The Prodigal Sun

by Sean Williams

  “The Armada could take days,” Neva added.

  “And that’s not the worst of it,” continued the Box. “A conflict of interests exists within the group itself. Assuming all goes well, we will be lifted from a combat zone by Armada dropships—hardly an inconspicuous way to leave the planet. Especially when more circumspect pathways are available. While it suits our needs admirably to choose this method of escape, others might not find it appropriate.”

  “What other way is there?” Roche asked.

  “By betraying us to the Enforcers, a traitor might gain illegal exit from Sciacca’s World from the Dato—thereby circumventing the judiciary system.”

  “It’s a possibility,” Emmerik said to Roche, his eyes dark.

  “A very real one, I’m afraid,” the Box continued. “In combat, as I am sure you are aware, there are crucial moments where one simple action, or failure to take action, can decide the ultimate outcome. It would be relatively easy for one person to shift the scales, should he or she so wish.”

  “That’s a risk everyone takes in combat,” Roche protested. “And besides, they won’t have time to plan anything. The response from the Armada won’t be slow. The Midnight was destroyed two days ago, and therefore hasn’t reported to HQ. Someone might already be on their way to see what happened.” Leaning over the map, she did her best to argue with a voice that had no face. “And besides, what other alternatives do we have?”

  “At least one,” said the Box. “We can commandeer a ground-to-orbit vessel and physically occupy the transmitter station.”

  “What?” Stunned by the audacity of the suggestion, Roche openly gaped. “Are you crazy?”

  “Not at all,” the Box purred. “The station is well defended—more so than the landing field and the MiCom installation, but not overwhelmingly so. I can get us past the Dato blockade and into a position to dock. The warden will not sanction a direct assault upon it, for fear of destroying it. This will place them in direct conflict with the Dato Bloc. A very real possibility exists that our enemies will go to war over the best way to capture us, while we sit back and await rescue.”

  “You really are crazy,” said Neva, shaking her head. “I like Roche’s plan much better. At least with her we stay on solid ground.”

  “Which is less defensible than—”

  “Forget it, Box,” Roche said. “The most we can hope for is control of MiCom. Push it any further and we risk losing everything.”

  “I agree,” said Emmerik, nodding.

  “But, Morgan—”

  “I said, forget it.” Roche glared at the valise, mentally daring it to argue further.

  Before it could do so, the room’s intercom beeped urgently for attention.

  Neva stepped aside to take the call. While she waited, Roche ran over her plan in her mind. Yes, it seemed sound; there were only a handful of details left to be straightened out, and they would fall into place as the others applied their superior knowledge of the rebel forces and the city to the problem. Roche doubted COE Intelligence’s head of Strategy, Page De Bruyn, could have done any better, given what she had to work with.

  “Your AI is either far more clever than I gave it credit for,” said Emmerik into the silence, “or dangerously abstracted from reality.”

  “What do you mean?” Roche responded.

  “Well, its suggestion appears to have forced you and Neva to a consensus. Perhaps that was all it was intended to do, in which case the move was inspired.” Emmerik shrugged. “If it meant it seriously, on the other hand...”

  The Mbatan let the sentence trail off, and Roche didn’t complete the thought out loud. Much as she disliked the idea of the Box being such a skilled debater, especially on her behalf, she found that less disturbing than the Box’s plan itself.

  Although, now that she thought about it, the Box’s plan did make a certain kind of sense. It was feasible, in a crazy kind of way. Almost Human in its boldness; hardly what she would have expected from a mere machine.

  When Neva returned, her face was grim. “That was Ameidio,” she said. “He’s received the results of Cane’s tests.”

  “Excellent.” Emmerik lifted his bulk off the table he had been leaning on. “Now we might get some answers.”

  “We already have, I’m afraid.” Neva turned to look Roche squarely in the eye. “Ameidio’s called a conference. It starts in fifteen minutes. He wants you to wait here until he calls a guard to show you down. We’ll meet you there.” Neva turned back to Emmerik. “Let’s go. I’ll fill you in on the way.” Together they headed for the door.

  “Wait!” Roche came around the viewtank. “At least give me a hint of what they’ve found.”

  Neva stopped on the threshold, glancing at Emmerik. After a moment, he nodded assent. “You won’t like it,” she said to Roche.

  “Is he sick? Dying? What?”

  “Worse than that, I’m afraid.” Neva met Roche’s stare and sighed. “Whatever Cane is, he isn’t what he seems...”

  13

  Sciacca’s World

  Port Parvati

  ‘954.10.33 EN

  1025

  Nine people filed into the oval-shaped Conference room and gathered about its long, polished, grey stone table. As they did, a warm and gentle light began to emanate from the rafters high above, replacing the shadows of the large room with a pervasive yellow glow.

  Present at the table were Haid, at its head, with Emmerik and Neva on one side and Sabra on the other. Next to Sabra—and directly opposite Roche—was Sylvester Teh, the representative of the medical team that had examined Cane. He was a short and balding man in his middle years who spoke in a manner both soft and lacking in self-confidence. Roche got the impression that he was more comfortable talking to machines than to people.

  To Roche’s right were two guards, between which sat Cane himself. If he was aware that he was, to all intents and purposes, on trial, his face betrayed no apprehension. Not that she expected it to. She doubted whether there was anything the rebels could do to Cane to hurt him. Roche and Emmerik had seen Cane in action; they both knew that he could have overpowered his escort on any number of occasions on the way down to this meeting. The guards’ presence was more for show than anything else.

  Maii had declined to attend, saying she needed to concentrate in order to prepare for her part in Veden’s plan. It felt unusual for Roche not to have someone whispering in her mind. Indeed, even the Box was silent— the tingle of data flowing through the glove still for the moment. She suspected it would be paying close attention to the proceedings just the same.

  When all were seated, Haid called for order. “I’m sorry to drag you in at such short notice,” he began, “but as you are probably aware, something has come up regarding our friend here.” He nodded in Cane’s direction. “You’ll have to excuse the choice of venue, I’m afraid; unfortunately it’s the only room guaranteed to be secure.”

  Roche glanced around the large and empty room. It was situated on one of the university’s lower levels, and, from the disheveled appearance of the corridors leading to it, she suspected it wasn’t used too often.

  “Sylvester,” continued Haid. “You want to tell us what we have here?”

  Teh adjusted the neck of his tunic as he stood to address the small group. “Early this morning,” he said, “we completed an in-depth physical examination of the subject known as Adoni Cane, our intention being to determine the cause of his amnesia. We also wanted to see if he had suffered any physical side-effects of what I am given to understand was an extended time spent in a life support capsule. Indeed, we thought the two facts might have been connected.” Teh glanced down to the copious notes laid out before him.

  “However, before we move on to the full findings of our investigation, I would like to begin by saying that, as far as we can tell, Adoni Cane’s loss of memory is not the result of physical trauma. He has no memory of a time earlier than thirteen days ago because, quite simply, the memories never existed in
the first place.” Teh looked around the table to ensure that this conclusion was clearly understood. Noting Roche’s obvious confusion, he said, “To put it another way, until a little more than a week ago, the Adoni Cane sitting before you did not exist.”

  “That’s impossible,” said Roche. “The recovery team on the Midnight physically pulled him out of the capsule.”

  Teh raised a hand. “Let me clarify that,” he said. “Perhaps I should have said he did not exist as an individual.”

  Emmerik lifted his thick eyebrows. “He was someone else?”

  “Or no one at all.” Teh’s nervous eyes dropped again to his notes. “Real-time analysis of the blood flow in his brain reveals an absence of lesions and clots—no physical damage, in other words, that would suggest the erasure of a previous personality. What we see before us is a man whose brain is functioning perfectly—albeit that it has only been conscious for a matter of days.”

  Neva leaned forward. “So how is it that he can talk? If he’s only thirteen days old, surely he should be as helpless as a newborn baby. And as mindless.”

  “I don’t know,” said Teh. “One possibility is that the capsule in which he was found contained more than the usual life-suspend/support outfit. During his time adrift, it may have been educating him, training him.” He shrugged. “We have no way of knowing.”

  “Training him for what?” Sabra asked.

  “Why don’t you ask the man himself?” put in Roche, gesturing at Cane.

  “I have no memories at all prior to the Midnight,” he said, preempting the question. “If I was educated subliminally, then I’m afraid I can offer no answers which might explain what my training was intended for.”

  “But why would anyone do such a thing?” asked Neva. “It’s crazy.”

  Haid brought the matter to an end by standing and saying, “We’ll come back to that later. First we should hear the other results of the examination.”

  Teh nodded. “We conducted the standard tests: X-rays, tissue typing, genetic analysis, and so on. Without exception, the results of these tests were anomalous.”

  “In what way?” Roche asked.

  “See for yourself.” The medic displayed a handheld computer down which scrolled test results. Roche caught perhaps one line in five and rapidly became lost among the endless procession of data.

  “What you’re seeing is Cane’s genetic transcript, coding exons and introns both,” Teh explained. “When you compare it to his overall physiognomy, the results are weird— to say the least. He may look normal on the surface, but underneath...” His voice trailed off as he scanned through a variety of holographic images, then returned: “Just look at his cell structure, his central nervous system, his gut, his lungs—and his brain. Have you ever seen anything like that before? Anywhere?”

  “No,” said Roche. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean—”

  “I understand your reluctance to accept the results of the test,” Teh said. “But I’m afraid there can be no doubt. Our diagnostic database is customized to the Pristine form, and precisely because it’s not equipped to deal with data outside certain guidelines, it is ideally suited to provide a direct comparison with what we would regard as usual. For instance, Adoni Cane’s cellular structure is more compact than normal, resulting in tissue that is more elastic, yet stronger; likewise his skeleton is denser, his intestinal tract longer, his lungs of superior capacity, his heart more powerful, and his immune system more efficient than what would be regarded as typical of a Pristine Human. He possesses several glands that do not correspond with any I am aware of, yet lacks certain vestigial organs we all take for granted. His brain displays a quite remarkable number of structural anomalies, and his chromosomal map matches no known genotype.

  “In short,” Teh concluded, “Adoni Cane is not Pristine—although what he is, exactly, has yet to be determined.”

  “Any guesses?” asked Neva.

  “Well, I’m not qualified enough to even guess,” Teh said. Then, for Roche’s benefit, he added, “You must understand, Commander, that we have no schools here. What training we indigenes receive comes from the convicts. My own was courtesy of a woman sent to Sciacca’s World for malpractice.” He smiled at a private memory. “She assured me she knew what she was talking about, even though her knowledge was not—”

  “Don’t feel the need to justify yourself, Sylvester,” intruded Haid. “No one is doubting your ability.”

  Roche wasn’t so confident, but she said nothing.

  Embarrassed, Teh turned again to his notes. “Well,” he said, “it seems to me that the differences between Cane and the Pristine Human are not random. That is, in each and every case they serve to make him superior to the norm. His kidneys absorb more toxins; he can see and hear things we cannot without artificial amplification; his tissue repairs faster than ours.”

  Not for the first time that day, Roche looked with some amazement at the thin scar that was all that remained of the gash Cane had suffered at Houghton’s Cross.

  “In fact,” Teh continued, “the only area in which he is inferior to anyone sitting at this table is reproduction.”

  “He’s sterile?” Sabra asked the question without taking her eyes from Cane’s impassive face, her lips pursed in a mixture of repugnance and admiration. “A superhuman drone?”

  “That would be one interpretation of the data, yes,” said Teh.

  “But he looks so normal.”

  “His appearance does belie the uniqueness of the rest of his physique,” said Teh. “And I dare say that this has been deliberately programmed—”

  “Programmed?” interrupted Emmerik.

  “Isn’t it obvious?” said Teh. “He can’t be an Exotic we’ve never encountered before. Someone knew what they were doing when they built him. Someone who knows more about genetics and the Human form than I ever will.”

  Haid allowed the others a moment to absorb this before asking the obvious question:

  “But why?”

  Roche watched the faces of everyone in the room as they thought it through. Haid had had time to reach the obvious conclusion, as had Sylvester Teh. Neva shook her head in irritation; Sabra’s lips pursed even tighter; Emmerik scowled deeply; the two security guards stiffened. Roche kept her expression carefully neutral, although the answer to the question seemed obvious enough, and indeed disturbing.

  Surprisingly, Cane was the first to speak.

  “To allow me to infiltrate Pristine society, I imagine.” His voice was even and uncolored by emotion. He might have been talking about someone else. “Given the abilities I possess, I can only be either a spy or a weapon.”

  “Exactly.” Haid leaned forward, his one arm splayed flat on the stone tabletop. “Emmerik warned me about your ability to kill without apparent remorse, when you need to. He and Neva also witnessed your extraordinary skill in combat; anyone able to disarm powered armor with hands cuffed deserves respect in my book—or suspicion. And there can be no questioning your intelligence, either. I have no doubt that, given time, you could do almost anything you wanted. But that brings us no closer to the answer: what do you want to do?” Haid shrugged helplessly. “I doubt that even you know the answer to that, do you?”

  Cane shook his head.

  “So it seems more appropriate to tackle the problem not from the why angle, but rather the who.”

  Cane shrugged. “Someone who doesn’t like Pristine Humans?”

  “That could be any one of a number of Castes,” said Emmerik wryly.

  “True.” Roche knew that although none of the seven local Castes hated Pristine Humans specifically, at least one Caste’s members despised everyone but themselves. And there were a number of splinter groups who would gladly accept responsibility. “But that leaves us with plenty of suspects.”

  “The Eckandar Trade Axis is the most advanced in this area,” said Teh, “and it guards its knowledge jealously. Or so I’ve heard.”

  “It’s true,” Roche agreed. “The
Eckandi will sell just about anything other than genetic technology.”

  “I don’t understand.” Sabra frowned. “What use would Eckandi genetics be to Pristines?”

  “We all spring from a common, carbon-based organism,” explained Teh. “Our genetic codes may speak a different language now, but it’s still all written on the same paper. Genome maps and so on are frequently interchangeable.”

  “So they’re the obvious suspects. Aren’t they?” Sabra turned to face Roche when she hesitated to agree.

  “Not necessarily,” said Roche. “The Dato have been interested, too. One of their pre-Commonwealth leaders—Ataman Vereine, I believe—almost went to war with the Eckandar Trade Axis when they refused to sell what they knew. She may have got what she wanted, or developed it herself.”

  “I thought they’d moved into cyber-assist programs instead,” said Haid.

  “Maybe,” said Roche, although she had heard nothing of the sort. “That could be a cover, though.”

  “True. Cane might be a Dato spy, which would explain why he was planted on an Armada vessel.” Haid counted on his fingers. “That makes two. Who else?”

  “The Kesh hate everyone,” Emmerik mused, echoing Roche’s earlier thought, “but they’ve never shown interest in this sort of warfare.”

  “And the Surin Agora is too busy squabbling within itself to attack anyone else,” said Roche. “The same applies to most of the other major governments. Why spend so much time and money fighting Pristines when there are already enough problems at home?”

  “If Veden was awake, we could ask him,” said Neva. “About the Eckandi, I mean.”

  “He is awake,” said Haid. “But he was not well enough to attend, I’m afraid. The nanomachines we had were an old paramilitary design, barely sufficient. Still, I doubt whether he would tell us even if he did know. Neither the Eckandar Trade Axis nor the Commerce Artel would ever risk spreading publicity like that.”

  “Maybe we’re looking in the wrong place.” Teh’s voice intruded softly, uneasily, into the debate. “We’re looking all around us for suspects, when maybe we should be looking in another direction entirely.”