Polity Agent

After a long pause the erstwhile Separatist replied, her voice sounding distracted as if her attention lay elsewhere. ‘There is a vast amount of informational evidence, and I cannot start on the physical evidence until it is delivered up here. But thus far it seems this world has been visited by suspicious characters in their thousands, including Skellor of course. I’m presently searching for anomalies that demonstrate a deliberate attempt at some kind of concealment. Then I have to eliminate various reasons for such concealment. I’ve eliminated six people so far—the last one was a Separatist woman who came here with an adapted version of an oak tree fungus. She apparently wandered off into the deep forest and has not been seen since. Aelvor informs me that she unfortunately fell into the rock crusher of an agrobot.’

‘How remiss of her,’ commented Thorn.

‘It seems evident Aelvor does not like saboteurs.’

Thorn laughed then asked, ‘What about Jane von Hellsdorf?’

It was Jack who now replied, ‘One would suppose her bright enough not to try her own wares.’

‘I rather assumed someone forced that aug upon her,’ replied Thorn, turning away from the chalet and heading for the exit from the dome.

‘Most certainly. Her Sensic aug was deliberately sabotaged to scramble her brains, and selling such augs herself she would certainly have known enough to run a diagnostic on it before fitting it.’

‘Are we going to get anything out of her?’

‘I may be able to glean something from a full memcord. Aelvor believes he will be able to make one by utilizing her present Sensic augmentation. I propose to allow him to try.’

Thorn stepped outside. The area was crowded now. A large AG vehicle had arrived first, containing all the equipment the Osterland monitor force might need to deal with a major incident. Now a couple of large airvans were also down, and numerous air-cars. Uniformed monitors from the local police force had spread all around, conducting interviews, taking copies from all privately owned recording media. Scar had pulled his dracomen back into the woods at this stage; if their services were not required, they would return to their shuttle and head back to the NEJ.

Thorn studied a group of people gathered by one of the vans. It was not difficult to distinguish the haiman from the others. He faced away from Thorn, so all that could be seen of him was the ribbing of his metallic carapace, and a tongue of metal reaching up behind his head. Thorn strode over towards him. When he reached only a few paces behind Aelvor, the man turned and the same tongue of metal fanned out behind his head, opening out the petals of his sensory cowl. After a moment they closed up again and Aelvor grinned.

‘Agent Thorn, a pleasure to meet you at last.’ He held out his hand.

Aelvor’s black hair was plaited in a queue that ran down over one shoulder. He was bulky but not fat, one of his eyes was green and the other displayed metallic shifting orthogonal patterns. Thorn shook the proffered hand, felt a restrained strength, and noted the extra gleaming metal limbs folded down on either side of the man’s torso.

‘Likewise,’ said Thorn. ‘I could get used to this place you’re making here.’

‘Consider it just a beginning. The human race has spent thousands of years standardizing everything, and the AIs continue in much the same vein. The reasons for that have all been valid, but now we possess the technology to expand individuality and the unique.’

‘More than one way of skinning a cat,’ Thorn observed.

‘What an obscene expression,’ said Aelvor. He glanced about himself rather theatrically. ‘And talking of obscenity: where is she then?’

Thorn supposed Aelvor had asked that question out of simple politeness—the haiman probably knew intimately the name and personal history of everyone within a radius of a hundred miles, and their positions to within a square yard. He pointed to the incident vehicle and led the way across. Shortly the two of them entered the vehicle’s medical centre to stand over von Hellsdorf’s bed. She lay utterly motionless. An autodoc clung to her side with its various tubes and implements penetrating her torso. At the head of the bed one of Jack’s telefactors stood motionless—a large cylinder bristling with multipurpose limbs. Von Hellsdorf’s aug casing hung open, its guts revealed, and the telefactor held numerous micro-optic feeds in place within it.

‘Okay, let’s get to it, shall we?’ said Aelvor. With a shrug he extended his own two additional metal limbs. Thorn noted incredibly complex hands on them consisting of two sets of three opposing fingers, selector discs for multiple optic and s-con interfaces, and a telescoping device that appeared to end in just a very sharp spike, but which he knew to be the presenting head for micro-manipulators—the rear section probably containing thousands of different micro-tools. With ‘hands’ like those Aelvor could probably remove von Hellsdorf’s brain through her ear and reassemble it outside her head.