when he invented runcible technology and, of course, organic damage. In this case we are worried about none of these.'
Cormac noted the sudden look of panic on Sheen's face. She'd just realised what Spencer intended doing to her. Perhaps she'd expected interrogation under drugs and torture, or maybe just a plain old execution, but ECS was more
'We'll be making multiple nanofibre connections, recording synaptic and neuro-chemical data all the while. The process records the structure, both architectural and neuro-chemical, of her brain, meanwhile building up a virtual model of it. It takes an AI then to deconstruct that model and interpret the data from that deconstruction as thoughts, images and memories.'
'And Sheen's brain?' asked Gorman, watching Cormac as he asked.
Spencer glanced up. 'It's mush afterwards. We maintain the connections to keep the autonomous nervous system going and the body is handed over to ECS Medical. I think they're trying for direct download now of recorded minds.'
Sheen's eyes were wide as she stared sideways at the autodoc. Terror? Maybe, though Cormac doubted she would be so scared of death. More likely she was frightened about all she was due to betray.
'Download?' queried Gorman. 'I'd heard it's theoretically possible…'
'I'm told the physical and neuro-chemical structure of the brain has to be changed to accept the mind in waiting,' said Spencer. 'It is actually restructured by nanomachines throughout the download process and takes several months.'
'Interesting,' said Gorman. 'I've been thinking about getting myself a memplant.' He tapped the side of his skull.'
'Even more interesting if you ended up occupying the body of your killer,' Spencer quipped. She now tapped a control on top of the autodoc and it immediately extruded a probe like a chrome-and-glass tubeworm against the side of Sheen's head. She started yelling from the back of her throat, the sound made into an odd whine by the aperture of her mouth plug.
'Goodbye, Sheen,' said Spencer. 'The next person you encounter will be the AI that takes apart your mind and turns it into a report for ECS.'
After a little while the sounds Sheen was making tapered off to a sighing. Cormac crossed his arms and watched for a while longer.
'Is it necessary for us to be here any longer?' he finally enquired.
'Why?' asked Spencer. 'Are you uncomfortable with all this?'
'No, bored, and Gorman was going to buy me a beer or two.'
Spencer waved her hand in dismissal.
Some hours later, Cormac returned, and watched the blank-faced drooling thing that had been Sheen being wheeled out on a gurney to be taken to the spaceport. He thought it good that in her new incarnation she would serve some useful purpose, beyond that his concern was nil.
'Waky waky,' said Gorman, slamming into the room and whipping the heat-sheet from Cormac's body—his presence turning on the light.
Cormac's instincts told him he had been asleep for about thirty seconds, but his aug told him precisely fifty- five minutes had passed since his consciousness fled into the pillow.
His instincts also told him that his immediate course of action should be to punch Gorman on the nose, turn off the light and return to bed. However, he swung his legs over the side and sat on its edge for a moment, deliberately not swearing at his unit leader, since that was precisely what Gorman expected.
'Some problem?' Cormac asked.
'Get your stuff together,' said Gorman, scanning the room's sparse collection of belongings and frowning, 'we're shipping out.'
'Why?'
'Apparently Agent Spencer will be giving us chapter-and-verse aboard the attack ship,' Gorman explained.
Now Cormac did swear, and his unit leader grinned. He had known that if the fact that they were still under orders from Spencer wasn't enough to get a reaction, then knowing they would shortly be aboard an attack ship would. His work done, Gorman departed whistling tunelessly and leaving the door open behind him.
Cormac stood up, walked over to close the door, then returned to his bedside locker from which he removed a self-heating coffee and a stim-patch. He pulled the tab on the coffee and set it down, and after stripping off its backing pressed the stim-patch down on his forearm. He pulled on disposable undergarments, his envirosuit and then dragged his pack out of a cupboard, into which it took him only a moment to shove a few more belongings, and by that time the stimulant was kicking in and the coffee steaming. Next he released his pulse-rifle from its coded rack by pressing his hand against the palm-lock beside it. The clamps dropped open and he took the weapon out and hung it by its strap from his shoulder. From under his pillow he took Pramer's thin-gun, which he shoved into his belt, then he was ready—just in time to receive a demand through his aug for his presence outside the barracks. Sipping hot coffee, he headed out.
Gorman, Travis and Crean awaited him in the darkness outside, standing beside a low-slung ATV with big, smooth tyres, its chameleon-paint body only revealed in this darkness by its scratches and unpainted replacement components. He noted that only Gorman possessed a pack, it lying on the plasticrete grating beside his leg. The two Golem carried nothing, not even weapons, and they wore chameleoncloth fatigues oversuited with white paperwear for courtesy's sake. Upon seeing Cormac, Gorman immediately hoisted up his pack, turned to the ATV and pulled open its side door to reveal the lit interior. It seemed almost as if he was opening a door in the very darkness. He climbed inside, Crean and Travis following. Cormac took the opportunity to employ a visual enhancement program in his aug, which made everything surrounding him more visible, but turned the body of the ATV into something that kept flickering in and out of visibility. When he ducked into the vehicle he saw that Gorman and Crean had taken the two front seats, Gorman in the driving seat, while the two behind were for himself and Travis. Cormac shoved his pack in the space behind the remaining seat and climbed in, closing the door behind him.
'Where to?' he asked.
'Where you came in,' Gorman replied, immediately setting the ATV into motion.
The landing field was fifty miles from here, so Cormac could not understand why they were using a ground vehicle to head for an apparently urgent rendezvous there. He didn't have time to ask just then as he quickly strapped himself in before Gorman threw the ATV round the corner at the end of this street in the military township. The vehicle, with its computer-controlling suspension, tyre pressure, individual wheel torque and the actual grip of the tyres, shot around the corner as if on rails and continued accelerating.
'Okay,' he said, 'why on the ground?'
'Travis,' said Gorman, concentrating on his driving.
The Apollonian Golem turned to Cormac. 'Though you are the prime target, having offed a considerable number of Separatists here, those surviving won't balk at killing us too, since we are also responsible for many deaths.'
'It's still not clear to me why we're not flying.'
'Agent Spencer's departing gift to the forces here was to request our presence over an uncoded channel,' Travis explained. 'Sheen's deconstruction has revealed that the remaining Separatists have missile launchers concealed within the vicinity. The AI has calculated a high probability that a launcher will be deployed to shoot at the automated gravcar that will depart in about four minutes.'
'I see,' said Cormac, awaiting further explanation but receiving none.
Gorman had now taken them into a track winding between the carnage of felled skarches left by the Prador vessel's crash landing. All around lay a jumble of thick trunks draped in dry leaves, jags of cellulose spearing into the air and trailing fibres like frayed rope, the whole scene scattered with the bright yellow-green of new sprouts stretching up towards the sky. Even with augmentation all this was only just visible through the screen—Gorman had not put on the lights so he must also be using his own visual augmentation. Soon the track began winding to the left around a hill, past a couple of parked autodozers which had been used to clear the track, then turning uphill. Here, where the hill had sheltered the area from the direct shockwave from the crash landing, the skarches were
