The Sentients of Orion

by Marianne de Pierres

  His associate? ‘And who would that be?’ asked Tekton sharply.

  ‘That is all the Commander wishes to say to you.’

  Tekton wanted to spit with rage. Farr was taunting him with obscure hints. ‘Call the taxi now. I wish to leave immediately.’

  The Lamin stood up and pattered towards the exit, where it cracked the door open and peered out. ‘I will inform you when it has arrived.’

  Tekton nodded. He took one last sweep of the room, compartmentalising his anger so he could observe through dispassionate eyes. His gaze lingered on the shrine. What in Sole’s name was significant about a black box? Was it a projector, perhaps? Or a Babushka? Or even a compression chamber of sorts?

  ‘Lamin?’ he said imperiously. ‘How do you activate the shrine?’

  The Lamin hesitated. ‘Commander Farr says that with your intellect you should be able to work that out.’

  Tekton wanted to gnash his teeth with frustration. So that’s what this was, a game of superior intellect. Tekton hated to lose at anything; a family trait that his cousin Ra had taken to the worst of extremes. It seemed that Commander Farr enjoyed the same competitive attribute. His free-mind took a moment to consider Ra and Commander Farr. Their collective competitive natures gave Tekton a shiver.

  Concentrate! barked logic-mind.

  Tekton tried to broaden his perception of the box in relation to the figurines. It bore no comparison to the organics, but it was not unlike the Rainbow Orbital, which grew and faded over the top of its projector casing.

  If the black box was also a projector of sorts, then it would likely need aural or kinaesthetic activation.

  Aural, said logic-mind.

  Tekton thought back over his most recent conversation with the Commander. Farr had emphasised several things. If he had more time, he could ask his moud to replay the entire conversation, but as it was...

  ‘Visiting Lostol, your taxi is here.’

  ‘Tell it to wait a moment.’

  ‘Detrivores are very active at present. The taxi will not be able to stay grounded for too long.’

  ‘Just a few damn minutes,’ snapped Tekton. Moud, search my last conversation with Commander Farr. Replay any verbal emphasis.

  Yes, Godhead.

  Tekton listened intently then chose one word of the twenty search items. ‘Shame.’

  The black box remained inanimate.

  ‘Visiting Lostol, the taxi has detected a circling detrivore. It must leave.’

  ‘Why? There’s no driver, is there?’

  ‘Taxis’ have a proximity detector. Detrivores have been known to try and eat them. It is very costly.’

  ‘Costly!’ snapped Tekton. He walked quickly towards the door, listening as his moud repeated the list of Farr’s emphasised words. When he peered out, the taxi was beginning to lift.

  ‘Stop it!’ he roared.

  ‘I will try,’ sniffed the Lamin. ‘It is centrally programmed.’

  A word from the moud’s list jumped out at him, as Tekton gave one last glance into the chapel.

  Balance. It seemed right, somehow. ‘Balance!’ he shouted.

  Across the room in the shrine, an image sprang alive inside the box, in what he’d thought to be a solid interior. From where he stood it looked like a swirl of colour—nothing more.

  Capture that image, he ordered his moud.

  Yes, Godhead. It is captured.

  Tekton turned and ran the short distance across the platform to the taxi. He flung himself inside, banging his leg against the edge of the door. It tore a gash in his thin skin. Blood streamed from the wound as the taxi lifted and pitched wildly into the abyss.

  Tekton seized the handgrips and clung to them, unable to secure his seat belt while the taxi rolled and dived. The proximity alarm began to blare. Then a detrivore crashed into the taxi’s underbelly. Tekton felt the shudder up through his feet; saw the dent appear like the hump from a small earthquake.

  ‘Lift,’ Tekton shouted at the automon.

  But the detrivore buffeted the taxi again, this time from the side. A web of cracks appeared in the shatterproof window. The vehicle swayed from side to side of the abyss. Tekton glimpsed struts and pylons and girders dangerously close.

  ‘Farr!’ Tekton screamed. ‘Lasper Farr!’

  But Lasper Farr did not appear to allay his terror.

  His minds split apart under the pressure, leaving nothing to bridge the gap between them.

  Free-mind was caught in the grip of bowel-evacuating fear.

  But logic-mind was still making decisions. Moud, imprint the image from the shrine on my cerebral cortex.

  May I enquire as to why you require a hard download, Godhead? the moud asked. My function and archives are entirely transferable to your next moud.

  Do it, growled logic-mind.

  A second detrivore had joined the first, ramming the small fibreplas bump under the nose of the vehicle that housed the navigation controls. The taxi began to spiral down.

  Free-mind’s screaming intensified.

  Logic-mind held back from chiding it about a sense of dignity or courage, and settled in to observe the changes in Tekton’s metabolism. Even akula had not brought such heightened responses. It also diverted some processing time to inspect the downloaded image from the shrine.

  Tekton was too paralysed by free-mind to instruct the moud to identify it, so logic-mind referred to Tekton’s own memory banks for a clue.

  Of course, logic-mind said, after a time.

  Of course fucking what? bellowed free-mind. I’m about to die.

  Its a representation of a strange attractor. A Lorenz strange attractor, to be exact.

  Exact? Exact? You’re insane. Can’t you see what’s happening? free-mind shrieked back.

  Why would Farr worship a strange attractor? logic-mind pondered. Is Farr’s god an ancient theory on the behaviour of dynamical systems? And if so, in what current context is that significant?

  Tekton’s moud-bolstered data recall was not sufficient for logic-mind to research anything. And frankly, free-mind was making it difficult to get sufficient blood to required areas.

  The taxi was surrounded. The detrivores had stopped buffeting it and had latched on to different parts, spraying it with their metal-dissolving saliva as they prepared to feast.

  Tekton, sobbing now, regained some thought control and tried to employ logic-mind to find a solution to his impending death. But it remained stubbornly resistant and preoccupied.

  Chaos theory. Prediction. Prediction. Balance. Logic-mind reflected on a range of concepts. Balance, Farr had emphasised. Balance had unlocked his shrine. Balance.

  Then it became quite excited. Farr must have some device for prediction that could help him keep the balance. It was the only explanation.

  Got it! logic-mind announced.

  Too frigging late, free-mind whispered.

  Tekton heard a hissing noise like hot metal plunged into water and a cold shaft of wind blew straight up between his legs.

  He glanced down. The slick, insectile head of a detrivore poked up through a melted gap in the floor. He screamed and kicked at it, but the detrivore’s carapace snagged into the sole of his shoe and tore it from the upper. Another shaft of wind. Its wings unfolded through the crack.

  Jump, ordered logic-mind.

  What in—? But free-mind didn’t get to finish.

  Jump! logic-mind insisted.

  Then the floor gave way, and he and the detrivore fell free from each other.

  JO-JO RASTEROVICH

  Jo-Jo was alive. Conscious. That much he knew.

  That was all he knew. Other than that his head felt weird; full of a kind of buzzing that wasn’t painful yet but might be, like the beginning of a narc hangover right before you got the headache.

  He tried shifting his limbs.

  He felt unconstrained, sort of... but he had no sense of movement. Or vision. His eyes were open, he thought, but he saw nothing.

  Smell? No. Crap. W
hat? He remembered that he’d run for the egress scale and the floor had trapped him like an insect fallen in something sticky. Then nothing...

  A flash of fear informed him that his brain chemistry remained the same. He wondered if he was in the floor of the chamber, subsumed into the Extro the same way the grenade had been.

  The idea of it made him want to puke, if only he knew where his mouth was. He tried licking his lips but sensation eluded him.

  The sense-deprivation caused his mind to fracture: one thought stream devoted solely to worrying while another began reasoning furiously.

  The-Extro-had-formed-out-of-the-chamber-wall-So- if-I’ve-been-eaten-by-the-same-chamber-then-it’s- likely-that-it’s-a-part-of-something-larger-Maybe-the-whole-damn-drum-is-an-extro-the-size-of-a-space-station-How-fucking-scary-is-that-But-does-that-mean- a-single-consciousness?-or-many?-or-something-else—

  The frantic thoughts were interrupted by the intrusion of a loud buzzing in his head. It sounded like an appliance about to run out of energy, a noisy, dysfunctional sound designed to grab the consumer’s attention.

  You’ve-got-mine, he told the buzzing. Fuck-all-else-to- do-when-you-can’t-even-feel-your-dick.

  A mournful thought, that one.

  He grappled to mend the split in his conscious thought by pooling all his concentration towards the sound. It seemed to get louder as he gave it his full attention. After a time—who knows how long really, maybe no time?—the buzz turned into a wider sound. Now it was more like the random intonations of someone jackassing with their voice through an amplifier.

  Moooooawwwwwoooooooaaaaa

  The jackassing was worse than the buzz and Jo-Jo listened harder, hoping that it might transform again.

  The next change came without warning: a sudden plunge from amplified wail into the clamour of voices, thousands, millions of them. He wanted to clamp his hands to his ears—if he could find his ears.

  Shut up, he mind-screamed.

  Obligingly, the voices vanished but the buzz came back, louder now, as if he’d somehow sensitised to it. He tried to think over the top of the noise but the sound seemed to have seeped into his mind and taken precedence over anything else.

  The buzz and his mind. In his mind.

  He tried sleeping but his conscious state wouldn’t alter. A pressure began to build around his thoughts. The buzz would send him crazy soon.

  Again he tried moving his limbs. Nothing. Just the frustration of sensing—hoping—that his body was intact, but no longer his to govern.

  His mind sped off again. The-Extro-thing-I’m-stuck- in-must-be-messing-with-my-brain-chemistry-So-why- hasn’t-it-suppressed-my-frigging-hearing-too?-This-is-frigging-torture-what-else-could-it-be-for?-Think-Think-Think-unless-the-buzz-is-the-way-in-Shut-the- fuck-up.

  But the buzz got louder.

  What-do-I-mean-the-way-in?-Maybe-the-buzz-is-a-data-flow?-The-Extro-is-the-data-flow-of-sound-But-I- thought-the-Extro-was-a-drum?-I-don’t-fucking-know- Fuck.

  Jo-Jo gathered together the pieces of his rapidly dispersing sanity and gave it a go anyway, concentrating on the irritating noise until it broadened and became the jackass sound again.

  It slipped from the jackass sound to a clamour of voices more quickly this time; though he had no measure to be sure of that, just an innate sense of time passing. He let his mind adjust to the voice-roar and listened as, occasionally, one voice rose above the rest.

  After listening for a while, he caught one of the raised voices and tried to follow the sound back down into the flow. It slipped away from his auditory grasp almost immediately, but he became determined not to give up. Each time the voice peaked he grabbed for it.

  Slowly, he began to feel its sense of individuality, timbre and pitch—as if he knew it.

  Eventually it pulled away from him, but he floated back to the clamour and waited patiently for it to return.

  When it rose from the flow, he was able to attune to it quickly, and the individual voice grew solid. This time his grasp felt sure, and it dragged him through a series of dips and peaks of sound that were speechlike, but not.

  Eventually the rise-and-fall nature of it began to smooth and without warning it became a voice that he could clearly comprehend.

  ‘For fuck’s sakes, you fucking freaks!’ shouted the voice. ‘Somebody speak to me!’

  Rast Randall, sounding thoroughly rattled. It comforted Jo-Jo to know that the woman felt fear.

  ‘Randall?’ He wasn’t sure if his lips formed the words or if it was a thought. ‘Randall, it’s Josef.’

  ‘Rasterovich? Where in fuck’s name are you?’

  ‘I don’t know. Tell me what happened to you.’

  ‘You made a run for the ‘zoon and fell. Then I feel like I’m sinking into the floor. That’s it. Next thing I know I’m awake in some kind of suspension. Can’t feel any-fucking-thing. Don’t even know if I need to piss.’

  ‘I’ve gotta theory.’

  ‘Shoot me with it.’

  ‘I think we’re inside the Extro. You saw it suck up the grenade. I think it did the same to us.’

  ‘You saying we’re its lunch?’

  ‘Shit, I dunno. Y’hear the buzz?’

  ‘Yeah it’s all I could fucking hear. Till you dropped in.’

  ‘I concentrated on the buzz real hard. For a long time. It started to change. Became more like a crowd. Just a big, big bunch of screaming voices. Nothin’ I could understand.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘The sound was worse than the buzz but I kept listenin’. After a while I heard some voices above the rest. Kept trying to follow them. Ended up latching onto yours.’

  Randall went quiet.

  ‘Still there, Randall?’

  ‘You telling me we’re in some kinda sound machine? And somehow you found me over all those voices screaming?’

  ‘Maybe you were bellowing louder than the rest of them. You gotta better theory?’ Jo-Jo wanted to rub his forehead. In fact, he would have given away a body part just to feel again.

  That was, if he still had body parts to give. What if his flesh didn’t exist any more? What if all that was left of his consciousness was this voice and these thoughts? Maybe the Extro had ‘evolved’ them.

  Rast must have been thinking something similar. She began to curse and didn’t stop.

  ‘Shut it, would you?’ said Jo-Jo eventually.

  ‘If I can swear, I know I’m alive,’ she spat back at him.

  ‘Yeah, well, I wouldn’t be counting on that. Could be you’re just a bad-mouthed bunch of neurons running around on a wave frequency.’

  ‘That doesn’t make sense.’ She quietened, though. And then she laughed.

  The sound made Jo-Jo feel a little better. One thing Randall could always do was laugh.

  ‘So what’s your idea? This “acoustic” connection of ours mightn’t last,’ she said.

  He told her in more detail how he’d pursued the frequency of her voice. ‘Maybe we can do that for the others. Or at least learn somethin’ about this place.’

  ‘That means you have to break contact with me?’

  He thought about it. ‘I guess so. I can’t see how to avoid that.’

  ‘That might be the end of it. You might not get it back.’

  She sounded frightened. Rast didn’t frighten easily. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘So maybe there are a few things that need to be said. In case... in case one of us finds a way out and the other doesn’t.’

  The silence went on so long this time that he thought he’d lost his hold on her voice.

  ‘Deal,’ she said, finally.

  ‘Some truths, Randall. Not some cocky bullshit.’

  ‘Practise what you preach.’

  ‘I will. Now who do you think your ex-Capo Jancz was working for on Araldis?’

  ‘Josef?’

  He heard the softening in her tone. ‘What?’

  ‘You think just anyone can hear us?’

  ‘Maybe. We got nothin’ to lose th
ough. I mean I don’t even know it’s you I’m talking to. Could be I’m just having a conflab with my imagination.’

  Another short laugh. ‘You do a good imitation of me then. Anyway, my thinking is that it’s the Extros that wanted the quixite. They’re the only ones with enough need to pull that kind of stunt. Figures that Jancz is working for them. He had as much contact with them in the war as I did. Mebbe more.’

  ‘But why do it that way? Why send a bunch of primitive brain-suckers in to fuck the place over?’

  ‘I been chewing that one around for a while. I’m thinking there’s got to be more to it than just the quixite. Or mebbe they need the Saqr on the planet for some reason. Fedor might have an idea.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ Jo-Jo felt raw at the mention of her.

  ‘She says she studied alien genera at her studium. She also knows the planet better’n us.’

  ‘You think maybe the ‘zoon’s found her?’

  ‘Sure left in a hurry. Now, I got a question for you. You said Farr had a DSD. What in Crux is that?’

  ‘You heard of Chaos Theory?’

  ‘Sure, some old conflab to explain something that doesn’t need explainin’.’

  ‘Yeah. Whatever. Like I said, he’s feeding the DSD with shitloads of info. The process lets him analyse stuff that’s going to happen.’

  ‘So what? He’s trying to predict the future?’

  ‘Nah. More than that, I think. He’s trying to change it.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Rast demanded. ‘You sound as crazy as him.’

  If Jo-Jo could have felt his eyelids he knew that they’d be closed in concentration. ‘I don’t know exactly. I’ve heard it talked about over the years—creating an informed system that can predict all the flow-on effects of behaviour so quickly that you can alter things before they happen. Take a diverging route.’

  ‘Impossible.’

  ‘Should be. Yeah. Until Sole came along. Mostly folk have fantasised about time travel to do such a thing—alter futures, I mean.

  Not necessary if you have a Bifurcation Device.’

  ‘So what’s this device look like, then? A machine? An organism? Not sure that I’m getting you.’

  ‘I don’t know. I saw it work in virtual. It could be anything.’