Exodus

by Alex Lamb

  [You know what I think?] said her shadow slyly. [I think Ira would be proud of you right now. You’re actually living.]

  Ann snorted. [Who cares what Ira thinks?]

  [You do. You can’t lie to me, remember?]

  [I assure you,] she insisted, [I don’t need a reminder about that fossil’s lecturing.]

  [Fossil?] her shadow exclaimed. [Don’t make me laugh. You admire him. Or you did, back when you used to let yourself think that way.]

  Ann refused to be baited. It would only lessen her satisfaction in the moment. And her joy was worth savouring. With a little luck, this would be their ticket to peace. She’d take it back to the Dantes, turn them around, and then, maybe, win the war.

  8.4: IRA

  Ira’s simulant stepped through the pressure lock and into the alien habitat. With his shadow running interference, the sensation of being there was almost perfect. Part of him wished it wasn’t. He could hear his breath in the simulant’s helmet and feel his hands rubbing against the gloves. As he moved into the darkness beyond the circular doorway, it felt like walking through a wardrobe into a sort of bleak, extraterrestrial Narnia.

  The insectile scoutbot leading the way activated its floodlight and suddenly Ira could see properly. Behind the obstructing lens of the door lay a near-spherical room the size of a modest canteen. The walls were covered with some kind of stippled plastic, decorated with a brown-on-brown marbled pattern. Thoroughly normal-looking racks on either side of them contained equipment and vac-suit parts. The suits themselves were rather more exotic. They had the same lumpen, ape-like profile he’d seen before, with the same curiously enlarged dome-helmets.

  The door lens was supported on an elegantly designed – but perfectly mundane – track system. But for the foreign details, the space felt surprisingly anticlimactic. The room’s most enigmatic feature was another circular opening on the far side that led into the lightless interior of the bubble-pyramid.

  ‘Let’s stay careful,’ he told Clath. ‘Alien technology has a habit of being unpredictable.’

  Through her helmet, he could see the generic female features of her simulant. She nodded in response.

  ‘No assumptions,’ she said, and set the small fleet of robots they’d brought with them bouncing across the room. Behind them, a waldobot was establishing the first of their line-of-sight relays – the tether optically linking them to the shuttle.

  ‘I’m seeing lead deposits on these surfaces,’ said Clath as she scanned the robots’ reports. ‘Very fine ones. You know what that means, don’t you?’

  ‘No idea,’ said Ira.

  ‘This is what you see after a habitat suicides with radon. It’s a simple technique for keeping Photes out – they used it at New Angeles when the Hope Brigade made their last stand. You pump the gas in with your air. Nobody notices until they can’t breathe. It’s a relatively painless way to go and it leaves a radioactive mess that the Photes can’t clean up. This atmosphere must be what’s left of a toxic noble mix.’

  ‘Then we know almost everything already,’ said Ira bitterly. ‘How did they die? They killed themselves. Why? Because they knew the Photes were coming, just like the Hope Brigade did. Which is why we saw harvester ships outside. And how did they get into this mess? That one’s not hard, either: they messed with a Phote world, just like we did. Hence the biosphere we found. Case closed.’ He shook his head in disgust.

  Clath nodded. ‘Looks that way. And from the condition of the atmosphere and these deposits, I’d guess it happened a while back – at least one-point-two million years. Some of these plastics are showing decay that must have taken for ever under these conditions. This climate is designed to keep things stable. I suspect this place was even carefully chilled. It’s like atmospheric embalming.’

  ‘They made a memorial to themselves,’ said Ira.

  While Clath studied the room, he followed the lighting-bot into the shadowed gloom of the next chamber. As he did so, lamps flashed into life overhead. Ira reflexively covered his eyes with his glove, momentarily blinded by the glare.

  ‘Clath, stay back!’ he warned. But as more and more illumination flickered into life, he realised that he’d done little more than trigger a motion detector. ‘Apparently we have circuits in here that are still working,’ he added.

  ‘Clearly,’ Clath remarked. ‘Not surprising, though. This place was designed for stability and it was nearly perfectly protected. Plus they have ideal materials for controlled solar collection, so there’s no reason why that stuff shouldn’t be operational.’

  ‘If there are defences, that’s going to be an issue,’ Ira pointed out.

  As he lowered his hand, he found himself standing at the edge of a huge enclosure that filled the building’s interior. It looked, if anything, like a park in winter. Nothing fired at him. Nothing even moved. A frozen lake stretched before him from which lonely clusters of slender artificial trees arose. They were huge, their tips almost reaching the silvered, bubbled ceiling about eighty metres up. In their branches nestled clusters of polygons made of carved wooden panels, connected by elegant spiralling ramps and complex ladders.

  ‘Holy shit,’ said Clath, stepping in behind him. ‘Buckminster Fuller tree houses.’

  Ira walked forwards to where the plastic pavement ended and the ice began. He tested it with his foot. It was entirely solid. The path they were standing on led around the edge of the lake. Ira waited for the line-of-sight relays to establish a stable link and then set off, accompanied by their small fleet of robots. He primed their defensive systems, just in case.

  As it was, nothing disturbed them as they wandered the frozen estate. The place was beautiful even in death. The Fecund had been a cruel, pragmatic species, he recalled. They exploited everything they came upon. These people, though, whoever they were, had been artists in a very human sense.

  Ira paused by a polygonal hut situated at the edge of the lake. Cut from something like burled walnut, complex mandala patterns had been carved into the panels and inlaid with silver. Situated on either side of the wide, low doorway were stalks of a metallic substance with integrated displays that came to swirling, incomprehensible life as he approached. The whole thing felt like a gallery exhibit.

  ‘They had all this science but they used wood for building?’ said Clath. ‘There’s a weird mix of high and low tech in use here.’

  ‘That’s not weird,’ said Ira. ‘It’s taste. These people liked a nice environment. They made aesthetic choices.’

  Nothing about the environment looked quite right to human eyes – everything struck Ira as being either too squat or too tall – yet it still managed to be attractive. Ira glanced around at the stately lines he saw everywhere and couldn’t fight the sense that in some odd way, these people had been better than humans. Classier, somehow.

  The whole place was a study in whites, blacks and muted shades of brown. Was that a deliberate style choice, or had the inhabitants simply seen differently? Maybe, before they’d died, this place had been a riot of colour.

  ‘Look,’ said Clath, pointing to a raised platform ahead of them. Draped onto the ramp that led up to it was something that might have been an arm.

  Ira walked closer. Clath followed. At the top of the ramp lay an open, paved area with views out over the lake. Limp brown banners hung from a fountain-like structure at the centre. And all around them were bodies. Lots of bodies. Most of them were holding hands.

  Physically, the aliens roughly resembled apes, as Ira had expected, but there the resemblance ended. These creatures were exoskeletal. Leathery plates the colour of mahogany and studded with coarse hairs covered their bodies. They looked like coconut crabs that had grown too big and taken on airs. But even that strangeness paled in comparison to their heads.

  The aliens had curious, caved-in skulls with things like armoured aphids nestled where their brains should have been. Here and there, the aphid things had come loose and lay detached on the floor, curled in on themselves. Complex p
ads on their abdomens were covered with millions of tiny cilia.

  Ira wondered how the relationship worked. Was this mutualism or parasitism? The gorilla-crab bodies were ugly and strange, but Ira couldn’t help staring at their almost-human hands. They had died with digits entwined, and because of that, Ira could see nothing in these beings except their humanity.

  A sick, sad feeling of inevitability washed over him. This fate was coming for his people, too. Goodbyes. Mass deaths. The end of all things. It was the Suicide War all over again.

  He suddenly felt a desperate urge to extract some kind of win from this mausoleum. He stared up at the silvered ceiling and drew a heavy breath. Why had the Transcended bothered to let them see this? The Photes didn’t need to be shown their own triumph; they were doing just fine without it. So the clue had to be for humanity, didn’t it? Except what was there to see here except despair?

  ‘What’s the secret?’ he yelled at the ceiling. ‘Come on, you fuckers! What’s the answer this time?’

  The tomb didn’t answer.

  Clath regarded him with concern. ‘Are you okay?’ she asked.

  Ira shook his head. Back in his real body, trapped in the shuttle, long-delayed tears started pooling in his eyes.

  ‘Yes, fine,’ he lied. ‘Just fine.’

  She laid a hand on his shoulder.

  Their shuttle-management SAP chose that moment to ping them.

  ‘Warp-light has been detected at the edge of the system,’ it informed them. ‘Nineteen milliseconds later, the following broadcast was received on the truce channel.’

  ‘Human explorers,’ said an enthusiastic female voice, ‘your journey has been a success! Whatever happiness or freedom you sought out here, be assured that it now lies within your reach. Everlasting love has come to find you.’

  The Photes had caught up. Ira blinked himself back into focus and saw Clath’s face fall as her features creased in panic.

  ‘No!’ she said. ‘This can’t be happening. The Photes don’t do revenge. They shouldn’t be here!’ She clutched her helmet. ‘Ohmygodohmygod.’

  ‘How many sources?’ said Ira.

  ‘Currently registering fifty-three vessels,’ said the shuttle.

  Against all odds, the Photes had tailed them through the Flaw. And now he and Clath were closest to the edge of the system, exposed in a shuttle with barely a weapon between them. Worse, it’d be over an hour before the warp-light of Phote arrival reached Mark and the others in the depths of the in-system. That meant they were on their own against an armada, with rescue up to half a day away. Suddenly the mysteries of the alien ruins felt like the least of their problems.

  8.5: NADA

  The Photurian fleet that left the Depleted Zone was not the one that had entered it. Its size, spirit and driving logic had all changed. A different Nada watched, steely-eyed, from the edge of the system where the human ship lurked, ready to dispense enlightenment. The presence of so many unusual artefacts didn’t faze her. Neither did the curious arrangement of the system itself. Why would the Transcended have tried to keep them away unless there was something here worth finding? And why else would the humans have been so keen to come?

  As soon as she and Leng had realised the steps they needed to take, they also knew there wasn’t a moment to lose. Further drift between ships would have cut off their viable options altogether. So, on the same day that she understood their predicament, Nada made the excruciating adaptations.

  She had communed despite the pain, sharing her soul-scraping disappointment at joy deferred. The others had smiled and screamed with her, rocking and biting themselves even as their souls sang. Then she’d sent home those ships that hadn’t impacted the bulk. Without a warp-trail to follow, they were effectively blind. Leaving them in the Flaw served no purpose.

  The remaining ships, she consolidated – transferring fuel and robust units to those vessels most likely to survive the long passage through dead space. It was a small blessing that the distances between some of her trapped vessels were measured in mere hours.

  Once the consolidation was complete, she instructed the depleted ships to also head back, but for them the voyage would entail anything from weeks to years, depending on their fuel and fortune. As a gesture of mercy, Nada permitted merging for those returning crews, since they were unlikely to make it out intact in any case.

  The effects were almost instantaneous. The ships she liberated dropped contact within minutes. Nada hoped that a few of them would make it to the other side before War Fatigue claimed them entirely.

  A few scant days after she’d made her cuts and her crew had endured their first round of torture therapy, word arrived that the humans had made a shortcut through the bulk. Signs of their quarry vanished as they warped away from the other side. All that remained for Nada to do was to match the human exit point and follow their warp-trail out of the Zone.

  Nada had been rendered speechless by the ironic turn of events. She had cut her strength in half without needing to. A second, long communing was necessary to prevent the outright malfunction of her crews. But what came out of that process surprised them all. Their union had awoken a very focused kind of joy that was sharp, intentional and extremely personal. They’d all changed a little.

  Leng turned inwards, becoming quieter and less combative as he reconciled himself to their new purpose. Zilch, by contrast, sprang into life. Their new sense of directed zeal encouraged a broader kind of thinking from him, more nuanced and less automatic. And Nada had been forced to reflect on the Yunus’s edits and the unit she’d become.

  She admitted to herself that he’d perhaps not been fully rational when he made his changes. In part, perhaps, because of his own strong feelings about the characters involved. He’d imparted some pain of his own – a cryptic twist of attitude that she couldn’t quite put her finger on. It wasn’t as simple as wanting to destroy the Abomination. It was more subtle and buried than that.

  However, she also saw that while the Yunus hadn’t been rational, he’d been wiser and greater than even he understood. Ending humanity’s false heroes was the more important goal. The fate of Earth’s population was a passing matter in a long game. The persistence of the false heroes, however, was crucial. Until they were either removed or converted, the child race they sheltered would keep defying the Yunus and delaying their inevitable leap into maturity.

  So while she acknowledged the conflict of ambitions that had troubled both Leng and herself, she knew now that she and her crews had become a weapon of the Yunus’s true – if unconscious – goal. And because of that, she no longer felt alone. Instead, she felt like the tip of a spear. She was ready to kill, even if the act killed her. They all were.

  Now she hung in the main crew-bulb where she’d been spending more of her time, watching her ships and munitions disperse into the foreign system. She felt ready for the fight that was coming. Nothing about this mission had been easy. But if they finished it, it would at least have been worth it.

  At last, reports from the advance scouts started returning. Nada listened to her crew and watched the attendant images from the mind-temple in parallel. She felt comfortable doing that now. Many of the Yunus’s dictates had been reinterpreted to fit their altered circumstances.

  ‘Unfamiliar technologies have been detected,’ said Zilch. ‘The probability of encountering an ally race for humanity is being assessed.’

  Nada watched visions of curious artificial moons flash past and wasn’t worried. She’d half-expected something new. The humans would be poaching off the dead, as usual.

  ‘Probable coordinates for the target vessel have been obtained,’ Zilch went on. ‘Insertion into a Goldilocks orbit occurred less than one standard day ago.’

  Nada smiled. She had them.

  ‘A biosphere world has been detected. Atmospheric signatures are being analysed.’

  There was a long pause. Zilch let out a shriek, wild and full-throated. His body thrashed against the wall of the bulb.


  ‘Report!’ said Nada, while looking for herself. The image from the lead scout’s forward telescope array made her thoughts stutter into white noise.

  ‘A Photurian world has been discovered!’ Zilch sang. ‘The presence of true homes has been detected via planetary surface texture!’

  A stream of golden urine spilled out of his body, much to the distress of the nearby maintenance lice.

  ‘Explain!’ said Leng.

  His avatar-bead appeared next to Nada’s in the temple. It quivered with excess emotion as he drank the data in.

  ‘A home!’ he keened.

  A mature home? Their one, true hope? Nada couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Chasing humans registered as a pale irrelevance compared to claiming such a boon for her people. She scanned the data, and scanned it and scanned it again. The verdict was indisputable.

  Thinking quickly, Nada checked the functionality of her units in the lead scout to make sure that their discovery hadn’t rendered them inoperative. It wouldn’t have surprised her. She sent them gentle edits, infusing them with calm, orderly thoughts.

  What should she make of this astounding find? Something cried out in her to visit it immediately. Just looking at the place was like standing in a mental riptide. However, her recent experiences had done nothing if not consolidate her willpower. Nada forced herself to return full awareness to her body in the crew-bulb.

  ‘Crew,’ she said breathlessly. ‘We will now verbally confer.’

  One by one, they opened their eyes. Many of them were crying like humans, which was perhaps natural under the circumstances.

  ‘I solicit opinions,’ she said. ‘We must ensure interpersonal alignment prior to any attack.’

  ‘This is a vindication of our hard efforts,’ said Zilch, his lip quivering. ‘This is the prize that the humans have hidden from us. We will reclaim it and joy will be immense and all-consuming.’

  ‘Leng,’ said Nada. ‘Speak.’

  Leng blinked at her, his brow wrinkling as if in pain. ‘The risks incurred by violent operations in this system are different than anticipated,’ he said.