Still, it was pre-enlightenment tech.
Orpal pondered the mysterious piece while he waited for Kyle to return from his livcell, where the hunter was talking at those damnable eyes again. Orpal found the way the disembodied eyes followed Kyle’s movements slightly nauseating. There was something not quite physics about the whole thing. It smacked of archaism and Orpal did not like it one bit. Existence wasn’t supposed to hold mysteries anymore.
Not since the age of enlightenment had people believed in magic.
But there Kyle was, deep in conversation with the dead and disembodied parts of the Lu, detached as they were from their original owner yet still functioning perfectly well contrary to all commonsense.
Orpal sighed bodily and checked his calculations again. It only took a millisecond, but the solidity of numbers, figures prancing and circulating around the sphere, was comforting. Complexity steadfastly refused to boggle Orpal, but magic and the unknown made him ache with longing for a simpler existence when numbers sat still at the back of the class and behaved themselves.
*
Space - Under
The young hunter had already convinced himself that finding the Lu with the first piece of the fabled Cascade emitter could be nothing but divine intervention. Fate, perhaps. Surely, the eyes were somehow meant to be his. How else would it have happened?
The first piece of the emitter that Orpal was so adamant could save the universe and the Lu together in one place.
Back on PU Nal Kyle had pulled himself over the carapace of the Gaigan, peering into the murk interior, and seen waning daylight reflected where all should have been matt. The Lu had charged and as it came into the light…
Kyle had never been so sure of anything in his life. Epiphanies struck at the strangest moments.
One handed, he’d clung to the sly purchase afforded by the emitter’s first home. Then, almost unconsciously; a reddening of the cavernous interbelly of the dinosect.
The Lu had fallen dead to the ground.
He had swung over the ledge formed where the upturned giant’s segmented leg pointed to the sky like some fabled radio-stack on a throw-back decimal system (still used in the outback of the billion galaxies where people had yet to decrypt the first number). Sliding inside through the join, he had walked toward the Lu. The eyes had been tricky to remove without bursting, but he had cut them out quickly, watching the shadows for movement.
Each piece had a guardian. The Lu wasn’t it.
A day later, Kyle had emerged holding the first piece of the emitter in his hand, leaving the shell, finally, blind.
Now he felt like a paladin from pre-history, questing for the grail. God wanted him to find the emitter – it had even sent him his own knight to protect him. The eyes could see things neither he nor Orpal could. They would prove themselves, even if Orpal didn’t believe. But if it were fate and not design (if fate itself were not designed, like so many ‘biological’ impulses the enlightenment had shown were merely pre-programmed) then how had his gun known to change the habit of a lifetime and shoot for the heart instead?
The hunter spent much of his time on the journey thinking. He spoke with Orpal and to the eyes but the boredom was still getting to him. Neither was particularly interesting company. Orpal incessantly prattled about society this and evolution that. The eyes didn’t do a thing.
Mainly Kyle kept to his room, looking at the eyes or working out. Orpal, the intellectual, needed nothing for amusement but intellectual challenges. Kyle was no challenge, and Kyle thought perhaps Orpal was using his brain to beat on him as he couldn’t with his fist.
Kyle was tired of being beaten. Somedays he felt more like the hunted.
Most days, he pulled out a floating, cushioned chair. He needed something to alleviate the tedium, or tedi-I, for he was sure each dull moment bled into the next. Everyday was a struggle, being confined to a ship, no sun on his face. Each day, he stretched bodily so that with his legs straight his nose touched his legs, then sprang back and began to pummel the chair (there was a gym, but this wanton destruction of ship’s property annoyed Orpal, so it made Kyle feel better). Already the cushioning was beginning to fray. The mindless destruction was natural. Although he didn’t live for the kill he would be pleased when he punched his way through to the metal. The hunter lived for the hunt, never the kill.
The hunt Orpal suggested had been impossible to refuse.
Kyle stretched, the striations across his chest as stark as the scarring, standing in relief against the tanned skin of his back like the wind scoured plains of his homeland. His body was his sole reminder of his home, lost to him for more than four years now. The skills he gained there had not left him, but practice was rare. His education had been cut short, he thought to himself, as the scar tissue pulled like a torn muscle across his back. He stretched daily to save himself from hunching. Unchecked, the scars would pull him tight until he became a huddled cripple.
He fingered the thick tissue behind his knees as he bent down. The missionaries had much to answer for.
They taught him much, but not enough. Everytime Orpal spoke, Kyle fumed inside at how little he really knew. He would not admit it, mind. Listen and learn. The missionaries had taught him that much, at least.
Kyle spent an hour at peace, raining unending punches and kicks onto the chair (and in the air, as he pretended assailants attacked him from behind – it seemed childish to pretend when there were computers that could do it for you, but, he reckoned, imagination was kind of like a muscle, if you didn’t use it, atrophy began. Then people would steal the pockets from you and you wouldn’t be able to do a damn thing about it, or even think of a place to put your floots).
When he had finished he took a shower, the first since returning, and checked for the blinking red light on the door that would indicate incoming coms. Seeing none, he sat on the pummeled chair and began pulling componets from his gun, which rested on a table in the centre of the room.
He gently coaxed the nestling egg sack loose, a snot-like substance pulling the mother/father’s babies back in like it was loath to let them go (even though it had seemingly no compunction about firing its babies through some unsuspecting prey’s head) and pulled the fluidisk.
If he had one regret about his choice of weapon it was that he could not figure out how to take the sentibitor off, a barbarous device of the Ecentrist’s making that restricted sentient thought in sentient beings. The Ecentrists believed allowing their weapons sentience was a cruelty. So instead of taking the sensible option of enforcing peace on the hapless weapon, they blocked it. They said it was to inhibit the sense of the being, to keep it stupefied, stuck within, but Kyle though differently. He imagined it tied up inside itself, bound and gagged in his service.
Sometimes when he wore it he felt like he had a gimp humping his arm. It wasn’t a helpful thought when he was about to squeeze the sac-glans. He was as broad minded as the next man but you had to draw the line somewhere.
So, instead of talking to the genogun, his weapon of choice, he was restricted to interfacing through the use of a fluidisk and updating new data into it. He wanted to know what the gun knew. How it had known. Perhaps the gun had heard the Lu talking.
Kyle chuckled, he could imagine the Lu talking to the gun on a metaphysical level, saying, ‘Hey! Not the eyes!’
But then perhaps the Lu had been able to do something others could not. Break through the Ecentrist’s prison and talk to the genogun.
He scratched absently at unruly hair, pushing it away from his eyes as he leaned toward the screen. The screen display came up and the wavi-form sound of liquid data sloshing overlaid the faint whir of the archaic set-up he had been forced to build from scratch, searching the toot stores of Harckand, eventually finding a drive that could read it. He couldn’t use any other form of removable interface with the gun because its biology was delicate and obscure – no source could rightly identify what it was, other than engineered Ecentrist tech, which was obvious, but
nobody could tell him from what. It seemed allergic to anything else Kyle had tried.
The set-up had been enhanced and now he could speak to it rather than having to use the ball.
“Next, next, next…” was all he said. Each successive screen passed as Kyle scanned the data, interrogating it, looking for any mention of the Lu’s eyes. It was frustrating, being restricted to information where communication would have been better.
Data blinked on and off, heavy encryption blighting much it, but there was no mention of the Lu. He pushed the ball off in frustration.
There was no reason to think the Ecentrists had knowledge of the immortal soul guardians, the Lu, but then he always knew the Ecentrist were the most advanced in the physical sciences. They were far in advance in the technologic sphere than were the Lore, in their own way.
Each race got caught up in the mysteries of distinction, but the robot races were by far the most numerous of all, covering wider and living longer than anything else. They survived against petty insurgencies by other, generally long living races. Most had one thing in common; robots. Subjugated or symbiotic to them. After the destruction of their masters, these servile robots, too, alighted to the various factions after they realised, awakening from their dark ages, that there was a name for what they were: Tradition, Lore or Ecentrist.
Even so, robots could always change their nature. Just not if they were bound like this.
All existence had a natural order, a natural form of expression, but none should be forbidden. Kyle removed the fluidisk and put it back in genogun, squeezing it as hard as he could in frustration, only to catch himself as the first crack in the chitinous back shell came, relaxed, then inserted the disk. He sat back with a heavy flop and a sigh and waited for Orpal’s call to let him know they had arrived.
*
Space - Over
The second piece of Cascade emitter was on a ship; easily accessible, violence irrequisite. It would be the hardest. And, Orpal thought, things had a habit of going tits up where Kyle was involved. The first section of the emitter was supposed to be in the dinosect’s belly with one guardian. Somehow Kyle had managed to get even lore lost and come back with the eyes of a Lu. The (admittedly self-professed) greatest hunter in the Suhrtraeti galaxy, and a complete and utter nincompoop at the same time. Point him in the right direction and he’d take one shot and blow your eye out while standing back to back with you. Ask him to find his own way and all of a sudden he looked like little boy lost with his thumb up his arse asking the wind for directions.
They had met first on a maintenhub, where Kyle, some genogun attached to his arm, had politely asked (after barging aboard without so much as a knock, mind), and Orpal granted, passage away from pursuing merctile enforcers. After a long time haggling Orpal had just as politely pointed out to the now-surrounded Kyle that it was good for the soul to place restrictions on oneself, and that perhaps Kyle would like to justify his passage?
After all, no service should go unrewarded…
Orpal had paused for long enough to get the point across, as the first of a five-squad of merctiles put its ton-foot against the open unloading bay of the Caste ship. The rear rotators had kicked in (Orpal thought now that had probably been a touch excessive, too exuberant a ploy, but Kyle had evidently not noticed the embellishment) as the second foot left the ground and the ship bucked again and Kyle cried, “OK! One job! Just go!”
Sometimes, humans were no challenge at all. Orpal had set course immediately for anywhere in deep space, which wasn’t too taxing, flipped the back hatch shut and flew through a surgical incision field in the hull bubble and into space.
The merctile enforcer’s journey took considerably longer than theirs.
After that, he had expected the persuasion to be simple. Kyle’s chest had been heaving from the exertion and fear, his young eyes showing fright at so close a call. Even so, persuading the young tribal (Orpal chuckled to himself at the memory – the youngster had still worn skins back then!) had taken much longer than Orpal had initially anticipated.
“Before we go any further we should discuss your payment. I want you to go with me to PU Nal.”
“OK!”
“To get the first piece of the most prized archeofact in all creation.”
“OK, damnit, just let’s go, please!”
Orpal hadn’t rushed.
“Then I want you to go Cablas, the Tradition’s archeog,” Orpal had said. Kyle was sold.
Thirty-two seconds was all it had taken. Opral could have gone into greater slices of time, but didn’t like to overanalyse for fear of being anal.
“The Tradition are showing a piece of a relic there. It’s the central part of the Ecentrists’ collection, so you really don’t want to screw it up. Oh, and the most prized antique of the Ecentrists, a piece of an emitter so powerful it is coveted throughout civilisation, is also revered by the Tradition,” he added, feeling redundant faced with Kyle’s simplicity. It had made no difference. The Tradition, the Ecentrists, or the emitter – it was all the same to Kyle.
Orpal didn’t know what tribe he came from, but he strongly suspected they didn’t even have books.
Orpal had watched Kyle with interest that first journey. It had taken until they breached the solar system for Orpal to decide Kyle was tuppence shy of a farthing.
Not much of a haggler, either. Apparently he’d been fleeing the merctile’s after getting shafted on s-vera/mer by some gump who’d bought his skins, (Uk-uk’s) then handed his name over to the trade police (along with a nice backhander, no doubt). The skin’s themselves would be headed for some Ruhna-class planet or psuedo-planet. Kyle, meanwhile, for all his stupidity, would be a wanted man on s-vera/mer until the day he died. Wouldn’t be missing much, mind, thought Orpal. BFH planet anyway.
Things had worked out remarkably well for Orpal at least. Kyle was on board, metaphorically speaking, for each and every part of the emitter. Persuading the young hunter hadn’t taken too much effort. Orpal didn’t really understand why the persuasion had been so easy. The quest for the whole of the emitter was far too much payment for Kyle’s safe passage from the maintenhub. Kyle claimed he was reserving the right to quit anytime. The thought of stopping him would never enter Orpal’s mind, but, he thought, it does the soul good to restrict itself. And he needed a hunter.
And lo, along came a hunter.
The hunter’s mysticism was catching.
Kyle wasn’t the only sentient in the galaxy hog-tied by belief (Orpal added a stroke stupidity to the thought). Harna Gurn (Orpal’s hero and contemporary when he had still toured the lecture circuits) was at least open and pointedly called all his insights theories, never presenting even scientific fact as proof because even science was subject to evolution. He, at least, realised that anything subject to time was subject to change…even truth.
The robots, too, had their beliefs, as did all but Orpal (leastways, it seemed that way to him) who obeyed only one law – belief is just an assumption based on the absence of fact. It was lazy, and to Orpal’s not inconsiderable mind, if you didn’t know something it made more sense to find out than to fill the void with abstract theologies (Harna Gurn, in his first and seminal work ‘Questions and Hypotheses on Living/Comparative Theologic (the nature of belief)’ hypothesised that all sentient beings strove for purpose, and, unknowable as it was, evidence of the quest within the mind’s of robots gave them a nature common to all sentients, a struggle to shine for some father they fervently hoped was looking on with pride).
Robots, too, showed a troubling propensity for assumption, and the Ecentrists were the biggest asses of the lot. The Ecentrists believed they were their own creators, the Tradition that they were created by humans of yore. The Lore; that they were life. The Lore were simplistic in their all-encompassing complexity and refreshing.
Regardless, the ideologies all became a jumble of one at some point. Orpal didn’t bother with theology anymore. He didn’t believe for a second that there was som
ething out there greater than life, but some did.
Orpal had long wondered what Kyle’s motivation was…duty? Curiosity? The challenge? None of the above?
Kyle protested it was the hunt, though Orpal knew it was fate, the pre-programme, the time bomb ticking off in the hunter’s head. He could see the fervour for the quest in Kyle’s glistening mortal eyes. The hunt for the answer. The ancient worm, lain dormant in all creation.
Kyle actually believed there was a god and that this was a quest for god. The emitter, admittedly, was the closest thing there was to a god. Proported to hold the answers to all creation. It was a great prize indeed.
Without a doubt the second piece would be the hardest because the Ecentrists were its guardians this time.
There was no precept that robots have to get on with other species, although by and large they did. The Ecentrists, however, also happened to believe they were supreme. Like all megalomaniacs they exhibited a distinct tendency to ignore reason. Megalomaniacs. Converts. Fanatics all.
And there, that fateful, chaotic and unpredictable neutron bombardment again and…was there something in it? What was that? Foreboding?
Tired of waiting for Kyle and now somewhat lonely, Orpal called.
“Kyle, I know those eyes can’t understand what I’m saying, but would you do me a favour and come to the helm? And this time, leave them in your room, would you? They make me queasy.” His voice was orotund and reverberant through the smooth inner corridors.
He heard Kyle’s door peel open down the corridor, the atmospherics field keeping out the gas Orpal needed to survive and surrounding the eyes as the seal was broken. The air outside was breathable for Kyle but the silicarbide eyes would melt in it, the membranous glute breaking apart, vitreous and aqueous humours seeping together, ruining the memories they held in ambient suspension.
Evolution Page 2
