Read Online Asimov's Science Fiction: April/May 2013 by Penny Publications - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Penny Publications
Ads: Link
Coordinates sat clear in my mind as the
Coin Collector
lurched under fusion drive, dropping lower and decelerating. Even if I wanted to stop this, to go away and never head for those coordinates, I couldn't, for Tank controlled the ship.
The world was mostly black, etched with red veins and red maculae, white at their centers with hot eruptions; smears of grey ash spread equatorially from these. It drew closer and closer, the great ship's engines roaring and the whole vessel shuddering around us.
"Why are we landing?" Harriet asked.
The question was obviously rhetorical.
"Perhaps," she continued, "the bathyspheres are not large enough to convey what needs to be conveyed."
I had never described the Client to her, so was she guessing or did she know? It was true, nevertheless, that if the Client wanted to move itself and its multitude of minions aboard this ship, then the ship had to land. What did this then mean for me?
Soon the horizon was an arc across the whole array of screens before me and we seemed to be coming down on a relatively stable plain before a range of mountains like diseased fangs. Scanning gave me a cave system deep in those mountains, precisely at the location of the coordinates in my mind, while the
Coin Collector
aimed to land to one side of them. I stood up and headed for the door, Harriet as usual close behind me. As I mounted my scooter I sent orders from my artificial body—orders I hoped I could not rescind.
While heading down into the bowels of the ship I turned to Harriet, who was pacing easily at my side. "The air out there isn't breathable."
She flicked her head once. "It doesn't matter—I ceased to need breathable air long ago."
"So you underwent more modifications than I know about?"
"Some," she replied
Lower down, the air in the ship was laced with sulphur and it was hot. It ceased to be breathable for a human being, or any creature that needed oxygen, on the lower level, as we approached a massive open door with a ramp extending from it to the charred ground below. I parked my scooter beside the door, hoping I would be able to return to use it, but doubtful of that, and I began walking down. My artificial lungs had by now ceased to process what they were breathing and my body had gone over to power cells and stored supplies.
"What are they?" Harriet asked.
I peered out across the plain at the four creatures approaching. They looked like manta rays hovering just above the ground as they swept toward us, but upping the magnification of my eyes I could then pick out the blur of insect legs moving underneath them.
"Exo-forms is what we called them," I replied. "The Client is a hive creature and a hive all in one, perpetually conjoined, being born and dying all in one and able to meddle at genetic levels with its parts. It is a natural bio-technician, geneticist, and makes forms like this to interact with environments outside its preferred one. It was a form something like these that acted as a translator."
"So your memories are clearer," Harriet suggested, as we proceeded on down.
I realized they were, and I remembered the terrible anger of the Client when the AIs shut down the project, though the results of that anger were unclear, but for those corpses in the hold, just as were details of the project itself before that, and precisely how it had been closed down. I wondered only then: how could the farcaster have been broken up and taken away if the whole team, including its AIs, had been slaughtered?
The ramp was shaking—perpetual tremors being transmitted from the ground and through it to my feet—but the new rumble was something else. As I stepped off onto a surface of shattered and then heat-fused chunks of obsidian, I turned.
"Here they come," I said, and stepped aside.
The thetics were already a quarter of the way down the ramp, over two hundred of them now. They were all clad in hard shell spacesuits of a combat design that enabled them to move quickly. They came
Coin Collector
lurched under fusion drive, dropping lower and decelerating. Even if I wanted to stop this, to go away and never head for those coordinates, I couldn't, for Tank controlled the ship.
The world was mostly black, etched with red veins and red maculae, white at their centers with hot eruptions; smears of grey ash spread equatorially from these. It drew closer and closer, the great ship's engines roaring and the whole vessel shuddering around us.
"Why are we landing?" Harriet asked.
The question was obviously rhetorical.
"Perhaps," she continued, "the bathyspheres are not large enough to convey what needs to be conveyed."
I had never described the Client to her, so was she guessing or did she know? It was true, nevertheless, that if the Client wanted to move itself and its multitude of minions aboard this ship, then the ship had to land. What did this then mean for me?
Soon the horizon was an arc across the whole array of screens before me and we seemed to be coming down on a relatively stable plain before a range of mountains like diseased fangs. Scanning gave me a cave system deep in those mountains, precisely at the location of the coordinates in my mind, while the
Coin Collector
aimed to land to one side of them. I stood up and headed for the door, Harriet as usual close behind me. As I mounted my scooter I sent orders from my artificial body—orders I hoped I could not rescind.
While heading down into the bowels of the ship I turned to Harriet, who was pacing easily at my side. "The air out there isn't breathable."
She flicked her head once. "It doesn't matter—I ceased to need breathable air long ago."
"So you underwent more modifications than I know about?"
"Some," she replied
Lower down, the air in the ship was laced with sulphur and it was hot. It ceased to be breathable for a human being, or any creature that needed oxygen, on the lower level, as we approached a massive open door with a ramp extending from it to the charred ground below. I parked my scooter beside the door, hoping I would be able to return to use it, but doubtful of that, and I began walking down. My artificial lungs had by now ceased to process what they were breathing and my body had gone over to power cells and stored supplies.
"What are they?" Harriet asked.
I peered out across the plain at the four creatures approaching. They looked like manta rays hovering just above the ground as they swept toward us, but upping the magnification of my eyes I could then pick out the blur of insect legs moving underneath them.
"Exo-forms is what we called them," I replied. "The Client is a hive creature and a hive all in one, perpetually conjoined, being born and dying all in one and able to meddle at genetic levels with its parts. It is a natural bio-technician, geneticist, and makes forms like this to interact with environments outside its preferred one. It was a form something like these that acted as a translator."
"So your memories are clearer," Harriet suggested, as we proceeded on down.
I realized they were, and I remembered the terrible anger of the Client when the AIs shut down the project, though the results of that anger were unclear, but for those corpses in the hold, just as were details of the project itself before that, and precisely how it had been closed down. I wondered only then: how could the farcaster have been broken up and taken away if the whole team, including its AIs, had been slaughtered?
The ramp was shaking—perpetual tremors being transmitted from the ground and through it to my feet—but the new rumble was something else. As I stepped off onto a surface of shattered and then heat-fused chunks of obsidian, I turned.
"Here they come," I said, and stepped aside.
The thetics were already a quarter of the way down the ramp, over two hundred of them now. They were all clad in hard shell spacesuits of a combat design that enabled them to move quickly. They came
Similar Books
