The Engineer ReConditioned Part 1

The Engineer Reconditioned.

Neal Asher.

INTRODUCTION.

I am a cla.s.sic overnight success i.e. that particular night was over twenty years long. It has been a struggle up the ladder, missing not a single rung, quite often stepping back down some, and every now and again having someone stand on my fingers. I spent many years in the wilderness of non-publication wondering if I'd made the right choice of vocation while I wrote the inevitable fantasy trilogy (still unpublished), then I was published in the small presses over many years, and finally ... Macmillan.

Too often, we read of someone getting the x-thousands advance on a first book and hearing this lose sight of the fact that it doesn't normally happen that way. There is, unfortunately, a lot of truth in the image of the writer struggling away in his garret then drinking himself to death. Writing is hard, getting work published is hard, and if you want easy money, your best option is to become an estate agent.

It took me five or more years to get my first short story accepted and then that magazine folded before publication. After that slight boost (and it was a boost; someone had actually wanted my work) I managed to get more and more stories published, the occasional novella serialised, and a one-off novella published for a single cash payment. For my short stories my reward was a copy of the magazine and some complimentary letters (mostly). After another five years I was getting the occasional cheque - about enough to pay for a toner cartridge a year - then in the following five years finally gained some notoriety through the publisher, Tanjen. But then they, like so many small press publishers, went to the wall.

Unfortunately, small publishers are really up against it trying to succeed in a world dominated by huge publis.h.i.+ng consortiums. Anthony Barker did not have sufficient spare cash to wine and dine the book buyers for the main book chains, could not afford large print runs, or divide distribution costs over many t.i.tles. Was it a shame for me, though?

Tanjen had already published my novella The Parasite (ill.u.s.trated by Ralph Horsley), The Engineer was getting good reviews and apparently a thousand copies had been taken in America, and Anthony was talking about publis.h.i.+ng a book of mine called Gridlinked, Ah twenty-twenty hindsight. If Tanjen had not gone to the wall when it did, I would not have sent synopsis and sample chapters of Gridlinked to Peter Lavery of Pan Macmillan at precisely the right time. But then again, had Tanjen not published my other books, I would not have had a full-colour SFX review of The Engineer to send along as well. Ifs buts and maybes. Maybe, in infinite parallel universes, I get run over by a bus while taking my third typescript for Tanjen to the Post Office.

Anyway, I feel The Engineer is a collection I have a lot to be thankful for, and one I'll always love because in size and appearance it seemed my first real book. It was a shame that people could no longer obtain it (though I heard of a guy in America gladly paying about $20 for a second-hand version). So here it is, with extra waffle from me and additional stories to tempt the completists.

ABOUT "THE ENGINEER"

Novellas being notoriously difficult to publish, unless in collections like this, The Engineer has been seen nowhere but in the Tanjen edition. In this story you can find some of the roots of the runcible universe portrayed in my Macmillan books. Here you get to see one of the Jain, who made a technology that destroyed them, and other races after them ... maybe. It was utterly natural for humans, on the archaeological evidence, to attribute the technology to the species that used it, rather than see a species used by a technology. They got it wrong, didn't they? I know some readers would like to fit this story into a chronology. Did these events occur before or after Skellor started throwing his weight around? Someone said to me that because the Cable Hogue is referred to in the Gridlinked sequence, the events here must have been just after, because had they been before, more mention would have been made of them. Well, not really. Immortal AI stars.h.i.+ps can exist for a very long time, and covering significant screw-ups is not an unusual governmental technique. Will I answer the question? Some day, in another book or short story, but not here. You see, my future history has not sprung full-grown from my forehead, but is still fermenting behind it.

THE ENGINEER.

PART ONE.

Here dust motes are worthy of note and micro-crystals intensively studied. A fist-sized rock discovered by the deep s.p.a.cer Plumb Line is the subject of lengthy scientific dissertations and now a marker buoy accompanies it on its quarter-completed billion-year journey. The Chasm, deep-s.p.a.ce side of that tongue of stars called the Quarrison Drift, is empty as much of s.p.a.ce is not ...

"It's an egg, and as soon as we get it aboard it'll hatch out and some disgusting alien will eat us all. You mark my words."

Abaron ignored Chapra. She was an aficionado of ancient celluloid and often came out with such ridiculous statements. He continued to observe the read-outs from various scanners and frown in perplexity. Was it something others had missed, or had some joker recently dropped it here?

The sphere was three metres in diameter, completed one revolution every couple of seconds, and sped across the Chasm at approximately one-and-a-half kilometres per second. At that speed it would have taken it five million years to get here from the nearest star system in the Drift - discounting the possibility of someone having dropped it from a s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p yesterday.

"You wait, they'll tell us to twin it with a marker buoy and study it from a distance," said Chapra, gazing at her screen. Abaron snuck a quick glance at her. She wore the appearance of a teenager: long black hair and perfect dark complexion, decorative caste mark at the centre of her forehead, and slim figure in a form-fitting bodysuit. Her cat's eyes and pointy ears were a fas.h.i.+onable look called partial catadapt. The new look. He shook his head, annoyed. What made her do it? She was a hundred years older than he was, and was one of the most reputable xenologists in the sector.

Chapra swung towards him. "What do you think?"

Abaron scratched at his greying beard - not for him the look of youth - then said, "I think, that in the circ.u.mstances we have detailed, they'll let us pick it up."

"Ah, the optimism of youth."

She could have been reading his mind.

"It's probably something new to the Chasm and by picking it up we won't be disturbing any ... long-term studies."

"Stepping on any toes you mean. Ahah, here comes Judd."

Abaron glanced around. Judd was short, black-haired and Asiatic, almost Chinese in appearance had he been human, but he was Golem.

Without preamble the android told them, "You have permission to bring the sphere in."

The s.h.i.+p, Schrodinger's Box, resembled a box only in that it had an inside and an outside. Its shape was that of a grain of barley with the hair still attached and it was a kilometre long. Many scientific minds noted its resemblance to a spermatozoon, and were quick to point out the symbolic significance of this design of s.h.i.+p being at the forefront of human exploration and research. The AI mind that did the designing remained sensibly silent about the whole matter. Some said its reticence was due to an instruction from higher AI minds. Perhaps they were embarra.s.sed.

Closer to and you could see that sensors and the ports for launching probes studded the s.h.i.+p's hull. It was a pure science vessel, on which Polity scientists had to book a place years in advance - coming to the s.h.i.+p, on their turn, by the onboard Skaidon gate, or runcible. The s.h.i.+p was run by AI and crewed by free Golem androids, most of which remained in stasis until needed. The sphere, in comparison to this s.h.i.+p, was a hardly noticeable speck. A drone, which in appearance was no more than a three-fingered metal claw with rocket motors attached, flew out to grab the item and bring it into an isolation chamber. In there, padded clamps clasped it, and the s.h.i.+p's AI discretely sampled molecules from its surface, and pa.s.sively scanned its interior.

"Ninety-eight percent frozen water inside. The rest is carbon compounds and trace elements." Abaron refused to acknowledge Chapra's grin. Touch consoles, screens and holographic displays surrounded them in the central processing room. The specialised AI-linked computers that collated information, from the isolation chamber and from the s.h.i.+p's skin of sensors, worked silently, but there seemed a hum of power in the air.

"Should I be smug, do you think, and point out the obvious?" asked Chapra, spinning around on her swivel chair.

Abaron finally looked at her and snapped, "I wouldn't call what you said a serious scientific prediction."

Chapra pouted at him, which made him even angrier. He thumped his fingers over his touch console, calling up displays of information. He did not turn when Chapra rolled her chair up beside him.

"A hundred years time you might get just as bored," she said. Abaron paused and turned to glare at her, but she was gazing back at the holographic display above her console. "Ah, here," she said, and rolled her chair back across. He quickly followed.

Above the console now hovered a holographic representation of the sphere. Beside it information in the form of graphs, bio' equations, and Standard English scrolled up too fast for Abaron to read. Chapra picked up an interlink transmitter from her side table - the device looked like a polished ball bearing - swept back her hair to expose an interface plug behind her ear, and plugged in.

"Outer sh.e.l.l is a polycarbon fabric, superconductive up to seven hundred degrees Celsius." As she said this, the outer layer melted away to reveal a honeycomb structure. "The inner layer is again of polycarbon, but with interleaved calcite and calcium formations. It would appear to be structural only." She looked at Abaron. "The sh.e.l.l." She grinned.

Abaron ignored her. He watched as the inner sh.e.l.l fled, and tried to tell himself his fearful fascination was scientific curiosity.

"Water," said Chapra. "Loaded with organic impurities the most common of which is this." Using her console she projected a red circle on the sphere's surface, then expanded it to infinity, zooming in on that point to reveal a complex helical structure. It was crystalline at first, but grew to reveal individual atoms. The display spread; the structure filling the entire room and fading beyond it.

"DNA," said Abaron.

"Not quite," Chapra told him. "It's trihelical and has some very complicated protein structures wound in there as well."

Abaron was now too fascinated to be annoyed. He called up information from his console, limiting it to his screen. This just does not happen to me, he thought. Major events always occurred light years from where he happened to be at any one time. Great discoveries were always on the other side of the Polity, Separatist outrages a hundred worlds away.

"d.a.m.n close," he eventually said. "b.l.o.o.d.y d.a.m.ned close."

"To what?" Chapra enquired kindly.

"To the theoretical models." Abaron looked at her sharply, but she had turned away. He watched her banish the large hologram and return the display to the revealed sphere of ice. She sat back, relinquis.h.i.+ng control to the AI again.

"There's an anomaly with the water here," she said. "The nominal temperature of the sphere is fifty Kelvin, which is low enough for the water ices to have become complex ices, yet they have not changed. I would say that certain free proteins in the ice have stabilized it. We need to have a long hard look at that ... Let's cut to the chase now shall we?"

The AI responded by excising the water ices to show the shape at the heart of the sphere. It was a creature: coiled like an embryo, reptilian. There was a tail there, finned, something like a head, strange triangular-section tentacles folded against a long ribbed body, and an arm easily recognisable as such, but ending in a hand with tens of long twiglike fingers. Chapra drew in a sharp breath. Abaron swore.

"It's an egg," he said, a species of dull dread in his voice.

"I think not," said Chapra in an abrupt reversal.

Something close to the creature, held under its long fingers, the AI picked out in bright red then projected to one side and expanded. It was a structure of folded tubes and unidentifiable components. They watched in silence as the AI took it apart, expanding sections, then further dismantling them. Equations blurred past at the bottom of the projection.

"Well?" Abaron eventually asked.

"I expected this to be an artefact, something manufactured. That would go some way to disprove the egg theory." Chapra regarded him. "But, as we are both well aware, when technology reaches a certain level its artefacts are often indistinguishable from life."

"Then it could still be an egg?" he asked, sensing a victory, if a somewhat Pyrrhic one.

"Oh no, the creature is adult. This is probably an escape pod of some kind."

"The creature -" began Abaron, hardly daring to ask.

Chapra finished for him. " - is in stasis."

Abaron licked his lips. He'd come out here to study the few micro-organic motes the Box trawled up. This was his ultimate wet dream: the discovery of an alien life form, possibly sentient, and wholly weird. He didn't know whether to be ecstatic or terrified.

"Do you think we'll be allowed to revive it?" he asked.

"We'll probably be instructed to do so. This is not a question of xenology but one of morality. We have rescued this creature and now we are responsible for its well-being."

"There's a lot of work to do."

"There is. We'll have to reproduce its optimum environment and sources of nourishment, and those are only the first steps. Reviving it without killing is not going to be easy. Then there's communication ... "

"Can we be certain it's sentient?"

"At the moment nothing is certain. But what would an animal be doing in an escape pod?"

"It might just be a disgusting killer," said Abaron, making an awkward attempt at humour.

"Quite," said Chapra. She did not laugh. She waved her hand, and the AI consigned the holographic model back to its memory.

The isolation chamber was fifty metres across, circular, the ceiling and floor flat grey ceramal. There was frost on every surface. Padded clamps, like cupped hands, held the sphere at the precise centre of chamber: two metres from the floor and two metres from the ceiling. Chapra and Abaron, clad in carbon sixty coldsuits, paced around it in the usual point seven-five gees of the s.h.i.+p. To one side squatted a Physical Study and Research robot, telefactored from the s.h.i.+p's AI. The PSR was a nightmare of chrome, gla.s.s, and dull ceramal. There was something insectile about it. It bore the appearance of a giant chrome c.o.c.kroach stood upright. But a c.o.c.kroach never had so many arms and legs. Abaron felt nervous around the thing, even though he had been using such devices all his adult life. It was just the knowledge that in a few seconds it could strip him down to his component organs, muscles, and bones. And if that was not horror enough, it could put him back together again to complete his screaming. He shuddered.

"The cold isn't getting through your suit is it?" asked Chapra.

"No. Are we going to get on with this?"

"Not entirely up to us. This is a command decision."

Abaron felt a dull humming from the floor, then the clamps folded back and abruptly withdrew into the floor, leaving the sphere floating in place.

"Gravplate suspension," observed Chapra. "We'd best get back."

As they got out of the way the PSR moved in and embraced the sphere. It reached in with U-sound cutting appendage then, like a scarabid beetle working its ball of dung, revolved the sphere. With a high-pitched whining the cutter scribed a line around the sphere's circ.u.mference. This complete, it grasped above and below the line with its many limbs, twisted the two hemispheres in opposite directions. At first these screeched like seized bearings, but soon began to move more freely. Then in a fog of ice powder, the PSR separated them from the inner skin Abaron had earlier seen in the computer model, and put them aside. Now the machine cut again, this time following the hexagons in the honeycomb. When it finally reached into the cuts with hundreds of spatulate limbs, and levered them apart, this final outer sh.e.l.l opened off the central ball of ice in four parts, like the petals of a flower. Then after putting these aside the PSR really got to work.

It took the ball of water ice apart, cutting away curiously-shaped ice blocks and stacking them. Abaron wondered if the blocks needed to be such odd shapes or if that was a quirk of this particular PSR. It looked to him as if the sphere could be rea.s.sembled from them and hold together like an interlocking Chinese puzzle. Probably there was a sensible explanation for this, though he was d.a.m.ned if he was going to ask Chapra.

Eventually the PSR exposed the creature, and held it up underneath its scanning heads to confirm what it must next do. Held by the huge machine like that the creature looked terribly vulnerable. Abaron jumped when the robot suddenly started to move again. It reached in with new limbs and, with that high-pitched whining, drove needles as thin as hairs into frozen flesh.

"At last count there were a hundred and fifty variations on the trihelix. We have to catalogue where the samples come from in its gut. Obviously some of them will be from its equivalent of bacteria, E-coli and the like, and other parasites that live on its food." Chapra's voice was entirely a.n.a.lytical.

"We'll get more idea of its environment this way as well," said Abaron.

Chapra turned to regard him and he found it difficult to a.n.a.lyse her expression behind her visor. She pointed at the blocks of ice. "We can't even a.s.sume that it lived in water. That might have been some kind of protective amniote."

"Quite," said Abaron, then impatiently, "Why did we come down here?"

Chapra pointed at the creature. The PSR had now withdrawn.

"Permit me to lecture," she said. "I've studied alien life forms for a hundred years more than you, Abaron, and if there is one thing I've learned, it is that all our superb-technologies are not enough. They can in fact be a hindrance. It is far too easy to wall yourself in with AIs and their information. It's too easy to distance yourself from your subject. That way leads to sterility and a lack of intuition. Look at it, and remember that it is alien and alive, not equations in a computer. Always remember the one unique thing humans bring to the study of alien life: imagination."

Abaron glanced up at the creature, then back at Chapra. "I haven't got time for this. I've a million tests to run." He turned and marched stiff-backed from the chamber.

b.l.o.o.d.y woman and her touchy-feely s.h.i.+te, he thought.

Chapra watched Abaron go then returned her attention to the creature. As she studied it, she heard the lock behind her open, and guessed it was not him returning. She glanced around as in walked someone without a coldsuit, but then Judd had no need of such protection.

"He refuses to learn from you," said the Golem.

"He's stubborn and proud, but he does have a good mind. He'll learn eventually - we all do."

Judd folded his arms and looked up at the alien. "He is a fool and he is frightened."

"Yes, but perhaps you should remember that foolishness and fear are things you can only emulate, Judd."

"Anything I can emulate, I can understand."

"You may be Golem," she replied, "but you're young as well."

"Meaning?"

Chapra smiled. "Your knowledge grows, Judd. It would seem you have made a good start on understanding pride."

There were four tanks arrayed in the room like library shelves: each stretching from ceiling to floor, two metres wide and five metres long. Their gla.s.s walls had a very low refractivity and, because of this, it seemed as if three walls of water stood there. It would have been possible to do this with the field technology, but the contents of the tanks were very precious, and not even the s.h.i.+p AI wanted to risk the incredibly unlikely event of a power failure.

Each tank contained plants consisting of free-floating ma.s.ses of blue spheres bound together with curling threads. Around these swam shoals of small strangely-formed pink shrimp-creatures. There were those with a tail fin, one central row of leg flippers, one hinged arm to pick and feed with. Others were tubes with the flippers and feeding parts inside. And still others were distorted hemispheres of sh.e.l.l with limbs and mouth parts arranged radially underneath. On the floors of these tanks their larger and more heavily-armoured brethren crawled over and occasionally dismembered each other. Abaron walked between the tanks carrying a notescreen. There were dark marks under his eyes and his movements were jerky and slightly out of control.

"It's the temperature. Perhaps it's the temperature," he said to his screen, and put his hand against the gla.s.s. Quickly he s.n.a.t.c.hed it away and shook it. The water in the tanks was as near to boiling point at Earth atmospheric pressure as it was possible to get without it becoming volatile.