Depression inhibitors were placed on most of the Ecentrist’s sentient machines – intelligence engenders depression as people begin to see through gaps, just as the see through lies. The truth might give the appearance of breeding depression, but only because of any expectation built on lies that came before it.
It wasn’t depression that halted Cablas, though. Cablas was unsentibited.
It was disappointment. Cablas, sentibitor long removed, still couldn’t believe that anyone – least of all Orpal, whom it had known for so long – could be guilty of such a crime.
The redolent sun, the foundation of Cablas, for which the archeog was named, sank into gloomy thought and exploded.
Meanwhile, Orpal got away.
Orpal, too, was saddened that it had come to this.
‘Sorry, old friend,’ Orpal thought to himself, then instantly forgot about it.
*
“Yeah, I was worried about that. Cablas has a tendency to explode when it’s upset.”
“What?” asked Cetee.
“Well, this system’s uninhabited….there’s no reason for it not to. Perhaps we should run.”
Orpal had reached warp within two seconds of blasting his way unceremoniously through the hull bubble in Cablas. He and his crew of four (Orpal counted the genogun as sentient, despite its sentibitor, and the eyes of the Lu, obviously, although if he was honest with himself he’d rather not count them as sentient. Even the thought gave him goosebumps) were now half a galaxy clear of the exploding sun. Cablas was prone to sulking. It would be fine though, the ship would contain the explosion and Cablas would just be reborn. Its matter had nowhere else to go. As personality traits go exploding was unique to suns.
(Harna Gurn, legendary theoreticist, among many diverse theories throughout his life also hypothesised the existence of tangible personality to all things. He spent his whole life trying to understand everything. He believed each atom was an individual, therefore each must have a unique story to tell. Did personality only come from a collection of atoms, an atomnal society within the mind, or was personality dictated by the nature of those atoms…? Harna Gurn was the first true Universalist.)
“I tell you what, you run. I’m tired.” Cetee had watched Kyle approach the ship on the holowindow and following the magically wavering Kyle until his demise into sleep.
She thought to herself, ‘Jesus, what a bozo…’
“I’ll show you to your cabin. Don’t worry,” added Orpal, “about the sun, I mean. It’s frustration, mostly – the Tradition will seal the radiation in…it won’t reach us and the sun will just reform later. No harm done.”
“I wasn’t worried.”
“Oh. Anyway, thanks are in order. Just hand that over…”
“No, I don’t think so.” Cetee put a restraining arm on her shoulder cannon bag.
“Well, I’m telling you it’s true.” Orpal continued his earlier theme. Persuading the thief was proving more troublesome than hiring her in the first place. “The man who employed you was employed by me. Do you not think it strange that of all the arteries you came here, to me? Do you not think it strange you succeeded?”
Orpal wondered how he could get the woman to believe him. She was entirely unlike Kyle. She was stubborn.
“It wasn’t you. I’m not blind. I know what the man who employed me looked like, and it definitely wasn’t you.”
Cetee was alone in the comcentre, still talking to Orpal. Kyle had gone straight to his bed as soon as he’d recovered enough energy to raise himself up off the lifeless floor and drag himself into his room. Orpal was a worried about him. The hunter seemed to like his own company too much. It wasn’t healthy.
It was why he’d arranged for him to meet Cetee, after all.
“I didn’t say it was. The man who employed you was employed by me. I have many contacts, young lady.”
“Young lady is it? You’ll be lucky, you bastard.”
“Well, yes, I was born out of wedlock, a bit quaint don’t you think? I’ve no doubt you’re in touch with your sire and mare?”
“Shut up.”
“Oh, I see. Anyway. Moot point. I think the piece is mine. That’s the price. I wouldn’t have hired you if I wasn’t sure you were a woman of your word, now would I?”
“What about the hunter? You sent him to get the piece too? Did you plan for us to kill each other over it?”
“I knew it would never happen,” Orpal said smugly. “I’m sure you’ll both get along like smog and cape.”
“I sincerely doubt that.”
“Either way, my dear. I think you’ll find the piece is mine. After all,” said Orpal expansively, “where would you go?”
Cetee took the piece out of her bag and threw it at the comcentre in disgust.
“Whatever, where’s my room? I’m tired, I feel dirty and I need a shower.”
“Down the hall, dear,” said Orpal.
“Don’t you dear me,” stormed Cetee as she left. The second piece of the emitter rocked. Orpal watched it slow to static.
*
Orpal spent a lot of time trying to fit the two pieces together using field tech to manipulate the pieces. He tried every configuration and could do nothing. Perhaps all five needed to be assembled for it to fit, or perhaps he was collecting them in the wrong order. He just didn’t know. Eventually he tired of it. He put the pieces down on the table and called to Kyle. He’d had enough time to recoup his energy after successfully assisting his other employee, Cetee.
“Kyle? Kyle?” called Orpal. The hunter had gone straight to his room, and while he couldn’t lock it, he’d made a magnificent job of barricading it. Orpal didn’t know what the hunter was up to, but he didn’t want to be stuck here with the thief, who was becoming increasingly agitated. Orpal was worried she would cause some kind of trouble. Trouble Orpal didn’t need. He’d tried to explain to her that the emitter really was his (well, his in the sense that he’d paid for it to be stolen), and she hadn’t been able to do a damn thing about it, but hand it over.
She was waiting in her own quarters now and Orpal was getting bored on his own.
It might do the soul good to restrict itself, but Orpal didn’t have a soul and was pretty sure if he didn’t get to gloat about his own cleverness he’d explode (well, not really, he thought.)
Kyle hadn’t taken well to the woman. The poor lad (although Orpal knew from a gene reading the woman was older, she didn’t look it) hadn’t been out in the world. He just didn’t understand what was going on.
*
Kyle wasn’t actually disappointed and still didn’t know that the woman, the Curator (his lower brain obstinately refused to remember she wasn’t the Curator) was on board. He thought about his nice surprise and decided whatever it was, it could wait. After a short refreshing nap, he applied himself to some serious sulking.
After his nap the first thing he had done was strip down the gun. He stuck the analysis probe in it, trying to figure out if it was malnourished or what. He didn’t understand anything, about the woman, his failure to get the emitter, Orpal’s silence while he was in danger, where they were going, why he was still here and didn’t insist on Orpal dropping him off – he had more than had enough. But he couldn’t deal with any of that now, so he tried to figure out what was wrong with the gun.
He didn’t understand why it wouldn’t shoot the gargoyles earlier.
He went over what he knew and what he’d been told. The gun, a living creature, was attached to the arm. It fired projectiles, a sticky membrane covering them. The projectiles themselves were bacteria (intelligent genetically engineered bacteria) so deadly they digested anything on contact as they expanded. They were limited to a short life, but would wind through any surface to expand from a long thin muctile substance, held together by force alone, upon impact. They would pass through two feet of imorialam. Living flesh couldn’t withstand it, apart from most regenerating creatures. It was fired by squeezing the sac-glans. It could be sent to sleep by pres
sing its forehead, which rested against the outside edge of the arm. It woke automatically when the wearer’s heartrate or adrenaline were high, and couldn’t be switched off until the wearer calmed down: a safety. It was not designed for assassins, traditionally cold of heart. The safety, effectively, meant Kyle could never kill anyone in cold-blood…
He found it. He’d been looking in the wrong place. There wasn’t anything wrong with the adrenocorticotrophic safety…It wasn’t the gargoyles. If it could be nothing wrong with the weapon, it was him!
He was too calm. Goddamnit.
*
Huna – Ecentrists homeship (1/427,100,991 – Ex-sector, sept)
The Ecentrists were fond of weapons. They even used animals as weapons. They thought of them as a ‘lower forms’. The Enlightened, mostly humanoid and therefore animal by nature, of course, disagreed. The Ecentrists were ostracised for this view, but didn’t give a damn. They were the social outcasts of the four great races, but their hatred of the Lore allowed them to fool themselves into thinking they weren’t the most unpopular.
The use of animals as weapons was a similar concept to that which Habla’saem, in the guise of Um’lael, had lectured upon at the Geodessy Univerisity; get the disenfranchised, most usually those lowest on the socioevolutionary scale, to fight your battles for you. In Habla’saem’s case he had raise and army from the student classes, the most disillusioned among the Enlightened. He had raised such an army out of necessity for his work. For the socioassassin to destroy the Lore the Enlightened would be needed. There was a reason for this need.
The Ecentrists had no disenfranchised to fight their battles for them, so they ordinarily used those of the first mathematical class to fight for them instead. These, however, were not ordinary times.
While the use of lower mathematical castes in such fashion wasn’t strictly illegal, the Law dictated that scientists were not allowed to do anything that could not be undone. Therefore, if you can create a drive that eats hydrogen you must also be able to create a drive that can create hydrogen. If you can mutate a star, well, bully for you, here’s the Doon prize. Now, can you turn it back again? Well, that’s a shame.
Capital.
Scientists of the Enlightened had thus developed a great social conscience. This social conscience would not let them utilise lower castes than the second mathematical caste, the binary creations that they used for lower tasks. Such creatures lacked the common sense required to be weapons.
Not all societies played by the rules though. The caste the Ecentrists picked were perfectly single minded. The Ecentrists, for one, didn’t believe that for every action there was an equal and sometimes surprising reaction. They believed time was absolute, and that therefore time was nature’s own healer. This was a rather anti-social strategy for all those who lived lives in periods shorter than eons, and tended to make the Ecentrists outcasts at parties. They weren’t generally invited anyway.
A revolutionary had riled up the disenfranchised. The bulk of Um’lael’s lecture had reached the Ecentrists ears. Now they found out one of the Lore had been assassinated, by one of the Enlightened without a doubt (who else used coil rifles?) and, unusual for such single-minded robots, the Ecentrists were confused. The Lore robot had been murdered before Habla’saem had been employed.
The only thing that made sense was that the short-lived humans, the Enlightened, would act as an army in the service of the Ecentrists. The Enlightened’s army of the disenfranchised would fight this battle for them. The Ecentrists were pleased. There was a war brewing, and Habla’saem had done his work well.
The war was something that the Ecentrists would not have been able to pursue to its natural conclusion, being unable to travel under space. Under space was where the bulk of the Lore lived. The Ecentrists would never have been able to hunt them down.
Ecentrists had several failings, but one was their refusal to use sub-space (as it was not subject to the rules of physics as they understood them). On the Geoddessy University campus, the talk by Um’lael Sabreme, about how the Lore were supremely unnatural, was now gospel among the Enlightened.
While the Ecentrists pondered the assassination of the Lore bot 4/45, an anonymous bot made famous only by the manner of its death, the Enlightened were getting ideas. Use the miniscule, just like the nanides, as a weapon – use the smallest to destroy the greatest…
The Ecentrists were gunning for the Lore. Someone else was gunning for the Lore. How else could Habla’saem move so fast? Would their hand be detected? It didn’t seem particularly subtle. What if the Lore, pacifists to a machine, came for them?
The Ecentrists were worried. Perhaps, at a stretch, perturbed.
What if, like the last war, they were to lose again?
*
Space. All of it. Lore Council
A Gat Moriumthraite unfurled his massive wings, thick black veins pulsing with genotech blood. He stood, claws curled around a dead Uon tree, holding himself upright against the buffeting wind of the dying planet, darkness soon to approach.
Upon a rock, endlessly spinning through space, a robot that looked like a man held hands tenderly with his wife, a robot that looked like a woman. She held in her arms the proof of their love; a writhing swarm of nesting snakes, each head joining as one, their green eyes turned orange in the light of a distant passing sun.
Under sea, a clan of questra mites crept along the sea bed in volcanic effluence, crawling over each other to keep warmth in, the heat their ally against the giant yori, a tentacled predator that plummed the depths for wayward questrans in a never-ending, blind, hunt for food.
Within a moon a colony of Lore ambiots joined together and pooled their energy, looking out through rock to see their kin and speak.
Plants that spoke pulled roots from ground and pushed their eyes starward. Friendly planets, blanketed by asteroids, chatted to each other like long lost friends.
Each and every beast and fish and bird and rock and sea and gas and comet and sun and moon and insect and plant and man of the Lore joined and saw what each and every one could see.
The Lore began their council.
“The Ecentrists are religious zealots. We cannot survive against them.”
“Who else would attack the Lore? An assassination?”
“It must have been the Enlightened. It was a coil rifle.”
“It was but a miner.”
“Yet still a part of the Lore!”
“We are diminished.”
“We will grow.”
“Who would do such a thing?”
“The Ecentrists.”
“But it was not their weapon. The Enlightened turn on us.”
“It cannot be.”
“We must fight.”
“Who else? Who could?”
“The Ecentrists.”
“The Enlightened.”
“NO.”
“We must not fight.”
“We can think of no one else. Can you?”
“No.”
“Fight.”
“NO.”
“Fight.”
“Then call back Archeon.”
“NONONO.”
“Then we will die.”
“Better us than all.”
The Lore argued long and over great distance. One among them listened. He spoke often. His voice was strong.
But they did not listen.
*
Deep space – shell ship (Habla’saem)
Habla’saem, sprawled fat and happy and drunk. Before him images from news channels from all races filtered by the sphere to his specifications flicked past him. His criteria was simple. He sought destruction…
Programme: histog.
Another race turns a country to dust. They cut down the planet’s protection, and the winds grow and grow. Are we all the planet’s creatures? Do they war upon themselves by sending us out into space?
Programme: report on major channels. Children’s Hour.
The Lore council met
today to discuss the implications of the murder – obviously an assassination; drilled through core with (type of projectile; coil – living type of robot; Lore classification – hit with a single bullet) (latent news release)
Programme: sociog. The life of Harna Gurn, retrospective.
Not every race spends its whole time living in cities. It is not societies only answer to growth although it is a fairly common progression. Culture is necessary for the step to becoming part of the evolved. But look at this – from what we know cultures themselves evolve. It is not just a human phenomenon. Evolution is simply change. It is a side effect of time and space, change is and must be constant where matter exists and feels the pull of time. Stars evolve, solar systems evolve, the planets swirl around seemingly without thought. Everything is connected and there is no random pattern. Random itself is just a theory that people come up with to explain the things they fail to understand. It’s a crutch, an ideological, theological crutch, just like religion.
Destruction and rebirth. That is truth.
Programme: milihistog. And how easily subjugated nations are if you can take them one at a time…
Habla’saem chuckled happily to himself as he watched the news. He listened to all the pundits…who could it be? Murder – indeed! The Enlightened had murdered the Lore?!
What was the world coming to? He alone knew. Next would come war. War often follows from the simplist of acts. Like the first Great Origin War, this would stem from a simple tide, a tithe in blood.
*
Kyle’s room
He couldn’t figure out who she was. He couldn’t figure out what Orpal wanted from him. It was all so confusing. He knew why his gun hadn’t worked but everything else was just too much.
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