Denner_s Wreck

“You got it, boss; transmitting to your skull-liner now."

Bredon had listened to all this with fascination. Even after his incredible cram course in Terran technology, he did not follow all of it. He had no idea what a rhinoceros was, or mice. Cockroaches he knew well, since the world-De

A stasis field generator? He knew what various field generators were, but not what a stasis field was.

He had encountered, but did not really understand, descriptions of the artificial symbiotes that the immortals had living inside them, augmenting the natural repair and maintenance mechanisms of their bodies and providing them with some of their “supernatural” powers. He knew now that his bruised nose and other injuries received in trying to break into the Forbidden Grove had been repaired by an offshoot of one of Geste's symbiotes.

What he chose to ask, though, was, “What's a skull-liner?"

“Oh, it's a computer that's grown onto the inside of the boss's skull, inside his head, where it can link itself to his brain. Gives him a few gigabytes of extra memory when he needs it, and lets me feed him information at high speed."

“What sort of a computer?"

“Silicon crystal, mostly."

“I thought silicon life was built; I didn't think silicon computers grew."

“They don't, by themselves; the skull-liner was installed by programmed silicon-skeleton bacteria."

“Oh.” The thought of tiny creatures growing into a machine in his head was somehow repulsive; he shuddered slightly.

His recent experiences had shaken him. Terran technology was overwhelming in its diversity, complexity, and power. He now truly understood that a Power, a Terran, could do almost anything with the right equipment-but so could anyone else.

The Powers were just people. What made them Powers were their machines and their creatures-and sometimes it was impossible to tell the machines from the creatures.

The true wonder was not the Powers themselves-after all, they had not created their technology, they had merely inherited the results of thousands of years of work by millions of people. The true wonder was their technology.

Bredon had begun to sample that wonder, to explore the fringes of a universe unlike anything he had ever dreamt of, and he wanted to know more. Thanks to the imprinter he had learned how to use most of the machines in Arcade, but Gamesmaster had had no basic science texts, no explanation for how most of the machines worked. Geste had no need of anything like that. What he needed was instruction manuals, and those he had.

Bredon wanted to know not just what the machines did, but how; not just how they worked, but why.

But even while his thirst for knowledge was driving him on, even as he revelled in his new mastery over Arcade's devices, there was a growing kernel of uneasiness, of fear, in the back of his mind. He sometimes thought that he was going too fast, that he was tampering with things beyond his comprehension, perhaps even beyond the comprehension of the people who built them. Some of the things he saw seemed unclean, or unholy, or just horribly dangerous.

Tailored bacteria, for example-those were bugs, like the bugs that caused disease, but instead of causing harm these performed useful tasks like assembling a computer inside Geste's skull.

But Bredon could not help wondering whether such bugs could be trusted, whether it was entirely safe to put a computer inside one's head. Could Geste ever really be sure that he was still the master of his own mind? The computer was, in effect, a disease. It was a beneficial disease, vastly expanding his memory, letting him think more quickly and more clearly, but by changing how he thought, didn't it also affect what he thought?

And the bugs that put it there-could they be trusted to follow the pla

And the bent-space generators, machines that could wrench reality itself out of shape, creating space where none previously existed, making rooms bigger on the inside than the outside, turning corners in directions that didn't exist before-those also worried Bredon. The Powers bent space to enlarge their homes, to save themselves long walks between scattered outposts, and for any number of other trivial purposes. Bredon knew, as a matter of simple pragmatism, that if you bend anything enough, it will break. Could space itself be damaged by the twisting the Powers gave it?

Terrans had been using these technologies for millenia, and as of four hundred years ago, when the Powers left to come to De

Now Geste intended to use these things as weapons, intentionally making them even more dangerous, right here on De

He also intended to leave Bredon here, in Arcade, while he went off to battle Thaddeus and perhaps rescue Lady Sunlight-or perhaps get her killed.

Bredon's mind snagged on that thought. He knew, consciously, that Lady Sunlight's plight was not his fault, but some part of his mind refused to accept that. If he had not broken the disk and summoned Geste, the Trickster might not now be preparing to fight. Lady Sunlight would still be wherever she now was, but not in danger of getting caught in the crossfire.

Geste was gathering weapons that could, if they went wrong, kill thousands of i

And when Geste left, he, Bredon, would be alone again in Arcade, with only the machine intelligences to talk to, and he did not care for that prospect. He knew now how Gamesmaster and the others worked, and that knowledge made them seem far less human-and less trustworthy.

Furthermore, he was ru

Part of the fear was of something he did not understand; another part was fear that he might become addicted to such experiences and give up his own world. Gamesmaster admitted that some humans did, indeed, prefer fiction, or history recordings, to reality. It mentioned other insidious dangers as well, drugs or neural hookups that could be addictive.

Bredon knew that if he grew bored enough, he might try things in Arcade that he would do better to avoid. He had already been dabbling in computer simulations that were fantastically real, and terrifying in the sense of power they gave him when he was actually controlling nothing but colored light, synthesized sound, and artificial odors.

He did not want to stay in Arcade.

Geste, however, probably would not want him along.