Something in Ashur’s face prevented Ansti from saying more. It stopped the anger he had released, and gave him pause. A silence hung for a moment until Ashur broke it with a soft and conciliatory tone.
“Ansti, I’m sorry. It was a stray thought. As for your journey, you know the field craft. We could not accompany you here. In this game every extra body is an extra risk, and you my friend, you we could not risk. I am sorry you had to fight to be here. The enemy was watching, but clearly it did not know what it saw. Had we sent our people to help it would have been a signal that you are important. Come on, you know that. We prepared you as well as we could, and better than many. The vehicle that brought you here is also a rare commodity to entrust to anyone. It saved your life you know?”
Ansti’s body relaxed taught angry muscles a little, but he stayed sitting upright. “Yes, I know, but I can’t believe we brought this on ourselves Ashur. Where did that thought come from? And, the vehicle, is like nothing I have ever partnered. It has the quality of a ship about it; I can sense it moving in places I can’t reach or understand. I know you helped, and I know this journey was mine to make. It was not easy. Do you know they have par-born agents?”
For the first time since the conversation started the older man showed surprise. He listened while Ansti told the story of attack and defence in the slow-time of transit. As he did, Ashur gestured at one of the gaggle of others who were still in the room and gave an instruction. She left and took the rest with her.
“We did not consider that, Ansti. It is incredible. The par-born have never shown the slightest interest in human politics. We barely know they are there most of the time. For one to make such an intervention, to reveal itself so totally is astounding. That another came to your defence beggars belief. I’ve asked that your vehicle is asked about the event. It must have sensed the episode.”
Ansti nodded, lost a little in the memory of that dream state fight before returning to the subject at hand.
“The little vehicle is a miracle. You said it saved my life Ashur; so it found you for me?”
Ashur blinked his eyelids and nodded confirmation.
“Yes, and more. It gave something of itself to your combat awareness suit functioning, and that in turn kept you alive. The suit was crippled by attacks, but the vehicle kept it alive as long as it could, and even after it all but died it coaxed the suit to stay just on the cusp of death. The vehicle preserved its vitality and in doing so extended your life too. By the time it found us the suit should have been long dead and you with it. Just how it did it is unclear, but we accept the gift of suns, eh?”
Ashur offered a warm smile, and Ansti returned it.
“That we do.”
Ashur gathered himself, sat upright and leaned forward, mimicking his friend’s posture. Ansti read the expression and body language, sensing his friend preparing a message.
“Ansti, I want to tell you something. Before the war, a group of us were working on a project designed to… enhance our people and those on the worlds we partnered with. It was a way to grow new skills from those we already had. It was a way of enhancing pilots.”
Ashur paused to let that sink in, and to judge his friend’s reaction. Ansti gave little away, simply holding his posture and listening, knowing that the heart of this conversation was approaching.
“Some of us felt that our people could develop even further as pilots, that piloting was a skill that had not yet reached its zenith. Of course our people were the best, Ansti. No others had the emotional and mental skills to meld with suns and ships so successfully. Do you know that amongst us about one in ten thousand could be successfully trained as pilots? In the rest of humanity the number is closer to one in one hundred million. Humanity’s ability to travel the stars is not limited by technology; it is limited by our emotional development. People could grow ships faster than we could nurture new pilots. And of course, the best place to nurture pilots — your home world — was, and still is, a very difficult place to expand a population. It simply cannot sustain a large number of people without losing the gift it offers. It’s a paradox; more people would alter the balance of evolutionary forces that create the environment that nurtures pilots. You see the problem?”
Ansti frowned.
“Well, yes, if many more pilots were needed, but did we need so many more?” Again something flickered across Ashur’s face, a moment of tension that his muscles betrayed. It left Ansti feeling uncomfortable; there were hidden depths to his friend that hinted at things he might not wish to know. He knew Ashur was a government man, one of those who was said to operate, and Ansti had been grateful for the aura of clandestine competence that he brought to the training and plotting behind his escape. Now, he wondered how his friend had been using those skills before the enemy struck.
Ashur shifted in his seat, his thumb tracing a line across his lower lip, and his gaze fixed on some point near the floor. He tilted his head and raised his eyes a moment before he spoke.
“There was a piloting project some of us supported Ansti… a project with military potential…”
Ansti instantly felt his stomach tighten and then pulse with anxiety. There were conventions that bound all pilots, and the prime convention was peaceful co-existence. No pilot would ever willingly engage another in combat. They would transport soldiers and war machines, but never ever attack each other. It was this code that had prevented war from spreading from the surface of planets to the deeps of space for centuries. The suggestion of military interest in piloting gave Ansti a cold hollow tension in the pit of his stomach. He regarded his friend wordlessly and wondered where this revelation would take him.
“…the researchers found a way to create new capability in ships. Our people knew more about piloting than any other race, Ansti. We have, or should I say we had, collective insights and knowledge that placed our understanding far ahead of other humans, or any other race for that matter. Our people were beginning to see just a little of what suns can. They were beginning to find a way to explain it in terms we could understand and communicate, and in doing so we discovered something profound.”
Ansti felt anxiety growing in him, he felt that he was being prepared for something. He held Ashur’s gaze, arranging himself inwardly for the inevitable revelation. Military and pilots! Sun-shit, it could not be good.
Ashur sensed his friend’s discomfort, reading the expression and seeing the tension in muscles and breathing. He had prepared for this moment and anticipated the difficulties. He had practised arguments and rehearsed gestures, aware that revealing truth might alienate the man he needed to help him, but also knowing that the truth was his best weapon. He breathed deeply locked eyes with Ansti and smiled.
“Pilots. You have always been a wonder to so many people. Such a rare and gifted group — sun-blessed they say —and god like to some. You have status and respect amongst people and other races, and travellers trust you implicitly. Twelve sentient races look up to you and depend on you. Without you our worlds would return to isolation, our commerce would falter and horizons shrink to the near curve of a planet’s arc. Pilots are the beings that make our universe function. All that love and respect and honour Ansti. Do you know what that makes you?”
Ansti held his friend’s gaze and did not answer, allowing a dramatic pause to fill the space between them, and rightly interpreting the question as rhetorical. Ashur raised his head a little and a light burnt in his eyes as he uttered the short answer to his own question.
“It makes you feared.”
An involuntary snort of breath left Ansti’s nose, and a smile flickered across his mouth.
“That, Ashur, is the most ridiculous thing you have ever said to me. Pilots have no interest in hurting anyone, and we have actually kept the peace in space for centuries. There is a good deal to fear in our universe, but pilots? No one and no race has any reason to fear us. We could not bond with ships with anger and violence inside us. They would sense it and reject us. Ships are the gen
tlest of souls Ashur, surely you know that, and so does everyone? The idea that pilots are a threat is ludicrous.”
Ashur regarded his friend again, letting an appraising gaze settle on him.
“True, and yet there are those that do fear you, and with reason. Pilots may not seek power Ansti, but they hold it. The commercial and political existence of trillions of beings on hundreds of worlds is kept balanced by a few thousand extraordinary individuals. In one sense you are the rulers of the known universe. Of course you do not see it that way because you have no intention of ruling, one might say your motive is service not dominance. And yet to those motivated by less noble emotions you have a fearful combination of power and skill. They see you as they see themselves, hungry for control, and to all intents and purposes perception is reality. The point is Ansti, if they were you, they would use their power to secure more, and they can’t see how you want to do anything else. Their greatest fear is that you wake up to this.”
“That’s a twisted way of looking at things, Ashur. Yes, in theory I suppose pilots could hold the universe to ransom, but we don’t. I mean we haven’t, not for hundreds of years. We don't do things collectively, we are individuals. You are right we serve. It is why we do what we do. Why would anyone suddenly see us as a threat?”
Ashur let out a sigh and shifted again. He reached for a drink that had been sitting waiting for attention and sipped it gently.
“Ansti, this is not new. Pilots are a unique blend of supreme emotional intelligence and childlike political naivety. Every government of every nation of every race spends a good deal of its time and resources contingency planning for the day when you turn around and ask a price for what you do. I mean a real price, a political price. Their greatest fear is that you ally yourself with whoever their enemy is. Collectively my friend, pilots are the greatest potential weapon there has ever been, short of persuading suns to take a side. No government can afford to ignore that threat.”
Ansti looked troubled. He understood the logic but could not bring himself to believe it. Ashur remained silent, letting his friend process a new paradigm, watching him grapple with the base but necessary view of those who attained power. He let the silence hang a little more and then continued.
“Of course our government had a different view.”
The flash of hope and relief that crossed Ansti’s face made his friend wince and raise a hand to signal that the view may be different, but was not likely to be one that Ansti would approve of.
“Our government, had an asset it wanted to protect. The people we trusted with power looked out and saw a universe afraid of the very thing that we excelled at. Our intelligence services constantly warned us of plans designed to undermine our people. To fear pilots was largely to fear us. To wish to contain pilots was largely to contain us. Our government saw a universe that one day would strike, and wondered who might actually do it and when? Ansti, I have spent much of my life looking for plots to kill, capture or disable you and pilots like you. Believe me they are many and rich in variety.”
Ansti tried to interrupt but Ashur needed to finish this without diversion, and continued.
“We protected you Ansti, with plans and counter plots, and with our own imagination. We also asked ourselves what we would do if our efforts failed? What if one day an attack came and we could not defeat it, then what? The answer was always unpleasant — to fail was to die, individually and as a people. Failure meant extinction. That was not an outcome anyone was prepared to tolerate, and so inevitably we asked the question others feared we might — how can we use our greatest asset to protect our people?”
At this Ansti could not contain himself.
“Sun-shit Ashur, you mean you found pilots who would fight in space. I was right earlier! What did you do to them? You utter, utter fools, you practically killed us, condemned us to a flat earth…!”
Ashur was shaking his head and holding up both palms in another gesture of conciliation.
“Ansti calm down. Ansti, no that is not what happened! Listen to me!”
Ansti was half up off the couch, which sent out a little flurry of warning chirps, telling its uncaring charge that he was not well enough to be so active. Ansti quickly reached the same conclusion himself; adrenaline fuelled anger had clouded his judgement but the protest of his muscles and the tightening in his lungs and chest just as quickly told him that he could not move far. He had a brief flash back to the helplessness he felt when attacked in transit, and despite the anger he decided to let flow, he slumped back, head spinning and chest sucking in lungfuls of air as best it could.
Ashur was concerned by his friend’s plight.
“Ansti, just relax and let me finish. We did not train military pilots. Please, sit and listen while I tell you what did happen.”
He picked up a waiting drink and offered it to his friend, who took it and sipped as Ashur continued.
“We always knew that pilots could not breach the trust of ships. No ship will allow itself to become a weapon. Ansti, we considered it, thought of a million ways to persuade pilots or ships to fight for their own protection, and always it ended in the same way; you would rather die than turn space into a battlefield, and in fact collectively you knew that space could only become a battlefield if you let it. Do you know that is true of all pilots of all races? None would take that path. You are truly something unique. So, we started thinking of other ways to keep you safe, to find an edge that would give us an advantage when attack came.”
Ansti looked hard at his friend and this time pressed his point
“You mean if attack came.”
Ashur pursed his lips and shrugged gently. “In an infinite universe anything that can happen will happen. It is just a matter of time and place, and our time ran out didn’t it?”
“So, you failed Ashur. Despite all your efforts the attack came and we lost.”
Ansti’s voice was hard and unforgiving. Ashur felt the barb aimed at him and took it, considering it a small just revenge for the many shocks he had inflicted on his friend. “Well, yes and no. We were overwhelmed at first, but the fight is not over, Ansti. Something unique survived. It is an ally, of a kind. In fact you brought the key to our fight here.”
Ansti’s was taken aback, He’d brought nothing with him, and he did not attempt to hide the puzzled look that flickered across his features.
“Ansti, I need your help, and I also need the thing you brought. Together there is a new and powerful potential that can be unlocked. It could save us.”
“Ashur, everything you gave me was destroyed. You saw how I arrived, barely alive with my equipment savaged. I incinerated everything I did not carry. I destroyed my guide patch so I could hide. I have nothing to offer you Ashur.”
“You’ve forgotten one thing Ansti. Something survived when all else was lost. You brought a powerful new tool.”
Ansti offered a questioning frown, and Ashur helped his friend make the connection “The vehicle Ansti. You brought the vehicle.”
Ansti remained puzzled as his mind grappled with yet another unexpected twist. “The vehicle? It’s a powerful for sure, and it can do things, but it can’t take on an army, Ashur. It can’t liberate worlds.”
Ashur nodded and gazed directly at his friend again.
“By itself, no, you are right, but its power can be focused and multiplied. Some years ago, just before the attack, we made a discovery. A very brilliant team — all lost to us now by the way — started exploring new ways of piloting ships. They were part of the contingency plan, looking for a way to preserve our people and culture when attack comes. Call it an insurance scheme against my failure.”
Ashur winked at his friend.
“They were creative, ingenious people Ansti, and explored lines of research that many of their colleagues thought obscure or even foolish. Most came to nothing, but one small leap of imagination and logic led to a profound discovery. It started with a question; they asked themselves how a ship could be moved withou
t a pilot. They asked if ships could be grown that could bond with suns and move themselves. They tried to grow ship minds that were truly sentient, and did not need pilots.”
As Ashur spoke he watched waves of emotion wash across Ansti’s face and settle into a grimace that signalled a multitude of conflicting feelings. Ansti let them flow, interrogating his emotions, searching for an anchor but only finding more challenges and contradictions. His emotional foundations were being shaken.
“Those experiments failed. Suns would not listen to the minds we built. We do not understand why but there was no connection at all, no communication. Solitary ship minds did not feel sentient to suns. But our researchers did not give up. They looked for minds already connected in some way, and eventually focused on the sun-blessed vehicles. These little things loomed large in the stellar consciousness. Their size in the universe we experience in no way reflects their importance in the universe of suns. In some ways they are sun’s emissaries, ambassadors nurtured by suns and trained in our ways. We persuaded a small number of vehicles to help, and they did so without complaint. They understand the need to fight, and as you have seen they are fearsome opponents.
There was an experiment; a vehicle was partnered with a ship that had its mind degraded. You might say the vehicle became the mind of the ship that was built in body only.”
Ansti’s expression now revealed some of the revulsion he felt. Separating the body and mind of a ship felt akin to the mind-body separation his enemies practiced in their vats. It seemed monstrous to him, but he was no longer shocked. In the course of the conversation he had come to realise that his people were not without difficult secrets. A growing sense of moral numbness was spreading through him. A few moments ago he would have expressed outrage and disbelief, now he listened, prepared to hear almost anything had been done in his name.
The Man Who Talked to Suns Page 13