Heirs of Earth

by Sean Williams

  “I would have if I could!” she broke in. “It was my intention to transfer data as I flew by the target system, so I could justify carrying on. I didn’t want to cost the program anything or hurt anyone.”

  He looked up at the ceiling as if seeking her out. “You did hurt someone, Lucia. You hurt me. As time passed, the expectation that you would appear softened into a hope, and then it became just a dream—a dream that I never really expected to be fully realized. But it’s never gone away. I’ve tried many times to get over you, Lucia, because I need to be free of you to find myself. But I don’t know how to. It’s not something I can switch off.”

  Something akin to relief washed over her at the sound of these words, but then he blinked and looked down to the floor, and in that tiny gesture she could see what was coming and a scream began to rise inside her.

  “Years ago, if you had suggested we could have traveled the galaxy together, tourist and truth seeker alike, you know I would have leapt at the chance.”

  “But now?” she prompted her voice barely level.

  “It was only when you appeared here just then, Lucia, that I realized I’ve already let go. It was just the taste of the dream that I was savoring, the memory of the time when we were together back on Earth. It’s gone, Lucia. I can see that now; I can feel it. It switched itself off. I’ve moved on, I’ve changed. And I can’t just drop everything to go gallivanting across the galaxy. I have responsibilities now. I have—”

  The sentence went unfinished. No words were required for her to understand what he had been about to say; it was in his expression. I have no need for you anymore.

  The high-pitched wail that erupted from her was quite unlike anything her original mouth could have ever produced. She felt it thrill through her like a standing wave, making her entire being vibrate. The hole ship rang with it, and Peter put his hands over his ears. Wordless, agonized, the sound seemed to go on forever.

  Lucia felt herself being torn apart by it, by the incomprehensible dichotomy between what was and what should have been. If it didn’t stop, her mind would fly into pieces, each fragment an unfulfilled expectation—a lie propagated by the engram overseer that had kept her her for so long. She was a victim of programming, a continuity error—a goddamn glitch, for Christ’s sake!

  I can’t take this, she realized, understanding and accepting not with despair, but desperation. She didn’t want to die.

  Klotho, you have to let me go!

  What are your instructions? asked the hole ship, its voice in her mind as cool and calming as a mountain stream.

  Just let me out of here! she demanded. Let me out! Let me out!

  Whether it was her subtle nudging of the hole ship’s inner workings or the force of her plea, she couldn’t tell. But she felt the constrictions around her suddenly ease.

  “Lucia!” Peter was trying to make himself heard over the ongoing scream. “Try to understand!”

  “I don’t want to understand!” she shouted back, and with that she felt the resistance of the hole ship crumble and the walls come down. Before it could change its mind or Peter could countermand it, she forced herself out of her prison and back out into the universe. A dizzying array of possibilities awaited her. Swept along by the power of her grief and the pain of her incomprehension, she sought somewhere quiet to hide, to lick her wounds and try to work out what was to be done. Everywhere was bright and dazzling: hole ships in complex networks dozens of nodes across, vibrating with the force of humanity’s assembly; gifts shimmering with alien intentions she could only partly read; and amid it all, nestled at the center like a tiny, insignificant flaw, a tiny speck of darkness.

  She headed for it, trailing her grief and confusion like a comet’s tail, and dived inside.

  1.1.4

  The sense of something chaotic and dangerous sweeping through her made Thor glance up in alarm.

  “What was that?” asked Axford 1041 from his half of the dual cockpit. Their hole ships had merged just far enough to allow them to talk naturally across the boundary; otherwise they were completely separate—or so she hoped, anyway.

  “Lucia, I think,” she said. “Expect the calls to be coming in any time now.”

  Barely had she finished saying this when the first transmission came through. Surprisingly, though, it was from Sol rather than Alander.

  “What the fuck is going on, Thor?” The image of the original Caryl Hatzis appeared on Pearl’s curving viewscreen. “You told me at Sirius that you hadn’t found anything at pi-1 Ursa Major, and now I find you’ve been telling Axford differently. And while we’re on the subject, why are you dealing with that madman in the first place? Don’t you know what he’s done?”

  A low chuckle from the other half of the cockpit cut across any answer Thor might have attempted.

  “Maybe she realizes she doesn’t have a choice.” Axford 1041 affected a relaxed, confident pose. “If you want a solution to this problem, then you’re going to have to talk to me.”

  “Any solution involving you is not a solution,” Sol spat back.

  “Hell of a line, Caryl. If there’s anyone left after the Starfish come through here, perhaps they could engrave it on your headstone.”

  “And you think you can stop the Starfish?”

  “I think he’s worth listening to,” put in Thor.

  “So why doesn’t he speak to the rest of the gathering?”

  “They’ll never reach a consensus, Sol,” said Axford. “You know that.”

  Sol sagged at that, some of her animosity subsiding for a moment. It was clear that she did know that.

  “If we listen to you, Frank, the Fit will rescind their invitation to become humanity-slash-Goel—again. Regardless of whatever your plan is, I know giving up that option will be certain suicide.”

  “We don’t need the Fit, Caryl.” The ex-general wore his best poker face: intent on the person he was talking to, with just a hint of amusement at the corners of his mouth and eyes. “And we don’t need the rest of the engrams to reach a consensus, either. We just need the ones who are prepared to put their lives on the line, like I have.”

  Sol’s expression curled into a sneer. “Remind me how you’ve put yourself on the line, Frank. You’re just one of—how many versions of yourself, exactly?”

  “It’s not relevant right now, Caryl,” said Axford 1041. “Let’s keep to the matter at hand. We’re talking survival on our terms, not the Ambivalence’s. I’m not about to offer any shallow apologies for Beid or anything else. I’ve done everything I had to do to survive—and the simple fact is that we need each other if we’re going to do that. So here I am. Are you interested in hearing what I have to say or not?”

  Before she could respond, the Pearl announced another incoming transmission. The screen divided in two as Peter Alander joined the impromptu meeting.

  “You’re keeping a low profile,” he said to Thor, glancing at Axford and Sol but, showing no surprise on his heavily stubbled face. “I don’t suppose that would have anything to do with the visit I just had from Lucia Benck, would it?”

  Sol looted up sharply at that. “She’s here?”

  “She was,” said Alander. “I don’t know where she’s gone now, though. Thor set her loose, probably hoping that she’d distract us.”

  “That’s not entirely true,” Thor said. “We were hoping she’d get your attention, which she obviously did. It’s not as if we forced her into anything. She wanted to see you, Peter. I need you to understand that she has in no way been tampered with.”

  “I never thought she had been,” said Alander, frowning. “But why is that so important?”

  “Because she’s proof,” said Axford. “She’s given us the key to everything. Without her, we’d be as good as dead.”

  Alander looked confused. “I’m sorry, but would someone mind explaining to me what the hell is going on?”

  “I’m here to offer you a deal,” said Axford.

  “Which I helped broker,” Thor add
ed, noting with satisfaction the look on Sol’s face. Yes, she thought. You’re not the only player now, Sol. “I found Frank and told him what Lucia told me.”

  Sol shook her head. “And it doesn’t seem to bother you that you’ve been lying to me as well as making friends with a mass murderer.”

  Thor refused to apologize. “Judging by what you told me about Beid, he was the only one who could think big enough to use the information I had. I knew I couldn’t, and that meant that you couldn’t, either.”

  “So where did you find him?”

  “Actually, he found me. I figured that if anyone was going to survive the destruction of Vega, it would be him, and that if he had survived, he’d be monitoring the system somehow. All I had to do was broadcast a request to parley, and sure enough, he appeared.”

  “Just like that?” said Sol skeptically. “Frank the Ax just turned himself over to you?”

  “Perhaps if you hadn’t been so keen to shoot him out of the skies, maybe he would have come to you, too,” said Thor.

  “Maybe,” said Sol, nodding. “And maybe I should order an attack on him right now and blow him right the fuck out of my sight.”

  “Except you know it wouldn’t be in your best interest to do so,” said Axford smugly. “Like I said, I hold the key to your salvation.”

  “I thought you said Lucia was the key?” Alander was looking increasingly lost.

  “What she knows is the key,” Axford explained.

  “And what is that?” pressed Alander.

  “Pi-1 Ursa Major,” Sol answered for the ex-general. “That’s where Thor has come from, and where she found Lucia. I’m guessing she saw something when she flew through, right? Was it the Starfish base, Frank?”

  Axford smiled. “Actually, it’s not a Starfish base at all. It’s a Spinner base. Or so I reckon. Does that get your attention?”

  Alander and Sol stared at the ex-general. Thor could practically see their minds working at superfast speed.

  “You have evidence?” asked Sol.

  “Enough to convince me.”

  “Assuming you’re not bullshitting us, then, Frank, what exactly is it you’re suggesting we do?”

  “Simple. I suggest we force the Starfish into talking to us and, once we’ve done that, we offer to tell them where their enemy is hiding. I doubt there’d be a military intelligence in the universe that would ignore that kind of information.”

  “Or ignore the people offering it,” said Thor, herself unable to suppress her smugness.

  “That’s the plan?” said Sol. “To run headlong into the very thing that wants to kill us?”

  “Better to run to your death than run from it,” said Axford.

  “He’s right, Sol,” said Thor. “And by allying ourselves with the force destroying us, we might be able to turn the tide.”

  “You make it sound easy,” said Alander eventually. “And I won’t even go into the morality of doing it.”

  “Well, easy it won’t be,” said Axford. “Getting over that first hurdle is going to be tricky.”

  “Any thoughts on how we’d go about that?”

  Axford’s smile widened. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.”

  “Wait a second,” said Sol. “I’m with Peter. What about the morality of what you’re suggesting? We’d be biting the hand that feeds us. Setting the Spinners up like this strikes me as being more than a little ungrateful. It could just as easily turn them against us, too. Then we’d end up with two enemies, not one.”

  “It’s either this or the Starfish wipe us out once and for all,” said Axford. “And it’s not as if the Spinners are exactly paying us any attention or anything. They won’t answer our calls. If they’re not supplying any answers, then, gifts or no gifts, I say they haven’t earned our gratitude.”

  “Just hear him out, Sol,” said Thor as her original opened her mouth to protest. “What he’s saying makes sense—and it could give us the edge we need to get out of this mess. Besides which, it’s not as if we have unlimited time on our hands.”

  “We have eight days, to be precise,” said Sol, intoning the deadline as though she was laying mausoleum slabs in place.

  “It’s all we’ll need.” Axford’s surety was infectious. Thor could feel Sol and Alander beginning to think it over just as she had done, days earlier. Frank Axford was amoral and vicious; she knew that. And she also knew that to trust him any further than was necessary would be asking for trouble—something she had learned all too clearly when she’d heard the facts behind Beid. But if parleying with the devil was the only way to ensure hers and the rest of humanity’s survival, then what choice did they really have? An opportunity like this might never present itself again.

  “What makes you so keen to stay, Frank?” Sol asked.

  “I’m not,” he said.

  Sol’s eyes narrowed. “That doesn’t make sense. If you’re pitching us on some damfool mission designed to distract or kill us while the rest of you follow some other agenda—”

  He cut her off with a laugh. “Okay, I take your point. But you’re only half right. The rest of me are off doing something else, but nothing that’s likely to conflict with your interests. You see, I’m not just banking on this plan; I’m also following the Yuhl path. I’m also migrating outward in other directions and hiding a few of myself on worlds that might be overlooked by the Starfish. I’m taking every option at once and hoping that at least some of me survive.”

  “Spores,” said Alander, his face a picture of distaste.

  Axford 1041 didn’t shy from the analogy. “Exactly. Every one of me is a seed. By propagating them as widely as possible, I hope to guarantee the survival of the Axford genome.”

  “A plague of Axfords,” Sol mused. “It doesn’t bear thinking about.”

  His smile only widened further. “It doesn’t seem so bad from my point of view, collectively speaking,” he said. “And there’s the rub. From my point of view, as an individual, this situation is a little different. The thought that one of me might survive somewhere, but not here, is only intellectually satisfying. It won’t change the fact that I’m still dead. So I’m going to do everything I can to ensure that this me will survive, that I will pull through. And if I have to drag you along with me to do it, then I will.”

  “No guarantees afterward, I presume,” said Sol.

  Frank the Ax’s smile turned predatory as he shook his head. “Once we’re out the other side, then it’s everyone for themselves. But it’s a big galaxy, Caryl. I’m sure we can coexist peacefully enough.”

  Assuming anyone survives, Thor thought to herself.

  “All right,” said Sol, her expression guarded. “You’ve told me some of it. Now give me the rest. And bring Peter up to speed, too.”

  “What about the others?” Alander asked. “What’s the point of letting them argue on if we’re going to make our own plans here? Shouldn’t we at least let them know there might be an alternative?”

  “Perhaps when they’ve finished arguing, we’ll consider bringing them into it,” said Axford. “Once the engrams and the Yuhl have divided into their camps, then we’ll know who has the guts to work with us. They’re the people we need: the Species Dreamers determined to find a new home; the patriots willing to defend the home they already have. There’s no room for fence-sitters now, people. We either stand or we fall; it’s as simple as that. There is no other alternative.”

  Axford’s words settled like a cowl over the conversation, and for a long time no one spoke. But from their expressions, Thor could tell that the ex-general’s words had hit home. And when her original finally met her eyes and gave a reluctant nod of approval to the plan, Thor allowed herself a brief, self-satisfied smile.

  1.2.0

  UEH/ELLIL

  There was no fanfare as the Yuhl migration divided in two. Although it took a great deal of preparation and incredible attention to detail, the occasion itself was marked only with silence by the human observers and sadness by the
Yuhl. The many hundreds of hole ships comprising the Mantissa that had survived the Battle of Beid were split almost down the middle, with 44 percent staying behind to confront the Ambivalence and rebuild themselves a home, and 56 percent continuing onward with their great emigration. The species was well and truly divided.

  Ueh/Ellil watched the separation of the Yuhl/Goel with resignation but no small amount of uncertainty. His species had been attending the Ambivalence for more long cycles than he’d care to count. The home worlds were legends remembered only by a handful of survivors of that time. But such memories did not belong to him. He had only ever known life in the hole ships, and sometimes it felt as though this was the only world he would ever know. It seemed inconceivable to him that the life he knew would ever end.

  And yet for some it had already ended. Those who had voted to remain behind were no longer part of the Yuhl/Goel. The Species Dreamers were Yuhl/riil now. They were prey, the already dead—and he wasn’t one of them.

  He didn’t know how to feel about that. Once, life had been simple. As one of a helot pair, his tasks had been simple, purely functional, and he had needed to think no more than was required to ensure those tasks were carried out effectively.

  But then the bodiless humans had come along, and everything had changed. His helot pairing, Asi/Holina, had been taken hostage by the many-bodied human Frank/Axford, while he, Ueh, had accompanied Peter/Alander on his journey to the Mantissa to see the Praxis. What had become of Asi/Holina was unknown, but it was assumed that he had died in Axford’s care. Whatever the case, without Asi/Holina, Ueh’s position among his people had become redundant. He was effectively caught between two colliding cultures, an orphan among orphans.

  He couldn’t blame Peter/Alander for breaking up his pairing, though. The human wasn’t to know the necessities of life where his culture was concerned. Alander and his kind expressed puzzlement over many things and were clearly unprepared for their first contact with an alien race. The Ambivalence had rattled them, and they were blundering now when they should have been treading lightly.