Ambel returned his stare and waited.
Keech said, ‘The sentence pronounced upon you has been executed.’
‘Does this mean you won’t try to kill me?’ Ambel asked.
Keech stared at him expressionlessly. ‘Probably not.’ He turned and left the cabin-deck.
* * * *
One after another, the blanks were now walking away from the gathered Prador towards the heavy-lifter. One of the Warden’s fellow AIs was ruminating over the huge possibilities now, perhaps, opening for such corporations as Cybercorp, and wondering if this had been the sector AI’s purpose in coming to the Prador home world in the form of a Golem - Cybercorp could certainly provide the Prador with more efficient hands than those of the human blanks, and perhaps commence trade in Golem and robot technologies. Another AI was observing that trade in such technologies would give AI a foothold in the Prador Third Kingdom, so that it would not be long until it was absorbed into the Polity. The Warden of Spatterjay acknowledged all this and shifted its attention away from the sector AI Golem and to the interior of the heavy-lifter.
The blanks’ control codes were being switched over to the control of subminds that had been briefly initiated by the sector AI, then downloaded into the blanks’ thrall units, and these minds were moving them into cold-storage lockers on the lifter. As each one went into storage, sampling drones the size of flies took snips from their skin, which were instantly taken for analysis.
Joseph Best, ECS monitor, lost in action . . . Erickson Sewel, medical orderly on the obliterated Hounger Station, lost in action . . . Seben Daes, housewife, disappeared . . . and so the list scrolled on and on, as DNA was matched to ancient records and those records then completed and closed down.
The Warden now pulled further back, to get an overview of yet more heavy-lifters landing and taking off on other Prador worlds, as the thousands of essentially dead were taken away for respectful disposal: a transmigration of the undead - a ghoulish chapter that should have closed the Prador war, though that war had ended long ago, but did not.
The final closing words, the Warden knew, would be written on Spatterjay. And so it continued to watch and send information packages back there - to itself.