The World Walker Series Box Set

by Ian W. Sainsbury

  The Singer promised Aleiteh’s tribe would flourish, that their enemies would fall before them. And so it came to pass. Aleiteh’s tribe prevailed in every battle, and they grew in number and strength. All who saw them came to know the power of the Singer and the truth of her songs.

  All was well for many generations until the Dark Time, the years of famine, when the People fell to arguing about how it had come to pass that the Singer had deserted them and allowed their children to die. They fought among themselves. The tribe spilled the blood of its own people. The sky darkened, the air turned colder than had ever been known and the world nearly came to an end. Finally, the tribe split into many factions, each establishing settlements far from each other. Slowly, the world recovered and the famine ended.

  The final song the bards learned to sing told of the day the Singer would bring the Last Song and the People would be reunited, making the Land a paradise.

  Sopharndi considered how long the People had waited for this new song. So long, that there were those who wondered if it would ever be sung. Such thoughts would never be spoken publicly, of course, but in the privacy of her own dwelling, Sopharndi had heard her own doubts echoed in the quiet conversations of friends. Although she had kept her own counsel on these occasions, she had recognized that her own faith in the Last Song was weak. She had good reason for her lack of faith. She had always honored the Singer and kept her ways, but her reward had been giving birth to a Blank. It was hard to believe in the Singer’s justice and mercy after that. Sopharndi had begun to think that the Last Song was no more than a myth.

  She thought about the bards she’d known in the settlement. They were very different to the earliest bards revealed in the songs. Those bards were remembered as prophets. They had shaken the People with their revelations, sung to them by the Singer in dreams. Now, it seemed that the correct interpretation of early songs was not straightforward. Many interpretations were only agreed after discussion and analysis over a period of years. Some of the oldest songs contained verses which were still discussed around the fire late into the night. These days, the current bard simply passed on the songs to his chosen apprentice - the boy who had shown the most musical promise. No new songs had been sung by the bards since the Dark Time, generations after Aleiteh’s death. It would seem the Singer had nothing more to say to her people. And, although she knew it was heresy, this was something Sopharndi found so bewildering that she had begun to wonder if the Singer had transferred her favor to another tribe.

  When she had walked half the morning and the settlement was far, far behind her, Sopharndi stopped, looked around her, laid down her spear, took off her waterskin and pack, and sank to the floor, wailing like a lost child. Startled birds took to the air from the bushes and trees lining the riverbank, and small mammals foraging nearby splashed into the water in surprise, swimming away from the unidentifiable sound.

  Sopharndi wept and pummeled the hard-packed dirt with her fists. Next, she beat her own chest with her hands, hard enough to start to bruise the tough skin. Finally, she angled her head upward and yelled defiance at the Singer. At first, her screams were incoherent, then she cursed the god, pouring out the rage she felt at the years of care she had given a child who had never been able to give anything back.

  She had tried to harden her heart against her own child when his condition had become obvious, but by then it had been too late. Despite the lack of any response from Cley, somehow she had found herself loving the boy. She had brought him up herself, not trusting the males and old women to give Cley enough time or care, when there were healthy, responsive young to care for. They didn’t kill Blanks at birth these days, but that didn’t stop almost all of the tribe at best ignoring, at worst, taunting and bullying the defenseless child as he stumbled unknowingly through boyhood into adolescence. Sopharndi knew she had let her stubborn love for him cloud her judgment, even to the extent of going to the Elders, trying to prevent Cley’s Journey.

  “Where was his song?” she demanded of the silent blue sky. “He should have a song. Why is there no song for my son?”

  As always, there was no answer.

  15

  Fypp looked at her fellow T’hn’uuth, her eyebrows raised. No one spoke. Seb found the dynamic between them interesting. Baiyaan didn’t seem to use language at all, Kaani and Bok had obviously played Fypp’s games for long enough to know when there was no point interrupting her.

  Fypp sighed theatrically. She turned to Seb, then back to the others.

  “The experience they report—the human mystics, I mean—occurs, almost always, within the constraints of their seemingly contradictory religious belief systems. They experience a loss of self. Some traditions embrace the nothingness, the emptiness. Others interpret it through different cultural filters. Julian of Norwich called it being oned with God.”

  “Who’s he?” said Seb.

  “She,” corrected Fypp.

  “Strange name for a woman.”

  “Well, on the gaseous swamp-world of Fruvmettlar, Seb is the word they use to describe a slug-like creature that feeds on fresh excrement, so you’re hardly one to talk.”

  Seb opened his mouth, then thought better of it.

  Fypp turned to her fellow T’hn’uuth.

  “You really don’t care what’s going on? You can’t see that this might be important?”

  Kaani laughed. “Important? A strong word. Mildly diverting, perhaps. But interesting enough to change the way intelligent life evolves in the universe? You sound convinced by Baiyaan’s argument. I’m beginning to wonder why you abstained.”

  “Because, unlike you, I don’t see the need to jump to conclusions. Baiyaan claims the potential danger posed by humans will, ultimately, be nullified and transformed by the mystical thread running through their religions. If we give them long enough. He might even go so far as to say that the threat they pose is worth risking when held up against the potential discoveries they might make.”

  “We just voted against that,” said Kaani.

  “Yes. But you may have missed a possible side benefit of allowing Baiyaan his way. It may help us understand the Gyeuk.”

  Seb was intrigued by the notion that something existed Fypp didn’t fully understand.

  “We and the Gyeuk follow a policy of mutual respect based on an almost complete lack of understanding. And yet, on the face of it, we are so similar. Both Gyeuk and T’hn’uuth are made up of sentient sub-atomic particles. Ours evolved biologically, the Gyeuk’s artificially. The Gyeuk is a hive mind, its consciousness a sea of individuals, groups and fallow regions coexisting in a constant state of change.”

  That last sentence made Seb’s brain hurt. He wondered if that was a sensation produced by his Manna to gently indicate the limits of his intelligence.

  “It could be argued that each T’hn’uuth is a smaller, discrete version of the Gyeuk. We are, in effect, colonies of intelligent nanotech. But our differences are more than just biological. Each T’hn’uuth is a separate, self-sufficient, sentient being. I am always Fypp. That identity is coherent, constant and traceable throughout my life. You might argue that the Fypp of a billion years ago is not the Fypp of now, but by most indicators, I am the same person. The Gyeuk has no discrete personalities within it because there never was an individual, only a collective. So the mutual respect between Gyeuk and T’hn’uuth is colored slightly by mutual fear. We don’t understand each other.”

  Seb remembered the ship he had met on Earth, part of the Gyeuk that had carried the Rozzers across space to wipe out humanity and start over.

  “H’wan seemed like an individual to me.”

  “Yes, their ships do present an interesting anomaly. But it’s temporary. The ships always return to the swarm, some as quickly as months after forming. Others stay out for years. I’ve even heard rumors of ships retaining a separate identity for centuries. But, in the end, they can’t help themselves. They always return and are reabsorbed by the Gyeuk. They allow their illusion o
f selfhood to dissolve in the sentient soup. Weirdos. Still, what I just described sounds surprisingly close to human mystical experiences. ”

  Bok rumbled a question of his own.

  “Please, Fypp. Enough talking. What do you propose?”

  Fypp told them. Seb understood approximately one word in every twenty in her rapid explanation.

  Kaani stood up and leaned across the table, her voice a low hiss of anger.

  “To do what you suggest would mean approaching the Gyeuk, going through their ridiculous protocols, waiting for a response. Even allowing for their skill with the manipulation of quantum time, it would be months before you could even…”

  Her voice trailed off suddenly, and her eyes narrowed in anger. Some kind of electrical energy seemed to crackle into life around her and the gray hair visible under her hat began to rise. She looked about as terrifying as it’s possible for a witch to look.

  Almost as scary as the witch in Disney’s Snow White, mused Seb. He still had mental scars from that Sunday afternoon matinee showing.

  “You have already consulted the Gyeuk,” said Kaani. “You petitioned them. You have it here. Don’t you?!”

  Fypp giggled and clapped her hands at Kaani’s display.

  “You’re just delightful sometimes, Kaani. Yes, of course I do.”

  “So why not just tell us in the first place? Why this rigmarole of—why bother trying to get us to agree to—why…?” The witch closed her eyes and muttered something. In the far distance, a patch of sky darkened quickly, then became completely black. There was a thunderclap loud enough to make the ground tremble, then a huge flash of lightning which turned the entire scene blindingly white for a split second. The sky cleared instantly, and Kaani retook her seat at the table.

  “Ooh,” said Fypp, appreciatively, “pretty.”

  The argument between Fypp and Kaani made so little sense that Seb gave up trying to follow it. When he finally became aware that they were no longer talking, he glanced up and found them all turned toward him. He felt like a fifth grader who had been caught daydreaming. He looked at what Fypp was holding and felt his eyes and his mind slide away from the sight, dismissing it as impossible and—therefore—probably not even there.

  “A Gyeuk Egg,” said Fypp in answer to Seb’s unspoken query. “There is no real equivalent in your human language, no concept that can begin to do justice to its complexity, its depths.”

  She was holding a dark object, a large oval. It was the first time Seb had seen the ancient child show respect for anything. She handled the Egg reverently, like a holy relic. She had produced it from the air, almost as if she had reached through one plane of existence into another, and pulled it through the skein that separated them. Now she held it toward Seb, and he cupped his hands to receive it.

  Seb had expected some weight to the object he’d been handed and was surprised at how light it was. He could feel something touching the skin of his hands (no-skin, no-hands) but the sensation was quite unlike anything he’d ever experienced. In one way, it felt like he was holding a ball of cotton, the tiny fibers barely registering on his fingertips. In another way, he felt the presence of the thing more solidly than if he was holding a bowling ball. The overriding impression was of something that didn’t quite belong, was somehow in his hands, but actually not there at all, a foreign body, something utterly other. His Manna was providing no useful information besides a feeling that the object was unreachable. For the first time as a World Walker, he found himself encountering a limit to his power, a line he couldn’t cross. It made him a little afraid, but—more than anything—he felt relief. The T’hn’uuth weren’t all powerful. At least, he wasn’t. And, judging by the way Fypp had handled the object he now held, she was similarly limited.

  “But what is a Gyeuk Egg?” said Seb. In answer, Fypp held out a hand, and he gave it back to her. She placed it in the middle of the table. The other T’hn’uuth were silent.

  “In the simplest terms possible, it’s a simulation,” she said.

  “Like a computer simulation?”

  “Well, like I said, monkey-boy, I’m using the simplest terms possible. A computer simulation is to a Gyeuk Egg as a microbe is to a human being.”

  Seb was unsure whether “monkey-boy” was intended as an insult or a term of endearment. He decided to let it slide either way.

  “So, er…how does it work?”

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Try me.”

  Fypp was right. He didn’t understand. Apparently, it had something to do with wormholes, string theory, quantum spinning, and comb-overs. And that was the bit of her explanation that made the most sense. After nearly four minutes of mental pain, he held up a hand and conceded.

  “Okay, okay, you’re right. But, let me check I’ve understood the essentials. It is a simulation in the sense that it’s artificial. But—somehow—the technology they’re using allows an entire planet, even a solar system to exist within the simulation at a level of detail that would make it impossible to tell it’s a simulation at all. Right?”

  Fypp had stretched out on the cabin floor. Her eyes were closed, and she was breathing deeply. She raised a hand and gave Seb the thumbs up before yawning and, seemingly, going back to sleep. He kept talking, trying to make sense of it all.

  “So the Gyeuk creates Eggs to run specific scenarios. And it’s prepared to make Eggs for others occasionally.”

  Seb wondered how best to ask the obvious question. Kaani saved him the trouble.

  “We would make Eggs if we could,” she said, her lip curling in such a clichéd way, that Seb felt sure there must be a picture of her in illustrated dictionaries alongside the entry for scorn. “None of us like to admit it, but the Gyeuk has the advantage here. We T’hn’uuth can easily create immensely complex systems using our own Manna, but they are always temporary. We could populate an artificial planet with homunculi, each of which would behave as if it had free will. But it would all collapse back to its component parts within a few days. Our Manna is inextricably linked to our individual consciousness. The Gyeuk, probably due to its non-biological provenance, has no such limitation. And, somehow, it has been able to use wormholes and multiple instances of the multiverse to create Eggs.”

  Seb was silent for a few moments, taking in the fact that the Gyeuk seemed capable of something possibly beyond even the capacities of a World Walker. Then he remembered that Kaani had artfully avoided answering his question, so he repeated it.

  “Okay, it can do something you—we—can’t. But why? Why does it go to all that trouble? What does it get in return?”

  Fypp stopped snoring and opened an eye.

  “I believe it helps us for two reasons. Firstly, our request feeds its superiority complex. It just has to believe it’s top of the pile, sentience-wise. But it’s not completely sure if we are its equal or inferior. Drives it crazy, I’d bet. So, secondly, I think it makes them for us because every request gives it a chance to add to the information it has about us. By knowing the details of every simulation we run, it learns a little more about us. You play poker, Seb?”

  For a moment Seb thought Fypp was suggesting a game. Just when the surreality of his situation seemed to have peaked, he suddenly imagined playing Texas Hold’em in an imaginary cabin with—as far as he knew—the oldest being in the universe.

  “Er, yeah, yes, I do. A little.”

  “Now that’s a game I like. Similar games are played by many millions of species, and the best of them share the same central premise: incomplete information and an element of luck. To win consistently, you have to make guesses about the strength of your opponent’s hand based on history, the current situation, psychology, and math. In that order, unless you’re playing an Artificial Intelligence. They can cheat by throwing truly random elements into their strategy. Bastards.”

  She seemed lost in thought for a moment, chuckling at some memory or other.

  “Well, that’s a story for another time. I o
nce suggested that serious conflicts with the potential to spread beyond, say, the warring parties’ solar system, should be settled by poker tournaments - or the equivalent. I still think it’s a good idea.”

  She seemed lost in thought again. Seb cleared his throat.

  “The Gyeuk?”

  “I was getting to it. I’m not senile, you know. Although, imagine the havoc I could wreak if I did start to lose the plot. Anyway, yes, the Gyeuk. I think of the relationship between the T’hn’uuth and the Gyeuk as one long heads-up game of poker. It finds out a little more about us each time it constructs an Egg, we get some information about it during the negotiations. Naturally, many of the Eggs we request are flim-flam.”

  “Flim-Flam?”

  “Diversions. False trails. We ask it to construct an Egg based on a very detailed template, engineering a society which will follow certain rules and be confronted with baked-in dilemmas, just to confuse the picture the Gyeuk is building of us. Incomplete information. We suspect the Gyeuk of pursuing its own agenda, and we want its store of knowledge about us to remain as opaque as possible. See?”