Annoyingly, thought Kyle.
Cetee was taking it less well. Both, as was right for someone good at their chosen professions, were unused to being chased. But for some reason being chased across the wide expanse of space was harder on Cetee. Perhaps it was the lack of an alley to duck down that did it to her.
“They’re gaining on us!” Cetee cried.
Orpal kept preternaturally calm. “Really, calm down would you? I wanted to show you this, so you would both understand something of the nature of the emitter. I needed you both to find it – it’s too big a job for either of you alone. Now, imagine if you could step outside the world…”
“Here we fucking go,” muttered Kyle.
“How would you achieve such a thing? With space travel. But you’d still be caged, by time. Time is restrictive. Now imagine if you could step out of time.”
“Can’t be done,” Cetee interrupted impatiently. “I’ve read everything Harna Gurn wrote on the topic, and it can’t be done. I know he hypothesised about our need to escape the chains of time, but if Harna Gurn couldn’t do it…”
“But I can.”
Cetee and Kyle exchanged glances. “Yeah, right. You talk a big game Orpal but you’re not that smart.”
“But I am,” replied Orpal, smugly. “The answer isn’t in force or acceleration, Cetee, but in stationery-ness. If you can manage that, then you’ll be outside time. Nothing can beat you there…except perhaps me!”
“OK, right.” Kyle pulled on his genogun. If the Ecentrists were coming he wanted to be ready. Cetee’s armour was back in her cabin, but she didn’t seem all that bothered by its disturbing lack of presence. Kyle almost prefered her in the robe. It left more to the imagination.
“The Cascade emitter can do this – do you understand? It doesn’t matter how fast everything else travels. Everything travels. The archeofact, however, is unique. It’s more solidly grounded in the universe than the universe itself.”
“I don’t really understand,” said Kyle, who had moderately less pride than Cetee and was therefore more prone to learning.
“Damn it, Orpal, shift! They’re right behind us! Arrgh, no!” Cetee screamed and thumped Kyle on the arm, who scowled petulantly.
“Not my fault!”
“Arrgh!” Cetee screamed again, in case Orpal had missed her point.
And the Zealots fired their first missile. A hundred followed after it.
“No, but perhaps, a demonstration…”
Orpal stopped. And the Ecentrists flew past.
*
Space – Outside
The stars, this side of space, almost, but not quite, flew past. One hundred Ecentrist missiles and three zealots disappeared in the blink of an eye. The Lu couldn’t blink, but even they were suitably impressed. They watched a galaxy slide past Orpal from the porthole in Kyle’s cabin.
“We are now outside of time,” said Orpal with aplomb. “So, you see, it’s not about how fast you travel. That’s what the emitter is. It’s perfect stationery-ness….”
And, outside of time, Orpal made tea.
Time passed on the ship. As humans couldn’t handle inaction, they chatted. It was the first time Kyle and Cetee had truly had a conversation.
“So,” said Cetee, “What’s the deal with all the scars?”
Kyle sat down and told her.
A long, long time ago, before Kyle had begun his second life, the preacher – he had called himself a missionary, (a hunter of sorts, Kyle supposed – hunting proselytes to his cause) had drummed religion into him. It was like binding his feet. The scars remained with him until this day, although he was only sixty-seven (he looked younger. Still, sixty-seven was young for a human), his hair yet to thicken or thin, the words were still stuck in his head. He didn’t think about them everyday, as he used to, now that other scars covered them. It had taken so many breaks and tears in his skin to let the poison out but the whiplash scars would always be the foundations the others were built on. Back in his youth on Guron the missionary had tried to teach his people, first in kindness, then in sullen violence as the people steadfastly refused to accept this new way of thinking.
Kyle had rebelled against the idea all his life, and still had not come to the realisation that this was what he was doing.
Cetee murmured that she understood. They were back in Kyle’s cabin, Cetee, naked next to Kyle on the cove bed, stroked the scars upon Kyle’s bicep gently while he talked. She thought she understood him better now. Over the course of the last two weeks outside of time they had become closer, although Cetee managed to maintain a decorous detachment from the youngster.
“They used to think that the end of the world would be the lifting of the veil,” said Kyle. “They attached mysticism to this, despite the logical conclusion to something you don’t understand being to research and find out they thought it meant that some powerful being would come and show them the way. All it really meant was that the answers were hidden away behind the veil of the past. That’s all the past is, a murky back window that obscures the view of where we’ve been. If you can see where we’ve been it makes the road ahead that much clearer.”
“So you don’t believe now or you do?”
“I do. But not in the God that the missionaries believe in. I believe in the God that makes coincidence. Like me finding you.”
“That was no coincidence,” Cetee told him kindly. “That was just Orpal.”
“Well, then I believe in Orpal. It’s a strange thing to say, but I do.”
“You believe in Orpal all you want hunny, I believe in me.”
Kyle pushed himself off the bed and stretched. “You know, it didn’t matter how much white carbon they used to erect their churches. They were still dirty. My religion is a clean one. Orpal, for all his wheeling and dealing is clean…”
Jump…
Orpal chimed in.
“You know, when I was in my younger years, before I met Harna, and before I toured with Um’lael, I spent a year studying the primitive thanatology (the study of death and its associated rituals, Kyle) of an the evolving race in the Irithian spiral. They gave birth to their children full sized. The parent died in childbirth and the children ate the husk as sustenance. They were very similar to your missionary teachings. They believed in the circle. The circle throughout our life…”
Jump…
“Societies are ranked according to their mathematical complexity. One through five. Unary systems through to quinary systems at the highest end of the scale. Decimal systems and sub-decimal systems are the lowest on level two. Prime numbers are level three. Fractions of primes for level four societies. Level five societies are not unknown – higher echelons work on the principle of if you know enough to ask, you know enough to figure it out yourself. I just figure it’s intellectual snobbery. I could tell you about it, but I wouldn’t be able to explain it in numbers you two would understand.”
Jump…
“And so,” Orpal concluded, “Fundilan mar Bren figured pi out in 1045 P.G.O.W. It wasn’t pi that didn’t work. It was the numbers. Cypher…”
Jump…
They appeared inside another ship. The ship was a transport ship.
It was a process known as stowing in. It worked in much the same way as Habla’saem’s ship had managed to enter Um’lael Sabreme’s ship, although given the nature and the size of their stowaway ship Orpal was able to manage it undetected.
Kyle was, however, getting tired of being on various ships.
“I want to feel real under my feet!” he complained.
“Well, alright, but eventually you’ll understand there’s no such thing. Consider this. I’ll give you three choices – first, the holosphere – I made it. Second, synthesphere – society made it. What about the third option? That’s just an illusion of the mind – your perception made it.”
“That’s just what you say.”
“No, that’s what you think.”
“Yeah, well, if that’s what I think, what
do you think?” said Kyle.
At this Orpal became confused and gave in. “OK, we’ll get out…”
Three weeks later, they emerged in time.
*
Huna Ecentrists homeship (1/427,100,991 – Ex-sector, sept)
The Ecentrist might have been slow. They had lost Orpal, but their memories were the size of continents full of elephants. They would not give up so easily.
*
Chapter Seven
Everywhere else
Three weeks, you would think, was ample time for robots, with their vast potential, to find the errant crew. But, no, during that time the armies of the Ecentrists did not gather.
The Tradition, understandably miffed, spent a large amount of that time apologising profusely to the Ecentrist for the loss of their prized archeofact. After two weeks of intense grovelling, the Ecentrists accepted begrudgingly.
Only the Lore, in the process of minding their own business, actually did anything useful. They died in droves. For while the Tradition mended bridges, the Ecentrists searched for meaning among their very own brand of hermeneutic preachings, the Enlightened raised their army of the disaffected and turned on the Lore. Habla’saem’s lecture, posing as Um’lael Sabreme, had proved to be the catalyst. The Lore were, after all, unnatural. What right did robots have to go affecting nature?
The student armies of the Enlightened were a terrible thing. They grew in stature while the Lore were whittled down. Nobody would stop them. The lecture circuits were closed and the movement Habla’saem had started became stronger during that short time. They were armed. It was easy to find weapons. The mercenary classes were employed, the armies grew like a biological entity.
The Tradition wrestled with their conscience. Those ships that were captained by the Enlightened joined the war. Those ships that were free, the independents, stood by to watch. They had yet to decide how far to go, and whether they would allow a schizm to emerge among their own kind.
What had been one assassination of a Lore bot on a forgotten ore planet became a sea of Lore dead on all sides of space. It was just a short hop to total war.
Habla’saem, alone in space, laughed his lonely laugh and nobody but him could see the joke.
*
Stowaway. Ed.
The stowaway ship was orbiting a quasar. Its massive energy suckling caused it to glow brighter than a star. Kyle stared from his room into the shining abyss, absentmindedly stroking the genogun laid out before him.
During the course of their journey (during which they hadn’t actually travelled anywhere) they had discussed with varying levels of passion Kyle’s gun. The gun needed to be sound and reliable but Kyle couldn’t figure out a way to get the adrenocorticotrophic safety off. The gun fed on adrenaline and would only work if Kyle’s adrenaline was up, but it was a dangerous safety. If he ever had to fight from cold he would be in deep trouble.
He had tried archeobactirium to no avail. His expertise in bioweapons grew, and he became proficient with the interface of his design that he used to treat the weapon to upgrades. But he could find no way to remove its sentibitor or to remove the adrenocorticotrophic safety catch. If the gun could not be changed he would have to learn to change himself.
He made little headway, too, with the Lu. Cetee and Orpal both took pity on him and at various intervals throughout their three-week sabbatical leant a hand, but no one could help. It was as if the Lu were purposely withholding their information. As if they were being stubborn.
Their wilful silence grated on Kyle’s nerves each time he entered his room.
Sometimes he entered his cabin with Cetee, but more often than not he was on his own. Cetee still refused to sleep with him (sleeping with someone was deemed to be the most intimate act possible among the Enlightened – to let someone lie next to you when you were at your most vunerable) and he grew used to amusing himself when and where he was able.
During the course of the three weeks much of Kyle’s time was spent with Orpal. Even though Orpal wasn’t paying Kyle anything, thoughts of asking to leave didn’t enter the young hunter’s head. After all, the Ecentrists were after him. He didn’t think the Tradition would hold much of a grudge but he couldn’t overlook the possibility that the Tradition would pursue him, too. And then there was the merctile police.
No, Kyle thought. The safest place for me is with Orpal.
Kyle and Orpal spent much of their time discussing sociotheology, and as the weeks passed Kyle became more or less fluent in the jargon that Orpal, a former frequenter of the lecture circuits, spoke. During his enforced sabbatical from time Kyle grew a rough beard, trained himself in anger therapy and excercised with abandon. At the end of that time Kyle was in the best shape of his life and much more comfortable with the genogun. He could call upon his rage now as though it were second nature.
Cetee, on the other hand, felt trapped. As a thief she was accustomed to feeling free. She wanted to feel the air on her face and the whine of projectiles clipping her armour as she skirted the defences the rich built around their palaces. She wanted the satisfaction that being a successful thief gave her. Being a wanted woman by the Ecentrists and the Tradition wouldn’t have bothered her half as much as it did if she had been able to get away. Being on the ship felt like being in prison to her, even though the cramped space of a prison was something she had never been subjected to.
Cetee, being older than Kyle in years if not body, was far in advance in the field of tech and sociotheology than Kyle, but that kept her from learning from Orpal in quite the same way as Kyle. The hunter was like a sponge. He learned everything that the great teacher had to offer.
Jaded or not, Cetee had to admit that Orpal’s knowledge was quite considerable.
On their final day in what Cetee termed captivity Orpal called out.
Kyle came into the comroom to find Orpal and Cetee deep in a discussion that bordered on an argument. The young hunter stared with undisguised longing at Cetee while she spoke with Orpal in the comroom. Three weeks together with Cetee had done nothing to dampen Kyle’s ardour.
“No, Cetee, I don’t think that’s the case at all when it comes to communicating with it,” said Orpal
With very little else to do when Orpal wasn’t talking, and not being as imaginative or nearly as curious, Cetee had spent the majority of her time making shapes with Kyle. As a consequence, Cetee was slightly bored of the hunter, although she had to confess (if only to herself) that she had grown fond of him.
It seemed from their discussion that Cetee had a greater understanding of his tool. Kyle felt mild jealously at the thought.
“Kyle, what do you think? Do you think the interface is wrong?”
“I don’t actually know what you’re talking about. The only interface I use is the fluidisk.”
“Not the gun, dummy, we’re talking about the eyes.”
“Oh, right, the eyes, yes, you were saying?”
“Well, you know there are different types of light? Right? You do know that?”
“Of course I do.” Actually, Kyle hadn’t known that, but he wasn’t about to let on. He’d managed three weeks without letting Cetee know how ignorant he was, and he be damned if he’d let on now. For some reason he was desperate to impress her.
“But do you know? Eh?” he added, trying to divert some of the blame for his lack of knowledge onto her.
Bloody idiot, thought Cetee. He doesn’t know.
“Well, I know you know, but just in case, there are eight types of known light, right?” For some reason, she didn’t want to let him know she thought he didn’t know anything.
“If that’s what you say then I guess it must be true.”
Cetee sighed, largely and to herself.
“Well, if that’s the case, maybe instead of trying to talk to the eyes with sound or words or pictures, being as how eyes mainly understand light, you should try talking to them in light? I don’t know, just a suggestion,” she added, noting the downward turn of his lips.<
br />
He had spent his spare time working on his gun and trying to understand the eyes, but hadn’t got anywhere with the eyes (Kyle was fast becoming an expert with his gun). Not being Orpal’s field of expertise (he still wasn’t sure what Orpal’s field was) the eyes remained a silent, observant, mystery. Orpal, for some reason, was reluctant to help him get to the bottom of his dilemma, and Kyle wasn’t having much luck on his own. His meagre studies along the way to wherever (whenever, he thought) had revealed nothing.
So, Cetee had suggested, on this trip, if he’d be patient enough to follow her around while she shopped, first stop, they would go to the chemists and try to find something that would interact with the eyes.
Kyle hadn’t been totally inactive. He had tested their matter, in an effort to understand the eyes, under supervision of Orpal. He had tried a replica, stored them in a polyquatodopropyl benzoate solution, tried to find a suitable storage devise for them, but nothing worked. The replicas he managed to create hadn’t responded well to field tech and he still couldn’t communicate through them. The replicas broke apart before he could immerse them in solution anyway and the silicarbide matter that comprised the eyes proved disagreeable to everything he tried.
Nothing had worked, so, as Cetee suggested, they were going to talk to Miriandianda, an old friend of Orpal’s. It was their next stop.
For now, they had to get from the unclaimed refuse pile that was their stowaway home and into the merchant areas.
Kyle and Cetee left Orpal and exited through the hatch into the refuse area of 507/4564* Harckand feeder ship/Enlightened.
The ship was one of thousands that fed Harckand’s toot stores. There were plenty of other ships they could have stowed away on, but Orpal had chosen this one. They didn’t know why Orpal had chosen this, but if there was someone here who could shed some light on the Lu eyes then Kyle wasn’t about to complain. Cetee on the other hand complained vociferously, as being on a rubbish dump wasn’t what she had in mind for a shopping trip. Orpal told her to stop being a baby about it and set about finding a bioweapon, which she would need if she was to find the next piece of the emitter. Orpal said it resided on a sybaritic ship in deep Enlightened territory. As the Enlightened had apparently gone to war with the Lore since their little jaunt out of time the Enlightened would allow no one with weapons to enter their entertainment ships. The Lore bots could all too easily sneak aboard in the form of a human and the Enlightened didn’t trust anyone who claimed to be a pacifist.
Evolution Page 10
