Reign of Fire

by Marjorie B. Kellogg

  Danforth shifted impatiently. “Yes, yes, CRI, you’re forgiven. Go on.”

  “It was the re-IPL that brought climate operations back to what they should have been all along,” Weng interposed, like a proud war correspondent reporting a victory. “A balanced, nonlethal environment; the life-support system that the ancients had intended for their descendants. They designed in a simple way to stop and restart the system if anything went wrong, which of course, it did. What never occurred to them was that the very idea of the reset itself might be forgotten.”

  “They were human after all,” said Megan dreamily. “Like us, they could imagine almost anything being lost to the ravages of time, except the memory of their own existence.”

  “And as the eons passed,” Weng continued, “the program degenerated. But the climate worsened so gradually that succeeding generations had nothing but legend to suggest that it had ever been better. Their own technical language became priestly gibberish to them. They lost the knowledge that they had ever had control over their weather.”

  “They lost the memory of the Connection,” murmured Stavros. “Though the old man must have understood something of it…”

  The others turned to him expectantly.

  “Connection?” Danforth finally prompted.

  Stavros shrugged. “I don’t know what it is, just that it is, or was.”

  CRI spoke up briskly. “The Goddesses were designed to use field manipulation of human sensors, whose biochemistry they shared. Information such as sense perceptions could be digitized and transmitted. Specific parts of a willing human brain could be activated like switches, offering a kind of long-distance awareness of the functioning of the machines, for the purpose of monitoring and maintenance.”

  “It is my belief,” offered Weng, “that such maintenance personnel were the origin of the PriestGuild. With further study, I’m sure the relevant technical information will be unearthed from the oldest guild records.”

  “The Toph-leta,” said Megan. “Life-gifts, indeed. The story of how a planet’s life was being preserved. They did the best they could to keep their memory alive, those old Sawls.”

  Danforth leaned back against McPherson to stretch his legs. “And damned if we don’t have Emil to thank for knocking Lagri into failure mode in the first place, so that the re-IPL could be initiated. Otherwise her program would have kept on degenerating, beyond the point of ever being able to reestablish any kind of livable climate.”

  “No.” Stavros spoke as if from the bottom of a well. “The Sisters’ struggle has always resumed after a Devastation.”

  Liphar stirred beside him and woke, rubbing reddened eyes.

  Danforth said, “Not this time, I don’t think. I’d say Fiix was doomed.”

  “The Sawls, yes, maybe the entire population this time. But not Fiix. The Arrah would continue.”

  “You’re saying there’s another reset trigger we haven’t found yet?”

  Weng said, “The basic philosophy of the system was the balance of contentious opposites—wet and dry, hot and cold—with the assumption that the tension natural to such an arrangement was better suited to living organisms over the very long term than static equilibrium.”

  “Shit, yeah,” McPherson remarked. “Don’t want them machines getting bored…”

  “Over the time span we are dealing with here, Lieutenant,” said CRI icily, “boredom is a valid consideration, even for a machine.”

  “Hey, don’t take it personal.”

  “So all this insane battling was built into the initial program,” Danforth guessed.

  “The Game, Dr. Danforth.” Weng smiled, the Cheshire cat in all her glory. “The intricacies of play can be as simple as a child’s gambling amusement or as complex as a symphony. The Game was meant to provide the needed climatic variation, but more importantly, to offer the Sisters a very long-term reason to live, a meaning for their existence that could be expressed not in ephemerally emotional human terms but in hard numbers that a circuit could process. I believe it was this very element of Chance, inserted to keep things lively, that proved nearly fatal.”

  Weng paused, looked down. “Interestingly enough, despite the Sisters’ remarkable power and complexity, true consciousness does not seem to have been achieved or even intended by their creators. The Goddesses are not aware in their play.”

  Stavros offered a quick murmur of protest.

  CRI said, “This is not totally accurate, Commander.”

  Weng raised an eyebrow at the monitor. “As you are currently demonstrating, you possess a greater independent consciousness than the constructs in question.”

  Undaunted, CRI replied, “I would prefer to say that the nature of their awareness is as yet undetermined, and unexplored by all except Mr. Ibiá and myself.”

  Cheeky. Susannah was amused and intrigued. CRI will be as changed by this as any of us. As Megan says, funny how things work out.

  “I can’t believe they weren’t aware of trying to massacre each other all the time,” announced Megan.

  “Newton’s Third Law of Motion does not imply consciousness in the reaction,” returned Weng stiffly.

  “Yeah, but that’s opposite and equal,” McPherson pointed out. “Somehow things must’ve gotten out of-hand.”

  “A variability of reaction is inherent in the nature of the organic circuit, I believe,” said CRI.

  “You would,” said McPherson.

  “As I said, the element of Chance in the program. The pendulum of conflict swung a little too far one time,” Weng pursued. “Is it possible, Mr. Ibiá, that ‘chance’ is the original meaning of the word ‘khem’? One Sister played too hard. The balance slipped, and in order to right it, the other compensated appropriately. The conflict was perforce escalated.”

  McPherson made a soft exploding noise.

  “No longer a game,” said Danforth.

  “Sounds like world history,” Megan commented.

  Weng nodded, her good humor restored. “Indeed. If you are willing to see our Terran population as a similarly vast machine, organic in nature…”

  “And inherently contentious,” put in Danforth.

  “Unbalanced,” added Megan.

  “Unaware,” said Susannah.

  McPherson giggled and nudged Stavros across Danforth’s back. “Hey, Stav, I think they’ve got another reprogramming job for you…” The others gladly accepted the excuse for a laugh, for a release of the tension that lingered as habit after so many weeks of constant crisis. Even Stavros allowed an abashed half-grin.

  McPherson pushed away from the terminal. “So I guess it’s really all over, then. I mean, things are gonna be okay here.”

  She tousled Liphar’s curls as if his Little League home team had just scored the winning run. “That’s great. That’s really great! In fact, that’s really amazing!”

  But Megan glanced up at the darkening tilted belly of the Lander. “Now all we have to do is find out if we can get ourselves off the damn planet.”

  When dusk became night, and the Cluster glowed hugely in the eastern sky, the Sawls came down from the Caves with torches. They filled the clearing quietly. Serpentine double rows of light lined the long curving path to the bottom of the cliff and snaked up the zigzag stair to the third level entry closest to the PriestHall. The cliff face glittered with a necklace of tiny fires.

  Stavros’ attention wandered from the debriefing. Liphar was restless with anticipation. A waiting host of torches flickered in the clearing. Stavros felt their summons like a steady pull. A final threshold remained to be crossed. If he went out into that firelit darkness to accept the Sawls’ acclaim, he would also be accepting the full measure of Kav Daven’s dying wish.

  He was aware of his silent palms as most are aware of their beating hearts. Their centers were the new centers of his being and he longed to waken their mystic fire again. He did not remember it as pain, but as Connection.

  Weng’s theory gave the Connection to the original PriestG
uild alone. Stavros thought his own sensitivity to it belied such exclusion.

  “I listen this singing of the world,” he recalled Liphar saying.

  All Sawls knew it once. They will know it again.

  He thought of how he would explain it to Susannah. He would he eloquent about the good he would do, translating the Sawls’ past and thereby assuring their future by bringing them a new understanding of themselves and their ancestors, of the nature of the Arrah, and what their real duties must be to the Goddesses who made their world habitable. The teaching must be offered slowly, in terms the Sawls could accept, in tale-chant and metaphor, by digging in the guild records for lost gems of history, approaching the truth gradually so that it was never imposed, but Intuited and absorbed from within, to become an understanding profound enough to survive the next seventy-five centuries.

  Stavros was glad he was young.

  Such teaching would require a lifetime.

  He glanced at Liphar, whose attention now hardly left him except in sleep. He nodded and the young man smiled beatifically. CRI was replying to questions and cheerfully supplying details like the chief scientist at a press conference. Stavros rose, diffident but firm. He indicated the expectant hush of torches in the clearing.

  “Excuse me, Commander, but out of respect, I don’t think we should keep them waiting any longer.”

  We? thought Susannah. There’s only one of us they’re waiting for. His tact was touching, being so new. Already he was learning something of the arts of leadership.

  Weng agreed that the debriefing could continue at any time and buttoned up the collar of her spotless uniform. Danforth pleaded exhaustion and asked that his respects be conveyed. Susannah elected to remain with Ghirra until she was sure he was out of danger, from his wounds and from himself.

  Stavros’ smile approved her decision. He ducked into the shadows where the Master Healer was sleeping soundly and gazed down at him lingeringly.

  “The many times he has eased my pain, here I am unable to do anything for him in return. Healing is his gift… and yours, Susannah.”

  He hugged her tightly and was gone, shrugging off his own weariness, striding through the entry cylinder with sudden energy. In the clearing, the bright torches came to attention like a dress regiment. The throng murmured in welcome.

  Susannah went with Megan to the mouth of the cylinder. The council of guild elders, the Kethed, waited in a reduced semicircle, missing Ghirra and Aguidran. Plump TiNiamar of the FoodGuild stood slightly forward with Kav Ashimmel as Stavros approached.

  Ashimmel was resplendent in her embroidered whites, her iron-gray curls stirred by faint breezes. She faced Stavros squarely, and he returned her stern regard, then took a short step back and bowed his head in respect. Ashimmel’s taut mouth quirked, not quite a smile. Her rigid posture eased. She bowed her head briefly in return and stepped aside to allow Stavros to proceed her along the winding lines of torchlight. TiNiamar moved in smartly to accompany Weng, and at Liphar’s urgings, Megan and McPherson filed along behind.

  A chant was begun high up on the stair. It travelled swiftly down the lines to gather everyone of the five thousand voices in a song of celebration. From the top of the cliff, the priest-hour boomed a joyous rhythm into a night alight with torchfire and in the east, the burning gleam of a billion stars.

  Susannah wandered back into the Underbelly and dropped heavily into the nearest chair. The chanting and torches receded. She watched after the departing throng for a long time, musing in the depths of her chair, feeling it absurd that she wanted to cry now, over this, after all she had just lived through relatively dry-eyed. But the placid lamplit darkness of the Underbelly was comforting, and the breezy scents of new plants and damp earth soothed her expectations of sadness yet to come. She tried to recall when she had first known that she would leave this world and Stavros would stay behind.

  At the console, Danforth gently cleared his throat. “You okay?”

  She turned to smile at him wanly, then rose with determined energy and claimed the empty seat beside him. “So what about the specifics on the ecosystem? When the system had unbalanced so far in one direction, as during a Great Destruction, what made it swing back again at all?”

  True delight warmed Danforth’s ebony face. “You’re going to like this one… I think I’ve found the inbuilt reset Ibiá was talking about. CRI, show off your biochemical model.”

  Susannah peered at the diagram that promptly appeared on the monitor.

  “Neat, eh? Here’s Valla Ired, here Lagri and in the middle, the Sawls.” Danforth traced a structural line in the diagram. “It’s Ibiá’s lithium connection.”

  Susannah pointed. “And photosynthesis?”

  “Yup. Let me lay it out for you: the creators needed to control water and heat distribution in order to get through the hot time of the passage through the Coal Sack. The whole planet couldn’t be made habitable. They needed some place to put the excess heat.

  “So they created an artificial habitable zone more or less at the planer’s equator by pulling the heat to one side, the desert, then the water to an opposite position where it could be controlled and distributed as needed. And essentially, they split photosynthesis into two processes, using lithium as a sort of control substance, you see?

  “Now, Valla Ired from her ocean controls the water distribution. She processes the CO2 produced within the ecosystem, but lithium effects her uptake of CO2 by controlling the alkalinity of water. Using sunlight to split LiO into lithium and oxygen, she increases the acidity of her water and can clear the atmosphere of more CO2.

  “Lagri also uses sunlight to split LiO, but she counters Valla’s moisture disbursement by recombining free lithium with water, to control humidity and produce free hydrogen, some of which the Sawls use for necessary fuel, and energy which fuels her own metabolism. These processes had badly degenerated by the time we got here, but do you begin to see how this cycle acts as a needed population control within a system of very limited resources?”

  Susannah nodded admiringly. “If the population grows too large, too much CO2 is produced, which acidifies…”

  “The ocean. This poisons Valla Ired’s metabolism, her control weakens. Water vapor builds up in the atmosphere due to evaporation, which then poisons Lagri, breathable oxygen decreases and the Sawls die off.”

  “So it is culling, like I said, to keep the species tough and active during their eons of environmental crisis. The sick and the weak go first, plus a kill-off decreases the excess of CO2 and restores the balance for a while, until the population grows too large again. There’s your reset.”

  Danforth nodded. “Or on the other hand, if in her field manipulations of the climate, Lagri grows too strong, by heating up the system’s water she can decrease CO2 to a point which also weakens Valla. Conversely, if Valla can flood Lagri’s heat with moisture…”

  Susannah regarded the diagram musingly. “I only hope they meant it to be a gentler process originally, a gradual shifting of balances to control the ecosystem more subtly.”

  “When you’re thinking of the long-term survival of a race, you may be willing to forego a certain concern for the individual,” said Danforth. “The real point is, it worked for a long, long while before it got knocked out of whack. With this planet’s astronomical situation, it has no business supporting life at all. It wasn’t nice for the generations of Sawls around when the peak of a population boom brought on a Devastation, but at least there were some of them left to complain about it then, and will be still, when the system moves out of the Coal Sack in another seventy-five thousand years. Without the Sisters, the Sawls would have vanished long, long, ago.”

  He withdrew for a while, bemused, clicking his fingers along the rim of the keypad. Then he exclaimed, “Damn, the sheer audacity of it! The utter genius! I would like to have known those old Sawls!”

  Susannah grinned at his outburst. They sat in comfortable silence, each contemplating the profound elegance of t
he ancients’ plan while adding to mental lists of questions yet to be answered.

  “By the way,” said Danforth finally. “I asked the doc to come with us,”

  “You did? When?”

  “Some point during the return flight. But he was so out of it, he probably won’t even remember.”

  “Ah.” Susannah was sure she understood now why the Master Healer had decided to live, “Oh Taylor, that was brilliant. I wish I’d thought of it.”

  “Between us, I figure we can convince Weng. He may have a hard time fitting in again here, with all he’s learned and been through. I thought we sort of owe him a new lease on life, that is, if he wants to come.”

  “Oh, I think he will.” She smiled at him gratefully. “I think he’ll jump at the chance.”

  “It’s, I mean, he’s gone, Commander.” McPherson shifted uneasily.

  Susannah clicked off her searchbeam. “None of us know anything about this, Weng, I promise you. He was still there when they took away Aguidran.”

  Weng folded her arms thoughtfully, gazing at the tall line of torches burning along the dark clifftop. Singing resounded from the cave mouths.

  “Spirited him away, they did,” said Megan. “For whatever reason.”

  “Gotta admit, they’re saving us a lot of trouble,” McPherson offered. “Not having to bring him back in cold storage ’n all.”

  “Not having to explain certain details…” added Megan.

  Weng rocked gently on her heels.

  “CONPLEX is used to losing men in the field, but it will complicate the invalidation of the claim if there’s any whiff of suspicion that it wasn’t an accident,” said Megan. “Going to be hard enough to convince them as it is, with all those charges he racked up against us.”

  Weng sucked in a deep breath of damp-scented night air, then sighed and shook her head. “Why did you even bother to bring him back?”

  Susannah and McPherson said nothing, but Megan smiled, knowing the victory was won. “They didn’t want your job getting too easy on you, Commander.”