The Sentients of Orion

by Marianne de Pierres

  ‘For the glory, of course. I will be the foremost tyro,’ Tekton replied without thought. ‘I will win the Entity’s favours.’

  Fool! both minds cried at once.

  Their emphatic rejoinder sobered Tekton somewhat. He had talked far too much.

  Moud! Chilled water!

  JO-JO RASTEROVICH

  Jo-Jo lay on his bed, in his cabin, in a maudlin fug fuelled by some of Carnage Farr’s most brutal home-grown whisky. Some of his misery he could attribute to the strains and scrapes from his last-moment attempt to get on board the biozoon. Another portion of it was due to the chronic allergy reaction that seemed to have settled into his airways and the nagging worry that Carnage Farr had given him a dose of something lethal. The major part, however, fell squarely on the shoulders of Mira Fedor.

  Where in all God’s hells had the Extros taken her? And why? Jo-Jo just couldn’t figure it out.

  Underneath the maudlin, though, was a simmering soup of other emotions; the foremost of which revolved around Rast Randall. The mercenary had left Fedor alone when she should have been watching her. Jo-Jo wanted to split Randall from orifice to orifice for her neglect, yet he couldn’t. For a start, she knew Mira Fedor best. He needed her to help find the Baronessa. But also the mercenary had admitted something to him. Love’s a bitch, ain’t she? she’d said.

  She hadn’t levelled that just at Jo-Jo.

  Randall was in love with Fedor as well.

  It should be amusing. Really it should.

  But Jo-Jo was too wracked with misery and rage to find anything funny.

  ‘Rasterovich!’ Rast bellowed into the ship-cast. ‘Get your dismal carcass down here, we need to talk. This giant whale’s freakin’ out.’

  Jo-Jo opened his eyes, rolled onto his side and drained the flask he held tightly. The white-haired bitch was right; the biozoon was stressed. He’d been listening for hours to the little noises that weren’t normally there. And there was something about the smell of the ‘zoon that had changed.

  Jo-Jo got up, swaying as blood searched for brain, and tottered over to the wall. He pulled away the cabin wall drapes and swiped his fingers across the ridged flesh. It felt slimy and grainy.

  Something dropped into his hair. He glanced up: thick goo had begun to seep through the ceiling covers. Fuck.

  Jo-Jo pulled on his pants and went looking for the mercenaries.

  * * *

  They were in the cucina drinking beer and eating slices from a giant, stinking wheel of cheese.

  ‘Something die in here?’ Jo-Jo asked.

  Randall stabbed cheese onto the end of her fork and offered him some. ‘Over-matured heartbreak. The food storage enviros are screwed. One minute they’re hot enough to broil pig-fat, the next they’re like a damn freezer. Some of the soft stuff’s complaining.’

  Jo-Jo folded a chair down and sat on it. ‘You think the ‘zoon’s sick?’

  ‘Ailing,’ said Rast.

  ‘Gutted,’ volunteered Latourn.

  Jo-Jo glowered at Latourn and grabbed a knife. He cut himself a large wedge of cheese and nibbled it. It tasted sour. ‘Shit.’

  ‘I suggest you eat up.’ Rast tossed him a beer; a clean skin tube, another one of Carnage’s finer brews.

  Jo-Jo belched and guzzled half of it down. It tasted refreshing after the whisky. ‘Why the rush?’

  Still seated, Rast slid her legs off the table to the floor, lifted up a box of beer tubes and dropped it where her feet had been. Then she put her legs across the top of the carton. ‘Other than the loony ‘zoon... just a small case of us heading, uninvited, into Extro space.’

  Jo-Jo paused mid-guzzle. ‘You’re shittin’ me?’ He placed the tube back on the table in front of him. He thought he did well not to tremble. ‘How long we been doing that?’

  The mercs broke into harmonised guffaws.

  When they’d finished, Rast wiped her eyes. ‘How long? Three days. Right about the time you were puking up your third bottle of No Label malt.’

  Jo-Jo felt the cheese lurch around in his stomach. ‘Three days. Anyone noticed us yet?’

  ‘Hard to say. The traffic’s insane out there. It’s a while since I’ve been to the Saiph system but I don’t recall seeing it like this before. Seems like everyone’s going somewhere in a real hurry. Being in a ‘zoon we should be OK. ‘Zoons trade with everyone. Even the Extros.’

  ‘Thought Saiph was off-limits—other than Rho Junction, I mean.’

  ‘‘Tis. For OLOSS craft. Not much there though, just a bunch of dry rocks and a skinny sun. The real Extro

  worlds are somewhere else. Saiph works like an airlock for them. They let traders in from time to time if they come through Rho Junction, but the door stays shut to the real system.’

  ‘What’s the wave analysis show?’

  Rast stabbed her knife into the centre of the cheese wheel and left it there. She pressed her thumb and forefinger to her forehead. ‘Can’t say. ‘Zoon’s not being very agreeable. Pings me every time I go near the buccal.’

  ‘What about going into Autonomy to get us out of here?’

  Rast dropped her hand from her face and stared at him with a deadly serious expression. ‘No frickin’ way am I going to try and pilot a crazy, heartbroken ‘zoon.’

  ‘I can do it,’ said Jo-Jo. ‘I owned one.’

  She stared hard at him.

  ‘It was a hybrid,’ he admitted. ‘AI-compatible.’

  ‘No frickin’ way am I trustin’ you to do anything of the kind.’ She gave the table a kick to emphasise her words.

  Jo-Jo’s tube rolled onto his lap. Instinctively he grabbed it and the amber fluid squirted all over him.

  The mercenaries fell into their synchronised laugh again.

  Jo-Jo’s years of staying out of ‘situations’ flew right out of the egress scale. Maybe it was the booze. Or the fact that he was still pissed at Randall. He lunged out of his seat and flung himself at her. Surprise got him closer than he’d thought. That and the fact she had her legs up on the table.

  They crashed to the floor together, Jo-Jo using his advantage to get astride her.

  He got his hands to her neck and lifted her head, pounding it against the floor—a crack good enough to knock anyone out, if the floor had been concrete or wood or metal. But the floor was ‘zoon, spongy and resilient. Her head almost bounced back and hit him.

  He half-expected to feel the hands of Catchut and Latourn on his shoulders but they stayed put.

  What he didn’t expect was Randall’s boot in the back of his head. The blow, as she kicked up hard and fast from behind, knocked him over her shoulder. In a single, agile move their positions reversed. Suddenly she had him pinned to the floor, her knees weighing down on his elbows. She’d punched him twice before he even began to struggle. Her next punch, though, loosened all his teeth. Jo-Jo’s world disorientated, and haze spots appeared before his eyes.

  He smelt the beer on Randall’s breath as she leant her face close to his. ‘You ever try and take me again and I’ll finish it.’

  Jo-Jo wet his lips. ‘But then she won’t have to choose between us... and you’ll never really know,’ he whispered.

  A moment passed; one of those unpredictable pauses where things could have gone either way.

  Jo-Jo waited, not really caring one way or the other.

  Then her weight lifted abruptly from his shoulders.

  Jo-Jo raised his head off the floor but before he could sit up, Rast had gone.

  Catchut and Latourn lurched out of their chairs.

  ‘What’d you say to the Capo?’ demanded Latourn.

  Catchut crouched down like a compacted spring.

  Jo-Jo ignored them both. He picked himself up, cupping his throbbing jaw with his hand, and fumbled in the carton for a couple of tubes of beer. Nursing them in the crook of his other arm, he left the cucina and headed to the viaduct.

  No way in hell was he sailing like a sitting duck into Extro space.

  He’d finished
both tubes by the time he’d reached the buccal and the pain in his jaw was beginning to recede. Temporary, but he’d take it. He pushed his fist into the centre of the pucker and waited for it to retract.

  Nothing.

  Again. Harder this time, more like a soft punch. Zip.

  This time he ground his fist around and pushed with all his strength. A mild shock crackled up his arm to his shoulder and jolted him backwards against the opposite wall.

  He recovered his footing and glared helplessly. The ‘zoon had locked him out.

  He stalked back along the central stratum to the cucina. Latourn and Catchut had gone, leaving their mess of tubes and the stink of overripe cheese behind them. Jo-Jo snatched up the half-empty carton and took it back to his room, where he drank it in a short space of time. They were in Extro space heading straight into the teeth of disaster and there wasn’t a frickin’ thing he could do about it.

  Except get drunker.

  MIRA

  Mira opened her eyes. The taste in her mouth; the heaviness behind her eyes—the Extro had drugged her. She lay very still, trying to put pieces of recent events together but the past rose up and swamped her.

  Trinder Pellegrini had raped her. Raped.

  Adrenalin poured through her body as she remembered.

  Right afterwards she’d been in shock. Anger hadn’t come till later, when she escaped Araldis aboard Insignia. But it had stayed with her; a hidden river of it, constantly on the point of overflowing.

  She sat up and stared wildly around the Extro cell, feeling the years of exercising restraint and manners breaking away.

  This... this... abduction...

  She jumped off the bed and kicked over the water container. Then she began to overturn anything unfixed. She threw herself at the wall of her prison, clawing at it and screaming. She didn’t care about her madness or the self-harm.

  I will not be kept like this!

  Wanton-poda hastened towards her from the adjacent chamber, passing through the wall to spray her with more sedation vapour.

  She tried to hit the Extro but it manoeuvred higher, out of her way.

  The wooziness came as quickly as last time—more quickly.

  Her legs folded.

  * * *

  She stayed liked that. Every time she regained consciousness Wanton-poda sprayed her again until she could not tell where the effects of one spray ended and another started. The Extro removed everything from her confinement space, including its own aquarium.

  Gradually her mood calmed, making it easier to refuse food.

  Siphonophores passed in and out of her cell so frequently that she barely noticed them. They were intertwined with the ghosts and the visions she began to have as a consequence of the sedation.

  * * *

  Time became irrelevant; it also became everything. A single moment would expand and exist for ever, and at other times Wanton-poda would tell her that days had passed.

  Once, her mind cleared from the mixture of wake and sleep to the sound of Wanton-poda screaming. The Siphonophores were back, and had gathered around the little cephalopod like ghouls around a corpse.

  Mira caught a glimpse of Wanton-poda spinning in an erratic, exhausted fashion as they bounced it from one to the other, each contact producing another scream.

  Eventually they left. Wanton-poda bobbled over to its rest tank and sank into the rejuvenation mixture.

  Mira slept again and awoke the next time feeling clearer in the head. How long since the Extro had administered the sedation? She glanced out to the bio-lab.

  Wanton-poda was still in its tank.

  Noticing her movement, it emerged and floated slowly into her containment booth.

  ‘Wanton-poda seems unwell,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Mira-fedor speaks.’

  ‘They have hurt you.’

  ‘Highness Most Capable: Evolution is not pleased with Mira-fedor’s progress. She does not thrive.’

  ‘That is my choice, not yours.’

  ‘That is not relevant.’

  Mira forced herself upright. ‘I wish to talk to you.’

  Its ear flaps lifted. ‘Mira-fedor must not use aggressive behaviour.’

  She nodded. ‘I promise.’

  ‘Wanton-poda does not understand that meaning.’

  ‘I will use... c-calm behaviour. But t-tell me what they want.’

  ‘Wanton-poda observes that your child is not thriving. You must ingest more nutrients or it may not survive.’

  ‘But I don’t want to survive. Not if I am to be kept here and told nothing.’

  ‘Wanton-poda is confused. It is well acknowledged that humanesques can use resolve to change predicted outcomes but my understanding is that it is usual for that resolve to be utilised for survival, not against it.’

  Mira sat straighter, holding her head against a spinning sensation. Lethargy of blood flow. She had lain still for far too long. Her fellala had gone and she wore a thin captive’s robe which showed the bulge in her abdomen.

  ‘I had thought that Post-Species like you would have retained some connection with their origins. That you would understand. Clearly that is not the case.’

  ‘Wanton-poda senses criticism in that statement but is not sure. Mira-fedor appears to need something.’

  ‘If I can’t have my freedom then I must, at least, have knowledge. I am nothing without it. I must make sense of things.’

  ‘Knowledge.’ The creature twirled gently, a clockwise movement that Mira decided was musing. ‘Wanton-poda will tell you of our worlds. Fear and anxiety emotions are known to be diminished by familiarity.’

  ‘I need water,’ said Mira.

  Wanton-poda floated out through the translucent wall and returned towing a plastic tube in its small gravity field. It dropped the tube in Mira’s lap and waited.

  When she’d swallowed the contents, it hovered down closer to her eye level.

  At this proximity she could see the cephalopod’s organs beneath the bell-shaped exterior, and a small, dark tumourlike mass she assumed to be the implanted Post-Species Identity. She wondered how well it would survive outside its host. Or indeed why it had chosen such an impractical and seemingly delicate body to inhabit. If she reached quickly towards it she might be able to—

  Wanton-poda shot away from her, spinning quickly counter-clockwise, as though it had read her thoughts.

  ‘Wanton-poda acts fearful. I had thought it about to share information with me,’ she said calmly.

  The Extro slowed its spin and descended until it once again hovered near her face.

  She peered closely again, trying to determine where the vocal projection originated. From underneath one of the head flaps, she decided. There was probably a small echo canal linked to a nano-speaker in the Identity mound. After all, cephalopods did not speak.

  ‘While Wanton-poda is not permitted to discuss the immediate details of your presence here, it is allowed to speak of the worlds.’

  ‘It is difficult for me to have a discussion with Wanton-poda if I cannot use the interrogative form. It is logical for my species to ask questions.’

  It went into its more gentle thinking spin.

  She waited.

  When it settled she noticed its translucent flesh had taken on a pearl-grey colour. ‘Wanton-poda will attempt to make species exception to the interrogative if Mira-fedor will be more contented.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she replied. ‘I will try, if you will try. Perhaps... I should tell you... what I know of your... culture, then you can advise me if I am... misinformed.’ The words came slowly despite her mind being clearer. It still seemed hard to speak fluently, as though her throat had rusted. She squeezed the last drops from the water tube and let the liquid sit in her mouth. Suddenly she longed for a steam bath and a mouth wash.

  ‘I have heard that the first generation of your culture chose to live in virtual worlds without corporeal... attachment. That is, without bodies. But in the next generation there were divisio
ns in belief. Things changed, and now your society has deviated towards the use of host bodies.’ Mira found herself breathing heavily at the end of such a long speech.

  Without warning Wanton-poda floated off to retrieve another water tube and a small container holding a cube of food.

  She pinched off a small piece of the spicy, soft cube and put it in her mouth. As it dissolved it left an aftertaste of meat.

  ‘It seems that Mira-fedor has a rudimentary understanding. However, Wanton-poda would not call the use of host bodies a deviation, merely a choice.’

  Mira thought for a moment. The creature was not straightforward in the way it expressed itself. She needed to ask the right kind of questions. ‘So others of your kind choose differently?’

  The pearl-grey colour darkened to almost charcoal with her first direct question, but the cephalopod did not scream. ‘Post-Species offers many choices. Mira-fedor is correct in some ways. You are correct in some ways. After the first generation, some of the Post-Species longed for some physiological reconnection. Wanton-poda’s family is among them. Not all shared this desire, and preferred to remain within I context.’

  ‘I context. Is that machine-based?’

  Its flesh darkened with agitation again. ‘That is a primitive analogy to how they exist and not accurate.’

  ‘So your society is divided into corporeal and noncorporeal?’

  ‘Again, Mira-fedor oversimplifies.’

  ‘Forgive me, Wanton-poda, but I am trying to find my own context.’

  ‘Let us call my family “host”, then.’

  ‘Agreed.’

  ‘Host family has varied subsidiary families.’

  ‘Using different species as hosts?’

  ‘A correct summation. There is even a small branch that still favours the basic biped form.’

  Mira paused. ‘You mean that some Post-Species have chosen to reinhabit bipedal bodies?’

  ‘A correct summation.’

  ‘But that seems ridiculous.’

  ‘Our information sharing does not require your evaluation.’