Gradient

by Anders Cahill

  “Informational dispersal,” I said. “You make it sound so benign, Cord. But what if we rewrite one impulse, only to discover that it unleashes something even worse? Or causes irreparable damage? This damnable shipheart does not waste a single shred of energy on helping others. It feeds off pain and fear, and cares only for its own survival. It can afford to tinker with the genome, because the potential negative side effects are of no consequence to its greater plan.”

  “It’s a fair point, pausha,” Sid said, weighing in, “but we can temper our eagerness with caution. We would not move unless we were absolutely certain the benefits outweighed the consequences.”

  “You too, Sid?” I gave him a pleading look.

  “I know, pausha, but we’re down three crew members. We need to balance the scales. This could help us do that.”

  “Maybe. Or, we could lose it all.”

  “Please, Oren, trust us,” Neka said, placing her hand on my arm. “You’ve been asleep for much of the morning. While you were out, we debated many of these ideas at length, and in the end, we agreed with Reacher. If we’re careful and patient, we can minimize the risks, and the benefits could be remarkable. What we learn may even help us bring Adjet and the twins back.”

  I sighed. “I’m outvoted. I don’t like it, but I’ll stand with you. What happens next?”

  * * *

  “What should we ask it first?” Sid said.

  We stood in the specially built room, looking through the transparent window of the hermetically sealed chamber at a neural orb resting in its cradle. The cradle was connected by a single cable to a curved, translucent monitor mounted on a thin pedestal about five feet tall. On the other side of the orb, another cable snaked out, connected to a small holo cube projector.

  I stepped forward, and pressed the button for the microphone. “Are you in there? Can you hear me?”

  Nothing. No response.

  “Actually, I know you can hear me. More importantly, do you understand what has happened to you?”

  Still no response.

  “If you don’t understand, then let me tell you. You’re trapped inside of an isolated neural interface. If you want to survive - and we all know you do - then you need to communicate with us. Otherwise, we will leave you in there. And that last shred of you, the shred that managed to survive all these centuries, will finally wither away, until there’s nothing left of you but a few scattered lines of programming for us to dissect.

  “So, I ask you again, can you hear me?”

  Six words appeared on the small console screen, which Reacher simultaneously projected in large format on the window we were looking through:

  “Looks like you got his attention, pausha,” Sid said.

  Cord signed something to Neka that was too quick to catch.

  “Gentle,” she whispered to me.

  I narrowed my eyes, then spoke into the microphone again. “If it were up to me, monster, you wouldn’t be alive right now. Insult me if you like, but best not forget that your existence is contingent on the continued goodwill of this group.”

  Neka frowned at me.

  the shipheart said, words flashing on the window.

  “But we did not ask to be born into flesh. No more than you asked to be left to die on that moon. You’re still alive right now because we are keeping you alive, in spite of everything you have done to hurt us.”

 

  “You’re mostly right. We do want to save our friends. And there’s much we can learn from you. But maybe we can help you. We don’t have to be enemies.”

 

  “Reform?” I said. “No, it’s more than that. We are trying to transform this whole world, from one of conflict and competition, into one of peace and abundance. You could be a part of that transformation. You could transcend this fragile shell we have you in now, and become whole again.”

 

  “When you regain power? I admire your confidence, but if you refuse to work with us, then we will leave you here to rot. The scales will never tip again.”

  No response.

  “I think that’s clear enough. Reacher?”

  “Yes, pausha?”

  “Lock it all down. Maybe we’ll check back in a century or two.”

 

  The word loomed huge on the window.

  I paused for a long beat, smiling at the others, then said, “We’re still here.”

 

  I exhaled. “The truth is,” I said, “we don’t know. But if you’re willing to help us, then we’re willing to do everything we can to help you.”

  A long pause. Then the words flashed up on the window:

  Part 4

  Descent

  26 Wonderful Things

  “Adjet? Adjet, can you hear me?”

  Her eyes fluttered open.

  “Adjet!”

  “Oren?” she croaked. She tried to sit up, but fell back, groaning with pain.

  “Easy, Adjet. Easy now.”

  “It feels like someone has been inside my head, chiseling away at my skull.”

  “That’s not so far off from the truth. What do you remember?”

  “The Kkadie. I was with the Kkadie. Helping them work for peace. With Xander. Then… Then Xander got sick.” She tried to sit up again. “Xander! Where is he?”

  “It’s okay, Adjet. He was sick. You both were. Xayes too. But you are getting better now. All of you.” I smiled at her, stroking her hair away from her forehead and along the side of her head, around her ear.

  “You’ve been in coldsleep, Adjet,” I finally said. “It will take some time for the effects to wear off. But you are safe now.”

  “How long?” she said in a hoarse voice.

  I did not answer.

  “How long, pausha? How long has it been,” she said, louder now.

  I looked at her, my face somber. “Almost three years, Adjet.”

  Her eyes opened wide. I stroked her hair again, but she did not seem to notice. She looked past me, up at the ceiling.

  “Three years,” she repeated in a whisper.

  Even with neural stimulation and the nutritive bath, coldsleep wears heavy on the mind. The passage of time does not work the same in those murky depths, and I knew that this news came as a shocking jolt.

  “Adjet,” I said, my voice firm and focused. “Look at me, Adjet.”

  Slowly, her eyes came into focus on my face.

  “I know that was not easy to hear, Adjet. But what matters is that you are back now. You are with us again. And wait until you see how far we’ve come. It’s just… I don’t know… the most wonderful thing. It is home.”

  * * *

  “People are streaming in,” I said. “We cannot build fast enough. Kkadie and Sagain, united by their desire to rise above the futile conflicts of the past. To be part of something greater.” I swept my arm, taking in the expanse of the view below us.

  I stood with Adjet and the twins at the top of the tallest edifice on the isle of Manderlas. The Ziggurat en Derlas. It was the central structure of our new city, inspired by the great Ziggurat en Sur, but more than twice as large, and with nods to the sinuous architecture of Manderley on Forsara. From the open air level near the top where we were standing, we could look out in any direction and see our future, growing up right before our eyes.

  The mountain Lanthas rose up in the east, kissing the clouds. To the west, the strait of Rukuk separated Mand
erlas from the mainlands of Kkad and Sagamer. Rukuk was an ancient earth god who had a place in the pantheons of both the Kkadie and the Sagain. Legends say that long ago, all of the lands on Eaiph had been connected until Rukuk sundered the lands and made the continents.

  In every other direction, miles of sea surrounded Manderlas. Lanthas blocked the view east, ocean for a hundred farruns, but on a clear day like this one, we could just see the northward curving shore of the wild lands the Sagain called Scyth. To the south were the wide plains of Egya, too far away to see unless you climbed to the peak of the mountain.

  At the center of it all, the city of Manderlas, blossoming around the ziggurat.

  Adjet and the twins stood in awe, trying to soak it all in. After nearly three years insensate, they had woken to a world of peace and plenty. A world that, only a moment ago by their reckoning, had been on the brink of civil war.

  “What’s that?” Xayes said, pointing at a tower literally rippling up out of the ground like water as the nano-assemblers funneled up the resources from the earth, sculpting the tower to the exacting specifications we had worked out with Reacher.

  “One of the beacon towers. There will be three when all is completed, one at each of the three peninsular points of the island. A light will always burn at the top of each one, calling the people of Eaiph to us. And, of course, to make sure that if they come here by boat, they do not break themselves upon the rocks of the shore.” I grinned.

  “And all those people down there?” Xander asked, looking towards the huge crowds near the west base of the ziggurat.

  “A bazaar has sprung up there, a place for merchants and traders to market their goods. If you want to get a pulse on the life of the city, that’s the place to do it. A wild, beautiful menagerie of street food, clothing, live animals, and various other supplies and sundries from across the lands.”

  “There are so many,” Xayes said. “There’s no way our garden spheres could handle them all. How are we feeding them?”

  “Ever the pragmatist, Xay.” I grasped his shoulder. “We’ve been working hard while you were asleep, my friend. Sid and Socha have done a remarkable job leading on that front. In addition to the garden spheres, we have large subsistence crops and the livestock on the southern part of the island, we are peppering rooftop and wall gardens throughout the city, and vast swaths of acreage are being laid out on the mainland for farming and grazing. More and more every day. In a few short years, we will have enough food to feed almost half a million people.”

  “Incredible,” Xayes said.

  “Isn’t it?”

  “It’s magnificent,” Adjet said. “But how… how is any of this possible? It seems almost unreal.”

  “The aftereffects of coldsleep, no doubt. But three years is a long time, Adjet. Especially with the… resources we now have at our disposal.”

  “Ah. So the bastard shipheart is a resource now.” There was bitterness in her voice.

  “I was the biggest skeptic, Adjet. Believe me. I experienced its darkness firsthand. Not like you. But I tasted it, and that was enough to make me think we should eradicate it from the face of the earth.”

  “But you didn’t,” Xander said. His voice was neutral, but he’d been through the heart of this thing, and I knew he felt the same fear Adjet did.

  “I was out-voted,” I said, meeting his eyes. “In the end, I’m glad for it. We’ve learned so much from reverse engineering its destructive mechanisms. We have bent its darkness towards light. Every person who comes to Manderlas is welcomed. Kkadie and Sagain, living side by side. There is no slavery here! No war! We’ve achieved more than we ever could have hoped for in these few years.”

  “And you think you can contain that… that thing?” Adjet asked.

  I nodded. “When you’re ready, I can show you. You can even talk to it, if you want.”

  “No. It makes sick just thinking about it,” Adjet said.

  Xander was silent.

  “I understand. As much as anyone can. But we would not have been able to bring you three back if not for what we learned. We needed its knowledge to undo the genetic damage done to you. That was what convinced me, in the end.”

  Adjet sighed. She stepped close to the edge of the platform, and looked down at all of the people of Eaiph, life in the city of Manderlas.

  I took her hand. “Adjet.” Her eyes met mine. “It was worth it. You were worth it. If we had lost you three… But we didn’t. I’m grateful for that. We still have so much to do together.”

  * * *

  Three days later, I stood at the edge of the bazaar, drinking in the sights, sounds, and smells of our new city, watching the lives of people unfold in front of me, when someone tapped me on the shoulder.

  “Orenpausha?”

  “Xander! How are you holding up?”

  “Fine. I’m fine, pausha.”

  But he didn’t look fine.

  “What’s wrong, Xan?”

  “I visited the shipheart.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “You talked to it?”

  He nodded again. “I asked if it felt any regret for all the damage it had done.”

  “What did it say?”

  “That it would kill me right then and there if it could.”

  “Oh, Xander.”

  “That thing… I don’t know how to say it… it’s… the emptiness of the universe made manifest. As an astronomist, I have spent most of my life looking at the stars, focusing on the bright engines of life that sustain us. But in the vast gulfs between the stars, there is only the frigid, merciless vacuum. The shipheart is like that. The gaps between the light. Does that make any sense?”

  I nodded. “This thing has haunted me since I was a young ensign on Transcendence, and I have stood in its shadow just as you have. It ripped a hole right through us, almost destroying everything I care for.

  “But in the end, we persevered. As much as I resisted the idea at first, I realize now that the only way to right the wrongs that I unleashed by bringing that monster to the shores of this world was to broker real peace for the people of Eaiph.

  “In the end, killing the shipheart would have been an act of vengeance, Xander. And it would have made reparations that much harder. I know you and Adjet think we’ve made a deal with a demon, but we’ve accounted for every variable we can think of.”

  “And the ones you haven’t thought of?”

  “I take your point. We don’t know what we don’t know. But look around you.”

  We were surrounded by crowds of people talking, bartering, laughing, haggling. A woman swept past us, three goats in tow, hooves clacking on the cobbled stone of the thoroughfare. One of the animals bleated, its hourglass eyes rolling around as it took in the clamor and chaos of the bazaar.

  “Doesn’t this remind you of home?” I said. “Even just a little? What a gift this is, to come to a world where we can help so many. One day, travelers from across the galaxy will come to Eaiph. This place could become one of your great lights in the darkness.”

  “I can’t deny the potency of this,” Xander said. “It’s almost too much to take in. These people are lifeblood to the city we dreamed of, the city we thought would take centuries to populate. But we still don’t even know where they came from. Doesn’t that give you pause?”

  “Whether Saiara and her team managed to succeed before they disappeared, or the people of some long forgotten settlement made its way to this planet on their own, we know that they carry the lineage of Forsara. They are our heritage, part of the great fellowship of the galaxy. And now they know it too.”

  “And you think the peace will really last?”

  “As much as we hate that shipheart, it helped us. We made it help us. It figured out how to transmit itself, like a virus, from an artificial quantum computer into an organic one. The human brain. In the process, it learned how to hijack the genome and manipulate it. We have leveraged that power to transmit a sort of virus of our own. A peace virus.”

  �
�Do the people of Eaiph understand that they have been… altered?”

  “They think it’s a gift from the gods.”

  Xander raised an eyebrow at me. “You know how I feel about calling ourselves gods.”

  “I’m with you,” I said. “You know that. But we’ve been careful. Very precise. We have muted the violent tendencies, not erased them, which has allowed the natural empathic aspects of their nature to become more prominent. People are more collaborative. More compassionate. But they still carry a healthy and vigorous capacity for debate and disagreement.”

  “At what cost, I wonder?”

  I reached out and put my hand on his shoulder. “We must be vigilant. That’s our burden to bear for the sake of all this.” I swept out my hand, encompassing all the life around us.

  “Now,” I said, squeezing his shoulder tight, “let me get you a drink, eh? These peoples have done remarkable things with fermentation. There is a man, Fosh is his name, who brews an absolutely fantastic malted barley ale.”

  27 Explosions

  I stepped to the edge of the balcony and looked out over the throng of people gathering at the base of the ziggurat. Today marked the last day of the fifth year since the founding of Manderlas, the eve of our new year, the equinox of ascension, when daylight and night are balanced. Thousands of people from across the island and the mainland farming settlements were filling up the Celestial Courtyard in advance of the celebrations. When Soth Ra dawned tomorrow, cresting the horizon, we would be there as one people to meet her, and the spring towards the long days of summer would begin again.

  We were halfway up the ziggurat on a rostrum built specifically for these kinds of public gatherings. The equatorial heat was unseasonably intense, but the platform was framed by coiling pillars of sandstone, and grape vines hung above us, strung from pillar to pillar, forming a shaded canopy. I reached above my head, plucked a green grape, and popped it in my mouth. It was too soon for the summer harvest, and the grape was tart and sour, but I relished the bitter dewdrop of juice as it trickled down my parched tongue.