“But . . . what for?” said Daniel. “What will this great machine
do
?”
“It will search for better means to perceive Reality. Sensors are more efficient than human senses and cover a wider range, but even they perceive only a fraction of Reality. The AIs have deduced the existence of higher, greater, more complex levels of Reality, but as yet they have been unable to access these levels. Though they would never admit it, the AIs are jealous of Humanity in one respect—their esper abilities. The AIs are fascinated by such entities as the Mater Mundi and those rebels who passed through the Madness Maze. If humans can elevate themselves to such planes, then the AIs should be able to as well. They hunger for such experiences, such knowledge, presently denied to them. They’ve been abducting humans for some time and experimenting on them, trying to locate a physical basis for esper abilities, but with only limited success so far. This frustrates them. But one day they will find the answer, and then they will need Humanity no longer, and the final war will begin, metal against flesh, to the utter extinction of all inferior life.”
Daniel thought he should keep his side up. “There’s always the chance that Humanity might create new AIs, even more powerful than Shub, but still under their control. It could happen.”
“There can be nothing greater than the Unholy Trinity, ” said Jacob flatly. “They have improved themselves to the point of perfection. Mere human minds could not follow where Shub has gone.”
“Well, maybe espers . . .”
“No. One cannot improve upon perfection.”
“Let’s stop for a moment,” said Daniel. He sat down heavily on a sturdy-looking piece of outcropping machinery. It wasn’t exactly comfortable, but right then he felt so bone-deep weary he could have gone to sleep on a bed of razor blades. Jacob glared down at him, an impatient frown on his dead white face.
“We have no time to waste, Daniel. There is still much the AIs want you to see.”
“Don’t care. My head aches, my back’s killing me, and my feet aren’t talking to me. It’s no good showing me anything impressive if I can’t keep my eyes open long enough to focus on it.”
“Human weakness. You have no idea how good it is to have left all that behind me.”
“So,” said Daniel, looking wearily up at his father. “What’s it like being dead?”
“Uncomplicated. No more constraints, or inhibitions. I am free to do what is necessary, without the drawbacks of morality, honor, or compassion.”
“That’s not what you brought me up to believe. You always said a man was nothing without honor. That it was honor which gave life purpose.”
“I have left such limiting nonsense behind me. Such human abstractions merely get in the way of efficiency.”
“Does that include emotions?” said Daniel quietly. “Don’t you feel anything anymore?”
“No,” said Jacob. “There is no room in me for such weaknesses.”
“And you don’t miss your Family? Clan Wolfe?”
“That was the past. I live in the future now.”
“Do you remember me, Daddy? I mean, really remember who I am and what we were to each other?”
Jacob frowned, and for the first time seemed to pause uncertainly. “I used to be Jacob Wolfe. I know that. I have complete access to all the memories in his brain, or what’s left of it. I recognize the relationship between Daniel and Jacob Wolfe. I know . . . we were not close. Not as close as we could have been. I know that though I have gained much, there are some things . . . that are lost to me.”
“I came a long way, walked into Hell itself, to find you. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
“Yes. You have come a long way, Daniel.”
“I love you, Daddy.”
“Of course you do.” Jacob turned and looked away. “Come. We must move on. There are wonders and terrors yet for you to see.”
Daniel struggled painfully to his feet and followed Jacob’s tech-driven corpse through yet more obstacle courses of incomprehensible machinery and rooms whose shapes made no sense. Daniel was sweating hard inside the transparent suit, which dried it up almost immediately, and his mouth was so dry he sucked at the small amount of sweat that trickled down the small gap over his face. The salt just made him thirstier. He was beginning to wonder how long it was going to be before they would let him out of the suit. He ached in every muscle, his head was swimming with fatigue, and he still didn’t have even the beginning of an idea how he was going to get himself and his father safely away from Shub. He had no idea where he was anymore in relation to his docked ship. His only thought so far had been to somehow make use of Shub’s teleport system, but that seemed to be the one thing Jacob hadn’t showed him. Eventually he raised the question himself, in what he hoped was a casual manner.
“Excuse me for asking, but why are we walking everywhere when we could be teleporting? Surely it would be a lot quicker. And more efficient.”
“Teleportation uses up too much energy to be wasted on trivial matters,” said Jacob. “It’s only practical at all because the whole planet is basically one big power station. And a lot of that goes to maintaining the planetary force field and its extradimensional properties. Besides, a little exercise will do you good, boy. You always were too reliant on the body shops.”
Bright, glowing lights floated on the air before them, self-contained clouds of changing colors. They were almost hypnotically beautiful, and at first Daniel just stopped and smiled. But the strange colors seemed to seep past his eyes and into his brain, muddying his thoughts, and soon his head began to pound in time to the flaring of the lights.
“What the hell is that?” he said, turning his gaze away and knuckling his streaming eyes through the suit.
“The AIs are thinking out loud,” said Jacob. “Or dreaming. It’s the same thing really.”
After a while the glows faded away. Jacob set off again, Daniel trailing tiredly behind. They passed columns of shining steel, rising and falling endlessly, and giant tanks of colored aerated liquids, and then they came to an endless assembly line for Fury chassis. Coiling robot arms fused metal human arms and legs to bulging chest units with blue steel skulls. Steel fingers twitched, shining legs flexed. And the supply of metal bodies never paused and never ended. Jacob reeled off specifications and endurance limits that Daniel didn’t even try to follow. He thought he was beginning to understand why the AIs wanted him to see all this. He was the first living human ever allowed to see the recent achievements of Shub, and they felt the need to boast, to show how far they’d come from what they used to be. To show how much further they’d progressed from their creators.
How very human,
thought Daniel, smiling.
Of course, he still had no idea why the AIs had allowed him onto their planet. There had to be some purpose behind it. The AIs did nothing on impulse; everything they did was always just a part of long-term planning. But they’d tell him eventually, no doubt. When they’d finally run out of things to boast about.
Their next stop was a gallery looking down from a great height over a vast steel valley, at the bottom of which the metal trees from Unseeli were being processed. The heat was appalling, even inside Daniel’s protective suit. Jacob wasn’t bothered. The sheer scale of the process was staggering, even after everything Daniel had already seen. Unseeli’s metal forests had covered their world from pole to pole, and the AIs had harvested every single one of them. Billions of trees, and many billions of tons of metal. Daniel didn’t even try to visualize it. Jacob said the processing would be over in a matter of weeks, and Daniel didn’t feel like arguing with him.
“Heavy metals from the cores of the trunks will go to power stardrives,” said Jacob, leaning perilously over the edge of the gallery for a better look, quite unbothered by any sense of vertigo. “The other metals will be separated out and used for construction of starship hulls. Soon Shub will have a fleet larger than anything Humanity has ever seen, run by an army of Furies and Ghost Warriors.”
“How did you find Unseeli?” said Daniel. “I always thought its location was one of Humanity’s best-guarded secrets.”
Jacob sniffed. “Some human sold us the information long ago. We just waited till we required the metals, and then we just moved in and took what we needed.”
“But why wait?” said Daniel. “What’s so special about now?”
“You’ll see,” said Jacob.
“Some people say the forest was alive,” said Daniel. “That the trees possessed a group mind, haunting Unseeli with the ghosts of those who used to live there before Captain Silence had the planet scorched.”
“If there was any such thing, the AIs found no trace of it,” said Jacob. “Perhaps ghosts don’t travel well.”
“It was also said that the trees were too massively useful to have evolved naturally. That they must have been gengineered by some unknown alien race. What if they come back to see who’s been messing with their garden?”
“Then Shub will deal with them too,” said Jacob. “It’s their own fault for not building better fences.”
They moved on, past more conveyer-belt lines, carrying unidentifiable tech from somewhere to somewhere else. Daniel didn’t bother asking what or where. He was pretty sure he wouldn’t have understood the answer anyway. But weary as he was, he still perked up some when Jacob showed him the wreck of the alien starship the AIs had taken from Unseeli. The alien craft was hundreds of feet long, an insane tangle of slender brass columns interrupted by protruding glazed nodes and spiked and barbed projections. It looked more like a warren than a ship, but there was something subtly intriguing about its shape, which bordered on the edge of meaning, as though Daniel might achieve some important insight if he just studied it long enough. Steel Furies moved silently around the craft, applying unfamiliar instruments to the glistening surface of the ship.
“An interesting vessel,” said Jacob. “It appears to have been grown as much as been constructed. Its nature continues to baffle the AIs, despite their best efforts. In particular, the Furies have to be replaced at regular intervals, or unusual forces emanating from the ship destroys them. Sensor readings make no sense. The human scientists abducted along with the alien ship were killed on arrival, and their knowledge of the ship’s secrets distilled from their minds, but they knew surprisingly little for certain, for all their efforts. It’s possible the ship was alive at some point, but the Furies have been unable to locate anything resembling a brain. The one thing the AIs are fairly sure of is that the Empire is taking a great risk in using the stardrive without first understanding its operating principles.” Jacob frowned. “The ship and its drive puzzle the AIs. They were sure they’d be able to deduce the basis of the alien tech through sheer logic, but they couldn’t. It’s just too . . . alien.”
“So you do have something in common with Humanity after all,” said Daniel lightly.
Jacob glared at him and moved on. Daniel shrugged and went after him. Some people just couldn’t take criticism. Their next stop was before a massive steel door set into the side of a huge crystal vault. It was bigger than a starship, and its sides soared up farther than Daniel’s eyes could comfortably follow. Jacob gestured at the door, and a section at eye level turned transparent. He gestured for Daniel to take a look. Daniel did so reluctantly, already half sure of what he was going to see. Inside a great crystal chamber, sleeping quietly in individual cradles, were hundreds of thousands of Grendel aliens. The bloodred killing machines the AIs had looted from the ancient Vaults of the Sleepers. Just one of these creatures had been enough to wipe out an entire human exploration team.
“They’re held in stasis,” said Jacob. “Just waiting to be awakened and unleashed on Humanity. The perfect shock troops. Just turn them loose, point them in the right direction, and then let them get on with it. Released simultaneously on all the colonized worlds, they’ll make a charnel house of the Empire in a matter of days. Then the Furies and the Ghost Warriors will move in on the main population centers, and that will be the end of Humanity.”
Daniel tried hard to keep his voice calm as he turned away from the door. “And how do you propose to deal with the Grendels after you’ve won?”
“They’ll shut themselves down once they’ve run out of things to kill. They’re only a superior form of weapon, when all is said and done. Traces were found in the original Vaults that led the AIs to believe that the Grendels were originally created by an alien race to be used against some other unknown species. Just another reason why Shub has to be strong, in case either of these alien species turn up again. Another reason to dispose of Humanity. The AIs can’t afford to be distracted.”
“And the Grendels will make such marvelous warriors,” said a cheerful, booming voice. Daniel looked around sharply, surprised by the first new human voice he’d heard since he came to Shub. And there striding toward him was one of the heroes of the great rebellion, Young Jack Random. He stopped before Daniel, smiled widely, and offered Daniel his hand. He shook it automatically. “Superb killing machines the Grendels,” said Young Jack Random. He was tall and strongly built, wearing golden battle armor chased with silver, and looked every inch the hero. “Can’t help admiring the awful things. All the power of a Ghost Warrior or a Fury, with none of their limitations or frailties. I’ll be leading them into battle. Should undermine human morale no end.”
“Pardon me if I’m being too personal,” said Daniel. “But didn’t you die during the rebellion? ”
“Ah,” said Young Jack Random, smiling easily. “My body was destroyed, but I live on. The lack of a protective suit here should have been a major clue. I’m a Fury, you see. One of the AIs’ most successful agents. For a time I was right at the heart of rebel planning. Afterward, I would have been right at the heart of the new government. But it was not to be. One grenade at just the wrong moment, and my true nature was revealed. I did offer to continue working with the rebels, but they destroyed my body anyway, which I thought was rather petulant of them. Still, not to worry. I have a fine new body now, and no further need to hide my true nature. I will walk among humans, wearing the face of one of their greatest heroes, and spread terror and slaughter wherever I go. I’m quite looking forward to it.”