Revelations

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Revelations Page 20

by Nigel Foster


  For some reason she expected him to materialise beside her. Instead she found herself looking at an exasperated Marc the other side of the hull energy field.

  He vanished again and the ship hummed.

  Nothing.

  The ship hummed again, an angry, rasping sound.

  “Tatia! Up here!”

  She saw Marc jump awkwardly down from an upper deck, and ran towards him.

  “You beautiful, wonderful man,” she sobbed.

  The ship screamed.

  “Get this on!” Marc thrust a suit and helmet at her. “Hurry!”

  Still sobbing, now mixed relief and fear, Tatia scrabbled her way into the suit as the ship’s energy fields flickered purple and green.

  “Hold tight,” Marc’s electronic voice in her ear, and suddenly she was in netherspace. Then they were moving and in moments the insanity went away. She was in real space, holding tight to Marc as the Originator ship before her turned black. It began to disintegrate until nothing was left except a dust cloud the shape of the original craft.

  “Hope to hell this works,” Marc said as they moved towards the Earth ship. Halfway there, three-quarters, and again the sudden plunge into a universe that was so wrong, Tatia and Marc forever, until a dark space blotted out the rainbows. And there was Kara waving at them, no space suit for the queen of death... Kara clutching at her, the clang of metal and Tatia knew she was back in the real world. She was safe with the people she loved most.

  “I need a shower,” Tatia said and everything went black.

  They met up two hours later, after Tatia had been checked out by the auto-doc – severe vitamin deficiencies, excess adrenalin, fixed immediately – and used up a day’s worth of personal water.

  They met in the rec room and ate a full English breakfast, the last of their fresh supplies.

  “I could spend the rest of my life saying thank you,” Tatia said, wiping up egg yolk with a piece of toast, “and it wouldn’t be enough.”

  “If you ever forget,” Marc said, “one of us will remind you.” Then smiled almost shyly. “We couldn’t do anything else. It was you.” And knew that for a moment the joy of saving Tatia had overcome the need to go back to netherspace. It was only temporary but to be enjoyed while it lasted.

  “I still can’t believe you found me with a lock of my hair.”

  “As given to your father by a round, warty-skinned alien? Nor can I.”

  “But...”

  “In the end,” Kara said firmly, “I found your trail in netherspace because I’m an empath. Also obsessed with getting my people home. And because you and I are very close. The rest is happenstance. Unrelated.” She saw the other two were unconvinced. “Because otherwise it’s all too fucking fantastic and we’ve stuff to do. Like figuring out what we’ve discovered and how to complete the mission.”

  So what had they learned? That if a star drive is used to enter a vehicle, construct, in normal space, it causes the molecular bonds to vanish. Or reverse. Turn into string. The vehicle, construct loses its integrity.

  No use Ishmael muttering about the conservation of energy, that’s what had happened and there was a vid recording, plus other electronic scans, to prove it.

  The star drive, by the way, appeared to be unharmed. But as there was no way of checking, who was to tell?

  “Face it,” Marc said moodily, “none of us are equipped to understand why this happens, the physics...” he saw the smile on Kara’s face and guessed Ishmael had objected... “or even understand the explanation an AI might give. But we know that it does and we’ve now got some sort of weird weapon.”

  Kara silently applauded. “So, Tatia. How’s it been for you?”

  Tatia told of her adventures. Of the loneliness. The aliens and humans she had killed. Her insight into the precog world, how the Originators were trapped to a specific timeline without understanding the way stations. She didn’t mention the AI she’d called Mom, now silent in her head. It was real enough, she knew. But not like other AIs and for now best left to sleep.

  “You thought the triune to death?” Kara asked.

  “More got very, very angry with it. Focused that anger. And it went mad and died. Now what?” Tatia got up to get more coffee.

  “Remember what you said about us finally fulfilling our roles?” Kara asked Marc.

  “And you getting angry when I said maybe the pre-cogs were manipulated by a totally unknown race of aliens?”

  Kara glanced up at Tatia who was now hovering with a coffee pot. “He has the most annoying insights.”

  “But always my hero,” Tatia said, and discovered she meant it.

  “Let’s think about that,” Kara said. “First, whatever’s behind the pre-cog empire’s on this planet. And we have to destroy it. I get emotions, even alien ones. And right now I’m getting an overpowering sense of love. It would disable me, except Ishmael did something clever with my brain. I say love because that’s the nearest human equivalent. It’s also power and has a... it’s like a code...”

  Marc held up his coffee cup for a refill. “Didn’t you say there was a signal coming from deep space that was screwing up the Earth’s AIs?”

  < Only some of them. Tell him!

  “Ishmael’s okay,” Kara said hastily. “It makes sense...”

  < That beam also exists in another dimension. So it can achieve near infinite velocity. Earth time from here to the solar system estimated at one point two standard Earth hours, so faster than using netherspace.

  > You have been busy.

  < Yes. Interestingly autonomous as well. Don’t worry. You’re still my favourite sniper/assassin.

  Kara relayed Ishmael’s news.

  “Glad he’s still on our side,” Tatia said and wished that Mom was taking part.

  Then Kara explained her own insight.

  Everything that had happened before, from being recruited to Tatia’s kidnap by the Cancri, had helped them discover and hone their talents. Hold on to that thought. So Kara herself became a more powerful empath. Marc became mister netherspace. Tatia developed a bond with the pre-cog aliens that had brought all three of them here.

  “So far, so pre-ordained?” Marc asked.

  Kara shook her head. “Tatia was also developing something else.” She looked at Tatia with sympathy and perhaps a touch of sadness. “You were learning to become a warrior, love. You were learning to kill.”

  Tatia looked shocked for a moment. The retort but doesn’t everyone? died on her lips. She thought of how her life had changed over the past few months. Then nodded and sighed. “You mean no way a Seattle society babe could kill aliens and enjoy it? You have a point.”

  “Only one flaw,” Marc said. “That would mean that whatever’s down there has invited its own killers to visit.”

  Tatia shook her head. “Not necessarily. The mistake we made is thinking these way stations, events that have to happen, are only relevant to one outcome. Doesn’t have to be the case. They could be shared by countless other timelines.” She grimaced. “I know, confusing as hell. Especially when you think that our pre-cogs knew all this this... but what better way to succeed?”

  They thought for a while, made more toast as you do, added brandy to the next brew of coffee, talked of this and that until Kara asked Tatia the obvious question.

  “But why so angry?”

  Tatia stared at her in disbelief. “Those artefacts? Oblong, size of a town?”

  “Not up close. Why?”

  “You need to see for yourself.”

  But before the Thrown could move towards the artefacts, twenty Originator ships came to say hello and goodbye. One by one, moving alongside the Thrown, pausing for a minute or so, then off into deep space.

  Kara ordered the Thrown’s hull to be kept transparent. The Originator ships came close enough for the humans to see the triune aliens staring at them without eyes.

  “Why don’t they attack us?” Marc wanted to know. “We just blew up one of their ships.”


  “Could be they’re afraid we’ll fight back,” Kara said, trying to ignore an awkward thought: what if we don’t matter any more?

  But the consensus was, as so often, aliens – who knows?

  And so eventually they came to an artefact, close enough to see what it held, for the walls were transparent force fields, like the Originator ships.

  Close enough for the shock, the sheer horror to bring tears and fury.

  Inside the artefact were deck upon deck of humans, naked, floating in the null gravity, feeding and excretion lines linked to the ceiling.

  Close enough to see their eyes were open and dead. That many humans had stick-like arms and legs, bodies that were all ridged bone. Except the faces, the heads were all fresh and plump.

  There had to be at least a million of them.

  Humans collected from Earth for centuries. From Earth colonies. Humans who’d been traded for star drives.

  “It’s a fucking human computer,” Marc spat.

  “Are they...” Tatia began.

  “Vegetative state,” Kara said. “That’s what I get. Identities burned out long ago. My sister’s there. I’ll never find her.”

  “I saw one more close up,” Tatia said. “It was full of aliens.”

  Kara jabbed down with her hand. “That beautiful planet. I got to be alone for a while.”

  She went to her cabin and wept. Then washed her face and told Ishmael to restore her brain to full functioning mode. She had to be at one hundred per cent for the next phase, and probably more.

  “What happened?” Marc exploded as Kara walked into the control room.

  “You look awful,” Tatia said, concerned. “Is it your sister?”

  “Partly,” Kara said. “I got my full brain back. Means I get all that signal. Also a strong sense of what lives down there.” She tried to tighten the left side of her face to control a persistent tremor. It didn’t work. “And it’s gentle, mild. Obsessed with mathematics. Wants the universe to be happy. But on its own terms.”

  “Doesn’t matter why they do what they do,” Tatia said. “Or love their mothers. They’re responsible for nightmares. Death. Suffering. Us being here, for fuck’s sake!”

  “Any ideas?” from Marc.

  < The artefacts are in synchronous orbit around the planet. Mutually supporting each other as it were. Break the chain and the planet’s gravity will prevail.

  > In English!

  < Fuck one and the rest fall down.

  > How?

  < You saw what happened to the Originator ship. Same again.

  It sounded like a plan. But would that destroy the planet’s aliens?

  “Get me down there,” Tatia said. “I know how.” As she did. It was what she was born to do.

  < Gravity one point two five Earth, Ishmael announced. < Breathable atmosphere. Watch out for sharks.

  The Iron Thrown descended slowly. It allowed time for three humans to appreciate the wonder of a water-world that they hoped to destroy. Not a level surface. In places low hills of water, caused by vast, slow currents. In other places were valleys. The whole sprinkled with vast whirlpools, and waterspouts reaching miles into the cerulean sky.

  They were expected. As they came closer to the surface the sea swirled and heaved. A hundred metres above, and a mass of tendrils appeared, as if welcoming them. The Thrown hovered, with Tatia sat in the open airlock. A single tendril, thicker than the others, gelatinous and translucent, rose up towards her.

  She reached out her hand.

  The tendril felt cool and alive. Peaceful. Curious.

  Tatia closed her eyes and merged.

  They were a race of jellyfish-like creatures that, similar to Earth’s Turritopsis dohrnii, were virtually immortal. Overcrowding could be a problem. It wasn’t. They could revert to a tiny, polyp-like form and go into suspended animation for hundreds, thousands, millions of years... until it was their turn to become full-grown again. They had been a sentient race for over two billion years. Mathematics was their joy and reason to exist. Long before life had emerged on Earth, they had solved the problems that still intrigued and frustrated humanity.

  They were pre-cog. They took huge delight in computing all the possible outcomes from a given scenario, expressed mathematically.

  Living in water, being ninety-five per cent water themselves, they had little sense of flesh and blood, or what passed for it in the rest of the galaxy. There were fish-type creatures, but primitive.

  The jellies were telepathic and in that sense lived as one vast organism, able to experience the thoughts of creatures many light years away. Netherspace was experienced as a series of immensely complex equations in a continuous state of flux. Alien thoughts were perceived as a multidimensional matrix. These jellyfish were probably the only creatures in the galaxy who understood what other races thought, and could equate it to themselves.

  Except.

  They had no empathy.

  Only a sense of the rightness of things. An appreciation of harmony.

  But no emotion as humanity understands the word.

  And so they were aware of others’ confusion, happiness, ecstasy and pain, without being able to experience them. They did know that something affected the algorithms of existence. Something affected the harmony they sought, a harmony that would embrace everything. The buzzing fly, wasp at the picnic, bedbug under the pillow, but all known rather than sensed.

  There was a possible future that would harmonise the galaxy. They needed an arm. They found the Originators.

  A triune race, three symbiotes working as one, who’d long ago traded corporal bodies for mechanics, the Originators survived by stealing technology and science. They had cunning but no creativity. Driven to conquest by the bitter awareness of their own weakness, the Originators were also telepathic, although mildly so compared to the jellyfish mind. They also lacked empathy, inasmuch as they didn’t care how much others suffered. And for them the only way to survive was to dominate, to control all other races... but without direct conflict. To promote the pre-cog way of life by encouraging other races – use of AI, use of high tech traded for rubbish – to become reliant, subservient and prepared to do the Originators’ dirty work: wiping anyone who wouldn’t buy in to the pre-cog dream. That could mean whole civilisations, even races.

  For the Originators – ironic, never having originated anything of galactic value to anyone – these strange water-creatures could ensure Originator domination, or at least protection from races who were cleverer and more warlike. For all their dreams of conquest, the Originators were afflicted by what a human would see as extreme cowardice. Their strongest instinct was to attach themselves to the strong or run away from them. In time they would, courtesy of stolen technology, develop a quasi-vegetable race that humans called the Gliese, to undertake enslavement by gift.

  It made sense to broadcast, on psi level, the delights of the pre-cog plan.

  Most races are telepathic to a degree. Let them be made ready for inclusion.

  And what, who, better to broadcast this signal than the various races themselves? In captivity. Reduced to zombies... so not as if they’re suffering.

  One race wanted harmony, the other survival. The one not sensitive to another race’s suffering. The other didn’t care.

  It was logical to use the psi broadcast also to control, if necessary, the AI technology stolen by the Originators from a race that had then been destroyed as potential rivals.

  Everything made such perfect sense.

  But inherent in the master plan was an individual, an alien who would play a major role in the development of the jellies’ master plan. They didn’t know how, of course. But it was there, a way station that featured Tatia Nerein.

  She’d been right. Pre-cog beings can be imprisoned by their own timelines... unless willing to alter the end result. Which they weren’t.

  Tatia was central to the jellyfish civilisation. She was going to destroy it.

  She took a deep breath and thought
of all the hideousness, the fear and tragedy, hate and terror caused because a mild race was determined to harmonise the universe. Remembered the fear and hatred of the alien she’d killed. The humans. The Originators. Felt those emotions grow in her mind until they became everything she was.

  Tatia rocked from side to side, convinced her head would explode.

  The dam didn’t burst. It vanished.

  The tentacle whiplashed away from her hand... but was turning brown before it slipped beneath the waves.

  “Get us out of here,” Tatia said. “It’s done.”

  Beneath them the sea boiled in anguish.

  And for all three humans a sense of something wonderful now lost forever.

  “You got all that from a minute or so?” Marc sounded incredulous.

  “Like you and that simulity thing,” Tatia said.

  “That can take hours,” Kara said. “You still think the jellyfish were innocent?”

  They were in the control room, watching the sea turn brown a hundred kilometres below. The jellyfish were dying. Their mathematics, their timeline, had failed them. Such an intense clarity of thought now reduced to a brown sludge.

  * * *

  There remained a signal to destroy.

  The artefacts were simpler than the Originator ship.

  They still had a spare, working star drive. Marc had experience of using netherspace to move between two vehicles in normal space. They’d seen what could happen as a result.

  Zombie or no, Kara’s sister deserved a better death than plunging into a dying planet, along with the other humans. So did the aliens, but this was family. At the last moment Kara said that she was going with Marc, sorry Tatia, I have to do this.

  Space suits on, into normal space. Marc clutching the spare star drive, Kara clutching Marc. Netherspace in an instant. Then inside the artefact.

  “Wait.” Kara took off her helmet, recoiled at the stench then walked across to one of the humans. Once it had been a teenage boy, a recent captive.

  Give him back his identity in death.

  She looked into his empty eyes, held his hand and kissed him gently on the cheek. A kiss for them all.

  “We can go now.”

  The artefact began creaking just before they entered netherspace again.

 

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