Evolution

by Saunders, Craig

  “Do I have your attention?”

  Kyle winced. “Fully.”

  In his head he added, “Orpal, damn it…” Now he was beginning to get really angry. He noticed Cetee’s predatory eyes narrowing as the hum of the genogun on his arm grew so loud she could no longer ignore it.

  Orpal didn’t reply but carried on in his head. “They took a drastic step. In the course of just ten thousand years their society devolved, and then they collectively took sanctuary in the trees, the planet became lush again and they rediscovered harmony. Most society don’t take a step back – nature doesn’t like it. The Thithil ignored nature. It was like they were genetically predisposed to see the big picture.”

  “That’s great, Orpal. Just great. I’m in a bit of a bind here. You know, you could get your…”

  “The basic theory of biology: there aren’t a million different races – there are infinite variations but all can be classified into the 7,800 types. This expands from time to time as we reconsider, but most within the same group are roughly comparable.”

  “finger out…”

  At last, a nasal chuckled replaced the drone in his mind.

  “Yeah, I really could. Sorry, Kyle. The ship’s been scanning me. Everything alright down there? Bit dark. Who’s that?”

  Kyle asked.

  “Cetee,” she told him. “Now we’re introduced, do you think you could…”

  “I suppose, but you know, this is tricky business. Maybe you could keep quiet and help?” he said to Orpal.

  “No problem. I’ll watch your back. I think the ship’s suspicious. It could be watching you. It’s been running scans…”

  “No worries. It’s dark where I am. It can’t see me.”

  Orpal shook his head, figuratively speaking. “Fascinating, you know, how she’s trying to get you to…”

  “Orpal, just once…”

  “Who’s that?” asked Cetee, as Kyle forgot and said ‘just once’ aloud…

  “Nevermind,” he said to Cetee.

  “Thanks for the Yonpan story, by the way. Almost thought I was talking to myse…” Orpal told him, but broke off, when he realised Kyle had broken the link.

  Well, how rude, one minute he wanted help, next he didn’t. Youth in love, he thought. So shy.

  The hair on the nape of Kyle’s neck moogled, knowing he was once again in the dark with – well, he knew her name, but he didn’t know who she was.

  “You really are a dummy, aren’t you?”

  “I like her.” Orpal chuckled in his brain, re-establishing the link without Kyle’s permission.

  “Thought you would,” Kyle replied. To Cetee he said, “No, I’m watching.”

  “I know, I know,” Orpal pre-empted the hunter, “but you’ll just get yourself in trouble without me.”

  “And your plan is?” asked Cetee.

  “Well…there’s the piece, right? I’m going to wait until everyone leaves and then I’m going blast the cage, take the emitter, and run.”

  It wasn’t what Orpal had instructed. Orpal had ensured him that there would be a lull in activity, as a group of teraphods were expected, and the Tradition had kindly agreed to allow them into Cablas, changing the atmosphere to hydro-oxypilium, unbreathable to all but the teraphods, who had created their own world and altered their own genetics over time to allow them and no-one else to be able to survive in their atmosphere. Famously anti-social, even by galactic standards, the teraphods still jumped at the chance to see the emitter. Kyle was due to jump out in three standard hours, when the clear out began. Orpal’s plan had gone to pot, but Kyle learned early on; you started shooting things, you made your own luck.

  Keep it simple, he told himself, as Orpal began berating him again through the eargen. Keep on plan, he said. Kyle laughed to himself. His blood was up. The blood clarity upon him. He was beginning to see things more clearly, his customary fugue passing. Fear down to nothing. Anger, flowing.

  “That’s your plan, huh?” Cetee laugh throatily. “Of all the joints in all the worlds, I get to tug yours. Great. I might as well do it myself.”

  “Yeah, see, that won’t work, cause, dummy I may be, I’m leaving here with the piece. Which, sweetheart, you ain’t.”

  “Ooh, you do have a pair.”

  “Yep…much like yourself, I notice,” Kyle said, pointedly pushing himself up.

  “Watch it tribal. Only on an off day.”

  “Well, then? What was your plan?”

  “Hmm…well, if you’d actually bothered to do any research (how the hell did this guy live long enough to get even one scar?) you’d know that there won’t be any quiet time, this is an archeog. It’s got it’s own sun, in case you hadn’t noticed. There are at any one time more than a million sentients, three million chattels, Sixteen million artefacts, the objects of love and reverence of more societies through each and every galaxy of the universe, and it is, as run by robots, never closed to visitors. You are given a time to see the emitter because it is one small part of the travelling show, and the main attraction, so the ship allows people to come and see it on a rotating basis. When this lot leaves, the next lot will arrive, and until the piece is returned to the Ecentrists there will be viewers here, and it is not due to be returned to the Ecentrists for the next thirteen years, before which time, biology permitting, I fully intend to make use of the toilet, and while not necessary by any means I would like to get old somewhere where I can see a sun without bromiums obscuring the view. So, you ask, what was my plan…”

  So she didn’t know about the teraphods…

  “Yeah, I seem to remember asking something along those lines,” he said.

  Cetee was beginning to worry. His arm was vibrating now, and while he had looked lost, dim, before, she saw there was a light growing in his eyes, a look – one she could recognise all too well. There was cunning there. How did I miss it before, she wondered?

  “Hmm. Yeah. I don’t have one,” she said.

  Kyle looked at nothing, “You haven’t got a plan?” he sneered.

  “Nope.”

  “And I’m a dummy.”

  “I’m glad you realise that. Now, what I suggest, tribester, is that instead of waiting down here, interesting though it would be to see the effects of fossilisation in yourself, you get up there, cause a distraction, and while obviously a distraction will only take the guests out of the equation, that I deal with the gargoyles, and make away with the emitter.”

  “Hmhm,” nodded Kyle. There, that light in his eyes again. She still held him tight, but no longer was sure she had him in her grip. Goosebumps began to raise themselves up on her arms, a legion of wights emerging from under the skin. With an immense effort, she held herself together. What is wrong with me, she thought. Afraid of some dumb tribal?

  He said, “So, I distract them, you make off with the exhibit?”

  “Yep.” She, keeping her voice steady. Mustn’t loose the initiative her, keep it together now.

  “Yeah, that doesn’t work for me. I tell you what though, you’re a lot more distracting than me, you know, what with them things you’ve got…”

  “Don’t know if you’ve noticed, Tribe boy, but, huminans, ytha, or’fran, the cove, armists, hruns and the like don’t really get much of a hard-on for boobs.” She saw a glint in his eye, that look of the predator, come back again. She felt like she was looking into herself, but his eyes, so wide…he was no hunter, surely?

  “Oh, right, no, you’re right. Sorry, that was me getting distracted.” He said sarcastically. “So, how about this…I jump up there, start blasting everything that looks remotely dangerous, you jump onto the thirma from here – can you open the cage?” he said, gathering himself. Enough of this.

  “Easy,” she replied – feeling nothing like it. She could feel his bicep under her arm. It had been firm before, now it felt like steel. The stiletto in her hand was beginning to feel like a toothpick.

  “Then, cracking plan,” he said, and without warning tensed all his muscles
and flipped her over on her back.

  Suddenly, she was underneath him, the whirring hum next to her ear, and the hand holding the knife gripped between his thighs like a vice.

  “That’s more like it!” Orpal chimmed in.

  “Ah…” was all she could say.

  Kyle wasn’t one to bear a grudge. Kyle pushed on the hatch with Cetee held in one arm. He turned around, a stripe on her face lit as the hatch opened, snapped back down again as one of the guests trod on it, crushing the tip of one finger and plunging him into darkness again.

  “You stay right there, lass,” he said, thinking, ouch.

  In the next instant he was gone.

  He leapt straight upward, bashing the hatch open and bathing Cetee in light. She had an instant to see a guestgreeter drone, humanoid in its representation, looking straight down at her, and then at Kyle, landing, feet splayed, shouted ‘Ra!” Kyle opened fire. The conjurel in the middle of the guestgreeter drone blew out the back where its midrift would have been. It clacked against a wall.

  Fuck this, she thought, and leapt up after him.

  If that’s not a good enough distraction, I’m in the wrong game…

  Startling all the races that could be startled, Kyle landed. Then he shouted “Ra!”

  Member from all the races that were able to feel surprise wondered what the hell was going on.

  The guestgreeter stood, dumbfounded, before him.

  “Jiall Kyle Iris, you seem agitated, perhaps…” was all she had time to say.

  Kyle blew the guestgreeter’s conjurel from her mid section. Instantly, she disappeared. The conjurel flew out, its tinny landing amplified in the now silent room. All eyes were on him.

  Then, he started shooting in earnest.

  A gargoyle whirred and shifted with the sound of teeth grinding. He shot both its arms off. Its gun clattered to the floor.

  “Now that was careless,” said one of the kindlier guests, adding, “I think that may have been ill-advised.”

  The gargoyles trained their weapons on Kyle as one. At which point Kyle gave the genogun its head and let his do the thinking.

  He ducked and rolled as the first barrage of fire, trained to perfection, missed him. The sheer metal where he had emerged turned molten, and screams arose from the crowd. His senses heightened, he could hear the clackclackclack of Tradition sentribots rushing toward the central hall.

  He couldn’t see the Curator anywhere. Cetee, he corrected himself. Just a thief, like him.

  Crawling, ducking, then, with a leap, feet touching the wall before he leapt – shooting upside down, perfect landing…through around through peoples feet, saying ‘sorry’ as he stood on a Kubrian’s gelatinous feet (squidge) he ran, strength filling his body, overwhelmed with it, and jumped to the thirma (all the while the gun blurted ‘sputsputsput’, the smell of afterbirth, iron in the air, wet and dry bodies hitting the floor).

  He jumped, timing it to perfection. Landed on top of the cage, and looked down. Sprawled across the floor were the bodies of everything – sentribot and gargoyles dashing into the hall from a hundred exits – he trained the gun on the bar, taking control for a second.

  The second piece of the Cascade emitter wasn’t there. Looking around (No time, move hunter, move)…and there she was.

  *

  Cetee, her prize nestling against her bosom, turned and winked cheekily at him, putting her hand on her hip and shooting with a finger.

  Kyle roared into his eargen. A sentribot disintegrated in wayward gargoyle fire.

  “Orpal, might need a little help!”

  “Oh, now you need help?” said Orpal snootily.

  Another sentribot blew apart, as the hard sack birthed smacked into its terium shell and tore through. His gun purred with the happiness of a new mother, and he ran.

  *

  Geoddessy University

  “And so,” Habla’saem moved toward his conclusion, “there is nothing new under the sun. The nanides bred and grew in exile. They didn’t want to fight and destroy their own home, so they spread throughout the solar system, then began on the galaxy. Separate colonies evolved. Then they went to war with each other. Now both sides have nothing left but war. We cannot stop it. Eventually, one will destroy the other, but were we to intervene we would only galvanise them into attacking us.”

  “Consider: when one wants to affect society and excise a cancer one would attack the nascent cells. Tell them what they were before they knew themselves, as the ancients first did with stem cells, using the baby to treat the adult.”

  Standing in glaring light, linked by quantum duality display, he began the next step in his revolution as the assorted faces of the Enlightened’s brightest and finest looked with rapt gazes as the master of illusions held forth on the fundamental impossibility of a genesis for revolution, their malleable minds let the infection in.

  Um’lael’s face loomed generously over the lectern. Habla’saem’s tech was so far in advance of the University’s – restricted as it was by their own pride, placing theory above fact and the solidity of reality, that they could never discern the real from the lie. One decent attack on the geodesic cylinders and the whole place would end. Lying to them was easy.

  The deception was so simple as they didn’t trust – they were so wrapped up in their own tortuous thoughts, using them was child’s play…he turned their thoughts back in on them and let them do the work.

  They restricted themselves as the other sentients did, to structures, rather than other planes, interfacing in the physical realm differently as it was with so many different species all rolled into one. The Enlightened were so bent on assimilating all cultures they didn’t know what they were. But for the socioassassin, they were putty.

  In a smaller part of his brain that he sectioned to the task, his quantum ears searched the hall for the conversations of the disenfranchised, the shirkers, the misfits.

  Whenever governments fall it is because it thinks its dark corners are the only place where subversive thoughts flourish.

  “When the revolutionary begins he begins on one planet. He attacks society as it stands, a mutation – much the same as a cancer in the old people. The revolutionary’s idea; to find the disenfranchised of society. He drums up support among the poor – imagine an army of hobos, if you will – other dissatisfied cells. But why not use those with the power already? Is this why revolution is, ultimately, doomed to repeat itself? Is this why revolution is not the catalyst for evolution?”

  Habla’saem, manipulating the quantum image generator the university had provided, wagged a finger at the gormless faces before his image.

  “No, because that isn’t how evolution works. Evolution of societies comes about through outside forces. Revolution, like cancer, can never affect the whole.

  “There is an ebb and flow. Society itself does not break, but its stewards must change. Great empires grow then die in dystrophy. This is always the way. It does not morph into another form, it is taken over. This is what we must do for there to be a true change, to learn the lesson from the nanides. We must not expand. We must not revolt. We must excise that which would change us for our empire to flourish.”

  Pure drivel, he thought, but the student population was lapping it up, congratulating themselves for their cleverness and making up a meaning to suit Habla’saem’s words.

  “The nanides were a weapon. They destroyed their creators, thus their creators destroyed themselves. In the destruction the nanides became as their creators, their weight a threat to themselves. The threat, quarantined, grew, spread from planet to planet, throughout the solar system. It imitated the creators…the nanides, over time, forgot, as their gods did, that they were one and the same. Planetary divides emerged, arbitrarily the nanides decided where, what, who was good, and strove to destroy or join their hero or nemesis alike. History, as science, repeats itself.

  “Thus the nanides, with no outside input, became the same as their creators. There was no difference. You
see? We must learn from this. Revolution from within cannot change society – we cannot change ourselves by drawing from ourselves. The people who created the nanides did not realise this. The Lore, perhaps, do. The Lore, surely, are the antithesis of our empire. They mimic, they adapt, but they are not an empire. They accept the new – like empire, but the new changes them so much that they can never be a stable example of a successful society. Not like ours.”

  That was the truth (at least, one version of it). Now for the lie. His conclusion was in sight. One final foray over the lectern and the malleable minds of the Enlightened’s disenfranchised, its student population, would be sold.

  “Citizenship was always the reward of empire, because to fight the inexorable is always to be destroyed, so one could say seek to be ever changing, as the river, as time, but for our society to work we had to do away with divisiveness. Sameness while embracing natural differences is the only answer. The reward for citizenship has to be total inclusion, changing the newly accepted to meet our standards. For our society to remain as it is, we must not be changed by the influx of the new as the Lore are. The Lore, however, are an empire unto themselves. They are kin to the nanides. In short, they can never be the same as we are, no matter how hard they try. Excise that which does not fit, embrace that which does. That is the only way to prolong an empire.”

  Habla’saem thanked the assembly and asked if there were any questions.

  “By the end of our quest, did you mean the end to evolution?” asked one of the students meekly. Habla’saem smiled through a face that was warmer than his own.

  “No, just the azimuth of this cycle. Evolution within borders is purely circular, however. It becomes revolution. Revolution is endemic, my learned friend. It behoves its progenitors little, and merely returns to the start. Look outside, that is what I am saying, and there will be no end. Evolution is eternal.”

  Habla’saem thought to himself what nonsense he had just spouted to the listening, gullible masses of the Enlightened. To a tutored mind it would not stand to scrutiny. To an educated mind…perhaps it would work.