‘You mentioned that it might not be safe for me to come to see you,’ I said.
‘I think you may. Take care, but do not be unduly concerned. The whiskways are safe now. I have secured them in readiness. Come up to the bridge - there is much to discuss.’
I left the ark, not without trepidation. Stepping outside for the first time since Cadence and Hesperus had fought each other, I kept expecting to find one of her severed limbs inching across the floor, dragging itself along by a fine silver thread. But that incident lay thousands of years in the past as far as the ship was concerned.
All around me, the bay appeared superficially unchanged - the same looming vastness, ceiling and walls kilometres distant, a volume large enough to swallow the white ark, with its own huge cargo, and make it look tiny. But a second glance told me that nothing was as I had left it. Every visible ship in the bay was covered in a gristle of white and gold strands, braided together in thick, fibrous mats. The outlines of the ships were rounded, indistinct, like mansions overrun by foliage. The cables had encroached on every surface, obscuring their true form. Even the white ark itself was now almost unrecognisable. A forest of cables enveloped the old ship, gold and white, branching and rebranching in dismaying complexity, punching through her barely visible hull in hundreds of places. The door where I emerged was one of the few clear spots; it was encircled by a thick moat of gold cables, keeping the white at bay, and the gold cables extended away from the ark to form a kind of braided tunnel, a passage through the forest floor.
‘You’ve been busy,’ I said.
‘It passed the time.’
I walked out into the cargo bay, to the nearest whisking point. This part of the ship looked more or less as I remembered it - there was the occasional gold cable, but other than that the walls and surfaces were unchanged. The go-board hovered in readiness. I punched for up-ship, whisked there in an eyeblink, walked from one side of the concourse to the other across the bridge with its kilometres-long central trunk shaft rising and falling above and below. The anvil-shaped machines, normally moving up and down the shaft, were still, bound in vast cobwebs of gold and white.
I punched another go-board and reached the bridge.
‘I’ve provided atmosphere,’ Hesperus said. ‘It’s safe to remove your helmet.’
Until that moment I had not known for sure that he was still alive; that the voice I had been hearing was not an impersonation performed by Cascade.
But Hesperus was still alive - in a manner of speaking. There were two robots on the bridge, situated more or less opposite one another. Cascade was to my left, his head and torso attached to one wall. Hesperus was on the other side, positioned in a similar fashion. Both robots had lost all their limbs - or, more accurately, had grown so many extensions from their bodies that their limbs had been transformed beyond recognition and duplicated many times over. Cascade was a many-limbed starfish with a humanoid torso and head at his epicentre; Hesperus was a gold star radiating out in all the directions of the compass. The limbs had the thickness of arm or leg joints where they erupted from all over their bodies, and then tapered down to the diameters of the cables I had already seen. They reached away from the two robots, tangling together where they made contact, forming a dense, labyrinthine quilt of white and gold filaments. I tried to follow a single cable, but it was futile - the pattern was too complicated. But I was certain that most, if not all, of the cables eventually found their way out of this room. This was the nerve centre. From here, the two robots had extended their bodies to encompass every vital system of
Silver Wings
and her cargo. They must have consumed and converted thousands, even millions of tonnes’ worth of matter - digesting the ship’s own fabric, remaking it for their own ends.
‘Remove your helmet,’ Hesperus urged again. ‘It’s quite safe, and we can talk more easily that way.’
I did as he suggested. The suit would not have allowed me to undo the helmet unless the air was breathable, but his encouragement was reassuring.
‘How long have you been like this?’
‘A while.’
‘Since you put me into abeyance?’
He smiled - he was still capable of that. ‘No, this state of immobility came much later - within the last six hundred years. For a long time I was the way you remember me. Once you were in abeyance, I began to direct my energies into regaining control of the ship. For many years it was all I could do to keep out of reach of the weapons and tracking devices Cascade sent after me. He was wary of touching the ark, though. That was when I began to wonder about the location of the opener. Once my suspicions had been aroused, it was an easy matter to locate it - it took only a few centuries of patient investigation.’
‘It was in there all along, just waiting for me to stumble on it?’
‘It was concealed - hidden inside a camouflaging impasse. Unless you had reason to look more closely, you would have seen only an empty cargo bay. You probably did look in there on more than one occasion in the distant past.’
‘Perhaps,’ I said doubtfully. It was equally likely that my subconscious had kept me away from the ark’s hold, knowing the secret it contained.
‘I tried to sabotage the opener, but quickly learned how well protected it was. Someone had gone to extraordinary lengths of ingenuity and resourcefulness to make it sabotage-proof. Her handiwork was marvellous.’
‘It was me, wasn’t it?’
‘Very likely.’
I cursed myself under my breath. ‘What have you tried?’
‘Everything imaginable. Everything imaginable has failed. As you may have observed, I am attempting to overload the impasse with a concentrated injection of energy. The chances of success are not high. It was simply one more avenue to explore. I have been trying for three hundred and seventy years.’
‘And the ship?’ I asked. ‘Who’s running her now?’
‘Neither of us. After centuries of mere survival, I decided the time had come to attempt to regain control. Cascade was strong, but I was not the simple Machine Person he imagined me to be. Gradually I wore him down - invading his mind, stripping away his intellect layer by layer. Over centuries I reduced him to a machine vegetable, a box of reflexes. I could not have done so without the gifts I inherited from Valmik.’
I looked at the inert white robot on the other side of the room. ‘And now?’
‘I am fighting a mindless entity. But he is not powerless, or without stratagems. Before I began to strip away his faculties, he put in place measures that I cannot rescind. The ship is course-locked - she cannot be turned from her current heading.’
‘Can’t you overcome him, disable those measures?’
‘I have been trying to do exactly that, without success, for hundreds of years. He was cleverer than most, Purslane. He must have anticipated my eventual takeover of his mind.’
‘I could get an energy-pistol, shoot him right now.’
‘It would do no good. The ship would still be course-locked, and I would still have to contend with the rest of him.’
‘How close is the stardam?’
‘We are very near now - less than a light-month away. I expect the opener to function very shortly. You can see the dam, if you wish.’
Without waiting for my answer, Hesperus caused an image to appear on my main displayer. It was garlanded in white and gold threads, but the surface was still unobstructed. A fountainburst of blue-shifted stars bunched aft, with a magnified circle of perfect darkness punched through the middle of them. You could blue-shift the black of a stardam as much as you liked and it would still be black.
‘That’s it?’
‘Realtime imagery,’ Hesperus confirmed.
The black circle, and the space around it, swarmed with red icons. ‘What are those things? Planets?’
‘Ships and defence stations. They’ve been waiting for us. Once our destination and intention became clear, Gentian Line sent a warning ahead of us, signalling the surrounding communities to guard the stardam.’
I felt a twinge of betrayal, while knowing that there was nothing else they could have done.
‘How much warning have they had?’
‘A little over sixty years. Just enough time to coordinate a few nearby systems, and call in any Line-level ships in the neighbourhood. It won’t stop us, Purslane.’
‘How sure of that are you?’
‘Very sure. I know what this ship can do now. I have seen her smash Charlock, Orache and Agrimony’s ships. Later she swatted Galingale aside - his ship carried more and better weapons than any of the others, and still it made no difference. After that there were three ships following us -
Dalliance, Shock Diamond
and
Chromatic Aberration.
Only
Dalliance
is left now. The other ships made attempts to slow us down, but
Silver Wings
picked them off effortlessly. They inflicted only minimal damage, easily repaired. From what I have learned concerning the cordon, the chances of them hurting us - let alone stopping us - are very small. It will be a massacre, and nothing will have changed.’
‘You could be wrong. There could be hidden ships, waiting to emerge from camouflage at the last moment.’
‘There could be, yes.’ Hesperus hesitated. ‘I took a liberty, Purslane - I hope you will not be angry.’
‘After you locked me in a box for three thousand years? Why would I be angry?’
‘I signalled the cordon - I am able to control
Silver Wings
to that extent. I explained our situation - that you and I are innocent hostages, unable to influence the course or velocity of this ship or stop her from responding to hostile overtures. I offered them graphical testimony of what I had already witnessed. I showed them that there is no combination of their forces that stands a chance of stopping us, and that the best they can hope for is massive losses of ships and sentients. I urged them to stand all crewed ships down and rely only on automated attack stations, to minimise losses.’
‘Did they listen?’
‘I have received no response. Nor have I observed any change in their defensive posture. I believe they received my message but chose to ignore it.’
‘You can see why they might. For all they know, they are hearing Cadence or Cascade, trying to talk them out of an attack that might actually work.’
‘I am sorry, Purslane - it was the best I could do.’
‘I could try talking to them.’
‘I do not believe it would make any difference now. Your voice and face could be faked just as easily.’
‘I’d still like to try.’
‘Then speak.’
‘Now?’
‘The sooner they move out of range of
Silver Wings’
weapons, the fewer losses they will sustain. They cannot stop us, but at least we will not have more blood on our hands.’ He smiled encouragingly. ‘Speak, Purslane. Perhaps you can make a difference, where I failed.’
‘I’m not sure where to begin. Usually when I address a civilisation I like to know a bit about it. Like, are they bipeds, do they breathe air, simple stuff like that.’
‘You don’t have that luxury now. The best you can hope for is that these people understand Tongue. They probably do, or they would not have acted on the Gentian warning.’
‘All right, then.’ I coughed to clear my throat again - it was still dry, despite the breakfast. ‘This is Purslane. I am a shatterling of Gentian Line. You’ve already heard from my brothers and sisters, I think. You may already have heard from my friend Hesperus. I want you to know that everything you’ve heard is true. This ship is carrying a single-use opener and it’s aimed at your stardam. If the opener works, we’re all in a lot of trouble - humans, posthumans, every organic sentience in the meta-civilisation. That’s a given. You’re right to try to stop us - if there was a foolproof way of doing it, I’d be encouraging you to go right ahead. But this isn’t a battle you can win. Please believe what Hesperus has already told you - that all you’ll be doing is flinging machines and people against an unstoppable object. If you have some ultimate weapon we don’t know about - ten thousand Line ships about to break out of camouflage and open fire with H-guns - then go ahead and use that weapon. But if you don’t, I beg you to remove all your crewed ships from the immediate vicinity of the stardam.’ I fell silent. Hesperus nodded.
‘That was good, Purslane. You made a very persuasive case.’
‘But they won’t listen, will they?’
‘There is always hope.’
I dragged fingers through my hair, tangled from the helmet. ‘Does any of this matter, anyway? If we reach the stardam, the lives that will be lost trying to stop us will be a total irrelevance compared to the lives that will be lost afterwards, when the First Machines break through.’
‘That is my gravest fear, and the thing I most want to discuss with you.’
‘I thought you wanted me to persuade the cordon to disperse.’
‘The cordon is merely a taste of the worst that could happen. As you say, if the stardam is opened, and the First Machines have hostile ambitions, even the loss of an entire civilisation would be a mere detail.’
‘They’ll have hostile ambitions. Wouldn’t you?’
‘Revenge is for biologicals, as I have already pointed out.’
‘Tell that to Cadence and Cascade. Revenge was pretty high up their agenda, as far as I could tell.’
‘You have a point.’
‘What do you want to say to me, Hesperus?’
‘That I can stop this ship at any time.’ He let that sink in, allowing me a few moments to digest the implications, watching me with those magnificent opal/turquoise eyes until he judged that the moment was right to continue. ‘My control of
Silver Wings
is still imperfect: I cannot steer her or slow her down; I cannot prevent her from opening fire on friendly forces. But I can destroy her, and the opener. I have sufficient control of the white ark to initiate an excursion event in her engine. As we discussed many centuries ago,
Silver Wings
could not contain such an energy release.’