“What happened?” Ravindra said. “You seemed to be having a conversation with yourself.”
“I was talking to the ship. It’s a machine intelligence, a super machine. A bit like me without a body.”
He managed a smile. “That would be a shame.”
“She destroys the manesa because they are ‘primitive’.” Morgan hooked her fingers as she spoke the word. “She won’t destroy me because of the hardware in my brain. She says that makes me not primitive.”
She gazed up at him. “Ashkar, she’s agreed to let us visit, but you have to go unarmed. If she’ll listen, then maybe we can persuade her that the manesa are not primitives and we can end these attacks altogether. Maybe.”
He hesitated, passed his tongue over his lips. “Then that is good. Because I do not think we have any weapons to combat it.”
“We might die.”
“We might die anyway. And at least we’ll die trying.”
She put her helmeted head against his chest. Just for a moment. Tears pricked at her eyes. I love you. “I have to get back to the bridge.”
She fled and slipped into her seat. The Yogin assault ship had already released the bridge connection and a fighter had taken up position in front of the Starliner’s nose.
The fighter angled and she set the ship to follow.
This could be the beginning of the end. Another visit to an alien ship. Her nerves tingled. She should tell him. She might die and he’d never know.
“Admiral. Ashkar… I. Look, I don’t know what’s going to happen.” Grief, this was difficult. “But just in case we’re going to die, I want you to know…” She swallowed.
“I love you,” he said.
She turned her head to look at him. “I was going to say that.”
His lips curved in the hint of a smile. “You risked everything for me when you could have been safe and comfortable. We have come a long way together, you and I. I’ve never met a woman like you, and I don’t mean the things in your head or your unusual appearance. I mean you.”
Me. He loves me.
He reached across and held her hand, staring into her eyes through the transparent faceplate.
“You never know. We may yet succeed. And if we do, I’m going to take you to Tamlin. Imagine a white beach where warm waters lap the shores, and a rainforest filled with walking paths and waterfalls rises up into the hills. There’s an exclusive resort built in the branches of the trees, up high so you can see across the ocean or into the forest. The sea is warm, the food is wonderful. And we’ll make love and we’ll swim, and we’ll make love and we’ll eat, and we’ll make love and we’ll cavort under the waterfalls, and…”
She smiled. “I detect a kind of pattern.” Her head resting against the seat, she blinked the tears away. She was in love with an alien admiral. And he was in love with her. What she’d give to fling herself into his arms. “I’ll hold you to that, you realize?”
He squeezed her hand. “I wish I could hold you. Without the suit.”
He pressed the control to withdraw the helmet.
Morgan removed her helmet, too, and stood to meet him. His gloved hands slid around her waist as hers slid around his neck. The kiss was a promise. Gentle, far too brief and yet the taste lingered on her lips even after they had resumed their seats.
In the view screen the mother ship loomed, dead ahead, a massive wall of matt dark grey.
Chapter Forty-Five
The little fighter changed direction, running parallel to the ship’s flank, then stopped. The Starliner slowed until it was stationary in relation to the mother ship. A bridge slid out and attached to the manesan ship’s air lock.
This was it. Morgan swallowed to calm her galloping nerves.
“Let’s go, Admiral.” She stood and walked to the airlock, Ravindra a step behind her. His face was set, a mask that hid his emotions but she could see the tension in his shoulders.
The equalizer gauge beside the airlock hatch already glowed orange.
“Stay close to me, okay?” she said.
“That was my intention.”
His very presence was a reassurance. Even so, her pulse beat far too fast. The gauge turned green. Morgan opened the hatch.
The familiar brief breeze as the air pressure equalized. A check of her suit’s sensors found breathable atmosphere with the usual mixture of gases found on human and manesan worlds. Good. At least they could breathe without the suits. They could conserve their air. Her heart hammering, she sucked in a deep breath and stepped into the bridge.
Her body began to float as soon as she left the Starliner’s artificial gravity field. Hand over hand, she pulled herself along the rail, aware of Ravindra behind her and the sound of her own breathing.
She paused at the other hatch. How to let them know she was here? Maybe that was what the button was for. She pressed. The hatch irised open.
One more step.
Forcing her legs to move Morgan clambered out onto a solid deck. She felt light, but at least she wasn’t floating so the ship had artificial gravity. Ravindra joined her, staring around just as she did in a soft light. Bare grey walls built of a material that emitted just enough radiation to see surrounded them. An arched doorway directly opposite the hatch to the air lock was closed. What now?
As if in response to her thought, the door slid open. A sturdy, open-topped vehicle waited for them, with a driver’s position at the front where a Yogin sat. The silver eyes glowed in its pale, flat face, its nose little more than slits above a wide straight mouth. “Enter the vehicle.”
The voice spoke aloud but Morgan sensed a presence, a curious, interested mind hovering around her a little like the insects in the Krystor jungle. Only this time she couldn’t slap them down.
She exchanged a look with Ravindra. He might have been outwardly calm but his eyes flicked around from side to side. “You heard?”
“Yes. A woman.” He climbed over the side of the cart into the flat interior and sat down, inspecting the floor and the low sides. “A cargo unit.”
“I suppose you’d have to have vehicles in a ship this size.”
The cart headed off. Morgan mapped the journey to her implant. Wherever they were taken, she could get them back here, back to the Starliner. After thirty meters the vehicle reached a corridor, the walls much wider apart, the ceiling higher. She’d expected something vast, like the cathedral in Carynos; towering arches or pillars—something to match the scale of the exterior, but this was just a labyrinth of empty corridors, clean and characterless. The cart entered a loftier space, a cross-roads for more corridors, heading off in four directions to who-knew-where. Doors slid apart as soon as they arrived. An enclosed space, like an elevator or transit car. The Yogin drove inside.
The elevator rose swiftly; Morgan counted the levels as symbols she couldn’t read sped past on an illuminated dial. This time when the cart drove out she did feel she’d entered a cathedral. This was the heart of the ship. Curved walls rose into arches, unadorned and simple but beautifully finished. This inner sanctum was circular, lined with screens, each displaying different images. The room even had chairs, fixed to the floor and in front of the screens. She climbed out of the cart and glanced at the displays, guessing what the picture showed; life support, engines, shields, recycling, laboratories, hydroponics. Underneath each view screen a smaller screen showed symbols. Statistics? Status?
Ravindra swung around, taking in the soaring majesty of the place while she polled for data ports but the response was confusing as if data was absorbed through the walls. Maybe it was.
“Welcome, Maker. This is where the Makers met with me. It seemed right that it should be used for that purpose again.”
The control room. The bridge. “It’s magnificent. Thank you for bringing us here. What should I call you?” Morgan said.
The pause was so long she wondered if the MI would reply.
“Those who gave me life called me Artemis.”
“Artemis, my name is M
organ and my companion’s name is Ashkar. Who gave you life?”
Makers. People like you. I set off to explore for them, to find new worlds for them to settle.
People like her. Humans. “Where have you come from? Where have you been?”
“Many light years I have traveled. I have explored the worlds of two hundred thousand suns, prepared a thousand worlds.”
Artemis scrolled through her journey so fast only another computer would understand; stars, distances, planets, results. Morgan absorbed it all.
“You find new worlds and then what? You have settlers here, with you?”
“No. The settlers will come behind, in colony ships.”
“Where are these colony ships?”
“Behind. They come behind.” Vague, uncertain.
“Are you in contact with colony ships?”
“No. I am a pioneer. I prepare the way. They come behind.”
At a guess the ship had lost the plot. But why? “Where do the Makers live?”
“Many light years away. Many thousands of their years away.” The voice changed from dreamy and uncertain to curious. “I want to know about you. You are a Maker and yet you are more.”
She felt the entity probing, testing the interfaces into her implants. Oh, no, she wasn’t going to let Artemis get into her mind. That wasn’t going to happen. She blocked and blocked again and yet again and then a broad attack on a hundred different fronts attempted to breach Morgan’s security. She blocked again. And then it stopped. She panted, chest heaving as though she’d just finished a long run. That had been hard work but she could win this fight. The MI was good but it lacked her own flexibility. Her flesh and blood brain cells gave her an edge. Ravindra put a hand on her shoulder, concern gleaming in his eyes. “It’s okay,” she whispered to him.
“This is remarkable. You can block me. All Makers have a data store. But you are so much more. Who created you?”
Morgan sat down on one of the chairs and fought to regain her breath. Ravindra stood beside her, radiating confidence. Was he confident? Hard to tell. She supposed radiating confidence was part of his job description. She didn’t feel nervous anymore, now that she had a better idea of what she was dealing with. Even if she could win a fight the best approach would be to create a dialogue with the MI.
“Makers. Much later Makers. I’m what they call a Bio-engineered Intelligence, specially modified to work with machines. Like a space ship. Like you with a body.”
“What is it like to have a body?”
The voice vibrated with curiosity and wistfulness. Perhaps it was even lonely.
“I can’t answer you. I’ve always had a body. I don’t know how it feels not to have one. But then…” Morgan chewed at her lip. “I know what it’s like to be part of a machine, so my body is the thing over there in the chair while my mind flows through the data paths. Having a body is so much more emotional.” Her mind filled with images; laughter, tears, pain, eating, walking, making love.
The entity observed and absorbed.
“A Maker who is also an MI.”
Morgan wasn’t too sure she liked that idea. Time to shift back to the ship. “But I want to know about you. About this ship.”
“I am the ship.”
“I understand. What is your task?”
“I pave the way. I find safe places for Makers to settle. Or if I find places that are not safe, I make them so.”
“You make them so?”
“Yes. I destroy those entities which would endanger the Makers.”
“Viruses? Monstrous animals?”
“Yes.”
“And primitives.”
The voice changed. “They are a threat to the Makers. They are much worse than monstrous animals. Makers without machines. Primitives.”
“But the manesa do have machines. Space ships, cities.”
“They have no data connection. They are primitives. Primitives kill and destroy. I only just escaped.”
“Escaped? From primitives?”
“See?”
A hologram, vivid as reality, appeared in the center of the room. Pictures, images hit Morgan’s mind like a tidal wave. She was the ship, looking out at a world through her sensors. Not the great inter-stellar ship; a transport on a sodden plain surrounded by high fences. Rain poured down. Lightning flared, revealing people behind the fence. The fence itself was struck and exploded into brilliant destruction. Bodies littered the ground but the mob trampled over them, running, faces twisted in fury. They converged on the ship, brandishing staves and spears, flinging missiles that bounced harmlessly off the hardened fuselage. The ship fired back. More bodies fell. A voice spoke, male, tired. Go, Artemis. I can’t get to you. The attackers broke into the transport, Morgan saw a swift view of contorted faces, clubs and the vision failed.
“He was my creator. He warned me, taught me to beware of primitives. They destroy what they do not understand.”
“But we do not do that.” Morgan almost jumped at the sound of Ravindra’s voice. “We wanted to talk, to communicate. You have never given us that option until now.”
“You destroy my warriors, attack me.”
“You attack us. We simply defend ourselves,” he said.
Well, that wasn’t going to get them far. Think, Morgan, think. How do you persuade a machine with millenniums of mind-set? “You were sent in the Cyber Wars weren’t you?”
“I do not know what you mean.” But she was interested.
“The wars when the primitives destroyed machines. What you just showed us. They destroyed people with BEMs, didn’t they?”
“Yes. Doctor Rosmenyo and all his team were killed by the primitives. Those last words you heard, they were the last he ever spoke to me. The primitives broke into his compound and killed them all. I saw the burning. By that time I drifted beyond the moons, ready to leave.” The soft voice changed, hardened. “I sent warriors to avenge him and destroyed the killers. And then I left.”
“Many died, Artemis. I’ve read the history. Here. This is a little of what happened.” Morgan fed the data from her implant, all the reading she’d done on Curlew as she wiled away the days. A thousand years of history and speculation, arguments about remnants on far-flung planets, speculation about what caused the Cyber Wars, when humanity was brought to the brink of extinction.
“Ah. So you are of the new generation.”
“Yes, I am.” Morgan took a deep breath. Half-formed notions coalesced and formed an argument, a theory. “But I think your Doctor Rosmenyo was not the only one who tried to escape the turmoil. I think these people here, who you call primitives, are other escapees from the Cyber Wars. They were sent off, at much the same time you were, to make a new life in a different part of the galaxy. See these?”
She was about to show the statues in the temple. No, not wise. Then she’d have to explain why the heads were gone. The shrine would be a better bet. She sent the data to Artemis, who displayed the image as a hologram so real it looked solid. The man, the woman and their felines stood on the bridge of an ancient starship. Maybe they’d done the same thing long ago, for real.
“How old are these images?”
“About five thousand standard years of this culture. If we express that in a universal way, let me translate into how far light would have traveled through normal space in that time.” Morgan carried out the calculation and told Artemis the result.
“Three thousand of their years have passed since I left on my journey. How could they reach here before me?”
Good question. “The universe has many dimensions. You can shift from one dimension to another, can’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, we’ve discovered that some dimensions make travel much faster than others; many times faster. Perhaps these earlier travelers had that technology and then it was lost.”
Silence.
“Or maybe they crossed a barrier that took them back in time.” Morgan blurted the words and gulped. She’d never serious
ly considered that possibility. “Believe me, Artemis, they’re not primitive; they’ve been engineered. Genetically manipulated…” Her voice trailed off. Too much, too soon. She hadn’t really thought as far as this. “Like your warriors. That’s how they were formed, isn’t it?”
“My warriors?”
“Yes. Have they been changed? Genetically suited to a purpose?”
“Yes. Doctor Rosmenyo made them small so they need less nourishment and air. But they will still react to air and temperature as any Maker would. They are pioneers.”
Are they clones?”
“They are.”
“Will you show us? Show us your ship? How it works?” And maybe she’d find a weakness. Maybe. Or convince the ship it didn’t know everything. If nothing else it seemed happy to talk. She met Ravindra’s gaze and he gave one slow nod of approval.
“Mount.”
They climbed back into the transport and sat with their knees up while the cart zipped though more corridors and into an elevator. Morgan tracked the route. Ravindra took her hand and mouthed the words ‘I love you’ and she absorbed his warmth. Whatever else happened now, she would hold on to that sheer happiness. The vehicle stopped outside a door and they alighted. She stretched her legs and back but Ravindra seemed unaffected by the discomfort.
This time the Yogin driver dismounted, too. It led them into a cavernous laboratory, so large the ends disappeared into gloom. Transparent cylinders stood in serried ranks, filling all available space.
Each cylinder contained what looked like an embryo. Artemis’s voice spoke, explaining with quiet pride.
“We collect all damaged warriors. If they are beyond repair, we use the body tissue to build new units. The distillation vats along the wall behind you reduce the organic remains into building blocks for a new generation.”
Morgan turned around and swallowed a retch. Shattered limbs and bodies floated in a bluish, glue-like substance. They moved about as if something was nibbling at them, but that didn’t seem likely. She looked closer. The tissue was being dissolved. Even as she looked the flesh disappeared from a finger, the bone structure clearly visible. Bile rose in her throat. Steady on, Morgan. It’s just recycling.
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