by David Brin
At once, the strategem behind this attack made sense to her.
“The Old Ones … they must have found the codes, enabling them to read our WOM. It would tell them where Streaker’s been!”
“Enabling them to backtrack our voyage and find the Shallow Cluster.”
Gillian’s reaction was strangely mixed. On the one hand, she felt angry and violated by these beings who would meddle in her mind and rob Streaker of its treasure. Information her crew had guarded for so long, and Tom and Creideiki paid for with their lives.
On the other hand, it might solve so many problems if the thieves succeeded. Some mighty faction would then have the secret at last, perhaps using it to dominate the next age. Battles and great conspiracies could then surge onward, perhaps letting Earth and her colonies drift back into the side eddies of history, neglected and maybe safe for a while.
“I’m surprised no one tried this before,” she commented, wary as she watched the minibattle follow Streaker’s retreat across the vast interior of the Fractal World.
“Indeed, it seems a logical ploy to try seizing the watcher from our bow. I can only hazard that our prior enemies lacked the means to read a coded WOM.”
If so, it spoke well for the neutrality of the Library Institute, that even the richest clans and alliances could not break the seals. That made Gillian wonder. Might the betrayals at Oakka have been an aberration? Perhaps it was just Streaker’s run of typical bad luck that put it at the mercy of rare traitors. Institute officials might be more honorable elsewhere.
If so, should we try again? Gillian wondered. Maybe head for Tanith and try surrendering ourselves to the authorities one more time?
Meanwhile, the Niss whirled thoughtfully. The Tymbrimi-designed software entity flattened into a planate whirlpool shape before speaking once again.
“It must have taken them much of the last year, using their influence as elder members of the Retired Order, to access the keys. In fact …”
The mesh of spinning lines tightened, exhibiting strain.
“In fact, this casts a pall across our earlier miraculous escape from this place.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that we thought we were being aided by altruistic members of the Retired Order, benevolently helping us elude persecutors in the name of justice. But consider how conveniently easy it was! Especially the way we stumbled on references leading to the so-called Sooner Path—”
“Easy! I had to squeeze our captured Library for it, like pressing wine from a stone! It was—”
“It was easy. I now see that in retrospect. We must have been infected by a lesser meme parasite, conveying the attractive notion of fleeing to Jijo. A nearby sanctuary with just one way in and one way out. A haven whose only exit would lead us right back here again.”
Gillian blinked, abruptly seeing what the machine was driving at.
Suppose one faction hoped to seize Streaker’s WOM, but knew it would take a while to access the right codes for reading it? Fugitive wolflings could not be left just hanging around in the open till then. Someone else might snatch the prize!
What better way to stash the memory unit for safekeeping than by sending it into hiding, guarded by the self-preservation skills and instincts of tested survivors? The Earthship’s own crew.
“If we had not turned up about now, no doubt they would have sent word to Jijo luring us back. Indeed, the plan has earmarks — patience and confidence — that resonate of the Retired Order.
“Only now this failure to seize the object of their desire shows that their scheme broke down. Not everything is going their way. This faction still has enemies. Moreover, note how dismal the state of their power has become, under these conditions of calamity!”
“Calamity” was right. As Gillian watched, fighting seemed to ripple outward around them. Tactics sensors showed signs of conflagration spreading toward the nearest ragged edge of the wounded criswell structure.
“At this rate,” she mused, “someone’s gonna get fed up and use one of those big disintegrator rays. Maybe on us. We better think about getting out of here.”
“Dr. Baskin, while we have been talking I’ve thought of little else. For instance, I have endeavored to call our captor-protector, the Zang ship entity, to no avail. A leading hypothesis must be that it was destroyed.”
Gillian nodded, having reached the same conclusion.
“Well, if it ain’t coming, I don’t care to hang around waiting.”
She raised her voice toward the intercom.
“Kaa! Give it a full effort. Let’s make a break for t-point!”
The pilot acknowledged with a click burst of assent.
Cornered by orcas,
With our backs against sharp coral,
Watch them eat plankton!
As Streaker started pulling away, the battle storm followed. Detectors showed still more machines converging from all sides. Still, a gap slowly began to grow.
Then the Niss interrupted again.
“Dr. Baskin, something else has come to my attention that I know will concern you.
“Please observe.”
The main viewer zoomed toward one corner of the fiery brawl — a scrap far smaller than some other battles Streaker had observed, though nearness made the flashes and explosions seem more garish by far. Rapid glimpses revealed that most of the fighters were machines, lacking any boxy enclosures to protect protoplasm crews. Clearly, the varied factions of “retired” races preferred doing combat by proxy, using mechanical hirelings rather than risking their own necks.
Then one object loomed into view, more squat in profile than any other — a tubby dart, rounded and heavily armored. Gillian recognized the outline of a Thennanin scoutcraft.
“Ifni!” she sighed. “Has he done it again?”
“If you mean Engineer Emerson d’Anite, I can tell you that interior scans show no sign of him within this ship. I surmise it is him out there, unleashing weapons with quite futile abandon, missing nearly everything he shoots at. Organic beings really should not face mechanicals in close combat. It is not your forte.”
“I’ll bear that in mind,” Gillian murmured, deeply torn over what she could or should do next.
Emerson
WHEN HE REALIZED HE WASN’T HITTING anything — and no one was shooting back — Emerson finally shut down the fire controls. Apparently, nobody thought him worth much worry, or effort. It felt irksome to be ignored, but at least no faction seemed bent on avenging the robots he had taken out with those first few lucky shots, igniting this fury.
Combat surged around him. There was no making sense of the shadowed struggle as machines flayed other machines.
Anyway, it soon dawned on him that something else was going on. Something more important and personal than events taking place outside.
Waves of confusion swept through Emerson’s mind.
Nothing unusual about that. By now he was quite used to feeling befuddled. But the type of disorientation was exceptional. It felt like peering past dark clouds of delirium. As if everything till then had been part of a vivid dream, filled with perverted logic. Like a fever-racked child, he had made no clear sense of anything going on around him for a very long time. But in a brief instant light seemed to pierce the mist, limning corners that had been shrouded and dark.
Like a hint, or a passing scent, it lasted but a moment and was gone.
He suspected a trick. Another psi distraction …
But the light must have been more than that! The joy it brought was too intense. The sense of loss too devastating when it vanished.
Then, without warning, it was back again, much stronger than before.
Something he had been missing for a long time.
Something precious that he had never fully appreciated until it was taken from him.
I … I can think …
… I can think in words again!
Not just words, but sentences, paragraphs!
I’m pilotin
g a Thennanin war dart.… Streaker lies behind me.… Over there, and across nearly the whole of heaven, I see the blemished sky arch of the Fractal World.…
At once an overwhelming flood of understanding filled Emerson. Things he had seen on Jijo and since. Concepts that had eluded him because they could not be shaped with images and feelings alone, but needed the rich subtlety of abstract language to shape and anchor them with a webbery of symbols.
Sadness flooded him when he thought of all the things he had wanted to tell Sara during their long journey together across the Slope. And to Gillian, after he returned home a devastated cripple. Two different kinds of love he could never express — or sort out — until now.
How is this possible? My brain … they destroyed my speech centers!
For some reason, after the Old Ones finished interrogating him, they had decided to let him live, but in silence. The means to do this they found simply by reading his own memories of poor wounded Creideiki. When they mimicked giving him the same injury, the resulting cruel mutilation had left him half dead … and less than half a man.
That much he had already worked out laboriously on Jijo, even without putting it in words. But the answer was never satisfying. It never explained the brutal logic behind such an act.
That was when it came to him.
A voice. One he had forgotten till that moment.
One he identified with chill, unblinking eyes.
“INACCURACY. WE DID NOT DESTROY THOSE PORTIONS OF YOUR ORGANIC BRAIN. WE BORROWED/TOOK/EXPROPRIATED A FEW GRAMS OF TISSUE FOR USE IN A GREAT GOAL. OUR NEED WAS GREATER THAN YOURS.”
The effrontery of that claim nearly made Emerson howl with rage. Only by fierce discipline did he manage to form a reply, shaping it through pathways he had not used in too long a time. His voice sounded unpracticed, with an odd nasal twang.
“You bastards maimed me so I’d never talk about what you did!”
A sensation of aloof amusement accompanied the response.
“THAT WAS BUT A MINOR SIDE BENEFIT. IN FACT, WE DESIRED/NEEDED THE TISSUE ITSELF. IF TRUTH BE TOLD, IT SEEMED FAR MORE VALUABLE TO US THAN YOU EVER WERE LIKELY TO BE, AS A WHOLE ENTITY … ALTHOUGH IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN BETTER IF YOU WERE OF A SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT SPECIES. BUT WE HAD PHYSICAL POSSESSION OF JUST ONE EARTHLING, SO IT WAS ORDAINED THAT YOU WOULD BE OUR DONOR.”
The explication left him more befuddled than ever. “Then how come I can talk now?”
“IT IS A MATTER OF LINKAGE AND PROXIMITY. WE LEFT QUANTUM RESONATORS LINING THE CAVITY IN YOUR BRAIN, WHERE THE EXCISED TISSUE ONCE RESIDED. THESE HAVE CAUSAL CONNECTIONS WITH OTHER RESONATORS COATING THE SAMPLE WE TOOK AWAY. IF YOU ARE CLOSE ENOUGH, UNDER THE RIGHT CIRCUMSTANCES, OLD NEURAL PATHWAYS MAY RESUME THEIR FORMER FUNCTION.”
Emerson blinked. Leaning toward the scoutship’s curved window, he peered at the dark skyscape, flickering with silent explosions.
“YES, THE CAPSULE IS NEARBY, BROUGHT CLOSE TO YOU BY A WORKER DRONE. ONE THAT SEEMS INNOCUOUS, EVADING ATTENTION FROM THE FACTIONS BATHING AROUND YOU.
“IN FACT, THE DRONE CAN COME MUCH CLOSER STILL. THE TISSUE MIGHT BE YOURS AGAIN, UNDER CERTAIN CONDITIONS.”
He wanted to scream at his former captors, declaring that they had no right to bargain with him over something they had stolen in the first place. But they would only dismiss that as whimpering over wolfling standards of fairness. Anyway, Emerson’s mind was racing now, covering a great deal of territory in parallel, using both the old logic tracks and new techniques he had picked up during exile.
“If I serve you, then I’ll get my speech centers back? What’s the matter? Did your former scheme fail?”
“SOME OF US STILL HAVE FAITH/CONFIDENCE IN THAT PLAN. THOUGH AT BEST IT WAS ALWAYS A GAMBLE — AN ATTEMPT TO BRIBE ONE WHO IS/WAS FAR A WAY FROM HERE.
“BUT NOW, DEFYING ALL EXPECTATION, YOU ARE NEAR US ONCE AGAIN. IT PRESENTS ANOTHER POSSIBILITY FOR SUCCESS.”
“Oh, I just can’t wait to hear this,” Emerson commented, but he had learned the first time that sarcasm was wasted on the Old Ones.
“THE CONCEPT SHOULD BE SIMPLE ENOUGH FOR YOUR LEVEL OF BEING TO UNDERSTAND. IF YOU HURRY, YOU CAN REBOARD THE EARTHSHIP AND FIND/RETRIEVE INFORMATION WE DESIRE. A SIMPLE TRADE WOULD FOLLOW, AND WHAT YOU DESIRE MOST WILL BE YOURS.”
Emerson clamped down, refusing to put in words some of the thoughts glimmering at the back of his mind. Whatever he expressed that way — even subvocalizing — must pass through a lump of protoplasm that lay out there somewhere, carried by a machine drifting amid the slashing rays and bursting mines. A piece of himself that others could sieve at will.
“So now you want to make a deal. But a year ago you thought you didn’t need my useless carcass anymore. Why did you send me to Jijo, then? Why am I still alive?”
The voice seemed resigned about providing an explanation.
“THERE ARE BOUNDARY CONDITIONS TO THE UNIVERSAL WAVE FUNCTION, AFFECTING WORLDLINES PROPAGATING IN ALL DIRECTIONS. YOUR PHYSICAL EXISTENCE IN A FUTURE TIME IS ONE OF THESE BOUNDARY CONDITIONS. OUR ACTIONS MUST BE COMPATIBLE WITH KNOWN FACTS.
“HOWEVER, THERE IS LOOSENESS IN THE SUP AND PLAY OF WORLDLINES. NUMERICAL CALCULATIONS SHOWED THAT IT WAS ONLY NECESSARY TO PUT YOU CLOSE TO YOUR PEERS, ALIVE, AT A CERTAIN PLACE AND TIME, IN ORDER FOR ACCOUNTS TO BALANCE. PLACING YOUR BODY ON JIJO, WITHIN ACCESSIBLE RANGE OF YOUR COLLEAGUES, APPEARED ADEQUATE.”
He stared, appalled at both the power and the callousness implied by that statement.
“You … you’d call that hellish journey I went through accessible?”
The voice did not reply to that. Emerson’s question might as well have been rhetorical.
His eyes skimmed the scout’s displays. Now the letters and glyphs made instantaneous sense, indicating Streaker’s growing speed and distance. Clearly, Gillian was making another run toward the stars.
“THAT’S RIGHT. YOU HAVE ONLY A FEW DURAS TO ACT. IF YOU DO NOT REBOARD AND ACCEPT OUR OFFER, WE WILL BE FORCED TO DESTROY THE EARTHSHIP AND ALL YOUR COMRADES.”
Emerson laughed.
“That assumes your enemies will let you! They almost grabbed Streaker’s WOM, before your faction interfered. They might have something to say about your plans, in turn.
“Besides, I’m an important boundary condition, right? You gotta help me live into the future, alongside my friends, or your whole cause-and-effect thingamajig falls apart!”
“THE DEMANDS OF CAUSALITY ARE NOT AS STRICT AS YOU IMPLY, HUMAN. DO NOT TEST YOUR QUESTIONABLE VALUE, OR TAUNT US WITH DISRESPECT.”
He laughed aloud.
“Or what? You’ll punish me? You’ll inflict pain?”
Silence greeted his challenge, but he could tell the scorn had had an effect, this time. Contempt was a slim weapon, but they weren’t used to it. The words stung them.
On the other hand, the Old Ones knew Emerson had little choice. Remaining behind was not an option, if he could avoid it. His hands decided for him, nudging to the scout’s throttle, sending it accelerating after Streaker … though he felt a rising sense of dread.
What would happen when he left the vicinity of the robot carrying the missing piece of himself? Would it follow? Lurking nearby so he could continue to think?
When the voice spoke again, it seemed cool and distant.
“WE NOW SUPPLY YOU WITH A CODE TO USE IN CONTACTING US, WHEN YOU AM READY TO ACT ON OUR OFFER.”
A series of colors filled Emerson’s mind — a simple sequence that seared its way into memory. He could not forget it if he tried.
Then his former captors offered a parting comment.
“CLEARLY WE MISESTIMATED YOUR LEVEL OF SAPIENCY, IN BELIEVING THAT SIMPLE AVERSION CONDITIONING COULD SWAY YOU EARLIER. CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR APPARENT TENACITY AND FLEXIBILITY.
“NEVERTHELESS, WE HAVE CONFIDENCE IN THE EFFECTIVENESS OF OUR FINAL INDUCEMENT.”
With that, the voice cut off, though Emerson wasn’t done with them yet.
“Well let me tell you what you can do with your
Ifni-damned offer, you gorslucking spawn of retard slime molds! Go seek redemption up your own clocoas, you jef-eating, dirt-licking, damned-to-Gehenna—”
Emerson’s stream of invective went on while he sped after Streaker, hurrying past robot combatants that grappled and slashed one another, but never laid a claw or ray on him. He cursed on and on, enjoying the rich flood of invective and the feel of words spilling from his mouth, keeping it going for as long as he could. Each added second of crass language seemed a victory.
Swearing was his touchstone. Filling the small cabin with hoarse noise, he clung to the knack of speech, fiercely refusing to let distance — or the enemy — rip it away.
Soon he noted that Streaker was slowing down, pausing in its flight to let him catch up. The act of loyalty warmed him as the docking tunnel opened, spilling a welcome glow. But Emerson kept shouting his opinion of the Old Ones — their ancestry, their character, and their likely destiny on the great pyramid of existence.
Only when he finished latching to Streaker’s guidance beam did Emerson pause long enough to remember something.
Cursing didn’t count.
He could do that even on Jijo. Like singing and sketching, profanity did not use the part of his brain that was stolen.
Emerson tried to say something else — to comment on the battle, the sky filled with shattered debris, or his own growing fear — and failed.
Desperately, his thoughts whirled, rummaging through his tormented brain, seeking an aptitude that had seemed so fluid and natural just moments before. A lifelong skill that villains had robbed from him, then briefly returned, but for too short a time.
It felt like trying to extend an amputated limb. The ghost was still there. A hint of volition. Meanings filled his mind, along with a readiness to act, to prompt sentences. To speak.