Children of Time

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  Assuming either of us is granted so much time, Portia tells her forcefully. I will not be remaining in Great Nest long, sister. How can I help you?

  Yes, you were at Seven Trees. Tell me of it.

  Portia is surprised that Bianca knows even that much of Portia’s comings and goings. She gives a creditable report, focusing primarily on matters military: the tactics used by the defenders, the weapons of the enemy. Bianca listens carefully, committing the salient details to memory.

  There are many at Great Nest who believe that we cannot survive, Bianca tells her when she is done. No peer group wishes to attract general scorn by being the first to abandon us, but it will happen. When one has gone, once that gap has been bridged, there will be a general rush to leave. We will destroy ourselves, and lose all we have built.

  It seems likely, Portia agrees. I was at temple earlier. Even the priestess seemed distracted.

  Bianca huddles against the ceiling for a moment, in a posture of disquiet. It is said that the message is contaminated, that there are other Messengers. I have spoken to a priestess who said that she felt a new message within the crystal at the wrong time, and without meaning – just a jumble of random vibrations. I have no explanation for that, but it is concerning.

  Perhaps that message is meant for the ants. Portia is staring down at the scuttling insects below. The sense-image of ‘a jumble of random vibrations’ seems apposite.

  You are not the first to suggest it, Bianca tells her. Thankfully, my own thoughts on message and Messenger are just that: my own – and they do not prevent me from working towards the salvation of our nest. Come with me. I have researched a new weapon, and I need your assistance in deploying it.

  Portia feels a sudden hope for the first time in many days. If any mind can find a way forward, it is Bianca’s.

  She follows the alchemist to the animal pens, seeing within them an unruly throng of ant-sized beetles – twenty centimetres at most. They are a dark red in colouration and most remarkable for their antennae, which spread out into a disc of fine fronds like circular fans.

  I have seen these before? Portia says uncertainly with hesitant movements.

  Great confronter of our enemies as you are, it seems likely, Bianca confirmed. They are a species of unusual habits. My assistants have gone into the colony below, at some risk to themselves, to find them. They live amongst the ants and yet remain unmolested. They even eat the ants’ larvae. My assistants’ reports indicate that the ants themselves are persuaded to feed these creatures.

  Portia waits. Any communication from her at this juncture would be futile. Bianca has this entire encounter already planned out, point by point, to a successful conclusion.

  I need you to gather capable and trusted warriors, perhaps twenty-four, Bianca instructs her. You will be courageous. You will test my new weapon, and if it fails you are likely to die. I need you to confront the colony marching against us. I need you to walk right into the heart of it.

  Infiltrating an ant colony is no longer just a case of taking some heads and stolen scent glands. The super-colony has developed its defences: a blind chemical arms race run against the spiders’ ingenuity. The ants now use the chemical equivalent of shifting cyphers that change over time, and in different detachments of the sprawling colony, and Portia’s kin have been unable to keep up. The chemical weapons the spiders use to disrupt and confuse their enemies are shortlived, and barely an annoyance in the face of the sheer scale of the enemy.

  The increased security of the colony has had a catastrophic impact on a number of other species. Ant nests are ecosystems in their own right, and many species live in uneasy communion with them. Some, like the aphids, provide services, and the ants actively cultivate them. Others are parasitic: mites, bugs, beetles, even small spiders, all of them adapted to steal from the ants’ table or to consume their hosts.

  The majority of such species are gone from the super-colony now. In adapting to defend against the external enemy, the increased chemical encryption used by the ants has also unmasked and eliminated dozens of unwelcome guests within the ants’ domain. A very few, however, have managed to survive by ingenuity and superior adaptation. Of these, the Paussid beetles – Bianca’s current area of study – are the most successful.

  The Paussids have dwelt within ant nests for millions of years, utilizing various means to lull their unwitting hosts into accepting them. Now the nanovirus has been working with them and, although they are not as intelligent as Portia, they still have a certain cunning and the ability to work together, and utilize their versatile pheromonal toolkit with considerable insight.

  Each individual Paussid has a suite of chemicals to manipulate the ants around it. The individual ants – sightless and living in a world entirely built on smell and touch – can be fooled thus. The Paussid chemicals artfully create an illusory world for them, guiding their hallucinations to induce suborned units of the ant colony to do their bidding. It is fortunate for Portia and her people that the Paussids have not yet quite reached a level of intellect that would allow them to look beyond their current existence as a self-serving fifth column amongst the ants. It is easy to envisage an alternate history where the advancing ant colony became merely the myriad-bodied puppet of hidden beetle overlords.

  The changing chemical codes of the colony provide a constant challenge to the Paussids, and individual beetles exchange chemicals continuously to update one another with the most efficient keys for unlocking and rewriting the ants’ programming. However, the simple feat of living undetected amongst the ants is left to the Paussid’s secret weapon: a refinement of their ancestral scent that Bianca has detected and become fascinated by.

  Portia has listened carefully as Bianca sets out her plan. The scheme seems somewhere in between dangerous and suicidal. It calls for her and her cohorts to seek out the ant column and ambush it, to walk straight into it past the multitude of sentries as though they were not there. Portia is already considering the possibilities: an attack from above, dropping from the branches or from a scaffolding of webbing, plunging into that advancing torrent of insect bodies. Bianca, of course, has already thought this part through. They will find the column when it is halted for the night in a vast fortress made of the bodies of its soldiers.

  I have developed something new, Bianca explains. Armour for you. But you will only be able to don it when you are about to make your attack.

  Armour strong enough to ward off the ants? Portia is justifiably doubtful. There are too many weak points on a spider’s body; there are too many joints that the ants can seize upon.

  Nothing so crude. Bianca always did like keeping her secrets. These Paussids, these beetles, they can walk through the ant colonies like the wind. So will you.

  Portia’s uncertainty communicates itself through the anxious twitching of her palps. And I will kill them, then? As many as I can? Will that be enough?

  Bianca’s stance says otherwise. I had considered it, but even you, sister, could not stop them in such a way, I fear. There are just too many. Even if my protection kept you safe for that long, you could kill ants all day and all night, and still there would be more. You would not keep their army away from Great Nest.

  Then what? Portia demands.

  There is a new weapon. If it works . . . Bianca stamps out her annoyance. There is no way of testing it but to use it. It works on these little colonies here, but the invaders are different, more complex, less vulnerable. You will simply have to hope that I am correct. You understand what I am asking of you – for our sisterhood, for our home?

  Portia considers the fall of Seven Trees: the flames, the ravenous horde of insects, the shrivelling bodies of those who were too slow or too conscientious to escape. Fear is a universal emotion, and she feels it keenly, desperately wanting to flee that image, never to have to face the ants again. Stronger than fear are the bonds of community, of kinship, of loyalty to her peer group and her people. All those generations of reinforcement, through the suc
cess of those ancestors most inspired by the virus to cooperate with their own kind, now come to the fore. There comes a time when someone must do what must be done. Portia is a warrior trained and indoctrinated from an early age so that now, in this time of need, she will be willing to give up her life for the survival of the greater entity.

  When? she asks Bianca.

  Sooner is better. Gather your chosen; be ready to leave Great Nest in the morning. For tonight the city is yours. You have laid eggs?

  Portia answers in the affirmative. She has no clutch within her ready for a male’s attentions, but she has laid several in the past. Her heritage, genetic and learned, will be preserved if Great Nest itself is. In the grander scheme of things, that means that she will have won.

  That night, Portia seeks out other warriors, veteran females she knows she can rely on. Many are from her own peer group, but not all. There are others she has fought alongside – whom she has sometimes fought against, in displays of dominance – whom she respects, and who respect her. Each one she approaches cautiously, feeling her way, telegraphing her intent, paying out Bianca’s plan length by length until she is sure of them. Some refuse – either they are not persuaded by the plan, or they lack the requisite degree of courage, which is, after all, near-total fearlessness; a devotion to duty almost as blind as that of the ants themselves.

  Soon enough Portia has her followers, though, each one then taking to the high roads of Great Nest to make the most of this night, before the morning calls upon them to muster. Some will resort to the company of their peer groups, others seek out entertainment – the dances of males, the glittering art of weavers. Those who are ready will let themselves be wooed, then deposit a clutch of eggs in their peer house, so as to preserve as much of themselves as they can. Portia herself has learned many things since her last laying, and feels some remorse that those Understandings, those discrete packets of knowledge, will be lost when she is lost.

  She goes to temple again, seeking that fugitive calm that her devotions bring, but now she remembers what Bianca has said: that the voice of the Messenger is not alone, that there are faint whisperings in the crystal that worry the priestesses. Just as she has always believed that the mathematical perfection of the message must have some greater, transcendent significance beyond the mere numbers that compose it, so this new development surely has some wider meaning too vast to be grasped by a poor spider knotting and spinning that familiar tally of equations and solutions. What, then, does it mean? Nothing good, she feels. Nothing good.

  Late that night, she sits in the highest reaches of Great Nest, staring at the stars and wondering which point of light up there is whispering incomprehensible secrets to the crystals now.

  3.7 WAR IN HEAVEN

  Kern had severed all contact, leaving the mutineers’ shuttle to glide on towards the green planet, eroding the vast intervening distances a second at a time. Holsten did his best to sleep, crouching awkwardly on a chair that was ideally designed to cushion the stresses of deceleration but very little else.

  He drifted in and out of slumber, because Kern’s absence had not shut down radio communications. He had no idea who fired the first linguistic shot, but he was constantly being woken by a running argument between Karst – on the pursuing shuttle – and whoever was manning the mutineers’ comms at the time.

  Karst was his usual dogmatic self, the voice of the Gilgamesh with the authority of the whole human race behind him (via its unelected representative, Vrie Guyen). He demanded unconditional surrender, threatened them with a space-borne destruction even Holsten knew the shuttles were not capable of, vicariously invoked the dormant satellite’s wrath and, when all else failed, descended to personal abuse. Holsten developed the idea that Guyen was holding Karst personally responsible for the mutineers’ escape.

  There was mention made of him and Lain, however – that was the only positive. Apparently Karst’s orders did include recovery of the hostages at some level, though possibly not top priority. He demanded to speak to them, to be sure they were still alive. Lain shared a few acid words with him that both satisfied him on that issue and dissuaded him from asking any more. He continued to include their return unharmed in his list of monomaniac demands, which was almost touching.

  The mutineers, for their part, bombarded Karst with their own demands and dogma, going into considerable detail about the difficulties the moon colony would face, and asserting the lack of need for it. Karst countered with the same reasons Lain had already given, albeit less coherently, sounding very much like a man parroting someone else’s words.

  ‘Why did they even give chase?’ Holsten asked Lain wearily, after this slanging match over the comms had finally defeated any possible chance of further sleep. ‘Why not just let us go, if they know how doomed this whole venture is? It’s not just for us two, surely?’

  ‘It’s not for you, anyway,’ she riposted. Then she relented, ‘I . . . Guyen takes things personally.’ She said it with an odd twist, so that he wondered just what her experience of this might be. ‘But it’s more than that. I accessed the Key Crew Aptitudes, once, in the Gilgamesh’s records.’

  ‘Command access only,’ Holsten noted.

  ‘I’d be a pisspoor chief engineer if that could stop me. I wrote most of the access scaffolding. You ever wonder what our lord and master scored so high on, that he got this job?’

  ‘Well now I’m wondering.’

  ‘Long-term planning, if you can believe it. The ability to take a goal and work towards it through however many intervening steps. He’s one of those people who’s always four moves ahead. So if he’s doing this now, it may look just like pique but he’s got a reason.’

  Holsten considered that for some while, whilst the mutineers continued ranting at Karst. ‘Competition,’ he said. ‘If by chance we get past the satellite and on to the planet . . . and survive the monster spiders.’

  ‘Yeah, maybe,’ Lain agreed. ‘We sod off to Terraform B, or whatever the place is, then come back a few centuries later to find Scoles is well established on the planet, maybe he even cuts a deal with Kern. Guyen . . .’

  ‘Guyen wants the planet,’ Holsten finished. ‘Guyen is looking to beat the satellite and take over the planet. But he doesn’t want to have to fight anyone else for it, as well.’

  ‘And more – if Scoles does set up there and sends a message saying, Come on down, the spiders are lovely, then what if a load of people want to join him?’

  ‘So, basically, Guyen can’t ignore us.’ And a thought came to Holsten on the tail end of that: ‘So basically the best result for him, other than surrender, would be Kern blowing us to bits.’

  Lain’s eyebrows went up and her eyes flicked over to the wrangle in progress at the comms.

  ‘Can we hear if Karst is transmitting to the satellite?’ Holsten asked her.

  ‘Don’t know. I can have a go at finding out, if these clowns’ll let me try.’

  ‘I think you should.’

  ‘Yeah, I think you’re right.’ Lain unclipped her webbing and pushed herself carefully from the seat, attracting the immediate attention of most of the mutineers. ‘Listen, can I have the comms for a minute? Only—’

  ‘He’s launched a drone!’ the pilot shouted.

  ‘Show me.’ Scoles lunged forwards, got a hand on Lain’s shoulder and simply shoved her, breaking her grip on Holsten’s seat back and sending her tumbling towards the back of the cabin. ‘And she doesn’t get near anything until we know what’s going on.’

  There was a clatter and an oath as Lain hit something and scrabbled for purchase to prevent a rebound.

  ‘Since when do these shuttles carry drones?’ Nessel was asking.

  ‘Some of them are equipped for payload, not cargo,’ came Lain’s voice from behind them.

  ‘What can the drones do?’ someone demanded.

  ‘Might be armed,’ the pilot explained tensely. ‘Or they could just ram us with it. A drone can accelerate faster than us, and we’r
e starting deceleration anyway. They must have launched it now because they’re close enough.’

  ‘Why are we letting them catch us?’ another mutineer yelled at him.

  ‘Because we need to slow down if you don’t want to make a big hole in the planet when we try to land, you prick!’ the pilot yelled back. ‘Now get strapped in!’

  Amateurs, Holsten thought with creeping horror. I am on a spacecraft intending to make a landing on an unknown planet, and not one of them knows what they’re doing.

  Abruptly down was shifting towards the front of the shuttle as the pilot fought to cut their speed. Holsten scrabbled with his seat, sliding forwards until he got a grip.

  ‘Drone’s closing fast,’ Nessel reported. Holsten remembered how swiftly the little unmanned craft had closed the distance between the Gilgamesh and the planet, the time before.

  ‘Listen,’ came Lain’s forlorn voice as she worked her way forward again, hand over hand, ‘was there any traffic between Karst and the satellite?’

  ‘What?’ Scoles demanded, and then an ear-wrenching screech erupted from the comms that had everyone clutching at their ears, Nessel slapping at the controls.

  Holsten saw Scoles’s lips shape the words, Shut it down! It was plain from Nessel’s frustration that she couldn’t.

  Then the sound was gone, but it had paved the way for a familiar voice.

  It came over the speakers with the booming volume of a wrathful god, uttering the elegant, ancient syllables of Imperial C as though it was pronouncing the doom of every hearer. Which it was.

  Holsten translated the words as: This is Doctor Avrana Kern. You have been warned not to return to my planet. I do not care about your spiders. I do not care about your images. This planet is my experiment and I will not have it tainted. If my people and their civilization are gone, then it is Kern’s World that is my legacy, not you who merely ape our glories. You claim to be human. Go be human elsewhere.