Further: Beyond the Threshold (35 page)

I reached the control panel of twinkling lights only steps ahead of the Iron Mass. I held my hand up and laid my palm against the cool, smooth surface, hoping against hope that this worked. Only an eyeblink later, the three pursuers caught up with me. The one in the lead swung his bone-spurred fist at the side of my head, the impact sufficient to jar my teeth and sending lights fireworking across my vision. Somehow I kept on my feet for an instant longer, my hand still held to the control panel.

The next Iron Mass raked his elbow spur across my back, cutting my shirt to shreds and opening huge gashes in the flesh beneath. The third knocked my knees out from under me with the butt of his spear’s handle, and I went down like a marionette with its strings cut.

I lay on the ground as the three stood over me, taking turns getting their kicks in, occasionally leaning down and pounding my face or body with their spurred fists. My mouth filled with blood, and I could feel myself losing consciousness.

Just before I fell away into a bloodred darkness, I could hear a tiny, distant voice in my mind.

::OK,:: Amelia said. ::I’m in.::

Amelia had noticed the interface when we were marched back to our cell.

From the signet ring, and using the evidence of my senses routed through the interlink, she’d been able to work out that the control panel was slaved to the local area’s security and environmental controls but that, in addition to manual input, the controls received commands from farther up the hierarchy of the mining platform’s computer network. Since the network would have to register any manual changes made—such as opening a secured door with a pass code—that meant that communication between the interface and the network was somehow bidirectional. It might only have been a small back door, and it might have been closed and locked, but hidden in that bit of twinkling lights was a route into the master controls of the mining platform.

The broadcast range of the signet ring was pretty short, not much longer than the length of my arm, and was pretty low bandwidth, at that, so she wouldn’t be able to gain control of the computers from within the signet ring, but Amelia thought that she could reconfigure the holographic projectors to download her source code into the platform’s computers. From within the system, she’d hopefully be able to work out how to open the doors remotely, locate our weapons, and help us escape from the platform.

I’d asked whether she couldn’t just download a
copy
, and not her operating code, but Amelia explained that it didn’t work that way. A mind, even a digital one, wasn’t just software. An emulated mind mimicked the cellular basis of an organic brain, the structure of the synapses replicated digitally. That was why the first artificial intelligences, millennia before, had been based on uploaded human minds and not engineered from scratch.

As a result, Amelia couldn’t just duplicate her files and dump them into the computer; if she did, she’d only succeed in planting a copy of her memories, lacking any conscious awareness. In order for her to be of any use, she’d have to move her entire source code into the computer, lock, stock, and barrel.

The plan had been for me to get the signet ring close enough to the interface for the transfer to take place. And, of course, to keep it in place long enough for all of the data to download. Amelia’s voice, broadcast from within the network to my interlink, was proof that it had worked.

The only problem was the next part, with me recaptured after an apparent escape attempt and Amelia stuck inside the platform’s network, unsure how to work anything but the most rudimentary communications systems.

I just hoped that I survived long enough for the effort to have done any good.

I was stripped to the waist and bound hand and foot in some type of shackles fixed to the wall. What it suggested about our captors that they already had a room equipped with shackles on the walls, I chose not to contemplate any longer than was absolutely necessary.

I was in bad shape, to be sure, but didn’t feel nearly as horrible as I should have, given the abuse my body had already taken. I couldn’t know for sure, but I guessed it had something to do with the medichines Maruti had injected when rejuvenating me. They couldn’t keep me from getting injured, but they seemed to be speeding my healing processes considerably. I was still bruised and bleeding, but I’d more or less been able to retain consciousness, blacking out only a time or two.

Amelia was able to remain in intermittent contact and reported in as often as she was able about her progress. She’d been able to get access to the communications network as soon as she entered the local circuit of the network, and had successfully maneuvered her source code from the terminal into the network itself, but so far, she’d succeeded in little else. She knew the general layout of the platform and could tell me anything I wanted to know about the production quotas, but that was about all.

As a pair of Iron Mass bruisers worked over my kidneys, taking turns pounding their spurred fists into my sides, though, I welcomed any distraction she could provide.

::OK,:: Amelia said as she snaked her way through the network, trying to find the security controls, ::the big rectangular box outside the dome, on the west side of the platform…Did you see that coming in?::

I tried to subvocalize an answer to say that I had, but couldn’t concentrate enough to form the words in my head.

::Well,:: Amelia went on, taking my silence for assent, ::that’s the refinery. These guys are digging up transuranic ore from the planet’s bedrock, refining it down to the useful elements and discarding the rest, and then using the mass launcher—that’s the cannon on the east side of the platform—to send shipments up into orbit. What they do from there, your guess is as good as mine. Do they use it on the ship? Package it up and send it somewhere else?::

::Who,:: I managed to subvocalize, just barely, ::knows?::

That I managed to follow it with a nonverbal shrug, I consider a testament to my willpower, if nothing else.

::The network’s software defenses haven’t noticed my intrusion just yet,:: Amelia continued, ::but I’m guessing it’s just a matter of time. Don’t worry, though. I’ll find your gear and the security controls, and we’ll get out of here.::

I moaned, rolling my head from one side to the other. My captors chuckled and took a step back to regard their handiwork. I looked down and saw the raw, bloody mess they’d made of my chest and abdomen.

::H-hurry?:: I managed.

::Hang tight.:: I could hear the strain in Amelia’s voice, and the fear. ::We’ll both get out of this, you’ll see.::

Neither of us knew it then, but she was wrong.

I must have drifted off, or blacked out, because when the voice woke me up, I opened my eyes to find that I was alone in the room. Still hanging from the wall, one giant throbbing pain from the top of my head to the tips of my toes, it took me a few moments to be able to parse out the sounds I was hearing as words and then to recognize the voice that was speaking.

::Captain Stone. Are you receiving me? Captain Stone?::

“Zel,” I said out loud, forgetting myself. Then I blinked hard, concentrated, and subvocalized, keeping my face as expressionless as possible. ::Yes. I’m here. I’m just a bit…I’m
just
, is all.::

::You don’t sound good, Captain, if you don’t mind me saying.::

::No, Zel? Well, you should see how I must
look
.:: I took a deep breath, collecting myself and trying to pull up as straight as possible in my restraints. ::How long since our last contact?::

::Just a bit over point-zero-five-six-two standard days.::

Eighty minutes. Had it been that short a time?

::OK, where do we stand?::

::The Iron Mass ship has approached to just a few kilometers but appears now to be holding position. The
Further
has continued to receive information from its probes, though, and a clearer picture of what’s going on in this system has emerged.::

::Captain,:: sounded the voice of the
Further
, ::it appears that the asteroid belt we sighted on first reaching the pulsar system was originally another planet, identical in composition to the one below us. However, nearly all traces of any transuranic elements appear to have been removed from the debris. Geodynamics could not account for the planet’s apparent destruction, much less for the absence of such a large percentage of its constituent matter, so the only conclusion we can draw is that it was deliberately done.::

::They mined the other planet out, obviously,:: came the voice of Xerxes, ::and when they’d removed all deposits of the heaviest transuranic elements in reach, they exploded the planet to access the final deposits hidden deep in the planet’s core.::

::That’s borne out by the evidence of my other probes,::
Further
answered. ::The probes sent down to the planet ahead of the landing party have reported back that, beneath the surface, the planet is riddled with bored mines. I can only imagine it’s just a matter of time before this planet follows its former sibling into oblivion.::

::At least some percentage of the mined ore,:: Xerxes said, ::must have been transported elsewhere, outside the system, which would account for the alteration in the pulsar binary’s orbital period.::

::You damnable machine!:: howled Maruti in frustration. ::I’ve been patient like you asked, but I cannot believe that you’ll patiently talk about mined ores and orbital periods in the face of what we’ve discovered.::

::Which is?:: I asked, mindful of the moments slipping past, of the window of communication slowly closing.

::It’s simply remarkable, Captain,:: Maruti said, and I could hear the excitement in his words. ::These cairns aren’t geological at all!::

::Nor are they designed as such,:: Xerxes objected.

::But they are the result…Oh, never mind your ridiculous objections. Captain, these structures are secreted by anaerobic bacteria, which are able to metabolize the simpler minerals of the planet. Much like the stromatalites that once were found on Original Earth, the cairns are digestive effluvia, if you will, the waste products of the bacteria after they have drawn whatever sustenance they can out of the inert materials of the planet’s thin atmosphere itself. As they continue to consume and excrete, the towers grow wider and taller.::

I couldn’t help but sigh. ::So the things that brought us down here in the first place are nothing but towers of dung piled up under unicellular eating machines?::

::Yes. That is, no. That is…:: Maruti was stumbling over himself, too excited even to form a response.

::What my overzealous companion is trying to communicate, Captain, is that the arrangement of these stromatalite-like cairns is not random. Though the individual organisms we’ve analyzed appear to be nothing more than ‘unicellular eating machines,’ as you put it, the question remains whether they might not have collectively developed some level of intelligence.::

::What?:: asked Zel. ::Some sort of hive mind?::

::Exactly!:: Maruti shouted.

::Perhaps,:: Xerxes put in, eir tone much more measured. ::We have detected the presence of organic molecules in the environment that could be functioning as a kind of rudimentary signaling system. Terrestrial bacteria use such signal molecules, called autoinducers, in a process called ‘quorum sensing,’ to regulate population levels, respond to external stimuli, and…::