by Sara King
Are you finished, Archon? the ship asked, sounding caught between amusement and irritation. We have made Our choice, and by the Solid State Accords, as a visiting archon, you are required to abide by it.
Well…shit. Tatiana swallowed. “What if I have to pee?”
There are waste disposal units in the wall. We will highlight them for your convenience. At that, the far wall flared up orange, giving her a good view of what looked like a miniature black hole set awkwardly into the side of the ship wall, flush with the wall itself. She squinted. “That doesn’t look like a toilet to me.”
Simply deposit your waste matter in the receptacle and it will be shunted to another dimension, the ship told her.
“Uhhhh,” Tatiana said, trying not to grimace at the mental image of trying to press her pasty ass to the wall. “I think there are some anatomical differences you’re not taking into account, here.”
The ship seemed to hesitate, then, before her eyes, the wall shifted, molding inward and down, giving her the best approximation of a black-hole-containing toilet that Tatiana could ever see coming from an alien mind. It seriously creeped her out because she hadn’t said what a toilet looked like, which meant it had either taken the image from her mind or put it together based on a reasonable anatomical guess.
It was the second, the ship told her. Unlike the woefully younger and less incorporated heartship Wandering Spirit, We of Encephalon treat mental privacy with the utmost seriousness, despite the fact you apparently feel the need to broadcast everything to an eighty-leg area around you.
“It’s the node,” Tatiana said quickly, pointing to it. “There was this little psychotic she-bitch demon-girl cunt who operated on me and put it in there and now I’m Shrieking like an alien!”
The ship hesitated a moment. Then, with seeming confusion, it said, You are not Aashaanti. The word ‘Aashaanti’ mentally felt as if it meant ‘of the Hive,’ not just a formal race name, and the ship sounded stunned.
“No!” Tatiana cried, relieved beyond words. “Can you remove it?
In ten thousand years of trying, no alien race has managed to hack into our mental communications.
“And I’d be happy to stop ‘hacking’ your wavelength,” Tatiana said quickly. “It wasn’t my idea in the first place.”
But the ship seemed disturbed. The technology that you carry required the dissection and experimentation on Aashaanti hivemates—a crime that is immediately punishable by extermination of your species.
Whoops. “Take it up with Anna Landborn,” Tatiana said.
It is biologically changing you to have similar properties to Aashaanti organisms. The ship sounded appalled.
“I had nothing to do with it,” Tatiana insisted.
But your species did, the ship snapped.
Tatiana snorted. “I wouldn’t call that demonic little shit human. I’m pretty sure she’s a possessed robot.”
The Solid State Accords delegate all responsibility for the actions of artificial life forms to the shoulders of their makers. The way it said it, the ship was thinking about enacting that ‘punishment’ right now, wiping both her and Milar off the face of the planet for robot-Anna’s atrocities.
“We’ll leave!” Tatiana cried, ducking to shake Milar awake. “We’ll go right now, okay? Maybe another archon or whatever will come along to say hi.”
The ship hesitated again. Then, We have not heard from a fellow hive since We fled the Phage contamination of the central planets, 1,289 molt-cycles ago.
That…sounded like a long time.
How were you not aware of these rules? The ship seemed almost desperate. Are there no hives left to enforce the laws?
Tatiana swallowed. “Um.”
Encephalon’s misery was palpable. Then We truly are alone.
Well, there was that.
The ship was silent for several minutes, then it said, We encourage you to explore the corridors to the north, Archon. We have a treat there for you, a special artifact left by one of your own kind about eleven molt-cycles ago. Sadly, he could not hear Us speak, but he spoke to Us, so it seemed he understood We existed, much like those four-legged beasts that roam the outer halls.
“Wait wait wait wait,” Tatiana said. “I am not an ‘archon’ or whatever. I’m not Aashaanti. Take out this node and let me go, okay?”
You would go back to the three-dimensional existence you had before? Encephalon sounded shocked.
“Absofreakinlutely!” Tatiana cried. “I hate this thing. Just pop it out and send me home! The possessed child put a bomb in there. And blades. She wants to control me like a puppet.”
We see the technology in question. Would you like Us to remove it?
“Remove it all!” Tatiana cried, excited. “God, yes, take it out!”
There was another moment of hesitation, then Encephalon said, We will remove the bomb and the blades.
And then Tatiana experienced a strange moment of vertigo as the world seemed to shift around her, the pressure inside her head easing, then…nothing. Tatiana immediately reached up and felt for the node.
It was still there.
“No,” Tatiana babbled, “no, you don’t understand. I never wanted it. Take it out!”
The ship ignored her. You are free to roam and discover whatever technologies you may find of use, Archon, and We shall endeavor to be your Guide. There is only one room banned your entry, and shall remain locked in guardmetal, which shall remain forever once We depart.
Tatiana, crushed by the idea that the ship could take out the node but wasn’t going to, was only moderately cheered by the idea that she could check out the ship tech. “What’s in the room?”
Something too dangerous for your tiny mind.
Immediately, Tatiana wanted to go there.
The ship seemed amused. You are young. Only Wandering Spirit has so routinely questioned Our judgment.
“Oh yeah? What’s in there?” Tatiana asked, trying to sound nonchalant. She found the ship’s self-important, condescending attitude irritating. “Weapons or something?”
The greatest weapon, Encephalon said. And We pray to Aanaho that it shall never be used again.
“Is it…nearby?” Tatiana guessed. The ship, if it didn’t let her go, would be dead soon, so she could check it out then.
Encephalon immediately ‘hardened’ in her mind. Remember that you survive at Our whim, and We have deemed this weapon dangerous.
Tatiana didn’t bother reminding the ship that that was the purpose of a weapon.
She felt the ship’s mental presence debating and got the acutely uncomfortable sensation that it was deciding whether or not to transport half of her into a wall.
You are free to explore, Encephalon said. We suggest the hive core first. It is very near the archon’s chambers, and it contains the package left behind by your like-bodied predecessor. We will light the passages to direct you. Immediately, a passage across the honeycomb room from where she stood lit up, like Encephalon expected her to begin exploring right then. After all, they were on the clock.
Tatiana nervously glanced down at Milar. “What about him?”
Your alien companion will remain asleep for the duration of your stay.
Which gave Tatiana the creepy feeling that the ship wanted her all to itself. Its own personal chatterbox, a squirrel to distract it from its looming demise, one last holovid to pass the time as its pacemaker ran out of government-allotted juice.
Tatiana swallowed. “So, uh. Is there any way to just download you into an r-player or something?”
The ship gave a confused pulse in her mind. Download?
“Yeah, you know,” Tatiana said, tapping her chest node. “I’ve got onboard computers. I could put you in here or something. How big is your program? I’ve got three hundred zettabytes on this thing.”
Encephalon seemed confused. We are the combined living essence of four billion Aashaanti hiveworkers, two billion soldiers, four hundred thousand clerics, eighty royals, and seven
archons, all infused into the livemetal of the ship. How do you propose to download Us?
Oh. Tatiana swallowed. “And you’re about to die? Because you want to talk to me?”
We have decided that chances of extraction and survival are infinitesimal, and would require going back into hibernation. We are not interested in hibernating anymore. Instead, We would like to bestow what wisdom We can, and discuss the Phage.
Tatiana got an uncomfortable chill. “We don’t even know what the Phage is. It was gone when we made it into space and jumped to the Bounds as we know them.”
Encephalon gave a mental snort. The Phage is not gone. It is hiding.
That was so not a cool thought. “So this weapon,” Tatiana suggested. “It’s used to kill the Phage?”
THE WEAPON IS NOT YOURS TO DISCUSS, Encephalon bellowed back, the overwhelming, stadium-level force of it immediately dropping Tatiana to her knees. Drop the subject or We will return you to the four-leggers.
“Okay,” Tatiana gasped. “Okay okay.”
Then, as if nothing had happened, the pressure released. If what you say is true and the other hives are gone, then the Phage passed your genotype over before you achieved space travel. It was only interested in advanced races, especially the Aashaanti and the Kelthari—races with knowledge and wisdom the likes of which We are about to give you.
Tatiana swallowed, still reeling from the impact of what had basically been the equivalent of a planet-sized mental bitchslap. “Okay,” she managed again, somewhat relieved it didn’t come out in a slur.
Go to the ship core, Encephalon commanded. Perhaps you can help Us solve a riddle.
Because Tatiana wasn’t a complete ditz, she did what she was told. She followed the self-lighting hallways, passageways built for something much taller than herself.
The royals are approximately twice your height, Encephalon said. It makes them excellent targets for hive enemies and saboteurs, who are attracted to their elaborate crests and body mass.
Tatiana frowned as she walked. “Wait… You wanted people to assassinate your royals?”
It was their most desirable end, Encephalon said. If they succumbed to an assassin’s blade, it meant an archon lived.
Tatiana frowned. “And you thought I was an archon?”
You broadcast like one, Encephalon said. And you carry the smell of one, though it is faint. Give it time, and eventually your genetic makeup should have changed enough that you will grow the proper head crest of one.
Oh, wasn’t that just peachy. Tatiana swallowed. “So, uh, can you reverse that? Pretty please?”
The ship said nothing for a moment. Then, Very few non-Aashaanti have ever been given the opportunity to walk the inside core of an Aashaanti hiveship. Do you see the coveted spiralform design? The Kelthari tried for six millennia to copy it, with no success. Like an interior designer going on about the nuanced and exceedingly rare color of the drapes.
“Come on,” Tatiana said, stamping her foot. “There’s no more Aashaanti out there anymore, so I won’t need it after you’re dead.” Immediately, she winced at how brutal her words had sounded, even to her own ears.
After another moment of hesitation, Encephalon said, “When Our miners brought the Phage back from its home dimension, it took Us four molt-cycles to realize the creature was amongst Us, and by then it was much too late.”
Tatiana blinked. “The…creature?”
A darkness flooded her mind on a wave of despair. The most devastating creature ever to exist in this plane.
Tatiana had heard the stories. “A…god?”
Encephalon gave a mental jolt of shock. A god? Are you insane?
Tatiana winced. “Sorry. There’s not much left of the Aashaanti. Our archaeologists put together what they could from the ruins, but you guys didn’t even leave behind any writing.”
Of course We did. You are merely looking in the wrong place.
And, if the ‘Open Sesame’ thing with the door was any indication, that was probably exactly what was happening. “Maybe you could show it to me?” Tatiana offered. She couldn’t help but get a little thrill at the idea that she could be about to uncover the greatest archaeological find since the Migration.
Perhaps some other time.
Meaning, no, they didn’t want to waste the final days of their existence teaching a knuckle-dragging human how to read.
“Then just tell me what I’m looking for!” Tatiana cried. “I don’t even know where to look, and if you insist on leaving the node, you might as well tell me how to be a better ambassador!”
You said yourself, the Aashaanti are dead. What do you care about the writings of Our archons?
“I’d like to learn,” Tatiana said. Most especially, she’d like the manual on how to turn a thirty-eight foot, 80 ton killing machine into a whirring, superfast, utterly invisible Bringer of Death.
The ship seemed slightly irritated at the tangent, but offered her a single, vivid image of a spiral within a circle, with a line sliced through it horizontally to jut out both ends, looking much like a symbolic gas planet with an asteroid belt. It was the ubiquitous symbol of the Aashaanti that all the archaeologists put on the front of Aashaanti textbooks, the symbol that was repeated again and again, with no variation and no discernible meaning aside from a symbolic representation of the aliens themselves, its image spread everywhere and on everything the Aashaanti owned, like graffiti, much like the way a dog marked its territory.
“Uh,” Tatiana said. “Yeah? What about it?”
Touch it as you concentrate on the space directly above it. The node the demon gave you should allow you to visualize the characters, though you’ll have to locate a primer to be able to decipher them. In general, hatching chambers and education centers have primers.
Meaning Encephalon didn’t have time to hunt down a primer for her.
“All right,” Tatiana said reluctantly. “What’s so special about this core room you wanted to show me?”
It held the hive beacon. Come. It’s beyond the next chamber. The archons like to stay near the hive beacon, as that is the beating heart of the hive. Your friend took it about eleven molt-cycles ago.
“Milar?” Tatiana demanded. She had done a little rough mental math from what she knew of the sixteen-thousand-year-old date of the ship’s crash and had come to the conclusion that a molt-cycle was approximately twelve and a half years. “He wasn’t even born a hundred and forty years ago.”
Encephalon seemed confused. No, not the one with you now. The one that left your picture in the beacon chamber.
Tatiana had to look at the age-browned paper for at least five or six minutes, twisting it in her hands, feeling the wrinkly crinkling of age, before she could wrap her head around it.
The picture had been placed upon what, to all appearances, looked like an alien throne. It was, the ship had explained to her, the site of the hive beacon, a beacon which a man claiming to serve her had taken ‘to keep safe.’
This is why We assumed you were an archon, Encephalon said, as she continued to stare at her own perfectly-penciled image. He spoke as if he knew We were here, and he claimed you were coming.
Well, that was…
…unnerving.
Tatiana cleared her throat. “Okay. To be honest, I’m not really sure what to make of this.” Indeed, above her picture, nestled into the notch where Encephalon’s precious ‘hive-beacon’ had once rested, was a very pretty katana, exquisitely crafted in the shape of a dragonfly.
“Oh holy crap,” Tatiana whispered, finally recognizing where she’d seen that substance before. “That’s tovlar.” She’d seen musker swords made out of the stuff on a visit to the Vault. Tovlar had a distinctive blue-black ripple to it, almost like the Damascus steel of Old Earth, but whose waves were an optical illusion, always moving, never in one place. Tovlar, by its very nature, was atom-locked, each molecule utterly immobile to physical manipulation, such as the bending or breaking of a blade. The last time anything had been m
ade of tovlar had been during the Triton Wars, since the recipe had been intentionally lost after the Tritons fell. Seeing it here, in the bowels of the Tear, Tatiana knew she was in the presence of an ancient masterwork, an artifact that her Nephyr friends would have given their left testicles to own.
“Oh crap.”
You recognize the object? the ship asked.
“Erm,” Tatiana said, realizing that it might take it from her if she didn’t, “Yes.”
Somehow, the ship didn’t catch her lie. Then perhaps you can tell Us why it was left here with your picture affixed to it?
Uhhhm, yeah. Still working on that part. “It’s mine, of course,” Tatiana said. She pulled the sword the rest of the way from its sheath and held it up. “See?”
She could almost feel the ship giving her a critical eye. It was made for someone taller and stronger than you.
Which was a real bummer because it was true. Despite the weapon being made of ultralight, utterly immobile tovlar, paper-thin and see-through in places where the blade took on the delicate lacing of a dragonfly wing, it was much bigger than anything Tatiana could easily wield, obviously created for someone taller. The dragonfly hilt, however, unlike most weapons that Tatiana’s Nephyr friends had allowed her to fondle, actually had a grip that her fingers could fit around. Well, mostly. It was a little big, but still, it was obviously made for a woman, and therefore, it was obviously made for her.
“It was obviously made for me,” Tatiana said. “I mean, it had my picture.” She flashed the blade back and forth, enjoying the feel of the rippling blue-black blade that had been so finely crafted with the webbing of an insect wing. Let the jaggles mess with her now, she thought, gawking up at the weaponized perfection in awe.
As if summoned by the thought, she heard a low rumble of displeasure from the honeycombed shadows at the far end of the room.
“Oh shit!” Tatiana cried, spinning to put the sword between her and the massive striped gray jaggle padding out of the darkness.
Don’t worry, Encephalon said, We will not allow the creature to harm you, and it is intelligent enough to know it.
