Marque of Caine

by Charles E Gannon

  “True, but that is not the important lesson to be learned from it, Caine Riordan.”

  At least Thlunroolt’s tone wasn’t condescending any more. “Go on.”

  “As Alnduul observed, we Dornaani do not inherit families, we choose them. Consider what that might imply, if the current crisis continues to unfold.”

  Riordan stared. “What crisis?”

  “The Accord is paralyzed. The Arat Kur and Hkh’Rkh are under probationary suspension for invading Earth. The Ktor have refused to participate further until the Accord is changed, and would be expelled if the Lost Soldiers and their other violations are brought forth. Your Consolidated Terran Republic has postponed joining in order to settle star systems that would otherwise be off limits.” Thlunroolt stared up at the first-level ledge, which had appeared out of the darkness above. “These circumstances are inherently unstable. A reckoning is approaching.”

  Riordan frowned. Well, when you put it that way…“Okay, but how is Alnduul’s cross-species affinity related to any of that?”

  “It points toward an important variable in the times to come: that some of us Dornaani have a marked tendency to gravitate toward, and identify with, humans. And through that, to ‘adopt’ them.”

  Riordan glanced over at the wizened Dornaani as the ledge elevator began slowing. There had been no hint of irony or facetiousness in his tone or in his expression. “How early did Alnduul know that he wanted to work in Human Oversight?”

  Thlunroolt folded his hands in front of him as the elevator snugged up against the rest of the ledge. They stepped off. “To adapt a human expression, he was spawned to be a Custodian. It was the greatest joy of my career to be his mentor.” As they entered the narrowest part of the tunnels that would bring them back to the cave mouth, the old Dornaani’s voice took on a hint of reverie. “He has been observing your race for one hundred and forty years, the last forty as Senior Overseer.”

  Riordan saw the significance. “So he took charge in 2083, the year Nolan intercepted the Doomsday Rock.”

  “The affinity he felt for Corcoran is not, in retrospect, difficult to understand. As you said, in some ways, their careers paralleled each other.”

  They entered the dark zone near the cave mouth, exited into the crisp shadows of early midday. “I would give you a gift, Caine Riordan.” Thlunroolt parted the folds of the deceptively plain-looking saturation suit he wore whenever the temperature and humidity dropped below that which prevailed around the low-lying breeding pool. He held forth a book. The wider-than-longer shape indicated it was Dornaani.

  Well, maybe the old coot really does like me after all. “Thank you, Thlunroolt. It looks new.”

  “It is, relatively speaking.” The old Dornaani’s mouth twisted congenially. “Just under six centuries. It is, for want of a more adequate label, a history book.”

  Riordan stared at it with greatly enlarged interest. “But isn’t this illegal? You’re not supposed to reveal information about any other races, even your own.”

  “I no longer represent the Custodians or the Collective in any capacity, so I am no longer subject to that restriction.”

  Caine opened the book. A cascade of curls, swirls, and squiggles flooded across the pages. “I have to confess, I can’t read Dornaani.”

  “Evidently. You are holding it upside down. However, there are translation programs. Better still, perhaps the desire to read this book may encourage you to learn our language. Which might prove useful.” He backed up a step, assumed the farewell posture slowly, as if signifying regret at parting. “Truly, enlightenment unto you, Caine Riordan.” His arms drooped slightly. “And be careful in your travels.”

  They turned at the sound of movement back near the cave mouth. Alnduul had just emerged from the shadows. Thlunroolt took a step in the direction of the sheer escarpment. “And now, I must say farewell to my old friend and pupil.”

  * * *

  Alnduul slowed as Thlunroolt approached and asked, “So, what of the simulacrum?”

  “Its cognitive matrix is intact. It is more developed than we dared hope.”

  “Excellent. It is no less than what you wished for.”

  Alnduul cycled his outer eyelids emphatically. “It is what we needed. Desperately. But the alert sent to the Assembly requires that we accelerate the timetable.”

  Thlunroolt’s mouth tilted. He put an affectionate hand on the side of Alnduul’s arm. “After today, it is not just this plan that must adopt an accelerated timetable.”

  “I am sorry I ever approached you with this, my mentor, my old friend.”

  “You were ever my favorite student, Alnduul. But you were also my most willful. So if there was one thing I never expected from you, it was a slavish concern with protocols. Or consequences.”

  “So you anticipated that one day I might attract unwelcome official scrutiny?”

  “It was always a possible outcome. But more recently, given the Accord’s accelerating dissipation, it became inevitable.”

  Alnduul let his breath burble softly, sadly, out of his gills. “Is that not the supreme irony? That a Custodian can only meet his mandate by taking actions that conflict with the protocols that are the root of his duty and the source of his agency?”

  Thlunroolt’s mouth twisted slightly. “It is just as the Corcoran simulacrum described. When the stakes are high enough, our duties often place us in covert violation of the rules we swore to uphold. It has ever been thus. It is simply more so, now. Enlightenment unto you, Alnduul.”

  “And unto you, Thlunroolt.”

  * * *

  Back on Olsloov’s bridge, Riordan perched on the edge of his excessively responsive cocoon couch, watching the recently arrived Dornaani courier commence preacceleration for its out-shift back to the regional capital. “So the Assembly has extended the delay even further?”

  Alnduul scanned the message the courier had carried to them. “Unfortunately, yes.”

  “Because of what happened with the simulacrum?”

  “Only in part.” Alnduul looked up. His eyelids cycled slowly, apologetically. “There continues to be considerable disagreement over how to interact with you.”

  Riordan nodded, glanced down at the utterly alien book in his hands, a mute reminder of the Dornaani’s complicated past.

  The Dornaani’s past—?

  He glanced over at Alnduul. “Coming to Rooaioo’q was about more than meeting your mentor, or seeing how you reproduce, or even interacting with the simulacrum. Thlunroolt was right: you wanted me to see your race’s origins, what it came from, before I see what you have become.”

  Alnduul said nothing for several long seconds. “It is sometimes awkward, but always gratifying, to be fellow travelers, Caine Riordan.”

  “It is. Despite all the delays.”

  Alnduul stared at Caine. “I was not speaking of our current journey. I was speaking of our longer paths.” Then he turned to regard the holograph of the Collective’s stars, which stretched upward in a helix of many-colored jewels of light.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  MAY 2124

  GLAMQOOZHT, BD+80 238

  Alnduul closed the comm link to Glamqoozht’s port authority. “We have just received permission to travel planetside, Caine Riordan.”

  Riordan looked up from the equivalent of a “teach yourself Dornaani” program. It had been almost a month since they’d left Rooaioo’q, and his mastery of the language was still lagging behind that of an early youngling.

  Olsloov had completed in-shift to the regional capital exactly ten months after Caine left Earth. Alnduul communicated their arrival and was promptly ordered to take up a tether at the highport’s spindock. Glamqoozht’s was one of the largest such facilities: a thirty-kilometer rotating cylinder where ships moored to tethers of different lengths, thereby imparting differing values of equivalent gravity. Sparsely inhabited systems had smaller equivalents: spinbuoys, which worked on a thrust-and-counterweight principle. Alnduul had explained
that the ubiquity of the spin facilities was not merely to reduce the medical consequences of zero gee, but to eliminate the travel conditions which had given rise to the lojis. Alnduul had moored Olsloov to a tether with a rotational rate that produced half a gee, and there they continued to spin, ignored by Glamqoozht’s authorities.

  Now, nine days later, they were finally being officially recognized.

  Riordan waved the language program away. “When do we head down?”

  “Tomorrow. We must arrive early. Few of our planets have screening as rigorous as Glamqoozht’s.”

  Riordan wondered if he might be able to translate any part of the planetary name, tried, gave up. “Is Glamqoozht just a place name or does it mean something?”

  “It translates imperfectly as Council Hub.”

  Riordan was guardedly hopeful. “Sounds like it’s a place to get questions answered and decisions made.” Unless, of course, it was like human capitals.

  “Glamqoozht is also the administrative center of the Collective,” Ssaodralth commented from the navigation station. “Although it is not the meeting place of the eight Senior Arbiters of the Assembly, it is the site of the government’s supporting infrastructure, research and oversight agencies, communications nexus, and most records. It is also where the Arbiters spend most of their time.”

  Riordan frowned. “Then why not simply move the capital here?”

  Alnduul raised a didactic finger. “Because this is not our designated homeworld.”

  Fair enough. “So is this meeting formal, with prepared statements, or more free-form and conversational?”

  Ssaodralth and Irzhresht were absorbed reading their instruments. Alnduul’s outer lids cycled once. “It will not be formal, but nor will it be relaxed. In addition to a number of Regional Arbiters, we shall be speaking to four Arbiters of the Collective’s Senior Assembly: Nlastanl, Glayaazh, Heethoo, and Suvtrush.”

  “Why only four Arbiters? Ssaodralth just said that most of them reside here on Glamqoozht.”

  “They do, but several are gone. And one indicates that she is…indisposed.”

  “So, a snub.”

  “Some do not wish to be associated with the prominent human who suggested and supported Earth’s delay at joining the Accord and subsequent unilateral expansion.”

  Riordan nodded. “Because if they meet with me, they could be accused of tacitly condoning those policies.”

  One of Alnduul’s fingers lowered; the other became an affirming streamer. “This is why I did not press for an earlier invitation to the Collective. Because if the Collective ever formally disapproves of humanity’s present ‘land-grab’ activities, your government may honestly reply, ‘You neither responded to our attempts at, nor initiated, communication.’”

  Riordan forced himself to exhale slowly, patiently. “So Elena’s fate has been held hostage by your Assembly and its infighting. I just hope the Custodians remain my friends.”

  “I hope that also, Caine Riordan, but bear this in mind: my presence no longer confers the implicit support of the Custodians. To use your expression, I have been ‘placed on probation’ for my actions in support of Earth. However, I am still allowed to act as your translator and chauffeur.”

  “And you can continue to work as my advisor, too. Right?”

  Alnduul’s inner eyelid cycled rapidly. “That is part of what we shall learn tomorrow.”

  * * *

  The moment Caine stepped out of the interface terminal alongside Alnduul, he fleetingly wondered if he was in another virtuality simulation. The cerulean blue of the sky and the manicured green of the pygmy rushes—which were more like terrestrial grass than any other world’s ground cover—seemed impossibly pristine and perfect. The city itself was a study in alabaster and silver. Hemispherical domes and low rectangular frustums clustered around the bases of towers. Most of those tapering spires were capped by disks, each ringed by windows that reflected the sky and the mirroring blue of the quiet bay. The water stretched away from the city in an improbably perfect arc, lapping gently at pink sands that lined a coast-following slideway. In the distance, aviforms swirled around cliffs and buttes towering above dark green skirts of forest.

  The olfactory sensations were less ideal: a carrion sourness blended with a musky-pine scent. Given the Dornaani penchant for slightly aged seafoods, it was no surprise to find that odor included in what they considered a blend of pleasing aromas.

  Alnduul gestured toward the slideway. “Shall we continue?”

  Riordan nodded, stepped on to the moving pedestrian thoroughfare. “Sorry. I was just taking it all in. It almost looks unreal.”

  “From a purely natural standpoint, it is. The weather is largely controlled, pollutants are both regulated and reprocessed, and the flora and fauna have all been carefully managed. Anything undesirable was removed long ago. What remains has been genetically engineered, even the rushes. They are completely resistant to pests and blights, and grow to a precise length and shape.”

  Riordan surveyed the scene again. Knowing that it could not be other than perfect made it seem less remarkable, much in the way a constructed vista in a theme park could never quite compare with a less perfect one discovered in nature. This was merely a technological achievement, and the price of its perpetual perfection was its inability to inspire a sense of grandeur. He wondered if the Dornaani had not, unwittingly, revealed something of themselves in their shaping of this environment.

  As the slideway carried them into the first urban microcluster, Riordan was struck by yet another unusual feature: the serenity and sparseness of its inhabitants. “Where is everyone?”

  Alnduul surveyed the spaces between the buildings. “Our cities are not dwelling places so much as they are work centers. What you see is typical.”

  As the slideway carried them into the center of the urban cluster and closer to Dornaani pedestrians, Riordan noticed that they seemed more completely naked. It took him a few moments to discover why. “No control circlets or vantbrasses.” He turned toward Alnduul. “And you left your wearables back on Olsloov.”

  “It is unlawful to have them here.”

  Riordan frowned. “Why?”

  “Security. Glamqoozht has very few computers and, except in extraordinary circumstances, none of them have any means of exchanging data. Simple recording devices are permitted, but they can only relay their content via prelinked lascom.”

  “Then how does this place function? The Collective seems to rely on expert systems, semiautonomous machines, remote controls. And what about virtuality?”

  “Virtuality is illegal here. And yes, our bureaucracy moves much more slowly here than elsewhere.” As they neared a broad concourse, Alnduul gestured toward a swarm of mobile disks moving parallel to the slideway, or, in the case of further ones, churning in a sluggish imitation of Brownian motion. “From here, we must walk.”

  As soon as Alnduul’s outstretched foot touched one of the disks, it adjusted to his speed, allowing him to exit the slideway without a wobble. It carried him across the current of other waiting disks toward an immaculate concourse that led between two of the tallest towers.

  Riordan followed his friend’s example, marveled at the responsiveness of the disk. He had no sensation that he was transferring from one moving object to another. As soon as Caine had joined him, Alnduul headed directly toward the soaring tower on the left, cutting diagonally across the concourse.

  As he did, a loose cluster of pedestrians crossed their path just long enough for Riordan to realize that these weren’t ordinary residents. They weren’t even Dornaani.

  One of the creatures was a pony-sized hexaped. Its patchy hide was a mix of spines, exoskeletal flanges, and bristles. It had a neck, but instead of a head, it sprouted a cluster of organs that resembled translucent eggs.

  Walking casually beside it was a quadruped, its forebody vaguely reminiscent of a terrestrial hominid. Its barrel-chested torso tapered back into hindquarters constantly rippling with the
motion of its spiderlike legs and long, narrow tail. As its four eyes blankly assessed Riordan, he reflexively stepped away. The high-jointed legs, smoothly scaled and muscled, evoked a momentary impression: a giant tarantula wearing a lizard suit.

  The other two creatures were somewhat similar to deer, but did not have hooves. Their legs ended in wide stumps that changed shape and consistency as they came into contact with the surface of the concourse. Bony, wing-shaped protrusions lined with spiracles emerged from behind their shoulders, where strong planes of muscle supported a structure that Caine supposed was a head: a sleeve of calloused hide housing a writhing, questing mass of tendrils. Or polyps. Or maybe tentacles.

  All four creatures walked calmly toward the disks that jockeyed lazily, endlessly, along the margin between the concourse and the slideway.

  Caine realized he’d been staring. “What…what are they?”

  “I am unfamiliar with two of the species. The last pair of quadrupeds, however, are familiar to me from my perusal of—”

  “No, no. I mean, are they intelligent? Are they protected species?”

  Alnduul’s narrow tongue made a buzzing sound against the inner surface of his lamprey-mouth. “They are not sapient. They are bioproxies. More than pets, but less than true servitors. They can perform simple tasks.”

  “But they are moving as if they understand how to navigate the city.”

  “That is now instinctual for them, imposed by genetic manipulation. Their behaviors can be further altered by chemical infusions or embedded controllers.”

  Riordan stared after the four creatures. The streaming disks were depositing them on the slideway. “I didn’t think that Dornaani used creatures this way.”

  Alnduul gestured that they should resume walking. “Caine Riordan, it is profitless presuming that there are still ‘common’ traits amongst Dornaani. Amongst the Custodians, shared tasks lead to some shared behaviors and attitudes. But we are the exception.”