Avik grinned. “So, is that to be the way of it? Then I’ll leave you to this lust, and it shall keep you company tonight. Tomorrow, when I return and make the offer again, you will be grateful.”
Avik left the room. The lights dimmed as he exited, and Maggie was left in pain, screaming inside, aching for Gallen.
Gallen returned to the pidc that morning, put on the instruction hood. “Teach me about mankind,” he said. The teacher began with genetics and showed the path of evolution, including ancient species of mammals and dinosaurs whose DNA had been salvaged and reproduced on many worlds. The teacher taught him the genetic structure of man, showing how genetic engineers had developed mankind into over a thousand distinct subspecies, each bred to a specific purpose, to live in a specific environment.
He learned the schemes humans used to achieve life extension. Thousands of drugs and procedures had been developed to cheat death. Most who died had their consciousness transmitted to virtual heavens that existed within computers. Some had their memories downloaded to machines, like the artefs, which were simply colonies of self-replicating nanotech devices. The most ambitious plans to beat death involved life extensions coupled with downloading memories into clones. Such plans culminated in virtual immortality—a commodity that had once been reserved for the most deserving but now available only to the wealthiest.
Last of all, the teacher showed Gallen the crowning achievement of genetic manipulation, the Tharrin, a race fashioned to embody nobility and virtue, a race designed to integrate fully with personal intelligences without losing their humanity. The Tharrin were to be the leaders and judges of mankind, a subspecies that would control the naval fleets, the police forces, and the courts of a million worlds.
The Tharrin’s physical features embodied strength and perfection. Certain glands secreted pheromones that attracted other humans so that the Tharrin constantly found themselves at the center of attention. Yet the Tharrin seldom became conceited. They did not see themselves as leaders or judges, but as the servants of mankind.
Gallen was not surprised when an image of a Tharrin formed in his mind, and he recognized Everynne in a thousand details.
Yet the Tharrin represented only half of a human/machine intellect. The machine half, the planet-sized omni-minds, stored information on the societies, moral codes, and political factions of tens of thousands of worlds. All such information was used when debating criminal and civil suits, but the data was all considered to be obsolete when passing a judgment. When a Tharrin passed judgment, it did so based on information stored in its omni-mind, but human empathy and understanding were meant to vitiate judgment. In the end, the wise and compassionate Tharrin ruled from the heart.
In his lessons, Gallen learned the brief history of Fale, how here the Tharrin ruler Semarritte had been overthrown by the alien dronon. For decades, the dronon had presented a threat to mankind, but Semarritte and her Tharrin advisors refused to go to war. Semarritte had created more guardians to protect her realm—creatures who were as much nanotech machine as flesh, creatures who could be controlled only through her omni-mind. Yet always Semarritte and the Tharrin had hoped that the humans and dronon might someday learn to live together in peace. They could not reconcile themselves to the horrors that would result from an interspecies war.
But in a surprise attack, dronon technicians won control of Semarritte’s omni-mind, then manipulated her fleets and guardians, sending them to war against their human creators. Then the dronon killed Semarritte herself and murdered every Tharrin who fell into their hands.
Gallen had to rest and eat again, but he came back late that night and questioned his teacher on matters of law, hoping that he would find some legal means of freeing Maggie. Under the old Tharrin law, slave-taking had been criminal. But under dronon law, Lord Karthenor could capture or buy servants who were not claimed by more powerful lords. Since his work ranked as a top priority among the dronon, he was free to choose servants from ninety percent of the population.
Seeing that he had no legal recourse, Gallen sought information on current war and battle techniques, but the teacher let him study only some very basic self-defense. Obviously, the dronon controlled this teaching machine to some degree, and they would not let it teach tactics that might be used against them.
In his last session that evening, Gallen downloaded a map of Toohkansay. That night, he dragged himself back to the woods late. Orick had returned to the camp.
“I searched all around the spot where we entered,” Orick said. “I couldn’t smell Everynne anywhere. I couldn’t find any other cities.”
“I know.” Gallen sighed. “Toohkansay is the only city for—” he converted kilometers to miles in his head “—eighty miles.”
“I don’t understand,” Orick said heavily. “We all went in the same gate, but we didn’t come out at the same place.”
“The making of gate keys is hard,” Gallen said, “and our key was stolen from someone who may have fashioned an imperfect key. Obviously, it dropped us off in the wrong spot. Each gate leads to only one planet, so I’m certain we are on the right world, but Fale is a big place. We might be two miles from Everynne, or ten thousand. There is no way to tell.”
Orick studied Gallen. “You’re certain of this, are you?”
“Aye, very sure,” Gallen said.
“What else did you learn in the city?”
Gallen could not begin to answer. He had studied handwritten books in Tihrglas, but in only a few hours here on Fale, the equivalent of a thousand volumes of information had been dumped into his head. How could he explain it?
“I went to a library,” Gallen said. “I learned some things from a teaching machine, like a Guide—but this machine doesn’t control your actions. I learned so much that I can’t begin to tell you everything. But I can take you there tomorrow, if you have a mind to learn something.”
“I’ll not have one of their devices twisting my brain, thank you!” Orick growled. “I saw what it did to Maggie!”
“It’s not the same,” Gallen said. “This is a different kind of machine. It won’t hurt you.”
“Won’t hurt me, eh?” Orick said. “What have they done to you? There’s a new look in your eyes, Gallen O’Day. You’re not the same man who left here two days ago. You can’t tell me that you’re the same, can you?”
“No,” Gallen said. “I’m not the same.” He reflected for a moment. Only a few days before, Everynne had told him that she found the naiveté of his world to be refreshing. She’d wished that all worlds could be so innocent. And now Gallen lived in a much larger universe, a universe where there was no distinct boundary between man and machine, where immortals wielded vast power over entire worlds, where alien races battled the thousand subspecies of mankind for dominance in three separate galaxies.
Gallen could have described the situation to Orick, but he knew Orick wanted to be a priest. He wanted to sustain the faith of those in Tihrglas, ensure the continuation of the status quo, and Gallen saw that this too was a valuable thing. In one small corner of the galaxy there could be sweet, blissful ignorance. In one small corner of the galaxy, adults could remain children. Knowledge carries its own price.
“I have learned some of the lore of the sidhe,” Gallen said at last. “Not a lot, but perhaps enough. I’m going to try to steal Maggie back.”
In a darkened room in the city of Toohkansay, nine lords of Fale sat around a table in their black robes and boots. Their masked faces shone in shades of crimson starlight. Veriasse and Everynne sat with them, both masked and cloaked as lords, Everynne in a pale blue mask, Veriasse in aquamarine. Though they had been on the planet for less than an hour, Veriasse had set up this meeting nearly five years earlier, and as Everynne watched her guardian, she could see that he was tense to the snapping point. His back was rigidly straight, and his mask revealed his profound worry.
All their years of plotting came to this. If anyone down the long trail of freedom fighters had betrayed them
, now was when they would be arrested. And everyone in the room expected to be arrested: one of their number had not been seen in two days. Surely, the dronon had captured him, wrung his secrets from him. Because of this, they had been forced to change the meeting place at the last moment.
One crimson lord, a woman whose name Everynne did not even know, pulled from the depths of her robe a small glass globe, a yellow sphere that could easily fit in Everynne’s palm or in a pocket. “As Lord of the Technicians of Fale, I freely give you this in behalf of my people,” the woman said. “Use it wisely, if you must use it at all.”
Everynne took the globe, held it in her palm. It was as heavy as lead. Inside, was a small dark cloud at the machine’s core—a housing where the nanotech components were stored, along with a small explosive charge designed to crack the globe and set its microscopic inhabitants free. In ages past, only a few weapons like this had ever been used. People called it “the Terror.” It seemed only right to Everynne that something which could destroy a world would be so gravid, so weighty.
“How fast will it work?” Everynne asked.
The crimson lady’s mask showed sadness. “The Terrors reproduce at an explosive rate. We designed them to seek out carbon molecules and form graphite. On a living planet, every animal, every plant, the atmosphere itself will be destroyed. Only the Terrors will survive for more than a day. They will appear as a blue shimmering cloud, moving outward through the sky at two thousand kilometers per hour. On the ground and in the sea, they move somewhat faster. The Terrors would destroy most worlds within a matter of twelve to eighteen hours.”
Everynne watched the woman’s face. The crimson lady was old, centuries old, and in that time she had probably learned to control her emotions exquisitely, yet her voice cracked as she spoke of the machine’s capacity for genocide.
“And how fast could this destroy Dronon?” Veriasse asked. “Will the Terrors be slowed significantly by being forced to reproduce on such a dry, desolate world?”
Even as Veriasse asked the question, Everynne cringed. The thought that the weapon might actually be used disturbed her. Time and again, she had begged Veriasse not to fashion such a weapon, to create only a simulated Terror. If the glass case broke, an entire planet would be destroyed. But Veriasse would not hear her arguments. He planned to take the Terror to the planet Dronon itself. He wanted to fear him, and the only way he could arouse such fear was if the dronon knew that a working Terror lay hidden on their world.
But sometimes at night, Everynne wondered if he had a hidden agenda. If refused to concede to his demands, she wondered, would Veriasse hesitate to lay the planet Dronon to waste?
“Dronon’s atmosphere is heavier in carbon dioxide than most. The Terrors will find it to their taste.”
Another of the masked lords smiled cruelly and said, “I designed the package with Dronon in mind. The planet can be terminated in six hours and fourteen minutes. Just make sure that you are near the imperial lair when you set it off.”
Everynne was disturbed by the man’s maleficent air. It pained her to see her people given over to such hatred. Though she knew that the dronons had killed her own mother, Everynne did not hate them. She understood them too well, understood their need for order at any cost, their instinctive desire to expand their territories and control their environment. “Let us have no more talk of genocide,” Everynne said. “Even if we tried to fight the dronon on such terms, they would be forced to retaliate. In such a war, there can be no victors.”
“Of course, Our Lady,” the crimson lords agreed, and almost as one they breathed a sigh of relief. They had spoken treasonous words and had not been arrested. Everynne could feel the clouds of doubt and fear lifting from her. For a long moment, they all sat and simply looked at one another around the table. For five years the crimson lords had worked, and now their part was done. Everynne watched them relax and wanted only to relax with them, take one last rest before her part in the great work began.
“We must go now,” Veriasse said. Everynne knew he was right. They had left Tihrglas only an hour ago. The vanquishers could transmit news of their escape over tachyon waves. Within another few hours, word of their escape would reach Fale, and the vanquishers would seek to block all of Everynne’s escape routes.
“Wait, please,” the crimson lady begged. “I have one last favor to ask before you leave.”
“Which is?” Everynne said.
“Your face,” the crimson lady asked. “Once, before you leave, I want to see your face.”
On Fale, the lords never went unmasked in public. It was a tradition millennia old. The crimson lady would never have asked such a favor of one of her own neighbors. Everynne had little time to spare, but these people had risked so much for her that she could not resist.
She peeled off her pale blue mask, and the lords stared at her in awe for a moment. “You are truly a queen among the Tharrin,” the crimson lady said. Everynne felt sick at the words. After all, what was a queen among the Tharrin but a specific set of genetic codes given to those who were born to be leaders? It was nothing she had done, nothing she had earned. Her genetic makeup gave her a certain sculpted beauty, a regal air, a measure of charisma and wit that probably would never have been duplicated in nature. Yet Everynne saw all of this as a sham. It was simply a station she was born to. Her flesh was the clothing she wore.
The crimson lady peeled off her own mask, showed herself to be a handsome, aging woman with penetrating gray eyes. “My name is Atheremis, and it has been my pleasure to serve you. I will never betray you,” she said.
One by one, the other crimson lords around the room also peeled back their masks, spoke their names and their gratitude.
That is when Everynne knew for sure that they would kill themselves. If they had not been planning suicide, Everynne was sure that they would not have revealed themselves. But one of their number was missing, so they were choosing to die now by their own hands rather than risk that they might be captured and forced to reveal damning evidence.
The crimson lady cried; tears rolled down her cheeks. Everynne wanted to stay with them a little longer, hoping to keep them alive. If looking into her face gave them pleasure, then she would stand here for hours. But Veriasse took her elbow, and whispered, “Come, we must hurry.”
Together they walked from the darkened chamber and headed down a long green corridor past the shops and apartments of Toohkansay. Only Everynne’s mask hid the fact that she was sobbing inside.
They had hardly gone a hundred meters when a blinding flash of light erupted behind them, and the blast from the explosion buffeted their robes like a strong wind. Sirens began to wail, and citizens of the city rushed toward the blast, searching for victims. The living walls of the city did not catch fire, but the distinctive smell of cooked vegetable matter filled the smoking hallways.
They hurried to a cantina on the edge of town where the scent of food beguiled them. Everynne had not eaten for nearly twenty hours, so they went through the dispensary line and grabbed some rolls, then hurried out to a waiting shuttle, a beat up old magcar that would not draw undue attention.
They hopped over the doors, and Veriasse unfolded a thin map and pushed a button until Fale appeared on the legend of the world. The map showed them at the edge of Toohkansay, and a three-dimensional image showed the land around them for hundreds of kilometers. There were three gates within that range, but only Veriasse had traveled the Maze of Worlds enough to know which planet each gate would lead to. “This gate here,” Veriasse said, pointing to the most distant of the three, “leads to Cyannesse. We will be safe there.”
Everynne took the stick and gunned the thrusters. The car raised several inches on a magnetic wave, and she piloted the vehicle slowly at first, fearing that foot travelers might be on the road so close to Toohkansay.
For ten minutes they drove past the yawning farms that sprawled along the calm river. Huge, spiderlike harvesters were at work, cultivating the fields. They tu
rned a wide bend, and Everynne was just ready to raise the windshields so that she could speed up when she saw a bear ahead. It leapt from the road into the woods.
“That’s Orick!” she said, reversing thrusters.
“It can’t be,” Veriasse said. “It’s just a bear.”
“I’m sure of it.” The magcar slowed and idled beside the trees. She gazed into the woods, up a slight rise where white rocks lay in a jumble. There was no sign of Orick—only prints among the fallen leaves that the bear had made as it bowled through the trees. Everynne wondered if it had been a trick of her imagination, yet she let the magcar hover on the road. Uphill, the nose of a bear poked cautiously over some bushes to watch her.
“You’re right,” she said, distracted. She had last seen Orick only slightly more than an hour ago on a planet nearly six hundred light-years away. Somehow, that recent image must have burned into her subconscious so that she imagined that this bear looked just like Orick.
She gunned the thrusters and the magcar rose and began to move forward slowly. She glanced back, and the bear stood up on its hind legs, sniffing the air.
It yelled, “Everynne? Is that you?”
She slammed on the reverse thrusters.
“Orick?” Veriasse called. The bear dropped to all fours and ran toward them with astonishing speed.
“It’s you!” Orick shouted. “Where have you been? I’ve been searching for you everywhere! It’s been days!”
Veriasse and Everynne looked at each other. “What do you mean, ‘days’?” Everynne asked. “We left Tihrglas less than two hours ago. How did you get here?”
“Gallen stole a key from the dronon. He was afraid they would use it to catch you. When we got here, we couldn’t find any sign of you. Maggie’s been kidnapped, and we can’t get her back. Gallen and I have been here for nearly four days!”
The Golden Queen Page 14
