Interzone Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine #215

by TTA Press Authors

  Who were these invaders, what were those secrets? Asha wanted to know, and had come a long way to find out. She drew in some acid traces and metallotropes from the surrounding mesotypes to construct an exotherm, and pressed on with her diffraction measurements.

  "The people here couldn't tell her where to find the human race, so she destroyed the outpost from orbit? The whole outpost?"

  "She is mad."

  Wright clenched his teeth to fight off the urge to laugh. He knew the feeling. He shifted his grip on the travelling vine, turning away from the Melzem and back towards the imaging tank. A grey stain was slowly spreading across the blue-green surface of the planet below—the remains of the Melzemi outpost, the 3,000 souls that it had contained, and the million-tonne siliceous mass that the fugitives had thrown at it from orbit, all turned to ashes by the force of the impact.

  Ashes. Everywhere Wright went, everywhere he had ever been: ashes. His stomach churned; he turned back to the Melzem. “Hasn't anybody told her that the human race is run?"

  "She is chasing ghosts,” said the Melzem, as if that was the answer.

  Unlike Wright, he was floating free, poised in the air above and behind the imaging tank, with his rear third tucked up under his mid-section and his four legs entwined, giving him the appearance of a three-metre-tall exclamation mark. Cleaner motes fluttered around him, keeping the air that he breathed clear of detritus. He swept one of his huge hands through the air, fluttering his fingers—Melzemi for a shrug. “She must be stopped."

  Wright again had to fight the urge to laugh. “And this is why you re-grew me—to act as bait?” This was the sixth Melzemi outpost that Elena Andalian had destroyed across the past two base-years. Thus far, all the Melzemi's attempts to stop her had failed. Wright recognised his revival for what it was: an act of desperation on the Melzemi's part.

  "You are human."

  Wright felt his face flush. “I was. I was human. Now, I'm...” He didn't have words; he couldn't frame the concept. He rocked his head from side to side. “Why couldn't you have left me dead? Why did you have to bring me back?"

  He was raging at the end of it. Spittle tumbled away from his mouth, driven by his rasping breath. A cleaner mote zipped right in and sucked it up. Seeing that, Wright surrendered to the urge to laugh. And once he had started, he couldn't stop himself.

  The Melzem dipped his head in a gesture of disquiet. “You should calm yourself, endling."

  "No!” Wright moved, hand over hand, along the length of the vine towards the Melzem. “What I should do is put a gap gun to my head and pull the trigger!"

  The Melzem stared down at Wright. After a long moment, he said, softly, “Don't you remember, endling? You have already done just that—three times now. And three times we have re-grown you, here, in the ship's own garden. Don't you remember?"

  Wright screwed shut his eyes. No, he did not remember—was the Melzem lying, or had the Melzemi left out those memories when they re-assembled his mind? He was garden-grown, the bio-engineered fruit of an artificial Eden—the edited highlights of the man that he used to be, a poor facsimile. And he was suddenly very tired. He let go of the vine and just hung in space. “When will this end?” he croaked.

  "When you deliver Elena Andalian to us."

  A child floated up towards them from the heart of the fibre nexus and reported that they had picked up the errant farship's trail. The Melzem whistled, the crew dived into action; and the Melzemi far-ship slipped back into the outer night.

  The ‘now’ of the beings that had become the neo-nous was a mystery to Asha. The patterns that they had formed within the mesotypes were unlike any that she had ever mapped. She could discern the make-up of the patterns by painting the cross-talk between the lyotropic plates that formed the larger part of the mesomind, but she could not fathom their meaning. That was why she had decided to cross the brain/floe barrier and trust her tropes to the arterial ice floes of the ship's siliceous outer layers. She was gambling that the neo-nous had co-opted the read/write memory-storage template of the ship's original mesomind rather than waste time coming up with one of its own. There amongst the icebergs, she was hoping to find memories she could read—visual memories not dependent on a deep understanding of the mental processes of the neo-nous.

  Something buffeted her, unravelling a section of her surface. It was the current returning, bringing with it warmth drawn all the way from the ship's core. She felt her every trope loosen and relax. She revelled in it for a moment. Then she gathered in fresh tropes from the surrounding mesotypes, rebuilt the damaged section of her surface and returned to the task of reading the berg.

  Water glistened on the epithelial lights like dew on long grass. Mist filled the air. It was like the coming of the dawn, and it was frightening.

  "What is happening?” hooted Called Patches as he swam towards Called 83. He was amongst the youngest of the Far-Beyonders to have accepted a new name from Elena Called Andalian, and near as tall as a Hila.

  Called Redback and a half a dozen others followed close on Called Patches’ heels; Called 83 waited until they were all within earshot before speaking. “We have arrived in an area of sky filled with dust. It is the dust striking the ship's shell that makes it shake so."

  "Are we in danger?” someone asked.

  Called Redback twisted around in the air, coming to rest alongside Called 83. “No,” he said. He turned to Called 83. “We are safe within the ship's embrace, isn't that so?"

  All eyes were on Called 83. He rolled his shoulders to avoid being turned upside down by the breeze that spiralled through the passageway. His fur was sodden, and it was a struggle drawing breath in the damp heat. “I ... the ship does not think that there is any danger."

  "But why are we here? Why do we not leave?” someone asked. Several others took up the question.

  Called Redback asked for quiet. As the squall of voices died away, Called 83 thanked Called Redback and then said, “There is an object within the dust cloud, as large as a world, but not a world. This object is clearing a path through the dust cloud. The Hila mean the ship to take us into its shadow, out of the dust. We will find the going easier there."

  "But why—"

  "We've arrived, haven't we?” put in Called Redback.

  Called 83 dipped his head, triggering a chorus of hoots and whistles from the other Far-Beyonders. Raising his voice to make himself heard, he said, simply, “Yes. The trail ends here."

  Called Redback's eyes grew cold. “And the Hila?"

  Called 83 rocked his head from side to side. “They are readying the missile-thrower."

  Called Redback hissed. “We cannot allow them to shoot.” He let the breeze carry him closer to Called 83 and laid a hand on his arm. “Called 83 In Honour Of Another Of That Name, we cannot allow this."

  Called 83 placed his hand over Called Redback's and dipped his head. “You are right. I see that now. That was why I was on my way back to the inner forest."

  Called Redback hooted and turned to the other Far-Beyonders. “Called Patches, Called Nine, return to the inner forest and spread the word. It is time."

  "We should approach the fibre nexus from many different directions,” said Called 83, “to take advantage of our—"

  Called Redback silenced him with a squeeze of the arm. He bared his teeth in a smile. “We've been planning this hunt for a long time—all is prepared."

  Called 83felt his fingers burn with shame. He had known nothing of this. Before their journey had started, the Hila had singled him out and used him to deliver their demands to the Beyonders. Ever since, to his own people, he had spoken with the voice of the Hila. Of course, they had told him nothing. “Is there ... is there a place for me in the hunt?"

  "Called 83 In Honour Of Another Of That Name, there is a place for every Far-Beyonder in this hunt."

  Asha soon had plate dimensions enough to justify shuffling the sugars that she had stored on one of her filaments in towards her reader. The process went quickly
in the returned warmth, and within a few short minutes, she had the information that she needed: the crystal packing within the berg matched that employed by the original mesomind when building its own memories. Her gamble was paying off. She started to spin her mimetic fabulations...

  The heat of two suns, the tug of their two gravities; and, beyond the suns, a dozen bands of rainbow light fringing on as many rings as dark as night. It was a view of a proto-planetary system somewhere within a nebula, the observer set somewhere above the system plane and distant from the system's double sun. It was reasonable to suppose that the nebula was the nebula through which the nous ship itself was travelling, but the proto-system did not match any that Asha knew of. And there was something about the image: it had the look of a composite, something formed from many partial images, one overlapping the next—as if the product of a hive mind.

  A hive mind; Asha felt a thrill: were the beings that had taken over the mesomind kin to the antecedents of the nous? It would explain how they had triumphed so quickly. Was this proto-system then the cradle of the nous of the nous ships? It was too fantastic an idea—but, if the memories she was mining truly did contain the pieces of a map that showed the way to the cradle of the mesominds, she would be able to name her own price with the schools of the Agora. There would be no limit to how far she would be able to afford to travel.

  A new sensation washed over her, taking her unawares. It was a desire to be amongst people again; and, within only a few short mo-ments, that desire had grown into a longing and overwhelmed her.

  "It is larger than any two normal rocky worlds,” said the Melzem. He turned to the nearest child. “Is the ship sure that it is a solid mass?"

  "It is solid as far inwards as she is able to see, Speaker-Of-Com-mands. But there are channels through it at all depths."

  The Melzem dismissed that last piece of information with a flick of the hand. “How deep is the ship able to see?"

  The child named a depth as great as the diameter of half the rocky worlds that Wright had ever heard of. Then it said, “But it appears to be layered, Speaker-of-Commands."

  Wright stretched closer to the imaging tank and studied the wan-derer in more detail. How old would something like that need to be to grow to such a size simply through accretion?

  Analarmsounded.TheMelzemdemandedinformation.Asecond child floated over to him and reported that they had entered the wanderer's bow wave. And as it spoke, Wright noticed an increase in the vibration that he could feel through the vine to which he was clinging. Even though they were cocooned in active dampers, the storm of dust particles through which they were plunging was still able to make its presence felt.

  The first child asked the Melzem permission to move clear. The Melzem hissed and rocked its head from side to side. “No,” he said. “Not when we are so close.” He stabbed a finger at the imaging tank and a target marker centred on a point in the wanderer's upper right quadrant. A subsidiary volume in the lower part of the tank showed the target in more detail. It was floating a few tens of kilometres above the surface of the wanderer; a truncated cone perhaps four times as long as its width at its base, with a taper so sharp that its width decreased by at least an order of magnitude from its base to its apex. Its surface was mostly carapace, pitted, scarred—and beetle-black, even in the ruddy-orange glow of the nebula—but there were areas of soft tissue too, particularly near the apex. A glyph floating alongside the image in the tank gave the object's length in base units; Wright did the conversion: it was almost 800 metres from top to bottom. A baby of its class—the Melzem farship was over three times the size, and still growing.

  "I want that child,” said the Melzem, and he gave the order to load the catapult.

  Wright turned away from the imaging tank and climbed the fibre towards the Melzem. “Wait,” he said. “Why am I here if you're just going to destroy her?"

  "In case she runs, endling,” the Melzem said. “She is good at run-ning. Hearing you will give her pause."

  Wright's thoughts raced. “Then ... then ... then let me talk to her now, get her attention before she even thinks of running."

  "And warn her of our presence?"

  "Speaker-Of-Commands?” The Melzem turned to the child hov ering at his shoulder. The child pressed its hands to its forehead in obeisance. “There is heat rising from the bow of the errant child. She is loading her own catapult."

  How long had Asha been mining nous-ship memories for the Agora? Her mail packets came time-stamped, but Asha had long since stopped taking note of such things—as Gespen, the master mesophrast, had told her that she would. Time meant little within the nous of the nous ships. There was no night or day, no seasons. There were currents that ebbed and flowed through the mesomind, thought processes that gave a sense of direction to the ever-shifting mesotypes of the lyotropic plates and nematic/smectic boundary zones; but these motions were chaotic, acyclic. Asha rested and reintegrated only when entropy threatened to pull her apart. And when she slept, she dreamt of the distant past, of memories that she had mined.

  How long had it been since she had arrived, diseased and dying, at the schools of the Agora and they had offered her this second shot at life, this chance to slough off her flesh and live on purely as self within the bounds of the mesomind of a nous?

  The Hila rose up from the centre of the fibre nexus to be met by a hail of missiles. They reeled, and several started to tumble, but most recovered quickly; and even before the Far-Beyonders could refill their slingshots, the first Hila spears were slicing through the air towards them.

  Called 83 twisted and tucked himself up into a ball as a Hila spear flew towards him. It hissed past, trailing water vapour. He heard it bury its tip in the surface of the tunnel somewhere over his shoulder. Immediately, he began to straighten, but at the same moment something struck him a glancing blow and he careened across the tunnel opening and collided with its lip. He started to tumble. Instinctively, he reached towards the stalk of an epithelial light as it moved past his line of sight. He missed. Shaking his head to clear his vision, he grabbed for a second light. This time his aim was true.

  A shadow rushed by above him, and, a moment later, something warm and wet struck his cheek. His vision cleared at last, and he saw that the shadow was a Far-Beyonder with a spear buried in his chest. It was Called Patches. His mouth was open, but his eyes were squeezed shut. He fell past Called 83 into the fibre nexus; a stream of blood droplets followed after him.

  Called Patches was screaming. The sound of shouting, cursing, filled the whole fibre nexus, punctuated with the hiss of thrown spears and sling-shot bone shards, and the thud of them finding a target. Called 83 felt the bile rise in his throat. He swallowed and rocked his head from side to side to clear it. Then he spun around, let go of the stalk of the epithelial and pushed against the lip of the opening with his feet, launching himself into the fray.

  Detail built on detail: rocky agglomerates orbited the twin-suns of the proto-planetary system—wandering planetismals that had fallen into the deepening gravity well. Nurseries of the proto-nous

  —could it really be so? Or was it foolish of Asha to dream? And what would she find waiting for her if she did earn equity enough to buy her way out of her contract with the Agora?

  Yari, Sakaro, Elizabet and all the rest, had recoiled in horror when the schools had offered up mesolife as the only way that they knew that Asha and her companions might escape the fate that had already overtaken their fellow XVIIers. But, Asha had been tired of running, of watching the Melzemi virus kill them off, one by one. She had broken ranks, run away. If, by some miracle, Yari, Sakaro, Elizabet and all the rest, had found a counter-agent, were they still alive? How long had it been? And even if Asha found them still alive would they accept her back amongst them, given what had passed between them?

  Wright closed on the nexus’ sounding box. He cleared his throat and spoke. “Elena Andalian ... Calling Elena Andalian ... This is the Melzemi farship calling Elena Andalian...<
br />
  "I ... I'm not Melzemi. My name is Taylor Wright. If you're search-ing for humankind, as you claim, you should talk to me, because, as little as there is of me that might still be called human, it's all that there is left in the universe."

  Silence. For long seconds, silence. Elena Andalian had killed tens of thousands of sapient beings because they had told her something that she had not wanted to hear—that the human race was run. What sense then, Wright wondered, in trying to talk sense to her?

  The sounding box sighed, and the next moment, a voice sounded deep within it. “You are wrong, Taylor Wright. Cross over to me, and I will show you that you are wrong."

  The voice was rich, but markedly feminine—and youthful. The Melzem grunted, drawing Wright's attention his way. He dipped his head. “Tell her you agree. Tell her we'll ready a shiftboat and you will cross over to her as soon as we come within range."

  It was a lie, a ploy to gain time to allow the Melzemi farship to get into the optimum firing position. But Wright was barely listening. What had Elena Andalian meant when she had said that he was wrong? What had brought her to the nebula, and this accreted mass larger than most worlds?