by Tim Waggoner
“Transition to hyperspace achieved, Captain, and the hyperspatial rift was successfully sealed by our passage.”
Adams looked at the mound of gray goo that manned the Dardanus’s sensor station. He didn’t think he’d ever get used to the idea of a life-form that was nothing but a pile of nanotech. How did the damn thing talk, anyway? It spoke words, but without any obvious orifice designed for doing so.
“As expected, Suletu,” Kryllian said with more than a touch of smugness. The crustacean—whose race was called Grindani, Adams had learned—turned to the human as if he expected the man to express both awe and gratitude.
In truth, Adams was feeling more than a touch of awe, but he’d be damned if he’d let on to Kryllian.
“Good,” Adams said gruffly. “What’s our next move?”
Kryllian’s antennae waved, a gesture Adams believed meant the Grindan was irritated. Adams wanted to smile, but he kept his face expressionless. He had no idea if Kryllian could interpret facial expressions since the giant shrimp was incapable of making any himself, or if the nanotranslators that Adams had allowed to enter the comlink of his vacc suit could or would translate nonverbal expressions in addition to his words. Either way, he didn’t want to give the alien captain the slightest advantage over him.
It was Suletu who answered Adams’s question.
“We shall transmit a signal to the nanocolony that shares Hastimukah’s body. Once the colony receives the transmission, it will begin sending a homing signal—without Hastimukah’s knowledge. We shall then be able to track the signal to the Janus.”
Kryllian continued. “When we catch up to your people’s ship, we will take Hastimukah into custody and—with your permission, of course—tow the Janus back to realspace. Just to make sure your vessel returns safely, you understand.”
Adams knew the real reason was that Kryllian didn’t want the humans poking around in hyperspace and perhaps stirring up the Manti any more than they already were. But Adams didn’t say anything. He was here for one reason only: to ensure the safety of his people aboard the Janus. Thus, he needed to be on his best behavior, which meant keeping his big mouth shut before it could get him into trouble.
“Sounds like a plan,” Adams said.
Kryllian looked at Adams a moment longer before turning to Suletu. “Transmit signal.”
“Aye, Captain.” A pseudopod emerged from Suletu’s gray muck and worked the controls at his station. Several moments passed before Suletu said, “Homing signal received, Captain. It’s very faint—primarily due to hyper-etheric interference, I imagine—but it’s strong enough to trace.”
“Excellent,” Kryllian said. “Let’s get moving. Helm, lay in a course and follow that signal. Best speed between mass shadows, but don’t take any unnecessary chances.”
“Aye, Captain.” The helm officer was a humanoid cat with greenish fur, four arms, and eight breasts. All four of her arms went to work, and Adams could feel the deck vibrate beneath his feet. The Dardanus was under way.
“One more thing,” Kryllian said. “Since our guest has never been aboard a Residuum starship before, why don’t we set our visual readout to full view?”
“Aye, Captain,” Suletu acknowledged.
A second later the bridge disappeared, and Adams was soaring through the shadowy substance of hyperspace. But he wasn’t alone: Kryllian and his crew were there, too, sitting at their stations, but the rest of the Dardanus was gone. Hot bile splashed the back of Adams’ throat as he fought a sudden severe attack of vertigo. He realized what had happened. They were still aboard the Dardanus, but Kryllian had turned the bridge transparent, much like the plasteel ceilings on Cydonia could do, but on a far more elaborate scale.
As the Dardanus wove between the darkness of two gigantic mass shadows, Adams couldn’t help expressing his feelings in the most eloquent fashion that he was capable of at the moment.
“Damn.”
Kryllian’s antennae stopped waving and settled back against his carapace. “Now, that’s more like it,” he said, pleased.
Kyoto stared at the boneless, fleshy thing and tried to grasp what the Prana had told them. This symphysis was alive, a creature of pure psychic energy. It was like an artificial intelligence that was all software and no hardware.
“When we first sensed the appearance of Rhea, we were quite curious,” the Prana said. “To our knowledge, no species in your galaxy had ever succeeded in shifting so large an object into hyperspace before. It was quite an accomplishment, really.”
Kyoto thought of the techs who had been responsible for that “accomplishment.” Despite their efforts, they’d failed to save their Colony and had been transformed into Mutants.
“While normally we must remain in the Daimonion until summoned by the Prime Mother, if an important idea occurs to us, we are permitted to leave to report to her. We are also allowed to leave to investigate any oddity we might perceive. Thus, several of us were outside Rhea’s hyperbubble observing when you three approached in your ship. We were confused at first, for our senses told us your vessel was another Manti, but psi scans revealed the Janus to be a starship of artificial construction. Intrigued, we probed more deeply and found ourselves in contact with Memory. The speed at which she thinks is quite rapid, though not quite as fast as we can think. Within seconds, we knew all that she knew, and she had learned a great deal about the Manti, though not everything we could have taught her. Her current physical form doesn’t possess the capacity to hold that much information.
“As Commander Kyoto took her starfighter down to Rhea to investigate, we realized that we had stumbled onto a unique opportunity. While we had created the symphysis, we had no way to deliver it to the Prime Mother without her knowledge. You have a starship that can disguise itself as a Manti, but none of you have a psychic bond with the Prime Mother and would betray your intention long before you reached her. With the camouflage capability of your ship and the knowledge of the Manti that we gave to your AI, you can infiltrate the Weave without detection, and you can deliver the symphysis without the Prime Mother suspecting a thing. You—two humans, a Bergelmirian, and an AI-Manti cyborg—can succeed where the Prana can not. You can heal the Prime Mother and restore our race to sanity at last.”
Kyoto was stunned. Save Manti instead of killing them? If she hadn’t been able to psychically sense the truth behind the Prana’s words, she would have thought he was joking. She glanced at Mudo and Hastimukah and saw they looked equally taken aback.
She turned to the Prana. “We need some time to think through everything you’ve told us.”
“Naturally,” the Prana said. “Feel free to take as long as you like. After all, time is relative here.” The Prana smiled. “You may go wherever you wish in the mental landscape we have created for you, and you have my word that we shall not violate the privacy of your minds while you consider our request.”
“Thank you,” Mudo said. “Not to be rude, but I do my best thinking alone.” With that, he turned and walked away from the others.
Kyoto watched him go. Just when she thought Mudo was beginning to develop a few social skills…
“Well, Hastimukah, would you like to go somewhere and talk?” she asked.
“Actually, I’d rather stay with the Prana, if you don’t mind. I have so many questions I’d like to ask.” He turned to their host. “If that’s all right?”
The Prana nodded. “Of course. Shall we take a tour of the zoo while we converse?”
The two aliens walked off together, leaving Kyoto standing by herself in the middle of a mixed-up re-creation of a destroyed holographic zoo.
“Well, hell.” She sat down in the middle of the path, stared at the blobby form of the symphysis, and started to think.
Kyoto found Mudo in the combined storeroom/prison corridor, sitting in the rocking chair and staring into space. She took a seat on the floor near him and drew her knees to her chest.
“Sorry to bother you, but I got tired of thinking by
myself.”
Mudo didn’t look at her, but he asked, “Where’s Hastimukah?”
“Still with the Prana. Last I saw, the Prana was showing him some kind of art form the they’ve developed. It’s like sculpture, only using thoughts instead of rock. I don’t really understand the concept, but Hastimukah seemed fascinated by it.”
“I believe our alien friend was more than a bit surprised to discover how intelligent the Prana are,” Mudo said, finally turning to look at her. “My guess is that he wants to learn as much as he can about them so he can report back to the Residuum’s leaders.”
“Just as we’re supposed to do when we get home,” Kyoto said. “Though our mission’s become a bit more complicated than simple reconnaissance.”
“Indeed it has.”
“Does it change anything?” Kyoto asked. “The Prana being intelligent, I mean.”
“I don’t know. We’ve been aware for some time that the Manti have a thinking caste, but I believed that no matter how smart they were, in the end, the Brain Bugs were like all Manti: little more than organic machines following their genetic programming to destroy.”
“But the Prana are more than just smart,” Kyoto said. “They want to heal their race, to turn it away from the path of destruction it’s followed for so long. If there’s even a chance that such a thing is possible, shouldn’t we help them? We could end the Manti threat to our entire galaxy once and for all.”
“I destroy my enemy when I make him my friend, eh? But you’re assuming the Prana are telling us the truth. After all, if they can manipulate our minds to make us believe we’re here instead of aboard the Janus, they could conceivably make us believe anything they wanted.”
“Now you’re getting too existential for me, Doc. ‘I think, therefore I am’ is about as far as I go when it comes to philosophy. When you’re a fighter pilot, you learn to take a lot on faith, mostly because you don’t have a choice.”
“Do we have a choice now?” Mudo asked.
Kyoto shrugged. “The Prana say we do. Assuming we choose to give their plan a shot, do you think it’ll work?”
“There’s no way of knowing. The psychic discipline the Prana practice is as far beyond our understanding as a fusion engine would be to a prehistoric primate. The Prana believe the symphysis will work, and in general, the theory seems plausible enough. But in practice?”
“We could always consult Memory,” Kyoto said.
“I’d rather not. I don’t think she’s as objective as she could be when it comes to the Manti, to put it mildly.”
“Okay, then let’s assume the symphysis will work. What then?”
“We might make things worse than they already are,” Mudo said. “The one advantage we’ve always had over the Manti was our individuality. Each human is intelligent—to one degree or another—and capable of making his or her own decisions, of reacting quickly to changing circumstances. If we took the symphysis to the Prime Mother and rebalanced her mind, as the Prana put it, perhaps she will become more rational. But will that mean the Manti will cease preying on the species of our galaxy? Or will they merely begin to do so more efficiently? The Manti may change from predators to rulers, and instead of prey, we’ll become their subjects.”
The idea chilled Kyoto to the core. Instead of stopping the Manti by healing the Prime Mother, they might make the Buggers even stronger.
“Let’s get down to it,” Kyoto said. “If we don’t do this, what are the odds of the human race surviving?”
“Now that we know the Manti are native to hyperspace and will continue to search for a way back into our star system until they find it, not good,” he admitted. “If we allied with the Residuum, our chances would improve, but only if we become one more race among them, living on starships that travel endlessly through space, forever running from the Manti.”
“Doesn’t sound like much of a life, does it?” Kyoto asked softly.
“No, it doesn’t.”
They fell silent for several moments, and then Mudo resumed speaking.
“Because my father was a guard at Phobos Prison, we lived there, but in a separate wing for employees and their families. It was a rough place to grow up, especially for a kid who preferred to use his mind rather than his fists. A lot of families resented the prisoners. Why keep them alive? they’d ask. They’re just using up resources that could go to decent, law-abiding people. But my father didn’t think that way. He used to tell me that no matter what someone did in the past, it was possible for them to change. Not likely, perhaps, but possible. And because of that potential for change, there was still hope.”
Kyoto smiled. “Why, Dr. Mudo, I didn’t know you were a romantic.”
Mudo smiled back. “Don’t call me names.” The scientist rose to his feet, and Kyoto did the same.
“We’re going aren’t we?” Mudo asked.
“Yes, we are,” Kyoto confirmed. “All the way to the Weave.”
Mudo sighed. “I don’t suppose the GSA will pay us overtime for this.”
Kyoto laughed. “With General Adams authorizing the credit deposits? Not a chance!”
“I didn’t think so. All right, let’s go tell Hastimukah.”
They left the room that had been fashioned from their combined memories, and they didn’t turn back.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-THREE
Kyoto and Mudo found Hastimukah and the Prana observing a creature that was a cross between a giant tortoise and a cheetah. The two aliens seemed rather chummy, which surprised Kyoto, given the hatred the Residuum held for the Manti. But then, the Prana weren’t like other Manti, were they? And Kyoto was beginning to suspect that Hastimukah might not be exactly like the rest of his people, either.
The Prana turned as they approached. “You’ve decided to help us. Excellent!”
Kyoto grinned wryly. “I thought you said you wouldn’t probe our minds while we decided.”
“True,” the Prana admitted with a smile. “But I didn’t say anything about after.” He turned to Hastimukah. “And you are in agreement?”
“You must already know the answer to that,” the assessor said. “Of course I am.”
The Prana nodded. “Then let us return to the symphysis.”
They once more followed the Prana through the zoo of hodgepodge creatures. As they walked, a question occurred to Kyoto.
“I understand that the Manti are determined to exterminate humanity, but why did they wait two years between attacks? It doesn’t make sense.”
“The doorway the Manti originally used to enter your star system was near your ancestral homeworld,” the Prana said. “When you and Memory destroyed the Manti base on Earth by driving the moon into the planet, their mass shadows shifted position in hyperspace, and the doorway was closed. The Manti continued to search for a new way into your system, or failing that, systems close to yours. When your people began to construct the holographic memorial to your lost homeworld, you erected a stargate near a relatively weak area in realspace. Once the Manti located the weakness, they became aware of the stargate close by.”
Mudo swore. “So that’s what happened! The hyperspatial connections between stargates exist on a quantum level—until they’re used, at which point they expand to accommodate the vessel passing through. They then collapse back to their quantum size until the next time they’re used. The Manti were unable to detect the stargates on a quantum level, and they remained at their expanded size only for a few nanoseconds at most, so the Manti were never able to locate them.”
The Prana nodded. “But while the Manti worked on breaking through the weakened fabric of spacetime, the stargate near the memorial was used often enough to draw their attention at last. After that, it didn’t take long for them to learn how to locate the quantum singularities of your gates and use them to return to your system.”
Mudo frowned. “When you say they learned, what you really mean is the Prana taught them.”
The Prana lowered his gaze in shame. �
��Yes. The Prime Mother commanded us to find a way to access your stargate system, and we did.” He looked up and met their eyes once more. “But we took no pleasure in the task, believe me.”
None of them said anything more, and finally they came to the exhibit where the symphysis was kept. The tentacles of the jellyfish-like thing undulated faster than before, as if it was excited, and Kyoto wondered if it was already aware of their intentions.
“What do we have to do?” Mudo asked.
“We shall upload the specifics to Memory,” the Prana said. “She will be able to guide you through the process of traveling to the Weave and delivering the symphysis to the Prime Mother. All you need do right now is take the symphysis and return to your ship.”
“But I thought we hadn’t left the Janus,” Kyoto said. “Our physical bodies are still there, aren’t they?”
“And if we do not possess physical form in the Daimonion,” Hastimukah said, “how can we take anything?”
“It’s quite simple, actually,” Mudo said. “The symphysis doesn’t have a tangible form. It’s pure energy, pure information. Like a computer program, only far more sophisticated, of course. All one has to do to take it is allow it to be transferred into one’s mind.”
The symphysis suddenly flared bright purple and then vanished.
“Thank you for agreeing to carry the symphysis, Doctor,” the Prana said. “For a being at your stage of evolution, you possess a most developed mind. Even so, you must be careful: the symphysis is quite powerful, and no matter how strong your mind is, you are not Prana. The longer you carry the symphysis, the more difficult it will become.”
Mudo looked alarmed. “But I didn’t… I mean, I thought someone else would…” He sighed in resignation. “Oh, very well. I suppose we’re ready to depart, then.”
“In a way, I’m sorry to be leaving,” Hastimukah said. “I feel that we’ve been shown only the merest glimpse of the wonders the Daimonion has to offer.”
The Prana smiled. “If you succeed in delivering the symphysis, relations shall change between our peoples. If that occurs, perhaps you shall visit us again one day.”