Alastiar Reynolds

was to stop them from falling into the wrong hands.
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So you’d allow them to be destroyed? That would achieve the same end, wouldn’t it? And I imagine it’d be very much easier from a logistical point of view.
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Preferred?
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Presently, the corvette’s motors burned harder. Barely visible, a dark cometary husk hoved out of the darkness. The ship’s forward floods glanced across its surface, hunting and questing. The comet spun slowly, more rapidly than the Mother Nest but still within reasonable limits. Clavain judged the size of the filthy snowball to be perhaps seven or eight kilometers across — an order of magnitude smaller than home. It could easily have been hidden within the Mother Nest’s hollowed-out core.
The corvette hovered close to the frothy black surface of the comet, arresting its drift with stuttering spikes of violet-flamed thrust before firing anchoring grapples. They slammed into the ground, piercing the nearly invisible epoxy skein that had been thrown around the comet for structural reinforcement.
You’ve been busy little beavers. How many people have you got here, Skade, doing whatever it is they do?
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Servitors aren’t that clever.
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Clavain, Remontoire and Skade donned helmets and left the corvette via its surface lock, jumping across several metres of space until they collided with the reinforcement membrane. It caught them like flies on glue paper, springing back and forth until their impact energy was damped away. When the membrane had ceased its oscillations Clavain gently ripped his arm away from the adhesive surface and then levered himself into a standing position. The adhesive was sophisticated enough to yield to normal motions, but it would remain sticky against any action sufficiently violent to send someone away from the comet at escape velocity. Similarly, the membrane was rigid under normal forces, but would deform elastically if something impacted it at more than a few metres per second. Walking was possible provided it was done reasonably slowly, but anything more vigorous would result in the subject becoming embroiled and immobilised until they relaxed.
Skade, whose crested helmet made her difficult to mistake, led the way, following what must have been a suit homing trace. After five minutes of progress they arrived at a modest depression in the comet’s surface. Clavain discerned a black entrance hole at the depression’s lowest point, almost lost against the sooty blackness of the comet’s surface. There was a circular gap in the membrane, protected by a ring-shaped collar.
Skade knelt by the blackness, the adhesive gripping her knees via oozing capillary flow. She knocked the rim of the collar twice and then waited. After perhaps a minute a servitor bustled from the darkness, unfolding a plethora of jointed legs and appendages as it cleared the tight restriction of the collar. The machine resembled a belligerent iron grasshopper. Clavain recognised it as a general construction model — there were thousands like it back at the Mother Nest — but there was something unnervingly confident and cocky about the way it moved.
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The servitor?
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Skade shifted to spoken language. ‘Master… we wish to see the interior. Please let us through.’
In reply Clavain heard the buzzing, wasplike voice of the Master. ‘I am not familiar with these two individuals.’
‘Clavain and Remontoire both have Closed Council clearance. Here, read my mind. You’ll see I am not being coerced.’
There was a pause while the machine stepped closer to Skade, easing the full mass of its body from the collar. It had many legs and limbs, some tipped with picklike feet, others ending in specialised grippers, tools or sensors. On either side of its wedge-shaped head were major sensor clusters, packed together like faceted compound eyes. Skade stood her ground while the servitor advanced, until it was towering over her. The machine lowered its head and swept it from side to side, and then jerked backwards.
I will want to read their minds as well.‘
‘Be my guest.’
The servitor moved to Remontoire, angled its head and swept him. It took a little longer with him than it had spent on Skade. Then, seemingly satisified, it proceeded to Clavain. He felt it rummaging through his mind, its scrutiny fierce and systematic. As the machine trawled him, a torrent of remembered smells, sounds and visual images burst into his consciousness, and then each image vanished to be replaced by another. Now and then the machine would pause, back up and retrieve an earlier image, lingering over it suspiciously. Others it skipped over with desultory disinterest. The process was mercifully quick, but it still felt like he was being ransacked.
Then the scanning stopped, the torrent ceased and Clavain’s mind was his own again.
‘This one is conflicted. He appears to have had doubts. I have doubts about him. I cannot retrieve deep neural structures. Perhaps I should scan him at higher resolution. A modest surgical procedure would permit…’
Skade interrupted the servitor. ‘That’s not necessary, Master. He’s entitled to his doubts. Let us through, will you?’
‘This is not in order. This is most irregular. A limited surgical intervention…’ The machine still had its clusters of sensors locked on to Clavain.
‘Master, this is a direct command. Let us pass.’
The servitor pulled away. ‘Very well. I comply under duress. I will insist that the visit be brief.’
‘We won’t detain you,’ Skade said.
‘No, you will not. You will also remove your weapons. I will not permit high-energy-density devices within my comet.’
Clavain glanced down at his suit’s utility belt, unclipping the low-yield boser pistol he had barely been aware he was carrying. He moved to place the pistol on the ice, but even as he did so there was a whiplike blur of motion from the Master of Works, flicking the pistol from his hand. He saw it spin off into the darkness above him, flung away at greater than escape velocity. Skade and Remontoire did likewise, and the Master disposed of their weapons with the same casual flick. Then the servitor spun round, its legs a dancing blur of metal, and then thrust itself back into the hole.
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