In Hapshant's service he had been injured by a stub-round. Tending him, surgeons had found a chronically advanced and previously undiagnosed cancer rampant in his abdomen. Had he not been shot, he would have died within weeks. Thanks to the wound, the disease was found, excised and his body repaired with plastic, ceramite and steel prosthetics.
Aemos referred to the whole ordeal as his 'lucky suffering' and still wore the twisted plug of the stub round that had almost taken and certainly saved his life on a chain around his stringy neck.
Aemos?'
He rose stiffly with a whine of bionics and turned to face me, shaking out the floor length green folds of his embroidered robe. His augmetic eyewear dominated his ancient face. He sometimes reminded me of a curious insect with bulbous eyes and narrow, pinched mouth parts.
A codifier of unique design. A series processor, similar in layout to the mind-impulse units used by the hallowed Adeptus Mechanicus to govern the linkage between human brain and god-machine.'
'You've seen such things?' I asked, a little taken aback.
'Once, in my travels. In passing. I do not pretend to have more than a cursory knowledge. I am certain, however, that the Adeptus Mechanicus would be interested in this device. It may be illicit technology or something derived from apparatus stolen from them. Either way, they would impound it.'
'Either way, they're not going to know about it. This is inquisitional evidence.'
Quite so,' he agreed.
There were distracting noises from below us. Tomb custodians and tech-nomagi from the cryogenerator brotherhood milled about in the chamber, supervising the mammoth and, in my opinion, futile operation to save the sleepers of Processional Two-Twelve. The whole tomb seethed with activity, and the awful screams had not yet died down.
I saw how Aemos watched the work with keen interest, making notes to himself on a data-slate strapped to his wrist. At the age of forty-two, he had contracted a meme-virus that altered his brain function for ever, driving him to collect information – any sort of information – whenever he got the chance. He was pathologically compelled to acquire knowledge, a data-addict. That made him an aggravating, easily sidetracked companion, and a perfect savant, as four inquisitors had discovered.
'Cold-bolted steel cylinders/ he mused, looking up at the heat exchangers. 'Is that to provide stress-durability in temperature change, or was it fabrication expedient? Also, what is the range of temperature change, given-'