Gridlinked by Neal L. Asher

Author:Neal L. Asher [Asher, Neal L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, Fiction, Epic, !Fantasy, Adventure, Science Fiction
ISBN: 9780330484336
Google: 0tqUPwAACAAJ
Publisher: Pan
Published: 2001-06-15T07:49:29+00:00

'There are fifty-eight people on the Hubris.'

He looked at her in surprise. She went on.

'Four of them are the Sparkind; twenty-two of them are crew; the rest are technicians. That you did not know this is not surprising. After being gridlinked you find there are a lot of questions you forget how to ask. Had you had any normal social interaction, this fact would have become evident.'

'So you're saying I'm not recovered yet.' He found he was having trouble keeping a smug grin off his face.

'Your efficiency does not seem overly impaired…'

He thought back to his conversation with Blegg, and realized what Jane was inferring: it was his humanity that was impaired. She was wrong, he felt - or was she? His avoidance of Chaline might be an aspect of that impairment. It might also be a perfectly human wish to avoid emotional involvement. The point was debatable.

'Should I spend more time in the recreation area? It would be wasted time now that everyone is busy'

'Your course of action is for you to decide. I merely make observations.'

Patronizing doll. He smiled to himself. Now that had been human enough.

The conversation moved on to Dragon and its motivations, while the shuttle moved on to each of the four seeding areas. Jane seemed to have stored all the Dragon/human dialogues. As they spoke, he wondered about that time back on Aster Colora: he had only been gridlinked for five years then, though an agent for many more. How different was he now? Could it be that Jane was confusing his own natural reserve with the aftereffects of being linked for too long? Again he smiled to himself. First contempt for the android, and now doubts about its abilities. He was becoming more human by the second. Soon he would be treating her like any other person, which would be just what she wanted.

When the contrail from the pods had bled away, Jane twisted down on the joystick and the shuttle spiralled down into the lower atmosphere. They dropped through a thick bank of yellow cloud, where flat ice crystals the size of thumbnails hissed against the screen. They came out of this and swooped low over a desolate landscape that could have been described as tundra had it possessed but a little vegetation. The only suitable description to Cormac's mind was 'arctic desert'. Here the ground had a pattern of tidal sands and icy sculptures like frozen waves poised over narrow gullies. In the rear-view screen Cormac saw that their passage was creating a blast cloud of powdery C0 ice. Ahead was a huge 2

mountain with the shape of a giant sandstone butte surrounded by snow-heaped slopes. As they drew close, Jane slowed the shuttle to less than the speed of sound so they could bank round the mountain's icy flanks.

'It was originally M65, but over a twenty-year period seven people died trying to climb it. It is now called Mount Prometheus. Prometheus was chained by Zeus to a mountain, where every day an eagle came to feed on his liver, and where every night his liver was renewed.

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