by Steve White
“You flatter me outrageously, holodah’kri. But if it is true that our people look to us first for leadership, then it is true enough that both of us should not be risked on any single venture. And there is no doubting who, in a choice between us, must stay and who must go. Your selnarm is closest to Illudor’s own, your voice most informed by the very shotan of our harmony, our narmata. And so, in this time of both political and theological turmoil, you must be our peoples’ strong spine and anchor.”
Air escaped from Tefnut’s vestigial gills like air wheezing out of a wine-skin. “Six years ago I was ready to discarnate. And still you are not done with me. You are a cruel taskmaster, Ankaht.”
She gently set aside the jocular tone. “I am not done with you because fate is not done with you, revered holodah’kri. We have no choice but to contend with profound challenges in every sphere of our existence. And upon the matter of your continuing presence among us: have the new antigerone treatments proved efficacious yet?”
Tefnut swept a few impatient tendrils at the sky. “Bah. Who can tell? When you creak and wheeze as much as I do, it is hard to discern any small reductions in those sounds of decrepitude. And who knows if the humans have deciphered our genetics as accurately as they claim they have? But they try. They do try. Alas they do not understand—or rather, they seem unable to remember—that in extending my life, they prolong the misery of living in this old desiccated husk of a body.”
“Dear Tefnut, we must trouble you to do so a while longer, yet.”
“I know, Ankaht. I am simply complaining. Grousing, as the humans say. I am old, so it is my right.”
“Of which none shall deprive you, Tefnut. Now tell me, what word from Megarea?”
Tefnut ha sheri paused in his slow pacing. “Ah. Now I see why we are walking in the garden again after all these years. Secrets to tell and be told.”
“Yes, Tefnut. I had to be sure our conversation could not be overheard, and no enclosed space is safe. Nor any too close to a city.”
“Yes, of course. Now, then: Megarea. The artificial fertilization projects have decanted their first Quickened Firstlings. It is as we hoped, and dared to expect: there is a demographic shift in the characteristics that predict later Casteing. There has been an aggregrate eight percent increase in those likely to become selnarshaz, a four percent increase in probable shaxzhu. But I repeat, this is only probability. It will be at least two years before these Firstlings will be casted. However, this, too, is promising: there has been a marked shift to the ibzhur physiotype.”
Ankaht sent a pulse of (relief, affinity), the latter since both she and Tefnut were of that small dark Arduan variety known as the ibzhur. “So, that almost certainly predicts an increase in Ixturshaz, selnarshaz and shazxhu.” For the ibzhur physiotype was far more associated with those castes than was the yedvree, or tall-golden, physiotype.
“Yes, and so we may hope for a corresponding decrease in Destoshaz. But I am concerned.”
“That the trend will not continue?”
“No. I am concerned that the humans will discover what we are doing and fear that we are breeding an army of fast-grown clones for war against them, rather than forcing a demographic shift among our own people.”
“Yes—although our own people would be more distressed by the latter.”
Tefnut’s gait became slower and his send was (tired, melancholy, worried). “Too many secrets. The lesson of this one life, and all before, is that secrets are treacherous creations. It is as though they keep trying to make themselves more discoverable.”
“It is true, but we have little choice. If our conjectures are correct, we must return our caste proportions to what they were before the Dispersates commenced. We must have fewer Destoshaz and more castes whose selnarm is more focused on the maintenance of narmata and the edification of shaxzhutok.”
Tefnut sent (waggish amusement). “Of course, the priest in me cannot help but wonder: is the current demography of our race not an expression of Illudor’s will? But if it is, then why would He allow us to effect these demographic shifts? Would not Illudor’s present manifestation not frustrate or preclude our attempts to alter what he presently is?”
“Alter Illudor by changing our demographics? How could this be?”
“How could it not, near-Firstling? Let us think through the theological ramifications: if we can influence the proportions among the castes, then are we not shaping the consciousness of Illudor Himself—or at least the lenses through which he experiences the universe and then communicates that back to us through the narmata which is the medium that joins us, and the shaxzhutok that connects us to the collective archive of our experience?”
Now it was Ankaht’s turn to slow her walking pace. “This is a keen, but troubling, insight, holodah’kri. Because as you say, the constituent parts of our species, and the mix of their respective aptitudes, should directly reflect Illudor’s Will and all the particulars of his manifestation at this time. So are we then the agents of His Will? Or—” She paused before the alternative, stunned that it was the high priest, the holodah’ kri—who had brought her to the edge of what loomed like a cosmological precipice.
Tefnut’s selnarm was oddly tranquil. “Or is the entity we call Illudor not divine in the sense we have maintained He was? Yes, Ankaht, we must look at this possibility with all three eyes if we are to see it clearly and fairly. If our present actions are not explicitly the Will of Illudor, then it might be rightly said that we possess the power to recast the nature of Illudor, at least in some small measure. And that, in turn, is potentially yet another argument in support of the growing proposal that Illudor is not divine, but rather, a macroentity.”
Ankaht felt suddenly cold on this summer’s day. “I have read that there is new research on this, arising from discoveries made while genetically altering the proto-selnarmic entities that we have used in triggering devices.”
Tefnut signaled (confirmation). “Yes. It is humbling, if not terrifying, to consider the possible parallels between ourselves and the simplest organisms that possess selnarm only so that they may work collectively without any direct physical connection. It seems to invite us to ask: are we like that ourselves, only more sophisticated? Are we a huge entity that is neither physically nor spiritually unitary, but rather, is comprised of an overarching subconscious whose processes are carried out by us, much as a computer network can share tasks by distributed processing?”
“You mean, our many minds function like a myriad of networked, but ultimately separate and otherwise unintegrated, computers? Then how is it that we remember the past, that we—?”
Tefnut’s tendrils waved soothingly. “Ankaht, we may not answer all the questions at once. In the case of questions so esoteric and tenebrous as these, we may not ever have answers at all. These speculations cannot be called ‘information,’ yet, for they are only theory—and for now, and perhaps forever, may not be amenable to substantiation. Moreover, as a holodah’kri, one must ponder one’s duties to such a theologically provocative concept, which naturally leads me to contemplate ‘what is to be done with it?’”
Ankaht rolled out a selnarmic flow of (protection, negation). “For now, we do nothing with it, revered holodah’kri. The distress within our people is great enough over the split with so many of the Destoshaz. Will they weather this, too? In the past, the reassurance to them—and to ourselves—would have been, ‘with Illudor’s help.’ But now—”
Tefnut’s answering selnarm was of (rue, melancholy). “Yes: now, the very topic is whether or not that help exists. It is difficult to know how to proceed, when to ask the very question gives rise to the problem we fear.”
Ankaht signaled assent, but, beneath it added, it is but one of the problems we should fear, old friend. And I am not sure it is the worst.
Not sure at all.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Ossian Wethermere resisted the urge to lean forward and rest his chin in his cupped palm: not the proper command imag
e. A captain had to be—and appear—ready to act at a moment’s notice. The ennui that affected mere enlisted mortals was, presumably, alien to officers, and so, had to be utterly absent from their demeanor. Even when they were bored beyond human endurance.
For almost two weeks, his small expedition had been parked in a distant, deep-space holding zone of the Amadeus system, well off the beaten trail to (and half of the heliopause away from) the warp point that connected it with Zarzuela. They were equally far away from any planetary orbits. So, the highlight of their week had become the arrival of the provisions shuttle from the 92nd Reserve fleet, a blended force of smaller, older Orion and human craft that had been tasked with rear area security and logistical support for the other three line fleets in system and any craft in transit to or from Zarzuela itself.
And, as reportedly happened frequently, permission for those transits had been stalled for weeks now, immobilizing the Woolly Impostor and its two new companion craft. The larger of the two was the Fet’merah, an Arduan bulk-hauler of nearly ancient registry, now converted into a carrier for up to a dozen fighters or small craft and furnished with sizable missile bays. The other was the Viggen, a PSU-built customs patrol corvette that was considerably smaller than Ossian’s Q-ship (even in terms of its armament), but had been built to be one of the fastest ships in space. Capable of a blistering 0.135 cee, it was, to Wethermere’s mind, the equivalent of an old-fashioned getaway car.
But he and his small flotilla were going nowhere fast. Immediately after arriving in system from the modestly trafficked warp point to M’vaarmv’t, the glum prospect of an interminable delay grew from “likely” to “assured.” Rather than the perfunctory transponder and identity check which was the typical arrival ritual, Woolly Impostor and its companions had been shunted into a processing box in deep space. That zone was already populated by enough ships to make designated anchorages necessary. Sam Lubell, Wethermere’s go-to helmsman for six years now, voiced the opinion that he couldn’t recall seeing such crowded space outside of a planetary orbit. “What about you, Captain?” he asked.
Wethermere’s reply ran athwart that of the Q-ship’s other captain: its new skipper, Commander O. A. Knight. Ossian’s curt “No” vied with Knight’s drawled, “Maybe.”
The two men glanced at each other, Knight nodding deference to Wethermere, who was the ship’s master and the mission’s de facto commander. Ossian smiled. “I don’t have anything to add to my ‘no,’ Skipper. But it sounds like you might have a story to tell.”
O. A. Knight, a typically laconic man, could be coaxed out of his extended silences by the possibility of recounting one of his spaceman’s tales. As were the best of such narratives, they were typically amalgams of outrageous but verifiable fact and tall tales that made the life of Paul Bunyan sound like a dry, academic biography.
Knight rubbed his chin, nodded his appreciation to Wethermere. Probably more for my calling him “Skipper” than anything else. Except for those bridge crew who had served on board an admiral’s flagship, the notion of not having the senior officer manning the con and giving the orders was not merely strange but contradictory. It was certainly unusual at the level of a three-ship detachment, where the burdens of commanding the unit were not so onerous that they materially interfered with commanding one’s own ship.
But Knight’s dossier, which had come across Wethermere’s desk when he was selecting crew for this unusual mission, had called dramatic and immediate attention to itself. A commander, Knight was ten years older than Wethermere and overdue for promotion. He’d seen action in the war against the Arduans, but it was mostly the kind of small, peripheral engagements that just didn’t grab the attention of the top brass or the imagination of the politicos who consistently exerted downward pressure on the size of the field officer corps (but seemed to conceive of a limitless need for staff officers). Ironically, Knight had been in some very tight spots, far away from the reassuring proximity of a fleet. Commerce raiding in Ajax, working as a decoy to flush out Arduan lurkers in Aphrodite, scouting for orbital defenses in numerous systems on the final drive to Bellerophon: O. A. Knight had steered three hulls (two were shot out from under him) through some harrowing engagements, but never in a big fleet-to-fleet clash.
Furthermore, the commander was an inherently unassuming and terse man, so the politicking that career officers often used to overcome a lack of fleet-level combat ribbons was not among his assets. But that same demeanor was the source of his rocklike solidity and natural authority on the bridge. He was the Old Man (the monklike tonsure that remained of his hair was prematurely grey) who spoke little, missed nothing, and never flinched. And you could tell that about him the first ten minutes you sat on his bridge.
Wethermere had been able to tell it just by glancing at his service record, and knew, with the lack of ego that came from not really seeing himself as career Navy, that here was a man who was infinitely more qualified than he was to be at the helm of a Q-ship on an unpredictable snoop and poop. Wethermere’s crew would have opined otherwise—and they’d been with Ossian long enough to hold firm opinions on the matter—but Wethermere conceived that it would be very handy indeed to have one command-brain running the ship, while another one remained focused upon the whole detachment and how its actions impacted the Bigger Picture of their mission. And so he had taken the unusual step of making Knight the ship’s captain, which caused a further “courtesy brevet” confusion: whereas Wethermere was a genuine or “post” captain, Knight held that title merely by virtue of being the ship’s commanding officer. For those crewpersons who had served aboard a fleet flagship, this was only slightly disorienting; for the others, it took more than a little getting used to.
Lubell was staring at Knight. “So, Captain Knight, you’ve been someplace where the traffic was this heavy?”
Knight squinted at the monitors, then at the dense cloud of green motes in the holoplot. “Six years ago, I was commanding a flank security detachment at Polo.”
Wethermere, remembering the details of Knight’s dossier, had wondered if this might have been what he was going to recount. Lubell blanched, Zhou’s usually expressive face set in lines.
“I watched those ships—ships several of you were in—line up to transit the warp point. What you were probably too busy to notice were the clouds of ships behind you. Literally clouds of them. Looked like a nebula of steel filings, from the flank. And the support craft stretched all the way out to us.” He nodded at Zhou and Lubell. “We all wanted to be in the van of the attack that day. We all knew that was the battle in which we might finally break the Baldies’—er, the Arduans’ backs. But then we learned what had happened to all of you.” He shook his head slightly. “Those of us who were not in the first wave still don’t have the gall to say that we were at the Battle of BR-02.”
“That would mean there are damned few of us left who can make that claim, Skipper.”
“That’s true, Mr. Zhou. And that’s just as it should be: no one has the right to speak for, or take the place of, fallen heroes.”
In the faint nods that passed between Knight and his veteran bridge crew Wethermere saw an acknowledgement that was also the beginning of a bond founded not merely upon rank and duty, but shared experience—even if Knight had only been there to see the aftermath of the horror, rather than live it himself. Wethermere felt a great sense of relief, of gratitude, of certainty that the new skipper and Ossian’s hand-picked crew were going to fit together just fine—
“Skipper, fleet elements are starting to shift to—I don’t get it, sir.”
Ossian, from a chair just behind Knight’s right shoulder, looked into the holoplot. The larger triangles that denoted stable formations of ships or whole flights of fighters started fragmenting into individual blips. “Anything on the comms?”
Communications Officer Schlender shrugged. “Maybe, Captain. There sure is a lot of activity all over the bandwidth. But we’re not in that command loop, so we can’t hear what t
hey’re saying.”
Wethermere glanced sideways at Knight. “Looks like they’re scattering.”
“It does indeed,” was the commander’s reply. “No pattern to it, though.”
“Yes, almost as if—”
“Sirs,” interrupted Engan from her post at the sensor controls, “take a look at this.” She put an expanded, system-wide plot on one of the main 2-D screens. It was not only the ships of the 92nd Reserve that were simultaneously bomb-shelling in every direction and undertaking evasive maneuvers. Even the three standing line fleets in the system—the 9th, the 23rd, and the 3rd Auxiliary—were breaking out of the various defensive postures from which they not only guarded the warp-point into Zarzuela, but patrolled Amadeus’ other two warp points, those that lead back to the logistical bases and reinforcements in Barricade and M’vaarmv’t. Only the immense forts arrayed in a rough hemisphere around the access path to the Zarzuela warp point were not moving—because they couldn’t. Those immense constructs of composites, steel, and advanced armors were too massive to move except over weeks or months of constant, low-level thrust.
“Any change in the Zarzuela warp point?” Knight asked.
“All normal, sir,” confirmed Engan. “No fluctuations indicative of either egress or ingress in progress.”
Wethermere leaned back in his chair. “Then why the hell are our fleets swarming like a bunch of bees from a kicked hive? Schendler, raise Admiral Maoud of the 9th. And don’t take any guff from his commo staff. I need to find out—”
“Sirs,” Schendler interrupted tensely, “OpComm of the 92nd Reserve has just broadcast a general navigational warning to all ships in the system, along with evasion directives.”
Knight’s diction was suddenly clipped, hard-edged. “Lubell, patch those recommendations through to the plot. Lay in a course that will center us between the warp points back to Barricade and M’vaarmv’t.”
