Ace of Thralls (Freelance Courier Book 3)

by Lawrence M. Schoen

  “How is that body a prison?”

  “It’s unnecessary. Having come to understand how physical senses work, how they process specific frequencies of energies and sample gradients of chemical substances in the environment, our individual cells learned to do the same things much more efficiently. Bodies such as these create dichotomies with the surrounding world, us and it, localized in a specific place. Because we’ve mimicked their form, we fell victim to the illusion that we shared the physical needs of the Tosh. With that realization, the solution was obvious.”

  Gel frowned. “That’s why you shed your bodies. You didn’t devolve, you deliberately returned to the earlier algae-like state that you had at the beginning of your sapience.”

  “To appearances, yes, though at a much more complex level. The one hundred or so of us who remained departed the cities the Tosh had built for us and spread our substance over much wider areas in the lakes and shorelines of this world.”

  “The shorelines, but not out into the wider oceans?”

  “No, to do so would be to leave the Tosh entirely behind. We longed to give them space to develop independence, but they still needed us at a physical level. And so we compromised. As some consortiums returned to the sea a portion of them effectively aerosolized.”

  “Aerosolized?

  “Each cell of a consortium is an individual that comes together in community to engage in communication and civilization. We agreed that a portion of us would take turns remaining among the islands of the Tosh. Though too small to be seen, we are nonetheless distributed among them. We are in the air they breathe, the water they drink, the food they grow and consume. They do not need to be consciously aware of our presence for their bodies to respond to it. In this way, the need we had bred into them is satisfied, albeit unawares. Every Tosh on this world carries multiple Clarkesons within them.”

  “Seriously? That was your solution? Turn your back on the thralls you made and secretly feed their addiction just enough to keep them alive while you all just float upon the ocean, thinking your weighty thoughts as you commune with the stars and the evening sky? You think that’s being more highly evolved?”

  “You oversimplify the situation.”

  “I’m responding to what you’ve told me.”

  “In part, but you’re anchored in the misperceptions that the Tosh have related. We cannot free them of the limitations of their own physiology, both those that are common to singular life forms and those that we put in place in the early days of their evolution. But for thousands of years we have been weaning away their dependency as best we can.”

  “How?”

  “The compounds you have been visiting. We have slowly and invisibly helped the Tosh to select their populations. These are individuals with the weakest expression of the biological need to have to connect with Clarkesons. They believe themselves to be members of a secret underground, that were the Clarkeson’s to discover them, their compounds would be sundered and their populations scattered. In fact, the opposite is true. We see them as the Tosh’s best hope to leave us behind and forge a path for themselves.”

  “You’re doing it again, manipulating their development.”

  “For their own good. It is a slow process, but time does not deter us. At this moment, there are nearly ten thousand scattered among their compounds who could survive without us in their lives.”

  “And you know this because…?”

  “The individual Clarkeson cells carried by all Tosh record everything about their hosts. We gain access to their knowledge and their activities. When we are expelled, these same individuals rejoin with a consortium and share their information.”

  “You’re basically spying on the Tosh.”

  “We monitor them. This is how we knew of your presence, how we learned your language. It is why we assembled this form to come and speak with you.”

  “You wanted to tell me that a hundred Clarkesons are intrusively monitoring ten million Tosh for their own good? Okay, got it. Anything else?”

  “Yes. Everything to this point is just background so you would understand the real issue.”

  “What issue?”

  “Your client, Aushthack, hopes to remove the entire Tosh population, although as you are aware he currently has neither the means to do efficiently, nor a confirmed destination to offer them.”

  “We’re working on both those problems.”

  “There is a greater one. If he were to somehow accomplish his goal, it would be a mistake. Moreover, It would be murder.”

  “Murder? What are you talking about.”

  “Only those like himself — Tosh whom we have guided to their compounds and have had the aching need, the yearning to connect, with the Clarkesons reduced — only these would survive. The rest would succumb to listlessness and despair and perish.”

  “So why have you come to me? Why not explain this to them yourselves?”

  “There are things a parent cannot explain to a child, no matter how patiently. No matter how carefully they attempt to do so, everything they would hear is filtered through the mythology of their species. You don’t have that past.”

  “You’re talking to me because I lack the Tosh’s cultural baggage?”

  “That, and you have the exemplar of Aushthack to point to, someone who has successfully left this world and lived in the galaxy beyond for years.”

  “You’re saying they’ll believe me but not you.”

  “Essentially, yes.”

  “So you want me to convince them they can leave and that you’re okay with it.”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s the easy part. They want to leave. The hard part is you want me to further convince them that they have to leave most of their population behind.”

  “Again, yes, but only for a time. We will continue our efforts to decrease their biological need for us. Every generation, Aushthack, and those who leave with him, will be able to return here, gathering up more of their kind who can survive without us.”

  “Why didn’t you simply do this yourself?” Gel gestured at the hulking figure in front of her. “You can still take on a humanoid form. You’ve committed individual cells to wander the world and keep you informed. Surely you could have built an old-style consortium, taken a ship and gone out into the galaxy yourselves to find a suitable location to create a new home for the Tosh.”

  “We had no reason to believe such a plan would work or what hostile elements existed on the other side of the sole portal in this system. None of those Clarkesons who departed have ever returned. We had no reason to believe that were we to mount a scouting expedition as you describe there would be any return from that, either. We did not know if this was an environmental factor, something that lay beyond our door, a limitation of our own biology that might not apply to the singular Tosh. Or even perhaps a dependency that we had acquired as we have merged more and more of our own consciousness with this world.”

  “So you gave up.”

  “No. We continued to prepare, reducing the dependence of our children on us.”

  “How do you even measure that?”

  “Their odor.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Surely you have noticed that the Tosh smell. Specifically, they have two scents, one of which is associated with the physiological responses to anxiety and related behaviors.”

  “I have. Aushthack smells like violets, and the scent is heavier when he’s nervous.”

  “The other odor is correlated with their devotion and dependence. It is quite faint among the Tosh you have met, but were you to venture into some of the cities their ancestors built, you would encounter Tosh who have not been bred as those in the compounds have. They have a much thicker odor.”

  “That’s it? Your big effort to reduce the Tosh’s dependency on you is to change their scents.”

  “No, that is merely one measure of it. But we do understand it has been far from successful.”

  “You think? The Tosh beli
eve you’ve disengaged with the external world. They don’t know where you’ve gone. Most of them are following you into what they believe to be your despondency. From what I’ve seen, they’ve stagnated. For thousands of years they’ve done nothing new, not with technology, nor with art. They’ve huddled in the cities they built for you — cities which you’ve abandoned — leading lives of little purpose, except for the handful that you’ve guided to the compounds, who studied the records of their forebears and dared to dream of a greater world.”

  “You can give them that world.”

  “How?”

  “Inspire their exodus. Help them to leave. Find them a home.”

  “The issue of the home aside, why would they listen to me?”

  “As we have explained, they would not listen to us. They may listen to you. And so we have formed this consortium to speak directly to you, knowing that the Tosh are aware of this conversation.”

  “They’re recording it?”

  “No, we have made sure of that. They know only that we will have spoken. When we have concluded, this consortium will wander off and its members slowly disperse. Afterwards, you can tell them whatever story you believe will be most effective. That you convinced us to allow them to leave. That you gained our promise of safe passage. That we relinquish our hold on the lives of those living within their compounds. And that in time, others of their race will be able to join them.”

  “I might be able to sell that, but if I were them I’d be paranoid. It would be so easy, having rounded up all these Tosh who want to get away from you, and simply destroy their ships with him aboard, as they tried to leave.”

  “If we want them to do that, it would be far simpler to snuff them out in their compounds at any time. Do not allow fear to overwhelm logic. Will you do this for us?”

  “I can try,” said Gel, “but I have a question.”

  “Ask.”

  “Why has your consortium taken this form? You’re so much physically larger than your template. Are you trying to intimidate me?”

  “Intimidation was never a factor. This form was a compromise.”

  “With whom?”

  “All of the Clarkeson cells in this world. Everyone wished to be part of this conversation. Obviously that was not possible. A compromise was achieved, a representative number to create a consortium for this purpose. Even so, that number was large, requiring a modification of this form.”

  “So you’re more than just the ten trillion cells that make up the Clarkesons as I know them, more than just the trillion sapient beings.”

  “Yes. We have marveled at your description of the Clarkesons, as you know them, consortiums that make use of sentient but non-sapient cells, that hollow themselves out to appear of comparable stature to the other races surrounding them. This shape before you has no non-sapient individuals and no hollow spaces within it. Our compromise required in excess of two hundred trillion individuals. Many felt that was insufficient representation. Even so, this lumbering shape is ineffective, and we will all be glad to leave it behind when we conclude this conversation. So tell us, Angela Colson, have we convinced you that the Clarkesons of this world, regardless of who we were in the past, are not a race of disinterested slave lords with no concern for the descendants of the original playthings we created for our own amusement? Have we shown you our need for your assistance, that we might make at least partial atonement for our errors, for our ego, and begin to do right for our children, the Tosh?”

  “Like I said, I can try.”

  “We ask that you rephrase.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Something we have learned of your Traveler language that does not exist in our own speech.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The concept of attempting an action.”

  “What about it?”

  “For us, one either does or does not. For you, the very words, ‘attempt’ or ‘try’ contains within its meaning the possibility of failure. We would rather you not invoke such a possibility.”

  “I can’t predict what will happen. Failure is always a possibility.”

  “It is, but let that exist in the world itself, not in the doer of deeds. To the Clarkeson, intention is everything. In this respect, we would ask that you emulate us.”

  A Reduction In Scent

  If she closed her eyes, Gel could easily believe she was in a flower shop, smothered by the fragrance of endless bouquets all around her. After meeting with the Clarkeson, she had returned through the swamp and re-entered the Reshmor compound, trusting that her new friends had monitored her encounter and now realized that whatever danger they had imagined or feared had passed. While she traversed the swamp they had spread the word and begun returning themselves.

  Portals to the other island compounds disgorged visitors in record numbers, several of them destabilizing in the process and requiring prepared replacements to be pressed into service. Now, she once again stood in the same large meeting room where they had held her welcoming banquet. That table had been removed. All the available floor space had been packed like a lecture hall with the mushy grey balls they favored in lieu of chairs, and every chair filled with a senior member of a research team from across the nine compounds.

  Gel had been debriefed quickly upon returning, and the basics of her encounter with the Clarkeson were known to everyone present. Far from relieving their anxiety, it had only ramped things up further, as evidenced by the floral melange wafting from so many Tosh in the enclosed space. The long walls of the room were the same muted beige they had been during her feast, but the bright orange smears had been removed and the only color on display was a two-meter aquamarine splotch on the narrow wall behind Gel that, deliberately or not, highlighted her position, and caused her — at some unconscious level — to stand so that she occupied the middle of it.

  “You believe them?” said Evlerp, her question causing the room to settle down and quiet the murmuring throughout, effectively calling the proceedings to order and starting what Gel hoped would be a very short conversation.

  “I do.”

  “Why? It flies in the face of everything we know about the Clarkesons.”

  “Actually, it doesn’t,” said Gel. “It’s completely consistent with what you know, once you accept the possibility that what you think you know is only a partial image of the facts, and even then it’s filtered through your own interpretation. It’s not objective at all, and most of it isn’t based on direct observation, just centuries of stories.”

  That sent a murmur through the room, as she’d intended. These Tosh, the ones who lived in the compounds, who had been systematically guided by the Clarkesons to have greater resistance to the biological need to serve their overlords, defined themselves by their mission to recover and expand upon the science and technology that had been left behind in their ancestors’ records. Knowing that to be the case, she deliberately confronted them because a lack of empiricism from their own beliefs would give them pause and set them on a path for more objective reflection.

  “Think about it. From what you’ve seen today, it should be obvious that the Clarkesons know about this compound. Before I left to go to my ship, they were aimed right here. More specifically, they were on a direct path to one of these compound’s access points. And if they knew about this compound, doesn’t it seem likely they knew of the existence of the other eight and their precise locations?”

  “Not necessarily,” ventured one of the younger Tosh in the room. “They could have been honing in on your ship.”

  “No,” said Peltond, the head of the hydroponics team from the compound at Splirsen. “Pay attention. We know the Clarkeson had initially targeted this compound and only changed toward her vessel after Gel left here.”

  “Right,” said Gel, moving on and waving a hand in front of her nose to dissipate the sudden burst of rose-scented embarrassment from the young Tosh who had spoken. “And I realized that the Clarkeson knowing of your existence and not acting on
it to disband or otherwise disrupt your work here doesn’t prove that anything else they said to me is true, but it seems to me it creates a context where that’s the more likely interpretation. Let’s look at what we already know. Some of you have traveled overland delivering portal halves. You’ve walked among other Tosh and witnessed firsthand, their despondency, smelled their complacency. And you’ve seen that one among you successfully left this world. His return likewise suggests that what the Clarkeson has said is true. All of you are significantly different from the other Tosh on Stefnal. Your existence in these compounds has shown you that you’re no longer enthralled, at least not in anything like the same degree as the rest of your people. You can leave. The logistics still have to be worked out, but that fact remains, you don’t have to stay here any longer.”

  “But you’re talking about only a small fraction of all the Tosh,” said Aushthack. “Barely ten thousand of the ten million here on Stefnal.”

  “I understand that,” said Gel. “I understand you don’t want to leave anyone behind. But if what the Clarkeson told me is true, then bringing them with, in their current state, would kill them. Those of you who can leave now have the opportunity to set up a new world where the descendants of the people you leave behind will one day be able to join you, as the Clarkesons continue their efforts to remove the biological compulsions that have enslaved the Tosh from the earliest beginnings.”

  “There is another consideration,” said Kerloan. “When one lives with a thing that is omnipresent, it doesn’t occur to question it. We have always known the Tosh to be thralls of the Clarkesons. It is a fact, like the color of the sky or the sound of rain. And because this fact is ubiquitous, it has never occurred to us to examine it with scientific rigor,”

  “Where are you going with this,” asked Evlerp.

  “I would propose that once we establish ourselves on a new home, if not before, we take up this question ourselves. The Tosh have shown for many millennia that in terms of research and development we excel well beyond what the Clarkesons can accomplish. Perhaps we can achieve a means to remove the compulsion, lessen it, or even block it, rather than wait for the Clarkesons to breed it out of successive generations as they have done for all of us.”