What the Thunder Said

by Walter Blaire

  She didn’t have much to pack in the lab. She opened the network and dumped her entire research archive onto her computer tablet, then hung up her white coat. Jephia knew not to ask what was going on, and Caulie could not have answered her anyway.

  When she was done, Caulie hesitated. She turned to her friend. “Will you feed my nervous systems?”

  Jephia darted a look at Luscetian, who was watching from the doorway. “Typical girl talk,” she said wryly.

  “I mean—” Caulie started, and then grasped Jephia in a hug that surprised them both. Jephia felt small in her arms, like something brittle and delicate. There was nothing of the solidity she’d expected from her fierce friend.

  “I’ll see you when I see you,” Caulie said, quickly letting go. She was astonished when Jephia clutched her arms and pulled her back.

  “I want you to be careful,” Jephia whispered. “This is not your world.”

  “Obviously,” Caulie said. “I’ve never even seen the front.”

  “I don’t mean the front, I mean the whole world.” Jephia drew back far enough to catch Caulie’s eyes, but still didn’t release her. “Just listen to me: don’t ask questions for once, little Caulie. The people who picked you for this assignment, and the ones who will read your reports . . . you must imagine them as—oh, I don’t know—as a great machine hunched in the basement, covered in shadows. The great machine only exists to feed itself, and it doesn’t care who you are. Caulie, it doesn’t care about your research, or how you make jokes when you’re flustered, or your appalling social skills. All the parts of the machine might be individually nice; they might even be handsome young officers from the front. But never forget it’s a machine, and the machine is fundamentally broken.”

  Caulie extricated herself, jarred by Jephia’s intensity, and glanced at Luscetian. He was eavesdropping shamelessly, which made her even more self-conscious.

  “Call me if you can,” Jephia added, her normal tone restored. “I’m your dear friend.”

  Caulie joined Luscetian at the door. Jephia was still staring at her. She looked thoughtful more than anything else.

  “Where to now?” Caulie asked.

  Luscetian grinned. “Why, to the great machine in the basement, of course.”

  * * *

  Luscetian led her directly through the basement to the loading bay for large deliveries. He seemed expectant so she glanced around the wide, empty hall. There it was: just in front of two sliding doors that led into the underground causeways hunched a great machine, swathed in shadows.

  It was indistinct at first, a hulk of vague shapes, but very different from the boxy delivery vehicles that supplied the campus buildings. To Caulie, it was like opening a closet door and revealing a wild animal crouched in the corner. She fought down a surge of disquiet. “You cloak and dagger people are very literal, aren’t you?”

  “Or maybe your friend hits too close to the mark.” Luscetian led her forward. “Meet the panther.”

  The panther looked like nothing so much as a pile of junk, a salad of boilers, pipes, flanges, and exposed gearing. Its four legs were folded beneath, giving it the look of a sphinx, and they appeared to be built from repurposed architectural girder. No two pieces of metal on the thing were alike. Though it was named for a home world predator and looked like one, in its details it had been constructed without any concept of symmetry or aesthetics. Its metal surface was pitted and scarred, a gunmetal patina that revealed a lifetime of exposure to the elements. In all, it was something from a storybook, or from the histories of the steam war back on Hapha. It even had two brass lanterns where its eyes would be. They glowed a faint red.

  “Hi, panther,” she said.

  The machine shifted minutely.

  “I regard you,” it said.

  Caulie screamed and jumped back. Luscetian barely managed to keep her from falling.

  “It talks! Is it alive?”

  “Don’t be silly,” Luscetian said. “It’s a simple courier vehicle.”

  “I feel like I’m alive,” the machine said. Its voice emerged from somewhere on its confusing body, though it didn’t have a mouth or a speaker that Caulie could see. The words were gravelly and distinctly nonhuman, more like the cough of a jungle cat.

  “Only because someone told you to feel that, panther,” Luscetian said. “Please engage your ambient context awareness so you don’t intrude in conversations that are not yours.”

  The machine hesitated a moment. Then: “May I join your conversation?”

  “No. Acknowledge the earlier request.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  Caulie gathered herself as they talked. By the time the machine went silent again, she was down to quiet astonishment. “What the hell is it?”

  “It’s a courier vehicle,” Luscetian repeated. “Merely . . . updated somewhat. It carries messages along the eternal front. Don’t mind its backtalk, it learned some bad habits from its prior owner.”

  He guided her closer with a hand on her shoulder. It felt a little like he was pushing her. As they approached, the front of the beast hinged open like a gigantic mouth, splitting its body in two. It revealed not teeth but a cramped cockpit that looked as heavily used as the rest of it.

  “This isn’t Haphan technology,” Caulie blurted. Even though the interior had been updated with low-tech additions, its lines and the general shape were clearly not military, nor even a consumer design. The angles and placements—including what appeared to be a cable conduit running directly across the pilot’s seat—were simply too odd.

  “Alien manufacture,” Luscetian said. “One of the fleet of military vehicles that came with us from the home world. Very rare, and we aren’t getting more anytime soon, so please treat it gently. And don’t teach it any more bad manners.”

  Now Caulie felt something approaching awe. This thing had come down on Landing Day, on the ark-ships. Such devices could never be replaced, and they usually couldn’t even be repaired—the factories had long ago been retooled for the eternal front. Even worse, the technical and scientific expertise had been lost as generations of potential experts trained for war instead. This machine, this panther as Luscetian called it, was the rarest artifact Caulie had ever seen, museum holdings included.

  “Would I know which alien race?” she asked. “One of the regular ones?”

  “Yes, the high spetsa—but not the high spetsa we have in the enclaves on Grigory IV. Our high spetsa are marooned and forgotten, a little like we are.” A narrow grin. “No, I think these were arms dealers, stopping off on Hapha just before the convoy launched. Keep this in mind because the panther can be strange at times. It was never updated for normative human physiology. Or psychology.”

  “You will please enter,” the panther said. “It is unwise to leave my cockpit open. Where are your dorsal legs?”

  “Case in point.” Luscetian turned to the machine. “This is a young Haphan female human, panther. She’s the one I told you about. She only has four legs. Erm, limbs.”

  “I apologize if that is a delicate subject,” the panther said. “You are very brave.”

  “Thank you?” Caulie edged forward under Luscetian’s prodding. “I have adjusted to life with only two legs.”

  Luscetian smirked. Then, when Caulie barked her shin against the panther’s jaw, he smiled outright, which transformed him into someone much younger than she’d originally thought. “Some adjustment,” he said.

  Leaning into the cockpit, he guided her past the illogically distributed panels, display overlays, and piping. Yes, she thought as she tried in vain to get comfortable in the seat, this thing is clearly not for humans.

  The panther began to close the cockpit, but Luscetian stopped it with a hand on its lip. Rather than climbing in himself, he said, “The panther knows where to go and how to get there. You will meet your Tachba liaison when you arrive at the eternal front. Ed-homse command will know what to do with you.”

  Caulie went stiff. “I’m going alo
ne?”

  “Didn’t I mention that? There is only one seat.” Luscetian sighed. “Dr. Alexandrian. Caulie. I regret you have to do this and I know it’s abrupt, but there’s no room for me and I can’t return to the front anyway. I have duties here in the capitol.”

  “I . . .” She struggled to think. The only thing that might worry her more than being locked in a tiny cabin with a strange person was being locked in alone. It was as if the universe wanted her to hyperventilate. And then: going to the eternal front by herself? Where she would be away from her lab, away from people who knew what to expect from her, away from the tiny life over which she sometimes felt control?

  She realized that Luscetian was still speaking. “If you want my advice, do not leave the panther until you arrive at the front. There are things in this world . . . well, you know about those things. When you leave the city, everything will feel slightly different. Once you leave Haphan territory and enter the autonomous Tachba provinces though, all bets are off.”

  He paused, which would normally be Caulie’s cue to formulate a reply. It was challenging enough in daily life, but now she was mired in a nightmare. “So,” she said finally, “it is dangerous?”

  Classic.

  “Yes, dangerous is a good word for it,” he said wryly. “Stay close to your panther. It can defend you but it’s not perfect. Need I say it? This machine is classified. The Tachba can’t know its capabilities; that it can talk, that it can fight, that it’s an alien device, that it’s more than a pile of replacement parts. No matter how valuable you are personally, Caulie, a machine like this will always be more valuable. These are our last resort if the eternal front fails. It won’t go well for you with the Gray House if you blow the secret.”

  He waited long enough for Caulie to catch up. “A woman wonders how it ‘won’t go well’ for her.”

  “Then let me explain.” He leaned closer. “You and your remaining family will be torn down. Doors will close in your faces. Your names will be synonymous with incompetence, rudeness, and failure. Eventually, you will meet with an accident, which most of the world won’t notice. Any friends you still have will sigh with relief that your suffering is over.”

  There. That was precisely what she’d expected from the secret police, framed precisely around what had befallen her parents. Caulie sat quietly, shivering in air that suddenly felt cold.

  “At least,” Luscetian added, “that’s how it went for my family. My parents were part of the same . . . incident as yours.”

  “Luscetian.” Caulie studied the man. “I don’t know that name.”

  “Then someone has done their job properly.” He smiled thinly. “We outcasts need to look out for each other. A young doctor may welcome some advice?”

  “She would.”

  “Your tablet won’t be able to connect directly to Falling Mountain, but the panther has military-grade communications. Be careful what you say to your ‘friend,’ Lady Tawarna. She may talk like a trench fighter but she’s the first female heir of the Duke of Falling Mountain, and her interests are not your interests. You don’t know her world, or what she needs from you.”

  “She said the same thing herself just now about you,” Caulie said. “If I heeded half the advice I got, I’d never leave my apartment.”

  “Well, it’s too late now.”

  “I wish I hadn’t left my apartment this morning.”

  “It wouldn’t have helped,” he said. “I stopped there first.”

  She studied him. If Luscetian had engineered this moment to exploit their common backgrounds, he didn’t capitalize on it. He could have met her eyes and made it very difficult for her to be suspicious of him. Instead, he lingered upon the scratched and skid-marked floor of the loading bay and waited the moment out. His posture, the direction of his gaze . . . perhaps another person might have intuited the truth from his calm disquiet, but Caulie had never had that knack with people and could only regard him like the behaviorist researcher she was—from a remove. He’s holding something back, she decided, as his eyes refused hers. He’s hiding something. Her stomach tightened. She needed Jephia to help her understand this, all of this. But she was alone now, wasn’t she?

  It was a relief when the panther interrupted her thoughts. “Effendi, you are fraught with rage and fear?”

  She turned to the cockpit, glancing around. “I beg your pardon?”

  “It does this sometimes,” Luscetian said. “Just ride it out.”

  The panther continued. “A temperature drop in your ablative surface and an increase of adrenaline. You are gathering your urine into reserve bladders and preparing to fight.”

  “Wrong species, panther,” Luscetian said.

  “I have receptors in the cockpit seat, effendi, calibrated for your brain waves. You are transparent to me.”

  Caulie looked for something toward which she could direct her speech. “I don’t think with my ass, I hope.”

  “The human male is making you feel threatened,” the panther assessed. “Shall I kill it?”

  “Tell it no,” Luscetian said immediately.

  “Gods, no, panther,” Caulie said. “Do not kill the threatening male.”

  Luscetian nodded his thanks. “This thing can be very literal, or not, depending on different factors. Time of day, phase of the moon, whether you’ve eaten recently. If you were as variable as a high spetsa protean sophont, I’m sure the panther would sound perfectly reasonable.” Luscetian grinned. “I never got used to it myself.”

  “This is your machine?”

  “Not anymore.” He patted it again. “It may have learned a few bad habits from me. Don’t judge it harshly, just enjoy the ride. Listen when it says you’re in danger.”

  “How do I—”

  But the panther’s jaws were already moving. The gears in the jaw rasped against each other, mismatched. Caulie thought it sounded like snapping bones.

  “Safe journeys, Caulie.”

  Chapter 4

  “We now move, effendi.”

  The cabin rocked as the panther rose from its crouch. The cockpit was blind, lit only by banks of oddly positioned screens, some of which showed the view outside. The screen for what she assumed was the panther’s forward view showed the lieutenant backing away, his fingers trailing on the panther’s chassis.

  The machine turned, and Caulie rocked as if she was riding something alive. Her cockpit was nestled between where the shoulder haunches would be on an actual predatory cat, and each of the beast’s steps was a smooth lateral surge. For all the machine’s clumsy augmentation, its movements were fluid and sure. Not even a century and a half on Grigory IV and a ton of scrap metal could obscure the vehicle’s quality and masterful design. Still, she rattled around like a loose bean in a can.

  When the panther turned again and Caulie bumped her head, she said, “Am I supposed to be restrained somehow?”

  “Swaddling,” the voice intoned. A random edge of metal blinked in front of her. She poked, tugged, and twisted it to no effect. When she stroked it, netting emerged from the chair base and enclosed her body, binding her to the seat.

  “A little loose,” she commented.

  It tightened. The panther said, “I will compensate for your arrangement of limbs.”

  “You and me both.”

  She stared at the screens as the panther arrived at the doors of the building’s loading bay. Caulie heard a brief, high-pitched drone and the doors rolled aside.

  Caulie had a brief impression of whizzing traffic before the panther leapt forward. She was pressed back into the seat—the panther’s velocity was so sudden and smothering that her vision filled with stars.

  When she blinked them away, Caulie saw they were in the underground causeways that connected the buildings of the university to the rest of the city. At one time the causeways had been hallways in the ark ships that had brought them from the home world. A month after the ships had settled on Grigory’s surface, after the cauterized landscape had finally cooled,
they’d begun their slow transition.

  The ark ship of the capitol city towered so high that that local Tachba had called it Falling Mountain, and the name stuck even after the mountain disappeared. The ship had uncoupled itself, opening like a huge flower, with the packed living quarters of each flower petal splitting along preordained lines into discrete buildings. The true magic occurred on the nano-scale, however. As the undersides of the ship’s petals dissolved, old hallways sank into the ground, expanded, and grew rigid. Even the scuffed floor of the loading bay Caulie had just left, as mundane as it now appeared, had once been a slow-boiling soup of nano machines.

  A hundred and fifty years on, all the nano was inert, dead. If she believed the history books, the material had also decoded itself and was now precisely what it looked like—concrete, metal, plastic, conduit, foam. On the one hand, it was nice to know the substances wouldn’t change again, but on the other, Caulie couldn’t really believe they had ever been so mutable. To her, the city had always existed in its entirety, and to think of it blossoming on Landing Day was like something from a fairy tale. And on the third hand, there was no more of that home world “magic” available on Grigory IV: the colony was on its own and Hapha was generations away.

  The surface city, where Caulie lived and worked, was stone-age in comparison to these brutally automated tunnels. The underground causeways were for robots only, and filled with vehicles of every description—home world, landing-day, post-landing—easily distinguished by their relative speed and confidence in the swarm. They jostled for positions at high speeds on three lanes in two directions. The middle lane was as full as the others, though it seemed to be for brief use by both sides, for overtaking other vehicles in a snap with inches to spare from oncoming traffic. The only vehicle racing along on legs was Caulie’s panther.

  To make things worse, the tunnel was not lit. The screens in the cockpit had shifted to the scratchy purple-tinged view of thermal vision.

  “You are feeling vengeful, effendi,” the panther observed.