by Alex Oliver
Felix stood close to Nori, wearing a ridiculous sensor net on his head that was plugged via a relay into the back of Nori's neck. Aurora would have found the sight creepy a year ago, but then, a year ago she would probably have been taken aback by the clear affection between the two men, and especially by the reassuring hand Felix had lain on Nori's lower back. A lot had changed in a year, and though she'd lost a lot of what she'd gained, this sense that love was always to be praised, no matter what its form, was not something she'd want to do without again.
“Are we good to let them land?”
Felix was crying now, quietly, turning his face away so Aurora wouldn't see it. Nori squeezed his hand, looking oddly guilty but clear eyed as he nodded to Aurora. “I think we should try it.”
That would give her something to watch so she wouldn't intrude on this couple's privacy. “Okay,” she said, “Bring the first one down on the plain outside. And if nothing goes lethal, direct the rest to the launchers so they can be racked.”
The descending ship was already visible by the time she got outside. A star falling through the chilly brightness of the winter sky, then a needle aimed at her eye. She sat on the knoll outside the city entrance and watched the needle turn into a sky-scraper-sized ship of a class she didn't recognize. Something flashy, high tech, and surprisingly weaponless. More people like Nori, like Bryant, who would understand the computers under their feet, but would not respect her crew's desire to live simple lives, unmodified, or to pray and to work with their hands.
The thought of trying to arbitrate between the two camps made her hope for a moment that they hadn't succeeded – that touchdown would come with a boiling cloud of death and all the decisions would be over.
The great ship settled quietly into the grass, the earth groaning beneath it. A cloud steamed off it, tell-tale gray-green in colour. Aurora had time to think Oh Shit before there was a wave of light like deep-sea luminescence across the whole cloud, and it fell gently to the ground in piles of familiar dust. Somewhere in the city, Nori was probably punching the air.
“Good work, guys,” Aurora told them over her comm. “So what does this mean, long term?”
“Nori says that now our pontoth has established a link to the InfiniTech batch, we should be able to gain control even of remote samples. That means Bryant can slow the spread to match the spread of our own. We still can't entirely halt it. Nori's working on the antigen now, but he's encountering some resistance.”
“What kind of resistance?”
“Um…” Felix huffed in something like amusement, or despair. “The planet knows what we're trying to do – that we're trying to use its computing power to figure out a way to stop it from doing what it wants? It's not cooperating, and if we try to force it, it may decide we're too much trouble after all, and lift the amnesty it made with Bryant.”
Who'd have thought the nerds would be so close to the sharp point of life or death? Aurora spared them an affectionate thought, but decided this was not her arena. “Well, do your best,” she said, watching the hatches on the newly arrived ship cycle and the landing ramps extrude. “I'll send you down any InfiniTech computer geniuses that might have just arrived. And Felix? Send the chlorophyll nanotech design to the infirmary to be duplicated. If these people haven't brought food with them, we're going to need a lot more injections soon.”
The leader of the InfiniTech Utopia refugees swayed down the landing ramp on tall spiked heels. He was seven feet tall without the shoes, and extraordinarily thin, white as a snowflake and with hair like spun silver. Aurora had to look at her wrists and remind herself that she was green now before she could persuade herself that this person was also human. Then she strode across the gap between them and reached up to stop him from taking a deadly step onto the planet itself. There were – judging from the size of the ship – three or four thousand people with him, and more on the way. If he thought he ought to be in charge instead of her, this could get messy.
“They shot at us!” he said, clutching a data-disc to his chest, and looking at her with an expression of betrayal she remembered feeling herself. “Our government, when we went for help – shot at us! You are the only one to take us in. We owe you our lives.”
Aurora smiled. She could work with that.
The sun was setting by the time she had all the newcomers inoculated with local pontoth and assigned to huts in the city. They had been briefed on the colony's new rules and political system by Bousaid, then set to work to organize themselves by profession, so they could report their skills to Felix for his resource spreadsheet in the morning. Aurora had made sure everyone knew what to do tomorrow and was taking advantage of a brief break to stand in the sunshine with her shirt off, soaking up the feeling of wellbeing that came with food.
The two spaceships looked weird to her now, standing un-camouflaged outside the city. She wasn't sure she liked their metallic lines, or the way they cluttered the view of the distant mountains. There were empty cities underground here, and over the past months she'd obviously got used to the thought that the surface should be pristine, untouched. She'd been given stewardship of it, and that meant treating it like her own child, letting it be itself and loving it for it.
And speaking of children…
When she had basked enough, she redressed and walked over to the Red Cat. She stood at the base of the entry platform, waiting for the computer or whatever officer inside to inform Xan Hu she wanted to see them. They were efficient – she'd barely stopped when the door hissed open, and a round faced woman in an encounter suit – the helmet held beneath her arm – came to show her in to Xan Hu's parlour.
“I'm very glad you came.” Xan Hu hurried in from the glossy inner rooms and gave a hasty bow. “I was about to comm you to ask you to visit. I've been watching the news.”
Their outer jacket was white today. It was made of heavy white silk, beneath which a layer of plum and a layer of mint green were displayed everywhere one side overlapped with the other. Their long hair was tightly bound into a high bun, with a green ornament skewered through it and silver pendant bells cascading from one side. Somehow the effect was still not feminine enough for Aurora to confidently call them 'her.' She should ask, she thought. It was ridiculous to keep dancing around it. She should just ask.
But Xan Hu had already flicked a screen to life in the wall opposite, and Aurora’s attention was caught by a Kingdom newsreader, who was talking his viewers through a sobering roundup of the spread of their original pontoth.
“The first infected ship is believed to have been the Principality, which called at Penal Colony Base Three Prime to offload the condemned kidnappers Crouch and Citlali.”
Footage of a space station like a small dark moon, bisected by glass through which a distant sun shone. The reflection of the Principality's departing engine glare didn't quite conceal the blurred figures watching it go – Morwen's incendiary red hair, and Lali's black, flowerless.
“Base Three Prime is home to eight hundred convicts, all of whom are entitled to visits from their loved ones. It is also regularly visited by a dozen contractors, bringing in necessities and taking away the produce manufactured by the inmates. Quarantine was enacted as soon as Kingdom Ship Gibreel reported visible infection on the surface, but by that time hundreds of vessels had already been and gone.”
A map behind him showed the destinations of those ships, shaded red, and it was a small scatter through the edge of Kingdom space. Thirty-three worlds were involved from the initial contact. “Data is not yet in as to how far it's spread from there. However, the Principality had previously docked at Seraph base, where Admiral Keene and his daughter disembarked. In the time before the quarantine was enacted, over six thousand vessels touched at and departed from the base, making their way throughout the entire Kingdom and into Source space. The Vanguard is known to have touched down on Earth, and several ships called and departed from Haven. The Synod have declared a state of emergency and have called for aid from the S
ource worlds, whose familiarity with the abominations of the intellect may for once be needed. Meanwhile all faithful subjects are directed to pray for God's intervention in the time of our need.”
A pause, and then footage played of the Principality’s approach to the ugly maze of gray docks and prefab space-station hutches that was Seraph base. Aurora drew breath to ask Xan Hu to speak, but they held up a hand to quiet her, nodding to the wall as if to say she should keep watching.
“This is repeated from fifteen minutes ago. You need to see this next bit.”
It was Keene again. The part of her that drew tight into a kind of fight-or-scream panic at the sight of him still stirred, but it wasn't as extreme as it used to be. Other things had taken priority over her desire to mess up the sleek perfection of his appearance with a bazooka.
“We weren't to know,” he said to the gaggle of reporters gathered to shout questions and accusations at him. “We thought the affect was instantaneous and therefore the fact that we were spaceworthy at all meant that it wasn't on board. However--”
There was a howl of protest, which he cut off with a patrician gesture. Very much in charge, confident still.
“However,” he repeated with emphasis when he had the floor again, “We fully intend to do something about it now. It's well known that this stuff is being controlled from the plague planet of Cygnus 5. Some kind of alien infestation. So we intend to cut the head off the beast. My ships are being loaded and readied as we speak. As soon as the task force is ready, we will nuke this parasite so hard we break through the crust of the planet and explode the core. Without its 'brain,' so to speak, the dust will become mere dust once more, and the galaxy can return to peace, comforted by the rod of its shepherds.”
“He's going to blow us up?” Aurora translated, scrambling to her feet in more than personal horror. “Is he a complete idiot? Without its 'brain' the pontoth would go feral and eat everything. We only just got this contained! Filho da puta!”
“But what can we do?” Xan Hu spread their hands with a mildness that suggested the question was partly rhetorical.
“You can take me to Seraph base,” Aurora snapped. “I am done with playing catch-up. It's time to take this fight back to the enemy right now.”
“And by 'right now', you mean?” Xan Hu rose to their feet in a practised movement of fluid grace. Without looking at all rushed, they were ready for action before the end of the sentence.
But by that time Aurora had had time to think. “Get your engines hot and your people prepared – check in with Sekh Heongu if you need to. I don't want her thinking I'm hijacking her forces. There was talk of an antigen to the pontoth. If it's ready, we want to take that with us. I… I need to officially transfer power and uh… say some goodbyes, just in case.”
Xan Hu smiled as if to say that they didn't require her permission to either talk to their leader or to make their own decisions. It was a smile Aurora could see recurring to her in moments of 'how could you be so gauche?' And so long as she was still alive and idle enough for those moments to come, they'd be welcome.
“Half an hour then?” Xan Hu said with a slight bow.
Aurora thought of the dead dark of the interface chamber, where Bryant lay, of the way her skin crept at the closeness of Bryant's pontoth replica and suppressed a shudder. “Twenty minutes.”
Unsurprisingly, she found both Felix and Nori together in Nori's workshop. Their strained, disheartened expressions told her all she needed to know. “No luck with the antigen then?”
“Yes and no,” Nori actually smiled at her this time. He'd been one of the criminals she thought most reluctant to accept her leadership. He probably didn't think she was clever enough. Which was true--she was a leader, she had people to be clever for her. Perhaps, given that the pair of them were still plugged together with an ungainly headset and wires, this was Felix's smile, Felix's trust for her coming out. That was useful, if creepy.
“Explain.”
Nori puffed out a tired laugh. “The antigen does what it was designed to do, which is force any rogue pontoth to listen to Bryant. What even Bryant can't seem to do is to instruct it to switch itself off completely. He's working on persuading the planet to slow the action even further, but...”
“But if I load up a ship with the antigen and fire it at our own pontoth it will do precisely nothing?”
“Yeah, essentially. It's already obsolete. I'm trying to design something new to counteract our own, but I'm one guy.” He twitched, his face lightening, as he looked up at Felix, standing by his shoulder. “Two. And the whole planet is fighting me on this – everything I think of it overhears via the pontoth that's already in my cells, and then it engineers itself to counteract. I uh...”
The weary shadows beneath his eyes showed darker as he bent his head as if in defeat. “I am almost thinking I need to plug in to the Destroyer too and talk to Bryant.”
Why haven't you done that already? She thought, but who could blame him really? She shrank from going close enough to share even the same breath with the wire-wrapped body that had been her love. The thought of gene-splicing herself with alien DNA so she could share what he was going through – so the same thing could happen to her? No. She couldn't do it either.
Aurora exchanged an uneasy look with Felix, who lowered himself to the end of his cable so he could sit on the nearest step and watch Nori with an expression of denial and awe. She couldn't ask that of him, could she? With the future of the human race at stake? Maybe she could.
“Let me talk to him first,” she said, bracing herself. “I don't know. He always was distractible, and malleable. You know? He always thought it was a good idea to change who you were to fit your circumstances. Maybe he's just not giving it his best shot yet.”
~
Every journey down into the bowels of the temple was worse than the one before. Selena had been with her last time, and she'd been distracted from her own reactions by watching her sister's. On her own, with only a torch in her hand to light the way, the cavernous hall where the Louse god stood with its many arms outstretched was a trial. The statue meant something now that tendrils of Cygnus Five had spread throughout the whole galaxy and at the end of each of those tendrils was the possibility of destruction. Maybe also the threat of subsequent remaking into the image of this dead insect's mind.
It would have amused her, at a remove – this warning against playing God. The whole Kingdom was built on the belief that tech could go too far, and when it did, when it got out of control and turned its creators into something they didn't even recognize anymore, that would be their own fault for their hubris. Sermons could have been written on the example of the Lice, the first alien race humanity had ever encountered, who had already sprung that trap on themselves.
But the irony was kind of bitter when you were living it.
I sent him in here to turn this thing on, she reminded herself, trying to look at the enormous articulated bug like it was a fellow creature of the same God, a neighbor to be loved. I don't get to claim I'm any different.
The thought was no comfort. She came into the antechamber of the Destroyer feeling sick of herself and existence. Ready to lie down and hand it over to someone else. If only there was someone else prepared to take it.
“Bryant,” she shouted into the domed chamber where he lay. No more wires had added to the pile since she had been last and, when she was allowed to step across the threshold, there were still gaps where she could push her fingers through and touch his skin. He was still freckled like a plover's egg, but paler now, the darkness bleaching out his color into something sickly strange. “Bryant, can you hear me?”
A rushing, whispering sound, dust carried on an electrical breeze. “I don't know why you look at the organics when you speak to me.”
It was there with her between one held breath and the next – a column of pontoth that turned into a statue of him. No reflection shone in its stony eyes and, when it wasn't speaking, it didn't move at all.
Even when it was, its face barely changed. Its mouth held still, and sound came out of it as if from a speaker.
“This is my Bryant,” Aurora said, trying to get the words out cleanly when her throat had just betrayed her by closing. She looked at where she was stroking the bare inch of his shoulder she could reach, her own fingers too changed by this planet into another shade of its ever-present green. “This is the real you. Don't forget it.”
Perhaps she'd said something interesting. There was a change about the creature's face as if something were rising to the surface. Minute nuances of expression rippled across it in a way that could never have been achieved by human muscles. How can a statue change like that, she thought stupidly, and queasily reminded herself it wasn't stone at all, it was a mass of pontoth particles intelligently holding itself in a shape that resembled Bryant. She had no way of knowing if she was actually speaking to him at all.
“I would have thought you would understand that when the body is buried the soul is freed,” it said. “He is sharing my network. He's learning so much. He has never been more himself.”
“And that's why he sent you to talk to me?” she asked, cut to the quick by the fact that the creature was not even claiming to be Bryant anymore – by the fact that he had more important things to do than talk to her. “He's decided not to care anymore. Is that it?”
It picked up its right foot and tapped it five times on the ground with a slapping rap, did it again, and again, its head tilted and its eyes fixed on her like moons. And that was nothing human, but it was like the warning drumming of the mirror-eyes high in the trees when they heard a predator approaching. She'd scared it? Or perhaps it didn't know how Bryant would react to her words, so it was filling in with the closest mammal?
“I don't want to talk to you. I want to talk to him.”
“He is finding things out and opening doors. He's excited and happy. And I am helping him by not destroying you yet. All is as it should be. You should leave.”
“All is not as it fucking should be!” Despite a lifetime in the army she tried not to swear, at least, not in Basic. That just made it feel more desperate when she did. “And if he's part of you I've got to hope he's listening to me now. Because I'm here to say goodbye.”