“Why!!!” he screamed at the eyes.
He didn’t understand anything.
The field shut in, and Kyle kicked his threadbare seat across the room. It slid out, the magnoseal breaking as it tipped, the back nudging the shelf. Kyle flinched, the eyes wobbled and stabled before he could leap to catch them.
“Damn it!” he shouted at the eyes. They looked back at him silently.
I do not know. I just want to go home. Back to the missionaries. What the hell am I doing here? He spoke to the eyes but they didn’t say anything.
(Do the eyes talk? Or speak straight to my head? Perhaps the eyes know where I am going.)
He threw the gun against the wall. It came to rest, silent as the eyes.
“Why will no one talk to me?!”
He threw himself upon his bed.
*
In the cabin next to his, Cetee, trying to sleep, was royally pissed. The stupid tribal was kicking up a stink and she could get no sleep. Why wouldn’t the dummy just pipe down and shut up.
She slammed her hand against the wall. Then she slammed her hand against her door. Then she slammed it against Kyle’s door.
Enough was enough.
*
Chapter Six
Space – under
Cetee smacked her hand as hard as she could against the door panel in anger and frustration. Orpal was an arse – she didn’t like being played by clients, and the dumb hunter (as Orpal had called him. Well, apart from the dumb part) was a ripe target for her ire. She could do nothing to Orpal – he was immune.
The door failed to respond in anyway whatsoever, fuelling her anger even more. She pummelled the rigantium under her first, near screaming with pent up rage.
The door took no pity on her.
*
Kyle blew air at the ceiling and pushed himself from the bed cove, a concave alcove of white foam. The rustling of the sheet was the only sound as it caught on his skin, fell to the floor and trailed after him.
He had said his prayers earlier that day, praying to the great creator, the creator of all life. Religion was simple for humans, something easy to do. One gave thanks to the Lord in heaven for all the graces he allowed his children, like life. Religion for bots was somewhat less complicated. The Tradition didn’t have any, believing man had created them, the Lore didn’t have any, believing themselves their own creator, and the Ecentrists merely prayed to the creator in exactly the same way as the Enlightened, believing the creator to be of mechanoid personification rather than humanoid.
Muzzy-headed still from his fight, he wondered what the hell Orpal was doing bashing on his door. It must be urgent for…hang on? He stopped before removing the barricade of the soon-to-be threadbare floating chair and smooth ceramic table (shifting that had taken some effort – just one more thing for Orpal to complain about when he finally saw the ragged hole in the floor when Kyle had torn it loose, using the last of his adrenal strength when he returned from Cablas). Orpal didn’t need to bang on doors. With a grunt of effort, Kyle pulled the table out of the way of the door – but not before sliding his right arm into the genogun, picking it up from where he had earlier hurled it against the floor.
If it wasn’t Orpal, it meant the Orpal had been taken – the Ecentrists must have taken him. Who else could want Orpal badly enough? Perhaps the merctiles had found him. Perhaps it was the Tradition. Was this the surprise Orpal had in mind for him?
Before shouting ‘come’ at whatever was behind the door, he ducked down behind the ceramic table.
All that could be seen was the bare arse of the genogun peeking over the top of his makeshift defences.
“Come!” he shouted. And the door flew open.
*
And, naked as the day she was born, but much cleaner, Cetee entered.
She gaped at him. He stood, his manhood proud before him.
“What are you doing here?” was the best he could manage.
“And I thought you’d be pleased to see me,” replied Cetee, her glance traversing down Kyle’s rocky body.
At this juncture it should be pointed out that there were few laws among the Enlightened. Genetic engineering and the eradication of want had all but eliminated crime. As a result, laws were few and far between, but as a corollary to this, where law fails, society must have some form of structure.
There were generally accepted societal norms among all the people of the Enlightened, and first and foremost was: where a man and a woman be naked together in privacy, lo shall the man and the woman not be shunned for doing what comes naturally.
Both now sated (from the perspective of the viewee, there is no real need for to go into detail, as being a story for the Enlightened, we all know where each piece goes, and like a jigsaw puzzle if you can’t find the right gap be damned sure the cardboard’s malleable enough to fit somewhere else).
*
Cetee stepped from the post-coital shower and took off her eye, ear and mouth protectors. She plugged the sight enhancer through the clinging compound into her port as she explained her armour to Kyle. “It’s resin coat – it expands and contracts again on the moment of impact, it’s perfect and light, and well, I’m sorry you don’t have one.”
She pulled goggles from over her eyes and Kyle looked up from her chest. “Sorry, what were you saying?”
She patted him on the cheek as she passed. “Oh, were you looking at me?”
He gulped. She wiggled her hips as she walked out the door. “Not a chance. I could never sleep with a man who doesn’t listen to me.”
Standing at the door, seductively (and at this juncture unnecessarily) pushing her full hip out, like an erotic bendy reading shade, she added, “I never knew the love of a scarred man before, though. Bobbly. It was novel.” The door hissed closed behind her.
After tidying his room, Kyle lay back and gave a great sigh of contentment. Perhaps the pseudonym ‘tribester’ wasn’t so bad after all.
He fingered the scars she was talking about. The whippings the missionary gave him had some uses after all. He chuckled to himself. Like the missionary had said, there’s plenty of women don’t go much on smooth men.
He didn’t know why the thief was there, but as she’d said – if Orpal thought they needed a thief, who was he to complain.
And damn, but she’d been nimble.
*
Orpal, having turned out the scanner on Kyle’s room (not through any overriding sense of decorum, but squeamishness mainly, it didn’t seem natural the things they did), sighed largely to himself. Well, well, he thought, things are looking up…
He loved it when a plan came together.
*
Cetee threw herself back onto her bed. Before she could even close her eyes the ‘whamwhamwham’ of the alarm kicked in.
‘Sheez, now the earth moves…’ she thought.
She threw on a robe and opened her door.
*
Huna. Ecentrists homeship (1/427,100,991 – Ex-sector, sept)
Generally one step behind (despite their refusal to admit it) the Ecentrists discovered who had stolen the exhibit from a Tradition communicae:
“Friends, we have, ah, something to report,” it began. The voice of the Tradition came through clear and loud across the Com-K
“And what is that?” growled the Ecentrists. The central Ecentrist, one of three Habla’saem had met, Baal, that had raised himself up from the tectonic plate of Nol Sar, now seeded, looked to his brothers, Baal’em and Asthroth.
When the communicae had finished, he spoke.
“Contact the faithful,” was all he said.
Orpal…the name sounded familiar on his (tongue). It had been a long time.
“Our section of the Cascade emitter has been stolen.” He felt derision welling up inside him. His brothers wisely said nothing. Let the Tradition take the brunt of his ire.
Orpal the lecturer he remembered, from deep within memory banks the size of a continent (nanoisation seemed stupid to the Ecen
trists – why make yourself smaller if you can be bigger – surely the universe had enough room).
He called upon his congregation. He saw the fervour in their programmes.
“Orpal,” he said. “Find him…destroy him. We can always pick what we need from the pieces.”
*
Space
Cetee burst out from her room with a nothing but a bathrobe about her person. Nobody else seemed bothered by the wailing alarm. Kyle was still in his room.
Orpal called down the hall from the comroom, “It’s alright, don’t panic. Just the pre-alarm. Go about your business. We’ll be having company pretty soon.”
What was going on? Cetee wondered. A pre-alarm?
“It’s only the Ecentrists, but they’re a bit slow. Don’t panic.”
Don’t panic!? What the hell was wrong with him? The Ecentrists were coming!
She really had to get off this ship. She wasn’t being paid to get caught thieving.
But, panic or not, if the Ecentrists were coming, Cetee had no intention of leaving empty handed. Glancing furtively about, she refined the stiletto until the pulse was wavering. She jammed it into a control panel by the hold door, and let herself into the hold.
It was dark in the hold, strangely, as the walls elsewhere glowed now with their own strange inner light, like chromatophoric plating, or her holmium armour. A variation on her holmium armour, she thought, perhaps, but then this glows with light instead of using it for energy…
She pulled her bathrobe about her, pulling it tighter. It was cold in here, with all that metal and none of it seemed to hold any heat.
The hold was full of nicnacs. Despite the size of the ship, the hold seemed large enough. Like a provincial version of Cablas, she thought to herself. The hold was part reliquary, part museum, part haberdashery. Many of the parts of machinery she could recognise. Some of the things would be of use to her, some to Kyle. There were machine parts, too, but she could make head nor tail of them.
In the back was a worktop, and upon it, the piece of the emitter which she had taken from Cablas. There, next to the piece she’d stolen – another piece! Two pieces of the Cascade emitter in the same room!
She reached out to pick it up, then jumped into the air as Orpal was suddenly behind her.
“Damn it, Orpal! Don’t sneak up on me like that!” She turned round and put her hands behind her back, replacing the pieces she had picked up.
“Fine talk coming from you – I believe I employed you to steal the piece for me, not from me.”
“I wasn’t stealing,” she lied pathetically.
“Really? Oh, my mistake. Well, what are you doing then? Eh?”
“Nothing,” she lied, gaining confidence now, on firmer ground.
“Put it back, come with us or you’ll never know where the rest of the pieces are.”
She smirked and put a hand on her hip. “First chance I get, I’m making off with these beauties.”
Orpal, not tethered by manly desires, didn’t look at her breasts when she said that and think ‘well, there yours anyway.’
Instead, he said, “Well, in the meantime, a little help wouldn’t go amiss would it?”
Outside, the stars were flat and lifeless and practically unmoving – stars don’t twinkle in space and no matter how fast a ship travels in real space they don’t whiz by.
“Why do you want the pieces, Cetee? You’re not a collector, are you?”
“Er, no,” said Cetee, “but the Cascade emitter – whole. That’s what you’re doing, isn’t it? You’re after all the pieces. That would be the greatest collection in the galaxy.”
“Yes, it would,” replied Orpal.
“Why are you after the emitter?”
“It’s a job,” Orpal replied. He didn’t shrug, but his voice did. “Why would you want such a thing?” he asked Cetee in return.
“Because it’s the last secret – the most uninhibited piece of hardware in existence…the emitter is the last secret. And, ah, it’s probably worth a fair bit.”
“Hmm, alright then. Why a thief, young lady?” Orpal asked.
“Why be a thief? I’m not a thief as such. Nobody ‘owns’ the things I take. The only thing anyone can ever truly own is time, their own time, and even that as a currency is notoriously fickle.”
“Why waste that time trying to collect things? What’s the theft for if not for collecting money?”
“Oh, I don’t get paid in money.”
“But I paid you in money.”
“Yes, but I exchange it for something else.”
“What do you change it for then?”
“I told you, I don’t like wasting time. I do it for a reason. Because life is short. I get paid in time.”
Orpal frowned. “Well, that must make you pretty old. I figured Kyle was older than you.”
“Physically he is.” Cetee replied. “But mentally I’ve been around for just a few years longer. But then I’m a pretty good thief and I always get paid.”
“Well, I guess you’re old then if you say you are. I figured you for a modern girl, but I must have been wrong. It’s been known to happen from time to time.”
“I’m just an old fashioned girl at heart,” Cetee smiled. The pre-alarm wailed on.
Orpal digressed.
“Thieves are archaic aren’t they? After all, there is no need to steal other than ‘because’ – there is no need or want and everything can be replicated to perfection. Harna Gurn, for example…”
“Oh, here we go,” said Cetee, sighing. It was her first Orpal lecture, but it wouldn’t be her last.
“…supposed hierarchical structures should top out with those with greater free will. A higher echelon of the mind, if you will. Through cooperation did society evolve, thus the whole of society ascended. Sole ascendancy was impossible, you see, genetically tethered to the whole as each individual is…”
“Thus, a thief is lower on the scale than an ant, is that what you’re driving at? And if I were a part of a collective of thieves I would be higher on Harna Gurn’s scale?”
“Well,” Orpal replied, “yes. Is a band of bandits not stronger than the lone thief? Is a government not a more successful elevation of this? Is ant society not harmonious and successful?”
“Hmm, well, I like to do things my way, thanks.”
“So, you’ve a throwback, too, eh?”
“Throwback?”
“Yeah, you know, old school – the whole being a thief thing. A throwback like Kyle, with his hunting.”
“Just because people don’t need anymore, don’t mean there’s no room for thievery. I’m not a throwback as such, just a modern manifestation of an old vice.”
“No, I suppose not, I can see the need. If for some outlandish reason your clients didn’t have a replicator.”
“You know as well as I do replication’s just not the same as the real thing. Something about the soul of things seeps into the matter. It’s different to the senses, you know? Like things with a soul recognise things with a soul. Like you’d recognise sentience in suns if you were a sun – like draws like, rather than repulsing? I don’t know, I’m not much on the theory of thievery, and I was always prone to Um’lael Sabreme over Harna Gurn. But I notice there’s fresh food in the pantry for Kyle.”
“He’s old fashioned, too.”
“No kidding. Where’dya pick him up?”
“Funny story…”
“Yeah, thanks, Orpal, I think I’d rather steer clear of a funny story from you.”
“What do you mean? I thought it was…”
Woowoowoo.
Cetee didn’t move this time.
“Another pre alarm?”
“Nope, that’s the real time warning. Better go get Kyle – bring him to the comroom.”
“I don’t think you’re paying me to run errands.”
“No, I’m not, but if you’d rather stay alive…” Orpal let the thought hang. The Ecentrists weren’t known for their kindness to thieves
.
“I’ll get him.”
*
Sex made Kyle’s brain work in interesting ways. He had several thoughts, while he sat in a robe and worked on the gun. He was thinking about the eyes and interrogating the fluidisk through the sphere. He was close. He’d put earplugs in to avoid annoying little distractions, like Orpal calling him, or Cetee coming back for seconds (although that he wouldn’t mind too much).
So, he thought, the archeobacterium, used for genotransmutation of matter…(and I could just get the weapon’s mind back…) through a viral cure, injected into the…yes! If I just take the robot analogy to its logical conclusion – the DNA/codec. Like a chaperonin, it could piggy-back in…now, how do I describe the elementary particles used to transplant traits? If I can do that with the gun, then could I talk to the Lu? By the same process?
He nearly had it!
He thought, and the door whammed open.
“FUCK!” The thought siddled off as Cetee barged in.
Cetee stood there in a borrowed robe with the ships name emblazoned on the front. Kyle studiously put down the disk.
Maybe it wasn’t so bad, after all.
“Really, you’re keen,” he said, pulling out the earplugs.
Over the wailing siren sound Cetee said, “Don’t flatter yourself hunny – Orpal wants you in the comroom.”
Kyle stood too, and pulled on a robe.
The alarm became a more insistent wawawa.
They both went to the comroom. They didn’t speak on the way. The din was too great. They looked like a couple of tourists coming out from the steam baths of Centrina sulphur pits.
Kyle, who had neglected to have a shower still, smelt like it.
*
In the holomirror the attack ships of the Ecentrists, Zealots, were gaining on them. Cetee and Kyle both watched as Orpal hummed to himself. They were getting larger with each minute that passed. Orpal did nothing.
Evolution Page 9