Marque of Caine

by Charles E Gannon

  “The information and directions you seek cannot be safely imparted unless you understand both the origins of Virtua and our society’s problematic relationship with advanced automation. Logically, we must first examine the events that first brought these two factors into friction with each other.”

  Riordan almost smiled. “You sound like another historian I know.”

  “Historian?” She stiffened. “I am an observer. I do not claim to convey a unified story, just the pieces for which I have data. Such as this.” Oduosslun waved a hand at the walls. A high-quality hologram of a starfield materialized. They began moving through it erratically. “Our earliest shift drive was like yours: each shift must start from and end upon a stellar object. But a millennium after the Final War, we reattained the more advanced form of this technology.”

  The zigzag advancement through the starfield became an almost straight line. The journey that had taken eight shifts took only two.

  Riordan nodded. “Those are deep-space shifts. No need to start or stop in the vicinity of a stellar object. That’s how the Custodians helped us counterattack the Arat Kur.” He glanced at Oduosslun. “Another miracle you inherited from the Elders?”

  “Only in the sense that we knew it could be done. We had to rediscover the technology independently. But once we had, we were faced with a quandary.”

  Riordan nodded. “You had the means to easily expand far beyond the one hundred and fifty-light-year globe that defines the Accord.”

  “And beyond the fifty-light-year buffer zone, as well. This was the catalyst for our fateful debate over the Collective’s potential loss of political coherence.”

  The starfield view rotated. Bright green lines connected the stars of Dornaani space in a chaotic cat’s cradle of shift routes. “History teaches that the longer the communication time between a polity’s capital and its borders, the more likely it is to either become an empire or dissolve into petty states.”

  The cat’s cradle of links expanded beyond its earlier borders, became so immense that it resembled a cubist ball of yarn. “We rejected those outcomes by staying within our original limits. However, there was another reason to do so.”

  Riordan nodded. “The uncertainty of what you might find beyond: the remains of the Final War.”

  “More than the remains, human. Dormant threats. Sleeping giants. Every shift beyond the limit was fraught with uncertainty. What would we find there? A virgin system? A brace of blasted planets? Or the malign beings that had reveled in Armageddon, even as it consumed them?”

  The holosphere showed brief, incomplete scenes of planetary bombardments that made whole continents conflagrations. Fleets of silver specks raced toward each other in deep space, brightening like fireflies before vanishing. Lush green worlds rotated to reveal hemispheres as densely cratered as ancient moons.

  Riordan stared at the frozen tableaux of dying green worlds. “It reinforced your instinct to turn inward, to more fully resign yourselves to—”

  “—To rag picking. Which caused such a continual loss of vigor, of drive, that now, we are no longer effective Custodians.” She leaned forward, pointed at the hologram. “This—this—was what undid us. Once we truly believed we had to be rag pickers and night watchmen, thus we remained.” She stalked away from the image. “This is what caused our descent into Virtua and the danger it represents. To all of us.”

  Chapter Forty-Four

  JUNE 2124

  AOZHOODN, SIGMA 2 URSA MAJORIS 2 B

  Oduosslun waved her hand at the wall again. The scene in the holosphere changed to Glamqoozht, the regional capital. The skyline was the same. The bay, despite a few changes in the shoreline, was easily recognizable. But the streets were busy, brisk and uncluttered in the manner of a smaller European city.

  And there wasn’t a single proxrov in sight.

  Nor were there any bioproxies or floating eyebots. Riordan leaned forward, studying the scene more closely. “How long ago was this recorded?”

  “Four thousand seven hundred sixty-one of your years ago. The physical similarity is a consequence of our penchants for thrift and familiarity: our buildings are built to last indefinitely. But as you can see, we were still a community.”

  “But the lack of automation?”

  “It was deliberate. Accounts of the Final War’s last years depict robots, drones, and even computers becoming erratic or responsive to enemy commands. Millennia later, as the loji wars concluded, automated systems were again purged, for much the same reasons.” In the holosphere, the landing field of a large spaceport was being filled with wrecked and gutted automatons of varying shapes and sizes. A final actinic blaze vaporized them.

  Oduosslun flicked a finger; the image froze. “These events fostered a deep and abiding distrust of all robots and computers able to control the actions of other machines. Those we did allow were built with overlapping safeguards and emergency disconnects. The most stringent restrictions were put upon nanites and similar microbots, although a few medical models were retained as therapies of last recourse.”

  Holographic depictions of Dornaani cities and machinery resumed whirling past. The inhabitants’ personal devices changed in shape, but the sphere-and-needle architecture, and the Dornaani themselves, were—from a human perspective—freakishly consistent. However, toward the end of the montage, two new types of visitors appeared. Loji, wearing what looked like gee-compensation suits, were occasionally shuttled about in small vehicles. More infrequently, humans strode swiftly through the scenes, but always as lone individuals, never groups.

  Riordan pointed at one of them. “Are the humans factotums?”

  “They are. Now, attend closely.”

  At first Riordan didn’t notice any differences in the scenes, but slowly, he began seeing the trend. “There are fewer Dornaani in the concourses.”

  “That is the first visible effect of Virtua: detachment from community.”

  “So is this when Virtua was, er, reinvented?”

  Oduosslun froze the time-lapsed images. “Virtua has always been there, human. As I said, it was the greatest miracle of all.”

  Riordan shrugged. “Well, I grant you that it’s very impressive—”

  “Human. Be silent. Until you have experienced Virtua, not mere virtuality, your opinions only demonstrate your ignorance. Virtua was neither conceived nor built for entertainment. It was used for planning, for modeling.”

  “Okay, but if it was ‘always there,’ does that mean you activated it during your Golden Age?”

  “Human, listen more carefully. It was always there.”

  Riordan sat straighter. “You mean, the Virtua in use today is the original? Was built by the Elders?”

  “Either them or one of the other ancient races. Virtua is fundamentally different from virtuality because it is not simply a scenario; it is an entire universe. Its sophistication and immersivity exhilarate, edify, terrify. Yet few Dornaani knew of it until five centuries ago.”

  “So it was an underground phenomenon?”

  “To adopt the closest human term, access to Virtua was a gray market commodity. The cost to use it increased as average persons began acquiring permits for access. That spawned the development of imitations—virtuality—and a tremendous surge in users.” Oduosslun reactivated the holosphere. The wide slideways and concourses were increasingly populated by proxrovs instead of actual Dornaani.

  Riordan sighed. “So as increasing numbers of Dornaani spent time in computer-controlled fantasy worlds, they started accepting more automation in their lives.”

  Oduosslun’s outer eyelids opened and shut slowly. “A sane being cannot both surrender their senses to virtuality and retain an aversion to the technology that drives it. In particular, its users accepted those technologies that addressed their physical needs. Proxrovs were the first sign of this trend.” Automatons now constituted three-quarters of the traffic on city slideways, most of them bearing loads. “Originally used to run errands and fetch food fro
m our public commissaries, remote-operated proxies became the primary means whereby virtuality devotees interacted with the world.”

  Riordan, eyes riveted to the holosphere, felt a sympathetic horror rising in his chest. The great cities of the Dornaani were now rarely visited by the descendants of their builders. “And so now most of your population won’t leave their virtual worlds.”

  Oduosslun’s left hand flopped loosely upward: despairing affirmation. “Other factors intensified the trend. Four centuries ago, budget analysts proved that the combined costs of virtuality, autonutrient delivery, and proxrov-assisted mobility were drastically less than any other form of geriatric care. Furthermore, the recipients experienced less pain and depression.”

  A chill running down his spine, Riordan watched as a withered Dornaani—limp, lifeless—was carefully removed from a maze of machines by two proxrovs.

  Oduosslun’s gills burbled. “Our older populations were glad to accept this as a subsidized alternative to traditional late-life care. Since then, the trend has spread to younger generations. Every age cohort is impacted.”

  The holographic images now matched Riordan’s own experience of the Collective: proxrovs and bioproxies moving through mostly deserted streets. Dornaani scuttled like cautious interlopers among them.

  Oduosslun waved the images away. “A comprehensive census is now as hard to accomplish as anything else. However, best estimates place our total non-loji population, which once numbered in the tens of billions, at only eight hundred million. The number of traditionally active individuals are estimated between seven to nine million. Roughly twenty times that number of partially active. The remainder spend at least ninety-five percent of their time in some form of virtuality, and defer an equal percentage of all social and physical interface to proxrovs, bioproxies, or other simulacra.”

  Riordan discovered he had been holding his breath. A whole race shriveling, decaying, disappearing into a digitized opium haze. Leaving a desperately factious and unready Accord to fend for itself. “It…it’s terrifying,” he murmured.

  “It was inevitable,” Oduosslun countered brusquely. “Be warned, human. Your species could suffer a similar fate.”

  Riordan remembered the naked streets, shook his head at the contrast with Earth’s megalopoli. “If it can happen to us, I think it’s a long way off.”

  “Do not be obtuse. I do not refer to virtuality. I mean you are equally susceptible to the curse of self-fulfilling prophesies. Ours was to be dutiful rag pickers and here you see the endgame. Your challenge will be different. Whatever destiny we assign to ourselves also defines our doom. It is there, lurking, waiting, from the instantiation of sentience. It is the antipodal defect of the virtue we call ‘foresight.’”

  Riordan shook his head. “I’m not sure that humanity has any self-fulfilling prophesy that—”

  “Then watch.” Oduosslun swept her hand toward the wall. “Is this not the validation, the affirmation most humans long for, like primitive hand-wringing penitents?”

  And Caine saw himself standing, like Abraham, before a burning bush, its outline reminiscent of the pear-shaped Dornaani silhouette. A voice suspiciously like Oduosslun’s emanated from the crackling flames. “You have expiated the genocidal sins committed by your half-sibling Ktor twenty millennia ago. For lo, when you floated above the homeworld of the Arat Kur, you held righteous apocalypse in your grasp, and yet you stayed your hand.” The voice became avuncular, more human, more like…Nolan’s? “But your species can be mercurial, and wayward in following any course for long.” A pause as the Caine-shepherd bowed, almost dovened, as the pronouncements washed over him. “So we shall watch and measure how you acquit yourselves when you take up the duties, the burdens, you will soon inherit from us.”

  Abrahamic Caine looked up.

  Damn, I am never growing a beard…

  Fear and longing brightened the simulacrum’s eyes. “But surely you cannot mean to confer such terrible power and such terrible responsibilities upon us?”

  The voice from the bush was now a mix of many Riordan had heard since arriving in the Collective: Oduosslun, Suvtrush, Glayaazh, Thlunroolt, Uinzleej, and even Alnduul. “We can no longer shape your fate, can no longer intervene, either to protect or constrain. Old secrets become the new truths with which you must contend. Our stewardship of the Accord is at an end. Yours must begin.”

  “But we barely survived the first invasion of our lands.” Caine’s image waved desperately toward a wide, flat valley where flocks and tents were clustered. “Our weapons are crude. Our numbers are as a few drops of rain compared to the vast ocean of our foes.”

  The bush burned low. “And yet, these are the challenges that ennoble your kind. The peril and the promise of new races and worlds. They will call forth the best from you. Go now, and prepare yourself.”

  The vision ended; Caine discovered he was running a palm along the underside of his neck, assessing three days’ worth of stubble.

  Oduosslun waved at the empty space where the scene had unfolded. “As if the reasons and motivations of any species could ever be so pure. But that does not prevent us from wishing and then believing that they are.” Spittle rasped in her extruded mouth. “It is in the nature of social creatures to crave approval and approbation, to build a temple out of what they have told themselves they are and must be.”

  Oduosslun stared at Riordan. “Reject that reflex. Reject the simplistic narrative. Reject the opiating allure of presuming you know your own destiny. Rather, embrace the ineluctable truth that you are not preordained saviors in the midst of a mythic cycle, any more than we were the guardians and guarantors of civilization. Like us, you are simply another species living out the consequences of what came before.”

  Oduosslun turned away. Riordan had a fleeting image of her words rising up around her like a suit of armor, of wicked spikes and razor-edged flanges protecting a raw, flayed body that was somehow still alive, despite the agony. “Why are you telling me all this?” he asked.

  Oduosslun seemed not to have heard; her response seemed more like a distracted musing. “One of your myths—Pandora’s Box—is especially instructive. For all of us.

  “We Dornaani ultimately chose to leave that box of knowledge and challenges unopened. Indeed, we put it far away, taught generations to forget it. That choice did not just determine who we were to become; it revealed who, at the core, we truly are.

  “Conversely, in order for Pandora and your rude forebears to become truly human, they had to open the box. They had to grapple with the ruinous and petty passions it released. That is how humanity’s character was established: not by some Olympian deity, but by a young woman who could no longer resist the allure of forbidden secrets. Her act exemplified the defining characteristic of your species, a trait that is far stronger in you than it is in us: curiosity.”

  Oduosslun’s fingers rolled in a slow cascade. “Most humans cannot resist the desire to know and act for themselves. We could resist and did. We were arguably wiser, choosing the warm safety of our hearth over the glimmering possibility of greatness. Conversely, one never achieves greatness by staying safe at home.” Her gills pittered faintly: an ironic chuckle. “Yet, no one ever inadvertently destroyed the universe by staying at home, either.”

  Riordan leaned back. “Do you believe a species can alter their intrinsic traits and characteristics, to change their outcomes?”

  Her mouth twisted slightly. “No race has ever been capable of observing itself from such remove, so I lack data for assaying an answer. However, that question would greatly interest the Virtua expert to whom I shall direct you. His focus in not on recorded events, past or present, but in greater patterns. All such speculations are nonsense, of course, but he can doubtless answer your most urgent question: if and where your mate has been immersed into Virtua. And what you must do to extract her from it.”

  “And where will I find him?”

  Oduosslun waved at the ceiling. “On a planet orbiting
the primary star of this binary system. I have just sent him a request on your behalf. He will be easy to find.”

  “And will he, too, require journeys or tests?”

  The twist of her mouth became slightly wrinkled: a hint of sardonicism. “Nothing that will inconvenience you.” There seemed to be an unspoken gulf, and warning, behind her words.

  Oduosslun gestured toward the door. “You have what you came for. My research and investigations resume soon. I must prepare for them. I recommend you do the same for yours.”

  * * *

  As soon as Anansi and the rest of the salvage from Aozhoodn was secured in Olsloov’s forward cargo bay, Riordan went to the bridge. Alnduul was standing watch alone. His voice and face were solemn. “It is gratifying that you are back, Caine Riordan.”

  “Likewise. Now all I need is a shower. Or maybe an hour-long bath in one of those big wading pools you relax in.”

  “We require the pools for hydration. Relaxation is an incidental benefit. For now, do use your stateroom’s shower. At least until your body is…free of contaminants.”

  Jeez, if I’m too sweaty, just say so. “Oduosslun showed me how recently the Collective started using robots. And why.”

  Alnduul finished plotting their course to the system’s primary. “Since your inquiry involved Virtua, it was inevitable that she would do so.”

  Riordan nodded. “You know, when I repatriated Tlerek Srin Shethkador at Sigma Draconis, I noticed that Ktor ship designers apparently share your ancestors’ aversion to autonomous or remote systems. There were none on their bridge or in their corridors, nothing voice-actuated or -operated. Everything was run through direct, physical controls.”

  Alnduul slowly drew a finger through the space between them, like bait trailed in a sluggish stream. “That is consistent with what we have heard. Logically, they would only forego automation if it entailed great risk.”