The Sentients of Orion

by Marianne de Pierres

  ‘So how did he create it?’

  ‘That kinda technology—if it is technology—has gotta come from the Entity.’ ‘How? One of the tyros?’

  ‘That’s what I’m thinking.’

  ‘Tekton?’

  ‘Maybe. Seems coincident he’s around.’

  ‘So what now?’

  ‘Let’s get the fuck out of here.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Must be your turn to have an idea.’

  Rast chuckled. ‘You’re all right, you know.’

  ‘Yeah. I am. So what’s your idea?’

  ‘Not sure you’ll like it.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘You know that thing we were keeping to ourselves?’

  ‘What thing?’

  ‘Who you are.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘You tell them—maybe they’ll pay some attention to you and then you’ll get an opportunity.’

  ‘What sort of opportunity?’

  ‘You said one idea.’

  ‘And what are you gonna do while I go off and commit suicide?’

  ‘Try and locate Lat and Catchut—same way as you found me.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Maybe by then you’ll have stirred up enough shit that we can find a crack to slip through.’

  ‘Hummph.’ This time Jo-Jo let the silence stretch.

  ‘Josef?’

  Jo-Jo was gratified that she sounded nervous again. ‘Yeah, well. I can’t think of anything better but I ain’t rushing into that idea, either. We’ll continue this later.’

  ‘Fair enough. Hope to... hear you again.’

  ‘Yeah, well, keep shouting and I’ll find you.’

  Jo-Jo loosened his mental hold on her voice in the way he might relax a flexed muscle, and in a moment he was back in the jackass, and then finally the buzz.

  He felt tired. Not a body ache tired—he still couldn’t feel a damn thing—but the kind of cloudy sensation that settles on your mind when you’ve thought too long or too hard. Even the buzz seemed less irritating. He slipped into a kind of numb consciousness that lasted as long as it lasted. Not sleep but something.

  When it passed, his mind seemed sharper: the buzz louder.

  He thought about Randall’s suggestion. If he could in some way let it be known he was the God Discoverer, what would happen? Right now, he wasn’t dead but he might as well be—trapped as he was like some frickin’ sound bite in this weird auditory jail. What would the Post-Species do with him if they knew he’d been God-touched?

  Maybe he’d try to listen in on a few things before he made that call. First thing though, he’d try to find Randall again—just so he knew he could.

  He focused on the buzz, and the transition through the jackass sound into the clamour of voices was almost instantaneous this time. He floated above them and waited. The cacophony of noise had its own colour and texture. Not that he could see it, but the sounds created a mind-picture. He let that picture develop into something he could reference: an enormous spinning multicoloured wheel, like the Ferris wheels on the vacation planet Fair.

  Jo-Jo’s mother had taken him to Fair, once, as a child. He remembered the exotic night landscape of it; the slippery trails of the slider rides and the pounding, pulsing flash of the Sudden Drops. One thing dominated the fairground vista, the fiery little gondolas attached to the gigantic Ferris wheel. The wheel took several hours to complete one revolution, which gave the fair-goers time enough to truly appreciate the scenery. Little food traders buzzed around the gondolas, bringing water and confectionery, and the Park rangers did their own tending to the needs of passengers who’d forgotten to use the amenities before beginning the ride or had been overcome by the breadth of the spectacle.

  Jo-Jo never got to ride the wheel—it turned out his mum had brought him there because the latest in her string of lovers was a ride operator. What was his name? Jo-Jo couldn’t remember. But the guy had hoisted him on his shoulders and twirled him around and told him stories of how some people never came back from the Big Ride, and others grew old while they were on there, and some changed into ginkos and ate their own tails.

  The more he twirled Jo-Jo on his shoulders, the more the gondola lights streamed, until the Big Ride turned into a giant blazing lollipop spinning in an endless twirl of fluorescing colour.

  The clamour of voices created the same image for him now. Somewhere in the circling sound vibrations were individual gondolas—unique groups of voices—and maybe within them, single beings.

  That’s how he’d found Rast.

  He listened for her now, concentrating on seeking the intonation and pitch that was unique to her voice.

  This time he didn’t have to follow it. Once he’d located it peaking out of the flow he instantaneously heard her.

  She was shouting his name, over and over.

  ‘No need to bellow,’ he said.

  ‘Josef?’

  ‘As far as I know.’

  ‘Thank fucking Crux,’ she whispered. ‘Being alone in my head with this infernal buzz is sending me nuts. I tried finding Lat and Catchut, but nothing. Just the fucking buzz.’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  ‘Don’t leave,’ she said quickly. ‘I mean, I don’t know how long it was. I’ve got no way to mark time but it felt like... well too fucking long.’

  ‘Yeah, the time thing is driving me crazy as well.’

  ‘So what’s happened?’

  ‘Nothing really. I’ve been thinking,’ said Jo-Jo slowly.

  ‘Lemme fool around for a while; try and locate the others. I found you again real quick.’

  ‘Why’s it so easy for you?’

  ‘Not sure, but I got a theory.’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ said Rast. ‘Anything to make the buzz go away.’

  ‘Back when I found the Entity, I died. At least, I think 1 did, and my HealthWatch records said the same. Sole did something to me. Split my mind in two when he reanimated me. The same thing happens to the tyros. It’s the only way Sole can communicate with them. It’s friggin’ weird and a pain in the arse but I think it’s helping me here. With this freak world.’

  ‘I heard they did something to the tyros—didn’t pick that you’d been affected too.’

  ‘The mind split only seems to happen to me when the crap piles up. The tyros are like it all the time, though. You get the feeling you’re talkin’ to two people.’

  ‘You like that now?’ Rast’s tone became tense. ‘Are there two of you?’

  ‘Don’t be fucking stupid. I’ll be back soon.’

  Jo-Jo let go of Rast’s voice and floated back to the clamour. He thought about how Latourn and Catchut sounded. For some reason Latourn’s voice seemed easier to remember; the man had the thick, guttural tone common to Latino men. Somewhere in the kaleidoscope of sound Latourn would be suffering the same sensory deprivations as he and Randall. Catchut too. Poor bastards. He didn’t like either of the mercenaries but they were humanesque. That meant a lot right now.

  He concentrated on recreating Latourn’s voice in his mind and then listened for anything in the clamour that might correlate. Again without a sense of time he had no idea how long it took before he decided he couldn’t find Latourn. Instead of returning to Randall though, he grasped the next peaking sound and let it pull him down.

  At first the sound made little sense, at best a bunch of slurred vowels, at worst a noise similar to the mooing jackass. Instinctively, Jo-Jo stopped trying to make sense of the whole sound and narrowed his concentration to small segments.

  He got a little thrill when he recognised a word. Soon. Another. Hasten. Then a whole jumble of them fell into his mind. But they weren’t ordered. Not that he could tell. More like an anagram or puzzle. He played with the order of them, switching them around until they made some sense.

  hasten quixite OLOSS confront

  He let go, then, and floated back to the clamour, waiting to pick up another peaking sound. This one took him deep into th
e flow before he began to hear clearly. Like the previous voice it seemed a blur until he broke it down into smaller pieces. There was something different about this one though. A kind of hard-edged tone that clipped the ends off words.

  OLOSS finis soo.

  A dialect perhaps? He let go of the clipped sound and found his way back to Rast.

  She was crying softly.

  ‘Randall?’

  No reply.

  Jo-Jo waited while she composed herself. But the composure didn’t come and eventually she tried to talk to him between sobs. ‘Can’t—take—it.’

  Curiously he didn’t feel compassion for her, the way he might have for Bethany or Mira Fedor. The connection was there—the humanesque thing—but Rast Randall had made some hard choices in life and now she was living with the result of them.

  Like I am.

  ‘Yeah, you can,’ he said. ‘You have to. No choice.’ He waited a bit. ‘I didn’t find your crew, but I tuned in to something. Not sure what, exactly. Something to do with OLOSS and quixite. Sounds like the Extros are plannin’ somethin’ soon.’

  ‘Yeah?’ The idea seemed to calm her down. ‘You mean something’s gonna change?’

  ‘Maybe. Sounds like it. I’m gonna go dig a bit deeper, see what else I can hear.’

  ‘Do it!’ she said. The strength poured back into her voice.

  MIRA

  ‘What do you advise?’ Mira asked Wanton.

  The Aves had divided into small groups and flown in different directions. One group appeared to be gliding towards the mamelon in widening, shifting circles.

  ‘As Mira-fedor climbed, Wanton observed crevices.’

  ‘Caves?’

  ‘Not large enough to be caves, but depressions. Wanton suggests that Mira-fedor takes cover in one of them.’

  Mira peered down at the swirling water. It had steadied. ‘I’ll carry you in my clothes again so that I can have both hands free,’ said Mira.

  ‘It would be more sensible for Mira-fedor to reinstate Wanton’s position on her neck.’

  ‘No.’ Mira spoke firmly, holding the Extro at eye level. ‘Even if you do not wish me harm, it is possible they will reach me through you.’

  ‘That is a reasonable evaluation,’ Wanton agreed.

  This time she slipped the Extro into the seam of her sleeve and began to climb downwards in a slow, careful spiral. Fatigue made her clumsy and slow.

  There was not a lot of exposed rock left and no crevices that she could see.

  She peered back out at the pillow surface of the Hue. The Aves grew larger as they closed on the mamelon; three times her size, at least, and distinct enough for her to see the tubular array along the length of their wings.

  ‘What are those things on their wings?’

  ‘Wanton cannot see, but would expect that they are weapons.’ Wanton’s projected voice was muffled.

  ‘Guns?’

  ‘No.’

  Mira began to pick over the rock with renewed urgency, this time tugging at anything that looked loose. Over on the far side of the mamelon, a boulder shifted as she stood on it. Climbing above it, she placed her feet on the top and began to bear down. Using a rocking rhythm she attempted to dislodge it.

  It came free without warning, and crashed down into the water below. Caught by the momentum, she slid after it, scraping her side as she clung to the edge of the hole it had left. But the soil came loose in her fingers and she banged into the slippery rock below as she scrabbled to stay out of the water. Her belly bumped cruelly into sharp protrusions.

  This time she didn’t have the strength left to pull herself higher and she hung there helpless.

  Insignia, she cried.

  I am close, dear one. Be stro—

  But a noise above her filled her mind; a drone that sent a vibration through the rock itself. Water sucked at her clothes, weighing her down. She slipped down into it but as her head was about to dip below the frothing water, something gripped her captive’s robe and pulled her back. For a moment her heart lifted.

  Insignia?

  Coming. I’m coming.

  Then she felt the pain of a cruel grip and an Ave towed her into the sky, retracting its legs as it lifted her high above the mamelon.

  She glimpsed the water racing along its course beneath her; and then the strange twisting concourses and quilted top of the Hue.

  The Ave pulled her close into its belly; so close that she felt the slippery touch of its skin and the wet warmth of its body. The claws that held her were crawling with small insects that jumped onto her and ran inside her robe. She feared slipping as it swung in a sharp sloping turn back towards the place it had entered the Bare World.

  Sharp squeals punctuated the flight towards the open button-top in the Hue. The other Aves gathered at its wing tips, all calling out in the same high-pitched noises, until the sound itself left her almost unconscious.

  ‘Mira-fedor! Mira-fedor! What is happening?’ Wanton’s voice sounded tiny and so distant that she barely registered it.

  Mira lifted her sleeve to her mouth and licked dry lips. ‘The Ave is taking us back.’

  ‘No, Mira-fedor. We must not—’

  She dropped her arm away from her ear so that she couldn’t hear the Extro.

  ‘Nothing,’ she mouthed at the muddy water below. ‘Nothing I can do.’

  Hopelessness overwhelmed her. Not even the defiant kicks from the child in her belly gave her strength. She hung, helpless, in the Ave’s grasp and closed her eyes as the wind stung her, the squeals struck through her core, and she became numb with the futility of her situation and the exhaustion of a body pushed beyond its endurance.

  Whatever it is, let it be quick, she thought.

  Mira?

  Insignia’s voice was stronger in her mind, but even that failed to stir her.

  I am here. Do not be frightened, dear one.

  Mira didn’t answer the biozoon. She was beyond fear now. Beyond feelings. She didn’t hear the explosion that punctured the faux sky, or feel the Ave dive towards the roof of the Hue in terror.

  She was spared the sight of the biozoon scalding the skin from the creatures that had hunted her down, just as her mind protected itself from her fall to the strange quilted surface when the Ave’s claw opened involuntarily with pain; and best of all she did not see the dreadful, dreadful rage that Insignia loosed upon the surviving creature, ripping it apart with the spine of its hardened underbelly, and crushing the flickering life force beneath it when it set down on the Hue near its fallen Innate.

  * * *

  ‘Mira-fedor! Mira-fedor!’

  Insistent, tinny shouting roused her, but she couldn’t see, as if her eyes were cloaked with dark patches. She managed to roll her head but any more seemed impossible.

  ‘A biozoon, Mira-fedor.’ Wanton sounded excited, she thought distantly.

  Dearest, you must come to me so I can help you.

  Insignia’s voice crept into her limbs but still she couldn’t move them. The baby in her stomach felt heavy and lifeless.

  Mira. You must come to me. My sensors tell me our baby is dying.

  Our baby. She found herself echoing the biozoon’s words in her mind.

  And with that echo, a frisson of concern grew; concern that brought with it a tiny surge of energy and will. Insignia would heal her baby.

  She tried to awaken her other senses. She blinked repeatedly to clear the darkness. From the vague outline it seemed as though the biozoon had berthed on her right side. She would need to crawl there. But crawling required the movement of useless limbs so she began to rock from side to side until momentum took her over in one complete roll.

  She waited awhile, summoning the energy to repeat the manoeuvre. Wanton called encouragement to her, though she could barely understand its speech.

  The child remained inactive.

  Change direction, Mira, Insignia instructed. I am closer to your feet.

  Sluggishly, she inched her chest forward towards he
r belly until it would bend no more. Then she worked her legs backward away from her head.

  Her breaths came slow and hard, as if her heart could barely pump the necessary blood to keep her lungs functioning.

  She rested for a time before trying again.

  Rock, rock, rock, became her mantra, followed by the painful exertion of tipping over: pain without energy.

  After a handful of rolls she felt the hard, sharp edge of something against her face. Her fingers moved compulsively at the contact.

  Once more. Roll onto the lip, instructed Insignia.

  But that meant a small measure of elevation that Mira couldn’t manage. She drifted from consciousness but was brought back by a series of vicious stings to her hand.

  Roll.

  She jerked reflexively against it, enough to raise her shoulders onto the lip of biozoon skin.

  It curled around her, lifting and sliding her up and then inside. Mira fell onto the spongy familiar surface of Insignia’s flesh and heard the muted sound of the egress scale sealing. A moment later she had the vague sense of being surrounded by softness.

  I have encased you in a tubercle, Mira. I will attempt to heal you.

  Nothing then.

  For a long, long blissful while.

  * * *

  Mira avoided consciousness. Every time her thoughts tried to form into something cogent she deliberately broke them apart and sought the safety and comfort of nothing.

  You must wake, Mira.

  She ignored the voice. She did not need to wake. Ever.

  The voice spoke to her sporadically, telling her things about the baby, or details of her own progress, but she did not care to hear them.

  It seemed that it stopped for a time, and she welcomed the silent oblivion back. But it returned eventually with gentle persistence.

  Mira, your brain activity suggests that you can hear me. Decisions need to be made.

  Mira pulled the darkness over herself like a blanket. No. No more decisions. No more survival. Just the dark and the quiet.

  Innate, please!

  Mira stirred a little. Insignia had displayed anger and frustration before—but the biozoon had never begged. What is it ?

  The Post-Species are pursuing us and I am not sure of your wishes.