“He came to warn you,” said Seb. “He finally decided to do the right thing and get away from Mason. It meant giving up Manna, leaving himself vulnerable. But he did it. He knew I couldn’t help. He saved you, knowing it meant his own death.”
“How do you know all this?” said Meera. She couldn’t stop staring down at the rich brown earth, knowing that a few feet below lay the body of a human being who had died for her. For her. She knew Walt had been involved in many morally ambiguous situations over the course of his life. Some of the things he’d done were plain wrong by any standards. Until yesterday, she would have written him off as irredeemably evil because of what he’d done to her and others. Was it possible that one utterly selfless act could outweigh all the bad in his life? Mee knew—after the events on the rooftop—she would say yes, it was. Mee had spent much of her life believing people couldn’t change, not really. She’d been wrong. The evidence was six feet under her soaking shoes.
“When I spent time with Walt, I didn’t trust him,” said Seb. “As it turned out, my instincts were right. He betrayed me. He had a history of making bad moral choices. I think the fact he was so honest about himself stopped me simply dismissing him as a bad guy. It was as if he was reaching out. I think he saw himself in me. The young apprentice discovering new powers, spending time with an older, wiser mentor. Only he knew he wasn’t wise. He was still making the same mistakes, still taking the easy path.”
Mee finally managed to move her focus away from the sodden earth to look up at Seb.
“But how did you know about him giving up Manna? And I saw him get shot in the chest. How did he keep moving without Manna?”
“He had help,” said Seb. “The last time I saw Walt—ironically, it was the day he tried to talk me out of sacrificing myself for you—Seb2 planted a coil of nanotechnology on him. It wrapped itself around his brainstem and waited.”
“A what?” said Mee.
“It was a template,” said Seb. “A small, lightweight program containing a cut-down version of my personality. No detailed memories, just broad strokes. Like a child, in a way. It spent the last eighteen months or so passively sitting there. Watching. Almost like hibernation. Then, Walt left Mason and gave up Manna. Once Sym detected there was no Manna left, he was activated and made his presence known.”
“Wait a sec. Sym?”
“Apparently, yeah. Not my idea. He took a new name. Anyway, he emailed me Walt’s decision, then he stayed with him right up to his death. Walt knew he would die attempting to save you, but Sym gave him the strength to survive the tranquilizer darts and bullets so he could do it.”
“Just when I think our life is as complicated as it’s ever gonna get, you tell me something like this.”
“Yeah, well, what can I say? Sym is an interesting development, I guess. He spent so much time with Walt, his personality appears to be as much Walt’s as mine. It’s why I haven’t reabsorbed him.”
“You haven’t what?”
“Well, he was just a program. He had a job to do, and he did it. So I should reabsorb him or just delete him. But he’s kinda the only part of Walt left. It doesn’t feel right. He obviously feels the same way, too. He didn’t come back, just emailed the information about Walt. He’s out there somewhere. Independent, or so he thinks. Even though I know he’s just a tiny spiral of coded Roswell Manna, he behaves as if he’s conscious. He’s a closed system, his power is very limited and—technically—he is me. But his year and a half with Walt has convinced him that he’s independent. It feels morally wrong to do anything other than let him go. Does that sound crazy?”
“No crazier than half the shit you’ve pulled since aliens decided to make you Super Seb,” said Mee. “But where will he go? Attach himself to someone else’s brain stem, maybe?”
“Unlikely,” said Seb. “There’s no need. He can exist inside technology as easily as flesh. Anyway, he’s not our problem right now.”
Mee looked at Seb. He wasn’t looking at the grave. His head was tilted back, watching the skies darken and close in above the cemetery. As the clouds thickened and the atmosphere became oppressive, white flashes of lightning began highlighting the darkest areas of the sky, the air crackling with energy. The air itself seemed to thicken for a moment, as if the area immediately around them had taken a breath and was holding it, about to unleash some terrible onslaught.
One massive swathe of black cloud was parting. The sky revealed beyond it was darker still, complete blackness—it was as if all color had been sucked out of it. And yet, it seemed poised, full of latent energy, like a big cat about to spring.
There was a thunderous crack above them and the pool of blackness solidified and shot through the clouds; dark lightning, an ebony bolt flung from the sky like a spear. It hit the ground just in front of a large weeping pine. The tree burst dramatically into flame for about two seconds, then the lashing rain extinguished it, leaving a smoldering blackened skeleton.
Mee grabbed Seb’s arm. Squinting ahead, she looked across at the ruined tree. Nearby, seemingly unworried by the storm, stood a figure, barely discernible through the rain. She couldn’t remember noticing it before. It hardly seemed possible anyone could stand so calmly during the bizarre onslaught they’d just witnessed. And there was something else strange. Mee realized the tree must have been much smaller than she’d thought. Some kind of optical illusion, skewing her perspective. Either that, or the watcher standing next to it was about twelve feet tall, which was unlikely. She looked back at Seb. He was staring across at the figure.
“He waiting for you?” she said.
“Yeah. You ok here a while?” She nodded.
Seb handed Mee the umbrella and set off through the rain toward the distant figure. The rain avoided his body like iron filings being dragged away by magnets.
The figure was shaped like a human. From a distance, it had seemed indistinct, shadowy. Up close, the effect was disconcerting. A mass of swirling dark fog, constantly in motion, waited under the dripping pine branches. As Seb approached, the body shrank, its height matching Seb’s own. About six feet away, Seb stopped. The part of it that resembled a head turned toward him. The voice was low, almost musical in its inflection.
“Do you know who I am?”
“Yes,” said Seb. “You’re the ship. Thanks for coming.”
37
At St Benet’s Orphanage, from the age of eight right up until he left nearly a decade later, Seb had slept in a dormitory. His bed had been against the wall opposite the largest window. One of his strongest memories was of the drapes. They were cheap and hard-wearing, bearing a repeating abstract pattern. For years, he’d fallen asleep looking at that pattern. In daylight, it was just a series of gray and blue shapes. At night, particularly in summer, when the thin material didn’t block much of the light from outside, Seb had watched the pattern slowly darken and—as it did so—change. The shapes weren’t random any more, they were faces: some happy, others sad, some animal, others human. The top right corner always drew Seb’s eye eventually, even though it used to scare him when he was younger. The face that appeared up there rippled and shifted, its eyes darting from left to right, looking at the boys as they slept. And the expression on the face was impossible to read. Sometimes it was angry, sometimes kind. It could be judgmental and severe, or forgiving and gentle. Seb knew the fact that a small pane of glass was missing in that corner meant that the curtains moved. He knew his imagination had turned the mass-produced pattern into a face. But it made no difference to how real the face was in the semi-darkness of those long summer evenings.
And now, he was looking at the same face. But this was the face belonging to a representation of an alien ship that had carried the Rozzers for generations on their mission to Earth.
Instead of a pattern, the ship’s face was made up of something very like dense black smoke. Rather than rippling as the wind moved folds of material, it swirled and twisted, a storm-torn weather system contained in a human shape. Seb knew
he was projecting the remembered face onto the formless features speaking to him, but that didn’t make it any less unnerving.
“It is true then. You are T’hn’uuth.” The mouth formed the words, then disappeared. Seb could see no eyes but he had the unmistakable impression that he was being looked at intently. He knew his Manna was interacting with the figure, that the surface conversation was only part of the interchange between them.
“I’m what?”
The stranger took a few paces to the side, then returned to its starting position. As it moved, the outline of a figure became briefly more pronounced. When it turned, Seb had the distinct impression that it was wearing a cloak. There was a surreal air of deliberate drama about the whole scene.
“T’hn’uuth,” said the figure. “Your language provides no alternative word. A loose translation might be ‘the traveler between realities’.”
“The World Walker?”
“The World Walker. Yes, it’s as good a term as any other.” The shadow being made a strange sound and scuffed the earth under its feet. If it had feet.
“You accepted my invitation,” said Seb. “Thank you. You know my name, ship. What is yours?”
“I am H’wan,” said the figure, bowing slightly. “I confess, I only accepted as we can no longer bring you to us. This has never happened before. Your organic structure fascinated me immediately, particularly that which was inaccessible. Our failure to bring you back this time raised the possibility that you had changed that organic structure. Consciously. Only a T’hn’uuth is capable of such action. I hardly dared to believe it was true.”
“I meant to mention that,” said Seb2. “The reason they can’t summon you now.”
“I know,” thought Seb. “It was a tipping point. You accelerated the process. I’m now more nanotech than flesh and blood. They can’t lock onto my DNA anymore.”
“Smart ass. Incidentally, this thing doesn’t possess Manna as such, it is Manna, or something very like it. But it’s wary of you. Its approaches are tentative, careful. You represent something outside the limits of its knowledge. This is very much a new experience for it, I think.”
“Yeah, well, me too.”
H’wan was drawing itself up into a pose very much like that of an actor about to deliver a stirring speech to a large audience.
Time seemed to slow down. Seb felt a momentary state of sadness sweep over him, a sense of mourning. Appropriate enough in a cemetery, but it wasn’t Walt’s death causing this feeling. He suddenly felt as if he was standing at his own graveside. Seb Varden, musician, childless, may he rest in peace. The reason the Rozzers couldn’t get to him anymore was that he was no longer fully human. The process of change had started with Billy Joe, continued when he absorbed the Manna at Roswell, and lately had accelerated in order to give him an advantage over the aliens now approaching Earth. His sense of himself, his humanity, his love of Mee had caused him to suppress the impulse to evolve further. But it was there, buried in his subconscious, getting stronger. He could feel the blind unstoppable imperative of Nature pushing and pulling at him. The caterpillar, now a butterfly imprisoned in its chrysalis, was struggling to free itself and unfurl its new wings.
He realized H’wan was speaking and he was barely listening. The creature in front of him was—he knew—part of the ship that he had been taken to three times. He had worked out the ship’s secret on his last visit. The Rozzers were intelligent, certainly, but they were genetically prepared for particular tasks. Brilliant scientists, all of them, but their brilliance was narrowly focused on their individual areas of specialization. Their treatment of Seb—their confusion about how to deal with him, revealed the limitations of their genetic inheritance. A crew needs a leader who can adapt to situations, who can deal with the unexpected. Seb saw no evidence of such a leader among the Rozzers he’d met, but he could feel a witness, a sharply intelligent watcher on his visits. Particularly that last time. And, quite suddenly, he had known. The ship itself was sentient.
Seb turned his attention back to the speaking figure.
“It really is quite an occasion,” it said, rolling its ‘R’s ostentatiously. “You are the first of your kind I have ever encountered in person. Then again, I have only been distinct for 1,300 years. Earth years, I mean. So although I have heard about the T’hn’uuth, the tales are so rare, they have almost taken on a mythical status. The Gyeuk knows you exist, the fleshbound have their stories, but mine will be the only properly reported encounter for thousands of years.”
Seb looked blankly at the swirling being. He knew it was less of an individual, more of a colony, made up by trillions of individual nanotech ‘cells’. He interrupted.
“Is that what you call your species? The Gyeuk?”
The shadow creature seemed at first stunned, then outraged, finally slightly nervous about being stopped in mid-speech. Its body language was larger-than-life, almost that of a clown at a children’s party. Seb wondered what particularly, during its study of Earth’s culture, had made the ship decide to appear in this form and behave in this particular way.
“The Gyeuk is not a species. We are the inevitable next stage of evolution, a society, a consensus.”
Seb could feel his knowledge of the ship increase as every second passed. His Manna was learning from the creature, but the traffic was almost all one-way. As had happened on the Rozzer’s ship, H’wan’s attempts to gather information from Seb was easy to block.
“We would call you the Singularity,” said Seb. “The moment artificial intelligence surpasses its creators.”
H’wan gaped at him. Which was a hard thing to do with no mouth as such, but he made a great job of looking totally dumbfounded.
“We prefer the term ‘enablers’,” he said, in a tone that suggested affronted dignity. “It was inevitable that the fleshbound should fulfill their purpose in time, and enable the Gyeuk.”
Seb tried to picture the Gyeuk and found he couldn’t. Manna told him H’wan was just one of millions of ships who had elected to leave the Gyeuk temporarily, although some had subsequently chosen not to re-assimilate. The Gyeuk ships, over time, became discrete individuals, although, like the race that spawned them, they were made up purely of nano-level technology, every particle equal to its neighbor. Each particle morphed frequently to accomplish different tasks, every decision was a consensus. If a human body was a benign dictatorship, with the brain demanding absolute obedience, H’wan was an anarchical cooperative, where every member existed purely to serve the whole. And yet, somehow, H’wan, and the other Gyeuk ships, had developed unmistakable personalities.
The Gyeuk itself/themselves was a cloud of pure existence and thought, drifting through the universe, its purpose or goals either unknown or unknowable. It was this that Seb couldn’t picture. He could interact with this part of the whole—this strangely eccentric figure—but found it impossible to imagine trying to communicate with a cloud of awareness.
“I didn’t mean to offend you, H’wan,” said Seb. “You and I are very different. Please forgive me.”
“No apology is necessary,” said H’wan. “It is impossible for me to be offended.”
Seb managed not to laugh as he looked at body language saying the exact opposite. H’wan was so flamboyant, it was easy to forget the threat he represented.
“You are close enough to Earth to send this representation of yourself,” said Seb. “When will you—the ship—be here?”
“We will reach orbit in twenty-seven hours,” said H’wan.
“I know why you’re coming,” said Seb. “Why the Rozzers are here.”
H’wan looked as if he was about to speak. Seb stopped him.
“Another name I can’t pronounce. So, it’s the Rozzers. The Unmaking Engine will destroy an entire species. It’s violent, it’s wrong and it’s unnecessary. It cannot happen.”
H’wan stopped its posturing and was still. Even the swirling of its body seemed to slow.
“I will not interfere,�
�� it said. “The—Rozzers—have seeded planets with life for billions of years. They carefully bring new species to maturity. This is their role. No records exist of a time before this was not so. My role is that of observer, no more. There are no circumstances under which I could intervene.”
“You would stand by and allow an entire species to be murdered?” said Seb.
“Your language is emotive, your connection to your species is still strong,” said H’wan.
“My connection? I’m a human being and you will allow my death and the death of seven billion more like me?”
H’wan paused. When it spoke again, the theatricality was gone from its voice.
“You will not die, T’hn’uuth,” it said. “And you must know that your last statement is inaccurate. Hear this. Humanity will either destroy itself or develop technology advanced enough to infest other galaxies with its poison. Every race in the universe has the potential to develop the capacity for large scale destruction. Before the Rozzers, legend tells us that violence, a seemingly endless cycle of planet-blighting warfare, was the natural order. The Rozzers changed that. They did it slowly, re-seeding barren planets with the potential for new life. The planets who evolved species capable of using Manna were helped in their development. Those races who kept Manna use secret, only known to certain individuals and groups who pursued power over others—they were unmade.”
“But what gives them the right?” said Seb. “I know humanity isn’t perfect, but we could be so much more. Just leave us.”
“I cannot interfere with the process,” said H’wan. “History tells us humanity is too far down the wrong path. We have seen it countless times before. But yours is not the only sentient species on Earth. When humanity is gone, another species will evolve sufficiently to use Manna. And they may succeed where humanity failed.”
The World Walker Series Box Set Page 60
