Warstrider: All Six Novels and An Original Novella

by Ian Douglas

  The solitary DalRiss was joined by a second being apparently identical to the first, its six-limbed Dal moving with a peculiar grace for such a large creature. A third arrived moments later, joining the first two in a rapid-fire flickering of their tentacles and a piping cacophony of peculiar, fluting sounds. Dev could detect no difference among them as individuals, and even their gestures appeared eerily coordinated. Their movements, lightning quick, possessed a fluidity that belied the ponderous mass of their mounts.

  "Are they aware of us?" Dev asked.

  "The sim's been set to show them without interaction," Ortiz replied. "So they'll act as though we weren't here. But we can reset if you want to question one. This sim has a fairly extensive data base. Their replies will be pretty close to what the real ones might say."

  "I don't think that'll be necessary," Katya said.

  "Yeah," Dev added. "I'm not sure at this point if I'd even know what questions to ask."

  "The fact that they're blind must make their perception of the world quite different from ours," Sinclair said.

  "They're not blind," Ortiz said. "They don't have eyes, but they're not blind. They use sonar, like bats or dolphins, though it seems to provide them with a genuine image of some kind, rather than just an echo. They have other imaging senses, too, apparently overlapping their sonar. They can sense motion, for instance . . . and, at least according to them, they can sense something they call ri, which they equate with some kind of life force. In fact, they visualize their surroundings more in terms of a three-dimensional sea of life through which they move than as empty space that happens to be occupied here and there by other creatures. They, well, they do perceive the world quite differently from the way we do."

  "Like the Naga," Dev suggested.

  Ortiz laughed. "Maybe not that differently. At least these folks don't see the universe inside out! But a DalRiss can scan you and tell what you ate for lunch, see what you're hiding inside your closed fist, and just by 'looking' at you, can trace your cephlink circuits from your palm implant to the feeds running up your arm to the sockets, cephware, and internal RAM nodes hidden inside your skull. They have trouble discerning human facial features and they don't know what color is, but they have senses that we don't. They see nonliving things—rock, for instance—as a kind of empty void with a definite shape. That difference in the way they perceive things makes aspects of their logic quite different from ours."

  "How?" Dev asked.

  "Um, well, one of their nonhuman senses is a little like the lateral line in fish. It detects extremely minute variations in air pressure and seems to help them sense the positions of objects around them. See those three on the ridge? Do you see how their heads are all held at the same angle, and how their limb movements are coordinated? It's almost as though they're performing a dance, but with a very precise awareness of each others' attitudes and gestures."

  "Group mind?" Sinclair asked.

  "We wondered about that for a time, but no. They're still individuals. But they do have much more of a sense of, call it community, than we do. With us, there's a certain amount of social pressure to blend in, to be just like everybody else, right? But that only extends so far. There've always been people who disliked the herd mentality, who struck off and did things on their own and in their own way. We think, think, mind you, that the DalRiss find it easier to come to a group consensus because they're so attuned to one another's attitudes—both physical and mental. There's almost certainly less of a sense of self, compared with more of a sense of the group as a whole. Not a group mind, General Sinclair, but a feeling that the needs of the group come before the needs of the individual."

  Dev felt an inner stirring of worry, almost of fear. "You know, Professor, what you've just described is a large part of the difference between Japanese culture and most Frontier societies. The Japanese feel they have a social obligation that should be placed ahead of the needs of any one person."

  "Captain, I think even the Japanese would be uncomfortable with what the DalRiss consider to be social obligation."

  "Arranged marriages," Katya said, grinning.

  "That's one. Mating among the DalRiss is done strictly according to genetic considerations, and mates are frequently changed to ensure the widest possible distribution of certain characteristics within the gene pool. Genetic defectives are killed at birth, that's another. And the old, I gather, are eaten, with great ceremony."

  "Arranged marriages, infanticide, and cannibalism have all been practiced by various human cultures, Professor," Sinclair pointed out. "And the acceptance of those practices by the community reflects what the group at large believes in."

  "Sure. But human cultures have always had rebels," Dev said. "People who bucked the system because they saw a better way, or because they didn't fit in, or because they wanted to marry for love, or whatever."

  "Any of which would be unthinkable among the DalRiss," Ortiz put in. "As near as we can tell, there is no rebellion against the DalRiss group consensus, none, and there has been none for some tens of thousands of years of unbroken cultural history."

  "Odd," Katya said. "As fast as the pace of life and metabolism and evolution seems to be, you'd think there'd be social evolution as well."

  "Maybe," Dev suggested, "their society is the one stable thing they have to rely on. Unlike us."

  They continued climbing the slope, until they came to the sponge-covered crest overlooking the valley beyond. The vegetation in that valley was, if anything, more curiously shaped than anything they'd seen so far on the tour. Spires, domes, and arches of pastel-colored growth crowded one another around tar-black, rippling pools. Hundreds of massive, squashlike structures covered the ground in a complex and interconnected maze of living structures. All of those shapes, the pools included, rippled and throbbed, obviously alive. The tallest spire was topped by something like a jet black rose, slowly twisting open in the harsh sunlight. Most of the growths pulsed in unison, like interconnected hearts. Though the first impression was of a forest moving with the wind, Dev had seen areas like this on both ShraRish and on the dead DalRiss homeworld. It was a DalRiss city.

  Beyond the edge of that organic metropolis, a cluster of silvery domes and an unmoving patch of nano-grown pavement grabbed Dev's attention, the first structures he'd seen since entering this simulation that felt like the product of human engineering. That bit of familiarity in the midst of so much strangeness quickly made itself the measure for everything else. A large ascraft on the landing field, a lasercom tower above one of the domes, provided the scale that had been missing before; the city, the valley itself was not so large as he'd thought at first glance, and the air was hazy with a light, golden mist that fooled the eye.

  Ortiz seemed to sense Dev's interest in the human-built facility. "That, Captain," she said, "is Dojinko."

  "If it's still standing when you get there," Sinclair pointed out, "that will be your principal target on the planet."

  "I wonder," Katya said softly, her gaze still fixed on the alien city, "what they did that made the DalRiss attack them?"

  "That," Dev replied, "may be the most important question we have to answer."

  Chapter 9

  No one who, like me, conjures up the most evil of those half-tamed demons that inhabit the human breast, and seeks to wrestle with them, can expect to come through the struggle unscathed.

  —Complete Psychological Works

  Sigmund Freud

  C.E. 1905

  They'd found time at last to be alone together, and a place as well—inside the cargo bay of an ascraft slung from Eagle's belly. Technicians and crew members were still swarming through the Eagle, getting her ready for her long flight, but the air/spacecraft, already packed with provisions and secured for the voyage, was deserted. There was room enough, just barely, for the two of them to float together in weightless ecstasy, moving gently to rhythms old long before man had left his homeworld, urged on by drives ancient before life had left the sea.
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  The cargo bay was crowded, packed with kiloliter canisters of water, for the most part. The Farstar mission was expected to last the better part of a year, and, since there was no guarantee of their welcome in the Alya system, consumables enough for some twelve hundred people for that long a time had to be carried along. Every spare cubic meter of space aboard each of the starships was packed with supplies, especially with Organic Precursors, or OPs, stores of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, phosphorous, and all of the other elements that would be nanotechnically assembled into food during the voyage. It was often jokingly said that starship crews on long missions had to literally eat their way into their own living spaces. That was exaggeration, perhaps, but there was very little free space left anywhere in the fleet, and the ascraft, which would not be used until they reached their destination, made ideal stores carriers.

  Still, a passageway leading aft from the cargo bay's dorsal entryway had been left clear for the loading robots and cargo handlers to come and go, and there was space enough there for the two of them to shed their uniforms and stress and all save that which made them human for a few precious hours. Now, the air around them was aglitter with a few tiny, stray, drifting spheres of perspiration, and it was musky with the mingled odors of their lovemaking. Dev had one hand out grasping a handrail on the bulkhead, bracing the two of them to keep them from bumping randomly into a wall of stacked stores containers.

  "That," he said with a deep and long-anticipated contentment, "was wonderful."

  "Better than sex-in-a-can?"

  "Than what?"

  She snuggled closer. "Than mental masturbation in a couple of comm modules."

  "Much." It was a small lie. Dev still couldn't tell the difference between real and virtual sex, and sex with a person's analogue didn't leave you so obviously in need of a shower. But as Katya clung to his sweat-slick body, he thought that he might now have at least a small understanding of what it was she sought.

  Mostly, he wanted Katya to be happy. He loved her, and he wanted to understand.

  "How are you feeling, Dev?" Katya asked him after a long period of comfortable, drifting silence.

  "Silly question. . . ."

  "About what happened with you and the Naga, I mean. I've been wanting to ask, and others are wondering too."

  How did he feel? For a time, while floating in Katya's warm embrace, he'd all but forgotten the sense of otherness that still lay coiled somewhere within the deeps of his own mind.

  "Others? You mean Sinclair?"

  "And some of the staff people here. Farstar is awfully important to the Confederation—"

  "And they wouldn't want a schiz-out or a burn-brain to be dictating policy with the DalRiss. I can understand that." He sighed, then pushed back slightly away from Katya's body. They were joined together at the hips by a tsunagi nawa, a lightweight, elastic tether that allowed them to move together in microgravity without becoming uncoupled. He touched the connector and the harness unsnapped. They drifted apart, and Dev reached for his bodysuit, hanging in the air close by the bulkhead.

  "Dev? . . ."

  "We really ought to get back. I've got so much admingarbage downloaded onto my sched it's going to take me a year just to—"

  "Dev, talk to me." She bumped up against his back, her long legs circling his hips from behind. The movement sent both of them drifting, and Dev had to let go of his clothing to keep from hitting the bulkhead.

  "Katya—"

  "The last time we talked about it you were still half in shock. Sinclair's giving you command of this squadron. I'd kind of like to know if we've got a psychotechnic problem in our senior staff."

  "I've run the diagnostics on myself," he said quietly, disentangling himself and turning in the air to face her. "Several times. Believe me, I wanted to know too."

  "And?"

  "I'll download them to you if you want. There's been no change. Same TM rating . . . high, higher than the Hegemony Navy would accept, but okay for the likes of us."

  "Point four?"

  He nodded.

  "And no TP or TD?"

  "Insignificant. Believe me, I'm not afraid of AIs and they don't depress me."

  "Dev, there's something wrong. I can feel it in you."

  "Nonsense—"

  "Kuso, don't lie to me!"

  He frowned. "Katya, I'm not lying. Okay, I wonder about myself sometimes. About my own stability. But the monitor programs check out. I . . . it's hard to put into words. Best I can do is say that there's a, a craving for what I felt when I was Xenolinked. A need for more." He swallowed. "You know, coming in-system, before we dropped into fourspace, I was afraid I was going to have to meet you and Sinclair down in Argosport. I was worried about that, afraid of having to get that close to . . . to . . ."

  "To the Naga?"

  He nodded. "When I volunteered to take Eagle out raiding, I thought that enough time would pass that I could forget what it was like, linked into the Naga. But I haven't. If anything, the memories have been getting worse. Stronger. And there are dreams . . ." He saw the alarmed look in her eyes and smiled. "No, I'm okay. I can handle it. It's not like I'm a PCS addict or anything like that."

  When Katya didn't immediately reply, he went on.

  "I do feel . . . changed, Katya. I'm not sure how. It's like, well, it's as though my perceptions of myself were completely rewired while I was Xenolinked. Even now, I can examine my memories of those few moments, and it's like reading about a stranger. I don't recognize myself in what I see." He took a long breath. "If an ant could become a man . . . would it later be able to accept becoming an ant again?"

  "Is that the way you feel? A man's mind, trapped in an ant's body?"

  "I feel trapped. I'm not sure I can put it into clearer words than that."

  "Ever since you were Xenolinked, you've seemed, I don't know. Distant. Isolated, somehow. You were that way right after you broke your link with the Xeno. I was hoping four months would have fixed it, but I, I sense it, that isolation, still in you now." She hugged him closer. "I want to help, Dev."

  He clung to her for a long time. He was remembering. . . .

  "Katya, can you imagine what it was like, being some kind of super genius, having a sensory network that stretched across half a planet, knowing things, thinking things, that even now I can just dimly recall? It's like having had the most wonderful and lavish meal imaginable . . . then not being able to remember the individual dishes or the people present or the reason for the banquet in the first place, but still being able to savor the memory of the food's smell . . . just the smell. I find myself wanting that, that sense of connectedness, of belonging again. Without it, I feel very . . . lonely."

  Katya moved closer, took him again in her arms. "Oh, Dev. It must be awful."

  "It isn't, really," he said. "It's not like some pain that won't go away, or anything like that. It's just a very deep sense of, of sadness, I suppose. A sadness that I don't have what I once had. And believe me, despite that, I don't want to go through a Xenolink again. I think that's what has me confused the most. I've lost something, something that I miss very much and that I'd love to have again . . . but I'm terrified that I might find it. That's why I didn't want to go back to the surface of Herakles. I was afraid that I might find it again, and that the temptation there would be too strong."

  "You know, Dev, there's a Naga out at Alya."

  "Yes. On, or rather, in GhegnuRish. But we're going to ShraRish, the colony world, and the Naga there is dead. We'll be five light-days away from the other one."

  "That's not so very far."

  "It's a hell of a lot farther than we are from the Heraklean Naga right now," Dev said. "Believe me, Katya. I'll be fine. I just need some time . . . and maybe some human companionship. Some closeness."

  She dimpled. "You had plenty of companionship aboard Eagle these past four months. From what I hear, Lisa Canady is quite skilled in such things, and I doubt that she minds sex-in-a-can."

  "Kuso. You kno
w what I mean." He reached out and pulled her close. Again, her legs entwined about him and they kissed.

  Dev tried hard not to think about the fact that this would be their last time alone together for quite a while. During the long voyage to Alya, Katya would be with her troops aboard one of the transports, while he remained on the Eagle. He would see her again when they reached Alya, but time alone together then would be desperately hard to find.

  This time they made love without the tether. It took skill and concentration not to slide apart, and their movements were, of necessity, restrained. If anything, the limits set on their motions by zero-G drove their mutual sensations to an even higher pitch than before. Afterward, adrift together in the warm, narrow volume of the compartment, they slept.

  The being that had once been Dev Cameron reared higher on its mountain ledge, scanning sky and horizon with a complex amalgam of senses—human sight and hearing, combined with eighteen external Naga senses ranging from the perception of magnetic fields to the rippling feel of flowing electrons to the dimly sensed mass of bulky objects bending space. . . .

  It was the dream again. After the first few terrifying moments, Dev knew he was dreaming, though despite the lucidity imparted by his cephlink control he could not will himself awake. Part of him did not want to wake. The sensation of surging, triumphant power was overwhelming; at the same time, he could sense the Naga supracell embedded within his body, distributing itself throughout his nervous system in a fuzzy cloud of alien nanotechnics and molecule-slender threads, a blending, a union so complete it would have been difficult for any outside observer to tell where Dev's body had stopped and that of the Naga had begun.