The Engineer Reconditioned by Neal Asher Read Free Book Online Page A

unfashionable about his appearance. He had short blond hair, a thin non-descript face set as a background for calm green eyes, and wore a ribbed and neatly patched environment suit. He looked ... utilitarian. From years of association Chapra knew that this was because such things as fashion just held no interest for him. His love was for things long dead and buried: ancient ruins and ancient bones, preferably alien ruins and alien bones. He sat now at ease in a deep armchair in a projection that occupied the air over the consoles in the control room. Behind him was a window through which could be seen a barren landscape below a sky half-filled with a red-giant sun. Weird birds drifted in charcoal silhouette.
    "Alex, it's nice to see you," said Chapra as she dropped into her swivel chair. Abaron took a seat in the background.
    "It is nice to see you, Chapra, though I wouldn't recognise you. I take it you got fed up with the grey hair and sagging tits?"
    Chapra grinned at the sound of a sharply indrawn breath behind her. "I did. I find that in this form it is easier for me to get what I want. Appearance is all even in this cosmetic age. What is it, Alex? What's given you priority over half a million other callers?"
    Alexion looked out his window for a moment before returning his attention to Chapra.
    "I was fascinated by your discovery out there, Chapra, and supposing that the escape pod is five million years old I considered that discovery within my remit. I've been watching and paying attention ... picking up on every scrap of information ... The evidence is mostly mythological, philological ... you know as well as I that you can excavate languages and stories as well as ruins — "
    "What's your point, Alex?"
    Alexion looked at her very directly, "Based on the construction of the escape pod — remains of one exactly the same were found in the Csorian time vault — and based on the machine it ... uses — the shape of that machine was etched into the walls of the same vault and no-one knew what it was until now
    — and based on thousands of other fragments of information collated by AI, there is an eighty-three per cent probability that the creature you have there is ... Jain."
    Chapra shivered and heard Abaron curse. She immediately wanted to object; but the Jain died out millions of years ago, they're just dust and legends and racial memories of gods ... Alexion went on, "In the Sarian mythos the Jain were the great sorcerers, the transformers. Their houses were said to be black water-filled boxes built in the equatorial deserts. Their symbol was the triangle. And if that is not enough, the world to which you are heading, has been posited for over a century as likely a Jain home world."
    "Okay, I'm convinced," said Chapra. "But how is this to affect what I am doing here?"
    "The ship AI there, Box, is loading every Jain study, every relevant piece of information. It might help."
    "Is that it?" Chapra was beginning to feel a vague disappointment.
    "They moved suns, Chapra. There are those who theorise that here we are in the backwoods of a civilization that still exists. I guess my message is: for all our sakes, don't fuck up. Ciao." Alexion flickered out of existence.
    Chapra turned to Abaron. "This changes nothing," she said.
    Abaron nodded, but he looked scared again.
    The Jain — this was how both Abaron and Chapra referred to it now, it was better than 'the creature' —
    took the containers from the jetty to its machine. Chapra smiled to herself. Perhaps they might never be able to speak to each other, but they understood each other. When she and Judd had collected them the containers held samples of what the Jain wanted in quantity. One of them contained a sample of only a few atoms inside a small vacuum sphere of glass. The Jain's requirements had stretched from the prosaic to the exotic. It had wanted iron, it had wanted tantalum, and it had wanted a metallic element only theorised until then. Making a few ounces