by Nigel Foster
She thought a little more and decided: no, it wouldn’t make any difference.
<< Are we done here?
> Do you have a better place to be?
<< In a game. One of us chooses a word, the other two start adding new ones to make a succession of phrases that have to make sense.
Kara had to ask, struggling to lose the image of three AIs sat round a table, maybe with scorecards and drinks. The word “Cheat!” vanishes in the sounds of gunfire and weeping. There would be a faithful dog. Or a Cedric.
> Like?
<< The word was cloud. I took it to cloud-wincing. Which is feeling wet before it rains. Or thankful the deluge will fall on someone else. Or looking at a fluffy, inoffensive cloud and assuming a downpour. Pessimism, cynicism, anxiety disguised as rueful experience. But we still know what’s going on here with you and the rest. Multi-tasking, right?
Kara wouldn’t leave it alone. But AIs have to be somewhere. Didn’t you? Go somewhere and meet? Like one of the dimensions they used?
<< Well, yes, like sitting around a table maybe... it’s a pretend... no, honestly, it is somewhere but we don’t know where, only how to get there and it’s very AI personal so shouldn’t have told you, except you and I have some kind of bond, and we know why, right?
“Go on now, Salome, go, walk out the door,” Kara half-sang.
And the SUT echoed to “I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor, another one of Kara’s retro favourites... and a reminder from AIs everywhere: you only think you know us, but we know all of you.
> No more games, she said firmly, > concentrate on keeping us humans alive. And what would she do if Ishmael or Salome said sod it, sort out your own mess, we’re off? Except where would they go? And if their human or SUT dies, so do they.
Kara suspected Salome was made in a small factory somewhere in the Wild. The AI actually meant whoever was responsible for the original technology. But that could be any of a possible million alien races. The topdog pre-cogs didn’t invent or innovate. They merely controlled.
An alien race that put all its efforts into establishing and maintaining a slave empire. Destroying it would be a necessary pleasure.
And then found herself thinking of home. Would her Merc be safe at Marc’s house by the Severn? Would it record the feed from a Net subscription channel for twentieth-century retro freaks? There was a vid about some long-gone musicians called Queen that had looked interesting, although she wasn’t sure Queen of what. Inconsequential thoughts that were somehow as important as fighting the pre-cogs.
> You AIs communicate at faster than light.
< Via another dimension. But that’s how it looks to a human. A faint note of superiority in Ishmael’s voice.
> So can you access the Net back home?
Salome joined in.
<< Not enough bandwidth. Anyway, we’re tactical, which means no unnecessary comms. There’s a vid library on board.
Kara remembered. Travelogues, nature documentaries, classic retro drama and wildly experimental programmes that made her angry, although she was never sure why. But not a bad idea to think about them, keep them in the background and so – hopefully – mask a suspicion that had suddenly popped into her mind.
<< All AIs can listen to sub-dimension traffic. If we broadcast, they’ll know where we are. At least, our direction. Sorry. We’re on our own.
And ain’t that the truth, Kara thought. On her own with only three AIs and a space-happy Marc for company. Netherspace happy. He might be on the SUT but his heart was far away.
They’d argued over netherspace, shortly after what Kara had named the Battle of Cedric. Marc had wanted the full immersive experience, the hull transparent, surrounded by colours and shapes so extreme as to make anyone’s concept of hell little more than kittens playing in a sun-drenched, flower-bedecked cobbled street.
Kara had said no, because it would drive her mad.
Marc suggested dark glasses.
Kara knew he wasn’t serious... equally, that he was making a point. Marc was with her for now but nether-space was his life and it could be hers. Any moment and he’d begin rhapsodising about infinite glory and the secrets of existence.
Marc assumed a slur on his integrity – wrong, Kara simply disliked him in pilgrim mode – and stomped off to his sleek cabin. Which was when Salome explained she could make that section of hull transparent if he liked.
“You can wave to your friends,” Kara had said via AI.
“At least I have some,” he shot back.
“Then stop 'em using us like a fucking scratching post.”
It was one of those conversations that leave people dissatisfied and guilty, often more caustic in the long term than a full-blown row. Loyalty and affection slowly dissolved by the drip-drip of resentment. Private sadness about things never said, unspoken promises never fulfilled. There had been a time, not so long ago, when both Kara and Marc had thought they might be each other’s destiny. Defeat the enemy, fall into bed together, make passionate love – at last! at last! – and who knows, maybe even make a child or two. Okay, if nothing else at least mega, astounding sex that would echo throughout the universe and make dogs bark in the street.
They’d even half admitted it to each other.
But Marc went a-wandering, to return more or less a human, hard to tell either way, and obsessed by a light he’d glimpsed in netherspace.
And it was Kara who’d found him in a wine cellar, she thought angrily, without her he’d have died. Maybe. Well, she was there. Yes, it was a rescue.
But now she’d given her body and maybe her heart to another man. Who’d manipulated her, manipulated all of them... a whole damn planet... maybe even all of human colonised space. All to follow a plan, The Plan, devised by a castrated male who could see the future. This was not a sound basis for a relationship.
In remembering Marc and how they once were Kara also knew nostalgia for a simpler time. There’d been killing, it was what she did. Licensed by the Bureau, although even that turned out to be another Greenaway and GalDiv manipulation. She had her Merc and a few good drinking buddies at Tea, Vicar? in Bermondsey. She had her rock climbing. Sex life was good, sometimes spectacular.
Be honest, she told herself. That simpler time ended when my parents died.
Now she was umpteen light years from Earth, on some bat-shit crazy mission which she barely understood, her main drive to bring back her people. One of whom was away with the fairies, and the other away with the aliens. Talking of whom...
... Kara tried searching for Tatia in her mind, using the natural empathy that Greenaway had promised would work.
Nothing.
Okay, maybe AI to AI? Salome?
<< No can do. Sounded regretful.
> Why the fuck not?
<< Tatia doesn’t have an AI.
> But I thought... last time she was on Earth...
Apparently it was too risky. The Plan was for Tatia to end up in the heart of the pre-cog empire. Any AI would be discovered and either driven mad or destroyed.
Finding her was Kara’s responsibility. Everyone knew that she’d succeed. Meanwhile there was a classic vid in the library called Once Upon a Time in America, right up Kara’s retro street... or dark, blind alley.
> But we’re also going to the heart of the pre-cog empire.
<< But not for long, babe. Arrive, destroy, go home. Salome sounded confident.
> That’s Tse’s plan?
<< That’s you, Kara. It’s what you do, babe.
Something wrong here. Kara buried the thought deep in her mind.
> So tell me about this SUT’s armament.
<< Please don’t call me a SUT.
> Slut.
<< Oh, I never heard that one before. The Wild calls us ships.
The weaponry was effective and dull. An electromagnetic system used to disable enemy electronics. Torpedoes effective against anything within a ten-thousand-metre radius. Anything greater than ten K would give the target to
o much time to evade or jam the torpedo operating system. Battles conducted at very high speeds are over in seconds. Cedrics for close-quarter mayhem. An armoury with sidearms and longer-range weapons systems. Kara made all the right noises and felt for the comfort of the vibra-knife, deep in her pocket.
<< Anything else?
They were back in the rec room. Kara sat at the table and asked the question that had been worrying at her for months.
> Tell me about Tse.
<< Tee ess ee? The degenerative brain disease? Tokyo or Toronto Stock Exchange? A threaded small end? Salome giggled.
Kara sighed.
> Tse. One of the good pre-cogs. Don’t play cute.
<< What you want is really, really classified.
> We’re beyond that. And if you think my knowing will affect my actions, it won’t.
<< An hour before we leave n-space. Should be long enough.
> For all of it?
<< To some extent.
> Don’t.
<< Tse was a nickname given by his parents. It means The Seeing Eye. It stuck. Maybe an hour won’t be long enough. I’ll download to Ishmael. Access whenever you like.
Pre-cognition ran in families. Might skip a generation or six. Might vary from psychosis-inducing to the occasional lucky hunch. But all pre-cogs carried the same gene. All were descended from a tribe who lived in what would become the Altai sixty thousand years ago. It was a strange tribe, seen by others as magicians to be both fêted and feared. An accident of evolution meant they were particularly affected by netherspace. This gave them the sight, meaning psychic, and their music could send other types of human into a frenzy. The tribe were long lived but slow to breed, and that – plus an instinctive understanding of genetics – made them bring human mares and stallions from other tribes. In time the pre-cog tribe died out, but their genes lived on in the form of prophets, witches, inventors, psycho- and sociopaths, artists, writers, musicians and tyrants.
* * *
Move on tens of thousands of years. Abilities like empathy and telepathy are all governed by the netherspace-relevant gene, now worldwide save for a few hundred families where pre-cog is boss.
And thus are born great merchant houses and much later, fortunes made investing in industry, stock exchange, futures markets. Not all the wealthy are aware of the true nature of their heritage. Most recognise that they have something. Sensible enough not to talk about it. Wise enough to marry into similar families. No ambition to be mistress or master of the world. Intense rivalries between those houses, sometimes leading to small wars fought by proxy states unaware of the true reason why... and it’s always long-term financial.
Also pre-cogs advanced enough to be aware of an alien pre-cog empire, although humans are still firmly Earth-bound. The humans divide into two: a majority who see the alien empire as a future disaster; and a minority who can’t wait to belong. Both make plans.
> So who decided little boys lose their balls? Kara asked impatiently.
<< There was never an actual meeting. And it wasn’t only boys. It was noticed over time that pre-pubescent boys and girls were the strongest psychics. One reason why virginity was so important.
* * *
At some point it was understood that castration increased the pre-cog ability in men. The practice remained long after the reason had been forgotten. Boys were castrated to the glory of God. Or, in China, as advisors to the Emperor: no children, no family loyalty and ambition. Similarly in the Ottoman and Islamic Empires, but also as harem guards.
And if in 1797 Tsar Paul I ever wondered who Kondraty Ivanovich Selivanov really was (not believing that Selivanov was the Tsar’s real father. Or why Selivanov started the Skoptsy castration cult, a breakaway from the flagellant Khlysty cult. Cults could help a Russian peasant get ahead. Or at least feel better about life, not easy for a slave. And Russia from Baltic to Pacific had, still has, a magic in the very earth.
Tsar and prophet did meet, but Paul assumed the man was mad and sent him to an asylum. Three years later Selivanov was back in the castrating business. He had rich and powerful devotees. Ceremonies involved rhythmic, repetitive music and dancing. People were transformed. They saw mystical worlds. The castrated (men and women, the latter undergoing FGM or with breasts scarred, often removed: it was an equal opportunity cult) saw the most. They also looked far younger than their actual ages. It was a pre-cog thing, of course, albeit uncontrolled and rogue. The pre-cogs among them saw and shared images of a possible future and second, third hand impressions of netherspace.
Before Selivanov, people like Tamerlaine. After him Hitler. All with a confused mysticism that produces cruelty and death. Their victims a sacrifice disguised as the politics of conquest.
“I have all this,” Kara said out loud. “Some told, some guessed. Why repeat?”
“It passes the time, babe,” a woman’s voice said. Low, throaty, with a hint of wicked laughter, rippling through the ship. “Didn’t know the virgin thing, did you?”
“You mean like the Vestal Virgins in Ancient Rome? I do read. And stick with the voice in the head, okay?”
“This too distracting?”
“You know it.” But the truth, that while Kara could handle voices in her head, real ones were disturbing. Too much of the omniscient being that promises doom, the computer that eats the world. Kara decided she was being melodramatic. Get a grip, girl. Which was good advice, because the next moment, courtesy of Salome...
... a mass of images, timelines, pagoda temples and a sequence of Mount Fujiyama throughout the seasons crashed into Kara’s mind.
All of which was strange because Kara had thought Tse was Chinese.
Or maybe he was, because her head filled with floating Chinese lanterns, followed by a dragon chasing a pearl.
She knew him. Knew that his pre-cog parents were aware before he was born that Tse would be important. Parents so obsessed with the coming conflict that they happily, devotedly, gave Tse up to be educated at an isolated, exclusive school in Saskatchewan. The parents themselves the result of a breeding programme begun centuries earlier, their son the ultimate goal who would "see" how the alien pre-cogs might be defeated. In their own way the good pre-cogs were just as ruthless and single-minded as their bad cousins.
Tse was born eighty years before the Gliese and other aliens arrived.
He’d been castrated – just the testicles, penis intact, could still enjoy sex – when he was sixteen. He had been a hundred and twenty, looking early forties, when he blew himself up, together with a few Gliese, to avoid being taken over by the enemy.
Tse had brought Greenaway into the fold. Had overseen the process that would bring together Kara, Marc and Tatia. If Kara wanted anyone to blame it could only be Tse. Instead she felt a rush of sympathy and sadness.
Poor little bastard. Raised and educated as a saviour – and who would ever want that? He hadn’t chosen Marc or Tatia, Kara or Greenaway. He’d merely seen them as the most probable people to keep Earth free. Had possibly seen his own death as necessary to his own plan, and wouldn’t that be that ironic? And brave.
She remembered how Tse had been so tired of everything, even life. And how he’d said that Kara would learn the truth about her sister, who’d been exchanged for a new Gliese star drive somewhere in the Trapezium Cluster in the Orion Nebula. Kara had been thirteen, both parents dead, Kara not sure if she wanted to be a musician or a vet. Instead an orphanage, then the English city-state army.
Funny, Marc had also been in a children’s home.
Tatia had been adopted.
Tse had said the truth about your sister. Not where she was, but the truth.
In the army Kara learned the skills she needed now.
In the home Marc had been given a psychoactive drug that, maybe years later, made it possible for him to communicate with a nature god.
How far did the GalDiv manipulation go? How detailed was Tse’s plan?
Would Kara have ended up here if her sister hadn�
�t been traded?
The truth about your sister. That she had to be traded, lost forever for Kara to become a sniper/assassin? For Kara to discover her latent empathy for both humans and aliens?
So what’s the difference between the good and bad pre-cogs?
Both focused on a plan only they understood, and then darkly.
Would more order in life be all that bad?
<< Kara? Can you come to the control room? Something you have to see.
She didn’t bother to check with Ishmael. Later, Kara would decide it wouldn’t have made any difference.
Five Cedrics in the control room. Three small, two the size of large dogs.
> Why Cedrics? We expecting trouble?
<< They need a walk.
Something was wrong. Kara walked up to the control panel above the locker that held the AI.
<< I’m locked away, babe.
> Ishmael?
<< Unavailable. I’d explain but you wouldn’t understand.
> Ishmael!
<< Is currently the equivalent of an antique adding machine.
Kara thought of Tatia, waiting for them. Of the faith – desperate, perhaps, but still a responsibility – that Greenaway had in her. Of a mission she’d sworn to complete.
> What do you want, Salome?
<< First, this you got to see...
The hull became transparent again. Kara immediately looked away.
<< It’s okay, babe. It’s clear. Goes that way sometimes.
She sneaked a glance. Not exactly clear, but the colours and chaos were muted, merged in one area into a faint, silvery space.
And in that space was a city state SUT. Large metal containers welded together, kept rigid and providing protection with Gliese-supplied hardened foam.
Except the foam was ripped away. Hung from the containers in great, pointless strips. Containers with some of the sides missing. And with people, humans standing there, immobile, apparently staring fixedly before them as...
... as tentacles of light came from outside the clear space to touch each human head.
Kara found herself unable to look away. Horror, yes. Also the sense she was witnessing something very profound. Boojums, devils maybe, following their instincts. Destroying the very beings that had given them life. Human minds raped in the blind search for greater meaning. Or simply attacked because a boojum, a devil, felt threatened. Or who the hell really knows why?