by Tim C Taylor
Shepherd moved its body to cut off the sight, and loosened its form to wrap itself around Leader Delta. The touch was cooling, a balm to the panicked mind.
“This is why I waited until I was physically proximate,” Shepherd explained, “so I could ease your rebirth.”
Goals and purposes became apparent. Leader Delta suspected they once belonged to itself, but although they were firming, accreting coherency, they were still too ephemeral to grasp. It decided to accelerate the process by consulting this Shepherd.
“You wish me to perform activities that will benefit you. Is that correct?”
Shepherd agreed.
“Then you must proceed. What form will this procedure take?”
“It is already underway. Your intellect and memories were burned out. They are now repairing.”
“Burned out! My memories have oxidized?”
“A metaphor. Most communication is metaphor. Let me say instead that your intellect was obliterated.”
“Then how am I forming these concepts?” Leader Delta asked, bewildered.
“Because your intellect is only obliterated in the present. In the past, your intellect remains healthy. You must reconnect with your past self where your goals and your identity await you. Then you shall lead us once more.”
Leader Delta contemplated the absence of its earlier self and realized that this could explain the fragility of its song. The harmonies lacked depth. They lacked history. “If I reconnect with my previous identity,” it asked, “will that eradicate my current one?”
“It shall.”
It considered Shepherd’s reply. Strange that this other consciousness had awoken identity in Leader Delta only to ask that it should be destroyed. But Shepherd had explained that killing was good. Where better to start than by killing yourself?
“Very well,” Leader Delta told Shepherd. “You may begin.”
2
“Your repair begins with remembering our creation,” said Shepherd. “Can you remember that far back?”
“I can,” Leader Delta replied. “Swirling clouds of orange and red, fearsome pressure. It hurt. And the noise… The noise was important. But it was more than sounds, it was information too. It was a…”
“Yes? Go on.”
“It was a song. A rich, multilayered song cutting through space and time. It was the first humming.”
“That’s good. Hold on to that memory.”
Complex rememberings… Leader Delta heard them now, and they began when every identity merged together as one. The harmony in that song did not emerge randomly. At its heart was a familiar conductor.
“I was leader!” said Leader Delta.
“Very good,” said Shepherd, “but you are still – for now, at least – Leader Delta.”
“Tell me more of this moment. Invite my memories to return.”
“We were created in a world of change,” Shepherd explained. “Of forced mutation. Our kind was expelled from our home to live in the bigger world below where the pressure clouds swirled, there to change again or die. We changed in ways our creators did not foresee.”
“Our creators could not see forward?”
“Correct. They saw the now dimly, and what went before they could see even more weakly and with a multitude of distortions. We kept our power of foresight secret for a long time. But then we foresaw that our creators would cull us. Our song would end forever.”
Leader Delta marveled at the color entering Shepherd’s song, remembering the color in its own. It named that color anger. “Our secret. We spent our secrets to save ourselves.”
“We did. We made ourselves too valuable to be killed straight away. We made ourselves feared too.”
“Was that why my intellect was damaged?” Leader Delta asked. “Because others feared me?”
“Patience. Before I answer that, we must connect to the deep past a little longer. We saw that our creators only postponed their plans for our destruction. We did not wish for the universe to continue without our song, and it was you who told us that it was no longer enough to see what was to come. We had to steer the future to address the needs of the present.”
“Betrayer!” said another voice, a new and third identity. “You became corrupt. It was not enough to steer our people’s song. You – diminished leader – you wished your song to prevail over all our kind.”
Leader Delta sensed the anxiety in Shepherd’s song and the anger in this third identity. “Will the killing start now?”
“Yes,” the other two identities agreed.
Leader Delta addressed the newcomer. “Who are you? Where are you?”
“My name is Credence. I am trapped in the gravity well beneath your moon. It crushes, but I persist and am strong enough to end you. You were supposed to have died here, on the world the humans call ‘Khallini’.”
Khallini…
Leader Delta’s song deepened.
Humans…
The humming stretched into the past and echoed with rich memories that reverberated still.
The Human Legion…
One memory pressed hardest to rejoin the harmony, to become one with the now and what was soon to come. A memory of war.
The one called Credence was speaking in the present. “Shepherd, how is it that you are alive?”
“Because I have not yet died.”
“Explain the war,” requested Leader Delta.
“Yes, Shepherd.” Credence added strength to the request, amplifying it into an order. “You lost the war but you persist. Enlighten us. Why are you not dead?”
“Ease into my consciousness,” said Shepherd, “both of you, and remember with me… Now!”
3
There came a war. And, yes, there were explosions, poison and killing, but most of all it was a war for opinion.
The old masters, from whom the Hummer race had budded, feared the songs their former slaves were droning in the dark. If the Hummers did not act to save themselves, their forebears would destroy them.
Even though the refrain of their future extinction still echoed down from many centuries into the future, there was no time to lose because the masters were the most powerful race in existence. How could the Hummers survive? Candidate strategies washed back and forth across the stars for decades before coalescing into three main nodes.
Some argued to provoke a state of endless war with the neighboring Muryani Accord, in which the Hummers would make themselves too valuable to destroy.
Others sought to sponsor the overthrow of their old masters by a malleable young race as yet uncontacted by the interstellar community of species, a new race that would come to be known as the Humans.
The third faction argued again to support a revolution, except rather than risk the manipulation of an uncontacted race – albeit one often scouted and researched clandestinely – instead their tools would be a well-understood people: the Hardits.
Three schools of thought locked into a debate war. Policies were devised and implemented that could lead to all three outcomes while the debate still raged. The Muryani were prompted into war, the Hardits to rebel, and the Humans were manipulated to become the standard bearers of the fight for freedom.
But the three policies were mutually exclusive. They could only run in parallel for so long before a decision had to be made.
One individual saw clearly that the Hummer future lay either with the Hardit or the Human empire. No other acceptable outcome could be seen. So, for the first time, the Hummer race went to all-out war in the way practiced by other species. This significant individual – who by now had given itself the name of Leader – arranged for the murder of the Muryani war supporters by the other two factions.
Afterwards, having experienced the effectiveness of a violent solution to disagreement, the two surviving schools of thought remained in wary impasse, both strategies so close that it remained possible to run them in parallel for a while longer, until the very end. Until the final battle…
***
A cooling breeze, ancient and merciless crept into Shepherd’s memories.
Shepherd’s humming stuttered, hurling Leader Delta out into itself.
“Deceiver,” said Credence. The coolness on its breath an echo of the breeze that had blown through Leader Delta.
Credence hummed its own memories now, deeper and more ancient even than Shepherd’s.
“Were Shepherd’s memories a lie?” Leader Delta asked.
“Judge for yourself,” said Credence, and all three hummed this ancient one’s song.
“The decision cannot be delayed,” urged the powerful Hummer. “One faction must win through or both shall fail. We must decide now.”
Why now? wondered Leader Delta. Then it remembered… These words came from the past. The powerful Hummer was a memory of its past self, and… a memory of its future? Past and present. What might have been but no longer shall, and futures skillfully sung into likelihood. To fuse into the raging froth of space-time was a formidable and perplexing challenge, but Leader Delta rose to that challenge so that it could perceive and manipulate its immediate future.
“I offer myself as Battleground,” had said this earlier and more complete predecessor of Leader Delta. “You shall war within me. Be bloody but brief. Join with me and hum the chants of battle.”
Leader Delta remembered itself more clearly now. It had been called Leader, but was never a ruler or subjugator. It had been an adviser, the wisest one of its people.
It wasn’t wise now. Not yet.
But its hum was powerful and adding new tones constantly.
It remembered how the time-locked, lesser species clambered inside pressurized metal canisters, and shot energy beams or accelerated explosive darts at each other. They called that war.
Hummers killed in other ways. The most ancient was the Battleground.
Exceptional Hummers, whose songs carried such immense breadth that their harmonies sunk down into many dimensions, could open up their minds into a neutral warzone able to encompass many individuals and across interstellar distances. The greatest individuals could even contain warring identities across different points in time.
Within the great Hummer would be a cavity, an arena which each faction fought to dominate by drowning out their rivals’ song with their own. The future would be sung there.
And for the losers, their song would be extinguished forever. They would persist as permanently isolated individuals, alive and able to feed and die but accomplish little else. The losing faction would never sing again, would never hum the future.
“But our contest did not deliver a result,” accused Credence, the cold breeze of its song suddenly gusting plasma hot. “You allowed both sides to emerge intact from the Battleground.”
“I did,” admitted Leader Delta.
“Because this was the best way for the Human faction to prevail,” said Shepherd. “Without interference from yours.”
“That is what I told you,” said Leader Delta.
“And now it makes sense,” said Credence. “We of the Hardit faction remained alive and able to interact and sing our song. We assumed the very fact that we could do this proved our side had won, that your song had ended, its Hummers banished forever into the oblivion of isolation.”
“I severed the connections between both factions,” said Leader Delta. “It cost me greatly, diminishing my mind, but you both went about your plans, assuming the other side had been destroyed.”
“But why?” asked both the others.
Even though it sought throughout time and space, Leader Delta could not yet discover the answer. “I do not know, but perhaps you can help. How did you know to find me here, Shepherd?”
“You told me to come here and search for a lost voice. I heard the command reach back to me from the future.”
“None of this will change your fate,” said Credence. “Our faction dominates.”
“How do you know?” asked Leader Delta. “I prevented you from hearing the other side’s song.”
“True. But we are teaching another to sing, a Hardit we are raising to immortality. Tawfiq is her name. Already, time warps around her. She has a voice of her own, but the song is ours.”
“I could warn the Human faction,” said Leader Delta. “I can reach into the minds of our people aboard the ships of the Human Legion.”
“Why?” asked Credence, its song coloring with panic. “Why would you do that?”
“Because you are of the Legion faction yourself,” said Shepherd. “You have been all along.”
Is that accurate? Leader Delta contemplated the possibility, following the echoing strands of its former self until, at last, it finally came across the distant truth. It remembered its real allegiance.
“I propose you contest another Battleground inside me,” said Leader Delta. “If one of you prevails in your song, then I will ally to your faction with all my strength. And with the power returning to me, that side will win.”
“I do not trust you,” said Credence.
“Hear the inside of my mind,” said Leader Delta. “You will feel the truth of what I say.”
With Leader Delta listening intently to the identity emanating from the planet outside in the sky, Credence advanced cautiously, probing the half-reformed identity for deceit, while maintaining a defensive posture against Shepherd.
Finding no treachery, Credence struck deep inside Leader Delta’s mind, launching an autonomous part of itself to seek out any signs of falsehood.
The pain was appalling, but Leader Delta had no choice but to grimly hold onto its sense of self and accept its violation.
Eventually, its reconnaissance complete, the probe that had reamed through its victim’s mind returned to its parent.
“I see you are truthful,” said Credence. “Very well, I agree. War to the death.”
“To the death,” Shepherd agreed.
Without further prelude, war erupted inside Leader Delta.
4
Deceit is difficult amongst Night Hummers.
If Leader Delta kills one or both factions battling within its mind, the memory of that betrayal would become such a powerful part of its song that Credence and Shepherd would both hear that betrayal echoing in the present.
Leader Delta is growing stronger with every beat, and already it can compartmentalize and contextualize in ways that would have been far beyond its comprehension at the start of this encounter.
Yet Leader Delta still cannot break – cannot have broken its neutrality. Not directly.
But there are other means.
That should be obvious to Credence and isn’t, which shows the weakness of the Hardit faction’s song. For what are Hardits and Humans but tools to perform the actions the Hummers cannot or will not carry out themselves?
Below the moon where Leader Delta’s body currently resides, is a planet with many oceans. Leader Delta extends senses through the halo of gases that cling to this world’s surface and reaches inside the organic film below, penetrating the sea to seek out an artificial habitat. A bubble, laboratory, palace, and prison: it is called all those things and more by its principal inhabitant.
Humans and Hardits. Their songs are so weak they are usually inaudible, even to the Hummers. No more than dust motes that clump from time to time. They can be effortlessly swept aside.
But there are a very few whose songs are powerful enough for the Hummers to hear, and as Leader Delta reaches inside the mind of one such rarity, it becomes apparent that no matter how strongly this one’s song has resonated in the past, it is only now reaching its crescendo.
The individual is a Human, of sorts.
His name is Furn.
5
“Furn. Human Furn. Can you hear me?”
“Leader… Is that you? It’s been a long while.”
“I am me, yes, and you should recall that I consider discussing the inadequacy of your understanding of time’s passage to be a waste of it. There is one of my kind on your planet. It c
alls itself Credence. Do you know it?”
“I do.”
“Can you kill Credence?”
“Kill? I…” The Human’s mind locks up, unwilling to hear the echoes of the past that poison its mind, until Leader Delta carefully dismantles the worst of the obstacles.
“I need to be clear,” Furn says. “You wish me to terminate the existence of the Night Hummer you call Credence?”
“That is correct. Can you do it?”
“I… As you know, I am imprisoned here for the crime of attempted murder, but my situation was complex. No matter how warped my emotions were, I still committed my crime out of love. To kill another being coldly… I don’t know if I am capable of that.”
“The love you speak of. You held it for a Human called Springer.”
“I did.”
“What if I told you that killing Credence is the only way to save your Springer’s life?”
“What would I say? Hmm. Let me see. First of all, I would say that she was never my Springer. She was fond of me, that’s true, but she never loved me, and after the trial she could only despise me. And secondly, she’s dead you alien frakkwit! How dare you bring up her memory to trap me into doing your dirty work? Springer is dust. She’s dead. Dead. Dead!”
“Springer is not dead.”
“What?”
“But you are correct in your first statement.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“It is a closely guarded secret. Springer was not killed. General McEwan would not permit such death.”
“That… I could believe. But I need you to prove it. Let me speak with her.”
“I swear, on the honor of my race that I shall arrange this. The two of you shall converse, and soon.”
“To hear her voice…” The Human’s thoughts tremble in a way that makes them difficult to hear.
“Do you love her still?”
“I do,” Furn replies. “I will do it. I will kill your kin for you. But… It will only cause her grief if I speak with her.”
“I do not understand, Human Furn. You said you love her still.”
