ring to pull open its mouth, right in front of the sharp end of the spine. Also noting that the clamps holding the spine were on slides, it didn’t take much imagination for me to guess where it was going to end up.

“It seems to me that Penny Royal is overcomplicating the solutions to the messes it made,” I suggested.

“Yes,” Sverl agreed, “if we are to be simplistic.”

“So why such complications?”

“I could think of many possibilities,” said Sverl. “The simplest solution to a problem is not always the best one and can often exacerbate it. Consider the history of your own race. When you fed the starving and that resulted in dependency and resentment, the governments concerned reneged on their responsibility, causing war and then further starvation. When you destroyed autocratic regimes, you caused more death and suffering than the regime itself, and often ended up with something worse. Your violent revolutions never resulted in anything better, and your revolutionaries always turned into the thing they despised.”

“You seem pretty sure of that,” I said.

“I’ve been studying the human race for a century.”

“Yeah, right,” I said, not sure how to respond to that. “So how have complicated solutions been better?”

“Penny Royal could have reversed the changes it made to Isobel Satomi, but she would have still been in a position of higher power in the Graveyard, still running her brutal coring trade. Instead the AI lured her and her organization to destruction at Masada, in the process altering the balance of power on that world and essentially freeing the Weaver, the Atheter, from Polity restraint.”

“And that’s a good thing?”

“Depends where you’re standing.”

“On the Rock Pool,” I said, “Penny Royal could have murdered Cvorn and the Five under the ocean, and that would have been the end of that problem.”

“Yes, but the shell people would still be pursuing their doomed experiment. I would still be as I am and a threat to peace between the Polity and the Kingdom.”

I shook my head. “No, it’s still overcomplicated.”

“Perhaps Penny Royal likes complicated.”

“There is that . . .”

“And this is only if we are to suppose that cleaning up its messes is the black AI’s singular intent.”

“What else?”

“The problem with having a greatly expanded capacity for thought is that all possibilities expand. In truth, my best answer has to be that I don’t know.”

I returned my attention to Riss while the door opened behind and the second-child took the chain-glass box out and away. The robot had attached a multitude of optics and power cables to the rear of the spine and now that object was slowly being propelled point-first into the drone’s mouth. I watched this for a moment, then walked over and sat on one of the saddle seats the prador hauled themselves over—the object pocked with pit controls fit for prador digits. I wondered if Sverl used it, because I saw no sign of manipulatory hands underneath the jaw of his big skull.

“Is this going to damage her?” I asked.

“No—in essence it will free the drone from some constraint, because to extract the memories I will need to break the AI lock placed upon her.”

“And afterwards?” I asked. “I know that you have no liking of assassin drones made in that shape.”

“I do have no liking,” Sverl agreed, “but the war is over. I am, however, not entirely sure the drone is happy with that. I will necessarily have to employ some restraint.”

“How long is all this going to take?” I asked.

“Many hours.”

“In that case I would like to see my ship, if I can,” I said. “Is Flute still alive?”

“You can see your ship,” said Sverl. “As for Flute, I don’t know—you’ll have to find out.”

“Then I want to speak to Trent Sobel,” I added, “without him trying to kill me.”

“Of course you do,” said Sverl, “because another piece has to slot into place. Trent Sobel is not the man you knew any more and is unlikely to try to kill you or anyone else. He will in fact need your help.”

Sverl gestured with a claw and the door opened behind me. “Bsectil will take you.”

“This way,” said one of the first-children, turning towards the door, which was opening again.

Bsectil led me along the corridor to a smaller version of the door into Sverl’s sanctum, which he entered, instructing me to wait outside. I peered in through the open door and saw a chamber I presumed to be this creature’s abode. Again, it didn’t follow the usual prador style. The walls were certainly lined with some rocky substance, but inset in these, all around, were numerous aquariums, backlit and filled with squirming life. Curious, I moved closer to the door to get a better look.

Over to one side lay a work area with benches and prador tools all standing around a central object. Was this first-child fashioning some sort of machine? Fascination drew me in despite Bsectil’s instruction to wait outside. No, here was a representation of Isobel Satomi part way through her transformation into a hooder. Judging by the collection lying across the work surface, Bsectil was fashioning this sculpture out of a variety of natural gemstones. This was art, something which was supposed to be totally absent in the Prador Kingdom. And, what was more, the lack of this had been cited by the Polity as the ultimate proof of prador barbarity.

Turning my attention to the other side of the chamber, I saw more conventional prador equipment: racked weapons akin to Gatling cannons and particle beamers. There were also heavy work tools which could attach directly to a prador’s carapace or their additional armour. The first-child had deposited himself on a ring of supports amidst this hardware and was shedding his armour. With a clattering sound, his visual turret expanded in segments, then with a crump the carapace separated along a line just above the leg sockets and rose on polished rods. This detached from the forward rods and hinged back on the rear two. Now revealed was the whorled and stony top half of the first-child—looking very much like that of the second-child I had seen.

Next, with further clattering sounds, the armour about the creature’s legs and claws expanded and separated, driven apart on similar, smaller polished rods. The prador rose out of this exoskeleton, levered up by an object like a large shoehorn which hinged up from inside. Extracting his legs and claws in the process, he got a grip on the surrounding armour, then heaved himself out completely, landing on the floor like a dropped toolbox. He was a little unsteady at first, struggling to get his balance on distorted legs. I examined the speaker grille for a translator and spotted the aug attached to the side of his visual turret.

“That was chafing,” Bsectil said.

I supposed that armour designed for a normal sort of first-child would chafe on something like this. I realized then that I was seeing a very ancient first-child indeed. Such creatures were usually dispensed with, in some nasty manner, at a relatively young age. Kept in a chemically maintained adolescence, they started to become immune to that suppression at some point. As I understood it, their fathers killed them before they inevitably began to transform, despite that suppression, into adults. Or perhaps that was all wrong. Perhaps their fathers killed them before they turned into something halfway, such as this.

“Do you want to be an adult?” I asked.

“No,” Bsectil replied, “Father has never offered us the choice. But he knows we are more than capable of freeing ourselves. Also, the physiological changes could now kill us.”

I realized my mouth was hanging open and closed it.

“You’re not really like any prador I’ve known, or known of,” I eventually managed.

“Maintained in adolescence, we still grow,” said Bsectil. “Even if we could transform into adults, we would devolve.”

“I see.”

The first-child waved a claw towards his artwork. “What do you think?”

“I think it’s very good,” I replied, “though I’m in two minds about the choice of subject. Is it your first? Usually prador are so . . . practical.”

“It’s my first—Father wouldn’t let me do him.”

“Okay . . .”

“Now, your ship . . .”

Bsectil headed over to the door and I followed him out. As he led the way through the corridors of the ship, we passed another of those distorted second-children.

“What about them?” I asked. “Do they grow in permanent adolescence? Do they have an interest in things other than the practical?”

“Not enough brain mass, though with augmentation it’s possible,” said Bsectil. “Father considered allowing them all to move to the next stage—to change into first-children. But again, the physiological change might be lethal. Bsorol is researching possibilities that you may understand, since they involve adaptogenics and nano-packages.”

“We might be able to reverse the damage caused by constant chemical suppression, allowing ganglion growth in our lesser kin and physical independence.”

I jumped, because Bsectil had not spoken the last words—they had come direct through my aug. I began running diagnostics and found that the device was reinstating, but it had also linked into the computing of Sverl’s ship.

“Who’s that?” I asked.

“Bsorol,” the voice replied.

“Does Sverl know I’ve access to ship’s computing and that you’re talking to me?” I asked. “I don’t want to end up brain-fried.”

“He suggested it,” said Bsorol.

“Yes, I did,” Sverl interjected. “I see another piece of the puzzle slotting into place. Your expertise will not be sufficient to help Trent Sobel.”

At this point, we had halted by a door that was grinding open.

“You always stop short of a full explanation,” I said.

“You will see,” said Sverl.

I let that go because now, with my aug functioning once more, I was receiving something down the channel that had previously connected me to Flute. It was an odd whining sound and large chunks of corrupted code. Meanwhile, Bsectil took me through a short tunnel and finally into a hold space similar to the one where Riss and I had arrived.

The Lance was here and, though it was a mess, with holes punched through it, I took comfort in the fact that its structure still looked solid. The nose armour was heat-rippled where the second railgun missile had struck. And, where the particle beam had cut through the middle of the ship, a section of hull was missing, revealing the charred interior. Airlocks and maintenance hatches stood open, also showing the black charring inside. Where the first railgun missile had struck, taking a huge chunk from the rear, five second-children were at work. They were clad in armour bristling with motorized tools, accompanied by a swarm of Polity maintenance robots. They had removed damaged armour, detached the fusion drive and were currently in the process of removing the U-space drive. I surveyed the pile of wreckage extracted by the workers, and then noted a big grav-sled piled up with new materials. Sverl was as good as his word.

“Rebuilding or setting up a U-space drive is usually the province of shipyards,” I noted.

“We can build or rebuild them onboard,” Bsectil replied. “Father is currently designing drives for U-jump missiles and U-space mines—and preconscious AI minds to control them.”

I didn’t like the prospect of prador controlling that kind of tech. But then Sverl was different, wasn’t he? I made no comment, instead waving towards the second-children at work on the ship. “Is it safe to go inside?”

“There is no lethal radiation, all systems have been shut down and remaining munitions and power supplies have been stabilized.”

“What I meant,” I explained, “was that I don’t want to end up on the rough end of a second-child claw if I enter my ship.”

Bsectil swung towards the workers here and clattered something. After a pause, one of them clattered something back.

“You will be safe,” Bsectil told me. “They are not entering the ship just yet anyway.”

I walked over to gaze up at the particle-beam hole through the side, but there was no way for me to reach it. However, as I scanned around for some other way of entering, Bsectil came over and lowered one claw to the floor beside me.

“Climb up on me,” he said.

I gazed at the creature. I had been responding to him as if he was human or AI—a Polity citizen. However, every time I stopped to think about what he really was, the behaviour of this Bsectil, and, in turn, Sverl, left me numb, shocked. Every personal memory I had involving the prador, along with every new additional one, confirmed them as vicious amoral killers. Yet, here was Bsectil offering to act as a stepladder up into my ship. In addition, Bsectil’s only change from a normal prador was age, augmentation and the influence of Sverl. Just like all my fellow soldiers in the war, I had always considered prador killers by nature. Yet now, as I clambered up Bsectil’s claw and onto his back, it occurred to me to wonder just how much was down to nurture.

Inside, a blackened ruin confronted me and it took me a while to get my sense of direction. Memory also made itself felt as I re-experienced the slow death of a man caught inside a ship just as ruined as this, but I suppressed it with ease. When I finally found the remains of the corridor leading to the rear of the ship, I realized that part of my confusion was due to the grav orientation here. The grav-plates in the floor of the hold now dictated “Down.” The corridor, in relation to that floor, actually sloped up from the ruination that had been my bridge, living area and laboratory. I climbed upwards, using as steps the distorted grid of the floor where charred grav-plates had dropped out. As I went, I considered just how indestructible that spine must be to survive what had hit here.

By the time I reached the turn into Flute’s chamber, the damage was not so severe, and the angle of the floor was no problem as long as I used the wall on one side as support. Reaching the entrance to the ship’s cortex, I wondered how I would climb the sloping floor there to get up to Flute. However, there was no need. An impact had flung Flute’s container from its two clamps and it now lay easily accessible amidst the wreckage that had piled in the lower corner of the chamber. I made my way to him and studied the damage to his case.

It was dented, cracked open in one place, and from there issued a steady stream of cold vapour. After removing my suit glove, I passed my hand over this. Maybe the case’s own power supply was keeping Flute’s ganglion frozen, or maybe I was too late. I peered in through the chain-glass porthole but could only make out the glint of occasional lights inside. Certainly, something was still powered up. I tried my aug channel, but the corrupted data had dissipated and now all I got was that previous fizzing. Maybe the case’s transceiver had been damaged. There was only one way to find out.

Searching the exterior of the case, I eventually found a small hatch. I tried to pop it open but the damage to the case had jammed it, so I found a shard of ceramal nearby and used that to lever it open. Inside, to my relief, the coiled optic was undamaged. I unreeled it and plugged it into a data socket in my aug.

“. . . sorry . . .” said Flute.

“Pilot,” I said. “Status report.”

“I am fully . . . dying,” Flute replied. “System ports . . . 1 to 125 are . . . disconnected. Polity-format . . . diagnostic . . . running. Internal battery at 8%. Zero external source. Coolant system damaged . . .organic corruption . . . in process. Status of U-calculus . . . nil—”

“End report,” I interrupted, uncomfortably reminded of the time when I had bought Flute from the shellman Vrit. “Bsectil?” I queried through my aug.

“Help is on the way,” Bsectil replied.

Help arrived down the corridor in the form of an armoured second-child, loaded with tools. I felt an abrupt and strong surge of memory—a Polity commando preparing to take on a similarly equipped second-child—and this one was harder to suppress. I quickly moved out of its way and watched as the prador reeled out a power cable from its armour and plugged that into the case. Lights flickered on about its exterior and the second-child applied a tool head and began taking the thing apart. I crouched, fighting the imposed memories, suddenly feeling them clamouring harshly at the borders of my consciousness. What now? And why now?

In my mind’s eye, I felt the spine finally lock home in a snakish body and make a full connection. Then something new came out of that mass, displacing the commando’s memories. I felt a consciousness of another kind emerge, one that was difficult to encompass, alien. And, all at once, I was the assassin drone Riss—newborn in the furnace of battle, back in Room 101.

THE PRAD0R/HUMAN WAR: RISS

The drone awoke to consciousness knowing its designation as ADP200 and quickly began connecting its consciousness to all its systems, instinctively running diagnostics, becoming all it could be, and understanding itself. It was an assassin drone built in the shape of a prador parasite. It resembled a terran cobra, but with an ovipositor in its tail, small limbs under its hood, and three eyes. Because of the ovipositor and its function, and that vague connection to terran biology, its designation was female. Internally she contained a grav-motor, EM inducers for penetrating computer systems, electro-muscle, a fusion brick to supply power and a high degree of computing. Data, immediately available in her mind, detailed much of human and AI history and science. But the focus of all this was the war. ADP200 hated the prador. In just a few seconds she knew her purpose and was eager to begin work. Next, she engaged her senses and studied her surroundings.

The construction area was a long tube crammed with robotic assemblers—a maelstrom of busy silver limbs and tool heads working around four of ADP200’s kin. These were suspended by hardfields, all in various states of construction. Behind was a version of her sans exterior skin—a snake skeleton packed with components and woven with electro-muscle. Behind that was one lacking both electro-muscle and many essential components, and as ADP200 observed her, she began to writhe. A hardfield slammed her to one side, where a robotic claw closed on her and threw her, still writhing, through a side hatch. Submitting a query to the station AI submind running this small factory, ADP200 learned that 202’s crystal had just too many faults. Rather than start again, it was easier to route her to a nearby furnace.

From the small chamber at the end of the tube, numerous tunnels branched off to the various final construction holds and docks of Factory Station Room 101. It was empty of any of 200’s forerunners and full of smoke. Using her grav-motor, ADP200 moved out to its centre, checking the map of the station clear in her mind and applying to the submind for assignment details. Just then, the whole station shuddered and 200 detected power surges and outages all around.

“You are to proceed to holding point Beta Six, my child,” the submind replied.

My child?

“I’m to be put on hold?”

“We have a situation and you cannot immediately be assigned.” Behind this data, something loomed and, since the drone had been made with the capacity for emotion, she recognized deep regret and monolithic grief. Behind the submind’s words, something was crying.

ADP200 opened her black eye and checked for data. It was blocked for a while, then it seemed as if the power blocking her faded, and she accessed station computing and sensors. In the space of a single moment, the situation became all too clear. Room 101 was under attack from a prador fleet and was taking a pounding. Its AI had shut down production of everything it considered non-essential in this situation. Robots were even taking apart whole factory units—their materials being used to produce stripped-down attack ships that the station was spewing out into battle. The drone understood at once that her kin would never make it, because their whole unit had been shut down—though no orders had yet arrived for it to be taken apart.

The drone watched as the production line powered down. She felt a surge of relief, having so narrowly avoided destruction. She then headed for the relevant exit tunnel to take her to Beta Six.

“You may select a name from the list provided,” the submind informed her, its tones leaden, careless.

Finding the list in her mind, the drone quickly riffled through it. Other snakelike drones had taken all the good names like Kaa and Hissing Sid, but one pertinent name remained.

“I select Riss,” she replied.

“Good choice,” said the mind. “Have a good life.”

Riss felt the mind encompassed by a grieving darkness before it crumbled, flying apart, howling as it went. The drone realized she had witnessed the station AI not subsuming its submind, but destroying it. Had that been necessary?

The exigencies of war, Riss thought, but sensed something seriously wrong with that assessment. Connected into the station’s computing, she was finding areas where logic was breaking down, swamped by digital emotion and always, in the background, that electronic crying.

Navigating quickly through a series of tunnels, Riss became aware that the temperature of the station was steadily increasing. Leaving one of the tunnels to enter a corridor made for larger drones and human personnel, she found some of the latter kind. Two women and a man were on the floor. Probing them with the sensor cluster in her black eye, she registered that the two prostrate on the hot deck were unconscious while the woman sitting with her back against the wall was not. They were clad only in overalls, which was surely insufficient, according to Riss’s knowledge, for the increasing temperature.

“Hello . . . drone,” rasped the woman.

Riss dropped to the floor and slithered across. One of the two on the floor was dying and Riss had to do something. She applied to local systems for help, quickly detailing the situation. The only response was hollow laughter that devolved into sobbing.

“You all need hotsuits,” Riss told the woman.

“Ah . . . if wishes were . . . fishes.”

Riss didn’t understand that but was aware that though she had a detailed knowledge of humankind, it wasn’t complete. Presumably, the woman had just uttered some sort of colloquialism.

“I cannot get a sensible response from 101 or its subminds,” Riss said.

“That’s because,” said the woman, “101 fell off . . . the other side of nuts . . . over an hour ago.”

“I don’t understand.”

“We’re in some . . . serious shit.”

The other woman, lying on the floor nearby, hit a crisis point as her heart stuttered, and then stopped. Riss again tried to summon help and also used her inducer to restart the woman’s heart, stabilizing herself with her grav-motor and beginning chest compressions.

“Don’t bother,” said the conscious woman. “She took . . . curare 12.”

Riss scanned to confirm this, then stopped the compressions. Derivative 12 of that organic poison rendered a person unconscious, then paralysed the nervous system, quickly killing them. The drone looked over at the man. He had taken the same, and even as Riss scanned him, he died. But the woman against the wall had taken nothing and was dying from the heat alone.

“Lucky for them,” said the woman, “they have . . . memplants.”

“I don’t understand,” Riss said again.

“You will,” the woman replied, raising the object she held and pressing it under her chin. The pulse-gun thumped three times in quick succession, taking off the top of her head and spreading her brains up the wall behind, where they immediately began to steam.

Riss froze, struggling to accept what had just happened. Scanning the woman deeper, the drone found the internal physical augmentations she had been using to keep herself alive. These were necessary because, for quite some time now, the temperature here had been beyond normal human endurance. Assessing those augmentations, Riss realized that the woman must have been in some pain, and that would only have grown until her augmentations failed. Then she would have been truly subject to the temperature here. It would have been akin to stepping into a hot oven.

Riss moved on to the end of the corridor, went through an airlock that required inducement to open and exited into another corridor. She followed one of the smaller tubes to finally arrive at Beta Six. The massive holding area contained only a scattering of war and assassin drones. Nearby four big objects, resembling giant dust mites fashioned from steel, clung to one wall. And a thing like a razor-edged praying mantis patrolled the floor. Riss approached the last of these, recognizing another terror weapon like her.

“You’re probably the last of them,” said the mantis.

“What?”

“The drone manufactories are being shut down and are going into the furnaces.”

“I need data,” said Riss.

“Here’s a situational update,” offered the mantis, opening a channel along which to send a data package. Riss accepted it.

The survival of Factory Station Room 101 took priority over its residents, so all runcible transfer imports and all available materials inside the station were being turned into stripped-down attack ships. The rate of production hadn’t kept up with the battle, so the AI had decided to open the heat-sink runcible for import. Production had thereafter increased, as had the internal temperature. About half of the five thousand human personnel had managed to don hotsuits, but that would only delay their demise by a few hours. Others had ejected themselves from the station in space suits or escape pods. But such was the intensity of the battle out there that their chances of surviving were low. Still others had inserted themselves into cryo-suspension in human quarters, where the AI had now cut power while robots tore apart the quarters themselves for materials. But 101 couldn’t route power for a U-space jump to escape, because just a slight dip in its present defensive production rates would almost certainly result in its destruction. And now the AI itself was starting to malfunction: many of its communications were illogical, its attempt to shut down the runcible gates was stopped directly by Earth Central, and other attempts seemingly to sabotage its own survival were being countered by its surviving subminds.

Riss wanted to say, “I don’t understand,” but felt that was a phrase she had used too often already in her short life.

“Fucking empathy,” said the razor mantis.

No, I’m not going to say it, thought Riss.

“Supposedly we are post-humans and so without emotion our reason for being will fade. That emotion is also supposedly a driver that will enable us to win this war,” the mantis explained. “Fucking bean counters.” The big drone whacked a forelimb against the floor and dragged it across, peeling up slivers of metal.

“Okay, I give up. I don’t understand.”

“Great idea to give a factory station AI the empathy and conscience of a human mother so it’ll be sure to look after all its children.”

Riss finally began to get some glimmering of understanding. The 101 AI had birthed and was continuing to birth thousands of sentient minds, only to send them immediately to destruction. Its children. It had also, out of necessity, killed all the humans aboard.

“This is why it’s malfunctioning?” Riss suggested.

“Malfunctioning,” the mantis pondered, “such a technical term.”

“Do you have a better one?”

“Yeah.” The mantis now swung round to face Riss completely, mandibles grinding. “The Room 101 AI has gone nuts, it’s barking, it fell out of the silly tree and hit every branch on the way down.”

“Why don’t I feel . . .” Riss tried.

“Hey, you’re a newbie,” said the mantis, “of course you don’t feel much.”

“I have just been made,” Riss agreed cautiously.

“I was in here for repairs myself.” Those mandibles stopped grating and the big drone continued, “In your case, no call for too much in the way of conscience or empathy in an assassin drone—it kinda gets in the way.”

As the snake drone contemplated all her parts and the perfection of her physical design, shaped for a single task, she understood that her mental design was just as refined and specific. Room 101 had also been perfectly designed for its task of producing sentient weapons. But it had never been intended to end up in the thick of the fighting.

“Ah fuck,” said the mantis.

A light as bright as many suns glared in through ports high up in Beta Six section. Some massive detonation jerked the eighty-mile-long station like a hand slapping a ceiling mobile. The whole of Beta Six distorted; a dent hundreds of feet long bowed in one wall. The little drone found herself propelled at high speed across the space, saw the mite drones tumbling, then slamming into the dented wall. The mantis was still in position, sharp limbs driven into the floor where they had sliced foot-long grooves. Riss tried to obtain data, while trying to pull her ovipositor out of the bubble-metal it had embedded itself in.

No data available.

Fire now jetted in from the entrances, and one airlock door tore free, tumbling across the space. Great heavings and groanings impinged, then everything twisted in a way Riss recognized at once, but with those parts of her mind that weren’t in any human-comparable format. Room 101 U-jumped.

CV0RN

Cvorn felt strong, potent, and he was beginning to feel something else as residual cell damage healed what the surgical equipment had missed. The transplant still ached, but that pain was just a gloss over another sensation, which grew steadily stronger. He turned sharply as Vrom entered from his annex, carrying a bulky organic synthesis unit with a precisely temperature-controlled atomizer and fans mounted on top. Vrom placed the device on the floor before Cvorn and quickly moved back. Even the unemotional first-child was now sensing the change in his father and understood that his personal danger had increased.

Cvorn dipped towards the thing, waggled his new palp eyes—an afterthought after the main surgical operation and one he was regretting, because they didn’t seem to be working properly. He studied the control made for a prador manipulator hand he didn’t possess, then made a connection to it via his array of control units and aug.

“So tell me about it,” he said, strangely reluctant to turn the thing on.

“The power usage is very low and is kept topped up by simple inductance from ship systems,” Vrom stated. “Even without topping up it will last decades. The hormones and pheromones are generated from your own genome but otherwise precisely match the mix created by these.” Vrom waved a claw towards the mutilated but still living remains of the young male lying nearby and bubbling weakly in agony, as it had been for many days. “The effect should be the same.”

“But if I activate this now,” said Cvorn, “the pheromone mix in the air here will be doubled.”

“Yes, Father,” Vrom agreed.

Cvorn pointed his claw at the young adult. He had been reluctant to let it die and lose its hormonal output, but now it was no longer required. “Remove him for your own amusement, but ensure he dies within the next hour.”

Vrom immediately turned and headed over to the creature, eager for the rare delicacy. The male’s bubbling increased since it was still aware enough to know what was in store. As Vrom began dragging it to the door into his own annex, where he would doubtless open up its shell and begin dining on the living contents, Cvorn focused his attention throughout the ST dreadnought. His ship now.

First, he needed to seal Sfolk and the other three young adults into their quarters so their hormone production would not spread throughout the air ducts. Through his aug, Cvorn cut their quarters out of the ship’s air-supply system, then issued orders to some of his own second-children to go there with air-set resin guns to make those quarters airtight. This wouldn’t kill the four for some time; later, if he felt the urge, Cvorn could deal with them on a more personal level.

Next Cvorn turned on the bio- and gas-attack filtration system. The nano-meshes in these would now take out all large molecules and clear the air. This would take some time so Cvorn set an alert to warn him when the hormone levels in the air dropped below ten per cent of their present level. Then he would turn on the device before him. But he was still wary, and a little puzzled.

Surely, even if prador father-captains had never found themselves breathing the same air supply as five young adults and four females, this effect had been known. Why, then, hadn’t it been more commonly used? Cvorn thought about his own past.

Cvorn’s father had, as was often the case with prador, grown senile and negligent. Whilst chemical suppression of Cvorn’s growth had prevented him, his father’s leading first-child, from turning into an adult, his father had failed to supplement his fading hormonal control of his children. A long time before he had been capable of acting directly against his father, Cvorn had understood this and had prepared, as had his father’s other three first-children. Ironically, if his father hadn’t decided that the time had come for Cvorn to be replaced, the result of the ensuing conflict might have been a lot messier and not necessarily in Cvorn’s favour. As it was, his father summoned him to his sanctum, where two thralled grazer squid awaited with surgical telefactors and one of the new spherical drone shells into which they aimed to install Cvorn’s ganglion. Cvorn knew what was about to happen and therefore had greater motivation to fight his instinct to obey than his brethren. It was the most difficult thing he had ever done—to resist the urge to submit, and then to activate the particle cannon concealed in his claw and turn it on his father. His father had died quickly, the beam punching through the macerating machine he had used in the place of mandibles and into his body, the pressure generated in there by expanding hot gases blowing off the top of his shell, but his pheromones had not faded as quickly as his life.

Cvorn spent many hours crippled by the reaction, sure he had done wrong, expecting punishment, terrified, but as the pheromones in the air faded, he began to feel free and knew he had to act, and now. Already prepared for this too, he went over to his father’s pit controls and penetrated his communications, immediately summoning one of his brethren first-children to the sanctum. He gave no indication that it was he doing the summoning and not his father. That first-child arrived and died, burning in the same beam that had taken out his father. The next suffered the same end too, but the remaining first-child, doubtless now aware that its father’s hormonal control of it was fading fast, did not respond.

Cvorn’s instinct at that point was to go after the other one, but that would have been a bad move. Here in his father’s sanctum, at the heart of their undersea home, he was relatively safe and had direct access to the computer system. He locked down the armoured doors before beginning his steady penetration of that system. First, he removed his father’s three control units from his shell, incidentally dining on his father’s partially cooked flesh and enjoying it immensely. He inserted new nano-connector interfaces into the units, then shell-welded them to his own carapace. The three channels opened to the two grazer squid and his father’s four war drones, who had all been Cvorn’s predecessors, but the coding he needed to control these had gone with the old nano-connectors. However, his father had been a rather old-fashioned prador who used pit controls to access his house computers and these, if he was careful, Cvorn could work with. And the control codes were probably recorded there too. He spent many days ensconced in the sanctum, eating both his father and his two brothers as he worked, and physically changing.

Urges he could not identify began to wash through him, as he no longer ingested the cocktail of chemicals that had maintained his adolescence. As he worked, his whole body felt looser, odd, and he was always hungry. Perhaps the joy he felt in finally penetrating the house computers, both taking control of it and getting hold of the codes for the war drones and grazer squid, was what helped instigate the change. He was just reviewing the list of numerous attempts by his remaining brother to penetrate that same system, with his limited access outside the sanctum, when he felt a sudden tight convulsion at his back end and heard a ripping sound. Abruptly he could no longer feel his back legs. Looking round, he saw them, and a section of intervening carapace drop away. Then a whole new set of feelings impinged as his new prongs and coitus clamp, as yet not fully developed, were exposed to the air.

As was always the case with pre-adulthood prador, Cvorn immediately felt vulnerable and wanted to hide and protect this new acquisition. He recognized the feeling at once: it was an evolved survival mechanism to get him away from aggressive fully adult prador, including his father, who would immediately attack and try to kill such a competitor. This was a form of selection—with only the fast and the strong surviving. In the far past, before prador society developed, pre-adults went into hiding until the transformation was completed, hunting and eating to build up body mass and armour. As full adults, they then returned to compete for females. Cvorn fought the urge, rationality his armour now because he controlled four war drones.

Contacting those drones, who were less sophisticated than the modern version and so could not distinguish between him and his father, he gave them their orders and then watched on his array of hexagonal screens. These drones were actually original body carapaces reinforced with armour, with major ganglions frozen inside and these interfaced with tactical computing. Other internal organs had been removed and replaced with a power supply and other hardware. Being surface-based and grav-technology being expensive, they ran on caterpillar treads. They were armed with twinned Gatling cannons where their claws had been and underslung missile launchers. Cvorn watched them trundle out of their cache and spread out through the undersea home. Before reaching Cvorn’s first-child brother, one of them encountered two second-children. These were already transforming into first-children and were fighting in one of the corridors. A short burst of Gatling fire rapidly converted them into smoking chunks.

The first-child, alerted by this, immediately fled his own small sanctum, headed to an exit portal and out into the ocean. Cvorn was disappointed but understood the impulse. His brother was no longer a first-child either, having also lost his back legs and exposed new tender sexual organs. Cvorn at once changed all the house codes so that the young adult could not get back in. He thereupon watched the drones slaughter all the remaining second-children, and then enter the third-child nursery and there massacre all the males. The females, in their separate annex, would be worth keeping for the usual round of necessary exchanges to prevent inbreeding.

Cvorn next spent many months hiding, ignoring queries from other prador who were his father’s allies or associates, aware that if they knew of his father’s demise they might well consider this abode vulnerable to attack. Gradually, he grew larger. He went through two further sheddings, and as his final fully adult shell hardened and thickened, his fear began to diminish. During his first venture out of his sanctum, he visited his father’s harem to satisfy a strongly growing itch, but used gel contraception. He did not want to inbreed with his mother and knew he needed to exchange these females for some that were more genetically diverse. Returning to his sanctum, he spent some time tending to inevitable mating injuries and decided it was time to announce his presence.

Prador society’s muted reaction to his appearance surprised him until he discovered that inter-house communications were abuzz with other news. Exploration vessels had encountered a new sentient race out at the limits of the Kingdom’s expansion, and his fellows were making the usual preparations. Of course, the prador were destined to rule the universe, and so would not tolerate other intelligences.

Back in the present, Cvorn felt himself bowed under a deep and heavy nostalgia and tried to shake it off, but the weight of memory continued to bear down on him. He relived the excitement of war preparations, the times he had nearly ended up a victim of his own kind, the allies he had made and betrayed and the enemies that had come close to killing him. He remembered his steady vicious climb up through the prador hierarchy, his steady acquisition of wealth and the commissioning of his destroyer. He remembered his first-children. But just one had survived all those years of warfare against the Polity and he now resided in one of his war drones. He remembered growing old and beginning to lose the mating urge during that conflict, then losing his limbs and the equipment for mating after them. Then it was that he regained some of his cowardice, ensuring layers of protection around him—his ships, armour, weapons and enslaved children. He realized he had become brutal then and that much of his aggression was a product of his fear of anything that might harm him . . .

Cvorn shook himself violently, noted that the alarm was sounding from the device Vrom had brought and through his aug immediately turned it on. He had been thinking about his past in relation to the hormonal effect upon him, not to end up reliving its joys and horrors. So again, why wasn’t that effect more commonly used? His immediate thought was that father-captains feared fear itself—that in regressing themselves like this they might end up as cowardly pre-adults again—but Cvorn had felt none of that. He felt now as he had felt when first announcing his presence to the rest of the prador. He felt brave and he felt ready. He also felt something else, something quite powerful and undeniable. Turning, he opened his sanctum doors and headed out. It had been a long time but he still remembered the techniques he had employed to avoid the worst of the injuries. It was time, Cvorn definitely felt, to pay a visit to those females.

THE BROCKLE

The single-ship that had just arrived was one of three used to convey prisoners to and from the Tyburn to face the Brockle. The woman inside was a murderess, but there must be more to it or she would not have ended up here. Her hatred of the Polity had led to her joining a separatist organization and she might be involved in other crimes too. The Polity wanted her reamed of information and then sentence executed on her.

The Brockle’s latest case had decided that her three sons had no future in the Polity, due to her detestation of the Polity and its AIs. They, despite being legal adults, apparently had no say in the matter. She had tried to force them to accompany her to one of the outlink stations to take a freighter ride outside the Polity. But they had refused, also rebelling further by getting themselves fitted with Polity augs. She had pretended to accept their choice and invited them to her home for a meal, whereupon she had fed them with a self-propagating neurotoxin. This poison, as well as killing them in seconds flat, turned their brains to jelly. So despite the alert broadcast by the augs they wore, they ended up unrecoverably dead.

So prosaic.

The Brockle felt a wave of ennui at the prospect of interrogating her. Maybe if ECS had sent some Golem murderer or the likes of the strange Mr Pace its feelings would have been different. But ennui was followed by angry frustration. Earth Central had informed the Brockle that it could obtain no more of value from Ikbal and Martina after their time with Penny Royal on Captain Blite’s ship. It was ordered to release them, returning them via this very single-ship . . . The Brockle’s contribution to solving the “Penny Royal problem” was now at an end.

The Brockle thought otherwise. All the intimate details it had gleaned from Blite’s crewmembers proved that Penny Royal, as well as being a paradigm-changing force, was dangerously unstable. The Brockle had requested the other two crewmembers—the couple Chont and Haber Geras—but apparently ECS had intercepted and questioned them on Earth, and released them. This was just plain wrong. It could learn so much more by a joint interrogation of all four. It could make so many comparisons of their experiences. By jointly putting them under pressure and setting them against each other in some VR scenario it could elicit new facts. Didn’t Earth Central understand the necessity for this? Didn’t that AI understand how dangerous Penny Royal was?

In its seat before the window, which gave a view along the thin central body of the Tyburn to the section that still contained the remains of some of the colonists, the Brockle ground its ersatz teeth and felt the need for some rebellion of its own. Through the cams in the interrogation room, it gazed upon Ikbal and Martina. Presently they were lying on the floor, the silver worms of nano-fibres visible around their heads, which had also penetrated within. The Brockle was running them through a perfect recall of events aboard The Rose while subtly twisting their mental perspective. And every time it did this, further interesting details surfaced. It then focused its attention on the dock, as the woman exited the single-ship and stood wringing her hands and peering round nervously.

Yes, time to push against the terms of its confinement by Polity AIs. The negotiation to reach agreement had been difficult and it had only consented because here it got precisely what it wanted: suspects to interrogate, minds to take apart. Now it wasn’t getting what it wanted.

The Brockle stood and headed out, broke into an unaccustomed jog then, in irritation, melted into a hundred silver worms and shoaled towards the dock. A short while later it exploded into the dock space, seeing the woman separatist from a hundred different perspectives. Quick and dirty, it decided, as it swarmed around her. Then all the worms collapsed in on her with a thunderous crack and enclosed her in a writhing ball.

The Brockle stripped the flesh away from her skull, then the skull away from her brain, which it retained. The shifting bait-ball of worms drifted across the dock, dropping flesh and skin, splinters of bone, and then her headless body. It recorded her brain physically as it took it apart, making a model, and running her mind-state in that. Discarding a slurry of neural matter, it departed the dock, already having extracted enough about her separatist contacts and involvement in other crimes to make a report. Meanwhile, it linked through to its submind in the single-ship. But rather than absorb it, as usual, it delivered some simple instructions: “Return to Omega Six for next pick-up.” As the Brockle well knew, there was no pickup waiting there, at the station where this latest victim had been held.

“Understood,” the submind replied.

Immediately the dock began to evacuate, the woman’s remains steaming on the floor as they rapidly vacuum-dried. The space doors opened and the single-ship began to manoeuvre towards them with blasts of compressed air. Now, almost certainly, the watcher would be informing Earth Central that the ship was departing without the crewmen. However, by the time the Polity’s leading AI responded, the ship would have dropped into U-space. And now there were no more single-ships aboard it could use to return Blite’s crew. This was merely a delaying tactic, because in time another one would arrive with yet another prisoner for interrogation.

Back in its viewing room, the Brockle formed itself back into a fat young man, already dispatching the report on the separatist as it stepped back to its chair. Later, it would return and get rid of the headless and now dried-out corpse. Right now, it checked through its units attached to Ikbal and Martina before formulating the replies it would make during the imminent exchange with Earth Central. Then it needed to think very carefully about endings, and new beginnings.