Polity Agent

The cylindrical pillar was a mile wide, and vertical rather than slanted like the joists. The inner structure of it, she knew to be almost ligneous. Each hexagonal-in-section cell stood about sixty feet from floor to ceiling, and thus the pillar contained thousands of them. It was for storage space, maybe living areas—that being something to be decided in the distant future—a general-purpose structure placed here prospectively, it being more convenient to do so while the entire segment was under construction. Orlandine brought the Heliotrope down to the base of the pillar, folded out the tips of each half of the ship’s claw, and switched their inner faces to gecko function. She eased the ship forward until the claw’s gecko surfaces bonded to the pillar face, then eased out the head of a plasma cutter from the rear of the claw. Reaching out with the cutter to the full extent of its triple-jointed arm, she began slicing a circle as far as feasible beyond where the claw tips bonded.

Carbon dioxide and water ice immediately sublimed from the pillar face. All around, in kaleidoscopic colour, fluorescence bloomed as complex ice made the transition to water ice and then into vapour. The cutter easily punched through the light sheet-bubble metal—the structural strength here mainly derived from laminated composite beams evenly spaced throughout the pillar’s interior. Eventually she finished cutting the circle, and with a delicate adjustment of the Heliotrope’s, thrusters, she backed the ship away, extracting a fifty-foot disc of metal. Then, swinging the ship around, she reversed it into the gap. Utter darkness now, but she mapped every movement and action precisely in her extended haiman mind functioning through the ship’s sensors. At the last she pressed the disc down against the bottom of the cut, and with a couple of stabs from the plasma torch, at its lowest setting, tacked it back into place. She then eased Heliotrope down to the floor of this hexagonal cell, which, with miles of composite layered below it, did possess a degree of gravity. However, that gravity level was low, so she extended the ship’s gecko feet to stick it into place. Turning on exterior lights—not that she really needed them, just for comfort really, human comfort—she gazed around at her new home.

* * * *

Resembling a burnished cylinder, the telefactor, resting in the wooden doorway, extended one of its numerous arms, and from the tip of this extruded a single tool which very quickly removed all the hinge screws. It then passed the door back to one of its fellows, which proceeded to wrap it in thin transparent monofabric before carrying it over to a stack of objects similarly sealed. Thorn glanced round at the dome that enclosed the entire house.

‘I assume we’ll be leaving the air at least,’ he said sarcastically.

‘But of course, though it is being run through filters right now,’ Jack replied from Thorn’s comlink.

Thorn scratched his beard and peered up at the dome roof, as if he might be able to see all the way beyond it to the AI and know if Jack was winding him up. ‘How do we choose where to draw the line between what is, or is not, considered evidence?’

‘She did not have much to do with anyone else here. I am presently loading all records of other arrivals and departures since her initial arrival—about ten years before Skellor came here. Aelvor’s people are meanwhile taking statements from anyone she came into contact with. Masses of data is being collected, but there’s a formula that forensic AIs apply to such situations which keeps evidential collection to manageable limits for the processing power available.’

Thorn watched the telefactor exit the doorway and rise up to the roof, where it began removing and bagging wooden shingles. It occurred to him now that there were definite advantages to being Sparkind rather than a Polity agent. As one of the elite combat groups, you just turned up on site and someone like Cormac pointed you in the right direction with simple instructions like, ‘Kill them’, or ‘Blow up that’.

‘Do we have anything at all yet?’ he asked.

‘Interesting question: we have a lot, but we don’t know what will be of any use. I have set Aphran to analysing data as it comes in—she has been loading forensic cribs direct from the AI net ever since we found Jane von Hellsdorf. Aphran will be working through the chalet as well.’

The whole building was to be transported to the NEJ, along with much of the soil surrounding it. Thorn considered the way Jack was using Aphran. ‘So Aphran is still useful.’

‘She is.’

‘And so survives. Or are you only finding uses for her while her consciousness remains entangled with yours?’

‘I am in the process of unravelling that particular Gordian problem.’

‘And then?’

‘We shall see.’

Thorn let that slide. ‘Does she have anything yet?’

‘Ask her.’

Thorn hesitated for a moment, then asked, ‘Aphran, do you have anything for me?’