The Ascendant Stars - Michael Cobley [178]
‘Talavera has firewalled off the Great Hub’s auxiliary and backup systems for her own use and set up an ops room at the base of sub-tower three … ’ Another image, a schematic of the Hub station and the numbering of its data towers. ‘The virtual domain maintained here contains billions of Hegemony AIs and the administrating coterie has given no indication that they know what is going on. I have inserted the pair of you into an unmonitored peripheral tract since I was unable to reach Talavera’s ops unobserved.
‘You are also near the base of a group of control systems stacked in order of importance. This domain is like the Hegemony itself – it is extremely hierarchic. Access to the auxiliary and backup dataflows is right at the top. Make the ascent without delay since that is the best area from which to mount an assault on Talavera’s data wall. The last update I received from the Garden of the Machines indicated that the Godhead was continuing its climb up the tiers rather than pausing to savour its victory.’ The shouts were getting closer, louder. ‘My time has run out. When next you see the Construct tell it that I was happy to serve.’
The image vanished and was replaced by an archaic advert for soap. Julia and Harry stared at each other.
‘Don’t you think it’s odd that the Construct makes copies of itself?’ Julia said.
‘It makes copies of everything, apparently,’ Harry said. ‘By the way, do you like what I’ve done with the place? A little rain always gives the scene that extra sheen of noir … ’
‘And this?’ Julia said, holding up the compact revolver by her finger and thumb.
‘Now that’s a Smith & Wesson Chief 38 Special, a classic product of mid-twentieth-century gunsmithing.’ He smiled. ‘Yes, it will fire little bolts of code destabiliser. Comes in handy. Now I do believe it’s time we were on our way.’ He held up one hand to stare at his palm. A flickering glow lit up his face. ‘I’ll just raise the upper perception boundary … ’
Suddenly there was light coming from above, a pale radiance that had no effect on Harry’s street-corner shadows. She looked up and saw an immense column like a U-shaped conduit looming overhead, its outer surface a midnight blue while from within a rich amber-yellow glow shone.
‘There are levels inside all the way up,’ Harry murmured. ‘With more complexity the higher it goes.’
And there were others. At the top the U-conduit spread out, funnel-like, with clusters of faintly pulsing cables curving between it and its identical neighbours.
‘I made sure your exter was fitted with the same orgs as before,’ Harry said. ‘That includes the mirager, so we should be adequately disguised as we ascend.’ Smiling, he raised a hand, pointing with a forefinger whose tip was a twinkly glow.
‘Upload grappler?’ she said.
‘Very same,’ he said, holding out his other hand.
The moment she took it they were off. Everything fell away in a multi-angled hurtling rush that went from black-blue-grey to blue-orange-yellow.
And stopped with jarring suddenness. Their miragers immediately went to work, swathing them in faint purplish meshes. Julia quickly surveyed their surroundings, a wide platform clearly within the U-conduit column, its expanse broken into three stepped levels and scored by numerous gleaming channels. There didn’t seem to be any other entities about. Plain cubes and cylinders in soft opaque blues and greens made up a few simpler modular structures while the familiar polychromatic cord of a dataflow wound among them, branching out filaments, before curving upwards to the next level. Harry looked up and nodded.
‘Okay, the miragers have got us looking like self-dispatching mid-priority updates. Ready for the next stage?’
Hand in hand they leaped away and up, a cascade of blurs, a sequence of intertialess direction changes, a flurry of fleeting impressions flashing and flickering.
And stopped.
The modules here had more variety, hexagonal and octagonal cross-sections, and more complex polyhedrals combined in larger, more elaborate structures. This was a reflection of the Hub systems