by Simon Kewin
He frowned. He'd clearly considered it. “At some point that may well be the logical step to take. I confess, I'm itching to go. But for now, there's too much I can learn from the data you recovered. We have to consider the risks of returning. Then there's the Dragon.”
“What about it?”
“The ship's systems appear to have suffered some impairment from the journey. I'm reluctant to risk further damage.”
She had the clear impression that his mind was only half on their conversation. He was talking to her but looking at the bead. She turned to leave.
“Oh,” he said to her back, “I meant to say. There is something I can tell you, some data that came in from the network while you were away.”
Ondo had a transgalactic communication network of his own. It was slow and flawed compared to Concordance's. The enemy appeared to be able to send messages to any system or ship with no latency, and Ondo, by contrast, had a swarm of several thousand metajump-capable drones that each ran a regular route around planets of known interest. They blinked into existence in each system, pulled in telemetry from the nanosensors previously left behind, then moved on. Periodically, their routes took them to a collection point in the dark of interstellar space where they, along with other drones, passed on what they'd learned to the next higher-up devices in the hierarchy. Slowly, data was accumulated until it could be brought to the Refuge. By then it might be weeks old, but it gave Ondo a comprehensive, if flawed, view of wider galactic events. He was always behind the curve but knew far more about what was going on than anyone else – apart from Concordance.
“What is it?”
“It's about Kane. You said you needed to understand what made him do what he did.”
She still needed answers, something to make sense of events on Maes Far. The slump of her father to the ice, the fan of spraying blood, played through her mind's eye one more time.
“Tell me.”
“I looked into his background. He came from a planet called Migdala on the periphery of the central mass. It happens to be a world I keep an eye on as a potential flashpoint. Some interesting information came in about it. There's been bubbling rebellion on the planet for some years, so far successfully suppressed by Concordance. They have a festival called the Carnival of Masks, celebrated across most continents and adopted and adapted by most Migdalan cultures. It's essentially a week of partying and celebration, midsummer in the southern hemisphere and, obviously, midwinter in the northern. In the past few years, there's been trouble in several major cities: demonstrations, rioting, drunken mobbery spilling over into violence and open revolt.”
“What's different this year?”
“There's been more Concordance activity in orbit around the planet. It's normal enough for a few Void Walker attack craft to arrive in-system from time to time, but I'm seeing at least two extra Cathedral ships in orbit.”
That sent a chill trickling though her. Were they planning to do to Migdala what they'd done to her own planet? “They're constructing another shroud?”
“That's unclear. My data is obviously out of date. Something is happening there. You could slip into the system and take a look, pick up the latest nanosensor recordings. I have good predictions on the locations and arrival points of their ships; you could go without being seen easily enough.”
He was trying to get rid of her so he could concentrate on his research. Or, more generously, he didn't want her to be kicking her heels, waiting to do something. Right then, activity was psychologically good for her; it gave her an outlet, a purpose. Maybe he got that.
“I'll go down to the planet,” she said, “find out what's taking place on the ground.”
He hadn't meant for her to go that far. He shook his head. “The risks are too great. You know what they would do if you were identified, and your appearance is hardly going to let you blend in.”
“You said they all wear masks.”
“Many taking part in the celebrations do, but by no means everyone. In any case, there's still the rest of you: a mask might cover up your face, but not your arms, your torso, your legs. You'd be spotted immediately. You know Concordance laws against biomechanical enhancement are enforced rigorously.”
“I'm an abomination, yeah.”
His distaste at the term passed across his features. “As they would see it. It doesn't matter that they're clearly wrong, it matters that you survive. From what I know of the system, it would be impossible to know whom you could trust. Concordance has embedded itself thoroughly in Migdalan culture. Parasitized it.”
She ignored his objections. A part of her wanted to go to the planet as she was: half-biological, half-artificial. A mongrel, an atrocity. Flaunt herself in their faces. This was what they'd done to her, this was what their rule meant. She had done nothing wrong, she'd simply survived, by whatever means were necessary. She wanted their outrage, their horror, their fear to follow her down the street. Except, she clearly wouldn't survive for long like that, and then she wouldn't be able to defeat them. If she wanted to go to the planet, she'd have to play their game for a time – repellent as the idea was.
“You can give me artificial flesh, cover up the substrate?”
“You want me to do that?”
“Temporarily, so I can go under cover. When I return, I go back to this. Patchwork Selene, piebald Selene. You can do it? It doesn't need to be real skin grown for the purpose, right? An artificial analogue will do for a few days.”
“It's too dangerous. If anyone sees what you really are, they'll come for you. One abrasion to your artificial skin, and it will be obvious. Cut you and you won't bleed. And then there is your left eye. Skin I can do, but concealing the extra tech in your eyeball would mean transplanting a more natural looking prosthetic.”
“I can wear goggles or sunglasses to cover my eyes.”
“Inside? At night?”
“I'll cope. I'll be careful. You can do it; I know you can.”
He was reluctant: afraid, perhaps, that she was too hell-bent on revenge to assess risks properly. It was possible he had a point. She burned to strike back at the enemy. She had to watch that.
“I could give you the skin,” he said, “but I won't. This is too risky.”
“You said you saved me so I could live my life. You have no right to deny me.”
“I won't facilitate your efforts to get yourself killed.”
“Now you sound like Concordance, telling me what's best for me. I'll go anyway, as I am, take my chances.”
She had his full attention now. He studied her for long moments, competing thoughts flashing across his features. He was torn in two.
Finally, he relented, looked away. “What you ask – I can do it, yes. It will take a few days. But promise me you're not going to get yourself killed. As well as you, I'm thinking of myself and everything here. If they take you, they'll be able to rip out your knowledge of how to find the Refuge.”
“Then zap those memories, encrypt them, and have the Dragon recreate them if and when I return safely. I'll take my chances.”
He shook his head. “I could do that if your brain was all artificial, but memory stored in biological cells isn't that simple. Memories have echoes, they're dynamic.”
“Then we'll have to take the risk. It's either that or I never venture near an inhabited world again. It was you that suggested I live a normal life, find a safe planet somewhere to build a new identity. There'd be the danger then that I'd reveal the truth about you.”
He'd clearly considered the possibility. “Yes. That is true.”
“We're agreed?”
He relented with a sigh. “Agreed. Go if you must.”
That evening he began the process. She stood naked, legs apart, left arm held high, unmoving, while electronically controlled micronozzles sprayed up and down her limbs and torso, swarming around her like a cloud of hummingbirds. They worked systematically, constantly returning to their base to refill with the required chemicals and biomechanical c
omponents. Bit by bit, they laid down her artificial skin. Ondo monitored the process remotely to protect her modesty. They'd come a long way since her rebuilding process, the months when every centimetre of her flesh was known intimately to him.
She hooked into remote sensors so she could see herself, watch her skin being built up, sparkling black substrate being overlaid by her natural off-white. Strange how wrong she looked when she was the same colour all over. Ondo's artistry was undeniable, though. He'd programmed freckles and blemishes into her appearance, including two scars that were an accurate-looking continuation of real scars across her abdomen. She was glad she'd chosen to remove all the hair from her body and head. Permanent artificial skin would have allowed it to grow through, blend in, but the temporary flesh did not. Her new skin also dulled her enhanced senses very slightly, although not enough to impair her significantly. Her best defence was in fitting in, looking like a local.
Ondo took the greatest care on her face. He used the micronozzles to lay down 90% of her artificial maxillo-facial skin, but completed the remaining 10% himself, either by programming in each batch of movements he wanted the devices to make, or even by using gentle brush strokes to build up the layers by hand. She turned off her facial touch sensors so that she wasn't constantly bugged by tickling sensations. Occasionally, he brushed over a seam onto her natural flesh, and each time she had to resist the urge to scratch irritatedly.
His face was centimetres from her own as he worked, his fingers smoothing the flesh of her earlobe or her cheek. The intimacy of it made her uncomfortable, and she had to force herself to sit still while he worked, staring into the distance so as not to catch his eye.
He was studying the contour of her cheekbone, stroking her cheek. He must have seen some reaction in her. “Is this okay? You want me to continue?” It was uncomfortable for him, too. Much of what they'd been through together had to have made him uneasy. She hadn't thought about it from his perspective before.
“You're doing fine. I'm grateful, truly.”
“I'll show you what you need to do so that you can apply the disguise yourself, eventually. I'm sure you have a better idea of how you should look than I do. With practice you could adopt this disguise in only a couple of hours.”
“Thank you. But you're doing fine.”
When he was finished, she studied herself in the mirror. He'd done a good job, the two sides of her face matching seamlessly but slightly asymmetrically. She ran through a series of expressions to test everything out: delight, sadness, horror, anger. It all worked perfectly, although it was strange how wrong the chubby-cheeked fleshiness looked and felt to her. She looked like a person, sure, but she no longer looked like her. Which meant it was a good disguise, although she had to resist the urge to claw off all that fake flesh, expose the real Selene underneath.
She downloaded all the data she could find on Migdalan cultures and languages. The political and social set-up was complicated, with numerous factions and clans competing on most continents – to the point that it was impressive they'd reached the level of social sophistication they had. She'd settled on an equatorial city called Senefore as her target. It was the closest the planet had to a world capital, and it was certainly the city that saw the largest and most raucous processions. She picked out a continent on the other side of the world and decided that would be the backstory home of her character. It would allow her some leeway if she slipped up on a pronunciation or a cultural reference, and its inhabitants tended to have lighter skin tones that were closer to her original flesh. People in and around Senefore, by contrast, were generally a rainbow of darker shades, delicate browns to deep blacks. Anything to help her not stand out – although it wasn't really going to be an issue. Migdalan cities were filled with travellers at carnival time, and there were no signs of tension between nations and populations on Migdala – either because it was a mature society at ease with itself, or because the greater threat of Concordance had united them.
“What mask will you wear?” Ondo asked.
“What do we have?”
“Various ritual masks from other cultures that would pass as grotesque or comic on Migdala.”
She picked out an outlandish red one that covered her face completely. It was some sort of hell-creature, with animal horns and an exaggerated, leering mouth. The eye-holes restricted her vision slightly but hid her features well.
“You're sure I'll blend in wearing this?”
“Some of the masks people wear are considerably more bizarre. You'll be tame in comparison.”
“I guess that's good. You're sure this doesn't represent some dire insult to one of the Migdalan cultures?”
“I'm more or less completely sure.”
“They wear them so they can't be identified by the authorities?”
“It goes back much further than that, into thousand-year-old ritual traditions from one of the mountain tribes. You could do whatever you wanted for this one week, cross any line, commit any sin, so long as you were wearing a mask. By covering your face, it was considered you became a different person, someone not responsible for your actions, allowing you to get away with essentially anything. Murder, rape, incest, mutilation, there are folk tales filled with no end of horrors carried out by people wearing masks, although the stories always have a strong retribution moral, of people ultimately paying the price for their actions, often through supernatural means. Inevitably, the practice has become sanitized for modern public tastes, becoming a way of mocking those in power rather than slaughtering them. Concordance has clamped down hard on the carnivals, but they can still be riotous. You should be careful.”
“Why do they even let them continue? It seems odd.”
“It does. I simply don't know.”
She also picked out clothes to wear from Ondo's extensive collection of costumes and disguises: plain tunics and trousers that were practical for travel and that weren't, according to their research, going to stand out. Again, her backstory would help skim over any awkwardness.
She stood in the midst of the racks of clothes, outfits of every conceivable colour, a huge variety of cuts and materials, and an odd thing occurred to her.
“Ondo, why are these costumes all the same?”
Ondo replied from his laboratory. “The same?”
“I mean, they all follow the same basic pattern. Two arms, two legs, somewhere between one and two metres high. Even the cuts, the tailoring for busts and waists and hips. Why is it all so uniform? There have to be clothes here for thousands of planets across the galaxy.”
“Of course, the sample of costumes you see is self-selecting. I haven't bothered to collect disguises for body-forms that aren't near my own, and there are many, many variations. Sentient species with more than four limbs are common. But you've hit upon a very good question, one that's puzzled me in the past, because there is a very high incidence of this basic form among intelligent civilisations across the galaxy. At a rate that appears to be far above what might be likely by chance.”
“What answer have you come up with?”
“I see two possible explanations: either this basic form is an optimal one given a wide variety of evolutionary niches, or else there is a prime cause. A deliberate plan.”
“You mean, like a creator god?”
“That wasn't the explanation I had in mind. What we see might be evidence of large-scale genetic manipulation of emerging species across the galaxy. The problem is that there's no way I've found of proving that, no obvious repeating patterns in species' genes or gene analogues.”
This wasn't like the shared language, a relatively recent phenomenon. Such widespread manipulation of genotypes would have to have been carried out millions of years ago. “Do you have any hard evidence at all that such a galactic-scale intervention took place?”
“None. Most likely it never happened, and what we see is a perfectly natural parallel evolution across broadly similar planetary environments. The theory that an advanced and ancient
progenitor species shaped life across the galaxy would also require them to have undertaken widespread terraforming interventions on countless thousands, perhaps millions, of worlds. It's hard to believe that's possible.”
“So, it is all the work of Omn, and Concordance have been right all along,” she said.
He got the joke but still replied with all seriousness. “The forces of evolution and long passages of time seem like a simpler explanation to me. There's a bell-curve distribution of basic body forms across galactic space, with common patterns and outliers as you see in just about every biological phenomenon. You need hands or some close analogue for complex tool manipulation, and you need something like a head, an armoured bone container, to hold a growing brain. If you don't have structures along those lines, you don't get intelligence.”
“Right. So not Omn.”
When she was ready, they hugged only slightly awkwardly, and she resumed her position in charge of the Radiant Dragon while Ondo returned to his analysis of the Depository images. She let the ship control its own exit from the hangar deck, then took over executive control. It was already beginning to feel like it was hers, following her instructions perfectly as they flew. In those moments, she stopped knowing where she ended and the ship's structure started: its voidhull her skin, its drives her limbs, its engines her organs. The fun of it, the thrill of skimming around stray lumps of space rock and accelerating hard towards the stars, was undeniable.
The rushing fall into metaspace was the greatest ecstasy, making her stomach flip within her, although her internal body senses calmly informed her that no such thing was actually taking place. Still, with no one else around to hear, she screamed from the exhilaration of it as the Dragon translated out of normal space.
“Do you feel it?” she cried out to the ship. “Doesn't it fill you with joy?”
The ship took a moment to reply, its voice as calm as ever. “I feel it, Selene Ada. I have always felt it.”
5. Migdala
She emerged from metaspace into the outer reaches of the Migdala system, five hundred million kilometres from the single yellow sun and at an angle of seventy degrees to the ecliptic plane.
