CALCULUS LOGI
Darius Hinks

HEAT RISES FROM the sands like a living thing. It shimmers and rolls over the dunes with a silent menace, bringing tears to my eyes. I blink, and an array of filmy geometric shapes shifts slowly across my retina, the minute mathematical symbols blurring in the salty water. Then I close my eyes for a moment to rest them from the harsh light.
Not that there's much to look at anyway.
Belisarius IV is barren beyond anything I have ever experienced. Not a single river breaks the monotony of the view; not so much as a sapling lifts its leaves above the sweeping dunes. If it weren't for the distant wreck of the Sardanapalus, it would seem a lifeless wasteland, but I know otherwise.
In three and a half seconds the planet's fierce sun will reach its zenith. The heat will become sixty degrees Celsius: a heat so great that the planet's scarce fauna will be forced to burrow and hide to escape the seething furnace. For a short while peace will descend, and only then can our daily race begin.
As my chronograph reaches the end of its countdown, I flex the pistons in my augmented legs, tensing the muscles and stretching the artificial fibres in preparation. 'Envisage a circle of which the centre is nowhere, and the circumference is everywhere,' I murmur, taking comfort from the old catechism as I lower myself into a crouch, 'for that is the Emperor.'
The ticking of my device is audible in the otherwise silent cave, and I sense the anticipation of the others as they ready themselves. Their fear is almost palpable, and I can't help but smile as I consider their pitifully unadorned limbs. Every day they make the attempt, and every day another one dies.
A bead of sweat rolls slowly down the bridge of my nose, and I feel the immense heat beginning to rise through the soles of my boots. 'Now!' I cry, and launch myself into the light. One by one we spring from the darkness of the cave, blinking like newborns as our eyes struggle to adjust to the harsh glare. I race ahead: sprinting lightly over the dunes with the sun sparkling along my dials and cogs, and the pistons in my legs wheezing musically as they power me across the desert.
Behind me trail the other survivors, those faithless flotsam and jetsam who are now my only companions: Amaryllis, Hasan, Rabanus and Valens. Humans of course, but as alien to me as everything else on Belisarius.
I can hear their pained gasps as they struggle to breathe the stifling air and without even turning to look, I can envisage the desperation on their sweating faces as they attempt to find purchase on the shifting sand. The sun will be at its hottest for only seven minutes and forty-two seconds, and they each know that a moment's hesitation could be fatal. Seven forty-two: the numbers are embedded in their thoughts like a prayer.
I sprint like never before, as though I have daemons bearing down on me. The desert becomes an incandescent blur, and the sound of my heart fills my ears. Speed is everything, speed and faith, and as a pleasing pain begins to tighten around my muscles, I wonder absently who will survive the day.
Soon, our goal is in sight: a small fraction of the ruined colossus that was once the Sardanapalus. It straddles the horizon like the carcass of a slaughtered beast, slowly collapsing in on itself under the heat of the midday sun. During the crash, this tiny section, containing the detention cells, split from the rest of the ship and landed close to the rocky outcrop we now call home.
I am the first to arrive at the wreckage, ducking under a blackened support strut and staggering into the relative cool of the shade. Then, four point eight seconds later, the convicts arrive - groaning with relief as they escape from the smouldering sun.
There is a frantic clattering and banging as we begin to scour the debris-strewn rooms.
'Here, servitor,' gasps Valens. 'Quick!'
Servitor. He knows what I really am, and the word grates on me, but I feign indifference and hurry to his side nonetheless.
A cracked pipe is spitting dark viscous liquid onto the sand. 'Is it safe?' he asks, clutching my arm, his tattooed face full of hope.
I stoop down beside the pipe, take a small piece of faded vellum from within my dusty robes and hold it briefly under the trickle of liquid. 'As a rock I shall be, with Him by my side,' I whisper, and press the damp parchment gently to my cracked lips.
For a few seconds I remain silent, my eyes closed as I relish the sensation of the moisture soaking into my dusty mouth.
'Well?' hisses Valens eventually, a note of desperation creeping into his voice.
I open my eyes and calmly meet his fierce gaze. 'Its composition is only seven parts water,' I tell him with a shrug. 'There are three quite noisome contaminants present.'
Valens massages his shaven head, trembling with barely-restrained anger. With a rush of adrenaline I realise that he might strike me. He leans forward until his blistered sweating face is almost touching mine. 'But is it safe?'
'Oh, yes,' I reply with a polite smile, and take a deep gulp.

THE RETURN JOURNEY is always more difficult. Every second wasted during the search for water now hangs heavily around our necks - almost as heavily as the ten litre flasks tied to our heaving chests. My footing remains true, however, and soon the rocks are in sight, along with the safety of the cave.
'Thirty point three eight seconds!' I call over my shoulder, holding up the chronograph. I am ahead of the others by eighteen metres and will soon reach safety. Neither heat nor fear has any hold over me: while the convicts run hunched and clumsy with weakness, I spring smoothly over the sand with my head held high, remaining utterly calm even as the hairs on my face begin to shrivel and burn.
One by one we reach the cave, tumbling desperately down the final dune and flinging ourselves onto the hard rock. I am of course the first, closely followed by Amaryllis - all one and a half metres of her small, wiry form collapsing to the ground with a staccato laugh of relief. Then comes Valens, his eyes rolling wildly as he runs past me into the shadows, and a few seconds later Hasan, his massive silhouette briefly blocking out the light as he careers through the cave's narrow entrance, and then... and then no one.
'Where is Rabanus?' Hasan's deep voice echoes ominously around the cave.
Amaryllis looks up from where she lies, her face suddenly taut with fear. 'How... how long, logi?' she gasps, struggling for breath. I take the chronograph from within my robes, and examine its delicate glyphs. I prolong the moment for two point seven seconds, aware that in the device's radium glow my face must look strange and menacing, then I shake my head nonchalantly. 'Time's up.'
They rush to the mouth of the cave and squint out into the blinding light. At first there is nothing to be seen, but then Rabanus appears, sprinting wildly towards us. Even at this distance I can see the animal terror on his face, the pitiful lack of self-control. Somehow he must have fallen behind, and he is still two minutes and three seconds from the safety of the rocks.
'Look there,' says Amaryllis, pointing a trembling finger at the sand near the cave's entrance, but her words are unnecessary - we can all see the dunes beginning to roll and shift.
With inexplicable relish I realise Rabanus is already dead, and all we can do now is watch.
Amaryllis leans heavily against Hasan. 'Oh, Rabanus,' she groans. 'Poor Rabanus.'
The dunes begin to churn and boil more violently, and from beneath the ground comes a horrendous noise: a tearing, rumbling grinding that fills each of their faces with dread. Hasan turns away, unable to watch, knowing all too well what will happen next.
Then the movement ceases.
We strain forward to watch. Rabanus is now only thirty-two seconds from the cave, and in the deathly quiet I can hear the hoarse barking of his breath as he races towards us.
'Maybe some days the heat lasts longer,' Valens wonders aloud, turning to me, his voice suddenly full of hope. 'Maybe he can still make it?'
Receiving no reply, he looks once more out at the desert to see that Rabanus is now twenty seconds away - his legs pounding the sand like pistons and a relieved grin beginning to spread across his sunburnt face. 'He is going to make it!' cries Valens eagerly.
The desert explodes.
A blinding eruption of sand and air throws me to the ground, and in the din and confusion someone screams horribly. When the air clears, only Hasan is still standing, but from the floor of the cave we all see the same terrible, surreal scene that he does.
Rabanus is hanging twenty-two metres up in the air, his eyes wide with incomprehension as he looks down at us from his strange perch. He's obviously dazed with shock, and his head thrashes violently from side to side as he tries to grasp the terrible reality of what's happening to him.
Then I notice his legs, lying on the desert floor, far below, spraying a powerful torrent of blood across the sun-bleached sand. Rabanus gives a hoarse cry of denial, and strains to free himself, but the blood loss overcomes him and he collapses into a lifeless slump.
The creature holding him in one of its monstrous claws raises him higher, seeming to savour the moment, then it rams the man's ruined torso greedily into one of its many gaping mouths and crashes heavily back down onto the sand. The impact sends out such a huge seismic tremor that fifteen pieces of the cave's roof fall down around me.
The behemoth has returned.

'HE WHO JUDGES me is the Emperor,' I whisper, as I sit alone in the moonlight, 'I shall not judge myself.' The words bring me little comfort however. Emotions do not sit easily with a calculus logi, and the guilt that has recently settled over me stings like an open wound. I nervously finger the nest of wires that snake from under my scalp - twisting and plaiting them as though they are strands of hair. Logarithms and ciphers, interpolation and statistics - these are the emotions of a calculus logi. The dogma of logic and obedience. Certainty is all, certainty and blind faith. So this terrible seed of self-doubt gives me a sense of foreboding I cannot seem to quell.
The sources of my confusion are asleep at my feet, huddled together for warmth and snoring contentedly. As I look down at them, my certainty returns. Of course, I know where my duty lies, and I must be strong. I must protect these criminals, however unworthy they might seem. If the Emperor wishes me to die here, on this barren world then so be it, I will die with pride. Although - my thoughts cloud over once more - would the Emperor really wish to lose one faithful servant in the name of three faithless ones? I shake my head in confusion and look out into the desert to distract myself from such shameful thoughts.
Even in the inky blackness, I can see the monstrous shape of the creature: ever patient, ever hungry, waiting silently on the horizon. Its huge eyes are blind and sealed, but I know that it senses my every move, every subtle odour of my flesh. Should I be foolish enough to step out from the safety of the cave, even for a second, it would pounce. Tearing me limb from limb, as it did those poor souls who never made it to the safety of the cave.
Still, it will not have long to wait. Days, weeks at most before it will have us all. Dehydration, hunger and the constant heat will finally take their toll, and even I will be too slow to survive the daily scavenging runs back to the detention cells. Unless...
I turn to look once more at my companions and notice with a guilty start that Amaryllis has awoken, and is watching me intently. 'You should rest,' I say, with what I hope is a reassuring smile.
She says nothing in reply, but continues to stare up at me from the shadows. The whites of her eyes are just visible in the moonlight, and I have the uncomfortable feeling that she has somehow read my thoughts. 'And what about you, logi? Do you ever sleep? Or did the tech-priests take even that pleasure away from you?'
I frown, despite myself. 'Do you find sleep pleasurable? How can oblivion be a pleasure?'
Amaryllis laughs softly to herself. 'Oh, you'd be surprised at the things I find pleasurable.' She crawls over to sit next to me and arches her eyebrows enigmatically. 'I'm not the nice girl you might think I am.'
My tongue cleaves to the roof of my mouth, so I simply smile awkwardly and nod. Amaryllis fills me with a nameless fear that I cannot explain. The others scare me too, but for reasons, I can at least identify: Valens is clearly insane - a novice Helio Cultist whose sun-worship has frazzled his brain to such an extent that the Ecclesiarchy were forced to lock him up. For all his fierce facial tattoos and piercings he is too much a prisoner of his own mind to be a threat. And Hasan is simply a thug. Although he claims to have once been an Imperial crewman, I somehow doubt it. His brutal slab-like face and colossal frame mark him for what he really is: a belligerent simpleton. But Amaryllis... she is altogether more mysterious. Her faithlessness seems somehow wanton.
Annoyed by the strange power she seems to have over me I attempt to embarrass her. 'I hope you don't mind me asking, but I was wondering-'
'This sounds interesting,' she says with a smirk.
I hesitate, and clear my throat self consciously. 'Well, you may not wish to talk about it... of course...' I wait for her to interrupt again, but she just continues to smile coyly at me. 'Well, it's just... at the time of the crash you must have been in the vicinity of the detention cells... in fact you must have been in one of the detention cells, and I just wondered - please don't think me impertinent - but what crime had you committed?'
She looks blankly at me and says nothing in reply. Her face assumes an expressionless mask that seems, in the half-light, horribly sinister and I have the disturbing feeling I am sitting with an automaton. I suddenly regret my question, and begin to shuffle awkwardly on the cold floor. Then, after a painfully long time, she finally moves. She takes a slender piece of rock from within her coat and begins to drag it along the cave floor - so that its edge sparks slightly in the dark, and an unpleasant scraping sound cuts through the silence.
I cough nervously again. I have noticed her toying with the stone on two previous occasions - it's one of the many things I find inexplicably disturbing about her. As she continues to hone the edge of the rock, I feel suddenly afraid, and look out once more at the behemoth.
She follows my gaze, but only after twelve seconds of awkward silence does she finally speak. 'Strange, isn't it? We can't escape - we may as well have died with all the others during the crash - and yet every day we put so much effort into postponing the inevitable. Silly really. It would be easier just to end it all now.' She flicks a pebble out onto the sand, and watches as the creature shifts its monstrous head in our direction. 'It could all be over so quickly.'
'Don't say such things,' I reply. 'Your substance is not your own, to be cast aside like an empty shell, it is a vessel for the Emperor's grace.' I tap my chest to reinforce the point, and quote from memory: 'The greatest and most precious form He has given us, that we may partake in His divine light!'
Infuriatingly, Amaryllis simply rolls her eyes. 'Oh, yes - the Emperor... how could I forget him?' She shakes her head, and I feel my muscles tensing with anger.
'You should not speak lightly of such things.'
'Calm down, logi, suicide isn't really my style.' Then she smiles coyly. 'Besides, death may not be the only option.'
I narrow my eyes, but say nothing.
'You know what I mean, friend, you've seen it too.'
I shake my head vigorously. Maybe she has read my thoughts. 'It could not be done,' I say, all too aware of what she is referring to. Further out in the desert, beyond the remains of the detention cells, lies the main wreckage of the Sardanapalus. If anyone could reach it, within the allotted time, they would surely find refuge within its huge labyrinthine shell.
Amaryllis leans forward, her small elfin face full of excitement. 'It could be done,' she says, with the moonlight flashing in her eyes. 'We could make it, you and me. We're still fast enough, not like the others, and we wouldn't need to allow time for a return journey - we'd be safe within the ship. The creature could never break through the hull.' She gently touches my hand, and I withdraw it with a start. 'There would be enough water to last for months, and food! Think,' - she pauses to catch her breath - 'the ship must have a signalling device of some kind, some kind of distress beacon. It needn't just be our mausoleum, we could be rescued. Think, logi!'
I shake my head again. These are the very thoughts that have been haunting me. With my implants, and the coolants running through my veins, I have no doubt that I could make it, but it would be I alone who reached the ship: none of the others would survive the attempt, I'm sure of that. If I were to try and reach the main part of the ship it would mean deserting Amaryllis and the others to their fate. Seven forty-two: the numbers are their death sentence, but somehow she refuses to see it. As I watch her, fidgeting with excitement, I feel a sudden rush of pity, and my mind is finally made up: I can't leave these people to die. I must remain until the end, keep them alive as long as possible, and if necessary, perish with them. The decision gives me a warm glow of righteousness.
'No,' I say, raising my chin proudly, 'there is not enough time.' I gesture to the numerous ciphers and clockwork devices that litter my battered copper outfit. 'I have examined every possibility, every differential, every possible equation, and we would not have enough time to reach the Sardanapalus before the sun began to cool.'
I feel sure that my authoritative tone will finally silence the girl, but she simply smiles enigmatically and toys with the sharpened stone. Then, without taking her eyes off me she begins spinning it on the ground. 'Can you only think like an adding machine, Regulus? Can you only see the world as arithmetic?' I say nothing, and she shakes her head, her smile becoming a grimace. 'They threw me in those stinking cells simply because I can see things as they really are. I can see the world from another point of view!' She tosses the rock into the air, and to my amazement it vanishes. An inexplicable feeling of nausea rushes up from my stomach. Then she leans forward until I can feel her warm breath on my face. Fear grips me, and I try to back away, but the cave wall is behind me.
'You cannot account for every variable,' she whispers, and rests her hand gently on my neck. I would be more comfortable with a snake at my throat than this strange woman, and as she slides her hand across my skin, I squirm uncomfortably. I feel suddenly powerless, and unable to move. She reaches under my leather skullcap and I feel her fingers shifting delicately back and forth across my skin. Then, to my dismay, she pulls something from beneath the matted cerebral wires. 'Life is more than an equation,' she says showing me the stone. 'You must learn to trust to chance.'
'Cheap tricks will not save you from that,' I say, gesturing out of the cave and trying to still the tremor in my voice. 'You're nothing but a faithless conjuror!'
'I need no cheap tricks, logi! Trust me,' she hisses, 'you cannot account for every variable, you cannot see every eventuality. If you would just- '
A rustling noise comes from behind us.
We turn to see that Valens has awoken and is watching us in silence.
Even in the dark of the cave I see the blood rush into Amaryllis's cheeks, and I wonder how much the Helio Cultist has heard.
For a few seconds he remains silent, obviously confused by his surroundings, then he sits up with a yawn. 'What are you two gossiping about,' he says, stretching his arms with an audible crack. 'Not me, I hope?'
We both laugh awkwardly.
'Well, no point trying to sleep now, I suppose,' he says, rising to his feet, 'it will soon be light, and my master will rise from his slumber.' I look out through the cave entrance, and sure enough, on the distant horizon, beyond the great mass of the beast, the black of the sky is already changing to a deep, vivid blue. 'Another hour and it will be dawn.'
'Seventy-two minutes and forty-three seconds,' I say.
Amaryllis laughs dryly, but Valens seems suddenly annoyed. He glares at me. 'What would we do without you logi?'
I smile innocently in reply, and Valens moves to the back of the cave, where he lies down on the ground again and begins to moan strangely.
'What is he doing?' Amaryllis whispers, arching her eyebrows.
'It could be some kind of religious rite - maybe he's praying?'
Amaryllis peers through the darkness at the man, obviously amused. She watches as he spreads his limbs into a star shape and grins inanely at the cave's ceiling while continuing to chant. 'He is,' she murmurs, 'utterly insane.'

'YOU TRIPPED ME!' screams Valens, scrambling to his feet and squaring up to Hasan. 'You retarded ape!'
'I did not,' replies Hasan in his deep slow voice.
Amaryllis and I sprint past them both without pausing.
As I run, I turn to see Hasan drawing himself up to his full height of two metres, so that he towers above the priest. 'You fell.'
With an enraged scream, Valens flies at him, and the pair fall - punching and kicking - down the side of a steep dune.
I turn away again, and concentrate on running. With Amaryllis straining to match my speed of twenty-five kilometres an hour, I fly over the dunes. Each day, rather than growing weaker, I seem to be becoming faster, more powerful than before. Adrenaline has replaced blood as my vital fluid, and I wait impatiently each day for noon - and the race - to arrive.
I reach the cave with two point three minutes to spare, and trot calmly onto the safety of the rocks. Amaryllis soon follows, her face flushed with exertion, and her limbs trembling uncontrollably. As she falls to the floor, coughing violently, I look back out across the desert. 'No,' I say, stifling a laugh, 'surely not!'
Out across the dunes, Valens and Hasan are still rolling and tumbling over the sand - laying blow after blow on each other. The sand around the convicts is now red with their blood, and they seem, with only seconds until the creature rises once more, utterly oblivious to their danger, intent only on killing each other. 'Animals,' I mutter under my breath, and shake my head.
Amaryllis rushes to my side. 'Oh, no,' she gasps, 'what have they done?'
We watch in silence as the distant figures wrestle and kick, lost in their rage. Then, with almost comic surprise, they freeze, mid-punch, and remember where they are.
'Too late,' breathes Amaryllis next to me, shaking her head with disbelief. 'They don't have enough time.' She looks at me with her mouth hanging open like a simpleton. 'Do they?'
The ground is already beginning to shift and roll, and I shake my head slowly. The men finally continue their sprint in the direction of the cave, but they have wasted far too much time, and I can see the fear on their faces. Animals, I think, is this worth dying for? They are not utterly without guile though, I notice. In an attempt to confuse the stirring behemoth they take separate paths towards the cave - presumably thinking that this way at least one of them might survive.
Valens is thirty-three seconds from the cave when the creature takes him. At first it seems as though he has fallen into an unseen pit. The ground suddenly disappears from beneath his feet and he simply vanishes from view. Then the pit rises from the ground around him and is revealed as a great gaping maw of impossible size.
'Save us,' breathes Amaryllis as the creature rises up into the sky, lifting its huge mass up from beneath the ground.
'It's incredible,' I murmur, shaking my head in awe.
'Look,' says Amaryllis in a small voice, 'Hasan.'
The usually brutal looking man seems suddenly childlike as the creature slams its massive body back into the ground and speeds in his direction. He staggers to a halt, seeing that the creature is now between him and the cave.
'What is he doing?' hisses Amaryllis, as the man drops dejectedly to the floor.
'Dying,' I reply.

'WE COULD MAKE it,' says Amaryllis, pacing around the cave. 'You've got to trust me, logi. I see things you can't - you can't see every eventuality! You must see beyond the numbers. The universe revolves on an axis of luck and circumstance... not science!'
I look up at her from where I sit. It has been two days, eight hours, fifteen minutes and sixteen seconds since the deaths of Valens and Hasan, and Amaryllis's mouth has not closed once. Her exhortations are becoming more and more hysterical. 'I've told you,' I say, 'I've looked at every possible variable.'
'But you don't know every possible variable!' she cries, with tears of frustration appearing in her eyes. 'Are you a god, that you can foresee the outcome of all things?'
'There is only the God-Emperor.'
'Pah! And what is He? A corpse... at best!'
'He is not this or that, but He is all things, for He is the cause of all.'
Amaryllis clutches her shaven head in her hands, and howls. 'Oh, what did I do to deserve this? Marooned with a... with a sanctimonious abacus!' She sits heavily down on the floor opposite me, and begins to scrape her stone angrily across the ground.
Once again I feel alien emotions stirring within me. As the days wear on, the woman's endless bullying entreaties are fuelling a growing rage in me. Why should I, a loyal servant of the God-Emperor, end my days on this lifeless world, in this pointless vigil - so that a faithless criminal need not die alone? In a few more days, even I will be too weak to make the longer journey - to the main wreck of the Sardanapalus.
Is this what the Emperor would really want? How can I be sure? It can only be days now before I will no longer have any option, but to stay... and die. I vigorously shake my head as though trying to dislodge my shameful thoughts. No, I assure myself, I must not question my duty. I must be true to my training. The forge world of Zopyrus VI seems a distant memory - it has in fact been two centuries, eight months and three and a half days since I knelt before the tech-priests and memorised the sacred tracts of my order - but nevertheless, even here I must remain true to my faith. My role is to protect my fellow humans, and if I deserted this woman now, I would be no better than a heretic. 'It cannot be done,' I say softly.
'Fool!' says Amaryllis through gritted teeth. 'You make me sick.' She slams the stone on the ground angrily. 'It's drones like you who make me ashamed to be human! Not you that you are much of a human anyway!'
Anger rises unbidden in my mind, and I feel my pulse quicken unpleasantly. The woman seems to be capable of stirring utterly useless and unproductive emotions in me.
'How much of you is actually a man? Half, if that? The tech-priests have made a freak of you, Regulus.' She rises to her feet and levels a trembling finger at me. 'You talk of the Emperor, but what are you to Him? Nuts and bolts! A walking box of cogs!'
'My faith is sufficient to ensure His protection, where as you are nothing but a...' - I hesitate before uttering such a potent word - 'heretic!'
'Maybe, but at least I'm a human! What are you? A servitor? A machine? How could the Emperor love that?'
I feel my pulse throbbing angrily in my forehead. Her words cut through me like knives, and my head is beginning to spin with anger. Where have these emotions come from? I have never before lost my temper - has the sun corrupted my thought patterns?
'But worst of all,' she shouts, 'you are a coward!' Then she whirls around and strides to the back of the cave, where she sits down with her back to me.
I find I am sat bolt upright, my fists clenched with anger. She is a worthless traitor. It cannot be right that I should die for such a wretch. It cannot! I could easily reach the Sardanapalus. What do I care that she could not? Like the final part of an equation I feel something in my mind slotting into irreversibly place. Almost without volition, I find I have made a decision.
'Very well,' I say, trying not to let my voice betray my emotions, 'tomorrow we will make the attempt.'
Amaryllis turns to look at me with a shocked expression. Then she grins. 'I knew you had it in you.'

AS I PATIENTLY watch the glyphs on my chronograph, I feel a growing sense of joy. 'Ten seconds,' I say, turning to Amaryllis, who is crouched beside me at the mouth of the cave. She nods, her sun-lit face full of eagerness for the race ahead. 'We take the same route as before, pause for twenty seconds at the remains of the detention cells to catch our breath... then just keep running until we reach the Sardanapalus.'
I flex the pistons in my legs, watching the hydraulic cables as they slide smoothly back and forth. Strange, that such insignificant things should make all the difference between survival - I turn to look at Amaryllis - and death.
'Now,' I cry, and throw myself out into the desert.
I run as before, with a loping easy stride. Dashing comfortably over the shifting sands at twenty kilometres an hour, and hurdling the dunes as though they aren't there, I have no need to push myself. I know to the exact millisecond how long it will take me to reach the Sardanapalus, and even allowing for errors, seven minutes and forty-two seconds will give me plenty of time.
At the sound of Amaryllis's gasping breath, I find it difficult not to laugh. 'Machine,' she called me. What a fool. The Emperor's gifts of augmentation are bestowed on only the most faithful of His servants; but that's something a worthless apostate like her couldn't hope to understand.
I look over my shoulder, and see that for the moment she is keeping up with me, although a combination of the heat and exertion have already coloured her face an unhealthy purple. She grins eagerly back at me, and once more I have to stifle a laugh. I can barely wait to see the expression on her face when she realises that I have been right all along. I hope that before the creature devours her, she will have time to consider the superiority of my ''freak'' brain.
When I reach the detention cells I am barely short of breath, but I nevertheless lean against the twisted metal frame and attempt to lower my heart rate a little. Amaryllis is still four point six seconds away and I look out in the direction of the Sardanapalus. My heart swells as I see that large sections of the hull are still intact - it will be a perfect refuge from the creature. It is even possible that I will find other survivors, hopefully of a more pious sort than my recent companions. I check the chronograph. Twelve point eight seconds and I will need to start the next section of the run.
A hoarse gasping alerts me to the arrival of Amaryllis. She slumps next to me against the cell wall with whimper, and then crouches down on the ground as she tries to catch her breath. Sweat is rushing over her face in torrents. 'How... how are we... doing?'
I smile, relishing the moment. 'No time for a rest, I'm afraid,' I say, tapping the chronograph. 'In three minutes and thirty-two seconds it will be cool enough for the creature to rise. We need to go now.'
I bend down beside her and whisper in her ear: 'In fact, as it would take you three minutes and fifty-eight seconds to reach the wreck, you may as well start preparing yourself for the afterlife now. This will be your last trip.'
Amaryllis looks up at me in alarm, and I feel a thrill of power. I see now how right I was to lead her to her death. I am more than she could ever be - I am more than human... I am calculus logi. As the sun beats down on me, I feel the Emperor's grace flooding through me - mingled in with the blinding light.
Then, strangely, I notice that Amaryllis is smiling.
'I have other plans,' she says, and with surprising speed shoves something towards me. Before I can react, there is an explosion of escaping air and my legs give way. As I crash heavily to the ground I see that her sharpened stone is embedded deeply in my femoral hydraulics.
Amaryllis steps calmly away from me as I thrash around awkwardly on the ground, cursing and spitting. 'Do you see now, friend,' she says, dusting herself down demurely, 'that you cannot account for every variable?' She stoops so that her face is just out of my reach. 'But maybe you would have to be a little more human to truly understand that, Regulus.'
With an inarticulate roar I try to pull myself to my feet, but my shattered limbs won't hold me and one point two seconds later I hit the floor again with a crash. I land heavily on my side, and watch as Amaryllis sprints lightly away across the desert - towards the Sardanapalus.
My mind is blank with animal rage, and at first I fail to grasp what she has done. Then, as my thoughts clear, I realise. Of course: by the time the creature has finished with me, Amaryllis will be safe. She has bought her escape with my life. She has planned this all along. All those days spent sharpening the stone...
My wrath consumes me. I turn my head and glare furiously into the sun - letting the light burn through my eyes, as though the heat can somehow scorch away my fury. As pain blossoms from behind my retina I hear the tech-priests' mournful litany, coming back to haunt me from across the centuries: ''Deception is the corruption of science.''
'No!' I scream as the ground beneath me begins to roll and shift. 'No! No! No!'