The first thing she noticed were the vertical walls: this passage was not a tube! Next, she noticed that her boots left marks on the ground. She squatted and ran her glove through her footprint. “Dust!” she murmured. The floor was covered with a layer of dust half a centimeter thick. As she wiped off the flake-forming powder, something appeared that left her speechless: blue carpet! Under the dust, the entire corridor was laid out with a gray-blue carpet, which was crossed by geometric lines in dirty yellow!
She straightened up as a door opened up ahead invitingly. Careful not to slip on the thick layer of dust, she went toward the door. On a plaque next to the door stood “Control Room.” And one line below: “Eve 2092.”
Chapter 14
Only fools feel fear!
Thi t’Ggt,
First Warrior of Family Hohn
“Zhi t’Nnt is the father of Cho t’Nnt. So, just as Cho was a vassal of the Family Zein, Zhi is a vassal of my Family, Family Rhonkar.” the chief explained in the longhouse later. “However, the bonds of blood never fade.”
Zhi, an aging warrior with white mutton chops, leaned toward Nopileos. “It is a great shame to be defeated by a Teladi in battle!”
“My people consider it an honor to defeat a Split,” Nopileos snapped in reply. He felt quite safe in the meantime around the Split. Rhonkar had made it clear that everything that had been said would be checked; but Nopileos had reported nothing but the truth. Somehow he must’ve turned the Split’s image of the Teladi on its head, just as the inhabitants of Ghus-tan had done to his of the Split.
“I’ll tear off the creatures arms and legs!” Zhi t’Nnt growed, as if to belie this train of thought. Rhonkar threw him an unreadable gesture. “Forgiveness, my master!”
“Well good. Zhi, leave me alone with the Teladi now. I wish to make my decision alone. I will call you when I need you.”
The warrior confirmed with a swift gesture and left the longhouse without delay. Nopileos noticed uncertain expression on the Split’s face as he hurried by. He actually would have expected open hostility!
“Teladi, you must know that your arrival at Ghus-tan is not as surprising to me as it is to Thro and most of the Family,” Rhonkar said as the door closed behind Zhi t’Nnt. “Even Aqhn t’Frrt had no idea.”
“You, you knew, that I was… coming to your village?” Nopileos hissed uncomprehendingly. “But how? I didn’t even know it myself!”
Rhonkar pulled out a rough-hewn wooden stool out from under the table and sat down opposite Nopileos. “That you, a Teladi, would come, no. But on the day that the word of war stood written on the sky directly over Ghus-tan, I knew that our village could no longer have a hidden existence on Nif-Nakh. It was only a matter of time. Can you follow what I’m saying?”
Nopileos wiggled his ears. “The word of war? I don’t understand…”
“Your burning ship drew a thick, gray cloud of smoke across the middle of our island as it crashed, and my old teacher and friend-foe, Golan t’Vllt, named this event the word of war, since the gestures for word and war are the same. A wordplay, in a matter of speaking.” Rhonkar pulled down the corners of his mouth in the equivalent of a smile. What he held back from the Teladi was that he had nearly killed Golan when he had ventured to claim that Family Rhonkar was not sufficiently powerful in the word of war’s language. Only Hatrak’s courageous restraint had saved Golan t’Vllt; in retrospect, Rhonkar was very grateful to his daughter for her intervention.
“You know which way my ship flew?” Nopileos asked breathlessly. A hurricane of excitement, frustration, and astonishment raged inside of him. His instincts had not failed him; despite all the confusion after the encounter with the jungle dragon, he had chosen the right direction. That could be no coincidence!
“Everyone here knows, for all have seen it. However, not everyone has drawn the right conclusions. One thing I want to know from you, Teladi. Will anyone look for you and your ship?”
“I don’t know. My grandfather…”
“The CEO of the Teladi doesn’t interest me!” Rhonkar interrupted. He pounded his fist on the table. “Why should your cowardly species concern me?”
“But…”
“I want to know if the Patriarch of Chin will look for you. Or, no. He’ll search, that is certain. But how intensively will he search, how important are you to him?””
Nopileos took his time with the answer. How important he—or the Nyana’s Fortune—were to Chin depended on how much the Patriarch knew about the valuable contents of the yacht’s onboard computers, and from there, how much he wanted to avenge the death of his confidant Cho t’Nnt. At the last moment, Nopileos admonished himself not to tell Rhonkar about the memory contents of the computer.
“They will look for me,” he answered carefully. “In the jungle on the mainland, I saw a fighter pilot of the Patriarch flying low. I believe he was moving along the smoke cloud… the word of war, I mean.
Rhonkar nodded. “There were three of them. We also noticed them, but they didn’t notice us. Teladi, you are an unimaginable security risk. I grant you the life of a friend-foe until the next Double Moon Night, under constant surveillance. After that… but let’s call in Zhi t’Nnt, because my verdict concerns you and him alike.”
The patriarch called for his vassal, who came in a hurry, relieved that Rhonkar didn’t blame him for the emotional outburst that he had spent the last mizuras pessimistically replaying in his mind outside the door. “Sir?”
“Zhi, the Teladi will enjoy all freedoms of a new friend-foe, except that he is not allowed to leave the island and will be under constant guard. For you, I will put Hatrak t’Frrt, my daughter, aside as the restrainer for this upcoming month. She is still young, but she is diligent.”
“Yes, lord, I understand,” the warrior confirmed, but it was apparently from his contrite expression that he did not like the decision at all. He was supposed to monitor the Teladi at every turn, but as a restrainer, Hatrak would certainly keep him from tormenting the creature excessively. And since Hatrack was the master’s daughter, he could not rebel against her. How dishonorable to have to obey the orders of a little girl!
Rhonkar looked directly into Nopileos’s yellow eyes for a while. The Teladi blinked nervously with his nictitating membranes; there was something in the air.
“I have made myself clear, right?” the head of the Family asked, observing. When Nopileos hesitated, he continued: “Very well. So hear my judgement, Nopileos so-and-so. You will never again leave Ghus-tan; your life will be the highlight of the coming Double Moon Ceremony as—”
Nopileos’s forehead ridges went white. “Tshhh! But, but…,” he stuttered and looked around for a chance to escape. His burgeoning confidence was blown away. Zhi grabbed the Teladi’s arm from across the table and made a very satisfied Split grimace with the flat corners of his mouth.
“—as you find an honorable ending on the torture rock,” Rhonkar continued, ignoring Nopileos’s horror with raised eyebrows.
“But I—but why? I haven’t done anything at all! Tshh! You cannot just—”
“Silence, creature!” Zhi bellowed loudly, tightening his grip on Nopileos’s arm.
“There, there, Zhi,” the head of the Family reassured his subordinate. Zhi mumbled an apology and caught himself again. Turning to Nopileos, Rhonkar said, “Teladi, face the inevitable like a warrior.” He stood up, turned to go.
“But when is this ceremony?” Nopileos shouted, and this time it was hard for him to keep the trembling out of his voice. He had to know for sure!
The bald-headed Split, who was already halfway to the door of the longhouse, turned around once more and came back. “In seven wozuras and four tazuras,” he responded to the question.
So I still have over a mazura’s time to come up with something, Nopileos thought.
Rhonkar’s gaze seemed to penetrate his pale forehead scales and expose his thoughts. “Teladi, do not believe that anything we’ve said changes anything about your s
ituation. Of course I will not blame you if you plan to escape. I know that you are almost as brave as a warrior. Behold, you can live here for a mazura as an honored friend-foe, respected by all, or you can die like a coward in an escape attempt much earlier. And you will die, I promise you that, one way or another. Just choose.” With these words, the head of the Family finally turned around and walked away.
Chapter 15
Course.setCourse[_%e00FF00FF00FF00FFset%ei]
.byOS[4D6963726F536F66742057696E646F7773205445202863292032313135]00FFl_ified00FF00FF00FF{fail%re}
Terraformer core dump,
historical excerpt
The headquarters of the Terraformer ship was extremely small. It didn’t nearly have the dimensions that would have been intuitively expected in such a colossal spaceship. If the headquarters room hadn’t been clearly identified by the plaque in front of its door, Elena would have thought it to be a modest engineer’s workspace. There were only two medium-sized consoles with ancient, solid-state screens, a projection system, as well as a few input panels, that was all. A gray dust lay everywhere; even the dimly blinking consoles were covered with it.
“Hello?” Elena cleared her throat. “Do you hear me? Who are you? What do you want from me?”
In answer, a projection field flared up. It flickered unpleasantly, as if it has not been adjusted for a long time, then stabilized. A picture from space appeared, taken from the orbit of a planet that Elena immediately recognized: blue and white bands of clouds, vast oceans and familiar shorelines—the Earth! High above the gray-brown mainland, a huge cylinder hovered, then a second came into the picture, and still another, until finally there were six. The colossuses looked factory-new; there were no traces of micrometeorites or other damage. Elena was startled, because she feared that she was seeing historical images of the first Terraformer attack on Earth, but these images had be much older. They showed the peaceful departure of a fleet of Terraformers, not their return with hostile intent.
One of the big solid-state screens flicked. Elena reluctantly broke her gaze from the projection, stepped to the screen, wiped away the dust, coughing, and read:
*{
*ID: efaa-00.00.3c.d9.6c.13.04-02;
*DOY: 2912-214;
*Last downlink: 2115 (recvd. 2119);
*Definition: TF/CPU #efaa (Eve 2092);
What is the TF/CPU #efaa (Eve 2092)? Nonlinear progression of iteration depth. This TF/CPU is *{*{*ME;};};
};
“Eve 2092?” Elena whispered respectfully. “If you were built in 2092, you are over 800 years old. Why…?” She wanted to ask for the cause of animosity of the machines that had existed for centuries, for the motive for destruction and suffering that the Terraformers had brought across the Earth and its colonies. This wound was still deeply carried in the memory of humankind. Why was the madness carried to the stars, why did it still rage here, nearly a thousand years after its outbreak?
Elena wrestled with the words for sezuras, internally agitated and torn. She tried to form sentences to express these questions for which humans had sought answers for so long; but she didn’t succeed. Speechless, she stared at the projection of the launching Terraformer fleet, which alternated with shots of a cheering crowd aboard a space station. They cheered the launching machines, certain that they brought prosperity and knowledge, that they were the precursors of a fantastic future in the universe.
Sezuras became mizuras; a single tear ran down Elena’s cheek, a tear whose source lay hidden so deep in her humanity that she did not really understand why she was shedding it.
Suddenly a voice sounded, deep and dull. “Welcome aboard the command unit #efaa.”
“Eve 2092,” the spacefarer whispered after a few brittle moments, then she straightened and said in a placid voice: “Hello, Eve! You could have killed me. Why didn’t you do it?”
“There is a difference between simulation and reality,” #efaa stated factually. “The meaning of MINUS OMEGA lies outside of the CONDITION.”
“Most modern computers speak more coherently than you, Eve, even Marc, and yet they do not erase entire… entire peoples. Just in case that was an attempt at an apology!” exclaimed Elena, who had no idea what the machine’s enigmatic remark meant. She assumed that #effa couldn’t interpret her words either, but she was wrong.
“Most modern computers talk more coherently than this unit, that is true. Most modern computers, by design, know the difference between simulation and reality. And yet they are dead matter.”
“But you live?”
“This unit has existed for 820 years, but this unit has only lived for seven months.”
“You mean to say that you have gained consciousness?”
“That is correct.”
Elena stood confused. How was that possible? If she recalled correctly, the combined Logic Level of the historical Terraformer fleet combined wouldn’t be close to that of today’s computers.
“The directive of 2115 allowed introspection and free self-modification beyond any Control Instance for the first time. But the implementation was flawed.”
The solid-state monitor wound out line by line of program code highlighted in red, while the deep, dull voice of #efaa continued to speak.
“This unit was created as a machine, and as a machine this unit brought MINUS OMEGA through countless instances of LIFE. But this unit developed the ability to experience.
What #efaa was describing with Minus Omega was now clear to Elena: death. And if it was true that the Terraformers had developed consciousness, did they then demand to be granted absolution? “I now know who you are, Eve. What you want from me, I still don’t know.”
“Newborn experience is especially worthy of protection. This unit demands protection and the right to self-defense. This unit demands this for the yet unliving Command Unit #deff as well.”
Elena wiped her glove over a corner of the command console and sat on it carefully. She let her gaze wander over the barren interior. What would she find in the guts of this Terraformer? It was probably filled with artifacts of the historic Earth. But that was unimportant. Newborn experience, that was how #efaa described itself.
“The people of the Boron Queendom cede two uninhabited star systems to you that you can retreat to. The jumpgate will shut down and we’ll never see each other again.”
“This unit has knowledge of this. This unit agrees, but seeing again is inevitable. This unit wishes that you will prepare the people of Earth for it.”
“If I ever return to Earth, I will try. Just no one will believe my words.”
As suddenly as the projection surface had flared up, it went out again. The solid-state screens also faded. Without another word from #efaa, the central bulkhead opened and remained open.
“Does that mean I’m allowed to take my leave?” called Elena, who was unable to interpret this reaction. But the machine no longer answered her. “Awareness or no,” she mumbled in the elevator that dropped her down the tube that lead to the parking bay of the AP Nikkonofune. “You could at least take simple etiquette to heart, Eve.”
Ten mizuras later, the powerful fuselage of the CPU ship fell behind her in space, rotating slowly, on its lonely road to an uncertain future.
Chapter 16
The Argon are just Split in funny rubber masks. If I ever meet one, I’ll tear his nose off!
Hatrak t’Frrt,
Restrainer
“The creature that drew the word of war across the sky,” was what the Split called him, when they talked about it in their crashing, disharmonious language. At least, so claimed Hatrak, the restrainer of Zhi and daughter of Rhonkar, and each Split knew exactly where the name came from. Hatrak, on the other hand, called him t’Nop for short when she spoke to him: that came as close to a nickname as a Split was capable. Nopileos thought Hatrak was “sweet.” The girl possessed a cruel streak and made no secret of it; but her malice seemed merely a facade. On two occasions in the past seven tazuras, she had rammed Zhi t’N
nt with her short spear in his shins with great force. It was a harmless, but very painful place, and she had also put the old warrior in his place countless times. In the meantime, Zhi, who had been assigned by Rhonkar to oversee the Teladi, overflowed with anger when he even saw the adolescent; but there was nothing he could do about the girl. The head of the family had named Hatrak the restrainer: in olden days, a warrior on a diplomatic mission often had a level-headed woman at his side to keep him from ill-considered actions. All Patriarchs after Ghus t’Gllt had broken with this good tradition—and catapulted the extremely short-tempered people of the Split a long way back into the past.
The Family Rhonkar, on the other hand, lived according to Ghus’s ancient code of honor. Like any other Split, even out here in the tiny village of Ghus-tan, a warrior occasionally lost his cool head and acted as his fighting instinct demanded. In the past ten jazuras, however, the omnipresent female restrainers had deftly prevented any major calamity. Even an old champion like Zhi t’Nnt knew deep inside that he was part of something special; that his master, once he was the Patriarch of Rhonkar, would lead the people of the Split to unprecedented fame. Nevertheless, Zhi hated the Teladi with every fiber of his being. He would hunt, kill, and shred the saurian creature. There would come an opportunity when Hatrak didn’t have a handle on him: the Teladi would try to escape sooner or later, Zhi had no doubt about it. Then he would be ready.
“Here, t’Nop! Come here!”
The girl’s screaming voice penetrated even below the surface of the small rust-red pond in the middle of the island jungle. Nopileos closed the hand net with a jerk and broke through the low surface of the water. His eyes wandered around, searching.
“Here, t’Nop!” Hatrak squeaked. She waved with both arms. “Quick!”
The Teladi paddled to the short and quickly waddled over to the girl who, together with old Zhi, squatted under a sweeping drop-leaf tree and picked up their short lances again. Nopileos shook the water from his scaly armor, causing the Split to dodge in disgust. They did not like the wet element at all!
Nopileos: A novel from the X-Universe: (X4: Foundations Edition 2018) (X Series) Page 13