by Ian Douglas
“I’m not so sure, Commander,” Delgado replied. “The ships we had here left with a Grdoch ship last week. Our naval people thought the demons were the best of friends.”
“I mean my people,” Fuentes told him. “The USNA. They’ll know Intrepid is overdue. They might even get the message drone we launched. They’ll send a stronger fleet. . . .”
“Assuming, Delgado replied slowly, “that the Grdoch haven’t just attacked the Sol System as well. They could be there by now. That might have been what they wanted all along, you know—to learn the location of our homeworld.” He shuddered, and almost added, A well-stocked larder. He stopped himself. Fuentes couldn’t stand much more stress, he thought, and his attempt at black humor might well have backfired. The woman was clinging to the ragged edge of sanity as it was.
“I still can’t fathom how they . . . how they think of us as just food,” Fuentes said, shaking her head as if in denial of what she knew to be true. The sobs had ended, and she appeared—again—to be grappling with the larger problems of who and what the aliens were, and how they might be stopped. “They know we’re intelligent, that we’re a space-faring civilization. You said they were talking with the commanders of your naval squadron.”
Delgado nodded. “When they first arrived in-system, they attacked us, the planet, did terrible damage to several cities. We thought they were a Sh’daar client race and tried to tell them that we wanted peace with the collective. We had no planetary defenses, and only a few ships in the Vulcan Legion to protect the system . . . from you.”
She nodded, and Delgado thought about how strange it was talking with her like this . . . a USNA naval officer, the enemy. The arrival of the truly alien made any and all human political differences completely insignificant. For the two of them, naked, emotionally broken, sprawled in the dirt as they helplessly awaited the next Grdoch feeding onslaught . . . mere politics meant nothing, less than nothing.
He reached out and touched her shoulder. She covered his hand with hers.
“The aliens,” he said, continuing the story, “brushed the Legion aside. They landed and established a base on Las Pampas. That’s the other continent, the smaller one. They massacred—I’m not sure—several million colonists there, maybe. Most of the populations of Nova Argentina and Buena del Mar. A fleet arrived from Earth under the command of Commodore Becker, on the Emden. What was left of the Legion joined with them, and they launched an attack on the aliens . . . a fairly successful one. At least the alien fleet was pushed back from the planet, isolating their base, and Commodore Becker opened a planetary bombardment of Nova Argentina. It was at this time that I was able to send several reports to the Emden, and they, in turn, dispatched it back to Earth on board a message drone.”
“But . . . you were able to communicate eventually?”
Delgado nodded. “During the bombardment, the aliens on the planet stopped firing back, and transmitted a broadband image: a 1024 by 1024 binary matrix that plotted out a symbol.”
“What symbol?”
“This.” Delgado reached down and drew it in the dirt: a narrow, vertical ellipse framed inside a circle. It looked something like a sketch of a cat’s eye.
“What does it mean?”
“We didn’t know at first, but we took it as an indication that at least the demons wanted to communicate. The linguists on board the Emden thought it might be their symbol for themselves—a kind of flag. Later, they concluded it meant ‘we surrender,’ or possibly, ‘we want to talk.’ ”
“It would be hard learning a completely alien language from the start, with no knowledge at all of their culture . . . no knowledge even as to whether they used a spoken language.”
“Exactly. Fortunately, Commodore Becker had a team of Agletsch on board the Emden.”
Fuentes looked surprised. “You have the Agletsch working with you as well?”
“Naturally. Don’t be foolish. They came first to the Confederation, remember, before your people tried to break away. They are completely apolitical. I know a few continue to work with you, but there is a sizeable enclave of them in Geneva, and some serve on board our ships as linguists and contact specialists.”
“Of course.” She looked chastened. Delgado thought that the woman was naïve, but put that down to her youth. As a full commander in her navy, she would have to be in her mid-thirties, at least, but she looked younger than that. Cosmetic anagathics, perhaps.
Or possibly it was the stress of the situation that had her not thinking clearly. Well, he could scarcely blame her.
“In any case,” Delgado continued, “the Agletsch are experts at establishing communications with unknown xenosophonts. With their help, Becker was able to open communications with them, and the fighting stopped at once. We thought . . . we thought maybe there’d been a terrible mistake, that they’d not realized we were intelligent until after Becker spoke to them. Or, possibly, they were at war with the Sh’daar, since our Agletsch insisted that they were not part of the Galactic Collective.” He gave a despondent shrug. “All I can imagine is that they decided to pretend to have misunderstood, in hopes of learning the location of our homeworld. Becker departed the system to return to Earth, and one of the three Grdoch warships departed with him. The Grdoch remaining in the Vulcan system attacked again, less than nine hours after our fleet dropped into metaspace.”
“Another misunderstanding?” Fuentes asked. She sounded . . . almost hopeful. As though she wanted there to be some reason for this horror.
“We’d done nothing!” Delgado shouted. “Nothing! They annihilated the last of the Legion’s vessels, landed outside our cities, used X-ray lasers to reduce them to rubble! When we put down our weapons and tried to surrender, transmitting the symbol they’d shown to us, they herded us together, took our clothing, marched us into these . . . these pens. And here we have been since, helpless. Food! Food for these demons!”
“I . . . always thought,” Fuentes said slowly, “that, that mutually alien species couldn’t get sustenance from one another. That they might even poison each other.”
Delgado shrugged again. “Most times, perhaps that is true. They say that there is only a one-in-four chance of another species having compatible sugars and amino acids, and that only if they both are carbon-based. The Agletsch have such a biology. I’ve heard that they can ingest our food.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“It’s true. Of course some species do use trace elements in their chemistries, like arsenic or antimony, that can be poisonous to other life forms. Or they can sequester poisons or biological toxins in their tissues, like Vulcan langoustines . . . or certain fish back on Earth. But nature tends to be conservative. What works on one world may well evolve on another, more or less the same. The difference between species, the real difference, is not going to be biological. It will be a difference in the mind, in the way they think. . . .”
“As with these Grdoch,” Fuentes said. “They think it’s okay to eat intelligent life forms.”
“It’s not so different from us. We know some species of great whales on Earth were intelligent . . . before they were hunted to extinction. Other terrestrial species showed high degrees of intelligence—the octopus, the elephant. That didn’t stop humans from hunting them for food. Or for sport. Or exploiting them in other ways.”
“But we didn’t know they were intelligent at the time!”
“Perhaps only because we didn’t try to understand them. Or didn’t want to.”
“Like the Grdoch.”
“Perhaps, at least at first. But they know we are a sapient species now. They’ve conversed with us. But they appear to be driven by . . . their appetites.”
“An evolutionary imperative?” Fuentes asked.
Delgado nodded. “I think so. During . . . during the brief period of truce, I saw something very disturbing. At t
heir base on Las Pampas, they had an enclosure, a pen like this one. They kept there several . . . animals. Immense beasts, like, like boneless whales, but on dry land. The Grdoch would enter the compound and assault these beasts, tear them open and actually burrow inside, feeding on them with all of their mouths at once. Dr. Schmidt—he was probably our most distinguished xenobiologist—he pointed out that the food beasts were almost certainly genetically engineered to provide the Grdoch with living sources of food, that they either prefer or for some reason must eat their food while it is alive.” He shuddered. “Horrible. Horrible. But we know of so many terrestrial species that eat their food while it still lives.”
“But . . . but intelligent species know better. . . .”
She was being naïve again. “That is a cultural preference, Commander. Not an absolute. Perhaps the Grdoch need their food to be struggling in order to activate some digestive enzyme. Or perhaps they merely prefer the feel and the excitement of devouring living prey. At least . . .”
“What?”
“At least we humans are too small for them to keep alive through multiple feedings, as they do the giant food beasts. For us, the horror is over more quickly.”
A new chorus of screams arose from the other side of the compound. The monsters were entering the enclosure once again. They tended to come in small groups of ten or twelve . . . and there were many thousands of the Grdoch on Vulcan now.
“Santa Maria, Madre de Deos,” Fuentes said.
Delgado closed his eyes, and wished to God he could shut his ears. Please, please let the horror be over quickly. . . .
Chapter Sixteen
13 March 2425
Emergency Presidential Command Post
Toronto
United States of North America
0958 hours, EST
President Koenig leaned back and let his chair conform to his body, thoughtclicking an inner icon as he did so. The logo of the NAVS-CS, the North American Virtual Symposium on the Cosmological Sciences, appeared on a mental window . . . then faded away, revealing a computer-generated view of the galaxy, a vast, barred spiral of stardust tilted 45 degrees toward his vantage point and tipped slightly to the side.
He smiled at the sight. Only once had humans viewed the galaxy from the outside . . . and that had been twenty years ago, when Koenig had led the America battlefleet through the time- and space-twisting mystery of a TRGA cylinder, emerging inside what had later—much, much later—become the Omega Centauri star cluster. At the time—almost 900 million years in the past, Omega Centauri—known to its myriad inhabitants as the N’gai Star Cloud—had been hurtling a few thousand light years above the plane of that galaxy, just a few million years before it had been cannibalized by the far vaster and gravitationally hungry Milky Way. The Sh’daar of that distant epoch, perhaps afraid of a confrontation with the Milky Way’s inhabitants of their remote future, had agreed to a ceasefire. And while America had been there, inside the heart of the extragalactic cluster, a scout ship had probed past the cluster’s teeming central ball of suns to get a look at the galaxy from Outside . . . a unique and dazzlingly beautiful perspective.
What Koenig was seeing now was based on the images recorded at the time, though what he’d seen on board the America had been more like a vast and glowing wall of stars and nebulae stretching from one side of Creation to the other. The N’gai Cloud had been too close to the galactic plane at the time to get a true perspective of the Milky Way’s sweeping, barred-spiral structure.
He could tell, though, that the images the America battlegroup had made had been utilized by the AIs to design the Society’s introductory scene.
Others were joining in to attend the symposium, linking in by the hundreds . . . by the thousands. One of the greatest transformational advantages of a completely linked-in electronic society was the potential for truly huge meet-ups of interested people, for purposes ranging from politics to social engineering to professional exchanges to public education. NAVS-CS had started out originally and primarily as an exchange forum for cosmologists, a means for professionals to keep up with the rapid-fire pace of new discoveries in the field. There was enough public interest in the subject, however, that symposia such as this one, hosted by the University of Colorado Virtual Campus, were remarkably popular outside the fields of cosmology, astronomy, and gravitational physics as well.
“Admiral King?” a voice said within his mind. “Welcome to the symposium. Is there anything we can help you with?”
The voice was that of an AI, evidently an electronic babysitter for the host of virtual attendees at the conference. “Alex King, Adm (ret)” was Koenig’s johnsmith, his alter-ego at such functions. The AI, of course, knew who he really was—they would have full access to the ID and personal records of everyone there—but protocol allowed those who wished a degree of anonymity to create fictitious avatars that let them blend in invisibly with the background.
“I’m fine, thank you,” Koenig replied.
“Which talks do you plan on attending, sir?”
“Just this first one, actually.”
“Ah, yes. ‘Gravitational Metrics as Applied to Metaversal Polydimensional Unity.’ There’s been a lot of interest in that one.”
“So I gather.”
“You know how to download simultaneous technical description and definitions?”
“Of course.”
“I am required to ask. Enjoy the program, sir. If there’s anything you need, thoughtclick this icon.”
A new icon appeared on Keonig’s inner window. “Thank you.”
The AI’s mental voice swiched off, and Koenig was again alone . . . alone in a sea of electronic presences. According to figures appearing in a window sidebar, there were well over two million people linked in now. Amazing.
A call light winked within Koenig’s consciousness. He checked . . . and saw that it was Deborah Johnston. Senator Deborah Johnston . . . or she had been until the 2420 elections. And after that . . .
“My God . . . Deb?”
He could feel her smile across the electronic interface. “Alex, that is you! I thought it must be . . . Mr. President!”
“Well . . . low profile, and all of that. You know how it is.”
“I do indeed.”
“God, Deb . . . I thought you were dead! After Columbus . . .”
“I was out of town,” she said. “Mexico City.”
“It’s been pretty chaotic since then.”
“Oh, I’m well aware! I relocated in the LA megapolis. Been working with the USNA terraforming department as an advisor.”
Koenig had first met Deb when the two of them had been on opposite sides of the Senate floor, shortly after he’d been elected to the USNA Senate in 2410. They’d clashed on a number of points, notably over North American sovereignty, Periphery independence, and the offshore free cities issue . . . and eventually ended up in bed together. The sexual relationship had ended in 2418 when Koenig had run for president and won his first six-year term. They’d remained close friends, however, and if Koenig disliked her liberal global politics, he respected her a very great deal.
He’d thought . . . he’d assumed she’d been in Columbus when the capital had been vaporized by the Confederation nano-D strike, one of millions of casualties in that devastated city.
He found he was almost trembling with relief. “This is . . . this is wonderful, Deb! I wish you’d let me know that you were all right!”
“You could have linked me too, you know. It’s been—”
“I know, I know. Busy. Yeah. Are you in LA now?”
“Hilliard, actually.”
“Ohio?”
“The department is working on the Columbus reconstruction. And I’m advising.”
“Fantastic!”
When the Confederation had nan
oed Columbus on November 15, 2424, they’d left the center of the city pocked by an immense crater three kilometers wide and half a kilometer deep. Hilliard was a suburb of Greater Columbus some fifteen kilometers from the old city center, and well outside the area destroyed by the shock wave. Koenig had signed off on the plans to begin reconstruction weeks ago.
He’d had no idea that Deb was a part of that project.
“So how’s the reconstruction going?”
“Quite well. We’ve started clearing the rubble. We hope to start growing buildings within the next week or so.”
Koenig nodded. He’d seen—he’d approved—the plans. The crater—filled now by the Scioto Waterfall—would remain as a perfectly circular lake, with kilometer-high hab towers and arcologies surrounding it. The nano constructors, he knew, were already being programmed for the job. Within a year, Columbus should be better than new.
If only it were possible to regrow those millions of lost people.
“That’s good,” he told her. He wrestled for a moment with the excitement of finding the woman again, and his conscience. He found he wanted to see her again, and the sooner the better. “Listen, Deb, I—”
“Hold it, Alex. I think they’re starting!”
Koenig felt both a tiny pang of regret, and considerable relief. Perhaps it was best not to explore that path too closely.
But God, it was good to know she was alive!
“Good morning, ladies, gentlemen, and AIs,” a new voice announced. The window now was filled by a youthful face, and the ID tag introduced the man as Dr. Howard Gilmore, of the University of Colorado. “Welcome to the North American Virtual Symposium on the Cosmological Sciences. Our first presenter will be AI Stephen Hawking. First, however, I invite you to download the background information returned this past January by a USNA carrier task force investigating the anomaly at Omega Centauri, some sixteen thousand light years from Earth. . . .”
Koenig had already downloaded the material, of course. In fact, he’d been briefed on it as soon as America had re-entered the Sol System. The mysterious construction by the Rosette Aliens out within the swarming heart of Omega Centauri was well known by now, as simplified versions of America’s original reports had been disseminated through the news channels to the public at large.
