Warstrider: Jackers (Warstrider Series, Book Three)

by Ian Douglas

  What would Self be like if it had first come to being in the Void, an alien otherness of inexplicable phenomena and strange radiations. Might Self have been shaped differently by different conditions, shaped, possibly, like this tiny not-Self? . . .

  That might-have-been was a new idea, an Event worthy of careful study. . . .

  Dev felt heavy, and the thoughts churning through his mind bore the alien, strange-tasting sensations of a dream. Consciousness faded into the black. . . .

  Encountering that alien >>self<< had been more shocking, more destructive of Self's certainty of its identity and place within the universe than had been the discovery that it shared a universe with humans. That >>self<< had not been generated by Self . . . but by another Self, a revelation of intricate complexity and unexpected wonder in a once-comprehensible universe that had left Self literally dazed.

  Another Self? One might as well speak of another Universe, for the two were, if not synonymous, then closely paired. Self bore memories within its innermost being of previous Selves grown sated and complete, distant Selves launching countless pods of Will-be-Self into the not-Rock Void at the Universe's center. There were other Selves, certainly; there must be to explain the unremembered voyage across the Void to this part of the Universe of Rock.

  But such . . . beings were far removed indeed from Here, unreachable by any means, separated by the Void itself and by uncountable numbers of Events. Here, unheralded, was proof of the physical existence of other Selves within a reachable portion of the Universe.

  Self had contemplated the possibility of one day meeting other Selves. It imagined that such a meeting must be inevitable, though it had never imagined that such a meeting might happen Here. In its inverted cosmology, the Universe was infinite Rock centered—though such a word could scarcely be applied to infinity—upon an immense Void of not-Rock. For a given Self, the Cycles ran ever toward completion, encompassing billions of Events; ultimately there came the final Event, when Self had reached the inner surface of the Void and undergone the Change, when clouds of Will-be-Selves were hurled into the Void on internally generated pulses of intense magnetic energy. The Will-be-Selves arced across the Void, ultimately landing on some other part of the Void's surface.

  Self had glimpsed that surface, and the Void beyond, though the Change was still many thousands of Events in the future. Still, it had imagined itself close to the final Event . . . close enough to taste, in fact, until the Burning had seared through Being, truncating Self and cauterizing untold aspects of being and memory and experience.

  The memory caused Self to tremble slightly. The human rocked on the yielding surface, half-submerged in the whole.

  For Self, the Burning was inextricably linked to these . . . humans, for it had first tasted them when its >>selves<< had first emerged on the surface of the Void. Humans, or things like them, had exterminated uncounted thousands of >>selves<< sent to probe and acquire those tantalizing concentrations of alien metals and materials sensed as delicious disruptions of Rock's inner magnetic fields, clinging to the edge of the Void. Humans had been present on the surface of the Void until just before the Burning.

  It was natural to assume that the humans had somehow caused the Burning.

  Almost, Self again closed its grip on the human, intending to dissociate the thing's molecules one from the other and absorb its substance.

  But some of the new memories stopped it. made it pause and consider.

  The new memories were from the alien >>self<<, and they continued speaking of another Here, another Self . . . and of humans much like this one. There were other memories as well . . . of shadowy glimpses of the Void, of myriad aspects of the Universe that were neither not-Rock nor Rock, or rather, perhaps they were very special subsets of Rock, solid and unyielding, yet with a variety of structure astonishing to a mind that had marked the passage of billions of separate Events, great and little, within the black warmth of Mother Rock.

  Probing deeper, Self studied the memories brought by the alien >>self<<. There was so much that was strange there, things perplexing, things bewildering.

  Most of all, there was wonder, for it seemed that the Universe still held myriad surprises far beyond what was Here and comfortably familiar.

  Dev knew the Empire as enemy. The Empire had sundered his family, ordering his father to divorce his mother in order to take a socially acceptable wife with the promotion that elevated him to an Imperial command. That command had led to disgrace, to court-martial, to suicide. Dev's mother lived still, but with psychoreconstruction she had become a stranger, withdrawn and uncommunicative. And Dev's brother . . . where was Greg now?

  Dev had been forced to find a new family. . . .

  Family? What is family? Impression of a gathering of >>selves<<, but more distinct, more . . . independent. Not echoes of Self, but Selves in theirown right.

  Astonishing.

  Fight the Empire. Not for revenge, though that was motivation enough at first. But because it is wrong. Because it stifles individuality, human purpose, the God-given right to try and fail and learn and try again.

  Because it batters down the barriers that separate men from machines.

  Because it tries to impose one way of being, one way of thinking on cultures as diverse as North Americans and Cantonese, as Japanese and Juanyekundan, as Latino and North Hindi.

  Because it is inefficient, creating pain as it sacrifices individuality for conformity.

  Because the proper place for government is not inside a man's heart or head.

  Government. Conformity. Individuality. Bizarre thoughts, alien and incomprehensible.

  Yet Self could feel and savor the flow of thoughts with a precise clarity now. The comel the human had been wearing on its . . . arm . . . had been absorbed, its patterns analyzed, its purpose clear. What the comel had been designed to do, bridging the gulf between thinking beings, Self could do now.

  But with thought itself made perfectly and mutually intelligible, how does the One communicate with another that cannot taste the same aspects of the surrounding Universe . . . or if it tastes them, tastes them as differently as Rock differs from not-Rock?

  What happens if neural stimulation is applied . . . here?

  Dev awoke suddenly, fully alert . . . though he couldn't immediately tell if his eyes were open for the darkness pressing in about him was absolute. He felt as though he were lying on a waterbed, though the gentle undulations beneath his back did not seem to correspond with his movements.

  His back . . .

  He remembered those last few moments of terror, and he remembered the distinct whiplash of pain followed by empty nothingness in his lower body as he'd felt his spine snap. A good team of somatic engineers could graft him back together again, of course . . . but there were no somatic engineers here.

  Fearfully, bracing himself against the worst, he tried to wiggle his toes. . . .

  . . . and felt them move!

  The relief as he realized that he could still feel his legs was indescribable, a flood of warm joy that lasted until he remembered that amputees could often sense ghost limbs where their real limbs once had been. Was that what he was feeling?

  Anxiously, he slid an arm down, felt his touched leg . . . and reveled in the sensation of his fingers sliding over his thigh. There was no pain, just a curiously heavy feeling on his chest as he tried to rise, as though several kilos of wet clay were lying there.

  There was something on his chest! He could feel it there, soft beneath his fingers. What? . . .

  All of his memories up to the instant when he'd fallen into the pit were accessible to him. He was in that cavern still . . . must be lying in or on the mass of the Xenophobe.

  Panic rippled through his being . . . instantly suppressed. He was still alive and apparently unhurt. He could sense the close, sulfurous heat of the place but was having no trouble breathing.

  And he could remember now the strangest dreams. . . .

  The complexity of Dev
Cameron conscious was delightfully more intricate than the merely chemical complexity of Dev Cameron's unconscious body. The thoughts flickering through his brain were wonderfully patterned, a rush and flow and ebb of neural currents, triggered from the very top of the brain, then flashing out across the surface of the cerebral cortex, sensed as a wave of interlocking sensory imagery.

  Self sensed . . . strangeness . . . there were multiple personalities here within the single being that called itself Dev Cameron, multiple Selves within one being, but so completely interconnected and integrated as to make it impossible to distinguish where one left off and another began. There was a Dev Cameron that was determined to fight for something it called freedom against an oppressor it called the Empire; there was another Dev Cameron, rigid and precise and logical; still another hungered for—that was the only possible translation—another human called Katya Alessandro.

  Currents within currents, thoughts beneath thoughts. This complex being was at once One and Many.

  Dev Cameron's upper brain was physically divided in two, with each half regulating and manipulating different types of information in different ways. Strange, too, was the fine network of incredibly pure metals that overlaid and interpenetrated various parts of the brain, and the ceramic and alloy devices implanted in head and hand and interwoven with the nervous system in a manner that was clearly derived from nanotechnology. At first, Self thought that this network was natural, but closer examination revealed that it was something added to the organism from without. Curious. Humans did not carry their own, inborn nanotechnology with them but had been forced to develop it on their own as a kind of externally applied prosthesis.

  They'd done a fair job, on the whole. Still, some things could use improvement. If there were more connections between the left and right sides of the brain, for example . . .

  Like this . . .

  Dev was uncomfortably aware that his thoughts were far too clear, too precise, too . . . creative. He had never felt this way, and the heady, almost dizzying sensation, as though his own mind was racing ahead at breakneck speed, was frightening at first.

  And the . . . ideas. Sudden. Brilliant. Inspired. Was he hallucinating?

  Perhaps he was insane. He'd once heard schizophrenia described as an inability to control the leap and flow of thoughts.

  Yet if this was insanity, it was a pleasantly creative one. The sensation was like the exhilaration he felt when he was in full linkage, commanding the raw power of a warstrider with his body, of a high-grade AI linked to his mind. But he wasn't linked . . .

  Or was he?

  He was linked with . . . something.

  Turning inward, he perceived the Naga, and in a flash of inspiration perceived just what the Naga had done to him. With the ease of imagination, but with a clarity that he knew represented reality, he saw in his mind's eye the network of connections, no more than a few molecules thick, that crisscrossed throughout his body, threading especially along his central nervous system and concentrated within his brain.

  Threads of Naga-growth exploded in a fuzzy mass from his face and his chest; the heavy weight on his chest was a specially grown Naga supracell, the source of the alien growth which consisted almost entirely of nanotechnic organelles strung together as connecting fibers.

  Dev was reminded forcibly of some kind of fungus, of countless branching hyphae feeding on his substance . . . but before some deep and primitive part of his awareness could react to such a horrifying thought, inspiration provided realization and complete understanding. He was part of the Naga, as the Naga was part of him.

  And there was nothing to fear, for the Naga only wanted to . . . know.

  As he did.

  A universe of wonder, seen inside out. Rock as . . . minute globules, adrift in an infinite sea of not-Rock. Radiation . . . the wavelengths growing progressively shorter from the familiar, comfortable warmth of heat and the longer, slippery questings of radio. Revelation! The electromagnetic spectrum extended far beyond the known!

  Was it possible to sense these radiations? Humans did, apparently. Many of their memories contained far more detail than could be expected from thermal imaging. Patterning the organ to detect those radiations was relatively simple. More difficult by far was the reordering of the means of perceiving the images.

  Vision, after all, took place not in the eyes, but in the brain.

  Dev could see.

  It was not the same as seeing with his own eyes, but he knew at once what was happening. Linked to a warstrider, he often shifted to infrared viewing, and what he was seeing now was like IR imaging, ragged patterns perceived as red and yellow and green that shaped form and substance in patterns that were nearly abstract.

  His sharpened mind took the patterns and enhanced them, finding sense and order. He was, as he'd deduced, in a vast, underground chamber, lying on a sea of Naga supracells that extended in every direction and up the sides of the surrounding rock walls. The specialized supracell on his chest was linked to the whole by thousands of connectors ranging in size from the diameter of Dev's little finger to threads so thin they were . . . sensed, somehow, but not seen.

  The actual sight of that thin fuzz of tendrils growing between the supracell and his own body jarred Dev unexpectedly, even though he'd already sensed its presence with another, newer part of his mind. The reaction, sharp and involuntary, sickened . . . and he was surprised to feel that sickening rippling out through the mass of organic tissue around him.

  *I did not intend to cause distress.

  **No problem. I . . . we . . . are not fully integrated.

  *Yet.

  **Yet.

  *The association can be terminated at any time. The changes wrought within your/my body need not be permanent. They were necessary, first, to save your/my life, second to learn about your/my functioning.

  **Understanding. Acceptance.

  Dev recognized the shock of unpleasant realization that had been triggered by the infrared image of the supracell and its extrusions into his own body. There was within most humans a queasy mistrust of organisms that fed—as parasites or as saprophytes—on other organisms. Bacteria. Fungi and molds. Parasitic worms and insects.

  But when the relationship between two species was mutually beneficial, it was true symbiosis.

  Symbiosis, Dev realized with an unaccustomed burst of mental clarity, was the natural way of most organisms with which he was familiar. The mitochondria within his body's cells had begun eons ago as viral or bacterial symbionts within larger cell hosts and had become so completely integrated into the system that they were now cellular organelles vital to the cell's conversion of food to energy. On a far larger and more distinct scale were the bacteria within the human gut, without which humans would be unable to digest their food. . . .

  What Dev was experiencing now was a symbiosis less complete than the one, more complete than the other, and differing from both in the fact that both the participants could voluntarily dissociate from one another . . . and in that dissociation would not cause their deaths.

  And the possibilities of this new association were intriguing. Dev could already perceive how greatly his senses had been extended simply by increasing the efficiency of certain interacting portions of his cerebral cortex; sight, hearing, smell, taste, feeling all were dramatically heightened . . . and they were controllable, to the point that too much input could be dialed down as easily as the texture or intensity of a ViRdrama could be adjusted for the linker's comfort. And there were other senses, as well. He could feel radio now, in the pulse and tingle of long wavelengths issuing from the creature around him, as easily as he could feel its heat, and both wavelengths carried far more information to him than the simple sensation of temperature had borne before. His hearing was incredibly sharp; the sounds of supracells gliding over one another on a rock wall some twenty meters away were instantly pinpointed, immediately identified . . . and they brought with them a crude picture of their cause. He could shut his eyes and i
mage his surroundings—softer and with less clarity than through his eyes—through his ears.

  Was this, Dev wondered, what a dolphin "saw" with its natural sonar in Earth's ocean depths?

  And the new connections between the two sides of his brain offered undreamed of potential. His intelligence, he was sure, had expanded to the point where a direct correlation with his former cognitive abilities was meaningless. He could process information faster and more efficiently; his memory worked as accurately as his implanted RAM but on a far vaster, more complete, and more accessible level; and his spontaneous creativity—his ability to gain insights, intuition, hunches drawn from scanty or incomplete data—had grown to the point where it was almost a new sense in its own right.

  The Naga supracell appeared to be dwindling. Actually, it was sinking, molecule by molecule, through the pores in his bodysuit and his skin, its mass rapidly trickling into the network of fine threads already growing throughout his body, or to pools of Naga-cellular material forming within empty spaces in abdomen and chest. The fuzz of molecular connections between himself and the Naga proper grew thicker.

  Dev flexed his awareness, reaching out, savoring input from his own senses . . . and from those eldritch senses of his symbiont companion. He could sense, somehow, the entirety of the Naga, huge within its vast network of underground chambers, could read its history, could receive impressions from as far away as . . .

  Then Dev drew back, shuddering, suddenly afraid. Even a super genius, it seemed, could be a bit slow to perceive the obvious.

  Not until this moment had he realized that he was no longer at all even remotely human.

  Chapter 26

  What does it mean to be human? A particular genotype to be sure . . . but beyond outward form is there some abiding characteristic of thought or being that distinguishes what is human from what is not? Genies possess much within their genotype that is undeniably human; most possess ninety-nine percent or more of the original human genome, yet they are legally barred from a human's rights of property and self-government. Artificial intelligences possess nothing of the human genome, yet possess—some prefer the word "mimic"—certain human modes and processes of thought.