by Nigel Foster
“Who does? Well, some do obviously. Why give it all up?”
He was silent for a moment, and then: “I don’t know. Only that I have to try.” He reached for her hand. “But I will come back and tell you, good or bad.”
“You’d better. I don’t want to come looking for you.” She paused and then, “Listen, there’s something could make you mad or sad. It’s about an ancient tribe from the Altai in Southern Siberia. It’s your childhood and what was done to you.”
Kara spoke non-stop for fifteen minutes. Marc held her hand the entire time. At the end she grimaced and he loosened his grip. “Ouch.”
“That’s a hell of a story. So we never had a choice, right?”
“Oh, we always had that. But born to make the right one.”
“There’s an obvious confusion, even contradiction.” Marc shrugged. “If there’s the one master plan, as it were, as run by the alien precogs... then what’s the point?”
“There’s an infinite number of plans. But it’s survival of the fittest, or strongest. And even the most... powerful one can be disrupted.”
“Isn’t that changing a probability matrix, big time?” He saw her surprised expression. “I’m not just a pretty-faced artist. Seriously, pre-cog is only seeing the possibilities and probabilities. You insert or see a desired outcome and the possies and probies adapt to suit.”
“Possies? Probies?”
“I hate long words. Seriously, though. The event line you want to disrupt is huge. It belongs to the Originators and whoever’s behind them. To the poor bloody Gliese, the Cancri, and every other race in this empire. Soon as we make a change here, the line adjusts. That’s what Tse said, right? So what the hell can we do? You, me and hopefully Tatia? Just show up and voilà! everything changes, the bad guys are defeated?”
Kara was silent for a while and then sighed. “I know. It must seem far-fetched. But you can win a war by killing a general and his battlefield AI. And perhaps this pre-cog empire is too inflexible, which is how most empires die.”
“I did graduate kindergarten. What do we do?”
“We’re always ready for the actions that can change the event line. We discover the top-dog pre-cog and destroy them.”
“That’s fantasy again.”
Kara shook her head. “A long time ago a wise man said the best generals defeat an enemy without killing anyone. Manoeuvre them in such a way that they defeat themselves. Get them into an arms race and their economy crumbles…”
“... but seeing defeat,” he interrupted, “they say what the fuck and go out in death and glory.”
“There’s always that.”
“Saviours of the universe, that’s us.”
She sighed and looked at him with mixed annoyance and pity. “You just don’t fucking get it, do you? If we’re so insignificant, why has the enemy tried to stop us?”
“Not that much...”
“Marc,” she said patiently, and it took an effort, “the psychic attack on Tse. Earth Primus trying to take down GalDiv. Now the chaos. Those ships we just destroyed. It’s open war, idiot, aimed at Earth and us in particular.” Her voice hardened. “You might think us pointless but sure as hell that fucking empire doesn’t.” She touched his arm. “I once heard a soldiers’ song from nearly two hundred years ago.” She nodded to herself as if recollecting the tune and sang in a warm contralto, “We’re here because we’re here because we’re here because we’re here.”
“A soldier’s lament,” Marc said. “We have to make the best of it. I never knew you could sing.”
“I had help.”
< Just call me Svengali.
“Let’s go find Tatia,” Kara said. “Ishmael, take us down.”
11
So they came down to the place where they’d last seen Tatia Nerein. Rounded white buildings like pebbles in fields of red and green. No alien craft in the landing zone. No movement on the roads, those low-loaders with squishy balloon tyres, used to collect Gliese newly emerged from shiny black pods hanging from the trees. The truth about the Gliese was one of the strangest and most upsetting of all. The Gliese, apparent source of the star and anti-grav drives, and therefore controllers of human space, were born as low-hanging fruit. It wasn’t an evolutionary path that made much sense. The only explanation was that the Gliese were genetically engineered as the perfect gofer. Ferrying tech throughout the galaxy, never any danger of wanting a more independent life. Obviously some intelligence, but perhaps controlled by an alien AI on board their own craft. Perhaps. Aliens, who knew? The perfect servitors. Vegetable robots – no, Kara had said how she felt one die in her arms, the one she’d killed to prevent live vivisection. Why not mechanical? Because you don’t need a factory to produce them, only a patch of earth. Because if they were mechanical, they could be used against their makers, or give up too many high-tech secrets. Plants are also more resilient and adaptable than metal. And AIs can go a bit strange.
The ideal, alien pre-cog universe would probably be populated by safe, friendly, reliable plants.
Marc sat in the rec room, watching the descent through a patch of transparent hull. Although the ship could fly down in a matter of seconds, Kara had said to take it slow, to check the landing zone and immediate area before landing.
He thought about Kara and what she’d said about a war that wasn’t, only a mission. About him missing Earth. About all three of them having been chosen long before their grandparents were born... was “chosen” the right word? Would “noticed” be more accurate? Noticed by a good pre-cog viewing the best way to defeat aliens hundreds of years in the future? Was that how it worked? Did he really care? His road pointed away from Earth. But why was Kara so accepting? He thought he knew: Greenaway. Kara hadn’t mentioned him much, strange considering the part Greenaway had played. And when Marc had pushed, she’d all but admitted that she and Greenaway now had a thing, much as she’d derided the expression.
He had his netherspace obsession, she had a new man. For Marc, sex with Kara would be little more than adolescent mutual masturbation. He was glad for her. Always better to face death with good memories.
To die sad about what’s been lost, rather than for what could have been but never was.
No more will we, won’t we, when? It was a relief.
They touched down in a mid-morning made bright to the extreme by the two suns. Remembered how they’d watched Tatia walk towards an alien spacecraft that resembled a modern version of a mad king’s many-turreted palace. How it had left as soon as she’d gone on board, leaving both Kara and Marc bereft and guilty.
Now the entire area felt abandoned. No sign of Gliese life in any of the buildings. Humans had been there little more than a month ago yet plants like black cacti with long spines were already claiming the roads. A sharp point had to be the most common weapon in the universe.
There was life by the tree where they’d first seen the Gliese pods. Life crawling on the ground, life dropping from the branches. Young Gliese seemingly helpless, several scrabbling at the ground as if trying to bury themselves like sand crabs at low tide. Others were being attacked or eaten by metre-long scarlet worm-like creatures with flower-shaped mouths and rows of teeth, sharp point syndrome again.
“They should be at school,” Marc said.
Kara wondered how you teach a plant. Slowly.
“Just abandoned. That’s sad.” He thought a moment. “Unless it’s normal.”
“Perhaps the empire is in retreat,” she said. “If we only knew where. Or from where. Or they even understand how to retreat.”
“Or the bad guys think they’ve won. This place isn’t important any more.”
“We’re doing it again. Assuming they think human.”
He asked the question she’d been dreading. “Any sense of Tatia?”
“Nope. Maybe this isn’t the best place.” And maybe it’s all BS about empathy.
“Don’t force it, Kara. It’ll come. Not just saying it, either.”
They walked back to the
ship, sat outside drinking beer, neither for the moment wanting to make any decisions. The sight of abandoned Gliese eaten alive had introduced pointlessness to the situation.
“What’s that?” he asked, as Kara took something metal and square from a pocket.
Kara passed him the small metal box Greenaway had given her. “I was told good luck. Problem is, I can’t open it.”
< Maybe you got to think it open.
> Where were you?
< Checking out the ship. Salome left copies of itself in all the spare AIs. And somehow the food stasis locker. At least, there’s a link that vanished in a higher dimension. Suggest you destroy the AIs. The stasis locker’s okay now but all the milk went off. So only espresso.
“No spare AIs,” she said to Marc. Then, “What the hell!”
The box lay open on Marc’s hand.
“I don’t know,” he said. “The lid just vanished.” He passed it back.
The interior gleamed like mother of pearl. Inside, a small ring of what looked like plaited dark hair. Kara took it out and gasped, suddenly aware of someone she knew well, unseen, so much more than an idea or a memory.
“What!”
She couldn’t speak for a moment. “I just got the strongest sense of Tatia.”
“Did Greenaway give you that box?”
Kara nodded. “Said it was an alien trade, years ago. He could never open it.” She reached inside, touched the plaited hair and recoiled. “Again!”
“My guess, it’s Tatia’s hair. Maybe from her as a toddler.”
“Greenaway would have said.”
“If he knew. Even then, maybe not. Sometimes we can’t be told or it changes things, right?”
She wondered about her reaction on being given a lock of Tatia’s baby hair. And would Greenaway have lied to her? “Maybe.”
“Isn’t it all a little convenient?”
“Could be that we’re not the only players.”
Marc looked shocked.
“Think about it.” The more she did, the more it made sense. “We keep on saying that perhaps the pre-cog empire is crumbling. Assume you’re right – and it has been for centuries, even thousands of years. Could be that another race that wanted to be free saw a way of getting us to do it for them...”
“Stop!”
She looked at him with concern. “What’s wrong?”
“Hear yourself, Kara! You’re saying that just as Tse and Greenaway and the other, good pre-cogs manipulated us, they were also being manipulated but never knew it? Maybe the bad pre-cogs are also being manipulated? Where does it all fucking end?”
“You can only play the hand you’re dealt.”
“What?”
“Old saying.” Personal AIs had killed off poker, bridge and any other gambling game that needed skill. “It means you worry about the things you can change.”
“Or simply follow orders. Do you trust Greenaway?”
Kara laughed. “Always – to do what he thinks is right.”
“No matter who gets hurt?”
Was Marc a little jealous? She didn’t think so. Protective, as a friend. Desperate to get back to netherspace alive. “He sees it as a war. Anson’s like any general. He has the job because he’s willing to send others to their deaths. Not every leader can do that. Or if they can, they just see soldiers as expendable.” She took the loop of hair from the box. “How to make this work? How does it work?”
“Some sort of quantum entanglement?” Marc guessed.
“You have to stop reading books. They only give you strange ideas.”
Marc shrugged. “So I don’t know. Let’s call it magic.”
“But she’s close. I can feel it.”
“That could just be...”
“No.” Positive. “I mean physically close... at least it’s like a trail...” She stopped as she saw Marc’s sudden start.
“You know she’s here. Her trail is here.” He shook his head. “You don’t get it?”
Kara stood up. “Five seconds before I break something. Like your arm.”
“Netherspace! You sense where she is – was – in netherspace!”
Kara stared at him. Logic said he was mad. Intuition said to listen. “Go on.”
“It’s all energy, right?” His gesture took in the planet, galaxy, universe. “Netherspace. And when we go into it, we have an effect. You said that. It’s what those things are: the result of living matter affecting an energy field. And you said the foam, the Wild SUT ship hulls are there to stop contamination. But maybe they don’t, never completely. Maybe, sometimes, a human leaves a trail. You have to think on a quantum level... or something like that...” he tailed off, struggling to explain something he didn’t really understand to someone equally confused.
“Okay.”
Marc looked surprised. “You agree?”
“Wait a minute.”
> Well?
< Anything’s possible. But yes. Should have seen it myself.
Which was all that Ishmael would say. It/he seemed to have become more fixed in a single personality, Kara thought. More fun when she’d be surprised by a Humphrey Bogart character, or an AI’s patrician take on England’s last king, never replaced after moving to open a yoga retreat on Majorca.
“We need a new name for this ship,” Marc announced as they left the planet’s surface. “Merry Christmas doesn’t cut it.”
< Traditionally the AI names the ship. But since Salome is gone...
“Ishmael has a suggestion,” Kara said. “Oh. Are you sure?”
And so the newly named Iron Thrown – retro-lover Kara understood the reference, thought it best to keep Marc ignorant, he’d only mock – sped out of the two-sun gravity well and dropped into netherspace.
Kara sat in the control room wearing the plait of hair around her ring finger.
She could feel Tatia’s presence, stronger than ever. But where? Despondency sidled into her mind. Netherspace wasn’t a specific place. No up, no down, no sideways. No shape. No yesterday or tomorrow, only now. And yet, Kara thought, aware of Marc trying not to look too hopeful, and yet there are sequences in netherspace. She’d seen a SUT murdered. Cause and effect, people dying. Marc had been on a netherspace journey, visiting/being shown one alien race after another – and what was that all about?
Think, Kara, silly bitch, think! She rarely if ever swore at herself. This was as good a time as any. She scratched her neck and thought.
So, maybe no-time in netherspace. Maybe time is how humans experience it, because otherwise we go mad? Because puny little human brains don’t have the capacity to perceive n-space as it really is?
And when you don’t have the maths to understand, or the understanding even if you did, all you have is instinct.
“Hull translucent,” Kara ordered. “Six minutes duration max.”
That familiar rainbow maelstrom filled her eyes, tugging at her sanity.
Think trails, she thought. Think of a ship’s wake. Heat signature on the ground long after a vehicle has left, only shown by infra-red. Think of a field, green, perfect, but aerial photos show the white lines of ditches, foundations that vanished hundreds of years ago. Think of cats and dogs finding their way home. Swallows migrating.
There. An area more... more relevant than... than not... an area strong with the sense of Tatia Nerein. Tatia Greenaway. Anson’s daughter. Oh god, I fucked the family. Doesn’t matter, irrelevant. I can point from here, but what does that mean?
“Solid hull.”
Sanity returned.
“You got something?” Marc asked. His eyes glowed from the last few minutes, whirlpools of colour around a jet black core.
Kara nodded. “A trace, a direction. Wait one, Marc.”
> If have a direction can you follow it?
< If it’s strong enough I can read it from your mind.
> Then what?
< Estimate new co-ordinates. What human navigators used to call dead reckoning. Have to check every now and then.
She found the trail again and concentrated.
< Too weak. Sorry.
Tried again.
< If I explained what’s not happening...
> Will I understand?
< Probably not. It’s the ship’s hull. Somehow diffusing this signal, trail.
> If there wasn’t one? Crazy stupid, but so what.
< You’d do that?
Well, of course she would. Tatia was her people. Tatia was coming home.
> Will you be okay? Not go squirly?
< Long as Marc keeps those things away. And you, Kara. No more than nine minutes at a time.
She explained to Marc what they were going to do, expecting disbelief. Instead he said yes, it made sense. Once you stopped comparing netherspace to normal space, you realised that anything could happen, everything was true.
“Finally, we get to use our talents, together,” he said.
Kara glanced at him, suspecting sarcasm. She saw only a rueful understanding. “You really think?”
“Everyone says how important we are together. When our special skills come into play. So my job is to keep the locals happy?”
“Like you did before.”
“Should be okay.” Marc wore a casual, done-this-before face.
Kara looked at him as if he was an errant child. “Want a little more than should, okay?”
“I’m not a complete expert...”
“Just a complete idiot. I know there’s a risk, nothing certain. What I need from you is rah, rah of course it’ll all be wonderful. And you also need to hear it. From yourself. Like you’re trying to make art and it’s not working so you boost yourself, do you see? Can you do that?”
“We’ll kill the bastards!”
“Mean it?”
Marc found that he did. “But if a really bad one shows up,” he said, “we get back inside, no argument.”
< You listen to him, Kara. No heroics, okay? You both wear suits, I don’t care if Marc can live in n-space. We might suddenly have to leave it. And you’re both on safety lines all the time. Tell Marc.
She did.
“Space suits? Safety line?”
“In case we have to quit n-space in a hurry. This no sightseeing opportunity, Marc. Okay?”