“What are you fishing for, Axford?”
“Me? I’m not fishing. We’re just talking.”
“Crap. We’re going around in circles until you get what you want.”
“And what would that be, exactly, Caryl?”
“You tell me.”
He didn’t say anything at first. His eyes didn’t look away from her, and the rest of him didn’t move. He was like a statue, motionless except for his mouth and the slow rise and fall of his android chest.
“All right,” he eventually said. “I’ll give you a few things to think about, and then I’ll leave you alone for a while. Deal?”
She nodded affirmative in response.
“It’s about the Starfish,” he said. “You asked me if I wanted to attack them, and when I said that I did, you asked the wrong question. You asked why, not how.”
“Would you tell me how if I asked?”
“Not really, but I do have part of an answer,” he replied. “First: the Starfish are behaving like machines, searching as though they’re following a simple algorithm. They detect a signal; they home in on it. Once the source is destroyed, they jump around at random in increasingly large jumps from their starting point until they find something. Or they hear another signal, at which point they start all over again in a new location. Sure, they’re filling in the gaps eventually, but initially at least, their behavior isn’t terribly complicated. Got it?”
She nodded again. “Go on.”
“Second: we’ve never seen the Starfish strike in two places at once, so maybe their resources are limited.”
“It’s possible,” she said. “You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know, Frank.”
“I know that,” he said, leaning forward. “But have you considered this: what happens if you present the Starfish with multiple targets at once? Perhaps they’d split their resources to try and take both at the same time.”
“Haven’t we already tried that? My engrams sent data back to me under cover of the midday broadcasts. That counts as simultaneous broadcasting. So far, this hasn’t had any effect on the Starfish whatsoever—that we can measure.”
“Then maybe you’re not measuring it the right way,” Axford shot back. “Or maybe it’s simply because your scouts are broadcasting from interstellar space. The Starfish might be machines, as the other Alander thought, but they’re not stupid. I think by now they know we have a penchant for G-type stars.”
“So what are you saying? That we sacrifice a colony or two to find out?”
“Empty ones, yes. Failed missions. You must have enough of those to spare by now.”
His stare was a challenge, daring her to bring up the pronoun he had used. To him it was still a case of Axford and the rest. They weren’t on the same side yet, and perhaps would never be.
“Was that what you wanted to tell me?” she asked evenly.
“Not entirely,” he answered, leaning back into his seat. “There is something else I think you’ve missed.”
“Which is?”
“We’re concentrating on what happens when the Starfish notice us,” he said. “But where are they for the rest of the time?”
“Well, I imagine they have some sort of base or mother ship somewhere,” she mused. “The same as the Spinners probably do.”
“But where?”
“Fuck, Axford, how the hell should I know?” She met his challenge irritably, knowing he couldn’t possibly have the answer to the question, either. “We don’t think of surveyed space as space, really. We think of it as an array of points, with each point a system or colony, depending on your preference. We ignore the gaps. Ueh told Peter that we should consider hiding in the gaps if we decided to follow the Spinners, but maybe that’s where the Starfish are. It would make sense, if they really wanted to stay hidden.”
“Who from?” asked Axford. “Us?”
She nodded. “Okay, point taken,” she said. “What’s your take on the situation, then?”
“Me, I think they’ve got some sort of command center somewhere—as do the Spinners. I don’t know what these centers would look like, mind you. Maybe they’re nothing like we can imagine. But I reckon they exist. The fact that everything is proceeding in such a well-defined, linear fashion suggests that. If there wasn’t something to follow, the Spinners wouldn’t be leaving such a large wake. And if the Starfish aren’t much more advanced that the Spinners, then they’ll be doing the same.”
“Okay,” she said. “I’m partly convinced. But that still doesn’t help us find it.”
“Doesn’t it? It’d be well defended, wouldn’t you think?”
“Of course. But that would only make it harder to find, surely?”
“Not necessarily. Think about it, Caryl: we already have one prospective target, and you’re already keen to attack it, even if it is for the wrong reasons: pi-1 Ursa Major.”
“What?” She stared at him, unable to see how he’d come to that conclusion.
“We’ve lost three hole ships around that area, so something’s going on in there.”
“Why not the Yuhl?”
“Simple: the three systems they’ve led us to have been K-type primaries. Pi-1 Ursa Major is a G.”
And Alander had already seen the massed Yuhl fleet in Beid, she belatedly realized. The fleet therefore couldn’t be in pi-1 Ursa Major as well. Unless there was a second Yuhl fleet lurking there, her assumption had been wrong all along. She felt like slapping her forehead.
“I think you’ve got something there, Frank.”
“I know I have, Caryl. And now you have it, too.”
“Thanks,” she said, half expecting a request to reciprocate at any moment, or a long, pointed gloat. But he surprised her.
“I’ll give you some peace, now,” he said. “I need to think.” He closed his eyes and folded his arms across his chest. Frowning, she watched as he settled back into the same state he had been in earlier, apparently oblivious to the outside world.
Think about what? she wondered. He had given her something, but she received the distinct impression that the reverse might actually have been the case. What had he got in return without her knowing? She didn’t know, and it worried her that she didn’t know. She was momentarily tempted to hack into his Overseer to find out what he was thinking, but she had no doubt that he had defenses in place that would stop her from prying. She would have to use old-fashioned guesswork to try to discover what he was up to.
The cockpit was suddenly silent. She wished she could relax like the others while they hung in the unspace void between locations, but she was too consumed with thoughts to rest. She kept turning over what might happen when they arrived at their destination.
What if it was a trap? Or the Yuhl weren’t interested in negotiating? The trip would have been wasted, and the fragile beginnings of cooperation might dissolve forever, along, perhaps, with the few scattered remnants of humanity that remained in the universe. But she wasn’t about to allow that to happen. No matter what it took, she would keep her species alive. Even if it meant abandoning her home and becoming a gypsy race, at least there would be something left. Anything was better than extinction.
2.1.7
An ftl communication rang through the combined hole ship ten minutes after they arrived in Beid. Sounding like a high-speed recording of a percussion ensemble played backward, it rapid-fired through the cockpit, making Alander wince.
“Sorry about that,” said Axford. “It’s for me. A message from home.”
“Want to tell us what it’s about?” Hatzis asked.
“Not really.” Frank the Ax turned his attention back to the main screen, on which was displayed the tremendous assembly of the Yuhl. “Everything’s falling into place nicely, though.”
Alander followed the brief exchange with interest. The tension between Hatzis and Axford wasn’t ebbing. If anything, it was increasing. And she still wasn’t talking to Ueh properly. Hatzis was like a very compact hurricane, wrapping around i
tself tighter and tighter, never letting up.
He’d caught a glimpse of her when she had dived into his mind. He had a greater understanding of her fear of letting go, of not being in control, but at the same time she knew that she wanted to let go. She had a love-hate relationship with power, either pushing it away or pulling it in toward her. That was the dynamo that fueled her tension; it wasn’t just the desire to be in charge all the time. She had simply yet to find the balance between accepting and delegating responsibility.
Not that he was one to talk. The academic life had been fine for his old self, back on Earth. Independently wealthy, he had been able to leap from interest to interest as the whim took him. He’d never had to answer to anyone but himself. As his stocks had risen in academic circles, then outside, he had enjoyed the influence he’d been able to wield while sitting comfortably safe behind glass, able to walk away whenever he wanted. He’d always learned from mistakes intellectually, never viscerally. He had been protected from the consequences, and thus thought himself immune.
He rejected me...
He wondered if his old self would have been any better adjusted than Hatzis after 150 years of life. Perhaps her greater self had been, the sum of the distributed Hatzis of which she had only been a small part. That Hatzis might have been completely incomprehensible to him, as far above the engrams as the engrams were above pocket calculators.
The Hatzis before him was afraid to surrender the control she had over the small universe she was rebuilding out of humanity’s ashes. But if she was going to breathe life into those dying embers, if they were to survive, then she needed to realize that relinquishing control might be exactly what she needed to do. He couldn’t tell which way she would jump—to join the Yuhl in running or Axford in fighting back—but he knew she couldn’t solve it, this time, by calling for a vote. Whether she liked it or not, the decision was up to her.
Axford wasn’t given another chance to explain about the message (not that Alander thought he was going to, anyway) because a transmission from the Yuhl arrived shortly thereafter, responding to Ueh’s hail upon arriving in the system.
“The Praxis welcomes your return, envoy/catechist Ueh/Ellil.” The voice came with an image of a Yuhl adorned with the accoutrements of conjugator. It wasn’t Vaise/Ashu, the first one Alander had met. This one seemed narrower and taller, its yellow and striped head reminding him of a pencil eraser.
“I bring envoy/catechist Peter/Alander,” Ueh responded, “and representatives of humanity/riil. We/they request permission to speak to the Fit.”
This time the reply came almost immediately. They were close enough to the Mantissa that transmission delays were less than a few seconds. The massive accumulation of hole ships and others structures made from ordinary matter still looked from a distance like an asteroid belt, but the more he looked at it, the more it appeared to teem with life and activity. Its component parts were in constant, chaotic motion, as though jiggled by Brownian motion on an infinitely larger scale.
“Permission is granted to dock,” said the conjugator. “Further eventualities/will then be considered.”
The screen went blank.
Ueh turned his black eyes on his companions in the cockpit. “Does this satisfy you?”
Alander turned to Hatzis. “Caryl? Are you going to go through with it?”
She shot him a faint glare, knowing that he was throwing her a challenge. “If we have to do it, Peter, then we have to do it, I guess. But I don’t like putting all our eggs in one basket.”
“It will be seen as a sign of confidence,” Ueh explained slowly.
She cast the alien a baleful glare. “Is that what you tell everyone as you lead them down the Praxis’s maw?”
“Leave it, Caryl,” said Alander. This was no time for squabbling, nerves or no. “We’ll be going nowhere near the Praxis, will we, Ueh?”
“Peter/Alander is correct.”
“So you don’t need to be worried about being eaten or anything,” he said. “Not straightaway, at least.”
She didn’t acknowledge his attempt at humor. “Okay, but once negotiations fail, then all bets are off.”
“If negotiations fail,” Alander said, “then we’re as good as dead anyway, so being eaten is a redundant concern, wouldn’t you say?”
She took his point with a curt, reluctant nod. “All right,” she said, facing the alien, “tell them we’re coming in. All of us.”
The alien gave the Yuhl equivalent of a nod and confirmed the arrangement with his superiors on the Mantissa. Alander received an impression from Ueh’s voice or body language that he was relieved to be going home. There hadn’t been much for him to do on Sothis, really. The hard work of getting Hatzis to agree to talk had pretty much been accomplished before the meeting had even started.
The hole ship jumped. They were committed. Hatzis walked around the cockpit once, glanced at Alander twice, but said nothing.
* * *
They docked with a graceful polygon made out of what must have been at least a hundred cockpits rotating lazily over the white bulge of a giant hole ship. The simple triangle of Triumvirate was dwarfed by it. When its airlock slid open, the yellowish atmosphere of the Yuhl flowed into the cockpit and merged with Ueh’s isolated bubble. Once again, Alander was contained within a force field of the gifts’ making. If it failed...
If it fails, he told himself, there’s still my I-suit. And if that fails, then I won’t have to worry about anything anymore, anyway.
The same conjugator who had hailed them walked in, flanked by two other Yuhl whose broad stockiness suggested to Alander that they might be guards. The conjugator acknowledged Hatzis, Axford, and Alander individually, his wing sheaths twitching with something akin to nervousness. Or perhaps distaste. Alander couldn’t decide which.
“The Praxis is pleased that you have come,” said the Yuhl. “I am Conjugator Seria/Hile. Please follow me/I will escort you to the Fit.”
The conjugator turned and walked out of the cockpit, intending them to follow. Ueh and Axford went first, then Alander and Hatzis, with the guards falling in closely behind. Hatzis’s lips were pressed tightly and anxiously together.
They were led into the sort of cramped, apparently disordered habitat Alander had come to expect among the Yuhl. He could see patterns to it now that hadn’t been there before, and he wondered how much of that he owed to the Praxis. The attitude and presentation of each workstation displayed information about the status of the person behind it or the sort of work they did. The layout of each chamber followed information flows and decisionmaking chains rather than hierarchical order, so it was possible to trace a bureaucratic process from one end of the room to the other without missing a link in the chain.
Alander also found that he didn’t need the conjugator to guide him. It was a lot easier, second time around, to tell where to go. The Yuhl used a complicated phonetic written language with symbols comprised of circles and intersecting lines, uncannily like cloud diagrams from particle accelerators. He recognized about one word in three, but he could have found his way to the Fit and back to Triumvirate without much difficulty, if he’d had to.
He learned that the helmets by which they would interact with the Fit were called ingurgitation ports, but he kept that to himself. Conjugator Seria/Hile led them to four empty ports and indicated that they should sit, Hatzis’s expression was sour as she confronted the cilia-lined mouth of the helmet. Attendants moved into position behind them to make sure they didn’t break free during the ingurgitation process.
Alander didn’t want to see it from the outside. “On three,” he said, hoping he didn’t look as nervous as he felt. Axford nodded sharply and counted down. Alander bent forward with the others, thrusting his head blindly into the glistening mouth before him, while at the same time hearing what might have been a faint moan from Hatzis beside him. The last thing he saw was the gleaming, marked dome of Ueh joining them in the maneuver. It didn’t reassure him to see that th
e Yuhl’s expression carried as much apprehension and distaste as his own face displayed.
Then he was being smothered again, and he was unable to resist flailing, physically and mentally, as the darkness enfolded him.
“I’m pleased you returned, Peter,” said a voice in the void. He recognized it immediately as belonging to the Praxis.
“Did I have any choice?” he said.
“Always,” said the Praxis smoothly. “And, conversely, never.” It paused for a few seconds before continuing. “Many things could have conspired to prevent this moment. The Ambivalence strikes swiftly and cruelly at times.”
Alander wondered how many times the Praxis had seen potential allies wiped out before negotiations could proceed very far. “I don’t understand what you’re hoping to get out of this,” he said. “Do you want to join forces with us?”
“I want what is best for the Yuhl/Goel. That is all.”
“You have no desires for yourself?”
“Beyond survival, there are few,” it replied. “To learn, perhaps; to be kept occupied. Provided I am fed, my needs are small.”
Alander instinctively distrusted such a blithe statement, but he was given no time to pursue it further. He felt a familiar thickening of the darkness around him as the minds and voices of the Fit rose out of the void. This time, though, the nonauditory component that came with the voices was stronger. Apart from odors, he saw flashes of faces and felt odd textures brushing against him. He didn’t know whether they were the result of a closer meshing with the Fit, thanks to the Praxis’s modifications, or whether his mind was triggering the sensations in order to make up for the absence of input.
“It is an honor,” said a voice out of the darkness. In this environment, without the dual vocal streams, Alander almost didn’t recognize the smooth, measured tones of Ueh.
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