by J L Forrest
A voice across the comm said, “This is Alstad.”
Mr. Avidità powered up the Plato’s engines. “Go ahead, Alstad.”
“First hostiles crossing our Mesh in five, four, three, two—”
Across my field of vision, outside the Plato’s diamondide ports, hundreds of faraway explosions flared into brilliant life, then winked back into darkness, some no brighter than the stars which provided their backdrop. This silent fireworks display carried on for seconds, at our flanks too, and from our position the explosions resembled mere firecrackers.
Each signified the destruction of a full-size attack drone, a striker, even a manned ship.
The comm crackled: “Electromagnetic jamming on both sides.”
“Expected. Relay to my ansible if needed.”
“Yes, sir.”
An ansible? On the Plato?
Ansibles were rare devices, spooky chatterboxes at a distance. Ridiculously valuable.
The fireworks extravaganza continued.
“And we have a stray,” said the Alstad.
A sliver of light arched toward the planetoid. Two or three hundred kilometers from Africa IV’s surface, a nuclear warhead detonated, a spectacular blossom of pure photons. In reflex, I raised my arm to protect my eyes, but the Plato’s AI reacted faster, darkening the viewports. A shockwave followed, translating into a low boom within the pressurized confines of our trimaran, a moment of rattle and shake.
“—number two—”
A similar close call, the comm reported, from the planetoid’s other side. The Battle for Africa IV drew to a finish, the lights in the void growing infrequent.
“All incoming destroyed,” came the report.
“Alstad,” said Mr. Avidità, “update your position.”
Through the holovid the position appeared as pure data. “Moving in to sweep their approach.”
“Happy hunting.” Mr. Avidità smiled, let go a tense breath. “Do we have any incidental targets?”
“We have two.”
“Two?” Mr. Avidità’s smile faded. “Can you give me their trajectory?”
“Better, sir, we’ve cracked their stealth.”
The Plato hummed to life and we detached from port. The cockpit’s full holographic interface rendered and, though we still relied on the AIs, Mr. Avidità made manual adjustments, overrode safety constraints, armed weapons.
“Hang on, Aur, g-forces are going to get mean.”
We peaked at 8.7, the blood rushed from my head, and my vision narrowed. I managed, though, to remain conscious. The AIs calculated a multivariate intercept course to another ship, but at these speeds and in these conditions my all-too-human eye could spot nothing—
—then—
A tiny dot grew bigger, a larger vessel with more thrust but much more mass, some kind of troop or personnel carrier. Its thrusters over-burned as it dodged and wove, anticipating our targeting system.
“Alstad,” said Mr. Avidità, “think you can capture the other one? Take prisoners?”
The reply came, “Already on it.”
My employer addressed his own ship’s AIs: “Apollo, Ares, estimate our odds of commandeering the target vessel without casualty to me or to Aurelius.”
The computers answered, “Eight-point-seven percent, plus or minus seven-point-two percent.”
“Give me the odds of either of us dying if we engage to destroy.”
“Five-point-two percent, plus or minus one-point-four percent.”
He glanced at me. “That makes for a clear decision.” To the AIs he said, “Bring us into engagement range.”
The Plato accelerated at 4g, gaining on our target. Firing controls rendered onto my holoscreen, above my lap, and the targeting system centered on the Nesteler transport.
“Take the shot,” said Mr. Avidità. “Let’s mark one up for the lions and elephants.”
I’d never killed before, and for a first time that was a lot of killing. Yet much in the same way a short life mattered no less than a long one, killing many was no worse than killing one. My crèche brothers were earmarked as the executioners, as those who’d go for black-ops. Me, all I wanted was to get back to Flapjacks.
Though I didn’t like it, I triggered the Plato’s weapons.
XI. Soothsayer
2131.4.10.5:44 PST
58°45’19.5”N 132°47’49.5”W
Alt 215m
British Columbia (Dissolved)
Stikine Region
111km to Destination
For months my first responsibilities have been to the baby, though nurses also attended his crèche, assisted by artificial intelligences. When you care for anything, day after day, the caring changes you, tunes your deepest fibers to a more orderly Brownian frequency. When he’s hungry, I feed him; when uncomfortable, I accommodate him; when thirsty, I give him water. When he cries, I comfort him. When the baby wakes, I awaken too, even when I’m exhausted.
This frosty predawn is no different. I change him—inside the tent, twice as unpleasant, but I want him warm as possible. After he’s wiped, I swaddle him, then climb outside to deposit the old diaper.
Beside the embers of last night’s fire, the Horned Lord sits. He watches the purplish eastern sky, the fading stars, the shine of Venus and Jupiter above the treetops.
After returning to the tent I set the stove, under the rainfly’s awning, for both tea and formula. Somewhere out of sight, either Garth or Fitzpatrick snores. I manage to enjoy my tea while feeding the baby and, blessedly, he slumbers. My view frames the Lord where he remains by the fire pit. In the growing light, his clothing’s blue and vermillion stains grow vibrant. At first I think to watch the sunrise with him, but before long my eyelids droop.
I set aside the teacup and close up the tent.
I wake because I’m hot, Sol blazing and high through the tent’s carbon-nylon fabric. Almost ten o’clock. With a start I sit, terrified the baby might be gone, that he might be dead. Yet he sleeps beside me, peaceful, his limbs splayed with his tiny hands by his head, his face turned, his slender lips puckered.
I climb from the tent, run my hands through my hair, and rub the sleep from my eyes. Garth’s and Fitzpatrick’s tents stand a dozen meters apart from mine. I don’t know which is which, or which contains the pack now holding my gun and ammunition. The Horned Lord’s oiled-leather tent displays decorations and iconographies I don’t understand. A pole rises beside it, ringed by bird feathers and rodent skulls. At its top, a human jawbone resembles a prong, affixed with dried tendon. The fire crackles low. On a stone beside it rests a tall pot, which Garth tends.
“That can’t be coffee,” I say, “can it?” We have coffee on Station, but reports suggested its presence here would be unlikely.
“Roots and herbs,” says Garth, eyeing me. “Pretty good, but I do miss coffee.”
Across the camp, nearer the river, Fitzpatrick pees on a wild rosebush. The Horned Lord appears nowhere.
“I didn’t mean to sleep so long,” I say.
“You needed it,” says Garth.
“I guess so.”
“Fitz and me, we haven’t minded a slow morning either.”
“What happened last night?” I point to my forehead. “What the fuck was that?”
Garth drops his head, won’t quite meet my eye. He pours some of the hot liquid into a steel cup, then hands it to me. Its bitterness hits the back of my tongue, followed by a spiciness, analogous to cinnamon.
“What happened,” he says, almost whispering, “is you should be dead.”
“Why?”
He shakes his head. “What you felt there, last night, that was a Questioning.”
“A Questioning?”
“That pain is what happens when someone lies to a Horned Lord.”
“Lies?”
“Something about what you told him wasn’t true, and the Horned Lords, they hate it when people lie to them.”
“Most people do.”
Garth says, “When
someone lies to a Horned Lord,” then he draws his thumb across his throat.
“I see.”
But I don’t see, don’t understand how a chemically induced headache could correspond with my mistruths, have never heard of any polygraph like it. Fitzpatrick returns to the fire. In the daylight he reminds me of a fuzzy river otter, his body and neck too long for his arms and legs. His prominent Adam’s apple bobs when he swallows, and he waves me toward him.
As I sit with him, he unpacks a bundled cloth, wrapped around knobby contents which rattle when he shakes them. He unties the bundle, lays down the cord, then flattens the cloth, a square bigger than a bandana, brocade with silver fabric. The cloth spills its contents—ten bones, the size of chicken femurs.
Not chicken femurs. Human phalanges or metacarpus bones.
The brocade marks out a five-by-five grid, and Fitzpatrick scatters the bones over it. They tumble, laying against each other, and he reads their pattern like an engineer might interpret an electrical diagram. To find so much superstition amongst these survivors of the Pacific Northwest is no surprise, not given what I have read, and I indulge it.
“What do they say?” I ask.
“That I’m sharing the campfire with a zombie.” He giggles.
“Zombie?”
“Isn’t that what they call the living dead?”
“I feel quite alive today.”
Still no sign of the Horned Lord. Garth sets out a blanket, begins to disassemble his rifle, organizes a cleaning kit. The sun feels grand, though western clouds are already rolling inland.
“All the undead,” says Fitzpatrick, “at first they’re confused.”
“What do you mean?”
“Till someone proves to them they’re dead, they insist they’re alive. The mind, you see, it can’t handle the idea of death.”
I keep his logical inconsistencies to myself. “What else do your bones say?”
“This pattern is the bridge.” He points to a configuration where three bones touch one another. Two rest wholly inside their squares, while the third intersects a silvered line. “You bring worlds together, baby-zombie-man.”
“Explain.”
He draws his finger over the configuration. “This here means the heavens, and this means the earth. I don’t know, maybe you’re grounded but also visionary? Or unrealistic? Or fanciful?”
“I don’t think of myself as any of those things.”
His giggle peters out. “Well, it ain’t a science.”
He’s got that right.
His Adam’s apple wobbles. “When your death comes,” he says, “it’ll be horrible. But it’ll be worth it.”
The breeze shifts and campfire smoke rolls past us. The baby’s voice demands my attention.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I say.
“Keep it in mind or not,” he says, gathering his bones, retying the cloth, “won’t make no difference.”
I shift my weight, ready to stand, but Fitzpatrick grabs my arm. His whisper is serious, sharp: “Next time a Horned Lord asks you what you see, try to say something better than an asshole.”
“I’ll keep that in mind too.”
From the north the Horned Lord reenters camp, using his long spear as a walking stick. He marches to the fire and tosses a human hand into it. Fitzpatrick scrambles back, his attention locked on the appendage, and I too retreat. Garth looks up from his rifle maintenance.
“You two,” says the Lord to the men, “pack up and head back out. The Queens have ordered the border closed. For now the Faen is shut.”
Neither man asks about the hand. They hurry to obey, all other thoughts abandoned. The baby’s cry rises.
“Care for your little ward,” the Horned Lord says to me. “When you’re ready, we’ll be on our way.”
XII. Surveillance (or, Intelligence, Part I)
Recollected
2130.9.19.12:41 GMT
Alt 40.2E6m
High Earth Orbit
EIK-Cel Station
I stood with Mr. Avidità on an observation platform. Our orbit brought us over Earth’s western hemisphere, a day-lit North America facing us, framed in my view by meters-tall windows of layered diamondide. My employer wore a tailored suit of spun silk, his tie patterned in yellows and blues reminiscent of fallen Sweden, and his cufflinks bore the likeness of Queen Christina.
“The region around New Juneau, Alaska,” he said. “Look. You don’t need a telescope, needn’t bother with the satellites.”
A mottled, diseased patchwork of browns, yellows, and greens, the Americas reminded me of old, discolored photographs, not of geography but of twentieth-century cancer victims in the hours before their deaths. I studied the Alaskan coastline, the way I might study a puzzle or an illusion. My intake of breath was audible, unintentional.
“You see it?” he asked.
Faint, indistinct, but now I detect what the AIs must have identified a year ago or more. In a sweeping arc, reaching inland, the color—
“Green,” I said, “and—”
“You see it?”
“A shade of violet.”
“Spectrography caught it first,” he said, “but now it’s distinct enough for the naked eye. We expect, after another decade, it’ll be obvious to anyone with functional pupils, and it keeps growing.”
“What is it?”
“No fucking idea.”
“Your Grace?”
“No fucking idea. Biotech? Nanotech? Both? Something we don’t understand yet. We’ve collected plants, soil, birds, small mammals, pollen.”
“No conclusion?”
“Not one promising goddamned hypotheses. Just—”
“What, sir?”
He shares anecdotal reports about the Horned Lords, tales of the superstitious north, accounts out of Prince George. He tells me of two women who lived awhile in San Francisco, of their strange condition, and of their violent departure.
“You say their trackers never switched off?” I asked.
“They haven’t moved either.”
“Where are they?”
“Wrangell Island.”
“The trackers have been there the whole time?”
He nodded. “My guess? Bettina and Cailín removed them soon after arriving in the Panhandle, but they’ve preserved them.”
“Why?”
“To taunt me?” he said, thinking on it. “Or tempt me.”
“What did their tissue samples tell us?”
“Remarkable resiliency, resistance to cancer, immunity to most bacteria, robust telomeres. Damndest thing I’ve ever seen. But no identifiable pathogen, nothing which should’ve been communicable. It was as if Bettina Ukweli’s cells had been engineered in the best lab money can buy. Nesteler’s labs. UPRC’s labs. But hell no, she was born in goddamn Winnipeg to an ordinary family, unusual for its genetic diversity, but solidly working class. No more designed than a common titmouse.”
“Unusual for its genetic diversity?”
“Her maternal grandmother was Kenyan. Maternal great grandfather, Chinese. Her paternal grandfather immigrated from Pakistan in twenty forty-three, then married her paternal grandmother, who was Quebecois and as caucasian as they come.” He chuckled. “Young Bettina was a poster child for multiracial harmony. ‘Kumbaya’. ‘We Are the World’. Et cetera.”
“What about the unidentifiable pathogen, Your Grace? It shouldn’t have been communicable, you said, but it was.”
“Most definitely.” Again he nodded. “Sexually transmitted.”
“Bettina and Cailín both carried it?”
“Near as we could tell, Cailín gave it to Bettina, but it spread no further, not in San Francisco.”
“It bothers you to see puzzles unsolved.”
“We need to know what’s happening in the Pacific Northwest, why the hell our satellites aren’t registering everything they should, why our field drones don’t come back.”
That surprises me. “We have no drone observations of New Juneau?”
“Few, and none of Wrangell.”
“What about our spies?”
“I’ve learned not to send anyone with high technology. All the transmitters, imbedded sensors, or sensory augmentation don’t help. Our spies go in but—” His words trailed off.
“We’ve lost them all?”
“All but one.”
“He have any insights?”
“She did. Three main points. First, the Queens’ rule inside their growing circle appears absolute. Second, superstition and religious zealotry define the society they’re building.”
“What kind of superstition?”
“They worship a God named Nodens.”
“The Celtic deity?”
“Who they call the Horned Lord.” Mr. Avidità shrugged. “Our agent has spoken of uncivilized rites, hedonism, human sacrifice—”
“Terrible.”
“Her last insight, though, was the most interesting.”
“What was it?”
“The Queens have a soft spot. They forbid the harming of children, and they adopt every young orphan who comes to them.”
Forbid the harming? I couldn’t help but compare such an idea to my own experiences.
“Every bit of intelligence we have on Bettina Ukweli and Cailín Byrne,” he said, “read it.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“I have a mission for you, one that could decide the future of System.”
For a moment I couldn’t breathe. “I’m your man.”
“Good. It’ll take us several months to prepare.”
“In the meantime I’ll study everything I can, whatever you see fit. Perhaps I could begin by interviewing our surviving spy?”
Mr. Avidità faced me. The Earthshine lit his profile.
“You’re welcome to,” he said. “Her name is Cassandra Watson, if you want to look her up, but I’m afraid she won’t do you much good.”
“Why not?”
“Because these days she mostly gibbers and drools. Despite our best efforts at treating her, you see, she’s completely lost her mind.”