Guardian of Night

by Tony Daniel

  “Mordor? Pretty geeky way to describe being a corporate Nazi,” Leher said.

  “That’s Queen Geek to you, sir.” Sam smiled. Her teeth were whiter than they really ought to be. And she no longer wore glasses. Lasik? Or probably the new acuity drops made of tiny nanotech lens crafters. He kind of missed the wire frames. “Anyway, it’s a running game against a passing game,” she said.

  “Much better. That sounds exactly like something a corporate Nazi would say.”

  “Uh-huh. How you been, Griff?”

  “Shoveling the coal of cultural linguistics into the firebox of the American war machine.”

  Sam shook her head. “Goodness. Then you ought to have developed more muscles.”

  “Touché.”

  Sam selected one of the china cups next to the urn—all the cups bore the presidential seal—and clinked it onto a matching platter. “Guess that’s probably why you haven’t called in a year and a half.”

  “No, I—”

  She moved next to him and playfully shouldered him aside in order to reach the coffee urn’s spigot. He caught a trace of tobacco tang from her hair as she passed.

  Oh, man, she’s back to smoking.

  Time to change the subject.

  “So—you’re in on the war council,” he said.

  Sam nodded. “Had to head-butt my way in, but yes.” Sam’s eyes were sparkling, predatory. It was a side of her he’d rarely seen before. “I signed on as technical support and then made sure the marketing v.p. got a shit-his-britches call from Kylie late last night that sent him packing back to Huntsville.”

  Kylie Jorgenson was the president of Femtodynamics, Sam’s company. Jorgenson had been navy, the director on the PW66 project back in the day. Back then Sam had hated Jorgenson—who was originally from Boston and projected Yankee bluntness—but had simultaneously been fascinated by her. She had now obviously become some sort of protégé.

  “So here you are, the face of Femtodynamics at our little get-together.”

  Sam nodded. She took another sip of coffee, left pale coral lipstick on the china rim. Leher successfully resisted the urge to take the cup from her and wipe it clean with a napkin.

  There was a rumble in the corner. Tillich was speaking heatedly to a woman in a suit who’d approached him. Sam nodded toward Tillich. “How does it feel to be the Old Man’s designated executioner? You made a pretty devastating case for taking the offense in your summer report.”

  “Yes, I suppose,” Leher said. “I take no pleasure in going against the admiral. And I’m far from sure we’ll win. Argosy is still on the table.”

  “It’s going to be tricky. He’s got lots of friends,” Sam said. “Powerful ones in the Senate. I’ve gone up against him a few times, lost some battles. And you know he practically owns the space-serving Extry.”

  “Never a truer word spoken,” said Leher. “Look at me. I’m right. I know I’m right and he’s wrong. But he still scares the hell out of me.”

  “He can’t win this fight, Griff, or we’re toast. You know that. Better he’s taken out by somebody who respects him.”

  Then a geist flickered into being in the reception-room doorway. Leher recognized the blue-green projection as KWAME, the president’s chief of staff. He was a servant, an artificial intelligence. His geist had the features of a middle-aged black man but was entirely monochrome in color, including his clothing.

  “There’s KWAME,” Leher said.

  “Where?” said Sam, turning around and scanning the room. Then she shook her head, chuckled. “Stupid me, I left my salt charger back in Huntsville,” she said. “Now I’m low on battery, and I can’t see a thing in the chroma.”

  In fact, only half the people in the room were adequately salted or charged up to see the projected image of the president’s a.i. chief of staff. You could tell who was by who had turned his or her face to the door. There was a murmur as those who could see in the chroma explained what was going on to those who could not. Leher joined in.

  “KWAME’s standing by the doorway,” Leher said. “He’s giving us the cue that the president’s ready for us.”

  “Better get back with my team, then,” Sam said. “I’ve got two of my best along with me. It’s going to be quite crowded in there. Suppose I’ll be rooting for you from across the room.”

  “We can pass notes,” Leher said.

  “Sure, dude.” Sam smiled. “It’s . . .” A small tear in Sam’s eye, which she flicked away with a lacquered nail. “It’s good to see you, Griff. Been too long.”

  Leher took Sam’s hand and pulled her into a quick hug, careful not to upset her coffee, then made his way through the waiting National Security luminaries. Leher turned a corner and headed for the president’s office.

  And nearly tripped over his own feet.

  Shit. The Lincoln Plaza linoleum markings. He’d forgotten about the linoleum. Black and white checkerboard. When he was here, he always stepped only on the black tiles. White was bad. Easily scuffed. But he’d never had a crowd of bigwigs pressing at his back before. Shit. He’d have to move fast and still be careful. This was going to be one of those trials by fire his OCD often handed him.

  Leher felt a touch on his shoulder. He turned to see Coalbridge, the Extry captain he’d met before.

  “Want to take point?” Coalbridge said quietly. “I’ll follow behind you on cleanup. I’ll make sure nobody gets pushy.”

  Leher considered. Could he trust Captain Courageous not to fuck with him? Leher tugged at his beard. Not ready for trim. Two more tugs. Always three in a row for full verification. Nope, no trim yet.

  “Yeah, that would be great,” he said to Coalbridge. “Thanks.”

  Coalbridge moved directly behind him, and Leher continued down the hall. With a sigh of relief, Leher took only the black tiles. Behind him, Coalbridge did as he promised and slowed the pace of the nervous group. Nobody tried to push Leher along.

  Then through the open door and onto the blue carpet of the president’s office. It had once been a fruit market and sometimes was still referred to that way by Capitol staffers. Of course, it bore no resemblance to a store now. The original owner and all his employees had been killed by churn in the first sceeve attack.

  After the entire gang of twenty or so officers, political aides, and contractor senior reps (including Sam) had trooped in and taken seats around an enormous conference table, KWAME mimicked closing the door behind them all, although in reality he had actuated some sort of servo in the hinges that did the actual door-swinging. He flickered out of existence and then appeared again, standing at attention across the room.

  And there beside him at the end of the table sat Taneesha Joelle Frost, the sixty-fifth president of the United States.

  She looked worried. Very worried.

  Leher didn’t blame her.

  The sceeve were coming back.

  SIX

  22 December 2075

  Vicinity of 82 Eridani

  A.S.C. Powers of Heaven

  Transel had found the Poet. Here, on this vessel. His vessel. The craft beta conditioner was on the other side of the vessel from the direction DDCM Receptor Lirish Transel was currently headed, but Transel had deduced long before that the Poet would never be found near the conditioner. No, he must have something like a virtual conditioner that fed off the main transmitter’s Q uncertainties.

  Such a clever trick. A novelty as an end in itself.

  Transel felt the acidic bile of contempt rise in his nostrils, as he did whenever he considered the nonsense the Poet was spewing. The waste of effort required to bring him to justice.

  The repugnance of having to listen to the spew in order to do his job.

  The knowledge that this subversive garbage was being secretly recorded, bounced to beta relay points, messengered in drones, passed hand-to-hand among officers, rebroadcast through the armada.

  Disseminated.

  Those traitorous officers—the ones who had been caught—claimed to t
hink the Poet funny, amusing. A way to pass a mind-numbing voyage. Some thought him profound.

  Worst of all, the Poet was beginning to spawn imitators. Other poets were cropping up in the armada, even in the Shiro.

  This must be stopped. Everyone from the top level down agreed, and the directive had gone out.

  And now Transel had isolated the Poet to this vessel. The original broadcasts of the Poet were originating with the Powers of Heaven!

  It was an amazing stroke of luck. Transel suspected he, Transel, was about to become a hero. Granted, only within the clandestine coterie of the DDCM. But still. Not a bad reward for a bit of detective work.

  More importantly, Transel felt he was serving the cause of justice in a pure way, a way he’d not been able to in the messy world of Sporata deployment. He felt good. He felt virtuous.

  He was going to see the Poet ripped to pieces by the dismemberment knives!

  Transel had fixed the traitor Gitaclaber’s actual location: a little-used janitorial storage area near the Q drives. He’d brought a gun—it had an official designation but was nicknamed a “painter” since its action was to release a cloud of needles at the target, with the “painting” itself being an empty, needle-free shadow behind the target on a bulkhead. The body would not be needle-free, of course. Quite the contrary. Transel quickly made his way down the accessway toward the storage area. He felt like a scouring wind, about to turn stone to sand.

  Transel had realized the Poet was aboard the Powers of Heaven several semanatos ago through an off-channel beta sweep, and it had only been a matter of time after that. The DDCM knew Transel was very good at his job. This was not a boast, but a clearly demonstrable fact. It was one of the reasons he normally got along with his captains, in his estimation. What was the use of dominance display when everyone with any sense understood the reality of the situation? Transel had even come to like Captain Malako, his current charge. He was smart and seemed utterly loyal.

  But Malako had been harboring a traitor on his vessel. And that was intolerable. It was, however, a problem Transel would soon dispose of permanently.

  Regulation of feeling produces regulation of thought. Regulation of feeling is accomplished by the surfaction of the flesh.

  It had cost him some effort to arrive at a solution. He’d donned the hairshirt cilice under his uniform with its surfactant, skin-dissolving gels. Never fear the use of the Garment of Ongoing Surfaction and Revelation, his Master Interrogator had taught him during his training. Surfaction leads to pain. Pain first and always is the precursor to knowledge. This is the foundation to Regulation.

  The Master Interrogator had been right. Once the rash had set in and burned a constant ache into his shoulders, the answer had come to him.

  The answer was words.

  The Poet had been careful, so very careful, to time his broadcasts randomly, to make them seem to originate from different portions of the vessel or from outside the craft entirely. His mastery of the technology was astounding, given what Transel now knew of him—so much so that he suspected external aid or perhaps an onboard accomplice. But the Poet was a word-shaper and word-maker, and he’d been unable or unwilling to clean up his first-draft efforts. It was the hubris of creators everywhere, and one of the reasons Regulation must always be vigilant for the excesses of profligate producers. Were it not for the calming influence of parasitism, the galaxy might soon be overrun with words, ideas, out-of-control technology, all competing endlessly for dominance. Endless war, endless chaos and destruction. Dark age after dark age.

  This truth made Transel shudder.

  Regulation is the solution. Regulation proceeds through disambiguation. Pain is the primary tool of disambiguation. His Master Interrogator had made sure he’d understood by firsthand experience the pathways to the soul that pain afforded. She had beaten justice into him. Beaten him until his instinct for Regulation was second nature.

  Transel was good at his job because it was a calling. He knew some on the vessel thought of him as a bit overbearing, doctrinaire—and he’d even sniffed the fragrance of “fanatic” emitted quietly behind his back. He was none of those things. He was merely a faithful instrument in the hands of universal justice. Faithful—and implacable when he had his scent.

  He’d simply analyzed the Poet’s verse. Teased ester from ester, pulled the word trains apart and unpacked them transport pod by transport pod. And what had he come up with? Ethyl maltol. Furanol. Methyl maltol. To a human these odors would be part of the makeup of the scents of currants, blueberries, and wild plums. So he’d set up detectors, noted concentrations over a period of tagatos. Followed the trail. And trapped Second Lieutenant Mountain-Lichen-Scourer Gitaclaber in the web of his own poetry.

  Now came the reckoning. As first political officer of the attack vessel Powers of Heaven, the enforcement provision was his call. He could apprehend Gitaclaber for further questioning. Such questioning could, and would be expected to, include necessary physical inducements to cooperation via the application of surfaction and chemical stimulants. On the other hand, he would be perfectly within his duty and right to execute the Poet outright. The choice was Transel’s.

  Transel had not entirely decided upon a course of action as he made his way to confront the Poet. Gitaclaber was in the midst of one of his live broadcasts spewing his Mutualist-inspired nonsense on symbiosis, love, the beauty of lichens (why were poets always going on about lichens?), and who knew what else bilge.

  One note blown from a stone horn

  resounds through the burnt

  becoming stone vegetation.

  This hard, bright now

  What a pile of anal eliminations! A mind spewing . . . gibberish, yes—but dangerous gibberish! As if one could sit back and observe the universe, admire the universe, and heed no call to action. Heresy and madness.

  Mutualism!

  The transmitter was on the other side of the vessel, but now he had fixed Gitaclaber’s actual location: a little-used janitorial area near the Q drives.

  Transel paused on the other side of the janitorial storage-area door and confirmed Gitaclaber’s presence with an atmospheric sensor. And this was where he, Transel, made an error. He immediately acknowledged as much. It was a minor error, but he’d violated best practice nonetheless and would report himself in due time. He hadn’t set his detector to vibrate.

  The sensor let out a pungent ammonia alert odor when it located the chemistry it was set to find. And within seconds of Transel’s detector going off, the Poet began to furiously spray more filth out over the beta!

  He’d smelled Transel, and he was trying to finish what would be his last broadcast.

  It wasn’t going to happen. Not on Transel’s watch!

  He made his decision on the Poet’s fate then and there.

  He was not going to apprehend him. No, he was going to stop this excess, this overproduction, this glut of words, once and for all.

  The universe is a profligate waste of resources, his Master Interrogator had told him. Regulation arises from the universe’s need to contain itself, to curb its own excess. This is our sacred task. We are the trimmers. The shapers. And, if need be, the cutters. The hewers of species. We are justice embodied.

  We are the Executors of Regulation.

  USX Chief Seattle

  “He’s talking to us. Directly to us. He’s asking for help.”

  SIGINT Petty Officer Japps knew from the visual display that this Poet broadcast was very different from the others.

  “KETCH and LARK, are you getting the graph pattern here?” she asked.

  KETCH’s geist flashed into blue-green being beside the XO. LARK’s was already manifested across the room. KETCH appeared as a bland, vaguely handsome young guy—shaded green and partially transparent, of course—in the uniform of an exper first class.

  “Not sure, Petty Officer Japps,” he said. “The articulation is definitely not the sceeve patois used in the other intercepts. Perhaps it is a variant.”r />
  Japps laughed. “Totally. He’s using his own dialect, I’ll bet, instead of sceeve standard. Which would fit with what I’m guessing is happening.”

  “What are you talking about, Japps?” said Martinez, still in SIGINT after Japps had called her down from the bridge.

  “Give me a sec, XO.” Japps menued up a console, began to rapidly make adjustments. “Adapting to this dialect’s dynamic range,” she mumbled to herself. “Want to catch all of this.”

  KETCH understood immediately what she was doing and began following her lead while making adjustments to his own algorithmic workings.

  Bink.

  After a short wait, KETCH began to speak his rough translation. He didn’t use his own voice, which was something of a tenor, but provided a baritone with a definite Chicago-Midwestern nasality to Japps’s ears. Unfortunately, that familiar element didn’t make what the voice said any less chilling.

  “Attention humans. Attention humans. This one knows you are there. Hopes. Attention, for the sake of your species. Much has already been given to you, but not all. Not all. A wrong element, a killer of poets, has found this one out. There is not time to explain, but this one makes the attempt to communicate final coordinates, complete information transfer—”

  “There is a break in what follows. Transmission drop-out. Or perhaps the Poet has ceased transmitting without realizing this fact. Eight point four seconds in length, and then the transmission resumes.” KETCH returned to the Poet-analog voice he’d concocted.

  “Our sun is dead. The stars blink broken code.”

  Japps recognized this immediately as a line from one of the Poet’s own pieces (or by some unidentified someone, if the Poet were not the actual author). It was a poem he’d read time and again during several transmissions.

  KETCH continued in his Chicagoan voice. “As previously stated, a visitor comes, comes to your system. Approaching, approaching. A visitor, visitors, vessels speaking Mutualism. This visitor offers trust. Alliance. Opportunity, survival, victory in struggle. Great danger, also. Peril closely follows. This one will—”