WALKING JOHN AND BIRD, by Neal Asher

I grace Bird with gender yet I still do not know if she is a living creature or a machine. She has the disquieting beauty of something as perfectly functional as a honed blade, her body-shape that of an Arctic tern fashioned, or grown, of mirror-bright metal as lacking in joints as mercury. Her head is an elongated teardrop and her beak, if such it could be called, never opens. In my darker moments I entertain the notion that should it open the sound to issue forth will be my death knell. But I wax too lyrical. Killing is a function she performs so very well.

When she is visible people mistakenly believe Bird has the fragility of her namesakes. The experts who have probed and tested her have learnt to their consternation she is impervious to any scan, any radiation. Neutrons bounce off her surface as readily as bullets. The latter I discovered long ago, as did some people who had wanted to learn her secrets and who had been prepared to use any means. Past now, and those people dead. They had threatened my life and paid the penalty. But the mystery remained.

I remember the name of the world, which is unusual, for I am a traveller and the names of worlds usually slip by me as readily as the names of the people I meet. It is a dark place where green grass and oak trees grow, and had recently been opened for colonization after terraforming. What mostly distinguishes it in my recollection is a cracked crystal ball of a moon hurtling across the sky like a bubble across molten glass, and a conversation:

“Mystery! Hah!” The old man had paused then and squinted speculatively up at Bird. After a moment he scratched his grey beard and continued, “Yes, I suppose you’re right. It’s just I can’t take you seriously. I’ve spent a century and a half trying to resolve some…mysteries, and I’m no closer. Your protest strikes me as feeble.”

“You do not walk with death at your shoulder,” I told him.

The old man bent down with the hose he was holding and began to vacuum dust out of the excavation.

“Don’t be so conceited. We all do.”

“It does not have the same immediacy,” I told him, feeling rather foolish. He shrugged and continued vacuuming for a while before saying anything more.

“There was one who answered questions for me that none of Earth’s AIs could answer.”

“Yes…”

“Dragon. Speak to Dragon. But be careful. The answer sometimes given is like what’s hovering at your shoulder.”

Next I stood before a runcible, the device invented in conjunction with an AI by Iversus Skaidon that made instantaneous travel a reality. Thus I was quince: a mitter traveller. And I was on my way to see a creature reputedly older than human history and apparently the size of a mountain. Bird was with me of course, a few metres above my head, and when I stepped between those twin bull’s horns into the space-twisting cusp, she followed, but by her own methods. I know not how.

Space and time ceased to exist for…yet there was no time so it could not have been for an instant too subliminal to register. One world blinked out and another blinked into existence. I found myself gazing across a landscape of pink and black rock below a metallic red sky. This was Aster Colora; the fabled world of Dragon. I tasted salt in the air and the taint of scrap yards. Bird was with me.

* * * *

The only city on Aster Colora was called Cartis. I rented an AGC at the runcible facility and headed that way, Bird fading into invisibility at my behest. It is a one-sided communication we have with Bird simply reacting to my emotions. How well I know that she reacts to my fear. I could still see her hovering like a holographic icon, but by her translucence I knew she was invisible to others.

Once in the AGC I put its computer on line and instructed it to take me to a decent hotel. It informed me that there was only one, so I told it to take me there. It lifted from the ground with a slight rumbling sound. I had noticed that much of the equipment round the runcible facility was somewhat decrepit, for this was how things get so far from Earth. The car accelerated with a lurch once in the air, and specks of pink snow slid from its frictionless screen. I contemplated then what I must do.

I had to speak to Dragon, which for most people is an uncomplicated affair, for all they had to do was address Dragon’s comunit through one of the local AIs. I, on the other hand, did not want anyone to know I was here, and knew that as soon as my identity was registered on the net there would be certain people who would pick it up, people I had no wish to speak to. The price of fame.

* * * *

The Metrotel was not such a bad place. I was soon ensconced in a comfortable room on the top floor ordering myself a meal and talking to hotel’s AI.

“I want a complete lock on my identity while I am here. I do not want any visitors.”

“Lock enabled,” a woman’s voice told me. “But there may have been information leakage when you were booking in. Should anyone visit I will deny that you are present.”

“Thank you. Now, I’m hungry. Do you have a menu?”

“Yes, John. I would recommend the Scylla crab with croquette potatoes and buttered hinch-carrots…”

The menu was running down the screen as she spoke and I was surprised at some of the things being shown there. I made my selection: “Steak, chips and peas and a couple of litres of IPA.”

It was ersatz Earth, but I was mature enough to admit I could not tell the difference. It was also expensive, but what the hell, you only live once…

* * * *

Two days of work proved to me there was no way round getting my identity registered if I wanted to talk to Dragon. I considered going to the creature in person, but the area all around was heavily monitored to prevent joy riders testing the two kilometre radius. Dragon, it seemed, had made a rule that no machinery bigger than a man was to get closer than two kilometres. I was told that there was ring of smashed AGCs and AG scooters at that limit. This was Dragon’s world and Cartis only had colony status. It was with reluctance that I registered as a petitioner and awaited my slot. The expected call was not long in coming.

“I can no longer deny your presence here,” the hotel AI informed me. “There is a Dawn Keltree here to see you.”

“Tell her I am not seeing anyone.”

I sat back in my chair and returned my concentration to the screen. The lecture was being given by a Professor Darson.

“The creature we know as Dragon consists of four conjoined spheres each a kilometre across. The primary analysis of Dragon material brought the conclusion that it is silicon based, but there are anomalies—”

I clicked back to another lecture by the same man, but retained the pictures of Dragon. There it was: the spheres, here wreathed in cloud, then a separate cut-out screen showing pseudopodia, like giant one-eyed cobras, junking an AGC that had crossed the boundary. A subscript quickly outlined the story of students getting through security for a prank. Their bodies were reportedly still in the AGC—no one could be bothered to retrieve them since that would have to have been done manually. Darson droned on.

“—was not the name given but the name claimed. So why did it name itself after a creature of myth? Gordon has it that—”

“Sorry to interrupt again. Ms Keltree has left a message. Do you wish to view it?”

“Go on then. This is getting boring. Darson comes out with nothing but speculation.”

Ms Keltree was very pretty, in an overly athletic way, and very anxious.

“This is Dawn Keltree of The Cartis Observer. Now…I know you are pursued by the press wherever you go, but perhaps we can be of some assistance to you…I see that you have registered as a petitioner. Well…we have information about Dragon in our files you won’t find on the standard net. Interested? If you are, just get the hotel AI to contact me. I’ll be right round.”

I chuckled at her nerve. She was obviously new to the game and in hot pursuit of her big break. I then considered taking her up on her offer. What had I got to lose? I could not prevent them putting out some story about me just as I could not prevent it being known I was here. What I could do was influence the story in some way and make some money out of it.

“AI, put me through to Ms Keltree if you can.”

Instantly her face flickered back onto the screen.

“The McCaffrey at seven o’clock. You’re buying.”

Her face became one big grin, but before she could reply I turned off the screen with the manual control. Let her say it all tonight. I would listen, answer questions, and charge a suitable fee.

* * * *

The McCaffrey is one of those very expensive places that specialize in personal service and handmade foods. As I stepped through the door I noted one or two diners look at me with a deep fascination then pretend nonchalance as they once again concentrated on their food. Obviously word had got around. Ms Keltree rose from her seat to greet me and I discovered something about her that her screen image had not shown: she was very tall.

“I am glad you could spare the time,” she said as she shook my hand.

“My time is at a premium.”

“Of course…a percentage?”

She seemed at a loss. I sat down.

“A flat payment of one hundred solars. Is that agreeable?”

I picked up the menu and opened it. For a moment I thought it was real paper, but the set meals scrolled up it as I ran my finger up the side. I looked up and waited for her to take her seat. Perhaps my mercenary attitude had confused her…no, I realised she must be on a direct link with her employers as she touched her fingertips below her ears and frowned.

“Yes, that is acceptable.” She sat down.

I reached out and touched the privacy touchplate at the centre of the table and the sounds of conversation died around us.

“You may begin,” I said, interlacing my fingers before me.

She looked at me for a long moment.

“Is Bird here with you?”

I glanced up to my left to where Bird held station below the crystal lights.

“Bird is always with me.”

She looked as well and Bird slid into visible solidity then out of it again. Ms Keltree stared in fascination then turned back to me when Bird was gone.

“Are you any closer to knowing what it is?”

“I am here to speak to Dragon about her…”

I told her then about the archaeologist and about my recent travels, of the bird religion of the Knastil, the ancient writings of Baraluck, how none of these had yielded the information I sought. We ordered a meal of baked Scylla crabs and sugar bread and drank a couple of bottles of Chianti. I found I enjoyed speaking to her, even if much of what I said had been practised on other worlds and on others just like her. Near the end of the meal she came to the questions to which I knew no answer.

“You say you have been travelling with Bird for fifty years, yet I have found references to ‘Walking John and Bird’ from as long ago as three centuries Solstan.”

“Yes, I’ve heard that before, but I can assure you it has only been fifty years. I can only ascribe those legends to hearsay.”

“Could it be that Bird travelled with someone else?”

The thought had never occurred to me. I sat back and sipped my wine.

“That might be worth looking into,” I said, grudgingly.

She nodded then looked aside as a floating vendor offered her an after-dinner selection. She took mint chocolates. I took a cigar because I was feeling pompous.

“Another aspect of your relationship I am curious about is the empathy…or telepathy. Have you ever consulted with a telepath?”

“Sorry?”

“Bird reacts to your emotions. There is some kind of mental link. I would have thought a good telepath might be able to learn something from this.”

I shook my head. She was walking into fantasy land now.

“I am sure a good telepath would be most useful, if there was such a thing.”

“There is John Tennyson of Earth and Horace Blegg.”

“Horace Blegg is a legend and I have never heard of this Tennyson.”

She nodded solemnly.

“Yes, legends…Until this morning I would have said the same about you.”

I returned to my Hotel in a bemused mood and it was only as I entered the lobby that I noticed the man who had been following me. He slid into the shadows when I turned towards him though, and was soon gone. I forgot about him.

* * * *

Dragon refused to speak to me in any sensible manner. I spent a frustrating morning putting questions through my comlink and getting Delphic and sometimes silly replies.

“I am known as Walking John, inevitable really, as I am a traveller and my real name is John Walker. With me is the entity known simply as Bird. Do you know anything of this entity?”

“Birds have a wonderful sense of direction.”

A humourless statement of fact.

“You are reputedly aware of much that occurs in the human world. You must have known of my arrival here. I was directed here by the archaeologist Sendel Dyne who once asked you questions no AI could answer. He said you might have answers for me. Please, what do you know of Bird?”

“Digging in the dust for facts about dust.”

And so, and thus. It was almost as if I were hooked up to random sentence generator that picked up on a single fact in a spoken sentence and generated another sentence from it. I received no answers from Dragon. The frustration drove me to a bottle of whisky at midday and I was feeling somewhat lugubrious when I received Ms Keltree’s second call. She was not slow in getting to the point.

“We have information on the location of Horace Blegg.”

“That is very interesting,” I said with as much lack of interest as I could muster. I was, of course, hooked. “How did you come by this information?”

“It was recently uncovered by one of our permanent search programmes.”

“How recently?”

She paused significantly before replying. “Last night.”

The long arm of coincidence. Yeah.

“May I come and discuss this with you? We have an offer we would like to make.”

“Let’s make it the McCaffrey at seven. I am rather busy at present.”

“Okay, see you there.”

I had lied of course. I had absolutely nothing to do. I had used up my com time with Dragon and was pissed, in both senses of the word. What I really wanted was not to appear to be too eager, and to have time to sober up.

* * * *

It took an hour with two capsules and a pint of orange juice to sober me up and after that I started wandering around my apartment trying to come to a decision about what I would do next. Often I stopped and stared at Bird in the hope that inspiration would come from that source. A foolish hope, for it never had. For me, most of the time, Bird was merely present.

Another fifty minutes dragged past while I showered and changed in readiness for my jaunt to the McCaffrey. When I eventually left it was with a degree of eagerness. Things were happening, I felt. I would soon be learning something. It never occurred to me then that I might learn things I did not want to know.

Ms Keltree was not there before me this time so I took a table and ordered a carafe of blue wine. The drink, though potent, did little for me, following as it did on the two Soberups I’d taken. Ms Keltree turned up when I was on my second glass and beginning to feel agitated.

“I’m sorry, so sorry to keep you waiting,” she said, and seated herself with artless flirtation in her tight and revealing clothing in an attempt to defuse any anger I might feel. My anger was dissipated, not because of any sexual attraction I felt, but because I found the naivety of her actions appealing. We ordered the special of the day, which was a selection of Asiatic curries, and she immediately came across with the sell.

“As I told you we know where Horace Blegg is presently located,” she told me as she thrust her cleavage in my general direction.

“And this you consider to be of interest to me?”

“Oh yes.”

“If I recollect aright the idea of a telepath being able to tell me something new about Bird came from you. As it happens I still do not believe such a creature exists.”

“He exists and I feel certain it would be to your advantage to meet him.”

“Yes, but how is it to your advantage?”

She sat back then, crossed her legs in a different direction, and shook her hair about her shoulders. I nearly burst out laughing.

“In exchange for the location of Horace Blegg we would like all rights to the story and to have a reporter with you at the moment of the encounter.”

“You, presumably?”

She smiled. “Yes, me.”

The meal arrived at that suitable juncture and we ate in silence for a short time.

“This could of course just be a ploy to get a reporter with me for a long period of time. I would have to check the validity of your information before agreeing.”

She gave me dumb blond expression of surprise number one. I was beginning to get irritated by her attitude, and by the acid stomach I’d acquired from my earlier boozing.

“I also have not finished my researches here. I was considering taking on more com time with Dragon. I find its evasiveness intriguing.”

All of a sudden Ms Keltree snapped out of her pretend daze, perhaps at the realisation that the sex slanted ploy might not work.

“Would you agree to a contract…on the validation of our information?”

“I don’t know that your information would be worth my trouble. Runcible jaunts are not so cheap.”

“We are prepared to offer a thousand solars block payment to assist things along. This way nobody loses. We get a story, and if you do not get information on Bird you will at least have the money for much more com time with Dragon when you return.”

This was more like it. My digestion improved measurably.

“Okay, I presume this conversation is being recorded.”

“Under seal.”

“Then I agree. When do we go, and where to we go?”

Ms Keltree had difficulty suppressing her smug look of victory and I turned away to allow her a moment to get herself under control. My gaze strayed to a nearby table where a man sat alone with an untouched meal on a plate before him. He was staring at me intently. I let my slide over him and brought my attention back Ms Keltree. I knew that man, but I could not remember where from.

“If it is agreeable to you we will leave early tomorrow morning. If I may I will join you at your roofport and we’ll take an AGC to the Runcible at about eight. Is that alright?”

“Fine,” I said, still distracted by the familiar face. Ms Keltree then told me where we were going and all my attention returned to her. There, that place, full circle.

We talked a while longer and it was with a kind of inevitability I felt that we ended up in my hotel room for another drink or two. When Ms Keltree asked me if I would like to have sex with her I said ‘yes’ immediately, my decision having been made on an unconscious level sometime before, almost like it wasn’t my decision at all.

* * * *

Buying time on my hotel AI I confirmed that Horace Blegg had indeed been reported by the runcible AI of Thurvis to be present on that world. There was no other information about him; why he was there, how long he would be there, and where exactly on that world he was. The time when this information became available and the place it became available from put breaking strain on the long arm of coincidence.

The morning air was chill and specks of reddish snow blew here and there and melted on the skin to form droplets like blood. My bare arm already appeared to have been worked over with needles. Dawn swore about the red specks evenly speckling her skin-tight white trousers.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Bloody snow!” she said, which seemed apposite. She then went on to explain that this colouring was caused by a mixture of dust and iron salts blown up into the air and mixed with the high-peroxide water. The result was similar to being spattered with blood. The stuff turned brown as it dried out.

The AGC was in better condition than the one I arrived in and turned out to belong to the Cartis Observer. Once we were seated inside the vehicle and it was airborne Dawn removed a small cleaning device and ran it over her trousers. That such a device was available in the AGC showed this snow was common.

At the runcible station there was no wait. We went directly to this open air runcible and after keying and palming to confirm our destination we stepped through one after the other into the huge lobby at Thurvis and a chaos of crowds.

“We just made it,” Dawn told me as we fought our way to the exit. She pointed to the announcement board. The runcible had gone into one way operation to prevent dangerous overcrowding. People could now only leave Thurvis, they could not arrive. All over the runcible network people bound for Thurvis would be stepping through the Skaidon cusp to be stored in no-space, basically ceasing to exist, for a while.

“I wonder what all this is about?” I asked.

“Horace Blegg,” she told me, and only then did I notice the amount of recording equipment scattered throughout the lobby. Like a swarm of huge silver bees holocorders hovered in the air. I noted with interest how some of them became confused when Bird, though not visible in the human spectrum, floated past or through them. On the floor scent recorders and all manner of analysers scuttled about on metal insect legs, or squealed about on fat little tyres. Hover luggage weaved in and out of this crowd like pets seeking owners, which was much the case, so to speak.

“’Lo Dawn!”

“Nice to see you Dawn!”

“Ms Keltree!”

Dawn nodded and smiled at fellow professionals, but I could see she looked very worried. Perhaps she was thinking it very unlikely she would be able to get to see Horace Blegg. I was not so sure there would be a problem. Once we were free of the lobby and out in the open where the crowds were being thinned by the AG taxis, she called up the local AI on a console inset into a rock in the shade of a huge oak tree.

“Could you give me the present location of Horace Blegg?”

“Thurvis.”

“Could you be more specific?”

“No.”

I took hold of her arm.

“There are people I can try,” she said. “I have contacts.”

“Yes,” I said, “but first we have somewhere to go. Call up a taxi.”

The taxi took a while to arrive as obviously the local service was under some pressure transporting the press of many worlds to the capital city of this one. When I told it where I wanted to go I am sure I evinced surprise from the on board computer. It took us anyway.

Thurvis: recently opened for colonization after terraforming, but only certain areas. It was a place of immense forests and heaths. It was a park world. But there were also a few places kept deliberately bare of life, places where the ancient remains of a civilization already fallen into ruin when humans had not yet decided which direction to take: back into the sea or out onto the plains of Africa. The AGC landed us in the same place I had landed only a few weeks before. As I climbed out I could hear the vacuum cleaner running in the excavation. The old man was there, carefully uncovering the shape of a wall in the earth. He looked up as we approached.

“Horace Blegg I presume,” I said.

He grinned wickedly.

* * * *

“I sent you to Dragon because Dragon will have the answers.”

I nodded, sipped at the glass of whisky he had provided, and slowly studied the interior of his tent. Dawn, sitting on a cerametal box marked ‘Artefact, Do Not Transmit’ was in her idea of heaven now she was over the initial shock. Around her, in the air and on the ground, was a formidable array of recording equipment. She was even writing in a paper pad.

“Dragon was uncooperative,” I told him.

“You should not have used the com. You should have walked directly to Dragon.”

I nodded with cool assurance as if I had considered this. In reality, after learning about the two-kilometre line Dragon had drawn around itself, I hadn’t. Blegg went on.

“I feel Dragon fears Bird. I would like to know why.”

“So would I, if that is the case, but I am here now and I would like to know what you can tell me, and what your interest is.”

Blegg looked at me with eyes like lead shot and I felt certain that behind those eyes was a millstone of a mind that ground very fine indeed. Something about this man exhilarated me, frightened me.

“First, my interest: I am agent Prime Cause and I work for Earth Central. Anything that might affect the stability of the human civilization is of interest to me. Bird is an unknown with unknown capabilities. As to what I know…I can tell you there is a constant subspace link between you and Bird that has a pseudo-physical integrity. It is almost matter yet it lies in the realm of the psyche.”

“What might that mean?”

“It probably means that Bird is part of you, an extension of you, but I know little beyond that without a probe.”

I felt the danger then, but my need to know was stronger.

“Probe me then.”

“It could kill you.”

“You also,” I looked over my shoulder to where Bird, now visible, turned slowly in the air like a string hung ornament. As I turned back to Blegg he suddenly seemed to be miles away from me. Abruptly I felt an abyss opening round me, then Blegg was before me again.

“First, this.”

He held in his hand a small pistol that seemed made of the most delicate chalky shell and weighed almost nothing.

“Why? What do I need this for?”

“It is there for need. You will know.”

I looked at the pistol in my hand. It was like a toy, and it faded out of existence as I looked at it. I knew then I was in some kind of dream space. I looked round at Dawn and she looked blank, mindless.

“Now,” said Blegg, and the abyss filled with fire. I might have screamed then, I do not know if it was me or Blegg. I heard the vicious drone of Bird as I had once heard it before. I think I warned him, for Blegg went flat as a picture, turned into a line, and disappeared a microsecond before Bird passed through where he had been.

* * * *

“Okay, you’re okay now.”

Dawn was holding my head against her breast and rocking me. I cannot remember what happened between this moment and the disappearance of Blegg. I breathed easy and pulled my head away. Her shirt was soaked with blood. I checked my face and head for wounds.

“Your nose bled, and you were crying blood too.”

A little unsteadily I reached for Blegg’s bottle of whisky and not bothering with a glass I drained a fair bit of it.

“Let’s get back to Dragon territory. You got enough for a story?”

“More than. Too much.”

I stood up, capped Blegg’s bottle, and peered at something he had been cleaning on a portable table. It looked like a small ceramic gun, and that reminded me of the gun he had given me, or not given me. I felt a pressure, light as a fly, at the centre of the palm of my hand. I did not believe it, and anyway, runcible proscription never let weapons through. I turned away, leaving the bottle for him, for I suspected he would be back for it. It was good whisky.

* * * *

The runcible facility had cleared of crowds by the time we reached it—we learnt to our surprise we had been gone for eleven solstan hours—though we got some strange looks from a few individuals as we walked across the lobby. I had blood crusted on my face and Dawn, what with my blood and her spattering from the red snow of Aster Colora, looked as if she had been taking a bath in it. Before heading for the runcible we stopped and enquired at a console.

“Could you tell me the present location of Horace Blegg?” I asked.

“Who’s asking?” The question shot back immediately, and I knew I was talking directly to the Runcible AI and not one of its subminds.

“John Walker.”

“Blegg is quite safe and will be in contact with you again after you return to Aster Colora.”

Fine.

We headed for the runcible.

* * * *

Stepping from the cool outdoor runcible on Aster Colora I felt exhaustion come down on me like a lead sheet. Looking to Dawn I saw that she felt much the same. We slouched to the only AGC in the area and with a feeling of relief climbed inside.

“I want a shower, some brandy, and a sleep,” she said.

I nodded and after pushing in my credit card I spoke into the AGC’s computer, “AGC, take us to the metrotel.” Obligingly it lifted into the air. I lay back and closed my eyes.

“What happened when Blegg probed you? Why did Bird attack him?”

“It decided he was attacking me in some way.”

“And always reacts so to a threat to you?”

“Always.”

I drifted for a moment until she brought me back with another question.

“What about indirect threats?”

“I don’t know. Nothing, I think. Bird only direct threats to my life. There has only been one other occasion.”

“Yes, I know about that. Someone kidnapped you and tried to get information from you about Bird.”

“They used drugs and VR first and when that did not work they tried pain. That is when Bird reacted. She killed three men and two women in about a second. Two of them were cyborgs. They were all Separatists.”

There was a long silence then before Dawn spoke again. I had almost drifted off to sleep.

“This AGC isn’t taking us to Cartis.”

Suddenly I was very awake. In that instant two facts became very clear to me. The man in the McCaffrey was one of the Separatists who had not been present when his fellows had decided to use torture. And I had been with Bird for more than the fifty years I had supposed and more than the three centuries Dawn Keltree had suggested.

* * * *

The AGC fled on the red sunrise of another day, not that the sun could be seen. Dawn tried all her communications equipment to no avail. I tried the one in my wristwatch and only got static. The solstan time-setting broadcast by the runcible AI had also been interrupted. I looked behind the AGC and Bird was there as solid as a heat-seeking missile.

“Try the panel. Try manual control.” Dawn sounded like she was playing a role in some VR drama. I studied her for a moment but she would not meet my gaze and I could not plumb why something seemed off about her. I next carefully pulled at the fastenings to the control panel and found them locked solid. I took hold of the joystick and found it also was locked in place.

“Oh for fucksake!”

Dawn smashed her nigh indestructible holocorder against the panel and tried to pull open the casing from the split she had made. A small red lightning flung her back in her seat and filled the inside of the AGC with the smell of burning hair.

“You alright?”

She nodded, but she was shaking badly, as if her VR role had just turned real.

“That wasn’t from the console,” she said.

“I know,” I said. I recognised the red lightning from somewhere. Where? Oh yes, place now called Tantalus III, static discharge projected through subspace, the weapon that brought an empire down. I was cold, emotionless, until I realised that the empire I had been thinking about had not been a human empire, had not in fact been of any race I should have known…I got the horrors then.

The AGC came into land as Dawn recovered her composure and made sure all her recording devices were operating. We landed in conditions of fine sleet and would have stayed in the AGC if the door had not opened and a threatening flicker of red fire expanded into existence between us. Dawn got out first with her recording devices moving out ahead of her like faithful sheep dogs. As I stepped out there was a sound like a metal wall being hit with a hammer and all her devices ceased to function. The holocorder fell out of the air.

“What the hell is this?” she asked, and almost seemed as if she wasn’t asking me.

“Separatists I think.”

“But where?” Back in her VR role.

I shrugged. There was no one about. We moved out into the wasteland as the AGC lifted into the air behind us and headed back to Cartis. Was that it then? We weren’t going back? They would be more prepared this time. Something would happen. Something. The ground shook then and fifty metres ahead of us something broke through it and rose into the air. I recognised the giant cobra shape immediately, as did Dawn.

“Dragon, then,” I said.

It rose ten metres into the air, another rose beside it, then another on the other side. Trinocular vision? Three eyes like blue crystal observed us from where a cobra mouths should have been. I took a step forward, then hesitated. There was something else. Had it risen to the surface also? Lying between us and these fleshy extrusions of Dragon—they reached for many kilometres under the ground so the tapes told me—lay something else, a black shape, almost like a coffin, only streamlined and somehow sinister.

“What is that?” she asked, playing her part.

I had no reply for her. The shape rose into the air, something rippled across its surface and a circle of ground underneath it roared and boiled and turned molten. I stepped back and Bird was in front of me in an instant, hanging in a shimmering curtain that bowed under the pressure of some force radiating from the black object. A terrible screaming filled the air. Dawn clapped her hands over her ears and fell to the ground. I felt my eardrums burst and something running down my neck. The pain did not hit me until the shimmering curtain broke and Bird and the black object met with a thunderclap, then I too fell to the ground and clasped my hands over my bleeding ears.

The storm did not abate, it moved away. The ground shook and the sky filled with flashes of light I quickly averted my eyes from. Even then the vision out of my right eye seemed charred. This was the kind of light that would do to a retina what that sound had done to my eardrums. Dawn was up onto her knees next to me. She said something, but all I got was a dull mumbling. I shook my head and wished I had not. The lights in the distance dimmed a little and I dared a quick glimpse. A flicker of something there, like a gull picked out by sunlight against tearing cloud, and its shadow, black. So much nearer the three cobra heads were watching, perhaps immune to the light that had burnt the vision of my right eye. I gestured to Dawn and we both turned away from the battle and those distant dangerous lights, right towards a closer danger.

Fifty years ago the Separatists had tried for the technology Bird represented. Two of them had been cyborgs, illegal cyborgs, because they were part man and part proscribed weaponry. One of them had been much like this one no hovering ahead of us. He was half a man, the torso, perched on a translucent sphere inside which, like metalled guts, hung an array of devices. Segmented tentacles projected from where his arms should have been, three from each shoulder, and each ending in a different tool or weapon. Behind and curved round his distended and surgery-scarred head was a metal box like a bloated horse shoe. From this metal struts speared down through his back into the sphere. He was floating about a metre off the ground. And he had come for me. I glanced at Dawn and saw that she was saying something to the cyborg. She seemed to be remonstrating with him, which struck me as decidedly odd. When she stepped to one side to retrieve her holocorder, arc light flared between then, and the cyborg blew her spine and part of her ribcage out of her back.

I think Blegg had expected something like this, or had he just assumed I would try to kill my erstwhile captor? The pressure against the palm of my hand was still the same as I lifted that hand, pointed the gun at the cyborg and pulled back on a trigger I thought I might break if I was not careful. The weapon was something from Earth Central. It is one of the reasons Separatists cannot be tolerated because the fragmentation of human civilization greatly increases the possibility of war and war, with the weapons now available, is unthinkable. The cyborg shot back into the sky with the air seeming to distort around him, then he exploded like a balloon filled with hydrogen. I heard the clang and rattle of a few pieces of metal hitting the ground and was turning away before the fragments of burning flesh did so. Dragon: answers.

The storm had ceased moments after I killed the cyborg. The black thing must have been controlled by one of the many battle programmes in his enlarged skull. I stepped over what was left of Dawn Keltree and walked towards the three cobra heads.

“Dragon!” As one the three heads turned towards me I demanded, “I want answers from you!”

Even as I said it a part of me looked on with a cold assurance; how human, how emotional. The three heads curved over me; three great question marks of flesh.

“Answers?” came the distant hiss of a voice. Just then Bird came in from the side, a silver flash, and three giant severed heads thudded to the ground like grain sacks. The hiss became a scream as the three pseudopodia retreated into the ground spattering all around the milky fluid that was Dragon’s blood. Those raw ends broke the surface once, twice, giving me an indication of the direction I must go. I followed, not stopping to wonder if I was meant to. Bird was back at my shoulder, my hawk, and we hunted.

A wilderness of broken rock surrounded me as I followed disturbed earth and occasional pools of Dragon blood. As I walked I admitted to myself that yes answers were important, but that the satisfaction of violence had its place. I looked at the weapon I held and it did not fade from my hand this time. I opened my hand and it stayed affixed to my palm even when I turned it to the ground. This was a weapon that could hurt Dragon, as was Bird, and I wanted to cause hurt. I did not know the extent of Dragon’s involvement with the cyborg. What kind of deal had there been? Was Dragon only observing in its coldly alien way? In the end this did not matter to me. All I knew was that Dragon had allowed this. This was Dragon’s world, even if it was only alien indifference it could be blamed for…I swore as I walked. Whatever. A girl I had quite liked lay in the dirt with her back blown out.

Four conjoined spheres rose over the horizon like a queue of moons, misty at first then clearing. I trudged on, drawing closer, and closer still, then, in a state of near delirious exhaustion I stood peering into the shadow and darkness under the first of the spheres.

“You want answers?” hissed the darkness.

“Not particularly,” I said. I pointed the gun into that darkness and pulled the trigger. The gun collapsed in my hand like burnt paper.

“Here are answers.”

Even Bird did not move fast enough. A great saliva drooling head shot out of the undershadows, two sapphire eyes fixed on me. The jaws closed on me just as Bird shot towards the head. I hit the ground and saw the head, severed away, holding the legs and greater part of a human torso in its jaws. I died before I realised they were mine.

* * * *

I sat on a flat rock in the Dragon shadows and felt regret for my actions. Dragon, another of whose heads was now drawing away, had been an impartial observer and had just related the full story. The cyborg had come by ship so no one was to blame for his actions but himself and the agent who had informed him of my presence on this world, and she lay dead, killed by an employer who had not known who she was. Blegg had been right about some things and wrong about others. He had warned me at the first that Dragon’s answer might be death. It was, and though I did not realise it, it was the answer I had then been seeking. So much has been restored.

Blegg believed Bird was an extension of me. Here he was wrong. I am an extension of Bird, a tool she uses, a program she is allowing to run, only slightly altered for the study of this particular civilization. And there have been many others. So why does Bird protect me? She protects me because of the work involved in restoring me. There is no altruism or loyalty involved, she has no feeling for me beyond that one might feel for a useful and well-worn pen knife.

On this restoration, as on every other one, the memories she had selectively erased because their sheer extent sometimes impaired my function, were returned to me from the master copy. Not fifty years, not three hundred years, and not the millennia I had momentarily glimpsed, and not just one death. These last few centuries with Blegg have been entertaining as he has, time and time again, led me into situations whereby he might learn something about me, about Bird. Perhaps someday he will know.

I now have little choice but to forget.