Ace of Thralls (Freelance Courier Book 3)

by Lawrence M. Schoen

  Water, fresh and pure. She realized how thirsty she was after the trek through the swamp. Hungry as well. She handed back the mug and repeated ‘water.’ “Thank you.”

  Aushthack had just drained a similar mug.

  “Now what?”

  “They’re preparing a celebratory feast,” he said. “Are you hungry?”

  “I could eat.”

  “They’re going to want to ask a lot of questions.”

  “Me too.”

  “That’s good, because I’m going to need you to answer as many of them as possible.”

  “Why is that? Surely you know more of what they’re going to want to ask.”

  “Probably. But for now, I’ll serve all of our needs best by translating both their questions to you and your answers as literally as I can. They’ll be listening not just to gain answers, but to hear how your language works so they can pick it up and speak with you more directly in a few days.”

  “You expect them to learn Traveler that quickly and in such a manner?”

  “I did,” said Aushthack. “And without the benefit of an interpreter. Remember, the Clarkesons bred us to be just as inquisitive and clever as they are.”

  “Did they?”

  “What are you asking? What do you mean?”

  “Maybe the Tosh are the ones innately curious and smart, and the Clarkesons that enslaved them were simply opportunistic, and modeled their own behavior and evolution on those characteristics, once they’d locked in your dependence on them so you couldn’t use those traits to escape.”

  “You’re not the first to have that idea,” said Aushthack. “And while we’ll probably never know which version is true, that’s all right, because I suspect our escape is imminent.”

  Technology and Translation

  Gel doubted these renegade Tosh in their underground complex actually had a feasting hall. Why would they? The space they’d led her to probably normally served some other purpose and they’d simply cleared out their largest meeting space and hauled in a large table shaped like a cursive L in the middle of it. They’d surrounded it with waist-high, mushy gray balls that they used as chairs, thirty-two of them. Gel had been escorted to what Aushthack assured her was a place of honor, midway down one side. He was seated across from her. Like the previous room and the hallways they’d taken to get here, the feasting hall was brightly lit, the walls and ceiling providing a warm, diffused light. Here and there someone had smeared a bit of color on the otherwise bland walls, as if rushing past with a handful of vivid green or purple or yellow paint and wiping it away on the wall. Just below the ceiling, a trio of hand-sized spheres moved around the room, orbiting the middle of the table.

  “Cameras?” said Gel, and Aushthack nodded.

  “This is being recorded and broadcast throughout the complex. Everyone wanted to be here, but of course there isn’t space. The solution was to declare a holiday, and all the Tosh are watching. So, in that sense, you’re sharing a meal with all of us.”

  Before Gel could reply he held up a hand, gesturing for her to pause. He spoke softly and quickly into a disk that he now wore on his collar that one of the other Tosh had provided before he’d sat down.

  “Sorry,” he said. “For this to work, I need to provide translation of everything I say after I say it, and everything you say before I respond to it.”

  Grinning, he ducked his head again and spoke into the disk.

  A team of servers arrived bearing platters of cooked meats and roasted vegetables. The aromas caused Gel’s stomach to rumble and she blushed. The servers placed the food in the vicinity of the table’s inflection points. Other servers arrived with pitchers moving among the seated Tosh and began filling their mugs.

  “Angela Colson,” said a voice to Gel’s left. She looked up to see the same girl who had given her a mug earlier. She spoke the words slowly like she was tasting some new food, rolling them around in her mouth, the speech sounds so different from her own chittering language. From her expression, Gel suspected the girl was guardedly curious that such a strange thing could exist, something which she’d probably never even imagined. She held a pitcher in one hand and pressed the other to her chin. “Milsa,” she said.

  “Milsa? Is that your name?”

  The girl held up the pitcher, smiling. “Water for Angela Colson.”

  Gel glanced down at her mug and nodded. “Yes, please. Thank you, Milsa.”

  The young Tosh poured, filling the mug to the limit before withdrawing the pitcher. “Yes, water. Thank you,” she said, and stepped away.

  “We’re quick learners as you can see,” said Aushthack. “And that’s what this feast is all about, for everyone to learn more. Not just a welcome home or a vindicatory celebration, but also an opportunity to expand our knowledge.”

  “Does that apply to me as well?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m sure your people have a lot of questions. I have a few of my own that I’d like to get answered.”

  Aushthack translated this into his disk and before he could reply to her a much older Tosh, elegantly balanced on the squish ball to Gel’s right, lightly touched her arm and said, “Yes, questions,” and then added something in his own language.

  She looked across to Aushthack who was grinning even more than before.

  “Go ahead. They’re eager to answer anything you ask, and not just because they’re happy to share their knowledge, but because they expect to learn a lot about you by the kind of questions you ask.”

  Gel paused for just a moment to consider if Aushthack was trying to warn her, but supposed it really didn’t matter. There were things she needed to know.

  “Ask them about the portal we used to get down here. You never mentioned you had technology like that.”

  “When I left, they didn’t.”

  “Huh. Okay, ask them how they could make it so small. Everything I know says such a thing can’t be done. The physics of portals doesn’t allow it.”

  Aushthack passed her question along. Moments later several of the Tosh seated around her began speaking at once, voices overlapping. Aushthack slapped the table and they stopped, their clownish faces covered with chagrin. They held a quick, whispered conference and presumably, selected a spokesperson who then continued for the group, with every now and then another Tosh interjecting a thought or two when the principal speaker paused.

  “You have been told that we inherited the technological records of our ancient forebears,” translated Aushthack. “These included more than simply the designs describing the construction of vessels that could leave our atmosphere and travel into space, but also explanations of the principles behind that construction, including an account of a pair of massive, quantum-entangled loops that the Tosh had created for the overlords who left a world.”

  “You’re talking about the portal that Tiggly used to bring us here, the one on the edge of the star system.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But how did they move the other end of it across to that gas giant in a different spiral arm of the galaxy?”

  “The records refer to a cataclysmic event that briefly ripped an opening in the fabric of space.” He paused and a look of wonder came over him as he started nodding rapidly. “This may be the true reason why the portal is set at the edge of our star system. They wanted it as far from our planet as possible because of the rip they made to shove the other half through.”

  Somehow the spokesperson for the Tosh recognized that Aushthack had added something of his own and demanded a translation before letting him continue.

  “Even as the remaining overlords lost interest in much of the world, the Tosh have kept a constant watch on the artifact you and I recognize as a portal.”

  “So they saw my ship when it came through? They were expecting us?”

  He nodded. “Since the moment we arrived in the system.”

  One of the other Tosh spoke but was quickly hushed.

  “We were expecting someon
e.” Aushthack gestured to indicate he had translated the interrupter. “We didn’t know if it was this one” — Aushthack tapped his own chest — “or perhaps one of the long vanished overlords finally coming home.”

  “We prepared for either eventuality,” said the spokesperson through Aushthack, regaining control. “We could see that your vessel was very different from the ones our ancestors had made for the overlords who abandoned our world, and likewise from the craft Aushthack had used, which was a slight modification of that original design. But a great deal of time had passed and we appreciated that technology could develop and change.”

  “Which brings me back to your person-sized portals,” said Gel.

  “Yes,” said the spokesperson through Aushthack. “You are correct. Our understanding of operating principles indicated the technology had come to an end. The basics of it had been taught to each successive generation, but as there was only the one portal in our system, and no Tosh had ever gone through it, there was never an attempt to push those boundaries any further.”

  “Let me guess, that changed when Aushthack left you.”

  “Exactly. Our freshest minds returned to the problem, the underlying concepts and inherent limits and found, not so much an exception to those rules, but a minor and temporary variant.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “The portal our forebears built that hangs at the edge of our system represents the lower limit allowable that permits a stable transition from one side to the other. But several specific smaller diameters are available, albeit with ever decreasing stability.”

  “How does that instability manifest?”

  That question produced a huddle conversation among a small group of experts. Gel glanced over at Aushthack, who beamed happily back at her as if quite pleased with how things were progressing.

  “They break,” said the spokesperson.

  “You want to elaborate on that? Were we at risk coming in through the one in the swamp?”

  The spokesperson raised both hands, spreading and collapsing his fingers repeatedly, a gesture which made no sense to Gel, and which stopped after a quick word from Aushthack. The speaker shook his head instead.

  “No, there was no chance of that. These smaller portals are perfectly stable for at least three quarters of a year.”

  “And after that?”

  “With every subsequent usage, there is a growing chance that the previous transit will be its last. The quantum coupling will come undone and the connection between the two sides will be lost for good. The portal you came through at the door to our swamp is new made. We began its construction the moment your vessel arrived in our system, and only positioned it at that door when you had landed and began walking into the swamp. There were other access points you might have used, and so we waited to position one end of this portal until we saw you arrive just past the limits of the swamp and knew where you were headed.”

  “So, this technology has become common in your society.”

  The speaker shook his head again, seeming to delight in the gesture. “No, not remotely. It is extremely costly to produce and its inherent instability makes it a poor substitute for simpler modes of transportation. Currently, we have only a handful of them in use. Each of those connects to another complex, like this one on a different island. In this way, we have in recent years come to discover other collectives of like-minded Tosh who are striving to resist following our overlords into decline.”

  “And you shared all your technology with those other Tosh?”

  “We have, just as we are sharing this conversation with them. Your presence here brings hope not just to the Tosh in this complex, but others throughout both hemispheres of our world.”

  “Will you share that technology with me?”

  The spokesperson didn’t hesitate. “Of course, you have returned Aushthack to us. He is the hope of our people. Everything we have to offer is yours.”

  “Oh. Um… thanks!”

  “I hope that satisfies your immediate concerns. You should eat now. Your sliced thimkle is at its most savory when consumed before it cools.”

  Gel pointed at one of the items on her plate and the Tosh around her all nodded. “It smells good. Really good.”

  “I promise you we will converse at greater length, multiple times during your stay. And soon we will be able to do so without the assistance of Aushthack, but have no doubt we will keep him quite busy with questions of our own for him.”

  Gel nodded and the others around her bobbed their heads in turn, and then picked up the tiny wooden tridents that had been set just above their plates and reached forth to skewer a piece of meat — presumably the sliced thimkle — from their respective nearest platters. Gel followed suit, watching to see how her table mates used a pair of slender rods — basically chopsticks — to tug apart smaller portions of the meat that they pinned to their plates with their tridents, and then transferred to their mouths.

  She smiled inwardly, briefly imagining a small pamphlet she might compose of table manners among the Tosh, not that anyone would ever read such a thing if Aushthack was successful in hiding his people away on the Cliveden’s moon. She applied her chopsticks to the slices of braised alien flesh on her plate, and with a trepidation she did not allow to appear on her face, put the piece in her mouth.

  Her eyes widened with surprise as tears streamed down both cheeks. The thing was hot, spicy hot, as if Stefnal was the heretofore lost origin point for capsaicin. She was reaching frantically for her water mug, hoping to wash some of it away, though in her experience water only tended to spread the heat throughout the mouth, rather than dilute its effect, but she had no other choices. Then, without warning, the heat passed on its own, replaced by an aftertaste reminiscent of French vanilla ice cream and marzipan. Gel blinked, wiped her eyes, and the old man to her right who had not participated in the conversation about portals touched her arm again.

  “Good, yes?”

  Gel responded with a delightful smile. “Very good. Yes.”

  Schrödinger’s Portal

  The Tosh of Aushthack’s complex had not been idle during his absence. Inspired by his departure, the group had more than redoubled their efforts to recreate the technology in their records, and to improve upon it. Their breakthroughs with person-sized portals was only one example. In the years Aushthack had been gone, they had applied themselves to other forms of transportation, building a fleet of vessels, each slightly larger than Tiggly, and all capable of fitting through the Clarkeson portal at the edge of the system, carrying supplies to last a crew of twenty for years.

  Evlerp, one of the leading technologists and the oldest Tosh whom Gel had met, had explained through Aushthack that none of the vessels had been tested outside the atmosphere for fear of alerting their Clarkeson overlords and that the merest possibility of such an outcome induced panic attacks among the intended pilots, as it warred with their hardwired dependence upon the Clarkesons.

  Gel suggested they might get around that problem with some locked-in departure protocols that would launch their ships and not return control of the helm until after they had left the planet. But on a practical level, it was all moot. Even with more than two hundred ships, they were a far cry from being able to move ten million people. And that was only the beginning of the logistical issues. There were fewer than one thousand Tosh living in the complex, and even accounting for the other, similar complexes they had made contact with, no one had discussed how they might handle informing, let alone migrating, the planet’s population — with or without alerting the Clarkesons.

  Aushthack’s people had fared better with other technologies. Once they’d advanced beyond the prototype stage for their personalized portals, teams of volunteers had gone out, each transporting one end of a pair, traveling to the other islands of Stefnal, working on the assumption that surely there existed other complexes or compounds of Tosh unwilling to follow their Clarkeson overlords any further into decline. Their ancient recor
ds had included mentions and locations of underground fabrication facilities throughout the world, some in desolate areas like their own and others in the hearts of the glorious cities their predecessors had built to honor the Clarkesons.

  In the present day, most of the remaining Clarkesons had abandoned their cities, and their once ravenous demand for technology and innovation was long forgotten. Only a handful of remote manufacturing facilities had contained colonies of Tosh, reopened by individuals who had managed to break away from direct control of their overlords, much as the ancestors of Aushthack’s group had. The more plentiful sites that existed in cities had never been reclaimed once the urban Tosh had no longer had use for them in service to the Clarkesons. While many thralls remained in the cities, their efforts had shifted to more basic tasks, struggling to produce sufficient food for themselves, and desperately applying all of their efforts in a fruitless effort to come up with something — some creation of craft or art — that might catch the attention of the Clarkeson lord of that city, something which might distract or please, even if just for a moment. In a very real biological sense, the Tosh lived for that.

  But science and technology no longer entertained the Clarkesons, and those Tosh who shared the mindset of Aushthack’s people had long since departed the cities, leaving behind the wealth and resources that they might otherwise have desired.

  In all, most of the teams with portals had failed in their mission and returned home to their complex buried beneath the swamp. Most, but not all. In the end, they had found eight communities like their own, scattered throughout the islands of the world. Now, each possessed personalized portals and enjoyed a regular exchange of both ideas and personnel. They shared similar histories, having suspected the existence of their counterparts for millennia, but having no way of reaching out. None had engaged in something as simple as a radio transmission for fear that the Clarkesons might detect it.