by John Grant
It had been a quick way to go. One moment you're conducting a piece of scientific observation, the next moment splat. One had to assume that, far in the past of every sentient species, there had been individuals who had made similar scientific discoveries. Let's try this nice new brightly shining fruit we haven't come across before. Omnes: Aargh.
Segrill had gone back to Hallaroi in hopes that the techs there would be able to solve the problem of getting the Santa Maria off the ground. Strider was in constant touch with him through the Images.
"This hasn't been the easiest of missions," she said off-handedly to Nelson.
"I set off to Tau Ceti II and all I got was this lousy T-shirt," he replied.
There was a beep from one of the communications Pockets. Strider moved to it and saw a semblance of Segrill: reproduced in the Pocket he seemed to be the same size as she was herself. The Images had clearly decided that she should speak to him face to face.
"There is a way," he said, not concerned with any preliminaries.
"How?"
"We can lift you into space. A Bredai transport vessel is big enough and powerful enough to haul you up into orbit. We're going to have to tamper with the size of the bay doors of the one that is just being completed in order to accommodate you, but this is not beyond our means."
"Sounds good to me," said Strider, although the prospect sounded terrifying. The immensities of what could go wrong filled her mind. Segrill assumed that the Bredai were his allies, but if they were in fact loyal to the Autarchy they could simply hoist the Santa Maria a few thousand meters in the air and drop it. Or, even with the best of intentions, they could allow an accident to occur which caused methane to flood into the Santa Maria.
"Go ahead," she said.
5
My Fleet is Bigger than Yours
Kaantalech looked at her aide with what she knew was the precisely proper expression of disdain. Not that the aide would be able to pick it up, of course: any aide who grew clever enough to be able to read her body language was dangerous, and swiftly met the same fate as those who were too stupid. It was a fine line you had to tread, being one of Kaantalech's aides.
"You've found the Humans again, but they're in the middle of an eight-thousand-strong fleet of warcruisers? That's worse than it was before," she repeated disbelievingly.
"That is what's happened," said the aide tremulously. "The fleet has grown. Most of the ships are of the Helgiolath; the rest we cannot as yet identify. And then there are the Humans."
Kaantalech swore with elegant fluency. A fleet this size was sufficient to inflict considerable damage on the Autarchy, at least in the short term. She hadn't expected that other species might start to add themselves to it.
Add a few hundred warcruisers and the fleet could . . .
Now there was an idea.
Add a few hundred warcruisers and you had a fleet big enough to cause permanent damage to the current Autarchy. Then there would be a hiatus while The Wondervale sorted itself out, and then there would be the dawn of a new empire. The future suddenly looked golden.
"I have spoken with the leader of the Human contingent before," she said. "Establish contact again."
"I'll do my best," said the aide nervously.
Kaantalech hit him so hard that the sound of his bones fracturing as his body shattered against the bulkhead remained in the aural memories of her other aides for the rest of their lives.
"I want to speak with the Human-thing again," she said. "I need a volunteer to make the contact."
#
Kortland made his decision. The raid he had mounted on F-14 had been, in the most unexpected of ways, a triumph. His fleet was now twice as strong—in effect if not numerically—as it had been before, and the Autarchy's main source of weaponry was hardly functioning at all. It wouldn't be long, though, before the Autarchy shipped out more techs to repair what farewell sabotage had done to the manufactories on F-14. He credited the Humans with their bravery and the ability they had shown to survive; had they not been so ugly he might have been prepared to award them the status of honorary Helgiolath. As it was, he was content enough to have their vessel as part of his armada.
The decision he made was simply enough expressed in a single word. He had thought this was an order that he himself would never be able to give—that it would be issued only by his successor, or by his successor's successor.
"Qitanefermeartha," he said.
#
Polyaggle was attempting to establish contact with Kortland when a quite different face popped into existence in the communications Pocket. She recognized the species immediately: this was one of the Alhubra who had visited and attempted, from time to time over the years, to take over Spindrift and turn the planet to profit, and who had eventually destroyed her kind.
"You're not a Human," said Kaantalech at once.
"I'm a Spindrifter."
"There are no Spindrifters left alive."
"I am."
"I very much regretted the operational exercise which the Autarch forced me to perform. Please let me commiserate about the demise of your species."
"Please let me commiserate about the demise of yours," said Polyaggle. She had never felt an emotion like this before—she guessed she must have picked it up from the Humans. It was vengefulness.
"My species is still alive and proliferating," said Kaantalech.
"Not for long." She didn't mean it. There were doubtless good Alhubra and bad Alhubra, just as there had been good Spindrifters and bad Spindrifters.
"I want to speak with your Human commander," said Kaantalech.
"She may not want to speak with you."
"Please ask her," said Kaantalech. "I am prepared to wait." Drool was spilling out of the creature's mouth. Polyaggle, who did not salivate, was revolted.
She lifted her head from the Pocket and addressed Strider. "There is a person here who believes it can do a deal of some kind with you."
"Who is it?" said Strider, who was in the midst of trying to persuade the Images that perhaps they could resuscitate even more of the Main Computer than Polyaggle had been able to do, now that she had carried out the groundwork.
"It is a person from the Autarchy. It claims to have led the expedition that exterminated my species."
"Tell it to fuck off, then."
"It is most insistent. I believe it may have something to offer." Polyaggle hated the words even as she spoke them. Were it not for the brood of new Spindrifters that was already forming within her she would have snapped off communications with the Alhubra-thing. But the Humans had befriended her, and one of them might form the nest for her brood. It was possible that the Alhubra could benefit the Humans, help them survive.
"OK, I'll speak with it," said Strider.
Polyaggle stood aside to let Strider face the communications Pocket. In doing so she inadvertently brushed against Lan Yi, ripping his jumpsuit in several places with her bristles. He made the movement of his mouth which Polyaggle had come to realize was among the Humans a gesture of friendliness. She touched a claw to his hand by way of apology, and he made that same gesture with his mouth again. She found it very difficult to like individual Humans, but this one seemed more amenable than most.
When her brood came to full ripeness, perhaps he would be the one.
#
"I have five hundred and twenty-two ships under my command, and I am prepared to join them to the Helgiolath fleet," said Kaantalech to Strider as soon as she put her face into the communications Pocket.
"I don't think the Helgiolath will want you. You're the shit who destroyed the Spindrifters, aren't you? I thought I'd made my feelings plain enough before."
"I was under orders."
"Whose?"
"The Autarch Nalla's. He made me do it."
"You could have refused."
"If I had I would have been summarily executed."
"So you thought it was worth annihilating an entire species just to save your own life?"
"This is irrelevant," said Kaantalech. "I can add considerable might to your fleet. I can also give much by way of information: I and my puters know more about the Autarchy's military secrets than you will ever learn."
By your friends you are known, thought Strider. "What you're trying to tell me," she said, "is that this could be a mutually profitable relationship?"
"It could indeed. I am as eager to see the end of the Autarchy as you are." Kaantalech made a curious movement of her forelimbs which Strider couldn't interpret. "I wish to see peace and harmony throughout The Wondervale."
SHE'S LYING, said Ten Per Cent Extra Free.
"I knew that already," Strider subvocalized.
"We have a common cause," said Kaantalech.
"No, we don't. If I knew where you were right now I'd hit you with every beam and missile aboard this ship, and after I'd done that I'd get the entire Helgiolath fleet to do the same, and if that weren't enough I would chase you so far and so fast that you fell out of the side of the Universe. Is this clear?"
"We will talk about this again later," Kaantalech said as her face vanished from the communications Pocket.
"Another nuisance commline call," Strider explained sarcastically to O'Sondheim as she backed away from the Pocket. "If only a few of them would start talking obscenely . . ."
#
Strauss-Giolitto woke to find there was a warm body beside her on the bed, and she snuggled affectionately against it. Then she woke again to discover that there wasn't anyone there.
Of all the recurring dreams she had, this was the cruellest.
Loneliness stretched out like a lake of unlit, unruffled water behind her. Ahead of her was the same black, still surface. She could speak openly to Pinocchio and with a certain modified frankness to Lan Yi, but otherwise there was no one on board the Santa Maria whom she could count as a friend. Yes, of course she missed sex, but what she missed far more than that was intimacy—the intimacy of whispering together in the moments before falling asleep, the intimacy of being in someone else's arms and holding them in her own, the intimacy of very slowly and softly licking a kneecap or a navel, the intimacy of waking together and both wanting a pee at the same time but neither of you willing to be the first to get up and go and have it. Masturbation could—and did—regularly relieve the sexual tension, but at the same time it made her all the more lonely.
She reached an arm across her forcefield bed, in the sleepy hope that for once her dream had not deceived her.
No. Still there was no one.
#
Strider and O'Sondheim were planning to pass over control to Leander and Nelson when the instruction from Kortland came through.
"Start with the big ones, eh?" said Strider to no one in particular. Flitting into the base of her Pocket were co-ordinates that she rapidly copied on her keyboard.
"What are we doing?" said Polyaggle.
"We're heading for Qitanefermeartha. The hub of the Autarchy." Strider looked anxiously into her Pocket. She wished she could somehow divert the course of the Santa Maria so that she could take out Kaantalech, but she had no notion where Kaantalech was. In an intellectual way she knew that the Autarchy was committing crimes up to and including genocide all across The Wondervale, but that didn't match the emotions she had felt as she'd seen Spindrift die. Kortland was correct. While the time was right it was best to strike straight for the heart.
From all she had been told by Polyaggle and Segrill, the Autarch's fortress on Qitanefermeartha was impregnable. Assuming one could fight through the battalions of warcruisers there were still the forcefields to deal with. After that came the deadmetal. The alternative was to wipe out bits and pieces of the Autarchy, elsewhere in The Wondervale. Strider suspected this would involve crimes as great as the extermination of the Spindrifters. No, after all, diverting to discover Kaantalech and her fleet was not a good option.
Kaantalech could wait until later.
Strider pressed a final button, and everything in both the view-window and the Pocket changed. The vessels of the fleet were far more tightly bunched together now, so that it was possible to discern a few of the nearer ones as spacecraft rather than as just scintillating, moving pinpoints. In the Pocket itself Strider could see the overall configuration of the armada as it surrounded a small, undistinguished planet of a small, undistinguished star. In both the visual and the graphic displays of the Pocket it looked as if the fleet were forming an unbroken shell around this world, though she realized immediately that this was merely an illusion created by the Pocket's necessity to render eight thousand spacecraft as something larger than motes.
She squinted up at the view-window once again and speculated about which of the dots of the starry sky might be the planet they were surrounding. Somehow she had expected that it would be bright and awesome, as befitted its importance in The Wondervale, but of course she knew that from this distance—they were half a light-hour out—it was possible that Qitanefermeartha was not even directly visible.
The first missile hit the Santa Maria's defensive shields exactly seven minutes and thirty-three seconds afterwards.
#
"I would like to be able to study you. Would this be permitted?" said Lan Yi. There it was. At last he had been able to muster the nerve to put it directly to Polyaggle.
They were seated opposite each other with Lan Yi's chessboard between them. They were playing a variant of the four-handed version, each of them taking two teams; the objective was to obtain a misère, whereby you aimed to force your opponent into taking your pieces until finally only your two kings were left. He and Polyaggle had been contesting the game in various lengthy sessions ever since the Santa Maria had been lifted off F-14. They talked occasionally over the board; more usually they maintained silence, communicating through the moves they made—chess seemed to be not just an international but an inter-species language. The Spindrifter had taken to chess the moment Lan Yi had introduced her to the game, his underlying motive having been to lead up to the question he had just asked. Her only difficulty was in handling the pieces with her talons.
She looked at him blankly. Clearly what he had just said to her had been nothing more than a meaningless string of noise. She said something back to him, giving a little flutter of her wings as she did so. It was his turn to stare at her in incomprehension.
The Images were too busy elsewhere to be able to devote any part of their minds to interpreting between the two chess-players. This hardly ever happened. There must be some emergency brewing.
As there was absolutely nothing he could do about it, Lan Yi forced himself to relax. He shrugged at Polyaggle, returning the flick of the wings she had made towards him.
As he looked into her empty-seeming eyes, Lan Yi was hit yet again by the hugeness of the gulf that existed between them. They were learning the basics of each other's gestures, but there was no question—possibly never could be a question—of their speaking directly to each other. The principles upon which the Spindrifter's language was constructed were entirely different from those that underpinned Argot. The two tongues had been born out of completely dissimilar species experiences and emotional states: although there were many areas of overlap—as evidenced by Polyaggle's seizing upon chess—Spindrifters and humans thought quite unlike each other. Lan Yi was amazed that the Images had been able to create communications between them at all.
That gulf—so vast. Presumably Polyaggle would feel closer to some of the ancient species, but otherwise she must be the loneliest being in all The Wondervale.
Are there degrees, however, of loneliness? thought Lan Yi, still looking into the vacuum of her eyes. Isn't all loneliness the same? Is she any more lonely than . . .?
It came to him that, even more than the tachyonic drive, loneliness was what drove the Santa Maria through space. The ship itself was alone in The Wondervale, carrying as its cargo a few individuals who were in the wrong galaxy and the wrong time, an outcast even when it was acting in conc
ert with other species, as now: only the Images could fully interact with the humans, but they were so different that they could hardly be counted as companions, or friends.
Even among the people aboard the Santa Maria there were great lonelinesses. Strider, forced to keep her emotional distance from her personnel and so able to find intimacy only with a bot. The bot himself, Pinocchio, who could form friendships with human beings—but how deep were those friendships compared with what he might achieve with another bot of his own calibre? Pinocchio, too, was communicating across what was in effect a species gulf. Strauss-Giolitto, whose lesbianism was now not just a suspicion but a certainty in Lan Yi's mind: her loneliness could be no less profound just because it had been self-imposed. O'Sondheim, who seemed on the outside to be so gregarious, yet was lost in a pit of solitude whose cause Lan Yi did not yet understand.
And then there was himself, who could look back over decades of loneliness.
He lowered his eyes and moved a rook.
#
Kortland's faces suddenly appeared in one of the communications Pockets.
Leander sprang to it.
"General announcement to the commanders of all vessels," the Helgiolath said. "There can be no interruption."
Leander beckoned Strider, but Strider was lost in her own Pocket. Nelson, seeing the gesture, pulled at Strider's elbow. She moved rapidly across to join Leander.
"We have taken up formation around Qitanefermeartha, and its automated defenses have been activated. Already we have sustained some casualties. It is vital that all craft maintain their shields at all times until we start to engage directly with the Autarch's warcruisers, which are now moving outward towards us. Do not waste weaponry trying to destroy the automated ballistics: let the Autarchy waste these weapons. There will be fewer of them for us to deal with later."
