The Stars Like Gods

by G. S. Jennsen

  “Yeah. Sure.” He brushed past her and out the door.

  She motioned to Boshemi to indicate the woman could leave, too. The tech packed up her gear and fled the room with a speed and efficiency that left Nika shaking her head. Of course the woman was spooked. Who wouldn’t be?

  She sank back against the wall with a frustrated groan. The Rasu weren’t merely experimenting on their people before killing them. They were brutally experimenting on them, ensuring their last days of life were filled with unspeakable agony. Godsdammit!

  No matter what, she could not allow any more people to be sent as offerings to the aliens. Not even the worst sort of despicable criminals; not even almost-people who’d never fully awakened. Now that she knew the truth, no more. Ever.

  Perrin burst into the room, two energy drinks tucked under her arm. “You let him leave? All by himself?”

  “I couldn’t keep him here. The tech cleared him, and he wanted to leave.”

  “You could have taken him home yourself, then watched over him.”

  She nodded thoughtfully. “You passed him on the way out, I’m guessing?”

  “I did.”

  “When you realized he was leaving, you tried to go with him, I’m guessing?”

  Perrin looked away. “Yes. He told me not to worry about him and stormed off.”

  “See? He’s making it quite clear that he wants to be alone.”

  “Doesn’t mean he should be. I’m pinging Ryan right now and sending him to their place.”

  “I think that’s a good idea.”

  A few seconds later Perrin redirected her displeasure, which hadn’t lessened, back to Nika while she tossed one of the energy drinks on the shelf and opened the other one. “Are you happy with yourself now?”

  “No, Perrin, I’m not. Are you asking me if I feel like shit for what he just went through? Yes, I do. You know what else I feel like shit about? What the Rasu have done to tens of thousands of Asterions for the last eight years. We just got a tiny little glimpse into how much every single one of those people suffered before they died.

  “So however awful the scene in here was today, I’m glad it happened, because now I know. Because now, no force in the universe will stop me from destroying the Rasu.”

  Perrin stared at her over the rim of the energy drink she held at her lips, her eyes wide. “I’m…I mean, I’m glad you’re angry. I’m glad you intend to do something to stop them. But you’re seeing the world in terms of tens of thousands of people and years of time. I’m thinking about one person, today, and the suffering that they might never get over. I can’t help ten thousand dead people, but I want, I need, to be able to help one living person. And so should you.”

  Nika grabbed the other energy drink and turned it up, though energy was one thing she didn’t lack for. When it was half empty, she set it back on the shelf, hopped up on the cot and dropped her elbows to her knees. “This is about the First Gen thing, isn’t it?”

  “What? No. Maybe. I don’t know. Nika, listen. I realize the Advisor power is super-helpful, and the money is nifty, too, and the flat is fabulous. I get it. But you don’t have to become the person you were.”

  “It’s not that simple. I think the truth is, I’ve always been that person—I merely lacked context these last five years. And Nika Kirumase? She was a good person. Yes, she made mistakes, like everyone does, but most of her mistakes stemmed from her carrying too heavy a burden on her shoulders—from taking others’ burdens onto herself. Sometimes without asking their permission.”

  “Sounds about right. Ever think you’re making the same mistake again now?”

  30

  * * *

  CONCEPTUAL RESEARCH TESTING FACILITY

  Nika carried a utilitarian chair from the lounge down the hall into the main containment facility. She dropped it barely two meters from the electrified edges of the force-field barrier, flipped it around backwards, sat down and crossed her arms over the headrest.

  None of the other Advisors accompanied her this time, because they had more important work to do than watch a frustrating, often maddening interchange that couldn’t decide if it was an interrogation or a negotiation. All the combat dynes remained on guard, however, as did two of Lance’s officers, and her interaction with the Rasu would of course be recorded.

  A chilly, drafty silence nonetheless permeated the prison. The ventilation system forced fresh air inside at a brisk flow in order to suppress the constant ionization of the air the barrier caused. She’d planned ahead and wore a black velvet turtleneck and gray wool pants, but they didn’t prevent her from shuddering when she sat down.

  Jerry imitated an oil slick spilt across the rear half of the cage. Lying there without shape or definition, it seemed impossible that when combined with a scant few of its brethren the alien was capable of destroying species and worlds. That this oil slick was capable of willfully inflicting horrific pain and torture on living, thinking individuals.

  Yes, she was angry at Jerry. At the Rasu as a whole, but though she’d used negotiation tricks to make Jerry feel special and unique, right now when she considered the prisoner, she saw Parc’s torturers. She saw Rasu.

  “Jerry, wake up.”

  The oil slick shrunk in diameter as it grew in height, pulling itself inward into semi-solidity. It slipped and slithered until it had taken on its preferred form, that of a forever coiling serpent, and approached the front of the cage. “Asterion. It has taken you a lengthy time to educate yourself on the unique characteristics of kyoseil, if you have managed to do so at all.”

  “I’ve been occupied with a variety of important duties. I apologize if you felt neglected in the interim, but I’m here now. I want to talk about control, Jerry. Control, free will and the unreconcilable dichotomy between them.”

  MIRAI ONE PAVILION

  Nika hurried into the conference room at the Pavilion to find Dashiel talking to a man who looked like he’d climbed straight out of a wilderness nature vid. A neat but full beard spilled onto his chest, and long soot-gray hair draped behind his shoulders. A rough-hewn plaid shirt paired with beige canvas pants and beat-up work boots completed the presentation.

  Dashiel met her at the door, squeezing her hands in greeting before gesturing to his guest. “Nika, this is Magnus Forchelle.”

  “Aye, we know each other. It’s been a while.”

  Dashiel cringed. “Sorry, I didn’t get an opportunity to mention….”

  She gave Forchelle her best diplomat smile. “I know we do. Unfortunately, I recently lost the majority of my historical memories in an attack. But I’ve been reading up on you, your work and our history together. Hopefully we can make do.”

  “Makes no real difference to me. If anything, I’m envious. I’ve wanted to forget my own past many times.”

  She shifted toward Dashiel enough to arch a private eyebrow at him, and got a pained shrug in answer. The message came through well enough: yes, Forchelle was a quirky character.

  She returned her attention to the man. “Yes, well, thank you for agreeing to help us.”

  “I’m still not certain it’ll be ‘help’ I’m giving in the end, but Mr. Ridani here convinced me it’ll be all our end if I don’t try, so into the breach I go.”

  They gathered at one of the two tables in the room, and Dashiel clasped his hands atop the surface. “As I mentioned in my message, Mr. Forchelle is aware of both the supradimensional and interlinked features of kyoseil. Rather than mangle the explanation, Mr. Forchelle, if you don’t mind?”

  The man stroked his beard thoughtfully—because what would you do with such a beard as his if not stroke it? “You’re referring to ‘supradimensionality’ and ‘interlinking’ as separate concepts, but when you’re talking about kyoseil they are one and the same. When you observe a chunk of kyoseil, you’re seeing an instance of its periodic extrusion into what we call the three physical dimensions. But it exists just as fully in the deep dimensions of the universe.

  “Now,
in shaping kyoseil to our own needs, to our own creation, we’ve changed it. The bonding that occurs between strands of kyoseil and our neural networks of necessity weakens its bond with other manifestations of its kind—strands which are bonded to another life, or not bonded at all. But it doesn’t sever those links entirely.”

  Nika nodded soberly. “Yes, we’ve…discovered this ourselves.”

  Dashiel looked over in surprise. “You have? What happened?”

  MIRAI

  My chest is flayed open, the folds of skin held back by clamps. The cavity revealed glows hot like steel fresh out of a kiln. But I can’t peer inside at my own insides, because my head is locked in place by something hard and unyielding. My eyelids are held open by more unforgiving clamps. My eyes are dry, scratchy, sandpaper scraping over unfinished wood. I haven’t blinked in…I can’t say.

  Time has blended together into an endless series of brief respites between the pain.

  Parc huddled on the floor in the far corner of Ryan’s rented room. His eyes were squeezed shut, in defiance of the memory he couldn’t stop seeing, and his legs were pulled up against his chest. His intact, whole and in no way whatsoever flayed open chest.

  He tried to focus on the silence of this room, his home since reawakening, but his ears rang with the din of his own screams.

  A shadow passes across my limited field of vision as one of the creature machines returns to me. It begins working on me, from behind this time. On my brain, as my skull must be cracked as wide open as my chest.

  Cool air tickles my brain tissue, and my whole body shivers within the restraints. Then a probe descends from above, and I’m screaming again. Silently, with no vibrations to give voice to my agony, for they long ago severed my vocal chords.

  He shivered now, though the room was comfortably warm, and tugged his legs closer against him.

  § sysdir(root) § Ηq(storerec*. Y12,463.115.1120-1314 A7)

  < erase all

  |

  He transfixed on the blinking cursor. It wasn’t fair to leave him—the other him—out there on the other side of the galaxy, alone and afraid. How dare he abandon himself to that torture while he lived free and easy back here? He was such an arrogant jerk!

  From the opposite corner of the room, a powered-down IkeBot passed judgment on him by way of its pitiless, blank gaze.

  I can’t breathe any longer. I don’t want to breathe any longer. Another nanosecond of this pain and I will surely die. Why can’t I die?

  Why wouldn’t the monsters fucking let him die?

  The remembered pain seized hold of Parc anew, and he couldn’t breathe either. He forced his eyes shut again, and in the darkness behind his eyelids he swore he saw the kyoseil strings pouring out from his body to travel across the galaxy. Was he still connected to his other self, somehow, even now?

  He started to reach out for a string, the way he had in the lab—then yanked his hand back. He was too much of a coward to do it, too much of a coward to share in his own pain.

  A sound from his left announced Ryan entering. Twenty-to-one odds that Nika and Perrin had told him to rush home and see to his pathetic, quivering mess of a lover.

  “Parc? Are you here?”

  The lights flicked on. Parc instinctively shrank away from them, burying his face in his arm.

  “Parc!” He felt Ryan’s presence draw near as the man crouched on the floor beside him, but he couldn’t bring himself to look up. “What’s wrong? Are you sick? Do I need to—”

  “No. I just…I just…I can’t….” Fuck, he was hyperventilating again. Talking seemed to trigger it, which wasn’t great.

  “Let me get someone over here—”

  “No!” His hand shot out to blindly grab for Ryan’s arm. “I’m….” He concentrated on opening his eyes and lifting his head. He blinked furiously against the too-bright light until gradually Ryan’s face sharpened into clarity. Good-looking face, if he was honest.

  Gods, he on the other hand must look a wreck and a half, judging by Ryan’s expression. “I’m not sick. It’s all in my head. I need…” he realized he’d been pulling at his hair with his free hand, and he quickly dropped both hands to the floor “…to be alone for a while, to work through it.”

  Ryan’s brow furrowed up in consternation; after a few seconds he shook his head. “Sorry, but I’m not leaving you alone like this. I wasn’t there for you before, but I will be now, dammit.”

  He stared at Ryan, searching frantically through his scrambled brain for how to respond. He didn’t want a keeper. Thus far the sex had been fantastic, and they’d always gotten along well so they had plenty in common to talk about in between. But now Ryan was making like this thing they were doing was an actual relationship.

  Crap, was it? Was that a good thing?

  He chuckled quietly, which was a marked improvement from the screaming. He’d gone a whole ten seconds without thinking about the waking nightmare his other self was trapped in. If Ryan could do more to extend those spans of respite, he was desperate enough to take him up on the offer. “Fine. You can stay.”

  Ryan got comfortable on the floor next to Parc and stretched out his legs. “Perrin told me a little about your experiment. Do you want to talk about what happened?”

  “No, I want to erase it.”

  “So, erase it.”

  “I can’t. I’ll be abandoning my other self to suffer alone.”

  Ryan frowned deeply. “You think your other self would want you suffering along with them? You’re a selfish prick, but you’re not a masochist…or a sadist, I guess. Sorry, this is all kind of confusing. Wouldn’t you instead want you working your ass off to get vengeance?”

  “Huh.” Parc dropped his head against the wall and fixated on the ceiling. A bead of sweat dropped into the corner of his eye, and he wiped the back of his hand across his forehead, unsurprised when it came away soaked.

  The man had a point. Parc played with a few embers of vengeance stirring in his gut, stoking them idly until they rose into the beginnings of a proper righteous fire. Vengeance was definitely a worldview he could get behind.

  A hundred thousand million seconds have passed, but at last the probing ceases. Not for long—it’s never for long. The creature machine always returns.

  I breathe, but only because my body insists upon it. Not for much longer. My will is gone, and my body will mercifully soon follow.

  “Hey, hey.” Ryan’s arm was around his shoulder, and Parc was half slumped into his lap. But not in the good way.

  “I’m all right.” He straightened up and slapped himself on both cheeks. “Okay. I’ll erase the memories. But first I need to put together a detailed report for Nika of everything I saw, heard and felt, along with my recommendation.”

  “What’s your recommendation?”

  “We have got to kill every last one of these motherfuckers.”

  31

  * * *

  MIRAI ONE PAVILION

  Nika peered out the window of the third-floor conference room as evening shadows crept across the lawn. “Do you think Luciene will make his move tonight?”

  Dashiel wrapped his arms around her waist from behind and rested his chin on her shoulder. “I think Luciene will cower in whatever hole Satair has stashed him in. Now, Satair might make a move tonight, or he might wait.”

  “For us to self-destruct?”

  “We’re not going to self-destruct.” He kissed her neck beneath her ear. “We’re going to ingenuity our way out of this crisis. It’s what we do.”

  They had sent Forchelle off to meet with a group of scientists at the Industry Division’s Conceptual Research office, in the hope that they could turn this new—or in Forchelle’s case, very old—knowledge into a concrete tool to use against the Rasu. Ingenuity their way out of this crisis, in other words.

  “We will. Speaking of, I know why the Rasu don’t use quantum entanglement communications.”

  “Did Jerry tell you?”

  “More or less.
After some goading on my part, it divulged a great deal about what it means to be a Rasu—enough for me to infer the rest. The key is in the term ‘entanglement.’ Jerry fears the effect on its individuality of physical re-entanglement with the Rasu at the stronghold. The Rasu at the stronghold fear the effect on their individuality of quantum entanglement with distant Rasu. They fear it will force a renewed merger with those they now view as wholly separate entities.”

  He shifted around so he could see her face but kept his arms around her. “Are you certain?”

  “Fairly. They’ve worked themselves into quite the pickle. Every Rasu of any size and complexity desires above all else independence for itself and control for all others. Consequently, every Rasu of any size and complexity suspects that its equals and superiors desire the same.”

  “Damn, they are paranoid monsters.”

  “It’s not paranoia if it’s true.”

  “Heh. Does this mean all those platforms and ships in their stellar system are fighting with each other? If so, we can use this. I’m not sure how, but I expect Palmer will have some ideas.”

  She sighed, but any frustration ebbed away beneath the soothing warmth of his embrace. Since their reconciliation, she was finding great comfort in his touch; it seemed as if he was finding the same in hers, and they both sought it out whenever possible. Even when the world careened madly around them.

  “I’m afraid it isn’t that overt. No Rasu are openly fighting one another…more executing low-key secret subversion campaigns. And if I’m starting to understand a little about how the Rasu function as a species, I think we can treat all the permanent structures in the stellar system—the platforms, the antenna rings and so on—as a single functional Rasu entity.”