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Colver whistled. ‘I don’t think that’s standard issue aboard Jerusalem? he said.
‘If anyone is still having problems,’ D’nissan said, ‘it seems Asselis Mika has the tool for the job.’
Laughter greeted this, just before the gravplates went off.
‘It’s fighting back,’ said Susan James.
Kilnsman Plaqueast watched the blimps departing from Overcity on an aerial search of the Sand Towers, their powerful searchlights stabbing down into shadowy canyons as they searched for the ship many had seen fly over Golgoth. He muttered and swore to himself about the high-and-mighty and their damned equivocal orders. ‘Erect barricades all around the city, and detain anyone suspicious, as somebody very dangerous and maybe possessing unknown technology might be trying to get in.’ For one thing, just about every citizen of Golgoth was suspicious, but he supposed the order applied only to those coming in from outside. But if he was meant to detain people bearing unknown dangerous technology, hell, how was he supposed to recognize that, and what degree of force should he apply?
Plumping himself down on a rock with his assault rifle across his lap, Plaqueast watched his fellows laying out the portable barricades and setting up the big belt-driven ca
Then, Plaqueast noticed something very strange. The ground was being disturbed by a regular line of indentations heading towards him, yet it was not shaking. Abruptly he realized that he was seeing a series of footprints crushing down the sulerbane sprouts, and he jumped down off his rock bringing his weapon to bear. Then something knocked his rifle spi
‘Over… here…’ Plaqueast wheezed, seeing his fellows stepping out from the barricade, but his capturer just walked up to it, squeezed through a couple of sections, and returned to the shadows of the Undercity.
As breath slowly returned, he began to struggle again, but to no effect. Out of sight of the barricade, the attacker slung him down on the ground below a wall of crumbling sandstone. He then held out a hand on which rested a flat, tick-like thing, its short legs stirring in a foam of slime, then tilted his palm so the little horror dropped onto Plaqueast’s shirt front. He tried desperately to brush it away, but there was a sudden pain in his wrist and paralysis spreading through him in a wave from that point of contact. Then he could only lie terrified as the thing crawled up his shirt, arrived hot on his neck, then attached itself behind his ear and ground agonizingly into his flesh. But there the horror did not end, for something was inside his head, taking his mind apart, ripping away identity, abrading consciousness. Through streaming eyes he saw his capturer had squatted on his heels to watch—and realized he was watching in some other way as well.
Finally, the last bulwarks of his self disintegrated, and Plaqueast was no more… which was merciful since some hours later his now mindless body began to hack and cough violently, bringing up like living vomit things that crawled away, again and again.
14
AIs choose their own names and, being on the whole such infinitely superior entities to us mere humans, their choices cause much speculation. This is perhaps why Earth Central named itself thus — the meaning of its name is simple to understand and only in the convolutions of the most twisted and paranoid brain capable of evoking any layers of conspiratorial meaning. Similarly, the runcible AIs usually take on only the names of the planets they govern. However, for ship AIs, through a fictional tradition hailing back towards the end of the last mille
— From Quince Guide compiled by humans
For Mr Crane there was as little distinction between conscious and unconscious as there was for him between his internal and external worlds: they were mangled, fractured and disjointed in time as in meaning, structured only by imposed imperatives and a chaotic striving for unity. Therefore, Crane walked through the valley of shadow and, in the light of another sun, tracked bloody footprints. Inset in white carapace, faceted sapphire eyes mirrored the etched sapphires a man tried to use to buy his life. Some pattern-recognition program keyed with his orders, and caused him to temporarily understand that the presence of another two albino creatures awaiting him was no random natural event. He halted and studied them, while shoving stones just like their eyes down a man’s throat. These creatures stood on six legs, were much larger than the previous two, and, as on another occasion, one of them scuttled aside to act as a spotter. Crane fell back to a kind of order, pulled up his sleeves, straightened his hat, and advanced.
The remaining creature lifted its head, huge pincers clacking and carapace saws rubbing against each other to grind their teeth back to sharpness, lubricant squirting from the glands at either side of its nightmare mouth. Then it opened both sets of implements wide and charged, kicking up blue-green leaves as it came.
Crane stood with his feet braced and his arms open wide, as if intending to meet the creature like a sumo wrestler facing his opponent. When it was only a few paces away from him, he ducked low, his head slipping underneath its head and forward segments. Its momentum carrying it on over him, he abruptly jerked upright. Half a to
He didn’t need to look round to know what happened next; he could hear the creature struggling to regain its feet, shaking itself, then charging him again, issuing a sound like a fractured air hose. Of course, being what he was, he could calculate its position relative to himself just by listening. Like a bullfighter, he stepped aside at precisely the right moment, reached out, grabbed, pulled down and twisted. This time the sleer hit the ground on its side, minus one of its pincers, which Crane now held.