by Barry Kirwan
“This has no pertinence,” shouted Sister Esma. “The spider race were barely Level Four and refused sponsorship: aside from art, they were technologically primitive, even compared to humanity.”
Micah begrudged her the point. He imagined from the Grid Society’s perspective this would be no different to humans clubbing seals to death for fur, to the point of extinction.
“Level Four?” Kat addressed the Q’Roth and Sister Esma, as if just noticing them for the first time. “How can you be so sure?”
The scene shifted to a cavern full of blue eggs. “The spider race hid tens of thousands of eggs on the planet before the culling. They knew you were coming. They used a shielding system your technology could not penetrate. They knew how valuable a food source the eggs would be to you; a delicacy, perhaps.”
“Impossible,” Sister Esma shouted.
Ukrull’s voice grazed across the arena. “Have been watching. Would have seen. Not detected any eggs.”
Sister Esma pointed at Kat. “You are lying in a Grid court!”
Kat closed her eyes and concentrated. Micah realised she was communicating with the Hohash. Pierre turned to face the Ranger. “Access your ship’s logs.” An image of the planet appeared from the Hohash, small yellow patches appearing just below the surface, like sparse stubble on a smooth chin. “These are the nest locations. Here is the decryption cipher.” A sequence of serifs hung over the Ourshiwann world.
Ramires stepped behind Kat. “Are you sure we should be showing this to the Q’Roth?”
She opened her eyes. “It’s all or nothing, and this is our best evidence. These courts are sealed. Besides, Grid society values complete disclosure. They have a saying that a half-truth is worse than an outright lie.”
The Ranger stuck one of its claws into a smaller reptile which Micah only now realised was alive. After a moment, Ukrull growled a single word. “True.”
Sister Esma tried to confer with the queen, but again was shut down by her. Good, Micah thought, you’re showing your true colours. Maybe the Q’Roth will decide you’re a liability.
“This throws doubt,” Kat said, “on the Q’Roth and Grid procedures for determining the level to be assigned to the host of a planet.”
The Finchikta squawked. “Careful! Respect!”
Kat glanced at him once then continued unabashed. “We have more evidence, this time from Earth. Chahat-Me?”
Micah thought she was talking alien for a moment, until the Ossyrian creature opened its jaws and emitted a choral screeching that had him pressing his palms over his ears.
“You get used to it,” Kat said. “I can tell you what she’s saying, as Pierre told me earlier. Her race, the Ossyrians, visited Earth – Egypt to be precise – four thousand years ago. They detected an EPC – that’s an Emergence Precipitation Coefficient, which determines how close a race is to ascending to the next level of intelligence – of 0.7. If it reaches the threshold of 1, which is basically one per cent of the population, the race cannot be culled outright, and should be advertised for sponsorship. Oh, and she’s adding, I think, that I intervened on their behalf to stop their technology being stolen, in a show of cognitive pattern recognition worthy of Level 4.”
Chahat-Me closed her jaws, and bowed deeply to the Tla Beth. Pierre took up the reins. “My father was a geneticist but also a statistical historian, a researcher for the Sentinels, guardians fighting against the Alicians. He was aware of the Q’Roth-Alician pact, and believed the Alicians were systematically eliminating scientists who demonstrated Level Four talents. Before he died, he made me commit to memory various statistical data and analyses – his genetic re-engineering of my brain focused a great deal on compressed memory storage.”
So, Micah thought, he used Pierre, his own son, for data storage, to keep his ideas safe. He felt sorry for Pierre. No wonder he’d turned to science long ago – less chance of being hurt.
“Here are the data, analysed with the Level Ten formula usually applied for species categorisation.” Pierre’s tubes flashed at a subliminal rate. A sphere appeared, like a marble, with milky colours dancing inside its surface, shifting, falling, colliding like waves. Micah had no idea what it meant. The queen stared at it intently. He was gratified to see that Sister Esma was lost, too.
“As you can see,” Pierre said, “the EPC in 2058, when my father was terminated by the Alicians, was 5.8. This was despite an Alician policy of seeking out talented scientists and murdering them, as well as squashing or squandering research funding to keep humanity in the dark, despite the emergence of new intelligence.”
One of the Q’Roth warriors now stood between the queen and Sister Esma. Micah did not know how complicit the Q’Roth were in the Alician tactics to achieve their masters’ goals – probably they didn’t care, but right now he understood why the queen would want to distance herself from the Alicians.
“Is it likely,” Kat said, “given what you have seen, that less than a thousand angts ago, when humanity was rated and culling permission was granted, that the EPC was less than one?”
“This evidence could be pure fabrication!” Sister Esma screamed.
‘It could, but is not.” Pierre said. “So, we would like to see the original deposition which rated humanity.”
Sister Esma started to speak but was nudged sharply by the warrior. A pregnant silence hung in the chamber. A minute passed.
“What’s going on?” Sandy said. “Why don’t they want to show it?”
Kat whispered. “Pierre’s hunch, we have to play it.” She walked to the other side of the platform to face the Ranger. “We call upon the Ranger to testify on the original deposition.”
Ukrull’s amber eyes flared, and his tail lashed out violently. “Deposition… accepted.”
Kat pressed. “Did the Ranger who submitted it agree with the rating?”
The tail flailed again.
“The whole truth please, that is what the Grid Society values, is it not? It is also a requirement in human judicial proceedings.”
The Finchikta ruffled its feathers. “You humans go too far!”
It was the last thing Micah remembered hearing. The Tla Beth ascended rapidly from the arena, and everything around him melted into static.
Micah opened his eyelids to see Sandy leaning over him, in a white room shaped like a tent. “Come on sleepy-head, the rest of us woke up hours ago.”
He rubbed his eyes, feeling for once like he’d had a good sleep. Then it all flooded back to him. He sat up as if starting from a nightmare. “The verdict! What happened?”
“We won,” Kat said. “Sort of.”
Micah would have preferred an unqualified version. “Can you elaborate?”
She glared at him. “Yeah, sure, Micah. You want elaboration? Okay then, here are the headlines. I saw Rashid’s ship evaporate in the heart of a star – glad to hear he survived, a story I’d like to hear in detail. Pierre and I were dying, and well, we made love, and I got pregnant. Nearly drowned but got rescued by the Ossyrians; saved their tech from being stolen by another alien race, the Mannekhi – friends of yours I believe, you really should watch the company you keep. My Hohash pal unleashed all hell inside my brain, not for the first time I might add, and it turns out the entire galaxy is under serious threat. Oh, and Pierre’s nannites got way ahead of themselves and everybody else, including the Ossyrians. It’s a girl, by the way. She’s next door, sleeping, Chahat-Me’s the godmother, kind of rushed it through for me.”
Micah stared open-mouthed. “Kat, I –”
“Oh sorry,” she said, in a mocking tone, much to Sandy’s amusement, “you meant the court case! Silly me, I thought you gave a damn.”
Micah stood up. “Kat I do –”
“The Tla Beth threw out the case. Pierre and I had a couple of days in quarantine outside to do some research. Chahat-Me helped us out. You see, the Tla Beth fostered the Ossyrians aeons ago, steered them away from their genocidal tendencies to become caring doctors. Meanwhile, though less well-known,
the very same Tla Beth fostered the already nastily violent Q’Roth to become even more lethal, with a killing instinct hooked into the most basic instinct of all, hunger. The Tla Beth needed footsoldiers, see? There was a war coming. The Q’Roth did their bit around fifty thousand years ago. Wrecked their own civilisation, reducing themselves to nomadic status, but they saved a whole quadrant from chaos. Only problem was that the killing instinct couldn’t be bred out of them. Best the Tla Beth could do was extend their hibernation cycle. For a while it didn’t matter, there were plenty of Level Two or Three planets to feed upon every thousand years. But then finding such planets got trickier. So, they –”
“– relaxed the rules,” Micah finished. He figured it was his turn to interrupt. She nodded, and flashed a fake smile. He could tell she was angry, but he knew it wasn’t about him. “Where’s Pierre now?”
She put her hands on her hips. “Are we talking existentially or physically? Because for me it’s the first that’s bugging me.”
Sandy intervened. “Kat,” she held the other’s hand. “From what you’ve told me, he’s no longer Pierre.”
Micah was impressed at how Sandy never feared to say the things everyone else only dared to think. Kat retracted her hand, though not abruptly, and walked over to the single small oval portal onto space.
“He’s with Chahat-Me, finalising the deal they struck with the Tla Beth.”
Micah felt awkward, not knowing if he should do something like give Kat a hug – but he didn’t know her that well.
Sandy rescued him. “Why don’t you go and see the baby, Micah. I sent Ramires in there, too, you know how emotionally inept men can be.”
He frowned, and walked towards the seamless wall as Sandy had indicated. A door irised out of nowhere, and he stepped through it. It closed silently behind him, and he realised he didn’t know which way to go down the three-sided windowless corridor, left or right. On impulse he turned left and came to a dead end. He decided to try it and approached the wall. Another round doorway opened up revealing Pierre and Chahat-Me in some kind of crystalline control room.
“Enter, Micah, we need to talk. The Tla Beth have delivered their detailed ruling. You won, but there’s a catch.”
“Where’s Kat?” Micah asked Sandy and Ramires, who were sitting on the floor, legs stretched in front of them, their backs to the bench running half-way around the room.
“Breast-feeding, last time I checked,” Sandy said.
“Oh, right. I’ll fill her in later.”
“So, what’s the deal?”
Micah sat down opposite them. He felt dizzy from the speed of events the past few days, as if he’d just stepped off a particularly violent rollercoaster. “First, the good news. The Q’Roth have been banned from going anywhere near Ourshiwann, which is where we’re headed. And we’ve been granted provisional Level Four status, which means we can’t be selected for culling. And there’s an unexpected bonus, a trove it’s called.”
“Which is?”
“Whenever a culling takes place, a record is taken, a sample if you like. A slice of the biosphere is literally cut out of the planet, put into a massive stasis container, and sent for processing in some kind of Galactic library. Good news is, it hasn’t reached processing yet, and is now being diverted back to Ourshiwann, where it’ll arrive in a few months. Wherever the trove came from on Earth, there’ll be fauna, insects, birds, maybe even some animals, or … people, I suppose. We can get back some of our bio-diversity.”
“But that’s fantastic!” Sandy said. “So, why aren’t you smiling?” She rested her palm on top of Ramires’ thigh. “Spill the beans, Micah.”
He sighed. “Okay. We have to be sponsored. It’s a fact of Grid life. The Ossyrians will be our guardians and representatives for the next fifteen years. During this time,” he raised and dipped his eyebrows, “we’ll be quarantined: no one leaves or enters Ourshiwann, except a handful of Ossyrians. They’ve promised to be hands-off with us, just helping with education, a kind of induction into Grid Society.” He looked down at his feet.
“There’s more isn’t there?”
“Yes. And it affects you directly, Sandy.”
Her eyes fixed on him and didn’t waver. Ramires pulled himself into a more upright pose, his hand clasping hers.
Micah took a breath. “The next generation must undergo genetic enhancement.”
She shot to her feet. “No fucking way!”
Micah stayed where he was. “No exceptions, Sandy. Kat’s daughter, too.”
Sandy stomped the floor hard. “No! It’s Gabriel’s son. He’s all I have! We didn’t survive all this just to have our genes manipulated and mutilated.”
Micah kept his voice calm. He guessed Pierre was having a similar discussion with Kat right now. “How long do you think humanity will last as it is, Sandy? We’ve been out here a few months, and we’re hopelessly inept, unable even to communicate most of the time without my resident, which is borrowed, illegal alien tech. Fifteen years – a generation – to give us a chance to survive in the Grid. If nothing else it will put us on an even keel with the Alicians. The genning won’t be too severe, mainly an upgrade to our neural processing – kids will think faster and be able to process thoughts in parallel.”
“And what do they lose, Micah, what’s the downside of this trade, because there always is one, isn’t there?”
Micah had no answer. “It’s non-negotiable, Sandy. It’s been decreed. We take it or else we’re abandoned, and the Q’Roth will finish the job they started. The Q’Roth queen played her hand well, knowing that with this Kalaheii threat, all their tribes will once again be called upon by the Tla Beth to fight; apparently two entire legions have been lost already. Despite all the evidence, we nearly had them sponsoring us.”
Ramires spoke softly, holding her hand. “Sandy, I am a warrior, one of the best in humanity, but I’m barely a match for an Alician. I want your son to be unafraid, to know he can fight on equal terms. Gabriel would have wanted this.”
She snatched her hand away, turning away from both of them, but remained silent. Ramires caught Micah’s eye and nodded to the hidden doorway. Micah got up and started to leave.
“Micah,” Sandy said, still facing away from him, “how are you going to convince the rest of humanity to go along with this? They’ve not seen what we’ve seen. They won’t understand. They’ll think you’ve sold them out.”
Micah paused in front of the doorway. “No idea, Sandy. One leap at a time.”
Kat drilled holes in the floor with her eyes, while Pierre went through the deal and the implications for humanity. Only when he’d finished everything and seemed ready to leave, did she speak.
“You’re not staying with us, are you?” She indicated the cot in the corner where their daughter slept.
He answered straight away – not harsh, just clinical, “Part of the deal is that I aid the Tla Beth and the Rangers. My development has not stopped. If anything, it is accelerating.”
Kat looked up. “I want to see my Pierre, even if only for one last time. I know you can do it. Somewhere buried deep inside you, he’s still there.”
Pierre’s silver eyes danced, though the rest of him remained motionless. Kat had the sense that there was some kind of internal debate going on inside his head. Abruptly Pierre shook and fell to his knees. She was by his side in a moment, her arms locked around his trembling frame, the silver flesh uncannily soft to her touch.
“Kat,” he said, short of breath.
“My God, Pierre, what’s happened to you?” She braced herself and kissed his silver lips hard.
He hung his arms around her. “It’s … it’s okay. In fact, it’s utterly amazing, beyond description. So much, I don’t know where to begin.” He panted, leaning heavily on her.
“I want you back, Pierre, I need you. Your daughter needs you!”
His silver eyes flashed metallic blue, irises forming. “Can’t, Kat, almost gone. No way back, organs … changed. Everyth
ing … rewired. I’m just an echo of who I was. War is coming… Need to prepare, fight, or else no one will survive, not even the Tla Beth. You see, I worked it out.” His speech quickened, as if he was running out of time. “What the Kalaheii were trying to do when they destroyed their galaxy. You were right all along, Kat. You said it months ago: why would they commit suicide? So I figured it out. We have to find the Kalarash before they try again.”
She shook him. “I don’t care!” She screamed at him, waking the baby. “What about us?”
“Doing this for us. Must. No way … back.”
She felt him tensing, the blue eyes reverting to silver, his skin hardening. She was losing him for good this time. “Our daughter, Pierre, name her, please.” She sniffed, trying to hold back the tears.
He held her hand, gently. “Petra,” he said. “Rock. Me. Remember?”
The tears broke. She watched them fall, splashing onto his silver thigh, running off immediately onto the floor. “Petra,” she whispered, as Pierre got up and left the room.
Chapter 27
Showdown
Cool ground crunched underneath Blake’s boots as the night surrendered to the first pre-dawn rays, rendering Shakirvasta pale and ghost-like, his pistol arm hanging by his side. They reached the plaza where Carlson’s large frame hung, the noose long since dug into his neck so that the blood had congealed black around it, his contorted face chalk white. Blake followed the pleated cord upwards to a crude bronze hook, the type butchers had used since ancient times to hang up carcasses. The cadaver twisted slowly in the dawn breeze, the rope creaking at each turn. Blake wanted above all else to get Carlson down; he deserved better.
“Your move, Commander,” Shakirvasta said.
Blake approached Carlson. He’d seen enough dead bodies in his time to anticipate the smell and rigidity of a stale corpse. He placed his arms around the dead man’s legs, and with a grunt, shoved the stiff body upwards. It took a few attempts, but the cord finally slipped off the hook, and Blake lowered Carlson’s body to the ground. Surreptitiously, squatting on his haunches next to Carlson’s frame while regaining his breath, he slipped his hand inside Carlson’s jacket pocket. Empty.