Creation Machine (12 page)

‘Hmm. Well, perhaps
he
doesn’t like being contained. Have you thought of that?’

‘It is irrelevant. The entity is a potential threat.’

‘Threat? He’s a cloud of dust!’

For a while the creature said nothing, but just stared glassily at her while she held on to a rising anger. Then its face seemed to change. The blankness went, and she had the impression that it was using – or being used by – a lot more intellect than before. When it spoke its voice sounded different as well – brisker and more controlled, as if a higher level of processing had taken over. ‘The entity is a prisoner of war, and entitled to our protection. It is also illegal and potentially dangerous. It will be contained safely until legal counsel have agreed a route for repatriation.’

‘Dangerous?’

‘Your friend came close to death by radiation – not a good experience – and was then remodelled into a dispersed cloud of artificial intelligence fragments, each one capable of autonomous action and defence. The transition was not immediate. The AI cloud appears to have resisted the takeover. This, too, was presumably traumatic.’

‘You mean he had to fight his way in?’ Fleare grinned. ‘Go Muz!’

‘Quite. However,’ and it made a show of looking at the glass vessel, ‘it – he – has every right to be psychotic. Psychopathic at the very least. And we have every right to be extremely cautious.’

‘Psychotic? Whoa, hold on!’ Fleare faced the creature. ‘You can’t know that, if you can’t talk to him.’

‘No, we can’t. But we can model. We can simulate his personality, and put the simulation through the experience he faced. There is a better than three-quarters chance that he has suffered substantial mental trauma.’ For the first time, the stony face showed an expression – the trace of an apologetic smile. ‘Hence our caution. We have a dispersed, self-replicating entity of unknown mental state and, at the moment, unknown capabilities. In theory such an entity could multiply until it had overwhelmed the universe. There are good practical reasons why it probably wouldn’t, but even so we will not take the risk of just letting it go. Even if it was legal, and at the moment that is far from established.’

Fleare stared at the creature, and then for a long time at the cloud. Then she mouthed ‘I love you’ at it, straightened up, and turned away. ‘Look after him,’ she said. ‘Now I want to go back to my quarters.’

The orderly extended an arm towards the door. She walked past it, and as she did so she saw the animation that had briefly taken over its features fall away. Whatever it was that answered questions had obviously finished with her.

As they passed through the airlocks she took out the card and watched the letters bloom and fade as she brushed her fingers over them.
Can we talk?

Abruptly she turned the card over and used her fingernail to write
NO!
, pressing hard so that the letters remained incised into the surface even after they had disappeared. Then she shoved the card into her pocket. By the time she had reached her room it had crumbled into a fine white dust. Message received, she assumed. She wondered what would happen next.

She didn’t have to wait long to find out. The next morning she was informed that she had been reclassified as ‘legitimate collateral’, whatever that meant, and she was unceremoniously yanked out of her quarters and hustled to a spaceport. Two changes of shuttle later, she was heading across the periphery of the Outer Spin on board a converted cargo clipper belonging to some outfit called the Strecki Brotherhood.

By then she had worked out that ‘legitimate collateral’ meant the Heg’ had sold her on as a suitable prospect for ransom. She briefly tried to persuade herself that her father had nothing to do with it.

It didn’t work very well. It was never going to. There was too much history, too many memories.

Private Estate, Semph Leisure Complex

FLEARE HAD BEEN
five.

The ground car still seemed very big, even though she was now very big herself. She snuggled into the soft padding of the seat, trying to find out how deep she could get. The car was old – Daddy said it had been her great-grandfather’s – and smelled nice, in a grown-up sort of way. She decided that from now on all birthdays would smell like this.

The Feather Palms zipped by. She tried to count them but they were too quick. The car was going quite fast. It swayed a bit, like a bath toy when the only thing moving the water was your breathing. The motion moved her from side to side so that she pressed first against her father and then her mother. Her mother smelled of the perfume from the little pink bottle on her dressing table that Fleare sometimes tried on when her mother was asleep, but not very much of the watery stuff from the bigger bottle under her bed. Her mother thought the bottle was secret, but Fleare had decided it was her job to know everything about her mother so she could make sure she was all right. She knew where all her mother’s bottles and packets were kept.

Daddy smelled of soap and clothes and sweat, as if he was too hot, although the car was quite cool. In the front she could see the rough skin of Fahri’s neck, sticking out of his chauffeur’s uniform, like orange peel only the wrong colour. Although he was very fat, and in Fleare’s experience most fat people smelled quite a lot, Fahri never seemed to smell at all. He hardly even moved. She wondered if he had grown out of the driving seat, like a sort of tree.

She decided to stop thinking about smells. She nudged her father. ‘Where are we going?’

His shoulders rose a bit, as if he was taking one of his deep breaths. The answer was going to be the same as the last five times she’d asked. She got ready to ask her mother instead.

There was a whoosh, and a car overtook them very quickly. Her mother and father looked at each other. Her father closed his mouth. Her mother sat a bit more upright. Fahri’s shoulders moved, and suddenly he was driving with one hand and holding a stubby tube-thing in the other.

This wasn’t fair. It was her birthday treat, even if she didn’t know what it was yet, and she didn’t want anything spoiling it. She tugged at her mother’s sleeve. ‘What’s happening?’

Her mother looked down and made a hushing gesture, but with such a fierce expression that Fleare flinched back and began to cry.

Another car overtook, not so quickly as the first but very close. Fleare sniffled and sat up, trying to see through the windows to find out if it was anyone she knew, but before she had a chance to look her father had shoved her down on to the seat. ‘Get down,’ he hissed, and then, to her mother, ‘Keep the stupid little bitch out of the way.’

The words felt like a slap, but they weren’t as bad as her father’s expression.

She hadn’t seen him look frightened before.

The car swerved and stopped. She felt her mother’s hand on her shoulder. Then there was a soft booming followed by a much louder noise that said
pyock-pyock-pyock-pyock
. She felt a sting on her shoulder and another on her cheek. Her mother said ‘Oh’, but in a voice that didn’t really sound surprised, and the pressure of her hand lifted for a second and then returned, if anything heavier. Something warm splashed Fleare’s neck.

It had gone quiet. Fleare’s shoulder hurt and she felt hot and sleepy. She lifted her head carefully and tried to open her eyes. For a moment she couldn’t, just like when they had stuck shut after she’d had a bad fever. Then they opened.

The inside of the car was splattered red. Fahri’s neck still stuck out of his chauffeur suit, but there was a purple hole in the back of his head and he wasn’t moving. Her father was pulling himself upright. His face was white, and he was breathing very fast.

Fleare felt the hand slip off her shoulder. She turned in time to see her mother slump sideways. The front of her jacket was soaked with red stuff, and her eyes were closed.

Fleare buried her face in her mother’s lap, which felt very still. She could hear her father’s breathing.

The red stuff smelled of salt and rust.

Startlingly, there had been another visit to the same planet. At the beginning of it she thought it was the worst thing her father could possibly have done.

She had yawned pointedly, applying the full weight of her newly fifteen-year-old disdain, and did her best to slump down into her seat. It wasn’t easy; she was sitting on a crude plank, and the g-forces kept trying to tear her out of it. Plus, it was noisy. People kept screaming.

‘Aahhhh! Oh! Oh . . . Is that it?’

‘Nope. Here we go!’

She gripped the guard rail, feeling the flaking paint tickle her hand. The rail shifted a little as she used it to brace herself. She hoped it was meant to.

The wind hissed in her ears, and her stomach did a quick upward kick of protest. She clenched her muscles as the train of little cars wobbled and creaked its way up the rails to the top of yet another ludicrous drop, paused like a senile bird of prey trying to remember what to do, and then hurtled down the slope leaving a trail of wails and curses and a faint smell of vomit and urine. Fleare suspected that some of the smells, and almost all of the creaks, were artificial. The owners of the longest, tallest, fastest and oldest roller-coaster in the Spin wouldn’t leave things like that to chance.

Whatever. There was no way she was going to react. Being her age had its responsibilities. Besides, it was her birthday and the ride had been her idea. It was exceeding her expectations. She stole a glance to her left. Her father’s face was set in the stony expression he wore when living through something unpleasant but temporary. Whereas – she flicked her eyes to the right – Seren looked terrified. For a second Fleare felt a bit guilty about that, but only for a second.

The cars hurtled down the last, near-vertical slope, swooped round a steep banked curve with a grinding screech of rails and braked to a halt by a rustic-looking concrete platform. Fleare noticed that the braking was distinctly quieter and more efficient than the rest of the ride. She waited until her father had helped a bleached-looking Seren out of the car and then followed them, trying hard to make a quick sideways stagger as her legs took up the load appear intentional.

Her father managed a smile, probably out of pure relief. ‘Well, that was something. Huh, darling?’

Fleare was about to reply when she remembered that he wasn’t talking to her. Over the last few months, ‘darling’ had come to mean someone else. So had lots of other terms of endearment. She compressed her lips.

‘It certainly was.’ Seren smiled weakly at Fleare. ‘You’re braver than me. I think I need something to help me get over it. Vik, can we get something to eat?’

It was a quick recovery for someone who looked as shaky as that. Fleare revised her opinion up several notches. Seren was made of tough stuff.

The restaurant was crowded, but that never bothered Fleare’s father. A table appeared, like it always did. Reservations happened to other people. Fleare had only noticed this quite recently, after she had been away to school and had seen other ways of doing things. Even more recently it had occurred to her that every time Viklun Haas didn’t worry about a reservation, someone else must have lost their table. If any arguments resulted, she never saw them. Her father had people to have his arguments for him.

But it was a good table if you didn’t mind the noise of the machine guns.

The restaurant was themed, like everything else in the park. The theme changed sporadically. For the last three years (an unusually long period of stability) it had been Musical Theatre. It had been Musical Theatre two weeks ago, when Viklun Haas had made the booking. It had been Musical Theatre yesterday, when she had signed herself out of school on a three-day birthday pass.

Today it was Prehistoric Battles. Apparently even the name Haas couldn’t do anything about that.

Their table was next to a wide window looking out over a rainy vista of mud that seemed to stretch for several kilometres, although it was probably smaller. It was scarred across by deep grooves and wandering lines of some coiled stuff that Fleare couldn’t identify at first. She blinked down a search and came up with the name ‘barbed wire’, which sounded suitably nasty. Every now and then a voice shouted something inarticulate and a lot of men dressed in mud-coloured clothes would climb out of the nearest groove and start swarming over the ground towards the wire stuff. Similarly dressed men on the other side of the wire would start firing machine guns – she could identify those without blinking. Some of the advancing army would deactivate, falling to the ground in disjointed poses. The rest would retreat quickly to the groove.

Now she came to look, there were a lot of deactivated soldiers on the ground. They looked very realistic.

Food came, a sort of stew served in square metal tins with a handle on one end. A card on the table said they were called mess tins, which seemed about right to Fleare, but the taste was better than she had expected. Her father seemed to agree with her; he had taken a spoonful – spoons were the only utensil – and raised his eyebrows approvingly. ‘So,’ he said, through his mouthful, ‘are you having a good time, Fle?’

‘Sure.’ She felt something more was needed, and added: ‘It’s okay.’

He nodded vigorously, like someone who had been given glowing approval. ‘Good. I’m glad. We’re glad.’ His hand sought Seren’s. She took it, at the same time giving Fleare an unreadable look. ‘It’s good we’ve been able to do this together.’ He paused, and then added: ‘As a family.’

Fleare focused intently on her food. It seemed safer than shouting in protest at the word her father had just used. One corner of her mess tin was actually a bit rusty, a tiny dark brown counterpoint to the light brown stew with its pinkish lumps of meat. She poked at the place with her spoon; it rasped a little over the corroded surface.

She became aware of silence, and looked up. Her father was looking at her with an expression somewhere between pleading and impatience. She raised her eyebrows. ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘have I missed something?’

He took the deep breath that meant she was being tolerated. ‘No, but there is something I want to tell you.’ She saw him squeeze Seren’s hand. ‘We want to tell you. About being a family. Seren and I have decided to sign a contract. A permanent one. We really are going to be a family.’