‘A space tug will arrive in thirty hours,’ said the Golem beside him, which was telefactored from the ship’s newly initiated AI: Hourne—named after one of those who had discovered the nature of the object below, just as the world itself was now called Shayden’s Find, and the sun was called Ulriss.

Down below, the single rocky slab was the planet’s only enduring feature, drifting around on the mostly molten surface like a miniature tectonic plate. Huge autodozers were clearing the millions of tonnes of ash built up on its surface over millennia of constant eruptions. A slab like this would not have survived for so long on such a world but for one circumstance: the magma had accumulated and solidified around a large flat object unaffected by the heat. Others had discovered this object and listed it as a purely natural phenomenon. The woman Shayden, and her two male companions, had come here to study it and found that some fragments of its incredibly tough and durable substance had broken away—enough for them to retrieve and study thoroughly. This substance, something like diamond, also bore certain similarities to memcrystal. Shayden—out of curiosity—attached an optic interface to one piece, and the reams of code feeding back through it astounded her. She realized instantly she had discovered something very important. She also realized that her private business did not have the resources to study this discovery as it should be studied. She returned to the nearest Polity world and reported her find. Before the AI on that world was prepared to commit resources, it needed confirmation so Shayden, Ulriss and Hourne returned here with a Polity Golem called Cento, whose presence cost them their lives.

‘Some lifting job down there,’ Blegg observed.

The Golem stepped forwards and pointed to an area of chain-glass before them. An image appeared—doubtless projected by laser from the Golem’s eye. ‘The artefact is shaped so.’ Blegg observed a fat comma. ‘We believe it is the inner part of an original spiral. Where the crystal is actually breaking down is along that flat leading edge, so we project that it was once like this or larger.’ The comma grew like a snail adding shell, winding out and out. Then this activity paused for a moment, before the growth retreated to its original shape. ‘Thermally protected gravmotors are currently being positioned underneath the object here.’ A multitude of dots appeared like a rash all over the comma shape. ‘And we are introducing sheer planes in the underlying rock so the artefact should separate from it upon lifting.’

‘What about structural integrity?’ Blegg asked.

Now a grid appeared over the shape. ‘Ceramal beams attached directly to the object using high temperature resins,’ the Golem explained. ‘That will be done once we have removed all the ash and rock still resting above it.’

Cento, that other Golem who had come here, being one of the two Golem who tore apart the brass killing machine Mr Crane, had kept a souvenir, Mr Crane’s arm, to replace one of his own that the killing machine tore away. But who would have thought that Skellor, who had no real previous connection with Mr Crane, would want to resurrect that deadly machine, and would be prepared to come to a place like this just to find a missing part? Cento survived the encounter; the humans did not. Mr Crane threw Ulriss into a river of magma, the other two were left exposed unsuited on the surface.

But that was it: another coincidental connection. Cento came here at precisely the time Skellor—a man controlling Jain technology—sought him out. Then they moved on: Cento and Skellor to finally die falling onto the same brown dwarf sun. And here, on this same world, awaited an object likely to be a vast repository of information that was now confirmed as being too young to be a product of the Jain, and too old to be something the Csorians made. It must be Atheter—Blegg did not know why he felt so sure, but he did. And it might provide part of the solution to the danger the likes of Skellor represented. The artefact’s importance necessitated building a ship large enough to house it: it was too valuable to keep in one place where it could become a target.

Blegg turned away from the blister and walked over to the edge of the platform. Launching himself from it, he felt the weakening tug of the gravplates as he sailed towards the inner hull. Landing right below a structural beam, he absorbed momentum with his legs, caught hold of the underside of the beam and shoved himself down to the airlock at which the shuttle was docked. No path yet led from this side to the same airlock as it was one yet to be put into service. Catching one of the grip bars beside the door, he was about to palm the lock plate but realized the inner door was already opening. He hauled himself over to the door, then inside.

‘You’re an avatar, Blegg,’ so Cormac once told him.

Blegg snorted in dismissal of the thought as the airlock filled with air, and he turned off the shimmer-shield over his face. He next pulled off his hotsuit’s helmet and shut off the air supply in the neck ring. He could transport himself over short distances, alter his body to survive in extreme environments, but in reality he was less rugged than most adapted humans, and certainly nowhere near as efficient as the Golem avatar of the Hourne AI to whom he had just spoken. Why would Earth Central have bothered to create so fragile a representative?

The inner door opened and Blegg pulled himself through into the cockpit of the small slug-shaped craft, then down into the pilot’s seat, and strapped himself in. He disengaged the airlock and docking clamps, and the shuttle fell away from the ship, turning its flat underside down to face the planet. Taking up the simple joystick, he took control of the descent.

Of course Cormac’s theory was more plausible than Blegg’s own. He might well be a creation of the Earth Central AI and utterly unaware of that fact: a submind brought out of storage when required, with his memories adjusted or augmented to account for any missing time. His body might have been recreated many times. Sometimes it might even be just a projection—how would he know? This was not the first time he considered this possibility, and as always he rejected it. The idea simply withered under the load of his centuries and of all the things he had seen and understood.

Hiroshi pushed his foot against the floating corpse of a woman and shoved it further out. A whole mass of corpses broke away from the bank and began to drift slowly downstream. The sky was dark now and everywhere he looked its blackness sandwiched hellish fires against the ground. He drank his fill of muddy water and bathed his swollen face, then, hanging the shoes around his neck by their laces, pushed himself out into the turbid current. When he finally climbed out from the other side, it was raining big heavy droplets of filthy water that stained like sump oil.

How did I get to the river?

He looked back across to the firestorm raging in the area where his school was located. The fire would have burned him up, so he had stepped away from it, into that other place, then back out by the river—his intended destination.

Or am I mad?

When he finally reached his home street, he found it difficult to decide which part of the rubble mound had once been his house. He identified it only on recognizing Mr Hidachi standing in the street outside what had been his own house next door.

‘Details are being investigated,’ the man said. And, to Hiroshi’s query concerning his own family, repeated, ‘Details are being investigated.’

As he dug, Hiroshi found the head, neck and right arm of his mother, while the incinerated body of his father was only identifiable by his shoes. Something in Hiroshi’s head just shut down then as he crouched amid the ruination. That night came and went, and in the morning thirst drove him back down to the river. Upon his return he thought he smelt grilled squid and his mouth watered, but following his nose only led him to a pile of corpses — most of them human, but occasionally dogs, cats and birds and a single cow swollen up like a balloon. Back in the rubble pile he made a nest for himself and chewed through a handful of dried rice. On his subsequent return to the river he found a floating bottle—the water he brought back from the river made eating the dried rice so much easier. As another night passed mother and father began to smell, so Hiroshi wrapped the rice in a cloth, took up the water bottle, and began to walk. He saw bewilderment all around him, and plainly written on the faces of soldiers clambering down from an armoured car when they saw the raggedy people coming out of the wreckage towards them. He heard the word ‘hibakusha’ for the first time being directed at himself. He was now an ‘explosion affected person’ for no ‘survivors’ must besmirch the memory of the honoured dead.