A VOICE WHISPERED harshly in his ear, “You think you’re so clever and classless and free, but you’re all still fucking peasants, as far as I can see.”
EXECUTIVE WILSON’S BODYGUARDS were all dead. Marcus did not have to look at them twice to know that, not even in the near total darkness. Living people were in fewer pieces. The Atangans weren’t dead, though they were dying; something moved among the Atangans and where it moved the screams ceased. Marcus was aware he was shot, but had not let himself think about it yet. He made sure he could use both hands, hissed at Wilson, still squirming beneath him, “Stay still, sir,” and rolled off Wilson long enough to go get one of the guns lying next to the dead bodyguards – possibly the gun I was shot with, Marcus thought a little lightheadedly. By the time he got back to Wilson he knew he’d been shot once in the shoulder, once in the ass, and possibly someone had shot him in the head as well; blood kept dripping into his eyes. He whispered urgently to Executive Wilson’s prone form, “I’m armed. Can you run, sir? Whisper if you can.”
The struggling form quieted but Marcus could hear the barely controlled panic in Wilson’s voice. “I think I can.”
Marcus envisioned the room around them. Two main door-ways, the south and north entrances, and yes, the side door used only by the staff would be … about twenty meters that way. “Run crouching,” Marcus whispered, “and stay right behind me and keep a hand on my jacket … on three. One, two, three go.” He was up, an amazing flare of pain in the right cheek of his ass, and yet moving, moving fast –
The darkened room burst into emerald light. Green flares exploded, crawled along what little was left standing of the ceiling, and Marcus knew what was coming next; a squad of Ground Force special ops burst through the south entrance as Marcus and the Executive slammed through the doorway and into the service corridor leading out of the Chamber of Conciliation, and ran down the carpeted corridors together to the kitchen. Twenty meters into the corridor, Marcus pulled to the side, pushed Wilson ahead of him, and turned to face the doorway leading to the Chamber, stood motionless with the gun in his hand, as Executive Wilson ran toward safety.
For ten seconds, twenty, the screams and shouts from the Chamber increased in volume. Marcus heard the hum and whine of lasers and particle weapons, the explosive report of impact weapons. The yelling and screaming faded, almost gently; and a moment after that the sounds of even the weapons ceased, and it was quiet again.
She appeared framed in the doorway. Marcus fired at nothing. The recoil sent a bolt of pain through his injured shoulder. A moment later she reappeared and stepped through the doorway. “Don’t do that again.”
For some reason he didn’t.
“Put down your weapon, Marcus,” said Ola Blue, “and you will be permitted to live.” He did not move, and also did not fire. “Marcus, my teachers would be astonished to hear this … but please.”
He fell and was not the least surprised that, from twenty meters away, she caught him before he touched the ground.
FOR THREE DAYS the Archangel scoured Zaradinist positions on Atango. What few spacecraft the Zaradinists possessed, it destroyed in orbit, and then the remainder as they attempted to launch. It dropped hydrogen bombs on the Zaradinist cities in the northern hemisphere, killing millions. It dropped smaller MAM bombs on the training camps scattered through the southern hemisphere. Laser cannon and particle beams swept Zaradinist cars and planes and semiballistics from the sky. Flying warbots chased Zaradinist troops into the jungles and detonated oxygen bombs across hundreds of square kilometers, murdering hundreds of thousands more, Zaradinists and the citizens they were hiding among as well.
After three days, the ship broke orbit and returned to Benardine.
WEARING HER SHADOW cloak, she visited him as he lay in his hospital bed. She sat in the chair nearest his bed and said, “That was very brave.”
“Why do I feel like I was just insulted?”
The faintest movement of her shoulders. “Criticized, if you like. The correlation between bravery and correct results is statistically insignificant when compared to right planning and right resources. But criticism was not my intent. Bravery is a virtue, and admirable, and you are a brave man, Marcus, and I admire you.”
“‘If an elegant solution is not found,’” said Marcus, “‘a rougher solution will be.’ I missed the part where you tried the elegant solution.”
She looked amused. “People were listening. Consider my options, Marcus. I was instructed to bring peace to Gillen System. I have. Even now Benardine is consolidating power upon Atango. When a new government is installed upon Atango, it will be a republic, like yours, though this is not very important. More important is that as you help them to rebuild, you will inevitably reshape them as a people, producing a mercantile culture more interested in trade, in building wealth and sending it out through your newly busy Gates, than in waging a holy war regarding the source of DNA.”
“You intended to kill Executive Wilson.”
“You’re boring me again, Marcus. Try to keep up.”
“Why didn’t you try to deal with him?”
“Your opposition has been in power forty of the last fifty years, have they not? Any creature or organization intelligent enough to do so will try to influence its surroundings so that the conditions that produced it continue. Ending your war on Atango was not a thing in which the Clafist party was truly interested.” She sat watching him for a long moment, then said softly, “Forgive me.” She took the glove off her right hand, reached out, and traced the scar that ran down the side of his face and along his jawline. He did not remember her skin being so smooth, when he’d shaken her hand the previous week. “You won’t keep this scar?”
“No.” Jhana had been specific about that.
“Pity … I miss mine,” she added. The finger lingered on the edge of the scar, and then withdrew. Marcus felt as though an electric current he had not been aware had abruptly ceased. He felt himself sag backward slightly into his hospital bed. “Do I frighten you, Marcus?”
“You know you do.”
He remembered the look in her brown eyes until he died. “If you fear me, who love me, Marcus, how must they fear me, who hate me? How must they now fear and hate the Face of Night?” She shook her head. “I’ve done my best for you, Marcus, within the limits of my power. I’ve given your people … you and your wife … a chance.”
He blurted it out. “How fast are you?”
“Fast is an adjective and is therefore meaningful only in comparison. I am slow by comparison with electronic devices. I am relatively quick for a protein device – though perhaps not as fast as the protein components of a Tamrann.”
“You look human.”
She pulled the glove back on. “I am human.”
“You look like us.”
“I chose this color, skin and hair and eyes, to visit you. I learned your accent. I turned off lighting and other sensorium effects. The shape of my body –” She smiled at him. “That’s mine. Most humans choose to be backward compatible.”
“Most humans. If you’re human, what am I?”
“Unreconstructed.” She hesitated, the only hesitation he ever saw from her. “If one wishes to be polite. Otherwise: leftbehind.”
THREE MONTHS LATER Marcus was called to the Black Cube again.
Yasmeen Cooridan said, “You’ve been watching the polls.”
“Yes.”
She nodded. “You’ll have my job again, soon.”
Jay Jackles had called Marcus the previous day. Due entirely to his new-found fame, Marcus knew, Jackles had offered him the position of Ambassador to Atango.
Cooridan looked at him and smiled. “Or a better one, maybe.”
Marcus shrugged. “Politics.” Cooridan opened her mo
uth and Marcus said urgently, “We thought she was young –”
Her smile faded. “Yes, we did.”
“– impetuous –”
“I know.”
“– she thinks fifteen times faster than we do. She never hesitated before replying because we were boring her.” He paused. “I tried to learn their language, Tierra – you know it’s an artificial language, right? Like Esperanto, you think?” Marcus shook his head. “I can’t even make the range of sounds it requires. It’s compressed by default, encrypted as an option. I might be able to learn to read it, but if I did I couldn’t speak it, couldn’t hear it, couldn’t think fast enough to encode the sound streams, or decode them, or –” He took a deep breath. “Most of their children speak it reasonably well by the time they’re two. They learn to compress and encrypt it in realtime before they’re five. They have this entire art form –”
Yasmeen nodded. “Poetry.”
Violence colored his speech. “No. Poetry is what it’s backward-compatible with. They try to make their speech as dense as possible – so that it doesn’t compress well. Speech that compresses at too high a ratio is considered –” He struggled with it. “Verbose. Windy. It’s –”
Yasmeen said gently, “Traffic is coming through the Gates again. There’s not a thing we can do about it, not even if we wanted to. I, for one, don’t. My thirty is up in two years – I’d like to see other worlds besides Atango. My parents never got to.”
“General Cooridan – we can’t compete with them.”
“It’s a big universe,” she said. “Maybe we won’t have to.”
MORE THAN TWO years after that, when trade had been re-established with the rest of the Continuing Time, after Benardine had refused Earth’s protection and become instead a client of the House of November, after Jay Jackles won re-election to the Executive and was forced to resign less than half a year later due to massive corruption within his new administration – after all that, Marcus found himself at a dinner where, among others, was a Captain of the November Guard.
The man was huge – but the Novembri were. Most of the women in the November Guard were taller than two meters. Captain Vanrey was 240 centimeters tall and visibly careful about how he moved around the native Benardine. He’d been on duty in Gillen System for less than a quarter, but already he spoke idiomatic, North City-accented Anglic as though born to it.
After dessert Jhana disappeared with Yasmeen Cooridan and Marcus found himself out on the hotel’s balcony, twelve stories up, looking out over New Colton, a half-empty scotch in one hand. It was a clear night and cool, and the city stretched out as far into the distance as he could see, over the edge of the horizon, a sea of light encompassing, today, some twelve million humans.
“You’re Ambassador Michaelson.”
Captain Vanrey had appeared at his left elbow. Marcus had not heard the huge man approach. “Colonel, if you please.” He turned and offered the man his hand. “Captain Vanrey. Pleasure to meet you at last.”
Vanrey took it. “The pleasure’s mine, sir. I know something of your combat record.”
Marcus wasn’t even sure why the statement irritated him. He tried not to let it show. “We’re a little backward here, I admit,” he said lightly. “Still have biologicals doing our fighting.”
The big man nodded. “So have we, recently enough. My House has used warbots and waldoes and a variety of such things – but there’s still a place for real humans, even in the Protetor de Combate.” He paused, as though waiting for Marcus to respond, and then said, “You knew Ola Blue.”
“I wouldn’t go that far. I was in her company occasionally, for a week, almost three years ago. Do you know her?”
Vanrey smiled. “She’s become fairly well known.” Marcus noted the lack of an actual answer. “That’s odd, for a night face. And she’s done it in a short time – I was curious what your experience of her was like.”
“Why would my opinion be of interest to you?”
“You saw her in her first live fire exercise. It was –”
“What do you mean?”
Vanrey stopped. “Colonel?”
“What do you mean, exercise?” Marcus could hear his voice getting louder and couldn’t stop himself. “The Face of Night sent Ola Blue and an Archangel to Gillen System to stop a war that millions of people died in, killing millions more in the process, and you call it an exercise?” Marcus could hear his own heart-beat in his ears. “I’d really like it if you’d stop and appear to think for a moment before answering me.”
He didn’t. “Colonel,” said Vanrey softly, “surely the Face of Night wanted your war ended. It was harming trade and helping spread Zaradinist views. For both of these reasons the Face of Night would have wanted to see it stop. But there are other wars throughout the Continuing Time that do these things, and the Face of Night does not try to end all of them; and it would not have tried to end yours if your System had not been selected as a proving ground for Ola Blue.” Now Vanrey did pause. “Forgive me if I’ve offended you. It didn’t occur to me ... that you didn’t know.”
“Do you speak Tierra? I don’t mean Simple Tierra.”
“Of course. Though it’s nearly obsolete: for most high-bandwidth communications I use my tap.”
Marcus stared at him. “Say something in it, would you?”
Vanrey stood studying Marcus for a moment. Then he opened his mouth. Marcus heard a brief noise, combining a squeak and growl – Vanrey said, “I suspect most of that was inaudible to you. What I said –”
“Not important. Thank you,” said Marcus, almost calmly, “and forgive me. I need to go find my wife.”
WINTER 12, 2489: on the planet November.
The genegineer was slissi, the Venerable Mosesha, and therefore without any ethics that would have been recognizable to a human, particularly a pair of what it had recognized as leftbehind even before it had examined their genes. Nonetheless, by rule of the Codemakers it took its time explaining their options to them. It spoke Anglic without need of MI translation – not common among slissi, but useful in the Venerable’s chosen profession.
“Your new children –” A leftbehind child, about three if the Venerable Mosesha was any judge, played on the floor at their feet. “– will not be much like you. You will not be able to bear them live; fetuses kick and these would kick their way free. You will require a host mother or other breeding enclosure.
“It is possible they will speak Anglic out of the womb. You will need to have them schooled in Tierra by humans of more modern construction.
“After the age of roughly five Earth years, you will find them difficult to talk to. It is likely they will choose to leave your home before the age of ten; this is usually the pattern.” The slissi paused; it knew enough about leftbehind to know that this moment was often difficult. “Frequently these children will retain cordial ties with their Unreconstructed parents,” it offered.
Marcus did not have to look at Jhana. She sat next to him, holding his hand. “This is what we want for our children,” he said.
Jhana’s hand clutched his more tightly. “A chance.”
END
Interlude 2489 – 2676
THE INVENTION OF the tachyon star drive is near six centuries past when the Man-Spacething War began. Humans have flooded out across the near area of the Milky Way Galaxy, have planted colonies on thousands of worlds: some of them with other inhabitants, and with varying degrees of success.
Relationships between humans and K’Aillae have become increasingly strained. Only on Tin Woodman – out of what are now thousands of human and K’Aillae worlds – is there a working society which includes both. War between the two species who defeated the sleem Empire is, if not imminent, no longer unthinkable.
In the year 2676, it has been one hundred and seventy-five years since Ola Blue died. She is more famous now than when alive, and she was well known then: Our Lady of Nightways, the deadliest human being who ever lived, or is ever likely to. It is said of Ola Blue that she was death itself, and sorrow: Ola Blue herself said that if shiabre had not existed, she would have created it.
It has been one hundred and thirty-seven years since Shelomin Serendip abolished the Regency of United Earth. Today Earth has no domestic government; no courts and no judges and no police. What it does have is United Earth Intelligence and its College, and both institutions are only tools of the Face of Night.
All of these figures – the mere thousands of years that human civilization itself has existed – are only small fractions of the near 65 millennia that have passed since the Zaradin ended the Time Wars and disappeared; and the Continuing Time began.
The Continuing Time itself is young. The Time Wars raged for three and a half billion years; and there are events in history earlier than that.
The Shivering Bastard at Devnet
2676
INTO A PLACE where nothing lived, came a man.
TWO THOUSAND LIGHT years away from Earth and the Face of Night –
– sixteen hundred light years away from November, at the other end of the twisting long tunnels that linked November to Eloise, and Eloise to Devnet –
– a human being named Bodhisattva Tan brought his starship, the Shivering Bastard, out of Devnet System’s First Gate. The Shivering Bastard entered real space moving at better than ninety-eight percent of light, the same speed at which she had entered the spacelace tunnel, back at the Eloisean planetary system.
Tales of the Continuing Time and Other Stories Page 6