“But Ormod now has the location of the Lild homeworld,” I suggested.
“Yes, it seems that some Lild heretics would steal such information when it was available and keep recordings. It seems that Gnostic has found a scout ship that was flown by one of them.”
“And in eight weeks time,” Ormod announced over the intercom, “we’ll be arriving right over their homeworld for some payback.”
The Gnostic shuddered again, this time so hard that those on the opposite side of the table from me slammed against it, and my chair shot back and went over. When I did finally manage to regain my feet and look around, I swore. The refectory ceiling was now not very far above my head, and one wall had receded nearly three meters and bowed out. And that was only the start.
The Lild—whose name was a complex infrasound pulse transmitted through its watery home and therefore unpronounceable in any human tongue, but whom we shall call Brian—had ascended to power in the wake of the recent resurgence and subsequent suppression of the Evolutionary Heresy. He was a member of the High Family: that species of the Lild whose shells most perfectly matched the God-given shape of the galaxy, and who brutally maintained the faith. Floating in his coral palace below the spiral sea—his beautiful twelve-foot-across shell presently being micro-etched with new star systems by a young Low Family Lild with very nervous tentacles and, of course, its own breather system—Brian contemplated the past and what must be done in the future.
The return of the segment of an expeditionary warship with its news that another starfaring race had actually been encountered had come as a great shock to the theocracy. When the bald facts of the warship’s defeat were presented, the Evolutionary Heresy inevitably reared its ugly head from the scientific quarter, and civil war ensued. It was a long and ichorous affair, and, after Brian’s High Family regained power, many Low Family nautiloids were necessarily staked out over volcanic vents, until all elements amid the Chosen stopped asking questions. Even so, the questions still remained, and now, with the strength of his forces growing, Brian understood that something must be done.
The humans were another test sent directly by God, just like the worms before them, though with the worms, the nature of the test had been blindingly obvious. Brian shuddered and the note of the micro-etcher stuttered.
“I hope you have made no mistake,” Brian intoned.
“No, Your Honor,” the young Lild quavered.
Brian would check later, and if the present star system being etched on his shell was in any way wrong, the youngster would be punished. Nothing too severe; maybe a crushed tentacle or two.
“You may leave me now,” Brian ordered.
The young Lild shot away, slightly ink-incontinent with fear, and disappeared into one of the nearby coral tunnels. Brian then jetted out a slow stream of water to set himself drifting across to a chamber wall that seemed just a chaotic mass of variegated corals inset with flat areas of utter blackness. He reached out a tentacle and interlaced its numerous worm-ish fingers around what, in a human sea, might have been mistaken for a brain coral. Pictures now appeared in the blackness.
Throughout the recent resurgence of the Evolutionary Heresy, most of the expeditionary warships had returned. Many had been destroyed in the subsequent fighting when Low Family EH elements used their God-granted scientific knowledge to take control of ships from the tentacles of their High Family theocrat captains, but that was all finished now, and new ships were in the process of being built. The worms, Brian recollected, had occupied an area of space eight light-years across, including twelve star systems and two worlds habitable by them and therefore habitable by the Lild. The war against them had taken a little while to get going, since this was the first intelligent alien species the Chosen had encountered, but once the horrific nature of these demonic creatures was discovered, the war became jihad and the worms were swiftly exterminated. The humans, almost certainly being a larger test sent by God, must occupy a larger volume of space, and maybe even as many as ten or twenty habitable worlds. This meant that more ships needed to be built and crewed—a task that would take perhaps another twenty years…Brian felt a moment of disquiet.
The survivors of the expeditionary warship to humanspace were now all dead. Quite obviously, none of them had been as strong as required by God, for they had fallen into heretical thought and even madness. While being put to the question by the inquisitors, a process usually involving one of those volcanic vents, some of them had even clung to their claims that long-range sensing had revealed human activity extending for tens of thousands of light-years. They were Low Family evolutionary heretics, obviously, for it was those science officers dealing with the ship minds and U-space mechanics who made such claims. They were also the ones who claimed that the humans were using impossible weapons; devices employing energies and science that just could not exist in God’s universe. It was all quite ridiculous, and Brian became angry at his own disquiet. The humans would go the same way as those disgusting worms, the shindles.
While we were hurtling through U-space, it was impossible to get an outside view of the Gnostic, even if its AI had been willing to give us access to any of its external sensors or computer systems. However, all of us possessed our own computer hardware, and, with our long experience, me and Shanen were able to link into the ship’s internal sensors to get some idea of what was going on.
“The ship looks like this now,” said Shanen, gesturing to the screen of her laptop.
The schematic was at first just a transparent shape sketched out in blue lines, then the laptop’s hardware caught up with the program we had created together and filled in the details. The image before us was still recognizable as the Gnostic, just. As I stated before, when I boarded the Gnostic I had found out just how substantially it had altered its structure, so that it looked like a set of church organ pipes, though with a large difference in length between each pipe. Now those pipes were drastically curved in toward the smallest pipe, which had completely folded around to become a doughnut shape, though with the center hole nearly closed up.
“Right,” said Pladdick. “Gnostic is trying to disappear up his own asshole.” He was particularly grumpy today because his cabin had reduced in size by half.
“Gnostic get better,” said Parsival.
“What?” I said, brilliantly.
We had relocated ourselves in Pladdick’s new room, one that didn’t seem to be changing shape as fast as the rest. Now Parsival pointed to the wall to our right.
“What do you mean, Parsival?” asked Shanen.
She stood and walked over to the wall and we all followed her.
“Here,” she pointed, “and here.”
This wall had been slowly sliding upward from the floor. I noticed that what I had at first taken to be a shelf along that wall was approaching the ceiling, and that up there lay a recess into which it would fit perfectly. Down below I saw that the wall angled out and was pushing out from the edge of the floor. After a moment, I looked up again to see a similar outthrust above the shelf, a long triangular ridge below which was a floor-thick indentation, and surmised that when all these reached the correct position, the wall would lock into place.
“These weren’t originally here,” said Shanen.
“Gnostic soon correct shape,” said Parsival.
Of course, she had seen more of this than any of us during her long strolls about the ship. She kept herself to herself, did Parsival, which was understandable amid this crew.
“And, of course, we don’t even have to guess what that shape will be,” said Shanen.
“A series of concentric toroids,” I realized.
“Absolutely correct,” said Ormod over the intercom. “Gnostic is changing its appearance to match that of a Lild warship—one they listed as missing, but which Polity AIs surmise strayed into the Prador Third Kingdom.”
“Why?” I asked, then felt stupid.
“All the better to be able to close right up on the Lild homeworld,�
� he replied. “Now, Strager, I know that recent events have been upsetting, but don’t you have a job to do? Don’t you all have various tasks to perform?”
“Why the hell should we?” spat Pladdick.
“Why?” wondered Ormod. “Why because from here, I control life support, and if you don’t do what you’re told, it might just start to get difficult to breathe in there.”
Oddly, the drop-shaft was functional again, but even while allowing the irised gravity field to assist me, I still kept hold of the wall ladder. Hold One had now developed enough of a curve that I could see the distant wall above the hold’s contents, but that would not last much longer, for the ceiling would soon cut off that view. I set off to the left and saw that the cargo containers had shifted, gaps appearing between them, but also noted that this had been prepared for, the gaps exposing hydraulic connections between each container.
As I had done a hundred times before, I set about my feeding routine, first checking the interior of each container for escaped shindles, then feeding those that required it. It was very noticeable to me that the information I had collected on these creatures was at complete variance to what I had been seeing here. These ones just weren’t dying off as fast as they should, so perhaps their metabolisms had been slowed down? It was only as I was dropping a snail food animal into the last shindle pit that the full implications of these creatures being aboard hit me, along, of course, with the fact that Captain Ormod was a survivor of a holocaust on a planet whose entire civilization was based on genetic engineering.
“So,” I said. “I would guess that you’re keeping a close eye on me while I’m down here.”
Walking back from the last container, I paused to remove my gauntlets. “Now, since I’ve been looking after these things, I’ve learned a thing or two about them. They’ll occupy their host and take complete control of its nervous system, meanwhile eating it from the inside out and multiplying. Doubtless you have altered these ones so that the Lild will be their favored hosts. It is a nasty plan, but I just don’t see how it can work. The Lild might be theocratic, but they are spacefaring, which means they are far from stupid and will possess the technology to prevent the spread of creatures as lethal as these.”
“You are wrong,” said Ormod, who of course had been watching and listening all the time.
“These creatures are a biological weapon you intend to use against the Lild,” I said. “Just tell me I’m wrong about that.”
“You are wrong about that too,” he replied. “The shindles are salvation for the Lild.”
And he would say no more.
Eight weeks passed, during which I pleaded and threatened but got no response from the captain or Gnostic. I went on strike, refusing to go down to feed the shindles, then relented after two days without food or water myself. During this time, the Gnostic continued to change its shape, to join up the tubes of its structure into a ship consisting of a series of concentric toroids five miles across. One day, the food synthesizer abruptly reconnected and started working again, then some of the other automated systems began to come back on. Taking my usual journey down into the hold, I observed that many of the cargo containers not containing shindles had been repositioned, and that some of the handler robots down there were now on the move and busy separating out six containers and beginning to open them. When I tried to get a closer look at what was going on, a handler, a thing like the bastard offspring of a forklift truck and a praying mantis, moved into my path and would not let me through.
I went off to feed the shindles, and again wondered what Ormod meant about salvation. Certainly, being small and threadlike and almost transparent, these shindles were different from those first discovered, but what else had been done to them? Were they intelligent, as Polity AIs now thought that the originals were? Did Ormod intend them to take over the Lild? I just had no idea.
The next time I went down to feed the shindles, the handler robots had dismantled the six containers and used them to build a big shed on the hold floor. Sounds of industry came from inside over ensuing weeks, but there wasn’t even a crack I could peer through into the interior. I told Shanen about this, and a few days later, I saw her sporting numerous bruises and a bemused expression. Doubtless, to relieve the boredom, she had tried to go up against one of those handler robots. Seven weeks into our journey, I arrived one morning for the usual feeding routine, and it was only when I actually entered the first cargo container and brought over one of the food snails that I saw something had changed. The pit was empty. Checking all the other containers I saw that they were empty of their shindles too.
“What are you doing, Ormod?” I shouted.
He surprised me by replying. “I want them hungry.”
Then finally we arrived.
“Well looky here,” said Shanen.
Ormod had reinstated access to the ship’s sensors, and we now had a large screen on which we could observe the Lild home system. With computer programs running to contract distances and highlight stuff, we soon saw a busy place indeed. The Lild homeworld was larger than Earth but only enough to knock surface gravity up about 10 percent. It was a water world, with only a few islands at the poles, and though it possessed no natural satellite like Luna, it certainly had plenty of unnatural ones. Big space stations hung in orbit in an even grid, and, taking a close look at one of them, I guessed that a lot of the visible hardware was defensive weaponry. Then, far out at a point halfway between this world and the orbit of the next world—an icy orb about the size of Neptune—we observed the fleet of Lild warships and warship construction stations, hanging in space like a scattering of huge coins amid massive slot machines.
“I would guess they’re making preparations for something,” I said.
“They are preparing for the extermination of the human race,” said a voice behind me, and I looked around to find that, after eight weeks, our passenger had rejoined us.
“Professor Mace,” said Pladdick, stepping forward with something nasty in his expression. Like us all, he had been really frustrated about all this but, since he was a heavyworlder, that frustration sometimes resulted in fist-shaped dents in the walls.
Taking if not her life then at least her health in her hands, Shanen caught hold of his shoulder. “Just a moment, Pladdick. I think now is the time for explanations.”
Elvira Mace nodded, and taking a wide circuit around Pladdick, strode up to stand beside the screen. She gestured at the Lild warships. “Already Gnostic is picking up and analyzing vast amounts of data.” She tapped at the console to bring the homeworld back onto the screen. “Much has now been confirmed, and we are updated on a lot.”
“Tell me,” I said. “Why are you involved in this?”
She glanced at me. “Not all the survivors of Circoven look like Ormod.”
“I see.”
She now gazed at Shanen for a moment. “You know much about this, having served on the sister ship to this one, but I will reiterate for the rest.”
Shanen nodded obligingly—still a little glassy-eyed, I noticed—and guessed that the last eight weeks had taken her far too close to her boredom threshold.
Mace continued, “The Lild species is a divergent one, with two branches that cannot interbreed. The theocratic elite and ruling class have shells that closely resemble our galactic spiral. Though somewhat interbred, they have managed to retain a grip on power through religious oppression and sheer aggression. The lower class is a hardier and generally more intelligent branch of the species, but less aggressive. Without any kind of intervention, this state of affairs could continue for centuries. Without any intervention, the Polity will end up with a Lild fleet at the Line in a couple of decades.”
“Wait a minute.” Shanen held up a hand. “Are you saying that what you and Ormod are doing, whatever it is, has Polity sanction?”
“I am saying that, for the present, Earth Central Security is looking the other way.”
“Plausible deniability,” I said.
“Precisely.”
“So what are you doing?” I asked.
“I will leave the final explanation to Ormod, but let me continue.” She gave a tight little smile. “Each Lild warship has a captain and six under-captains, should the ship separate into segments. These are all members of the ruling-elite branch of the species. However, they often return to the homeworld, where the main concentration of the species lives in tunnels in the seabed corals—a massive cave system with internal water separated from that of the sea itself. You see, for religious reasons, they cannot breathe water contaminated by their lesser brethren.”
“I do see,” I said. “With the defenses around that world, it would be very difficult to get in to drop a bioweapon in the sea, let alone get one down into those tunnels.”
“You do see.” Elvira smiled. “Then I leave it to Ormod to explain the whole setup further. He is awaiting you and Shanen down in Hold One.”
“What about us?” Pladdick gestured to himself and Parsival.
Elvira eyed him. “I will explain further, but you two are not anywhere near suicidal enough for what comes next.”
“I’m not sure I like this,” I said, but I was already turning to follow Shanen toward the door. The reality? A week of not feeding the shindles had left me bored and listless, half-alive, and wondering about my chances of, like Shanen, going up against one of those handler robots with whatever weapons I could fashion, just to find out what they were doing. Yes, I was getting through that damned watershed, but I wasn’t through it yet. This meeting with Ormod promised something that would stir me up inside, make me feel alive. I could see the excitement in Shanen’s expression as she glanced back at me before stepping out into the corridor. Of course, she was a worse case than me.
This time, when I used the drop-shaft, following Shanen in, I didn’t bother with even checking if the irised gravity field was working, or touch the ladder. At the bottom of the shaft, Shanen stepped out into the lit area beyond and swore out loud. I swore too when I saw what awaited us.
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