by Mel Keegan
For a long moment Mark and Dario shared a speculative look, but Mark was not about to lay any cards on the table. “Lai’a?” he invited.
“According to Zunshu research records amassed over the space of more than a century,” Lai’a continued, “the veracity of which you may examine for yourself, Doctor Sherratt, the Zunshu were absolutely convinced of their possession of transcendent personality. Their priests, in trance, and under strict laboratory conditions, traveled to the brane continuum and made contact with ancestors and descendants – the formal data is compelling. Resalq and humans would endorse it; no reason exists to disparage the Zunshu for their conviction. It is the information returned from the brane which skewed the Zunshu academic development into violent directions.
“They quickly realized they must exterminate all other intelligent life forms; it was the only logical course of action, and might have been taken by a majority of creatures, as surely as such beings protect their territory and young. This knowledge, or faith, was ingrained in the Zunshu over several generations. When the time came, they deployed their weapons unquestioningly in what may have constituted a kind of religious mania, though I would advise caution in making this assumption.”
Travers’s heart performed a double-thump, and he shot a glance at Marin, whose eyes were dark, wide, unblinking.
“The priests,” Lai’a went on, “discovered an appalling truth. The Zunshu personality is exceptionally fragile. After the death of the host body, it survives as a tenuous energy, held in coherent patterns by the structure of the brane. The brane itself demonstrates an energy matrix not at all unlike holographic memory architecture, albeit limitless in terms of space or time. The structure of the brane encourages the perpetuation of certain life energies, which are received like a datastream at point of death.
“Within the matrix of the brane, surviving personalities apparently influence their surroundings, similarly to self-programming games which respond dynamically to input from players, creating the user-driven environments of the ‘gamespace.’ Hence, no matter the philosophy or faith of the individual in life, he or she will encounter an otherworld which was foretold – the Heaven, Hel, Nirvana, Bardo, Tir Magh, of humans, the Seman’djura of the Resalq.
“However, as stated previously, the Zunshu priest-shamans learned an unspeakable truth. The tenuous energy of the Zunshu personality is ‘canceled’ and dissolves upon contact with other, more powerful forms; it dissipates into the background energy waveforms of the brane and is absorbed by the more robust forms which utilize the brane far more efficiently.
“In effect, the mere presence in the brane of the souls of other species – vastly more powerful than the Zunshu’s fragile surviving energy – spells termination, irrevocable and everlasting death, not merely of the body of an individual, but for the individual’s immortal soul. Furthermore, all individuals will suffer this absolute end, from the first primordial Zunshu born in the days before language or science, to the last born, in the distant future.”
Silence fell again, dense and heavy. Travers struggled to grasp the ramifications of what he had heard, though the broad facts were painfully obvious. Without any hard evidence that the human soul even existed, mankind had done heinous things across a whole planet to protect the immortal souls of the species. The Zunshu had the potential to reach further, and their very survival – not in the mundane world where physical creatures muddled along, but in the brane beyond, where a creature hoped to live forever in company with its illustrious ancestors – pivoted on xenocide.
“Oh, my gods,” Vidal murmured.
“Or, as my great-grand pop used to say,” Jazinsky added, “sweet Jesus parked on his holy butt in Heaven on a cloud. I guess in the end it all comes right down to the same thing, doesn’t it?”
“You mean, every religion in history flourished around one question: ‘What happens to me when I die?’” Alexis Rusch’s voice was hoarse.
“Most people,” Marin said softly, “are desperate to believe in something after this, especially as they start to grow older. Humans never developed a way to take measurements beyond transspace –”
“Well, shit,” Rabelais said quietly, “back in my day, when the Odyssey launched, most physicists refused to believe transspace existed. It was just a bunch of phantom numbers, equations they couldn’t get to gel. They figured Hellgate was just a bunch of e-space that got tangled up like the Gordian knot, bloody-damned dangerous to shipping, so some total lunatic should go out and chart the navigation hazards. And, pardon me while I take a bow, here I am.”
“But if we could take measurements off a brane beyond transspace, or maybe at right-angles to transspace…” Jazinsky’s head shook slowly.
“The Zunshu had the apparatus to do this?” Rusch wondered.
But Lai’a said without hesitation, “Not apparatus, as such. The trained Zunshu mind, in trance, had the potential to cross a threshold, pass into the brane continuum, and return with useful information.”
Roark Hubler groaned. “And we believe this? Sorry guys – it sounds like the proverbial steaming pile to me.”
“Maybe it is,” Travers said slowly, “but it doesn’t make any difference what we believe, does it? The Zunshu believed. The evidence coming out of the lab was good enough for them. Damnit, Roark, I don’t understand one word in ten Barb and Mark say. But I believe ’em when they tell me the sky turns inside out and there’s a doorway to the other side of the galaxy.”
“Yeah, but you can see Hellgate with your own eyes,” Rodman protested.
“And the Zunshu brain is so different from ours, and so much bigger, particularly by ratio with the body,” Mark added, “they were very probably always semi-aware of something far beyond anything human eyes and brains can comprehend.” His shoulders lifted in an eloquent shrug. “Either they were ripe to fall for the biggest confidence trick in history, or…”
“Or the data looked so good,” Leon Sherratt added, “they didn’t have to be conned. They knew their ancestors and descendants were out there, all of them, being bulk erased like a bunch of useless old data.” He sat back, looking from Mark to Dario and Midani and back. “You know, a lot of humans still refuse, even today, to believe there’s anything after the death of the body, at least for their species – and who could blame ’em? You guys have a long, bloody history of wars of persecution and burning people alive; and in the end the whole argument comes down to a total lack of hard, empirical evidence on one side, and a whole lot of faith on the other.”
“You can get pretty disgusted with the whole religion deal,” Roy Arlott said cynically. “I got interested after my parents died. It’s common among our people, Lee, because the truth is, we know nothing about any transcendent personality. We just hope, and try to find something to believe in. So I studied ancient human history, every religion from Babylon to the Iconic Church of Mars. The more you know about it, the less you want to believe. In the end you say, ‘Go on, then, show me your best stuff, convince me, make me believe.’ And of course there isn’t any ‘stuff.’ Some folks have faith – cheers to them, it makes them happy, what else is there in life? But try talking to an atheist about faith!
“That was me – the total, bloody-minded atheist – till I met you, Lee.” He reached out blindly, took Leon’s hand. Their fingers meshed and he went on, talking specifically to the humans. “Lee, uh, told me a lot about the way the Resalq retain memories of past lives. And I know the Resalq say it’s offensive, crass, to talk about it, Mark, but we’re all big kids and this is senior science class. We could sit here and dissect the male genital system, call a penis a penis, and it’s got squat to do with vulgarity. It’s biology. So? Lee, you want to enlighten us – them?”
It was Leon’s turn to groan. “So, we carry memories over,” he said with a trace of awkwardness. “I remember a lot about being Jemos Huhli … if I were still Jemos, I’d go by the name of James Hurley for the sake of passing among humans. I was a trader – I imported, exporte
d domestic goods, and I had five children. I was vain, self-obsessed, fought with the kids, competed with them, spent fortunes on frippery, cooked the books, avoided taxes, went bankrupt twice and had to be rescued by progeny who must’ve inherited their other equero’s genes, because they were a hell of lot smarter than me. I was a complete airhead. When the Zunshu came I was snuffed out like a candle, and nobody even noticed I was gone.”
The story was convincing, as Leon told it, but Rusch had to ask. “I’m sorry to play the skeptic, Leon, but … I suppose your people actually validated all this, um, supposed memory?”
“Supposed?” Dario echoed, and snorted with acid humor.
“Humans,” Jazinsky explained, “quite often seem to remember past lives, but it almost always turns out to be a dream, or vestigial memories of something they read, or saw, in early childhood.”
“Oh, it didn’t have to be tested,” Mark said darkly. “Property disputes would carry over from life to life. Unpaid debts. And vendettas. People would be hunted down and murdered through several lives, for heinous crimes committed by a former self. In our more barbaric epoch, one could legally be arrested, tried and executed in this life for crimes that went unpunished in a previous life.”
“Business deals would carry over,” Dario added. “Inheritance and bequest became a big, fat joke. You humans have a popular tradition of hauntings, where a person dies in violent or stressful circumstances and comes back as a bloody nuisance – or doesn’t go away at all, in fact. The old haunted house cliché, right? Now, imagine being ‘haunted’ by someone who just came right back, in the flesh, to make your life a total misery after you cheated or murdered him, or his kin.”
“It was a mess for millennia, plural – all part of life. And the cultural chaos was entirely normal,” Mark said in wry tones. “There’s never been any requirement for scientific proof. Not when a kid announces himself, marches into your house and finds the keys he lost during the renovations twenty years ago. He was an old man when he dropped them there, just before the new heating system was installed; now he’s back, he wants the old sportplane that’s been corroding in the back of the garage under the house since he passed away … you didn’t even know it was there. Better, he’ll quote its registration codes, access the license with the deceased’s ID, which was confidential to the old man and the city AI.” He spread his hands. “The taboo grew up to control sheer entropy. Life is pandemonium beyond anything humans can imagine, if one life doesn’t end when another starts. And as for the Zunshu, I’m afraid it’s perfectly possible their data is sound regarding the brane continuum, their persistence there … and their extinction on contact with more powerful, robust forms. Like Resalq, do you think, Dario?”
“Probably.” Dario’s face was thunderous. “According to the spiritual horde back home – there’s plenty of them! – we pass through somewhere before we’re reborn. Years can go by before we come back, and the part that survives had to hang out somewhere after the body was cremated. The brane? It’d surely explain a lot. And don’t forget the people who’re hiding at Orion 359; their enduring personality could be equally as robust as ours. Maybe humans, too – though there’s no evidence. Sorry, guys, you’re on your own there. It’s just as possible humans are too similar to Resalq for the Zunshu to even care to differentiate between us. They might easily snuff humans just to be safe. The stakes are high enough to rationalize … proactive extermination.”
“Gods, what an appalling term,” Rusch whispered. “What makes it so appalling is its accuracy.”
Shapiro leaned forward, hands clasped loosely on the table before him. “What would any of us do,” he mused, “if we learned that the one shot at genuine immortality for our entire species was compromised by the mere presence of others?” His brows arched. “Is it not genocide if we, and others like the Resalq and the Orion, erase the Zunshu from the face not of their world, but of all eternity?”
The question made Travers dizzy. He sat back, set one hand over his face for a moment. “Are we sure of their information? The research was sound? They proved all this stuff about the brane was genuine?”
But Richard Vaurien was a step ahead. “Doesn’t matter, Neil, one way or the other. We find their data convincing, or we don’t … were their priests practising a system of spiritual elitism and racial purism to execute the ultimate con job, perhaps to wheedle their way into supreme global government? The truth is, we might never be sure. But one thing we already know as solid fact: the Zunshu believed, with the same brand of faith that made humans go out and persecute whole races, burn people alive.”
“They were on a crusade,” Marin reasoned. “They still are – their weapons are still dropping out of Hellgate, mopping up worlds on our frontier. The people at Orion 359 don’t dare show themselves! A crusade,” he added, “to destroy every other intelligent species that had a presence in their otherworld, to secure their own immortality.”
“Well, shit,” Jazinsky breathed. She angled a dark look at Shapiro. “You wanted the reason, Harrison. You’ve got your straight answer.”
“I’ve got it,” Shapiro agreed. “I just don’t know what in any hell to do with it.” He stood, working his neck around to ease the stiffness of stress. “Lai’a, from what we observed of the Zunshu city, it’s decaying, falling into ruin. Nothing we saw there indicates a people who’d be capable of picking a fight with a flock of sheep. Did the Zunshu abandon this star system, are they on other colonies?”
“No, General,” Lai’a said emphatically. “The Zunshu were never able to find a world better suited to their own special needs than their own home; and they were never likely to run out of space or resources here, since they live in a three dimensional environment on a giant world. At its height, their civilization measured around five billion individuals.”
“And now?” Rusch wondered.
“The current census is in the order of twenty thousand individuals,” Lai’a estimated, “and four million eggs in stasis. Their race can recover its numbers in two generations, given conducive conditions and the right environmental triggers. And there is no record of any offworld colony, anywhere at any time.”
“So…” Travers looked from Marin to Vidal and Mark. “What the hell happened here? They’re gone, Richard – you saw the vids. The whole thing is crumbling. There’s a few automatics still running, but in another hundred years even they’ll shut down because the folks left here don’t know how to change a light bulb or charge a power cell, much less how to make a new one!”
“Lai’a?” Vaurien prompted.
“Retribution,” Lai’a said calmly.
Marin’s head came up. “Somebody beat us to it?”
“And they didn’t come here to talk about any armistice,” Jazinsky observed in acid tones.
“Who?” Travers heard the edge in his own voice. “Not the people from Orion 359 – they didn’t have the tech.”
“It had to be the others,” Shapiro said quickly, “the ones who posted the warning beacons in orbit. The owners of the second language that’s outside the Zunshu vocal capacity.”
“Veldn.” Lai’a pronounced the word deliberately – the first time it had been uttered aloud. “Neither language has an alphabet as such, General; certainly no consonants. However, certain harmonic resonances are suggestive of patterns that could be approximated in conventional speech. The Zunshu computer core records the name as an associated series of resonances which might be interpreted as VLDN, possibly FLTNg or VfLThNg. By far the most pronounceable phonetic for Resalq and humans is Veldn.”
“Well, now.” Shapiro took a drink from the water glass that had stood by his plate, ignored. “A species whom the Zunshu attacked?”
“It would appear so.” Lai’a streamed data to the screen, images of star systems, planetary and biological information cascading through the left of the display. “As nearly as I can place the event in time, the Zunshu priest-shamans encountered the Veldn first as persistent and very powerful persona
lities in the brane. Navigational information provided by the Zunshu priests guided a transspace mission, leading to first contact between a Zunshu probe and the Veldn people, approximately six centuries ago. Shortly thereafter, numerous Veldn colonies were obliterated in a pattern entirely familiar to Resalq and humans. As many as a half billion intelligent life forms perished –”
“Wouldn’t that just pump another half billion souls into the brane?” Vaurien wondered. “That’s exactly what the Zunshu didn’t want!”
“Their strategy was always one of containment, Colonel,” Lai’a told him. “The brane is an extremely large continuum. Given a small enough population of other, more robust forms there, the remaining Zunshu could realistically hope to survive by simply avoiding them. This population control within the brane relies on prompt curtailment of the procreative potential of any competing physical species.”
“Of course.” Vaurien’s face was shadowed. “I imagine the Zunshu exterminated several species before they got to the Resalq.”
“Four others,” Lai’a reported, “which are likely utterly extinct. The species at Orion 359 survives as much by luck as by cunning. The Resalq were assaulted around a millennium ago; humans entering the Deep Sky much more recently have been devastated by the same weapons systems simply because they occupy the same target worlds. The Veldn were the final species to be assaulted by the Zunshu.”