The Octagonal Raven

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Eldyn smiled. “Daryn … I wasn’t sure whether you’d come, but I had hoped you would.”

  “I’m here.” I returned his smile, but my senses were taking in everything in the study, a spare room with little more in it besides a conference table and four chairs.

  Eldyn motioned to the young woman. “Mehlysa, you must go now, quickly, as we discussed.”

  The resemblance between the two was strikingly clear. Both had the light brown wavy hair, and the same small straight nose — and the watery blue eyes.

  “But …” Her voice had the hesitancy of a teenager.

  “Now that my friend is here, it won’t be safe for you.”

  “It won’t be safe for you, Father.”

  “It will be for a time, but I can’t do what I need to do and worry about you. Take the hidden way, and I’ll join you as soon as I can.”

  “You promise?”

  “I promise.”

  I could sense that while Eldyn wasn’t lying, he was very controlled, and more than slightly worried. That made me more than a little apprehensive. So did the octagonal medallion, although it could have been an affectation to remind us pre-selects of his conquest of the pre-select plague.

  With a look over her shoulder, the girl walked toward the rear of the dwelling. She was looking back as Eldyn closed the study door.

  “She looks a lot like you,” I offered, not knowing exactly what to say.

  “She looks more like her mother.” The doctor/scientist/food magnate smiled warmly, if but for a moment before turning to me. “How do you like my retreat? It’s so modest that it has escaped unnoticed until now.”

  “Until now?” I scanned the room. The walls were bare. There was a flat panel holding some energy above the door, and another similar panel over the window that ran nearly from floor to ceiling and overlooked a small walled and formal garden — its trimmed yews and small polished bench looking very damp in the misting rain.

  “Before we get started, I need to provide you with several things.” He extended a small case, no more than six centimeters on a side and half that in depth.

  “You’re assuming I’m going to do something.”

  He shook his head. “I’m certain that there are dozens of tracker nanites around you. You fasten that to your waistband or put it in a pocket, and in a few minutes, all of the trackers will be disabled. I’d strongly suggest you take it, if you don’t want the PST types to do you in like your sister.” His smile was crooked, but he was almost certainly telling the truth. “It works better if you turn off the body-screen for the first few minutes.”

  Nyhal wore a nanite body-screen. So did I. Body-screens had some usefulness — they’d stop most projectile weapons, and mitigate or stop a laser — depending on the power output. They were designed to respond to kinetic energy, and that meant I or Nyhal could be wrestled to the ground, and that we were certainly vulnerable to pathogens and nanites — or specialized low energy weapons like filament knives.

  I took the box and put my shield on stand-by, but just for three minutes.

  My older-looking norm contemporary studied me for a long moment. “Elysa said you didn’t get any of my messages.”

  “No. At least not directly. I got a message from Elora, suggesting I contact you. She’d set it up before she died. I also had several blank incomings. That was why I had Majora call you … and why she tried never to mention my name directly.”

  “That was wise.” He sat slowly in one of the ebony chairs on one side of the table. “Sit down, if you would.”

  “Eldyn … could you please just tell me what exactly is going on. I think I’ve figured out the general outlines.”

  He offered another crooked smile. “Despite all the slights and slings of fortune, and the ungratefulness of your peers, I’m trying to hold the Federal Union together — in the way in which it was designed. Your sister was trying to help me. Some wealthy pre-selects, call them the PST group — want to change the Union and have proven that they’ll do anything to succeed.”

  The scent similar to jasmine rose around me. I couldn’t help wincing. “Now what? Another set of nanites to send me into shock? Your little helpers?”

  “Hardly.” He laughed once, harshly. “Mer — you know her as Elysa — she could have done that if I’d wanted that. You’re going to need those if you want to function.” He paused. “I hate to ask this, but do you care for the woman who called me?”

  “Yes.” The answer was a lot more complicated than that, but “yes” was more than accurate.

  “Have you been sleeping with her recently?”

  “What —”

  “Or hugged her or held her close?”

  “Once or twice.”

  “Let’s hope that’s enough.” He nodded briskly. “There’s a lot to cover.”

  “Wait —”

  “There’s a lot to cover,” he repeated. “You already had resistant nanites. They tend to spread to others close to you, but this last dosage was to make sure you don’t get slowed down immediately. You have much to do. Or you could, if you’re interested. Now … as you surmised, there is a revolution in progress. The attempts to use the PIAT as a screening tool are just part of that. The other and more dangerous aspect of the PIAT is that you can use those same techniques to assess and, shall we say, assist conformity and loyalty. That’s been part of the literature for years, but never really considered. It is one reason why past secretary directors quietly disabused any use of perceptual testing as a requirement for any office or educational assessment.”

  “If people weren’t trying to kill me … I still have troubles with this conspiracy theory,” I said slowly. “And revolutions. I don’t see any wide-scale uprisings.”

  “Successful revolutions aren’t led by the masses.” Nyhal snorted. “They’re led by the discontented elite who exploit the discontents of others. Every successful revolution has been led and masterminded by those who have been or could have been part of the previous power structure. You don’t like your own brother that much, and he’s better than most of them.” Eldyn’s watery eyes seemed to glitter for a moment.

  “Most of whom?”

  “The pre-select elite.”

  “You’re certainly a part of that elite,” I pointed out.

  “I’m a half-accepted norm with freak genes.” He smiled. “And I’m not a revolutionary. I’m the counter-revolutionary. So are you. You’re going to be the true mastermind of the counter-revolution.”

  “Talking about a counter-revolution …” I shook my head. “I’ve never wanted anything to do with power. Why would I now?” As the body-shield returned to a full active power state, I felt slightly less apprehensive.

  “To stay alive. To retain your family’s heritage. And as for power, you’ve never wanted anything to do with power the way your family has handled it. You’re going to take over UniComm, and you’re quietly going to change the entire world, and because you’re almost a martyr … because you’re perceived as a man who served mankind, and who spoke up and was attacked … why … no one will dare say a thing” He laughed, the laugh rising, not quite into shrillness. “That’s the way we’d like it. That’s not what will happen, but you do have a chance.”

  “We’re missing a few steps here.…” More than a few. While watching Eldyn, I was still trying to scan his reactions and be alert for any outside surprises. “Why should I believe anything you say?”

  “I need to tell you a story, Daryn. You’re an edartist … you should appreciate it.” He lifted a blocky weapon from under the table. “This is an ancient flare gun.” He gestured with the obsolete weapon. “It’s just weak enough to slide under a body shield. I wouldn’t bring it up, but you’re not going to like everything I’m going to tell you, and you do need to hear it all. Yes, you do.”

  “Oh.” I managed not to swallow. The man with the answers also had a flare gun pointed at me, and he was insisting he was on my side. I was having strong doubts about Eldyn, but I had no do
ubts that I didn’t want to test my systems against the gun, and that meant I was going to hear more — whether I wanted to and whether he would actually answer all my questions. Certainly, no one had yet.

  “You remember the scare about the pre-select plague? You remember that almost fifteen thousand pre-selects died?”

  “I was off-planet.”

  “You would have died, too. All of you would have.” He peered at me.

  “I heard it was bad.”

  “That’s like saying nanites are small.” Eldyn snorted again. “I saved every one of you. Every one of you, and what did I get? A letter from the secretary director, and a one-year ten percent salary bonus. Ten percent. Thank you very much, but you’re really not one of us, and ten percent is more than you deserve.” The smile broadened. “Even after reading my reports, they didn’t know. The idiots still didn’t get it.”

  “I guess I’m an idiot, too, Eldyn.” I tried to make my tone apologetic. “I’m very grateful to be alive.”

  “Oh … don’t condescend to me, Daryn.” He offered that not-quite-high laugh again. “But you should know. I was the one who figured it out. It was right in front of them, and they still couldn’t see it. You know the forerunner Gates aren’t dead. They’re just not used often. We’re at the end of a transgalactic net, the slums … call it what you will.” He laughed once more, that same laugh that was cutting across my nerves like a filament knife.

  The forerunner Gates? The medallions he wore — they were probably all octagonal. My eyes flicked toward the dull gray on his chest.

  “You see? You’re not like the rest.” He smiled. “One hint, and you can see. The others, they won’t see. They can’t see that the forerunners don’t want us playing with our genes”

  “How would they know?” There couldn’t have been any two way communications.

  “They don’t … or they didn’t. The octagonal nanites are just programmed … cellular machines designed to analyze structures and react. If the cells aren’t integral, or if there’s foreign matter there, like augnites … they attack.”

  A long-dead alien race programming nanitic attack machines and spraying them across the Galaxy? Nyhal had definitely lost touch with reality — delusions of evil aliens, and a savior complex as well, and an obsolete weapon.

  “I know you have to be upset … with the death of your wife”

  “You think I’ve lost it, don’t you, Daryn? Don’t patronize me. I haven’t lost it. Not at all. You can check the records.” He shook his head, and his voice dropped. “The octanites — that’s what I call them — they detect what doesn’t belong. I told the secretary director that. He didn’t believe me.”

  I didn’t either.

  “Those little octagonal nanites … the ones that Elysa sprayed you with … you almost died, but not because of the spray, but because of the treatment. Even for me some of it was a guess … that’s why I had to have it done again.…”

  “Again?”

  “The laseflash … you remember … don’t you?”

  “But that was set up before …”

  “Of course it was. I know Kharl. He’s very bright. Not quite so bright as me … but very bright and most thorough. There was a chance, with his access, that he might have decided otherwise and tried to neutralize them. The laseflash was for three purposes. I wanted the PST group to think someone else was after you … to make them re-think their strategy. I also wanted your visibility higher. They were thinking you could be removed quietly, and your stock would go to your father or brother. That would have preempted Elora’s bid for control of UniComm.”

  A lot of what Eldyn was saying didn’t ring quite true, but some did, and I kept listening, trying to sort it all out.

  “What does this all have to do with the forerunner Gates? The forerunner Gates are monitoring ports as well. They monitor and send their own nanites to record and monitor all over the Galaxy. Time doesn’t matter that much to them, and their nanites are quite sophisticated, quite a marvel, really. I learned much from them.”

  “No one has seen one of their Gates in operation — except once — maybe — from a distance.”

  Nyhal just shrugged apologetically. “We don’t have time to debate everything. Please listen and save your questions. They dropped nanites on Earth … with ice comets, I would judge … they might even have been waiting centuries … millennia … for us to develop augmentation. Those nanites are designed to undo augmentation. Without the effects of pre-selection and augmentation, evolutionary diversity will create a wider range of humanity, and a race slightly less focused on abstractions and conquest. These forerunners, or aliens, well … like so many in our own culture, they’ve underestimated our cleverness. We beat the pre-select plague, and now there are teams of nanitists that have taken apart those little bugs and studied them every way possible.”

  “We may not understand their Gates,” I said, “but we understand their biology techniques, is that it?”

  Nyhal plowed on. “After we stopped the first plague, I began to worry. What about the second … or the third wave? The secretary director at that time wanted me to design something special — so every pre-select would get nanites that recognize the octagonals.” Nyhal lowered the flare weapon, but kept his fingers around it. “That looked like biological warfare on an individual cellular level, and I had doubts about our eventual success. They have been around longer, far longer.”

  He smiled. “I came up with something better. Octagonal nanites that coopt the invaders. There is a price. You’ve seen it. The whole world is seeing it now. I’d estimate that the mortality is twenty percent … maybe more. Those who survive and their children, if they’re not pre-selected to avoid regression to the mean, will be immune almost to anything the forerunner can send through their Gates.”

  “You just chose, on your own, to kill off twenty or thirty percent of the pre-selects? More than twenty percent mortality of the people who run the world … who’ve kept it stable? That’s … it’s insanity.”

  “Insane? I saved all the pre-selects the first time, and what happened? A ten percent bonus? I unraveled all the codes and offered a way to ensure we’d be safe forever, and they told me to go back to my laboratory and be a good boy?” His voice dropped down again. “I couldn’t let that happen, not to Mehlysa and her children. So I left Federal Service, and used all the things they didn’t believe. And no one said a thing when I made millions with toys like the variable replicator.” Another laugh followed. “They’ll believe now. And I’m being generous, far more generous than they are to norms — or to me. I’m ensuring that more than half of those now alive survive when none would have survived before. Besides … why not? You pre-selects have chosen genetic traits that allow you to run the world. I’m just trying to reestablish a balance.” His smile spread from ear to ear. “I’ve already taken some steps to ensure it will spread.”

  “Steps …”

  “I had formal announcements delivered all over the world. Of course, the announcements actually were announcements of a different sort.”

  “You put your pathogen nanites inside?”

  “Nothing simpler. People scan packages. They scan people. But paper? Or expensive parchment? A simple coating to keep them inactive until dissolved by body heat, fingers, you know.”

  “Why?” I had almost been afraid to ask, afraid I knew that answer.

  “Pre-selects should face some risk for their benefits, shouldn’t they?” His eyes sparkled. “Isn’t that the basis of successful evolution? Now, one could argue logically that we’re unsuccessful products of evolution, since successful evolution results in the diversity of a species, not in its homogenization, but the social evolutionists claim that successful evolution is apparent domination of the planet and its resources. That will do for now. Under either definition, genetic improvements come at a cost.”

  “That’s … that’s ancient social Darwinism.” I had trouble coming up with the word.

  “No. What
you pre-selects have done is social Darwinism. Now let me finish before you judge, Daryn. There’s a next set lurking in the background, where no one will ever find it … until it’s too late. The next set is designed to attack on the basis of certain combinations of pre-selected patterns … particularly those patterns designed to thwart genetic regression to the mean … and, also, every so often, certain configurations of genes that only occur in pre-selects will trigger the same reaction that the nanosprays did on you … call it an equalizing factor.” Nyhal looked blandly at me.

  “What? Just because their genes fit a pattern … they’ll die?”

  “No one should set themselves up as god — or gods. The PST group did. They’ve been trying to remove you and most of your family. They killed Merhga and tried to destroy me, but they can’t stop my science.”

  “And you don’t think someone will take apart your little bugs?” I asked.

  Nyhal grinned, and the expression reminded me of a skull. “Mine look just like augnites, and they react in exactly the same way, except when they’re in the system of those who are … susceptible. No one is likely to discover … unless you tell them, and even if you do, they won’t find much. They won’t believe you. They don’t believe me. And the effect will die off, because the special nanites, like those I just sprayed you with … well, they’re really organic augnites with octagonal properties, and you and your children will be fine. In time, someone will puzzle it out, but not soon. You see, even if they do, it will take a team, and then the techniques will be out there for everyone … and the biowars will begin. You don’t want those in your lifetime, Daryn.”