“
But why Riss?
”
“
The drone is part of the answer, and the other is one easily within your reach
.”
“
Why can’t you just tell me?
”
“
Because I don’t need to.
”
Sverl stated the words with finality and when I tried getting in contact with him again, he blocked me. Instead, I concentrated on fully exploring my connection into the father-captain’s system. To Trent I said, “I can probably return many of these people to their base human format. Free them from prador pheromone control and thereby free you from that responsibility.”
“What?” he said, gaping at me.
“Physical damage can be reversed or repaired. We are, after all, dealing with some relatively primitive adaptations, grafts and alterations of body chemistry.”
Trent stared at me for a moment, then said, “Like you could reverse or repair what was happening to Isobel?”
“These are not one of Penny Royal’s transformations.”
He nodded, but he looked a bit less beaten now. I continued, “However, as Sverl just pointed out to me, that’s not our main problem. They are fighting even now and not keeping up with the constant interventions they need to keep themselves alive. So we have little time.” I paused. “We need something now.”
“What?”
“I’m thinking about it.”
By now, with the larger part of my mind and my augmentation, I was deep in Sverl’s computer system. I had made a place for myself and was there uploading stencil programs for the design of nano-machines, complex enzymes, adaptogens and the whole human toolbox of physical transformation at the microscopic and sub-microscopic levels. I had also discovered another body of work in there: Bsectil and Bsorol’s combined research. This looked into reversing the damage to them and the second-children caused by being chemically maintained in adolescence for so long. This work wasn’t barred to me, and I soon found stuff in there I could use.
“So how do we get started?” Trent asked.
“Taiken must have equipment here,” I said. “I’ll need to make some initial examinations and assessments.”
“I’ll show you.” Trent stood up, suddenly energized. I followed him as he moved from his sanctum to an annex containing a surgical theatre. As we entered, I caught myself looking round for any sign of Sepia.
“Will this do?” Trent asked.
It would do for examinations and surgery, and equipment was available for assembling bio-molecules and other organic items. It wasn’t the best, but then, according to Sverl, I didn’t need the best right now. I just wished I knew what the hell I was going to do.
“It’ll do until other equipment arrives,” I said, turning away and walking back out into the sanctum.
Just then, the frightened-looking woman came in through one of the doors, dragging a child behind her. After her came Sepia, armed with a stunner and looking like a warrior maid out of some VR fantasy to me.
“Trent,” said Sepia. “We might have a problem.” She backed away from the door, pointing her stunner towards it.
“I’m never a problem,” said a familiar voice.
Riss came through the door, squirming like a snake but a couple of feet above the floor. I noted that she now wore a collar about her neck, heavy ceramic with inset controls. Next, she lowered her ovipositor to the floor and seemed to balance on it while opening her black eye.
“We’re going to Station 101,” said the drone, with a hint of craziness in her voice that I didn’t like. “And you know what that means?”
“What does it mean, Riss?”
“Eggs!” she exclaimed. “I can get eggs!”
After living for a brief time in that snake skin, I now understood perfectly what she meant. And that made me like her crazy tone even less. I felt, just for a moment, as if the madness of Room 101 was already reaching out to us here. Perhaps it was my hormones.
“Oh good,” I said. “And apparently you are part of an answer I require.”
“Just tell me what to do,” said Riss, which was no help at all.
After a brief, embarrassed pause, Trent said, “Perhaps you can start here.”
I turned to see that the frightened woman was standing close to him, one hand possessively on his arm. He was pointing at the child, who could not have made the choice to have his arm removed and replaced by a claw.
“Yes,” I said, “that’s where I’ll start.”
CVORN
Eager to make the most of the new feelings rising within him, Cvorn wanted to reach his females. He watched impatiently as the first door of the water lock revolved into the wall, spilling fluid from the last time it had been used. The door seals in prador ships were never foolproof, because they had no need to be so. Prador could withstand large changes in atmospheric pressure and losses of air or, in this case, water. And they could easily obtain more from ice asteroids or comets. Cvorn peered at the water running into the gratings about his feet in irritation, but considered how the ship systems reclaimed it anyway. Analysing the feeling, in an attempt to divert his mind from other urges surging through his body, he realized he now disliked an inefficiency he had previously ignored. After fitting his aug, his thinking was tighter, more factual, and his awareness of shortfalls like this was growing. When he was done here, he would set his children and the ship’s robots to work to improve this type of thing.
When he was done here . . .
Once inside the water lock, he found the manual environmental controls, then tried to locate them via his aug through the ship’s system. Someone had disconnected them, which was odd—more work for his children and robots. Perhaps the problems with this lock were due to infrequent use—he was only using it because he wanted quick direct access to the pool rather than using the chamber above. Through his aug, he set the door behind him closing. As it grated home, circular hatches opened in the wall by his feet, water immediately gushing in. Cvorn hyperventilated in preparation. As a male prador, he could survive underwater for a long time and probably didn’t need the extra oxygen in his system. But underwater, it was not good if you had to untangle from a female quickly because you were running out of air—that was when the worst injuries occurred.
Next, he tried mentally to locate the automatics for the inner door, but they weren’t in the system either. The water rose quickly and he shivered when it reached his sensitive prongs and coitus clamp.
Damn
. He glanced at the environmental control, reached out with his claw and tapped the temperature up a little way, feeling further irritated when he noted how high the scale could go. This was not only inefficient but dangerous, because if that control was accidentally shifted up to its top sterilizing setting, the females would end up boiled alive in their pool.
The water rose up over his carapace and finally over his visual turret. But before it reached the ceiling of the water lock, an indicator rattled in the fluid to tell him he could open the inner door. He slammed his prosthetic claw against a large impact control on one wall. Such a large, heavy button here to operate the lock was understandable, because any prador here could be in such a state it might end up wrecking something less durable. However, he was finding he enjoyed the newly extended power offered by his aug to control his surroundings mentally. He decided he must do something about that impact control too.
The inner door opened at last into the murk of the mating pool and Cvorn propelled himself out, ready to swim over to the far side. On his previous viewing, he had seen that one of the females had separated herself from the others. The three other females had gathered in the middle around the feeding pillar. He hoped to get past them, and get on with his business before they detected him. However, he hadn’t taken his prosthetic legs and claws into account, for they immediately dragged him down.
He hit the bottom with a heavy crump that the other females would have certainly detected through the floor of the pool. He quickly headed to his left, sticking close to the wall in the hope of circumventing them. He could now just see the feeding pillar and the humped shapes gathered around it. They were all rising up on their legs and he could hear the harsh clatter of their powerful far-reaching mandibles through the water. He could also
taste
their readiness for mating and feel the skittering of their ovipositors against the floor. In fact, if he had just waited a little longer, they would have abandoned the pool for the chamber above, where it would have been much easier to hunt them down.
Soon he saw the isolated female ahead, but she was now moving away from the wall and quickly heading towards her companions. Cvorn swerved to intercept her, coming in from the side, and tried to close a claw on the edge of her carapace. She turned slightly as she fled, and one mandible shot out sideways, clanging against his claw and knocking it away. He’d forgotten that trick. It had, after all, been a long time.
The female now joined her three fellows, who all turned to face him. Cvorn halted and gazed at them, remembering how some of his contemporaries had surgically crippled their females by removing their mandibles. Others had ensured the females had guards affixed over their ovipositors, to prevent them being used as a weapon during mating. Still others had even had their females locked into body cages that prevented any movement at all, making mating a completely risk-free exercise. Cvorn, however, was of the old school. He understood the evolutionary imperative that made females so hostile towards the males that wanted to mate with them. It was because only the strongest, most aggressive and most resilient males should be able to reproduce. But that wasn’t why he preferred his females to be free-ranging. He’d tried confined or crippled females and it just wasn’t the same. Violent sex was much more satisfying.
Cvorn advanced, singling out the one to his left for his attention, then rushed for the gap between that one and the others. The nearest one to his right stabbed out her mandibles but Cvorn intercepted them with his claw, where they hit with a loud thump. Meanwhile, the one on his left shot out her mandibles in turn and tried to get a grip on two of his forelegs—trying to tear them off. Cvorn threw himself sideways to push into the gap, his excitement rising and his coitus clamp clattering against his body. The left female’s grip slid off the metal of his prosthetic legs, failing to tear them away, so firmly were they affixed to his body.
The female on the far right threw herself up over her companions. She folded her body, louse-like, and drove her ovipositor towards his visual turret. He knocked the thing down, but still it punched in at the base of one of his mandibles. The pain was terrible, but only increased his excitement. He axed his claw down into her underside, cracking ribs of carapace there, and she rolled away, issuing a stream of green blood. His target female now tried to turn her back end away from him, but he grabbed the edge of her carapace with his other claw and dragged her back, while slicing his legs down upon the eyes of the adjacent female. She retreated just a little, and he turned his upper shell towards her and rammed her, while still hanging on to his prospective mate. His target went over, onto her back, her legs rowing defensively. On the rebound, he swung round behind his mate and slammed his back end in.
His coitus clamp hit its receiving grooves and lodged firmly as he climbed up onto her back. He now closed his claws on her mandibles, wrapped his legs round her and pulled himself down tightly. She fought him as he heaved mightily, while the other two females, recovering, pounded him with their mandibles to try to dislodge him. The shield-like section of shell protecting the softness of her double vagina tore free, blood spilling into the water all round, the section hinging up on gristle. He jabbed his prongs in and out and in again and in a surge of ecstasy squirted his seed inside—the thumping of mandibles against his shell now going through him like throbs of pleasure. After a long dull and mindless moment, while he was only partially aware of the damage the females were doing to him, he rolled off and quickly moved away. He saw the female closing up that shell section, yellow cement quickly bubbling up to seal it into place. This had once been a necessary precaution, in an ocean full of parasites that would have attacked such a vulnerable spot.
Cvorn headed to the far wall, spying out a series of water-cleaning ports he should be able to use as claw holds to get himself back to the water lock. With his heavy prosthetics he had no chance of swimming up there. He noted blood leaking from his leg sockets, where the prosthetics mated with his natural body. He noted some grooves in his carapace and one or two cracks. He felt battered and his satisfaction with the mating was somewhat marred by its speed. As he reached up to the first cleaner port he remembered, far in the past, feeling the same dissatisfaction at the brevity of his matings. He decided he needed more practice. And, as he climbed, remembered thinking the same back then too.
13
BLITE
The antique space suit was empty. Blite had finally nerved himself to open the visor and peer inside. He found only an internal incrustation like soot. He then moved on to search for Penny Royal elsewhere.
Beyond the central corridor running round the horseshoe of the
Black Rose
, there were numerous branching maintenance tunnels. The entire ship was webbed with them like a worm-eaten fruit. Many of these tunnels were big enough for a man, if he was prepared to crawl in some places. They were for various designs of robot, the majority of which were grub-like things capable of performing many tasks themselves or unloading smaller robots where they could not gain access. Over four days the captain explored all these, occasionally encountering those robots. The things politely retreated and dropped back into their side niches to allow him past.
The schematic of the ship, though detailed, didn’t really give him the feel he wanted. He needed to go in there and see things with his own eyes, touch them, consider the things he might need to do if there were problems. He wanted to
know
his newly configured ship. And, beside that, he felt the need to locate Penny Royal, rather than talk to that apparently empty suit. Or that black diamond manifestation. But, just as when he had searched before their arrival at the Crispin Six supernova blast front, the black AI was nowhere to be found.