“I have weapons.”
The Prador shuttle was now landing next to Jael’s vessel.
“Let me come in with you,” said Gene.
I didn’t answer for a while. I just watched. Five Prador clad in armored spacesuits and obviously armed to the mandibles departed the shuttle. They went over to one of the tunnels and gathered there. I focused in closer in time to see them move back to get clear of an explosion. It seemed apparent that they weren’t there at either Jael’s or Penny Royal’s invitation.
“Of course you can come,” I said, eventually.
Jael frowned at the distant sound of the explosion and the roar of atmosphere being sucked out-the latter sound was abruptly truncated as some emergency door closed. There seemed only one explanation: the Prador had placed a tracker on the
when she had gone to meet them.
“Can you deal with them?” she asked.
“I can deal with them,” Penny Royal replied through its submind golem.
The AI itself continued working. Before Jael, the gabbleduck was stretched upright, steel bands around its body and a framework clamping its head immovable. It kept reaching up with one of its foreclaws to probe and tug at the framework, but, heavily tranquilized, it soon lost interest, lowered its limb, and began muttering to itself.
From this point, equipment-control systems, an atmosphere plant and heaters, stacked processing racks, transformers and other items obviously taken from the ship above-spread in every direction and seemed chaotically connected by optics and heavy-duty superconducting cables. Some of these snaked into one of the surrounding tunnels where she guessed the ship’s fusion reactor lay. Lighting squares inset in the ceiling illuminated the whole scene. She wondered if Penny Royal had put this all together after her arrival. It seemed possible, for the AI, working amidst all this like an iron squid, moved at a speed almost difficult to follow. Finally the AI moved closer to the gabbleduck, fitting into one side of the clamping framework a silver beetle of a ship’s autodoc, which trailed optics to the surrounding equipment.
“The memstore,” said Penny Royal, a ribbed tentacle with a spatulate end snapping out to hover just before Jael’s chest.
“What about the Prador?” she asked. “Shouldn’t we deal with them first?”
Two of the numerous eyes protruding on stalks from the AI’s body flicked toward the golem, which abruptly stepped forward, grabbed a hold in that main body, then merged. In that moment Jael saw that it was one of many clinging there.
“They have entered my tunnels and approach,” the AI replied.
It occurred to her then that Penny Royal’s previous answer of “I can deal with them” was open to numerous interpretations.
“Are you going to stop them coming here?” she asked.
“No.”
“They will try to take the memstore and the gabbleduck.”
“That is not proven.”
“They’ll attack you.”
“That is not proven.”
Jael’s frustration grew. “Very well.” She unslung her combined pulse-rifle and launcher.
“You are not unintelligent, but you seem to have forgotten about the instructions I left for the
“Your ship will not detonate.”
“What?”
“I broke your codes two point five seconds after you departed your ship. Your ship AI is of Prador construction, its basis the frozen brain tissue of a Prador first-child. The Prador have never understood that no code is unbreakable and your ship AI is no different. It would appear that you are no different.”
Another boom and the thunderous roar of atmosphere departing reached them. Penny Royal quivered, a number of its eyes turning toward one tunnel mouth.
“However,” it said with a heavy resignation, “these Prador are showing a marked lack of concern for my property, and I do not want them interrupting this interesting commission.”
Abruptly the golems began to peel themselves from Penny Royal’s core, five in all, until what was left was a spiny skeletal thing. Dropping to the floor, they detached their umbilici and scuttled away. Jael shuddered-they moved without any emulation of humanity, sometimes on all fours, but fast, horribly fast. They also carried devices she could not clearly identify. She did not suppose their purpose to be anything pleasant.
“Now,” said Penny Royal, snapping the spatulate end of its tentacle open and closed,
“the memstore.”
Jael reached into her belt cache, took out the store and handed it over. The tentacle retracted and she lost it in a blur of movement. Items of equipment shifted and a transformer began humming. The autodoc pressed its underside against the gabbleduck’s domed head and closed its gleaming metallic limbs around it. She heard a snickering, swiftly followed by the sound of a bone drill. The gabbleduck jerked and reached up. Tentacles sped in and snaked around its limbs, clamping them in place.
“Wharfle klummer,” said the gabbleduck, with an almost frightening clarity.
Jael scanned around the chamber. Over to her right, across the chamber from the tunnel mouth which Penny Royal had earlier glanced at-the one it seemed likely the Prador would be coming from if they made it this far-was a stack of internal walling and structural members from the cannibalized ship. She headed over, ready to duck for cover, and from there watched the AI carry out its commission.
How long would it take? She had no idea, but it seemed likely that it wouldn’t be long.
Now the autodoc would be making nanotube synaptic connections in line with a program the AI had constructed from the cerebral schematic in the memstore, it would be firing off electrical impulses and feeding in precise mixes of neurochemicals-all the stuff of memory, thought, mind. Already the gabbleduck seemed straighter, its pose more serious, its eyes taking on a cold metallic glitter. Or was she just seeing what she hoped for?
“Klummer wharfle,” it said. Wasn’t that one of those frustrating things for the linguists who studied the gabble, that no single gabbleduck had ever repeated its meaningless words?
“Klummer klummer,” it continued. “Wharfle.”
“Base synaptic network established,” said Penny Royal. “Loading at one quarter-layered format.”
Jael wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, but it sounded like the AI was succeeding.
Then, abruptly, the gabbleduck made a chittering, whistling, clicking sound, some of the whistles so intense they seemed to stab straight in behind Jael’s eyes. Something else happened: a couple of optic cables started smoking, then abruptly shriveled; a processing rack slumped, something like molten glass pouring out and hissing on the cold stone. After a moment, Penny Royal released its grip upon the creature’s claws.
“Loading complete.”
After a two-tone buzzing Jael recognized as the sound of bone and cell welders working together, the autodoc retracted. The gabbleduck reached up and scratched its head. It made that sound again, and, after a moment, Penny Royal replied in kind. The creature shrugged and all its bonds folded away. It dropped to the floor and squatted like some evil Buddha. It did not look in the least bit foolish.
“They chose insentience,” said Penny Royal, “and put in place the means of retaining that state, in U-space, constructed there before they sacrificed their minds.”
“And what does that mean?” Jael asked.
Three stalked eyes swiveled toward her. “It means, human, that in resurrecting me you fucked up big time- now, go away.”
