Adiamante

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “If you would follow Subcommander Kemra to the observation room, our demonstration is about to begin.” Gibreal stood as if I hadn’t spoken at all. He hadn’t really heard a word. All he’d wanted to do was to evaluate me as though I were his personal opponent.

  The observation room was just that—a small room with three wall-sized screens and a dozen black padded chairs. The heavy shielding was clearly designed to keep cybs or me or both from interfering with operations. If I’d wished, I could have created some difficulties, but not before the energy weapons in the shield emplacements had made even more difficulty for me.

  Luna now filled two-thirds of the center screen, and a growing sense of horror bubbled up within me as I settled into one of the center chairs. Kemra sat two chairs away. No one else entered the room.

  “Five minutes until commencement of demonstration. Five minutes,” came the human voice of MYL-ERA from the hidden speakers.

  “What are you planning?”

  “No more than others have done,” Kemra answered crisply. “No more than you.”

  How did one answer that?

  “Demonstration commencing in three minutes. Three minutes.”

  Luna had ceased to grow in the screen and now filled almost the entire focus, blotched in white and black, the terminator splitting the moon’s image into a third of darkness and two-thirds of silvered light.

  The cybnet whined and strained, and a prickling burning feeling ran through the cyb-limbo that was neither underweb nor overspace, yet which bore some elements of each. The power concentrations that poured from the linked fusactors into the magbottle focus were already twisting space itself, and sending harmonics through the overweb.

  For millennia the wave of disruption that was building would cross the galaxy, puzzling future astronomers—those that captured or recorded it. More than a few demis—me included—would have splitting headaches before long.

  I watched the screen, as I had been directed, although I could have caught and held the images in my mind as easily.

  “Demonstration commencing.”

  Still, the energies built in the magbottle for a moment longer before they lashed outward, downward at the satellite below.

  For long instants, nothing happened.

  For minutes, nothing occurred. Nothing. One untutored in physics or deep-space might assume that, when enough energy to power half a mid-tech planet poured from an adiamante hull toward the moon, some visible sign might immediately appear. That assumption would be wrong.

  The first sign was mist rising from the moon, though it was not mist, but vaporized rock and associated gases. I rubbed my forehead, trying to handle the distortions created by that much power, trying to shield my mind against the knives of power and the implications for the Construct.

  Even the Gibson shuddered the entire length of its klicks-long hull as the energy poured forth … and forth.

  Kemra’s eyes flicked from me to the screen and back again.

  That mist of vaporized rock and metal, lunar north of the ancient linear induction accelerator, widened and rose and shimmered.

  The Gibson shivered, wrenching underweb and overspace, overloading low nets and shutting down the internal public net.

  A smoother oval began to appear, ringed in darker material, peering through the fog of vaporized rock, growing larger with each gigajoule per nanosecond.

  After a quarter hour, a molten eye peered from old Luna.

  How wide was the new sea, the new crater? Two hundred klicks? Three hundred? It didn’t matter. The baleful reddish glint to the polished surface would give the moon the look of a bloodshot eye staring down at Old Earth—at least when the new crater hardened and was fully sunlit.

  The old god Lyr didn’t operate on Luna, where the seas were dust and rock, but was a god of Old Earth, as my mother had said.

  I closed my eyes for a time, not that there was much else I could do in response to the threat and the incredible waste of power used to deliver it. Knives stabbed through my skull.

  When I reopened my eyes, still watering, the diminishing disc of the moon indicated that the Gibson was rejoining the rest of the fleet off Old Earth—the next target for the massive particle beams and the still-unused de-energizers that had to lurk within the adiamante hull that surrounded me like a niellen cage.

  I studied the screen for a moment longer, taking in the polished orb-within-an-orb that was clearly meant as a reminder that the power of the cybs was not to be disregarded.

  It might prove a different reminder, one I could do without. The cybs’ reliance on physical might was a problem, a problem bigger than it had ever been for our ancestors. It would be difficult—if not impossible—to reason with hate-fired anger supported by a faith in the idea that physical force able to rearrange the appearance of a solar system was the best manner in which to resolve all problems.

  I tried not to take too deep a breath, knowing that Kemra would misunderstand, but the power of both the cybs’ hatred and that concentrated particle beam had reverberated through me—and both had hurt. My head and tense muscles ached, and I sat in the chair for a time, wrestling with my self-system, and gathering myself together.

  Finally, I stood.

  “I trust that the demonstration is concluded.” My head still hurt, and I massaged my temples with the fingers of my right hand.

  “That was the demonstration,” Kemra said.

  I wanted to say something, but what could I say at that moment? So I asked, “Now what?”

  “That’s all.” Her voice held a hint of disappointment, as though I should have said or done something, but I didn’t, and she touched the access plate.

  The door opened.

  Gorum was waiting outside the observation room, smiling. “What did you think of our little demonstration, Coordinator?”

  I pushed back simultaneous waves of anger and sadness and met his eyes full. “It was an impressive display of brute power, Commander. I doubt the like of it has been attempted or seen since the high point of the Rebuilt Hegemony.”

  “It would seem the Coordinator was impressed,” Gorum noted to Kemra.

  “When the Rebuilt Hegemony did something similar at Al-Moratoros,” I added, keeping my voice dispassionate, “it was the beginning of its end.”

  “That’s an odd sort of threat, if it’s a threat,” said Gorum.

  “It’s an observation. We don’t threaten. We can’t threaten.” That was as far as I could push it, and I looked at Kemra. “If you would be so kind as to return me to Deseret …”

  “ … got to him finally,” gloated Gorum on the shipnet. “He admitted they don’t have the power to threaten.”

  “He didn’t mean it that way, Commander.” Kemra’s pulsed response was pushed away before she finished.

  I turned in the direction of lock one, and Kemra bounded to catch me. We continued aft for several moments before she spoke. “Why didn’t you tell him what you said wasn’t an admission of weakness?”

  “Because that would have made it a threat.”

  “I don’t understand you demis. A warship boils a hole in your moon, and you say nothing. Why not?”

  “As I told Gorum, we once boiled away the entire surface of another world’s moon. What could I say? That it was wrong? That we’re still paying for it? That any people who does that will eventually pay for it?”

  “You just threatened. Why didn’t you tell Gorum that?”

  “It isn’t a threat, and I didn’t tell him, and he didn’t hear what I said,” I answered tiredly. “Remember Viedras and the prairie dogs? I told Viedras to stop. It wasn’t a threat; it was an observation.”

  Kemra halted at the heavy hatch to lock one, slipping onto shipnet and coding her entry. I waited.

  The first hatch opened, and we stepped through. As it closed, the second one opened, and we walked through it and across the open space of lock one toward the waiting shuttle. No marcybs remained to pipe me off the Gibson.

  “An
observation? Explain that, if you would.” Kemra’s voice contained both anger and bewilderment.

  I shrugged, and nearly lost my balance in the low gee. “It’s simple. Using that much power results in one of two things. Either those against whom you use it retaliate with greater power, or they don’t. In the first case, the result is obvious. In the second case, what happens is that so much power translates into inner arrogance within the society, and for a number of well-documented and intricate reasons I won’t try to explain in detail, leads to the destruction of that society’s power. That’s what happened to the Rebuilt Hegemony, and quite a few other societies.”

  “You’re impossible and patronizing,” she snapped. “You won’t explain because you can’t. It’s just some magic that you believe, and think everyone else should believe.” Kemra stopped at the foot of the lander ramp.

  I lurched to avoid running into her.

  “Well, can you explain this mumbo-jumbo magic?”

  “Not in your terms.”

  “In yours then.”

  I looked at the lander looming above us in the chill of lock one, then at Kemra’s eyes, even more chill than the air around me. “Power attracts those who are corrupt. A society that can destroy a moon or a continent or boil a hole in a satellite that will last for millions of years offers immense power. That power attracts and creates equally great corruption. No society has ever lasted in the form that exercised such power because that much power is far more attractive to its members than the moral restraint necessary to maintain a functioning society. That’s because no society can continue when every member insists on receiving back more than he or she contributed. The exercise of power requires that those in power receive much more than they contribute, and that means all too many others feel cheated, and fewer and fewer will abide by society’s rules.”

  Kemra shook her head. “You’re incredibly naive. For all your brilliance, you are so naive. Most members of any society couldn’t even understand what you’re talking about. And they wouldn’t care.”

  “No,” I said slowly. “They couldn’t say what I said. But they feel it, and care, and they act upon it. I gave you your answer. Could we leave?” I’d given them clue after clue, answer after answer, and they wouldn’t listen. They couldn’t listen.

  “Yes, we can leave.” She turned angrily.

  I followed more slowly and strapped into the couch silently.

  Neither of us said anything until Kessek had the shuttle well clear of the Gibson.

  As we sat in our separate couches in the lander, Kemra turned toward me and asked bluntly, “Why didn’t you clone her?”

  “Who?” I was still trying to figure out a better explanation for why successful use of massive force would destroy the cybs—if we didn’t first.

  “Your soulmate. What was her name? Did you have children?”

  “Morgen.” I paused as the lander’s attitude jets fired once, twice. “I thought we were talking about why excessive use of force—”

  “We won’t ever agree on the use of force,” Kemra said in exasperation. “Let’s keep it simple. Maybe I can understand this on a personal basis. First, children. Did you have any?”

  “We have a daughter. She’s grown—a marine biologist.”

  “Does she have children?”

  “No. What does this have to do with—”

  “Just a minute. I’m getting there. Why didn’t you clone Morgen and just feed her mind to the clone?”

  I tried not to wince, but the wrongness of that ripped at me. I swallowed and finally answered. “It would have been wrong.”

  “You … a demi? You—of those who once imposed your concepts of right on the galaxy? You worry about right and wrong?”

  “Strangely enough, yes.” I laughed, and did not conceal the bitterness. “Cloning would not have worked. An exact clone would have died soon from the same causes—”

  “How? That sort of death is an interaction between genetic predilections and environment.”

  “Exactly. Could I doom a duplicate Morgen to a duplicate death?”

  “You wouldn’t have to replicate all the environmental factors. Why, with all your great knowledge of anatomy and physiology, couldn’t you recreate her without the defects?” Kemra’s tone was not quite sarcastic.

  “Even if we managed to remove just one critical strand from the DNA subhelices—and could find just the one—don’t you see? Morgen was a demi, and so am I. Her clone”—I shivered—“would be also.”

  Kemra looked blank as the shuttle bucked slightly at the first hint of the upper atmosphere.

  “Would it be fair to make that new person conform to the lines of Morgen’s life? And, as I mentioned, since humans are whole-body people, how would it even be possible? We can’t cram a lifetime of experience into a few years. Look! Morgen would still be dead. You can’t duplicate people that way. So I’d have a clone that was almost Morgen, but I would have gone through her death once, and, since that would change me, then nothing would be the same, and that new person would be tied to a life where nothing was quite the same or quite right, without really having chosen it herself.” I winced again at the inherent wrongness of it all.

  Her eyes widened slightly as if trying to grasp something, and not quite reaching it.

  “You don’t understand, do you?” I took a deep breath. “That’s something you’ve never understood, part of the gulf that separates us.”

  Kemra turned cold again, and her eyes were hard and chill as ice three.

  “Humans are whole-body creatures. Every physical and emotional impact modifies both body and the brain—merely scanning the brain and duplicating the mental images doesn’t do it. That’s why you all have to stay close to your nets—because unanchored mental images don’t retain well.”

  “Coordinator, are you all right?” Keiko snapped through the uppernet, cutting through my concentration, which was wavering anyway after the headaches created by the Gibson’s particle beam.

  “I’m fine,” I lied. “Any problems?”

  “Besides half the locials screaming about the cybs boiling a hole in the moon? No. No problems at all.”

  “Good. I’ll be there as soon as I land.”

  “Or Locatio gibbering about the cybs in Ellay being ready to fry his locial?”

  “They won’t, but if they start, that breaks the Construct, and he can do as he pleases.” I rubbed my forehead. Things were going to get worse, much worse. “There wasn’t anyone or anything damaged on Luna, was there?”

  “Some items shifted in the north depot. That was it. They chose an abandoned area.”

  That figured. They seemed to have some understanding of what would break the Construct without understanding the implications at all.

  “There will be a groundshuttle waiting,” Keiko promised. “Take it.”

  I would. What else could I do?

  “I’ll ignore that,” Kemra snapped through my confusion, responding to my observation before the high speed net-exchange.

  “Unanchored mental images?” I stumbled, trying to pick up the threads of my thoughts. “Why? Why do you all deny whole-body reality?”

  Kessek flared the lander, slowing the monster as it dropped toward Parwon.

  “We don’t deny it. But it warps true logic. What is true is true, whether your body feels that way or not.”

  I shrugged. “That’s accurate enough, but you don’t resolve logic-body conflicts by ignoring your body, but rather by integrating thought and body.”

  “We do. We integrate bodily inputs into the nets, and we identify bodily biasing factors to ensure that they don’t create emotional biases to true logical solutions.”

  “That doesn’t work,” I said tiredly, knowing the words were wrong as I spoke them, but trying to juggle too many variables and worries wasn’t making clear thought any easier or more logical, and I was trying to be logical when I was half intuit, and it wasn’t working.

  “You have enough answers for why n
othing can be done,” Kemra said brightly, every word forced. “You can’t or won’t say anything that will stop the Vereal fleet. You couldn’t or wouldn’t do anything that would have saved your beloved Morgen. You don’t have any descendants, and you probably won’t, and you can’t explain any of this. So what can you do?”

  I wished I knew. I just sat there as the lander rumbled to a halt a hundred meters north of the Deseret tower.

  “That’s a good question,” I said into the abrupt stillness as Kessek killed the rumbling engines. “I don’t have a good answer, except that I know that not every question can be resolved through the application of better and better technology and more and more power.” I released the harness and sat up in the supple officers’ couch. “I know what is right and what is not, and I know that you can’t explain that understanding in hard, bright, logical, and correct words that fit every circumstance, because you can’t separate words from life and expect them to hold their full meaning.”

  “More magic,” Kemra said, her voice as tired as I felt.

  The heavy ramp whined down onto the permacrete.

  “If that’s how you feel, that’s all it will be.” I stood on legs that felt all too shaky.

  “You’ll turn … never mind.” She shut her mouth as I stumbled down the ramp, but she never left her couch.

  The ramp rose as I walked toward the tower, rubbing my forehead and blotting back the tears caused by the continuing headache and the cold wind out of the north.

  As the lander rumbled back down the strip, I took a last look toward the black monster before walking toward the groundshuttle.

  None there were so blind as would not see, and never had that been so true, I felt. Then, that had probably been exactly how my eleven predecessors had felt.

  Such a comforting thought. Six of them hadn’t even survived their office as Coordinator.

  Dvorrak waved, and I walked toward his groundshuttle as the cyb craft rumbled back down the locial strip, lifting toward orbit.

  XXVIII

  THE STORY THE DEMI TOLD