Children of Time

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  ‘She’s going to destroy us!’ he shouted. For a long moment the mutineers just stared at one another.

  Lain hung on to the seat backs, pale and drawn, awaiting developments. ‘So this is it, then?’ she groaned.

  ‘That’s not what she was saying,’ Nessel objected, although precious few people were listening to her.

  Welcome to the classicist’s lot, Holsten thought drily. He closed his eyes.

  ‘The shuttle’s changing course,’ the pilot announced.

  ‘Bring it back on. Get us down to the planet, no matter what—’ Scoles started.

  The pilot interrupted him. ‘The other shuttle. The Security shuttle. We’re still good, but they’re . . .’ He squinted at his instruments. ‘Drifting? And the drone’s off now . . . it’s not following our course adjustments. It’s going to overshoot us.’

  ‘Unless that’s what they want. Maybe it’s a bomb,’ Scoles suggested.

  ‘Going to have to be an almighty big bomb to get us at the distances we’re talking about,’ the pilot said.

  ‘It’s Kern,’ Lain declared. Seeing their baffled faces she explained, ‘That warning wasn’t just for us; it was for everyone. Kern’s got them – she’s seized their systems. But she can’t seize ours.’

  ‘Good work there,’ Holsten muttered into the mask radio around his neck.

  ‘Shut up,’ she returned by the same channel.

  Then Kern’s voice was on the radio again: a few sputtering false starts and then words emerging in plain language, for everyone to understand.

  ‘Do you think that you have escaped me just because you have locked me out of your computers? You have prevented me turning your vessel round and sending it back to your ship. You have prevented me dealing with you in a controlled and merciful manner. I give you this one chance now to open access to your systems, or I will have no option but to destroy you.’

  ‘If she was going to destroy us, she’d have done it already,’ one of the mutineers decided – on the basis of what evidence, Holsten did not know.

  ‘Let me get at the comms,’ Lain said. ‘I’ve got an idea.’ Once again she kicked off for the comms panel and this time Scoles hauled her to him, a gun almost up her nose. Her deceleration-weight yanked at him, and the pair of them nearly ended up crashing into the pilot’s back.

  ‘Doctor Mason, your opinion on Kern?’ Scoles demanded, glaring at Lain.

  ‘Human,’ was the first word to come to Holsten’s mind. At Scoles’s exasperated glower, he explained, ‘I believe she’s human. Or she was human, once. Perhaps some melding of human and machine. She went through the Gilgamesh’s database, therefore she knows who we are, that we’re the last of Earth, and I think that means something to her. Also, a laser like she’s got must be an almighty energy sink compared to just shutting us down or telling our reactor to go critical. She won’t use her actual weapons unless she absolutely has to. Even Old Empire tech has limits, energy-wise. So she’ll shoot us as a last resort, but possibly she’ll try to get rid of us without killing us, if she can. Which she can’t at the moment because we’ve sealed her off in the comms.’

  Scoles let Lain go with an angry hiss, and she instantly started explaining something to Nessel and one of the mutineers, something about restoring some of the links to the shipboard computer. Holsten only hoped she knew what she was doing.

  ‘Will she try to kill us?’ Scoles asked him flatly.

  What can I say? Depends what mood she’s in? Depends which Kern we’re talking to at any given moment? Holsten unclipped his strapping and slowly crawled towards them, with the idea that perhaps he could talk Kern round. ‘I think she’s from a culture that wiped itself out and poisoned the Earth. I don’t know what she might do. I think that she’s even fighting with herself.’

  ‘This is your final warning,’ Kern’s voice came to them.

  ‘I can see satellite systems warming up,’ the pilot warned. ‘I reckon it’s locked on.’

  ‘Any way of getting round the planet, putting the other shuttle in the way?’ from Scoles.

  ‘Not a chance. We’re wide open. I’m on our landing approach now, though. It’s got a window of about twenty minutes before we’ll be in the atmosphere, which might cut down on its lasers.’

  ‘Ready!’ Lain chimed in.

  ‘Ready what?’ Scoles demanded.

  ‘We’ve isolated the shipboard database and linked it to the comms,’ Nessel explained.

  ‘You’ve given this Kern access to our database?’ Scoles translated. ‘You think that’ll sway her?’

  ‘No,’ Lain stated. ‘But I needed access to a transmission. Holsten, get over here.’ There was a horribly undignified piece of ballet, with Holsten being manhandled over until he was clipped into a seat at the comms panel, leaning sideways towards the shuttle’s nose as the force of their cut speed tugged at him.

  ‘She’s going to burn us up,’ Lain was telling them, as she got Holsten settled. The prospect seemed almost to excite her. ‘Holsten, you can sweet-talk her? Or something?’

  ‘I – I had an idea . . .’

  ‘You do yours and I’ll do mine,’ Lain told him. ‘But do it now.’

  Holsten checked the panel, opened a channel to the satellite – assume it hasn’t been eavesdropping on everything, anyway – and began, ‘Doctor Kern, Doctor Avrana Kern.’

  ‘I am not open to negotiation,’ came that hard voice.

  ‘I want to speak to Eliza.’

  There was a brief, clipped moment of Kern speaking – and then Holsten’s heart leapt as it was overwritten by a transmission in Imperial C. Eliza was back at the helm.

  You are currently within the prohibited zone about a quarantined planet. Any attempt to interact with Kern’s World will be met with immediate retaliation.

  No Eliza no give me back my voice it’s my voice give me back my mind it’s mine it’s mine enough warnings destroy them let me destroy them

  As swiftly as he could, Holsten had his reply ready and translated. Eliza, we confirm we have no intention of interacting with Kern’s World, because he was fairly sure Eliza was a computer and who knew what the limits of its cognition and programming were?

  That is not consistent with your current course and speed. This is your final warning.

  They’re lying to me to you let me speak let me out help me someone please help me

  Eliza, please may we speak to Doctor Avrana Kern?, Holsten sent.

  The expected voice thundered through the enclosed cabin, ‘How dare you—?’

  ‘And away,’ Lain said, and Kern’s voice cut off.

  ‘What was that?’ Scoles demanded.

  ‘Distress signal,’ Lain explained. ‘A repeat transmission of her own distress signal,’ even as Holsten was sending, Doctor Kern, please may I speak to Eliza?

  The response that came back was garbled almost into white noise. He heard a dozen fragments of sentence from Kern and from the Eliza system, constantly getting chopped out as the satellite’s systems tried to process the high-priority distress call.

  ‘Almost to atmosphere,’ the pilot reported.

  ‘We’ve done it,’ someone said.

  ‘Never say—’ Lain started, and then the comms unit went so silent that Holsten looked at its readouts to make sure it was still functioning. The satellite had ceased transmitting.

  ‘Did we shut it down?’ Nessel asked.

  ‘Define “we”,’ Lain snapped.

  ‘But, look, that means that everyone can come to this planet, everyone from the Gil—’ the woman started, but then the comms flared with a new signal and Kern’s furious voice whipped out at them.

  ‘No, you did not shut me down.’

  Lain’s hands were immediately at her waist, fastening the crash webbing, and then scrabbling for Holsten.

  ‘Brace!’ someone shouted ludicrously.

  Holsten looked back at his original seat, towards the rear of the shuttle. He actually had a brief glimpse back into the cargo bay, seeing
the desperate flailing about as the mutineers there tried to fully secure themselves. Then there was a searing flash that left its image on his retinas, and the shuttle’s smooth progress suddenly became a tumble . . . and from outside there was a juddering roar and he thought, Atmosphere. We’ve hit atmosphere. The pilot was swearing frantically, fighting for control, and Lain’s arms were tight about Holsten, holding him to her, because she had not been able to get all his webbing secured. For his part he gripped the seat as tight as he could even as the world tried to shake him loose.

  The doors to the cargo hold had closed automatically. At that point he did not realize it was because the rear half of the shuttle had been shorn away.

  The front half – the cabin – fell towards the great green expanse of the planet below.

  3.8 ASYMMETRICAL WARFARE

  Portia’s people have no fingers, but her ancestors were building structures and using tools millions of years before they attained anything like intelligence. They have two palps and eight legs, each of which can grip and manipulate as required. Their whole body is a ten-digit hand with two thumbs and instant access to adhesive and thread. Their one real limitation is that they must fashion their work principally by way of touch and scent, periodically bringing it before their eyes to review. They work best suspended in space, thinking and creating in three dimensions.

  Two strands of creation have given rise to Portia’s current mission. One is armour-smithing, or the equivalent in a species with access to neither fire nor metal.

  The ant column has stopped for the night up ahead, forming a vast and uniquely impregnable fortress. Portia and her cohorts are twitching and stamping nervously, aware that there will be plenty of enemy scouts blindly searching the forest, attacking all they come across and releasing the keen scent of alarm at the same time. A chance encounter now could bring the whole colony down on them.

  Bianca is fussing over her males as the butchers set to work killing and dismembering her pets. The males will perform their part of the plan, apparently, but they lack the nerve to form the vanguard. It is Portia and her fellows who will undertake the impossible task of infiltrating the colony while it sleeps, taking their secret weapon with them.

  The collection of Paussid beetles that Bianca had accumulated have been driven here from Great Nest. They are not herding animals by nature and the going has been exasperating, meaning that they have arrived alarmingly late in the night, getting close to the dawn that will see the enemy on the move again.

  Several of the inventive beetles have escaped, and the rest appear to be communicating via scent and touches of the antennae, so that Portia wonders if some mass action is being planned on their part. She has no idea if the Paussids can think, but she reckons their actions are more complex than those of simple animals. Her world is one in which there is no great divide between the thinkers and the thoughtless, only a long continuum.

  The beetles have left any intended breakout too late, however. Now they are penned in and Bianca’s people kill them quickly and efficiently and peel off their shells. Great Nest artisans promptly begin fashioning armour from the pieces, cladding Portia and her fellows as completely as possible in heavy, cumbrous suits of chitin mail. They use their fangs and the strength of their legs to twist and crack the individual sections of shell to make a better fit, securing each plate to its wearer with webbing.

  Bianca explains the theory, as they work. The Paussid beetles seem to use numerous and very complex scents to get the ants to feed them, and otherwise provide for them. These scents change constantly as the ants’ own chemical defences change. The beetles’ chemical language has proved too complex for Bianca to decode.

  There is a master-scent by which the beetles live, however, and that does not change. It is not a direct attack on the ants themselves, but simply functions to inform the colony Nothing here. The beetle does not register with the ants at all, unless it is actively trying to interact with them. It is not an enemy, not an ant, not even an inanimate piece of earth, but nothing. For the blind, scent-driven ants, the beetles utilize a kind of active invisibility, so that even when touched, even when the ant’s antennae play over the beetle’s ridged carapace, the colony registers a blank, a void to be skipped over.

  The null scent persists even through death, but not for very long, hence this massacre of the beetles at the eleventh hour. Bianca cautions Portia and her fellows that they must be swift. She does not know how long the protection will last.

  So we can just kill them, and they will not know, Portia concludes.

  Absolutely not. That is not your mission, Bianca replies angrily. How many of them do you think you could possibly destroy? And if you begin attacking them, their own alarm system may eventually override the scent of your armour.

  Then we will kill their egg-laying caste, Portia tells her. The ant colony on the move is still a growing organism, constantly churning out eggs to replace its losses.

  You will not. You will distribute yourselves about the colony as planned, and wait for your packages to degrade.

  The packages are the other part of the plan, and represent the other end of spider craftsmanship. Bianca makes them herself by brewing up a chemical from prepared compounds and the remains of the Paussids, and sealing it in globules of webbing. Again, it will not keep for long.

  The alchemy of Portia’s people has a long history, evolving at first from the scent markers their distant ancestors used, and then becoming swiftly more elaborate and sophisticated after contact with species like ants, who can be deftly manipulated and enticed by artificial scents. To a spider like Bianca, personally experienced and blessed with past generations of Understanding to assist her, mixing chemicals is a visual experience, her senses blending into one another, allowing her to use the formidable ocular parts of her brain to envisage the different substances that she works with and their compounds in a representational mental language of molecular chemistry. She spurs her alchemical reactions with the use of exothermic catalysts that generate heat without a dangerous open flame.

  Just as the chemicals themselves have a limited lifespan, so do their webbing containers. Precisely crafted, they will release their payload within moments of each other, which is essential timing as Portia and her fellows will have no way to coordinate with each other.

  Bianca hands them their weapons, and they know what they must do. The mobile fortress of the enemy is ahead of them, through the dark forest. They must accomplish their task in the short time gifted to them or they will die, and then their civilization will follow them. Still, every part of them that cares for self-preservation balks at it. Nobody enters an ant colony’s travelling fortress and survives. The advance of Portia and her fellows is slow and reluctant, despite the chivvying of Bianca from behind. A fear of extinction was their birthright long before intelligence, and certainly long before any kind of social altruism. Despite the stakes, it is a hard fear to suppress.

  Then the night is made day, and the spiders look up at a sky from which the stars have been briefly banished.

  Something is coming.

  They can feel the air shake in rage, the ground vibrate in sympathy, and they crouch inside their heavy armour, terrified and bewildered. A ball of fire comes streaking across the sky, with a trail of thunder rushing after it. None of them has any idea what it can possibly be.

  When it strikes the ground, well within the ant colony’s scouting range, it has lost a great deal of its speed, but the impact still resonates through their sensitive feet as though the whole world has just cried out some vast, secret word.

  For a moment they remain still, petrified in animal terror. But then one of them asks what it was, and Portia reaches within herself and finds that part of her that was ever open to the incomprehensible: the fearful and the wonderful understanding that there is more in the world than her eyes can see, more than her feet can feel.

  The Messenger has come down to us, she tells them. In that moment – out of her fear and h
er hope – she has quite convinced herself, because what has just happened is from so far beyond her experience that only that quintessential mystery can account for it.

  Some are awestruck, others sceptical. What does that mean? one of them demands.

  It means you must be about your work! Bianca hammers out from behind them. You have little time! Go, go! And if the Messenger is here with you, then that means she favours you, but only if you succeed! If it is the Messenger, show her the strength and ingenuity of the Great Nest!

  Portia flags her palps in fierce agreement, and then they all do likewise. Staring at the trail of smoke still blotting out the night stars, Portia knows it is a sign from the sky, the Messenger’s sky. All her hours spent in reverent contemplation of the mathematical mysteries of Temple, on the brink of revelation, seem to her to have led to this.

  Onward! Portia signals, and she and her cohorts head off towards the enemy, knowing that Bianca and her team will be following behind. The beetle-shell armour is heavy, obscures their vision, is awkward to run in and makes jumping impossible. They are like pioneering divers about to descend into a hostile environment from which only their suits can protect them.

  They hurry along the forest floor as best they can, the armour catching on their joints, hobbling and crippling them. They are determined, though, and when they come close to ant scouts scouring the area, they pass by in their black armour as though they were nothing but the wind.

  The scouts themselves are agitated, already on the move, heading for that gathering smoke and fire where the Messenger has visited, no doubt ready, in their blind and atheistic way, to cut a firebreak to preserve their colony – and, unwittingly, their colony’s enemies.