The Saints of Salvation [British Ed.]

by Peter F. Hamilton

  A portal took them into a xenobiology research facility housing one of Immanueel’s aspects. They walked straight into a huge central chamber constructed out of translucent pearl-white walls that broke it up into a wide spiral of hemispherical cells. To Dellian, it looked a little too much like the biological technology the Olyix used. When he got close to any of the curving walls, he could just make out a burgundy filigree of veins below the surface. The similarity made him uncomfortable.

  ‘Engineering always provides one definitive solution to a problem, right?’ he asked as they walked in. ‘We work through methods and prototypes until we find how to do the job properly. I mean, there aren’t two ways to build a generator or a processor junction.’

  Yirella gave him a glance that conveyed mild puzzlement. ‘As a general rule, yes.’

  ‘So . . . eventually corpus humans are going to wind up with the same technology as the Olyix? It’s the plateau theory, isn’t it, that some things just can’t be improved any further, so it becomes universal, never changes?’

  ‘As a general rule, yes. What’s your point?’

  ‘Well, if everything we do drives us in the same direction, doesn’t that mean we might wind up like them? The Olyix?’

  ‘No! Whatever made you think that? Why would we want to go around the galaxy enslaving other species?’

  ‘It kind of adds a purpose to life, doesn’t it? I’m not saying it’s a good purpose,’ he added quickly. ‘But it’s infected them; it gives them something to build their immortal lives around. I mean, look at Kenelm and all the others like hir. This cause they had, to maintain Utopial philosophy down the generations, it kept hir focused, gave hir something to live for. Causes are dangerous, Yi.’

  ‘I know that. But, really, Del, we don’t think like the Olyix. They’re alien, remember. Not just in their biology and culture, but the way they think, too.’

  ‘Are they, or did they just shape themselves to fit the crusade that the God at the End of Time gave them? That’s what you can do if your biotechnology is so advanced it allows you to morph your own body for convenience. And that’s what we’ve got now, isn’t it? We’ve got the potential to live forever if we want to. But I’m not sure we’re built for that, not as we are. Our minds can’t cope with us lasting that long, so we’d have to change them. Just like the corpus humans have done. Our outlook will have to evolve to cope with extreme lifespans. And what about all the people we’re going to liberate?’

  ‘What about them?’ she asked sharply.

  ‘Well, y’know.’ He shrugged expressively, hoping not too much shame was showing.

  ‘No, Del, I don’t.’

  ‘Oh, come on. They’re not as . . . well, as enlightened as we are. The times they grew up in were different.’

  ‘And?’

  Dellian was really starting to wish he hadn’t begun this conversation. ‘Okay, the kind of people Saint Alik was dealing with – the New York gangs, for one. They’re not the kind of people we can give full access to an initiator, are they? Really, I mean. Hell alone knows what they’d build!’

  ‘Human civilization is always regulated, Del. It’s how it maintains itself, the eternal balance between freedom and authority. We all live in the middle, obeying the rules for the common good.’

  ‘Maybe,’ he grumbled. ‘But the people from Earth might not be as accepting of limits when they see what we’ve accomplished, what our technology can provide.’

  ‘You’re being very judgy all of a sudden.’

  ‘Hey, you’re the one who normally has contingencies for everything. I’m just asking the question, that’s all.’

  ‘A lot of things will have to be agreed if FinalStrike is successful. We can start with some kind of citizens’ convention, I suppose, to agree a new constitution. When that happens, we can talk about introducing initiator restrictions, like the Neána did for their society.’

  ‘Okay. But I’m not convinced that attitudes will change.’

  ‘Are you saying we shouldn’t liberate the humans who were captured?’

  ‘No! But, it’s just . . . nothing is easy any more. When we left Juloss, I thought there’d be a couple of battles – tough ones – but after that it would all be over and we could all settle somewhere together and have a normal life.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be the first time someone won the war then lost the peace. But really, Del, we have to win it first. Then we can start thinking what comes next.’

  ‘Yeah, but we will have to change ourselves. That’s what worries me, Yi: what we’ll become.’

  ‘If we change ourselves, and control how we change, we can keep hold of our souls. I’m not sure the Olyix did that.’

  ‘I hope you’re right. But we’ve been pretty monomaniacal about spreading terrestrial DNA across the galaxy. That’s a form of conquest, too.’

  ‘Not going to happen, Del.’

  He wanted to believe her. But not even Yirella could see clearly through so many variables. So he had to go on faith instead. That was easy. ‘Okay, so back to this tech equivalence. I was wondering if the Neána are hiding in slowtime enclaves, if that’s what their abode clusters actually are? What if they’re heading for the heat death of the universe in parallel to the Olyix, and one day both of them will finally confront each other?’

  ‘Great Saints, Del, where’s all this coming from?’

  ‘I dunno. Just trying to think outside of training and what we’re doing. I want the big picture, Yi. Like you have. But I don’t think I can do that, being me.’

  ‘Del . . . are you thinking of elevating up to corpus? Is that what all this is about?’

  He shrugged limply. ‘I wouldn’t want to do it alone. If I did, that is.’

  Her hand came down on his shoulder, making him halt. He found himself looking up at her face, and the sorrowful expression she wore. ‘You’re not dumb, Del. You don’t need this right now. We have a vital role in FinalStrike.’

  Again the doubt, but the words did comfort – especially coming from her.

  ‘Afterwards,’ she said, ‘if you still really feel like this, then we’ll elevate to corpus together.’

  ‘Saints, you’d do that? Seriously?’

  ‘Yes. And you know why?’

  ‘I never understand you.’

  ‘Because it’s reversible. If it’s wrong for us, we just come back to being us.’

  He had to grin. ‘I thought you were going to say something about destiny, or love, stuff like that.’

  ‘Right.’ She licked her lips. ‘You only want to try it because all your bodies would be having sex together.’

  ‘Hey! I never thought of that. Wow!’

  She sighed in martyred exasperation. ‘Come on. Before your brain melts. I want to see what Immanueel’s got for us.’

  Twenty of the research facility’s cells contained quint bodies. They’d been immobilized on top of a weird stool-like pillar, with their stumpy legs encased in black sheaths that were fused to the floor and a steel bracelet that encased their mid-torso skirt of manipulator flesh. Their neck and lower head was also collared by metal, leaving the apposition eye peering out above. Actinic white light shone down on them, which somehow added to the discomforting impression they were being crucified.

  Less surprisingly, the Ainsley android was in a cell with one of them. It and Immanueel’s big humanoid body were crowding in on the suspended quint: a timeless image of impassive scientists studying a specimen.

  ‘Making good progress,’ Ainsley said as they came in. His featureless white hands were applying small scarlet hemispheres to the alien’s translucent flesh. Dellian could see fibres had sprouted from the base of each of the little gadgets to weave around the dark organs inside; they were all heading for the core of the torso where the brain sat. Somehow, he could tell the quint’s golden eye was unfocused.

  ‘Progress to what?’ he asked.

  ‘Memory extraction,’ Immanueel replied. ‘Unfortunately, none of our marines managed to isolate a sh
ip’s central neural array before the onemind eradicated itself.’

  ‘Same problem I had back during the Vayan ambush,’ Ainsley said. ‘As soon as the onemind realizes its integrity has been compromised by intrusion systems, it does the honourable thing and suicides. With something as massive as an arkship, which has a neuralstratum the size of a skyscraper, that takes time, and I could extract some memories. But the Resolution ships here were quick, and the habitat onemind had plenty of warning. It erased its critical memories before you guys even busted your way inside it.’

  Dellian stared at the quint, keeping his face neutral. ‘But the quint didn’t suicide?’

  ‘They did not,’ Immanueel said. ‘At least not all of them. The squads and marines used a lot of entanglement suppression when you took the Olyix station, which breaks up the union between quint bodies. Once one is isolated from the other four in the unit, it becomes more averse to suiciding. I’m assuming that’s a residual instinct from when they were natural animals with a single body each, not this rigid elevated version. That hesitation was what allowed you and the marines to stun them.’

  ‘And those filaments you’re using? They suck the memories out?’

  ‘Essentially, yes. But we do have to allow them a level of consciousness to animate their minds. They try to resist.’

  ‘Does it . . . feel pain?’

  ‘No. They eradicated the whole concept from their bodies when they became quint. The nervous system is more like a data network. The body knows if it suffers damage, but it doesn’t interpret it the same way we do.’

  ‘Okay.’ He wasn’t sure if he was glad about that or not. Torturing an enemy combatant went against his principles, but this was an Olyix. It deserved punishment – not that he had the slightest idea what was appropriate for the cosmic-sized crime they were committing. ‘So what have you got? Actually, what are you looking for?’

  Immanueel’s tail flicked languidly. ‘Information on the enclave star system is our primary objective. Firstly, confirmation it is where we believe it to be.’

  ‘Well, fuck you very much,’ Ainsley grunted.

  ‘Which it seems is correct – thank you.’

  ‘Forty thousand lightyears away,’ Yirella said wistfully.

  Dellian exchanged a glance with her. He could see how daunted she was by the distance, but it didn’t bother him. It was just a number. They had the route there, and a method of reaching it through the captured Olyix wormhole. They could take as much or as little time as they wanted travelling. Numbers were irrelevant.

  ‘Yeah,’ Ainsley said. ‘Ten thousand years, and we finally have a target. Statistically, we shouldn’t be the first humans to take them on. But hey . . . those are the breaks.’

  Yirella’s gaze hadn’t moved from the immobilized quint. ‘The Neána must have done something like this. Soćko and Saint Jessika had so much information on the Olyix.’

  ‘Out-of-date information,’ Ainsley said.

  ‘That was inevitable,’ Immanueel countered, ‘given the scale of events. But the basic facts are sound. Sadly, there is a hierarchy among the Olyix, with a quint created outside the enclave just about at the bottom. They don’t know much.’

  ‘I thought they had an egalitarian monoculture society,’ Dellian said.

  ‘You thought wrong, kid,’ Ainsley said. ‘Looks like evolution kicks up the same old shit no matter where in the galaxy you start off. The quint are the lowest of the low in the Olyix civilization – worker drones, basically. But they do have a degree of autonomy.’

  ‘Free will?’ Yirella asked sharply.

  ‘Nah, this is more like the ability to come to low-level decisions away from a onemind’s guidance. Just like every religion or ideology, you’re free to do what you want as long as it conforms to the governing commandments. But it does allow them to progress up the ladder – another leftover of natural selection. Darwin would be proud of these little shits.’

  ‘So they can start to question what they’re doing?’

  ‘I suppose. In theory. But for a quint to change its attitude and beliefs, it’d have to be exposed to different ways of thinking, something to make it challenge its indoctrination. That never happens. Like you said, they live in a monoculture.’

  ‘What the hell is the next rung for a quint, anyway?’ Dellian asked in fascination. ‘Six bodies?’

  ‘A onemind,’ Immanueel said. ‘They transplant you into something pretty basic like a transport ship where you toil away loyally, and if you do a good job you get another promotion. Deliverance ship maybe, then up to Resolution ship or an outpost habitation station, arkship, Welcome ship, a manufacturing base. But even those have different levels. If you begin your existence outside the enclave, you only get inside the enclave once you have fulfilled an invasion crusade and brought back the treasure of another species.’

  ‘Which is a problem for us,’ Immanueel said. ‘We have quint memories of the enclave star system, but none of these quints ever went through the gateway into the enclave itself. They have no first-hand knowledge.’

  ‘But you’ve found memories of the enclave star system?’ Yirella asked excitedly.

  ‘Yes. Recent ones, only a few years old.’

  Dellian used his databud to call up the data Immanueel and Ainsley had extracted. The primary of the enclave system was a large white star devoid of any planets. Instead there was a single impossibly dense ring orbiting five AUs out, backdropped by the splendour of the galactic core.

  ‘The ring is rubble,’ Immanueel said. ‘Unnaturally large segments, too. They broke their planets apart to allow easy access to the available mass.’

  ‘Kardashev Type Two and a half, if you ask me,’ Ainsley said. ‘Re-engineering a star system, for Christ’s sake! And that’s just to prepare yourself for the crusade.’

  ‘We knew it would not be easy,’ Immanueel replied.

  Dellian’s optik provided a picture of the gateway itself. In his mind he’d envisaged a great technological orb, maybe protected by fearsome energy cannons that could blast a minor planet apart. True, the number of Resolution ships circling around it was formidable, but the gateway itself was hard to distinguish, as if it was nothing more than a ball of dark water reflecting the blaze of corelight.

  The sight of it chilled him. So much history. Humans have waited ten thousand years just to get this glimpse. Longer than the recorded history of humans on Earth, for Saints’ sake. The sheer effort and suffering it’s taken us to get to this point is humbling. I don’t think I’m worthy. ‘The gate to hell,’ he said softly. ‘Do you think we knew all along? That this was so big, so momentous, that it somehow wormed its way into our collective racial memory?’

  ‘Could be,’ Yirella said.

  He knew she was just humouring him, which put a bite of anger in his voice. ‘Immanueel, do any of these quint memories confirm the Saints were killed? I . . . I want to know.’ To know it wasn’t just propaganda, a lie to break me as part of the neurovirus. He saw Ainsley and Immanueel look at each other. A strange physical characteristic, considering they must be connected at some unimaginably high data rate.

  ‘There is a level of deep knowledge in every quint brain,’ Immanueel said. ‘A racial memory, similar to us learning critical points of our history. It is a way of best understanding ourselves.’

  ‘They’re dead,’ Ainsley said. ‘They got to the enclave star system on the Salvation of Life and made a break for it in the Avenging Heretic when they realized they would be discovered. But they managed to take out some Deliverance ships before they got hit. Imagine that! They set out using the most primitive technology – the best we had at the time, but nothing compared to what we have now. It was a fucking miracle they even got on board the arkship to start with! Yet they made it all the way to the Olyix enclave system, the first humans to see it. It was sheer ballpower that got them that far. And they sent the Signal, too. They did everything we tasked them to do, against the most ridiculous odds in the universe. It takes
something to impress me, but those guys were genuinely the best of the best. They really were Saints. I’m proud I knew them.’

  Dellian’s databud played the one file that was available. He watched a fuzzy vision of a Signal transmitter blazing away in front of a massive radio telescope. It was a weird visual inversion of natural astronomy, as if a star were orbiting a planet.

  ‘So the original Signal is on its way to us,’ Yirella said reverentially.

  ‘Yes,’ Immanueel said. ‘It will reach this part of the galaxy in about thirty thousand years’ time.’

  ‘I wonder if it will be strong enough to detect?’ she pondered.

  ‘It should be.’

  ‘We should keep watch. We owe them that much.’

  ‘If humans are still free, I expect we will build quite a creed of expectation around the arrival of the Saints’ Signal. It is a truly magnificent symbol of our fortitude and spirit.’

  Dellian played the file once again. Thank you, he told the Saints silently. You’ve shown me we can prevail even in the bleakest of times.

  After a moment of respect, he drew a breath and started to concentrate on the layout of the enclave star system with its multitude of ships and industrial hubs. ‘So now what?’

  ‘Now every corpus aspect will convene to formulate our assault strategy,’ Immanueel said. ‘We invite you to join us in a determinative congress.’

  Sure, like we can contribute, Dellian thought sullenly.

  ‘Thank you,’ Yirella said. ‘Our priority has to be reaching the Salvation of Life and all the other ships holding human cocoons.’

  ‘The scale of the enclave star system, and its resources, is at the upper end of our projections. We understand the primacy of liberating the cocooned. However, if that proves unobtainable, our fallback position must be the successful elimination of the Olyix ability to continue their crusade. Humans can resume a more normal existence if this nemesis is destroyed.’

  ‘No,’ Yirella said. ‘I can’t countenance this. We exist to liberate our cocooned cousins.’