by Paul Anlee
“Who is this ‘John’ he’s speaking to?” Hodge asked.
“John Trillian,” she answered
Aside from the content of the tape, Nigel marveled at the obvious closeness of the two men, and the depth of secrecy needed to keep this “John Trillian” out of the public perception, even more so, away from the attention of the Governing Council.
“How did you get that?” Hodge demanded.
“My temper may have run hot, but I’m still Kathy Liang. I wasn’t so out of my mind with rage that I couldn’t think to plant a listening device or two.”
“Believe her, Nigel,” added Strang. Their eyes locked.
Hodge looked away first. “It seems I have little choice,” he sighed.
“You do. You could accept the personal and political ruin that you likely deserve,” DAR-K suggested.
Hodge couldn’t tell if the Cybrid cared what happened to him, but a way out, a way forward while salvaging his political career, that still left hope. As long as he lived and stayed in the game, the outcome was still to be decided.
“Alright then. How can we give ourselves any chance of winning against Alum?” Hodge asked the Cybrid.
“There’s more,” Strang interjected.
“Much more,” DAR-K echoed. “The snippet of conversation you just heard led me to investigate Alum and Trillian more extensively.”
“Ahh! You found dirt,” Hodge guessed.
“Your group’s activities have had a lull of late, correct?”
Hodge picked at a lure on his vest. “Our goals were being met without much need for direct intervention.”
“That’s because Alum and Trillian have taken to helping you out.”
Hodge started in surprise and pricked his finger on the lure he’d been toying with.
“Ow!” He shook his hand and put the bleeding finger in his mouth. He pulled it out after a few seconds and examined it. “You can prove that?”
“Indeed,” DAR-K replied. “That’s the only way this election will be fair.”
Hodge shook his head. “MAD.”
“Yes,” DAR-K confirmed, “Mutually Assured Destruction. After Alum grants Cybrids full citizenship rights, I will send him all the evidence I have showing his collusion in the habitat problems. He will know I mean the election to be a fair one. We won’t use what we have, provided that he doesn’t use what he has.”
“Will that be sufficient?”
“Oh, he’ll try dozens of ways to see rumors are planted and that hints of damning information about you gets out, but this will restrain his direct involvement to some degree. His petty interventions won’t be a large factor in the overall results.”
“How can you be sure of that?”
“Nigel, please,” Strang admonished. “Among her many other talents, this is the most powerful mathematical brain in existence.”
“Thank you, Jared, DAR-K acknowledged. “Alum can run the game theory scenarios as well as I can. He’ll know he can’t push any dirt on you and Ms. Cutter too hard. He’ll also know I can counter any rumors he creates about Cybrid collusion.”
Hodge held out a hand to interject. “Alum is a game theory genius?”
“He is more than he seems,” DAR-K replied. “He may be my equal.”
“But how?”
“When Darian Leigh made the virus that created the lattice enhancements in humans, he made three capsules. One for each of his lab assistants. Greg and I, that is the original Greg Mahajani and Kathy Liang, took ours. Larry Rusalov, the third assistant, appears to have given his to the Reverend LaMontagne.”
“Alum’s spiritual father,” Hodge recalled.
“Much, much more than that. It seems the Reverend found a way to extract or copy the lattice virus from himself and give it to the young Alum. I don’t believe it was taken voluntarily.”
“That’s horrible!”
“Yes, it is. Alum was exposed to an IQ-enhancing lattice from almost as young an age as Darian himself. His mind was also probably slaved to the Reverend’s for a good number of those years. Our ‘Leader’ is older, smarter, more capable, and more ruthless than anyone suspects.”
“He’s an unholy abomination!”
“Every bit as much as what he preaches against. More so than most Cybrids, whose only crime has been to have the wrong computational substrate, and at least as much of an abomination as I am.”
Hodge thought about what he’d learned. “Is there any way we can use this against him?” he asked.
“I have no desire to carry on down that road. Over the past few decades, there has been enough disparaging of IQ-enhancing dendy lattices, and of those who have them, to suit me a lifetime,” DAR-K answered. “And keep in mind that I’m a machine; my life is likely to be a long one.”
37
“You’re going to steal from Alum?”
“Don’t look so surprised; it was your idea.”
“You’re going to steal. From Alum.”
“Still, yes.” Darak wore an infuriatingly smug look.
“Why not do your normal magic?”
“Science and technology,” Darak corrected, holding up one finger. “Although to someone who doesn’t understand, they do often appear the same.”
Stralasi frowned at the interruption. “You won’t use your science and technology to save these people but you’ll steal from Alum. The Living God,” he added, as if Darak didn’t realize who Alum was.
“First of all, not all technology is equally useful in all circumstances. For instance, I can’t affect the local laws of nature over a large enough space to stop the Eater. Given enough time, I could develop an appropriate technology but we don’t have that luxury.
“Alum has more complex field generators in the Deplosion array than I currently have at my disposal. Time is of the essence. Ergo, we’ll take his.”
“If He allows it,” corrected Stralasi.
“By the time He finds out, they’ll be gone. A few days of adjustments and we’ll be ready to deal with the Eater.”
Stralasi shook his head in disbelief, threw his hands up, and walked away. I’m bound to a madman—he thought. He considered once again how he might escape from his forced companionship. He felt a hand on his shoulder.
“Don’t worry,” Darak said. “Your God will not be able to detect us or follow us. We’re not ready for such a confrontation. I’ll be careful,” he promised. “Anyway, we’ll have a few days before our criminal escapades.”
“What’ll we be doing in the meantime?” Stralasi asked.
“First, I have to go inside,” Darak answered.
“Inside what?”
“The Eater, of course.”
“What? Why?”
Instead of answering, Darak walked to a viewing window. The center of the ESO galaxy was obscured by the all-absorbing gray of the Eater. They followed a few million klicks behind it. The only visible stars were off to the sides and well behind them, where the Eater had not travelled.
He pointed at the indistinct mass directly ahead. “It’s possible my friend is still inside there,” he said. “I have to find out if there’s anything left of him and pull him out if I can. I owe him that.”
Stralasi’s eyes tracked the tip of Darak’s finger to the center of the gray blob. “You told me that everything passing into that thing stays absorbed. Nothing has ever come out of it.”
“True. But before I send it outside this universe and deactivate it, I need to know if Darian’s still alive in there.”
“Who’s Darian?”
“Dr. Darian Leigh. He was my mentor and my friend,” Darak answered. “It’s because of him that I am…me today.”
“He taught you?”
“Taught me? Yes. Even more, he changed me. He started me on the path to becoming a different person. My only regret is that I didn’t understand what happened to him sooner. It took me years to connect his vanishing with the Eater.
“The first time we saw it was right after Darian and Larry disapp
eared. We were pretty sure the sphere had something to do with their disappearances, but back then we thought the Eater was too small to make them vanish entirely. We expected to find a body, or what was left of a body, but there was nothing.
“A little while after they disappeared, one of our night patrolmen accidentally walked right through the sphere, and it killed the poor guy. That was before we knew about it and cordoned it off. My point is, there was a bullet-sized hole right through the guy, exactly where he’d walked through the sphere, and he died there on the lab floor. So that couldn’t have been what happened to Darian or Larry. If it had, we would have found their bodies in the lab.”
“Okay, but if it was as small as you say, how could it have made them disappear?”
“Honestly? I don’t know,” Darak answered. “I realize that it’s unlikely he’s still in there, but where else could he have gone? He wouldn’t have abandoned us or the project. I just have to make sure before I destroy it forever. I have to.”
Stralasi contemplated a moment. “If it’s so important to you, I guess you have to try; but how do you know you’ll be able to get out, once you go inside?”
“I’ve been beyond the edges of the universe. Do you honestly think that can trap me?”
“Well, those ‘jump blockers’ the Angels used on you seemed to stop you quite effectively,” Stralasi pointed out.
“They only stopped me because of you. If I wasn’t worried about losing track of you, I could have escaped them easily.”
“Aren’t you worried about losing me now?”
“No. You’ll stay on Eso-La while I go inside the Eater. If I need to, I can find you there.”
“It’s a big universe. What if you get lost?”
“I won’t get lost.”
“But what if you do?”
“I won’t.”
Stralasi could see his argument was going nowhere. He’d simply have to trust Darak. On the bright side, living out what might be his final days in Crissea’s company wasn’t the worst possible way to die. He ceded the point. “Okay. Take me to.…”
Before the monk could finish the sentence, he was standing in Crissea’s reception garden.
“Did you find it?” she asked.
On seeing her, Stralasi grinned nearly ear to ear.
“We did,” he answered.
“Where is it?”
His face darkened. He didn’t know what to say.
“Oh, Ontro, it’s heading toward us, isn’t it?”
“It is,” he replied. “But don’t worry. Darak has a plan to divert it before it reaches Eso-La.”
“How long before it gets here?”
Stralasi couldn’t lie to that face. “About a year.”
Crissea’s brow furrowed. She looked down without uttering a word and rolled a loose stone with her foot.
The Good Brother held his tongue and let her process the news in her own way.
When she raised her head, her eyes were bright. “Darak will save us.”
* * *
After he sent Stralasi away, Darak stood alone by the window in the detector chamber. He stared at the Eater and prepared to enter.
What he was about to do was going to be a lot more dangerous than he’d let on to Brother Stralasi, and getting back out alive was a lot less certain, but he had to try. He had to know.
The first time it had occurred to him that Darian might be alive inside the sphere had been millions of years ago, but by then Alum had already set the destructive ball on an intergalactic journey and refused to tell anyone where it was. When pressed, all he would say is, “Security reasons.”
The secrecy was understandable. What if the wrong people were to find it and…?
Darak had fully believed Alum had sent the Eater away on a distant and reasonably safe course, one that would keep it away from human habitation for billions of years. When he was finally free from his most critical duties and started looking for the Eater, it was no longer within a dozen light years of where he’d last seen it. He’d searched for decades but, with no clues and with a growing number of issues demanding his full attention, he’d eventually dismissed all thoughts of his former mentor and friend, Darian.
His curiosity about Darian’s disappearance and the whereabouts of the sphere might have ended there if it hadn’t been for Alum’s disgusting campaign of genocide against the Aelu. After that, Darak had needed some time away from Alum and the Realm, and he sought the solace of his Eso rebels.
His visit to the original, struggling Eso planet brought back memories of ancient times and his unquenched curiosity about Darian’s fate. It was there he decided to leave Alum’s service and resume his search for the Eater.
He placed Soltron detectors in the Eso system, and went off exploring while the detectors acquired data. His journeys took him all over the universe and beyond.
Enough reminiscing. It’s time to see what’s inside the Eater, and to find out what’s left of Darian Leigh—if anything.
38
“So what’ll it be, son? Eggs or pancakes?”
Darak understood the question, recognized the language as ancient English, but he was too surprised to answer. He didn’t recognize the middle-aged man who asked the question any better than he recognized the house.
Where am I? How did I get here, sitting at this kitchen table?
The place was of ancient design. It took him a few seconds to query his archives and identify the style of house and furniture.
Early twenty-first century Earth.
That narrowed the search. He thought of everyone who might have called him “son” around that time. Nobody came to mind. Acting on a hunch, he ran a similar scan of memories specific to Darian Leigh.
“Dad!”
The man smiled patiently. “Yes, son?”
Darak swallowed. “I mean, you’re my Dad, Darian’s dad.”
“Have you been lost inside that lattice of yours again? What is it, this time? A new neural net algorithm? Another dendy design?”
Darak shook his head and rested his hands on the glass tabletop. It fit right in with the brushed metal fridge and stove, and with the chrome-legged chair on which he was sitting. All exactly as he remembered it.
As Darian remembered it.
His head swam with confusion. Why am I in Darian’s kitchen, in the home he and his father shared in Berkeley while he completed his first PhD? He knew where “his” room was: up the narrow flight of stairs, first door on the right. He knew where “his” lab was on campus, and he knew “his” favorite route to cycle the two miles to the university.
Of all the possible scenarios Darak imagined encountering inside the Eater, this one had never entered his mind.
Where am I? Has the Eater been absorbing matter all this time, just to restage parts of Darian’s life?
“So…eggs or pancakes?” Darian’s Dad—Paul was his name—asked again.
“Uh, pancakes, I guess,” he answered. The man nodded and started looking through cupboards for the necessary ingredients.
While Paul began cooking, Darak wandered into other parts of the house. Everything was exactly as he remembered it. The brown fake leather sofas, the IKEA reading lamps, and the mismatched pine coffee tables all had a surreal familiarity.
Could the Eater have activated my ancient memories? Am I dreaming? Or is this somehow real?
Walking down the hallway toward the front door, he passed a mirror and stopped to look. The glass reflected the image of a teenager, a sixteen year-old Darian.
Darak put his hands to his face and traced the contours of a face he found both strange and familiar. How is this happening?
He’d explored thousands of bizarre universes in the past twenty million years. He’d spent ages playing with various combinations of natural laws just to see what kind of technologies he could invent and to watch how odd forms of life might evolve. And yet, in many ways this particular universe, at once both unexpected and familiar, was the most surprising and the
strangest of all.
He opened the front door onto a tiny patch of grass Darian and Paul had called a yard.
How big is this world? Does it extend all the way to the boundary with the outside universe? Is it larger inside than its external radius?
There were too many questions; he didn’t have time to find the answers.
What bothered him most of all was the extremely low likelihood that he would’ve shifted at random inside the Eater and happened to appear in this microverse in the body and home of Darian Leigh.
The odds were beyond imagining. Something directed him here. But what? Well, only one way to find out.
He shifted to a different place inside the Eater microverse.
* * *
He was lying in bed, staring up at a suspended ceiling. The metal rails on each side of the narrow bed and the pale yellow curtain pulled around it told him he was in a hospital.
He felt exhausted. Every muscle in his body ached as though he’d just run a marathon.
“Hey, you’re awake. How are you doing, honey?” A nurse pulled the curtain aside and stepped into his space.
He could read her name tag: Ranson, it said. Behind her was an unoccupied bed. The wheels of two more beds showed beneath their respective curtains.
Darak tried to sit up but fell back with a groan.
“Ohhh, I hurt everywhere,” he answered. Or someone answered. The voice sounded younger than his own.
“That’s to be expected. You had quite a seizure.”
Seizure?
“Did my dad leave?”
The words tumbled out of his own mouth but…Dad? Wow, where’d that come from—he wondered.
He didn’t feel completely in control of his body. It was as if he were watching some antiquated inSense movie.
The whole experience was a mind-bending combination of active and passive. He seemed to be partly reliving memories of things that had happened to Darian, and partly acting on his own intentions.
“Yes, he did, sweetie. Just a little while ago,” Nurse Ranson replied. “It’s late. I’m going to give you a little something to help you sleep.” She held out a paper cup with a small yellow pill inside.