Shivering, Robert Horst pulled up the hood of his padded jacket before tugging open the D-shaped hatch leading outside the Artisans Deck. Hinges creaked and a gust of snow flew in as he edged out into the freezing blast, then slammed the hatch behind him. The walkway had a flimsy canopy but was open at the side to the swirling winds which drove particles of ice and snow against the ancient, pitted hull of Malgovastek City. Robert hurried along the exposed gantry and up a flight of iron steps to a circular, sheltered platform. A covey of stick-legged Hodralog were buying whirly-glows from an emaciated female Henkayan who waved a handful at Robert the moment he came into view.
When he came here the first time, three weeks ago with Rosa and the droid Reski Emantes, he had made the mistake of going over to see. Whereupon the Henkayan vendor had stuffed whirlyglows in his pockets, hands and partly open jacket, then demanded payment. Luckily Reski Emantes had intervened and paid up with what looked like marbles containing different numbers of brassy beads. After that, every time he passed through he did as he was doing now, keeping his distance as he hurried to another set of steps leading up.
Above was a similar circular chamber with a low roof and louvred metal shutters which kept out the snow but let in icy draughts. Breathing out foggy clouds, he crossed to one of the exits and out onto a railed gantry bare to the elements, along which he dashed to the observatory, a small boxy building on pillars that rose from the deck below.
For once he was early and his Gomedran contact, Ku-Baar, was late. And since there was no one else about he had the full run of all the viewing niches. He quickly ascended the wooden stairways to the highest catwalk and went straight to the niche that faced the great penduline city of Malgovastek. Winds moaned around the observatory as Robert trained the heavy scope on the upper levels, the Supervisors Deck and the Proprietors Deck, names dating back to the city’s founding nearly two millennia ago, according to Reski Emantes.
Such names had apparently hung on out of common usage, bearing no relation to the current power arrangement which was an oligarchy of corrupt clans and guilds. Looking through the scope at the Supervisors Deck he could see light-globes and strings of lamps decorating the porticos, extensions and balconies built onto the original residential sections by successive clan bosses. The Proprietors Deck was more ostentatious, with glass towers, turrets and faceted, glowing domes denoting privilege and wealth, as well as the ruthless violence needed to maintain it. The rushing swirls of snow made the heights grey and hazy but Robert could still make out the Elavescent Hawsers, five mighty cables that soared up through a mile or more of ice storms and gloom to the underside of a colossal stone ledge where the ancient engineers had embedded anchors deep within the rock.
Malgovastek was not the only city suspended from that landmass-scale shelf, nor was that the only such shelf in the bizarre hyperspace tier known as the Shylgandic Lacuna. Robert still vividly remembered their arrival as the Construct tiership Plausible Response plummeted down into the Lacuna’s dizzying abyss, past jutting immensities of icebound rock, past other cities hanging in the murk like encrusted clumps of corroded regalia, some lit with lamps like dying embers, others looking grey-black and dead. Even as he relived those sights his mind reeled and he experienced a moment of vertigo when he thought of the limitless depths gaping directly below.
Holding on to the scope mounting he recalled the Construct’s last words to him before the tiership departed the Garden of the Machines:
‘Robert Horst, keep in mind that no matter how grotesque and frightening the sights you behold, local conditions often vary wildly from one tier to the next. Do not forget that you are travelling through the cadavers of expired universes, the remains of their remains, the sepulchral ashes of eternity. You are not required to involve yourself in the survivors’ tribulations, only to fulfill your task – find your way to the Godhead and speak with it on the matters I mentioned.’
Of course, Robert knew that the Construct was far more than merely the ruler of the Garden of the Machines, that it was an ancient mech-sentience and one-time ally of the Forerunners themselves. When the Construct spoke of ages past, it was with the authenticity of direct experience.
As he stopped to gaze through the scope again, he heard footsteps enter below then hasten up. A moment later he turned to greet Ku-Baar, former captain to Mirapesh, deceased tooth-father of the Redbard Clan. Ku-Baar was tall for a Gomedran and less bristly than those Robert had previously encountered during his years as a diplomat. These Gomedrans, however, derived from an earlier, less predatory branch of the species which had gone off to explore the upper levels of hyperspace. He also spoke in a much more cultured, expressive version of the Gomedran tongue and held himself with a composed demeanour.
‘Good day, Captain Ku-Baar.’
‘To you also, Seeker Horst, but sadly that is all the beneficence I can convey to you this day.’
Robert’s heart sank. ‘No contact, then.’
‘Once again the mystic Sunflow Oscillant has not deigned to reply to my communication.’
Robert nodded, weary of the waiting. When the Construct dispatched them on this mission, they were told they would have to go through a series of intermediaries. The first one was quite straightforward, an abstract-dealer living on Zilumer, a crumbling, honeycombed world on the 41st tier of hyperspace: all he required in exchange for the name and location of the next gatekeeper was a hefty sum, which Reski Emantes swiftly paid. But when they came to Malgovastek on Tier 65 in search of the Bargalil mystic Sunflow Oscillant, difficulties became apparent. They discovered that until recently the Bargalil had enjoyed the protection of the Redbarb Clan chief, Mirapesh, who, unfortunately, was fed into a bioshredder by one of his cousins. While blood relatives vied for the leadership, Mirapesh’s former officers sought new posts and the mystic sank out of sight, hiding in the warrenlike undertanks of the city. Enquiries had led Robert and the others to a scrimmer workshop part-owned by Ku-Baar, who agreed to help.
‘Perhaps we should venture down into the undertanks,’ Robert said. ‘I recall that you have previously advised against such action, Captain, but our time grows short. Would not a well-armed escort guarantee our safety down there?’
‘I fear not, Seeker,’ Ku-Baar said. ‘For topsiders, a mere show of strength provokes retaliation. Please, allow me to pursue other channels – I have not yet fully exhausted all possibilities. There are a few undertank disbursers I might be able to reach on the eye-way. Indeed, I shall send out notes today.’
‘I appreciate your efforts on our behalf and look forward to a swift and positive outcome.’
‘I am pleased to be of assistance. Tell me, Seeker, where is your charming daughter and that amusing servitor machine?’
‘I left them near the entrance to the Swaydrome – they expressed interest in exploring the stalls there.’
‘The ones along the top balcony?’ Ku-Baar said with an anxious tilt of the head.
‘That is correct.’
The Gomedran seemed relieved. ‘The Swaydrome is a risky place at the best of times but on swaydays, like today, they hold pit-tourneys for organics and machines and anyone who strays onto the lowest seating level automatically becomes a contender and can be challenged by anyone or indeed anything.’
‘I’m sure that my companions will take all necessary precautions,’ Horst said, pausing to peer through the scope at one of the Elavescent Hawsers for a moment. ‘Captain, I’ve a question which I hope you will not find insulting, and it is this – how often do cities fail and fall?’
‘Your question does indeed encompass a subject that many Malgovastins consider taboo, though not myself. To answer, I can say that we learn of such calamities about once every few years, either from rumours passed on by aerotraders or from the first-hand accounts of fleeing refugees, or – more rarely – from an actual visible sighting. I myself bore witness to one when I was a knife-cub. I remember standing out on one of the springwalks, and it was between the bells so it was late, and I was staring out into the ice-storm veils, watching them sweep and rush into dark vortices then uncoil again. Then something made me look up, maybe a sound or some change in the air, but when I did I saw a pale grey object no larger than an ishi bean drawing near, falling towards Malgovastek. The moments passed, the object grew steadily bigger and darker and I could tell that it would fall past our city rather than strike it. Larger it became, taking on regular details, the lines and corners of a city’s decks, blocks and towers. At one point it looked as if great red and gold banners were streaming out above it until I realised that the city was burning as it fell.
‘I remember watching it plunge past less than half a mile away, with the hawsers trailing in its smoky wake and the veils of snow swirling and eddying in the force of its passing. Ever since I have been aware at all times what our lives hang from.’ The Gomedran grinned. ‘I was an anxious cub who became an anxious adult. But a surfeit of time passes for those who tarry, Seeker Horst – I must return to my shop to make further eye-way enquiries after our wayward Bargalil.’
Bows were exchanged and after Ku-Baar left the observatory Robert waited a minute or two before retracing his own steps back to the Artisans Deck, closing the D-shaped hatch on the icy winds. Inside it was cold and dim. This level of Malgovastek consisted of six main floors and innumerable refurbished and retailored subsections, silos and chambers. Lighting was intermittent, bioglobes and battery strips mainly, and the air had a dank, fetid quality. A busy stairwell led up to a curved passage of entrances leading into the top balcony of the Swaydrome. There were a few locals about, mostly Keklir, a bipedal race with short, powerful limbs and faces dominated by a wide, tapering snout with two mouthlike openings. Other species included Gomedrans, a few Hodralog, and the occasional Pozu.
Pushing through heavy curtains, he entered the deafening cacophony of the Swaydrome, a full-throated roar that surged along in time to a heavy, metallic hammering coming from down on the drome floor. The upper balcony was a U-shape of seating carrels, then rows of ordinary benches and bucketchairs, then crowded shadows dotted with the lamps of gaming tables and the amber glows of the kiosks and stalls that lined the back wall. Out of curiosity Robert sidled through to the front of the balcony and peered down through the bowed layers of netting. A large, tracked mech was holding down a spindly droid with one articulated claw while pounding its armoured midsection with the other. Bright spotbeams picked out the two combatants while spectators chanted and howled. Just as the underdog’s plating gave way in a burst of sparks, Robert felt a touch on his shoulder, and a voice.
‘Daddy!’
It was Rosa, his daughter, or as good as. His wife had sent him a holosim projector of their dead daughter before he came to Darien as Earthsphere’s special ambassador. But when intrigue, deadly peril and chance encounters led him down into hyperspace, to a strange citadel called the Garden of the Machines, he could not have predicted what was to come. His daughter returned to life as a simulant based on the holosim’s data, and his own physical form rejuvenated by decades. But the Construct, the AI ruler of the Garden of the Machines, had also removed Harry, his AI implant, then given it free imperatives before releasing it into the tiernet, the omnipresent interstellar infoweb. Amazed and gratified by Rosa’s new existence, he had agreed to help the Construct establish contact with the Godhead, hence the necessity to meet the intermediary known as Sunflow Oscillant.
‘Where’s Reski Emantes?’ he said loudly, above the crowd noise. ‘I would have thought it would be interested.’
‘It says that if it wanted to see dumb objects hitting each other, it could go and watch an autoforge stamp out cutlery for half an hour.’
Robert nodded. ‘Understandable.’
By now they were away from the mass of spectators and gamblers, strolling along the line of stalls from which he caught an occasional appetising whiff. Then Rosa stopped him, hand on his arm.
‘You’re not exactly bursting with news so I guess that good old Ku-Baar had nothing to report.’
‘Same as before, my sweet, no sign of our mysterious mystic, although Ku-Baar insists that he still has other enquiries to make.’
‘Perhaps we should engage the services of someone else from Mirapesh’s coterie, assuming there’s any still alive,’ said the droid Reski Emantes, which floated into view with a netbag of packages slung beneath it. The droid resembled an inverted isosceles pyramid, narrow and elongated, less than a metre high with spheroid studs at each vertex and a small trigonal dome on its upper surface. ‘Or hire some fists and go searching for the mystic ourselves. He is a Bargalil, after all; a large, six-legged, barrel-chested sophont would be difficult to conceal, I should think.’
‘The undertanks are a risky territory,’ Robert said. ‘Ku-Baar promised that he would vigorously query his other contacts, so we give him another day and a half, after which we shall consider our options. In the meantime, how goes the shopping?’
‘Ah yes,’ said Reski Emantes. ‘I found an itinerant Pozu selling urmig eggs, and then chanced upon some tubers that may suit your Human palate…’
The mech was interrupted by another mass-roar from the arena followed by rhythmic shouting and stamping.
‘Another hapless bot reduced to scrap?’ said Robert.
‘Worse, it’s the Force Fate event,’ the droid said. ‘The drome organisers select a mech from the bottom level to go up against their resident armoured thug, probably some oversized, rock-chewing rustbucket with the hardmem substrate of a floor polisher. The unfortunate dupe should appear on the monitors…’
‘Yes, there it is,’ Rosa began, then paused and pointed at a wallscreen several metres away. ‘Reski, it’s you… I mean, at first it was another droid, for a second, then it switched to you!’
The wallscreen showed them standing near Reski Emantes, staring off to the side, while the surrounding crowd guffawed and hooted. Robert looked around to where the sneak-cam had to be but could see nothing in the dark texture of the ceiling.
‘You’re right, I’ve just rerun it!’ Reski Emantes said. ‘I’ve got to see the judges…’
But the eager onlookers were hemming them in as they started for the exit. Then the mob parted and two Keklir in red stewards’ uniforms rushed straight at Reski Emantes and tossed a shining loop over it.
‘I’m not finding this in the least bit amusing,’ the droid said. ‘Get your idio-idio-idio-idididididi…’
The loop sprang into a taut circle and a pulsing blue field flickered on, rendering Reski Emantes motionless. Before Robert could react, one of the Keklir produced an oval-snouted sidearm and made discouraging motions with it while his companion steered the immobilised droid over to the front of the balcony and pitched it over the side. The roar of the crowd was thunderous.
Robert and Rosa reached the balcony edge in time to see the helpless droid land on the arena floor and rebound, cushioned by the blue field. Another Keklir dashed over, affixed a small object to Reski Emantes’s plating, then hastily jumped into an open hatch at ringside, which slammed shut. Then, in a cupola-pulpit overlooking the arena, a ridged cowl began folding back into the wall, revealing a gleaming, golden insectoid creature with three mandibles, jutting limbs and three pairs of black faceted eyes along the length of its narrow head, which reminded Robert of a horse skull.
Then the golden master of ceremonies extended one spiny forelimb and pointed at the floating, unresponsive Reski. A harsh, amplified syllable cut through the crowd noise and a moment later the blue restraint field winked out, allowing the droid freedom of movement.
‘This is an outrage!’ it began. ‘How dare…’
The insectoid master of ceremonies drowned out Reski Emantes with its grating, booming speech for a brief moment before a much more familiar voice filled the arena: ‘… probably some oversized, rock-chewing rustbucket with the hardmem substrate of a floor-polisher…’
Spotbeams swept the crowded tiers and angry shouts broke out as translations filtered around the drome. As the fury stoked itself, the golden insectoid raised its gleaming forelimbs.
‘Words to the designated challenger – projectile and energy weapons are forbidden, also anti-cognitory fields are forbidden. The attached inhibitor enforces. What words from the designated challenger?’
For a moment there was a cessation of the clamour, and Robert hoped that Reski Emantes would opt for a response with a decent courtesy content. It was a forlorn hope.
‘Your louts broke my urmig eggs, you preposterous bug!…’
In its pulpit the master of ceremonies made a dipping motion with one limb. Directly below, an arched metal door slammed aside and a large, dark green spidery mech emerged. Its torso was a flattened spheroid roughly five metres across with four articulated, armoured legs spaced around the midline. Faceted sensors were dotted over its battered cowling, which bore innumerable dents and scratches, the legacy of past bouts.
Without warning, Reski Emantes suddenly launched itself at the big mech, ducking a parrying limb and striking the top of one of the legs where its armoured joint emerged from the plating. There was an immense clang and sparks flew as Reski rebounded from the impact and tumbled away. The large mech turned and sprang after it.
‘What kind of machine is that?’ Robert murmured.
‘A dock drone of some kind, Daddy,’ Rosa said unexpectedly. ‘A midrange assembler, possibly a positioner.’ She met his gaze. ‘I learned a lot from the Construct’s archives before we left.’
Interesting, Robert thought, his fond smile fading a little as he regarded the fight below.
Reski Emantes now seemed to be getting the worst of it. His narrow, pyramidal torso was bent and two of its corner studs were missing. The big mech had it pinned to the floor with a clamp effector while all around the crowd’s roaring approval came in waves.
‘Reski can’t survive this much longer,’ Robert said. ‘We should go down and protest…’
‘Don’t worry, Daddy. Just watch.’
A moment later Reski had somehow managed to slide his wide upper section a short way out from under the clamp. Before the mech could reposition its effector, Reski Emantes thrust upwards, levered itself free and shot away, looking somewhat wobbly in flight. Robert thought it was going to stay at a safe distance but instead it swooped in again… and was sideswiped by another of those armoured yet lithe articulated legs, whipping up to swat it like a fly.
But instead of spinning away, Reski was clinging to the armoured limb’s lower section with thin, cable extensors. The big mech tried to shake it off but Reski doggedly held on and made its way up to the segmented shoulder junction. Robert could just see Reski wrapping its cable extensors tightly around the top of the articulated leg. The droid gave a sharp tug, then another, and the leg came away.
The big machine quickly shifted one leg forward to compensate but Reski had already hopped to the next shoulder junction. A moment later the second leg was wrenched off, and the mech crashed to the floor. With contemptuous ease, Reski Emantes dodged the two remaining limbs as it darted in to finish the job. The Swaydrome crowd stared in stunned silence as the last heavy armoured leg landed on the big mech’s hull with a clang.
‘Calculator,’ the droid Reski Emantes said to its opponent.
In its cupola-pulpit, the golden insectoid sapient raised one angular limb and pointed its spiny tip at the Construct droid.
‘Force-Fate bout… to the challenger!’ And at once the inhibitor device detached from Reski’s cowling and fell to the arena floor.
This provoked a mass chorus of hisses, clacking, hooting and less than complimentary (not to say improbable) observations as to Reski Emantes’s origins, as well as surreal suggestions on what to do with a variety of power tools.
‘Thank you, thank you, dearest of all my fans,’ Reski said as it slowly rose towards the top balcony. ‘Your incoherent, hate-filled grunts say more than real words ever could.’ Below, attendants were dragging off pieces of the dismembered mech.
Robert and Rosa stood back as the Construct droid floated up and over the balcony netting. The crowd of onlookers and patrons offered only glowering, unfriendly looks as they moved away, so Robert decided that a burst of applause might be unwise.
‘You don’t look too bad,’ said Rosa.
Up close, Robert could see the damage in detail, a disconcerting collection of dents, scuffs, gouges and cracks, as well as the bend two-thirds of the way down its tapered carapace. All four corner studs were missing, too.
‘You look terrible,’ said Robert.
‘Looks can be deceiving, Robert Horst,’ the droid said. ‘Some repairs are already under way and will accelerate once my internal builders replace the micromolbots I used to deal with that cretin’s legs.’
Robert stared. ‘Was that… cheating?’
‘You heard the list of forbidden tactics,’ Reski Emantes said. ‘Micromolecular toolbots weren’t mentioned.’
‘It may be advisable to return to the ship,’ Rosa said. ‘We still don’t know why the challenger image switched from that other droid to you.’
‘It may be nothing more than picking on the stranger,’ the droid said. ‘But before we go, I want to buy some more urmig eggs…’
Just then, Robert felt a tap on his elbow and turned to see the Gomedran, Ku-Baar, standing there.
‘Captain Ku-Baar – a pleasant surprise meeting you here. Did you happen to see the last bout?’
‘Indeed I did, Seeker Horst.’ The Gomedran gave a polite tilt of the head towards the Construct droid. ‘Congratulations on your victory, Seeker Reski, a notable event that I suspect may be connected to the reason for my presence here.’
‘Which is?’ Robert said, feeling a prickle of anticipation.
‘A short while ago, I was contacted by the mystic Sunflow Oscillant, directly, by voiceline.’ The Gomedran regarded their expectant faces. ‘He has agreed to meet with you.’
Robert and Rosa exchanged smiles.
‘When and where, Captain?’ Robert said.
‘Tomorrow, at the outset of the Bright Bell, at your vessel. He said that all of you must await him on the bridge, else your quest will be at an end.’