by Eric Flint
It was a nice feeling, in a way. Or, at least, it would be—if Ed was still alive in a few days, to deal with it.
PART VI:
Inferno
"You will not intervene?"
The Preceptor's response was an elegant tripartite stance, assured-negation coupled with understanding-of-risk. "No, Tura. The Pluthrak is already surpassing my hopes. Let us see by how far."
"If he fails . . ." Tura's own stance was aghast-anticipation. "Hundreds of millions of humans may die, before we could arrive."
"Yes. All beings die. What matters is that they die well, making themselves of use."
Chapter 36
No other intelligent species would ever really understand the Ekhat. That was something the Ekhat knew themselves; and, in the knowing, found further proof of their own destiny. Further indication, rather—the Ekhat, recognizing none of the limits of formal logic, did not recognize the concept of "proof." The universe was in constant flux and opposition. A thing which could only be understood as the unfolding dance of the Ekhat with their surroundings, whose only sureness was the music of reality and the eschatology of the dance itself: the completion of the Ekha, when the very notions of "Ekhat" and "Universe" could no longer be distinguished.
Human scholars, had any such been able to penetrate the murk surrounding all things Ekhat, might have said they were psychopathic dialecticians run amok. Jao scholars would have understood them better, perhaps. The greatest of them might even have come to see the reflection of their creators' mentality in the very bones of Jao cultural patterns. Even human ones, as fragmented and discordant as those were. There was a sense in which the Jao, as they emerged into sentience under Ekhat control, had translated the peculiar Ekhat mentality into social concepts and behavior. Shaping them—twisting them, the Ekhat would have thought—into a form suitable for the creation of an intelligent polity. "To be of use," stripped of its messianic endpoint and the sheer horror of its methods.
But all those terms were human or Jao, and the Ekhat would have recognized none of them. There was much about the Ekhat that was still mysterious even to themselves, much less any alien species they encountered. Even such basic things as where and how they evolved. That they had evolved, no Ekhat doubted. "Evolution" was one of the few concepts that the Ekhat shared—overlapped, it might be better to say—with Jao and humans. But on which of many possible home planets, and in what original form, no Ekhat remembered any longer and True Harmony only claimed to approximate.
None of it mattered, really, not even to True Harmony. However and wherever they had come into existence, all Ekhat agreed on their destiny. The division was simply over the means to that end. The universe would eventually be Ekhat. Not "controlled" by Ekhat—they were not imperialists in the sense that humans or even Jao would understand the term—but would literally be Ekhat. The subject and object of reality no longer distinguishable in a new synthesis.
The Ekhat understood that the eschatology was unfortunate from the viewpoint of augment species. But they cared not at all, any more than Beethoven cared that the paper upon which he penned his music was the remains of a tree's carcass, or that the fuel that lit his endeavors was made possible by the death of animals. What did that count, against the Ninth Symphony or the Hammerklavier?
Nothing. All was subordinate to the music with which the Ekhat were creating a true universe. Rather, the music which was the true universe.
* * *
Rendered very approximately, those were the stray thoughts of the Point as it entered the choreochamber. Seeing the Counterpoint entering from the opposite gate, it set the idle thoughts aside. The view on the huge screen dominating the far wall of the chamber made clear that emergence was near. Time to begin the dance. Concentration and care was needed, lest the sacredness of the moment and the greater moments to follow be marred and rendered ugly.
Point begins, always, so the Point spoke the first words. They would have startled a human, had any been present; and misled them into assuming a concordance of mind.
Let there be light!
As if on cue, the screen brightened. The solar photosphere was emerging through the frame point. A sunspot swam into view, and the Counterpoint's voice rang through the chamber.
Light against darkness! Darkness from the light!
Without opposition, all was meaningless. The Point took its first dancing steps toward the center, gleeful with renewed assurance.
It passed the ranks of the Huilek, assembled on the great floor of the chamber, looming over them like a spidery brontosaurus. To a human, the Huilek would have borne some resemblance to erect four-foot-tall chipmunks, except their fur would have seemed sparse and more like cilia than actual fur. The little creatures who maintained much of the ship's functions were trembling with fear and religious ecstasy. The Dance of the Gods was beginning, and those who survived would penetrate further into the state of grace. Those who did not would have found the state of grace.
It was early yet, but since the initial chord had been so powerful, the Point decided to add punctuation to the melody. It was confident the Counterpoint would follow its lead. Ekhat musical creation was characterized by much in the way of improvisation. A human jazz composer, had any been watching, would have understood he was seeing a jam session. Of course, he would also have thought it was a jam session being played by homicidal maniacs, and would be desperately looking for an elephant gun—but, again, all those concepts were alien to Ekhat, and beneath their notice.
The Point reached out and plucked one of the Huilek. Holding the creature up in two great forehands, it took a few more prancing steps toward the screen. As the sunspot swelled, like some ghastly flower, the Point opened the Huilek to match. Blood and intestines flew everywhere.
All levels of creation the same!
To the Point's pleasure, but not surprise, the Counterpoint immediately echoed. In dance as well as music, plucking its own Huilek from the ranks assembled on that side of the choreochamber, and shredding the creature.
Life out of death, death out of life, so Ekha unfolds!
Point and Counterpoint reached out again, this time plucking a Huilek in each forehand. The four little beings were crushed like grapes, adding their juice to the moment. Ekhat did not recognize the distinctions between "music" and "dance" and "painting." All art was one, and one with reality.
The well-conditioned Huilek began their own ululation. The chant was designed, insofar as the limits of the creatures permitted, to augment the blessedness of the moment. A human might have called it another voice added to the madrigal; assuming, of course, the human could have kept its composure. Ekhat aesthetic notions were radically different from those of humans; even stoic Jao would have been unsettled by the blood and grue now splattered all over the chamber.
But the Huilek did not waver. Not for the first time, the Point was pleased by the creatures. True, the Huilek lacked the sure capability of the Jao and the cleverness of the now-completed Lleix. But, on balance, they were a more suitable leitmotif species. Less fractious; less likely to inject unwanted discordance into the tune.
The Point began the first circuit of the dance. Moving in a slow and stately manner, now, to provide pleasing contrast to the sharp opening chords. Surely, the Counterpoint matched its steps.
The lengthened moment allowed the Point to muse again. It found itself wondering whether the new species soon to be completed might have made a suitable leitmotif. It was difficult to estimate, even had the Ekhat possessed more information than the simple name "Human." Of all the aspects of reality, intelligence—even the limited intelligence of leitmotif species—was the most unpredictable. The Point's thought was not one of complaint. That same unpredictability, of course, accounted for the strength of its chord.
The discordance also, True Harmony argued. But the Point had shifted to Complete Harmony in large part because it found True Harmony too limited. Discordance had its place also.
That remembrance, for a m
oment, brought something very like amusement to the Point. Leitmotif species, it knew, tended to think the Ekhat were "divided" into something they called "factions." They even introduced the bizarre notion of "politics" to the equation.
All nonsense. The superstitions of semi-sentients. All Ekhat were one, united in the unfolding Ekha. Even the Interdict was needed, to add the necessary Limit. But One was meaningless without Many; Unity, empty without Opposition. Thus True and Complete Harmonies maintained their dance, creating the Ekha in the only way creation could occur, with Melody adding its own still further Opposition.
The idle thought bloomed into the music, giving the impetus to sudden action. Daring, true, but the Point thought it would make for a tasty atonalism. Complete Harmony was always more daring than True, even when, for the purposes of the moment, it took True Harmony's methods for its own.
They had come to complete a species without even gauging it for leitmotif, after all. An abrupt and atonal chord should be given its place in the opening melody, even during stately moments of the dance. The Point, passing another rank of Huilek, smeared several of them across the floor with a hindleg. Across the chamber, Counterpoint immediately matched.
The Huilek ululation yammered response. There was something a bit hysterical in the sound, which pleased the Point. Even the dull-minded Huilek could sense that this was to be a great dance.
* * *
"The first one's coming through," came the voice in Kralik's earphones. It was obvious from the tone that Aguilera was doing his best to stay calm, but was having a hard time of it.
So was Kralik, for that matter. Flying through a sun is not, all things considered, the best way to relax. Even leaving out of the equation the fact that a battle was looming that would likely kill all of them.
Kralik studied the screen in front of the tank commander's seat, trying to block everything out of his mind except the image of an Ekhat warship emerging from the frame point. It was . . .
Difficult. The Jao technology that enabled a ship to exist at all inside a star's surface—for a time, at least—also shielded it from the radiation and magnetism. But it couldn't turn the actual visual imagery translated onto the screens into anything less frightening than it was. Nor, although the same Jao technology provided the ship with its own gravity field and thus protected everyone from being crushed by the sun's gravity and the g-forces produced by their travel through the photosphere, could it eliminate the visual effects of that travel upon the human stomach. The former submarine was, in effect, swooping through a solar roller coaster. Rising and falling and veering this way and that depending upon the turbulence of the granular cells and the pilot's skill at using them.
Aille himself was piloting Kralik's vessel, and the young Jao leader was proving once again what a superb pilot he was. But not even a pilot as good as Aille could prevent the ship from being cast about like a woodchip in a maelstrom.
And "maelstrom" was what the ship was traveling through. The photosphere was the outermost layer of the sun except for the chromosphere, and was dominated by granular cells. Ever since Aille's fleet of converted submarines had penetrated the photosphere, the ships had been swept into the vertical circulation of those cells. Normally, spacecraft emerging from a framepoint within a solar photosphere left as rapidly as possible in order to escape those granular cell currents. But there had been no way for Aille's fleet to do so, given that they were trying to lay an ambush for the arriving Ekhat.
Most of them had survived. The Jao and human technicians, working together, had calculated that the converted submarines could withstand the stress of the granular cells. And, indeed, they had. But two of the submarines had gotten trapped at the bottom of the circuit, swept down into the supergranular cells that formed the sun's convection zone. They were gone, and certainly destroyed by now. Jao technology was not magic, after all. Those supergranular cells would carry the ships all the way down to the radiation zone, over a hundred thousand miles below. Nothing material could possibly survive that passage, no matter how well shielded.
Still, twelve ships had survived. And now the Ekhat were coming through. Whether Aille's fleet could survive the encounter with the Ekhat remained to be seen, of course. But at this point, Kralik found the prospect of a battle something of a relief.
He squinted into the screen, trying to spot the emerging enemy warship. He was unable to do so, which was not surprising. The image on his screen was produced by the same computer that provided Aille and Aguilera's view, but the screen itself was of human design and neither as large nor as sophisticated as the holo tank in the submarine's command deck.
"Coming through," Aguilera's voice half-whispered in the ear phones. "Taking shape now. God, that's a big mother."
Kralik could see it now—a faint, still vague outline against the flaring turbulence, visible mainly because it was made of straight lines and nothing else in the sun was. A moment later, he spotted two other outlines taking shape, then another, then two more, then two more again. Then . . .
Nothing. Eight ships, in all, which was what the Jao had guessed would be the most likely size of the Ekhat invasion fleet.
The first of the Ekhat ships was now a solid image in the screen, no longer fuzzy.
"Big mother," indeed. There was no way to gauge size through direct visual examination, since the sun provided nothing in the way of recognizable scaling objects. The swirling granular cells that filled most of the screen could have been mere meters across, for all Kralik could tell, instead of the hundreds of miles they actually were. But the computer provided a scale for him, and . . .
Big mother. At its greatest lateral dimension—call it "wingspan" except the term was silly applied to such a weird-looking contraption—the Ekhat ship was almost three miles across. Granted, most of the ship was empty space contained within the spidery latticework of the peculiarly shaped craft. But even the central pyramid where the Ekhat were located was half a mile wide. The submarine swooping toward it was like a minnow attacking a whale.
Kralik shook his head, dispelling the image forcefully. It wasn't that bad. Say, a catfish attacking a shark. Except this catfish had very sharp teeth, and this shark had very thin skin.
He didn't find the new image all that comforting. Fortunately, his gunner was a man with either less of an imagination or just more in the way of sheer grit.
"We'll chew 'em right up, General. You watch."
Kralik was a little amused at the man's tone of voice. Awkward, it was, as you'd expect from an enlisted man suddenly finding himself with a lieutenant general as his tank commander. On one level, of course, there was something absurd about Kralik's insistence upon personally fighting from one of the improvised turrets. But . . .
Why not?
If they didn't succeed in destroying the Ekhat here—most of their ships, at least—everything else became a moot point. Kralik had decided that his willingness to personally fight in the engagement, in the most dangerous position, would have a good effect upon morale.
Which, it had. Civilian morale, to his surprise, perhaps even more than military. For the first time since the conquest, the human race had living heroes again. And not just human ones. Kralik had watched the relayed images of the rallies and demonstrations himself, and quickly understood what Aille had not. With few exceptions, and those only among diehard members of the Resistance, the human race had taken Aille krinnu ava Pluthrak for their own with all the fervor that Scot highlanders had once embraced Bonnie Prince Charlie.
In the turret, he grimaced, remembering the battle of Culloden and the harrowing of the glens thereafter. That was perhaps not the most auspicious analogy he could have come up with.
The enthusiasm for all things Pluthrak extended to the members of Aille's personal service, human even more than Jao. Ben Stockwell was a canny politician, and he'd seen to it that all the stops were pulled out in the propaganda being broadcast throughout the human communication network. That official network was still very
extensive, even twenty years after the conquest. The Jao on Terra had always been too few to simply suppress human activities and institutions. Much like the English in Africa and India, they'd had to use those existing institutions as the instruments of their imperial control.
Now, the institutions were slipping the leash, although Stockwell was being careful to maintain the formalities of Jao rule. Given Aille's immense personal popularity with humans, that had been easy enough. Even the pirate TV and radio stations that seemed to be springing up all over like mushrooms—on the internet, like wildly infectious bacteria—spoke at least respectfully of Pluthrak.
It was dangerous to do otherwise, in fact, and not because of the Jao. The Resistance in Texas had discovered that, after they began their uprising in Dallas-Fort Worth. Before General Abbott and his troops had even entered the metropolitan area, a full scale civil war was raging. Most of the inhabitants of Dallas-Fort Worth were hostile to the Resistance, because of its past behavior in the area, and given Aille as a rallying point around which to organize, they'd quickly taken up arms against them. "Arms," in fact, not just as a literary expression. The ever-practical Jao had never bothered with the hopeless task of trying to disarm the human population of its hand weapons.
* * *
Kralik had finally been able to speak to Rob Wiley, by then. Through a full comm link, not simply a telephone connection.
"Hammer 'em, Ed," had been Wiley's terse advice. "Frankly, the best favor you could do the Resistance is getting rid of Kenny George and his thugs in Texas."
Kralik had considered the advice, for a moment, as he studied Wiley. The colonel—major general, now—looked not too different than he had the last time Kralik had seen him, after the surrender following New Orleans. Older, of course, but the fact was that Wiley resembled his twenty-year-earlier self a lot more closely than Kralik did.