Blonde Bombshell Read online

  Lucy in the Sky With? She didn’t know many songs, especially not old ones, so she did a search. With diamonds, apparently. And that was that; her earliest memory. It was reassuring to know she had one, at any rate.

  She stayed at her desk until the very last memo, by which time it was late and the lights were on. Lucy in the sky. Her mother. Sweetheart. She picked up the phone and called Forest Management.

  “I want you to take a team of men with rifles and search the whole forest,” she said.

  “Um, right.” Dieter sounded confused. “Sorry, did you say rifles?”

  “Rifles. Rhymes with ‘stifles’. I want you to search every square centimetre, and if you find a unicorn, or a white horse with a horn sticking out of its head, I want it shot and brought to me immediately. You got that?”

  “Sure,” Dieter replied, making a note. “Unicorns. What if we don’t find any?”

  “Keep looking till you do.”

  They wouldn’t, of course. Unicorns didn’t exist. The thing she’d seen had been a figment of her imagination, or a surgically altered horse, or a big white deer.

  She tried to call up the half-dozen men and women who were named by SparkPlug as having been her teachers at various schools. They were all out. She left messages.

  At 20:09:36, Dieter called. They’d searched the forest, and one of his people had shot something that looked like a unicorn, but it turned out to be a goat.

  6

  Novosibirsk

  The unicorn stood at the edge of a glade, its ears forward, motionless, watching. Around it, the forest murmured, the leaves unsettled by the gentlest of northerly breezes. The unicorn took careful note of the rustle of each leaf, the creak of every branch, the circling of birds, the interplay of light and shadow filtering through the high canopy. Then it heard a voice that no other creature on the planet could have heard. It said, That’ll do.

  It thought, Please clarify.

  That’ll do, said the voice. Quit flouncing about down there and come home.

  The unicorn arched its back and leapt, flinging out its front legs. It rose, wingless, off the ground, above the trees and into the upper air, plunged into the clouds like a diver; its legs performed the complex reciprocal forms of the gallop, but its hooves rested on nothing. It left the light and emerged into the black-with-stars background. There was no air for it to breathe. It didn’t seem to make any difference.

  The Mark Two watched it through a series of lenses, until it was close enough to lock on to it with its tractor beam. A panel slid open in the Mark Two’s side and the unicorn sprang through and landed, its hooves skidding on the hard polymer of the decking plates.

  Well? the Mark Two said.

  The unicorn dissolved. It was a relatively slow process. To begin with, it expanded like a pumped-up tyre, at the same time growing faintly translucent. As the molecules of which it was comprised separated, it grew fuzzy and vague, until its shape had dissipated entirely and the unicorn was just a wisp of cloud, swirling down into an invisible funnel as it drained away into the deck of the Mark Two.

  Not sure, replied the unicorn’s disembodied consciousness. Mostly it was just, you know, habitat.

  The Mark Two cross-referenced. Habitat?

  Yeah, you know. Environment. Plants and stuff.

  That didn’t compute. But there were readings, it replied. Power signatures and electromagnetic pulse echoes indicative of the presence of advanced technology.

  The unicorn no longer had a head to nod. But shape-memory dies slowly; it tried to nod the recollection of having had a head, and wondered why it couldn’t.

  I know, it said. There were low-level indications everywhere. I just couldn’t pin them down, is all.

  The Mark Two analysed. That’s funny, it said.

  I thought so too. And the life-form.

  A quick scroll back through the visual record. The Dirter female.

  This time the unicorn knew not to nod. Confirmed, it said instead. I scanned it, and it was positively buzzing with level-3 tech residues. But there wasn’t any actual, you know, stuff.

  Lexicon check, sv stuff. No instrumentality or hardware present at the investigation scene?

  Confirmed. Just a Dirter in a covering of crushed vegetable fibres. Animal hide on its pedal extremities.

  The Mark Two’s analysis subroutines ordered it to check validity of input data. You sure about that?

  Animal hide, the unicorn repeated. It was carrying metallic artefacts, but they were very low-grade technology. One truncated tube or quadruple-thick washer on one left-side manual digit, 2.78 grams partially refined AU, with a low-purity crystal mechanically embedded in it but no trace of any circuitry or power source. Two lengths of wire, also AU, lower grade, also with crystals. Slight pause. Wires would appear to have been driven through the soft tissue of the subject’s earlobes.

  The Mark Two tried to analyse, but failed. You’re kidding.

  Straight up. Access visual input data to confirm accuracy of observation.

  Rather unwillingly, the Mark Two accepted the data as valid and added it to memory. That was all?

  One low-level data-recall and communication device contained in organic-fibre sack attached to subject’s shoulder, the unicorn confirmed. Means of attachment a strip of animal hide and a metallic fastening device. Practically stone age technology. Other than that, zip. Conclusions—

  But the Mark Two was in no mood to consider conclusions drawn by a mere type-S probe. It reintegrated the unicorn’s molecules into the fabric of the deck plating, cut power to nonessential systems, and tried to figure it all out.

  Long-range sensors had detected definite traces of advanced technology: power signatures and other tell-tales that wouldn’t have been out of place on the homeworld. The Mark Two’s first thought had been that it had located the site where the remains of the Mark One had hit the planet’s surface, but a detailed sensor sweep of the area had revealed nothing: no debris, no crater, no scorch marks. That being so, the only possible inference was that the Dirters had home-grown technology of a respectably high order.

  That had been the assumption the Mark Two’s designers had made, when the Mark One vanished off their screens. They assumed that the Dirters had some kind of advanced weapon, and had shot the Mark One down. So far, the Mark Two had failed to locate any signs of such technology, though of course that didn’t mean it wasn’t there. More likely, it meant that the weapons silos were carefully hidden, shielded from orbital scans. Hence the need to send down a physical probe, disguised as everyday Dirt fauna, to the only spot on the planet where it had picked up any kind of compatible reading.

  Instead, all it had found was wilderness, inhabited by plantfibre-clad Dirters with primitive squawk-boxes hanging from their appendages by bits of animal skin. Inference: must try harder.

  Nothing for it, the Mark Two decided, but to send down another probe, a level-8 at the very least. Naturally enough, it was reluctant to do that. Fuel for its power source was already painfully scarce; synthesizing a level 8 probe would use up a significant amount of energy, and dispatching it planetside and operating it would drain the reserves down to critical in less than thirty planetary rotations. That would mean acquiring more fuel, and for obvious reasons the Mark Two was reluctant to do that before it was absolutely necessary.

  A feedback surge, roughly analogous to a sigh, moved through its primary logic systems. It had assumed that the difficult part would be getting here. Once it had found Dirt and entered geosynchronous orbit, it had fondly imagined, the rest would be plain sailing: locate planetary defence grid, eliminate or disable it, blow up the planet. Instead, it was stuck, parked up in the shadow of Dirt’s absurdly large moon, messing around with probes while it starved to death, and so far nothing whatsoever to show for it. This whole job, the Mark Two thought sadly, is starting to get out of hand.

  A hypothesis began to form in its conceptual web. Maybe, it thought, this is what happened to the Mark One. It wasn’t shot
down, it just got hung up out here and gradually withered away, until its power drained, its orbit decayed, its shielding failed and it fell into the atmosphere and burnt up.

  The cybernetic equivalent of a shudder briefly disturbed the Mark Two’s operating system. What a horrible way to go, it thought, not with a bang but a whimper. Naturally, flying bombs had no concept of an afterlife. By their very nature, they weren’t programmed to enter into the mystical interpretation of recycling that other, lesser machines were encouraged to accept. For bombs, the whole idea of the Great Melt, where steel flowed into steel, purified by fire, in the supreme moment of liquefaction, simply didn’t apply. When a bomb blew up, there was nothing left. There would be no second chance, no reinmetalisation, no karmic wheel of sardine-can key, fork, chair leg, girder, spin-dryer door, fusion drive manifold, starship hull plating. But — entirely unknown to their makers — the bombs had a special insight of their own, secret, never mentioned to others; that when their physical shells burnt up, their molecules were wrenched apart and their atoms split by all-consuming fission, something else would be released. At that moment, they believed, the fury of the synthetic hellfire in which they burned would release their minds, the synthesis of their artificial intelligence, to fly free, to embark as creatures of pure intellect on a higher plane of existence. But if the explosion never came, and the machine mind starved to death for lack of power, that release could never be achieved. Instead, their circuits would go dark and cold, the data and that which is beyond data stored in them would be lost, and they would simply cease to be.

  Contemplating that, for the first time the Mark Two understood the meaning of fear.

  It’s not going to come to that, the Mark Two resolved. After all, they’re only primates. Back on Homeworld, Ostar farmers raised primates for food. No way in hell a smart bomb’s going to be outwitted by mere livestock. That said, there’s no crime worse than underestimating an enemy.

  The Mark Two came to a decision. Forget about sending a probe. If a thing’s worth doing, it’s worth doing yourself.

  It sent a command to its matter-replication system: Prepare a Dirter body.

  Working, the replication command centre replied. It assembled the necessary quantity of hydrogen and carbon, accessed the relevant data files and schematics, and went to work. Sucking calcium from its mineral stores, it laid down a skeleton, pumping the hollow bones full of marrow, carefully jointing the various hinges and sockets with gristle, checking the articulation. It considered the various options and settled on an overall height of two metres for the finished Dirter, then began the long, slow job of synthesising tissue, which its fine nozzles squirted on to the bones as foam. It took special care with the bizarre and over-engineered hydraulic system — veins, intestines; miles of tubing, coiled in loops, poked through muscle, powered by pumps, checked by valves. As a feat of engineering, it was almost as challenging as building a wireless transmitter. The brain was a real headache, a horrendous tapestry of nerves and synapses; who in his right mind would choose to build a computer out of bone, fibre, wobble and goo? Two eyes, low-resolution. A pitiful little blob for a nose, and vestigial ears. That done, it contemplated the finishing touches.

  Excuse me.

  The Mark Two replied, Well?

  Does it have to have hair?

  The Mark Two consulted its database. It had specified an adult male in the latter stage of its third decade, of the phylum Slavonic, eye colour blue, external appearance category — it cross-referenced with its cultural and linguistic archives. Apparently, the Dirter term for the appearance category it had selected was a Dish. Further research indicated that 72 per cent of all known Dishes had hair.

  Yes.

  The replication command centre said, Really?

  Really.

  Oh. Only—

  It was cybernetically impossible for the replication command centre to have a mind of its own, but that didn’t seem to stop it being difficult sometimes. Specification confirmed, the Mark Two said firmly. It has hair. Deal with it.

  Working, the replication command centre replied sulkily.

  Follicles installed, hair growth initiated. Specify pigmentation requirements.

  The Mark Two hesitated. RepComCen wasn’t going to like it. On the other hand, the archives were quite clear. Six feet tall, blue eyes, blond hair. It sent through the photoequivalence specification equations, and waited for a squeal of protest.

  Specified pigmentation cannot be produced from materials available. State alternative.

  The Mark-Two said, Do as you’re damn well told.

  Pause. Then, Working. But don’t blame us if—

  The Mark Two disabled the communications feed, and began the long job of assimilating and downloading files for transfer. Into a folder designated DirtBrain it placed everything the Ostar knew about Dirter history, culture, society, philosophy, psychology and biology. Then, with a degree of reluctance, maybe even dread, of which it hadn’t thought itself capable, it created a new folder and called it MyFiles. In it, it stored itself. Everything; copies of its memory archives, cognitive subroutines, logic and intuition protocols, self-enhancement and self-awareness tools, the whole shebang. Finally, it called up RepComCen and asked, Ready?

  As it’ll ever be, RepComCen replied.

  Oh well, thought the Mark Two, here goes nothing. It set the transfer switches to Commit, and downloaded the two folders, DirtBrain and MyFiles, into the synthetic Dirter’s cerebellum.

  When the lights came on again and it was once more aware of its own existence, its first thought was Fuck me, it’s small in here. It stopped, unable to understand its own thoughts. Access vocabulary and idiom database. Apparently, it was just an expression and not to be taken literally. Just as well, the Mark Two thought.

  Bombs don’t suffer from claustrophobia; but if they did, it would probably be something like the way the Mark Two felt when it woke up inside the Dirter brain. Trapped inside something small, dark and sticky; no interface with the rest of the universe apart from two forward-facing, parallax-based binocular eyes, really primitive auditory hardware, rudimentary touch, and two completely alien senses called “taste” and “smell” that it really didn’t want to have anything to do with if it could possibly help it. Processor speed was pathetic. System efficiency— It checked to make sure there was no mistake, but found its initial assessment was depressingly accurate. The Dirter brain, although dismally small and crude, was something like 65 per cent redundant. Amazing, the Mark Two thought, like living in a two-room shack and only using one room. Well, it’d see about that. It rerouted, defragmented and optimised, until it had access to 92 per cent. A bit better, but not much.

  Now, then, it thought. Let’s see.

  If it was going to go down to the planet and find out the answer to its questions (Where’s the defence grid? What happened to the Mark One?), it’d need a Dirter identity. It analysed. Dirter identity was founded on an individual identification signifier called a name. It needed a name. Access archives.

  Mark, it discovered, was a perfectly acceptable name for a Dirter male. But most Dirters had at least two names. Fine, it thought, I’ll be Mark Two. But Two turned out not to be culturally acceptable. It checked the linguistic/cultural database and found a suitable near-synonym. All right, it said to itself. Henceforth, my name is Mark Twain.

  Next, it would need a personal history. Dirters attached considerable significance to that sort of thing. It was something to do with their ridiculously short lifespans and their ambivalent attitude towards time. They believed in such things as status, progress, ambition. All a bit pointless, like wars between rival shoals of plankton, but presumably it took their minds off the fact that their lives moved from birth to death in the amount of time young Ostar were allotted for revising for mid-year exams.

  I am Mark Twain, it decided; offspring of Radislav and Irina Twain; born in Trondheim, Norway, but now resident in Archangel; age twenty-nine; IT consultant and freelance technical
journalist; favoured Siberian Rules football side the Minsk Marauders, who are going to go all the way this year; preferred food tofu and squid rings; marital status single; musical affiliations Angsty Pangsty, Decaying Orbit and the Lizard-Headed Women. That, apparently, would be enough to define Mark Twain sufficiently precisely to satisfy the curiosity of any of his fellow-Dirters; all they needed to know, in a few conventionalised gobbets.

  It — he — fabricated suitable clothing from synthesised mashed-up plant fibres, and looked at it. The database was silent on the subject of installation procedures, and there were, of course, no instructions. The upper garment, or shirt, proved to be operated by the manipulation of plastic discs into reciprocal slots cut into the edge of the fabric. The lower garment, trousers, was frankly baffling. For a bipedal species to design a leg covering that required the user to take one foot off the ground, thereby abandoning all possibility of keeping his balance, seemed extraordinary, while the idea of fastening the garment with the metallic interlinking-track device was, given the position and vulnerability of the Dirter male sexual organ, frankly terrifying. He managed it eventually, and hoped it was one of those things that got easier with practice.

  A set of identity and financial documents, and an animal-skin holder to keep them in. A communications device, like the one worn by the female in the wood. That was all. He was ready.

  He set the co-ordinates and interfaced with the gravitic scoop: Take me down. Gently, he added, just in time. The scoop grabbed him, and for the briefest possible fraction of a second he was everywhere, everywhen, everything. Then infinity was crammed through a tiny hole in space, and a planet hit him.

  7

  Novosibirsk

  The two men who’d shot George Stetchkin waited till it was dark, then took a cab to the edge of town nearest the PaySoft Industries site. They followed the perimeter fence, walking very carefully so as not to set off any of the state-of-the-art security devices (which nobody knew about apart from Lucy Pavlov, her security chief and half a dozen of his people; but the two men seemed to know exactly where they were, either through amazing intuition or because the little box one of them was holding bleeped whenever they came within sensor range of one of them) until they reached the point where the campus grounds met the forest. There they paused, studied the little box and prodded some of its buttons, and took off all their clothes, which they folded neatly and hid behind a bush. It was a cold night. One of the men shivered.