by Timothy Zahn
“Oh, please,” I scoffed. “You really think the Modhri isn’t going to put two and two together now that he’s actually in communication with the Melding? There’s no way he’s not going to figure out that you’re the ones who created them. Or that your ancestors were the ones who created him, back when the original Shonkla-raa were running the galaxy.”
There was just the briefest of hesitations. “We believe the Modhri already knows of our role in his origin,” the Chahwyn said reluctantly.
“So there should be no problem,” I said. “In fact, I daresay that makes it even more likely that he’ll gladly accept this new direction. Who else but your creators would know how to make you better than you already are?”
“Perhaps,” the Chahwyn said. “But the point is moot. As I have said, the plan is changed. And with that change, your services are no longer needed.”
I stared at him. The Chahwyn were firing me? Again? “Just like that?”
“Just like that,” he said. “Instead of you and the Modhri, we shall send the defenders to fight against the Shonkla-raa.”
“They can’t,” I said as patiently as I could. “Don’t you read our reports? The Shonkla-raa command tone freezes them like statues.”
“That problem will soon be solved,” he said. “We have a variant in development that will be immune to that tone.”
“And exactly how soon do you expect to have this miracle defender up and running?” I countered. “How soon after that will you have built up the numbers you need? How soon after that will you get those numbers deployed?”
“We believe we have sufficient time.”
“No, you don’t,” I said bluntly. “The Shonkla-raa are on the move, Elder of the Chahwyn. This is no time to go back to square one for a whole new battle plan.”
“Nevertheless, that is our plan,” the Chahwyn said. “And with you no longer under our guidance and protection, we must ensure that you will not leak its substance to the enemy. You will therefore be taken to Viccai—”
“Wait a minute,” I cut him off. The insanity here was coming way too thick and fast. “What’s this nonsense about me leaking the plan? Since when have I leaked anything?”
“You were seen speaking with the enemy on the Quadrail from Sibbrava,” the Chahwyn said, his melodious voice gone flat and stern. “We fear you may speak with them again. We cannot risk that.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I protested. “Talking with the Shonkla-raa doesn’t mean a thing. Hey, I talked with the Modhri all the time back when we were still enemies. That’s part of warfare, one of the ways you gather intelligence and work out trades.”
The Chahwyn’s whiskers twitched. “The decision has been made. You will be taken to Viccai, where you will remain for the duration of the war.”
A chill ran up my back. Frank, this is suicide, Bayta had said. Had she known this was what the Chahwyn had planned for me?
No, of course she hadn’t. If she had, she would surely have said something more concrete, something to warn me off. All she’d had was a feeling, some sense of this grim new insanity that had apparently overtaken the Chahwyn.
But it didn’t make any sense. All I’d done was talk to Riijkhan. I hadn’t made any deals with him, or told him any of my plans, or given him intel on our allies. More importantly, I’d just repulsed two separate Shonkla-raa attacks. If that didn’t show I was on the Chahwyn side, nothing would.
Unless it wasn’t my talking to Riijkhan that the Chahwyn were concerned about. Maybe it was my listening to him.
What had Riijkhan said to me? More importantly, what had he said that might have thrown the Chahwyn into this insane mental tailspin?
Whatever it was, whatever the Chahwyn thought they’d heard, there couldn’t be very much of it. Sitting in the Quadrail bar, Riijkhan and I had been encased in the usual acoustical bubble that prevented outsiders from eavesdropping.
But there had been a moment when that bubble had been breached, I remembered now. The point where the server Spider came by to ask for our orders.
And as I thought back, that breach had occurred right as Riijkhan was offering to tell me something terrible about my employers.
A dramatic buildup that had been followed by a big fat lot of nothing. As the Spider left, Riijkhan had merely trotted out the traditional vague threat that my allies would eventually turn on me. It was such a tired old ploy that I hadn’t given it a second thought.
But the Spiders had apparently reported Riijkhan’s question to the Chahwyn, who were obviously taking it very seriously. Which implied in turn that there was one hell of a secret lurking somewhere in the Chahwyn’s collective closet.
And if I didn’t do something fast, that secret was about to get me exiled from the entire war. Which was no doubt exactly what Riijkhan had been angling for in the first place.
“If you take me off the field, you will lose,” I said as calmly as I could. “The Shonkla-raa will take over the galaxy, they’ll track you down, and they’ll destroy you.”
The Chahwyn lowered his eyes. “There are worse things than death.”
“Sure there are,” I said acidly. “Slavery is one of them. Watching your friends being murdered is one of them. Having some deep dark secret become common knowledge isn’t.”
His eyes snapped up, his whiskers flattening. “So we were right,” he said. “The Shonkla-raa did tell you.”
If I’d been smart, I would have just said no: straightforwardly, honestly, passionately, with a little righteous bewilderment thrown in.
But I’m never that smart. My brain is that of a truth-seeker, my training that of a professional investigator, my personality that of a damn the torpedoes, full speed aheader. Even as I opened my mouth, my mind was sifting the problem, sorting like heat lightning through everything I knew about the Chahwyn, the Shonkla-raa, and the universe at large.
What could a Shonkla-raa tell me that the Chahwyn wouldn’t want me to know?
I’d heard a little of the story during my one visit to Viccai. Four thousand years ago, the Shonkla-raa had discovered the quantum filament the Chahwyn called the Thread and figured out how to use it for interstellar travel. Over the centuries they’d learned how to ravel off pieces that could be used to link all the inhabited and inhabitable systems together. Once widespread interstellar travel was possible, the Shonkla-raa had built huge warships and sent them out on a systematic subjugation of all the other peoples of the galaxy. Along the way they’d used their skills at genetic manipulation to create the Chahwyn and various other servant races. When the inevitable revolt finally came, the Shonkla-raa had forced the Chahwyn to create the Modhri as a last-ditch, fifth-column-type weapon that they’d hoped to use against their enemies.
Only the end came before the Modhri could be deployed. The Shonkla-raa were destroyed, the surviving races were crushed back to pre-spaceflight levels, and the Modhri was lost and effectively gone dormant. Three centuries after the dust had settled, the Chahwyn had stumbled on caches of Shonkla-raa tech and had used the genetic equipment to create the Spiders and, through them, the Quadrail, wrapping their Tubes around the sections of Thread. When Modhran coral was found and began to spread across the galaxy, the Chahwyn had countered by again using the old Shonkla-raa equipment, this time to create the Melding in hopes of turning the Modhri from a single-minded conqueror weapon into something calmer, more civilized, and less threatening to the galaxy at large.
And as the history lesson flashed across my mind, so did something more recent: the image of the defenders aboard the Sibbrava Quadrail, carefully carrying the injured Belldic commandos to their compartments but merely lugging the dead Shonkla-raa back to the tender like sides of beef.
I’d made sure to take scans of the bodies, hoping to wring out a few secrets about Shonkla-raa physiology that I could use against them. Surely the Chahwyn would want to do the same, and would thus make sure to take special care of the bodies until they could be examined.
Unless there was n
o need for them to study the bodies. Because they didn’t need to know how Shonkla-raa physiology differed from that of normal Filiaelians.
Because they already knew what all of those differences were.
I should have kept it to myself. But I’m never that smart. “You lied to me,” I said quietly. “You told me the Shonkla-raa created you. That they gene-manipulated God only knows what creatures into the Chahwyn to be their servants.
“Only they didn’t, did they? The Shonkla-raa didn’t create you.
“You created them.”
Silently, with the finality of a sealing tomb, the car door irised shut. “Yes,” the Elder said, his melodious voice resonating with infinite sadness. “And with that knowledge, you must never be permitted to speak with anyone, ever again.”
TWENTY-SIX
The two defenders started toward me. “What are you going to do?” I asked.
“You cannot be permitted to share that knowledge with anyone,” the Chahwyn repeated. “We will take you to Viccai—”
“No, I know that part,” I interrupted, watching the approaching Spiders and trying to figure out what the hell I was going to do if this didn’t work. I knew something about Shonkla-raa, but I had no idea where defender weaknesses were. If they even had any. “I meant what are you going to do once I’m gone and Bayta and Morse have quit and the Modhri goes back to fighting on the side of the Shonkla-raa?”
“I have already told you our plan,” the Chahwyn said.
“You haven’t got a plan,” I said flatly. “You have a repeat of history. Shall I tell you why your ancestors created the Shonkla-raa in the first place?”
The defenders reached me, each shifting to a four-legged stance and lifting three legs toward me. “You created them to be your protectors,” I said. “As you’ve pointed out countless times, you Chahwyn can’t fight. So you created a group of beings that could, enhancing their telepathic abilities so you could more easily communicate with them.”
The defenders paused, their legs hovering in midair like a mobile cage waiting to come crashing down around me. “Do I have to remind you how well that worked out?” I added.
“It will be different this time,” the Chahwyn said. “We have better control of the defenders than we ever had with the Shonkla-raa.”
“No you don’t,” I said. “Maybe they’re obeying you right now, but I don’t doubt the Shonkla-raa did the same at the beginning. The problem wasn’t your engineering, but with the philosophical basis of the whole project.”
The Spider legs were still hovering over me. “Explain,” the Chahwyn said.
“What you did then—what you’re doing now—is creating independent beings with intelligence, strength, and the ability and desire to compete and fight,” I said. “Sooner or later, the defenders will inevitably conclude that they can do a better job of running things than you can.”
“They will obey us,” the Chahwyn insisted.
“Not when they feel the need to break the rules you’ve set for them,” I told him. “As a matter of fact, they’ve already started. Back on the super-express from Homshil I needed to get my Beretta from its under-train lockbox. A regular Spider would never have allowed such a thing. But the two defenders you’d sent saw that it was necessary, and they got it for me. Reluctantly and under protest, but they did it.”
“But they’re bred for loyalty,” the Chahwyn insisted, his voice almost pleading. “How can they defy us and our laws?”
“Because that’s what inevitable means,” I said. “Power corrupts, one way or another. That’s all there is to it.”
“The defenders are Spiders. Their essence is taken from our own flesh.”
“But then heavily modified,” I reminded him. “I’m sure your ancestors were using similar logic when they picked Filiaelians to use as their Shonkla-raa template. They’d probably seen how Filly soldiers could be genetically engineered for loyalty, and figured that would guarantee their new protectors’ compliance and cooperation.”
“Then why didn’t it?”
“Because just like your defenders, the Chahwyn designers were forced to tweak the formula,” I said. “The way the Fillies engineer their soldiers’ loyalty is by sacrificing some of their initiative, intelligence, and motivation. We got a taste of that with Logra Emikai, when the simple fact that a Shonkla-raa was also a Filiaelian santra meant Emikai couldn’t take any action against him. Filly soldiers are even worse—good fighters, but in some ways not much better than ants in an anthill. That kind of strategy requires huge numbers, something your ancestors couldn’t come up with. So instead they were forced to make each individual Shonkla-raa smarter and more independent.”
I gestured to the two defenders still frozen in their mousetrap positions. “You’ve done the same thing with the defenders, and it’s going to lead to the same end result.”
The Chahwyn gave a noiseless sigh. “Your reading of history is accurate,” he admitted. “Yet we have no choice but to try.”
“Sure you do,” I said in my most encouraging voice. “You can close down the project, deploy the defenders you already have for the protection of Viccai, and let me take out the Shonkla-raa.”
“With the aid of he who was once our sworn enemy?”
I frowned at him … and then, abruptly, I realized what this whole confrontation was really all about.
The Chahwyn knew perfectly well that they were playing with fire. They knew that the last time they’d tried this they’d failed spectacularly, to the tune of the devastation of thousands of worlds and the wholesale slaughter of dozens of races. They’d seen firsthand what the Shonkla-raa could do, and were utterly terrified by this new resurgence.
But they were just as terrified at the thought of deliberately making the Modhri into something smarter, more patient, more competent. Terrified enough that they would rather cross their extendable fingers and hope that this time the protector plan would work.
Their minds weren’t made up, the way Bayta had thought. Or rather, the way this Elder had tried to make it appear to her. They were divided and paralyzed with indecision, seeing nothing but death and destruction at the end of all possible paths and afraid to move in any of them. I was here not to batter myself against a monolithic stone wall, but to give them a good reason to choose my proposed path over all the others.
Whether my way was the best, I couldn’t say. But I was pretty sure I could prove all the alternatives were worse.
“Yes, I’m willing to work with the Modhri,” I said. “For two reasons. First, unlike the Shonkla-raa, the Modhri is highly vulnerable to attack. You can walk right up to his coral outposts and destroy them, and if you don’t mind slaughtering a whole bunch of innocents you can walk right up to his walkers and destroy them, too. That vulnerability makes him far less likely to start anything grandiose.”
“Yet for two hundred years he has been trying to conquer the galaxy.”
“Because that’s what you designed him to do,” I countered. “That’s all he could do. But that’s about to change. By combining him with the Melding, you’re opening him up to new possibilities and options, new ways of dealing with the universe around him.”
“Yet you’ve already said that intelligence and initiative leads to competition and the desire to rule,” the Chahwyn said.
“I also said that will be limited by his vulnerability,” I said. “But you’re also assuming that on some level he wants to be our opponent. It’s my considered opinion that he doesn’t.”
“What then does he want?”
I raised my eyebrows. “He wants friends.”
For a long moment the Chahwyn just stared at me. “Friends,” he repeated at last, his voice flat.
“Yes,” I said. “You don’t understand, because you Chahwyn are never really alone. But the Modhri is. He always has been.”
“He has a multitude of mind segments.”
“All of which are essentially him,” I reminded him. “He’s never had any friends, onl
y enemies and potential enemies. He’s never had anyone outside himself to trust, or who trusted him. Until now.”
“We do not trust him.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “I do.”
Another silence settled into the car like fine grains of dust. “Let me offer you a deal,” I said into the gap. “Give me the Melding coral and let me try things my way. If I fail, you can always fall back on your defender plan.”
The cat whiskers twitched. “Even a short delay could prove fatal.”
“Perhaps,” I said. “But if you do head down that path, it will permanently alter the tone and texture of your people, the Quadrail system, and the galaxy. Personally, I like the Quadrail and the Spiders just the way they are. I don’t want to see them ruined.”
“Even at the cost of defeat?”
“There won’t be a defeat,” I said. “My plan will work.”
I gestured around me. “And the time here isn’t quite as critical as you think. Even if the Modhri and I fail, you can always shut down the whole Quadrail system, boxing up the Shonkla-raa on whatever planets they currently happen to be in. That should give you enough time to build up your defender force.”
The Chahwyn’s shoulders did a strange hunchy thing. “That assumes the Shonkla-raa won’t learn the secret of the Thread.”
I grimaced. That was a big, dangerous if, all right. If the Shonkla-raa ever realized that the Thread hidden inside the Coreline was the key to the Quadrail’s faster-than-light travel, and that the Tube and the trains were just window dressing, then shutting down the system wouldn’t even slow them down. All they would have to do would be commandeer a few of the big defense ships that guarded each Quadrail station in the Filiaelian Assembly, wreck the Tube to allow them to get close to the Thread, and they’d be free to travel any place the Thread went. “Hopefully, they won’t,” I said. “Or if they do, that they’ll have their own reasons for sticking to the train system. At least for a while.”
I stood up, being careful not to bump into the metallic legs still half birdcaged around me. “All the more reason why we need to get this show on the road,” I continued. “Let me get this coral to Yandro and start the Modhri on his path to civilization.”
