Evolution

by Saunders, Craig

  Apart from the gloriously shifting colours the tenophoric Homeworld was rather boring. Everything was see-through, so there was no real telling how big the city was. It just seemed to play with what little light came down this far. It was like a prism made of jellyfish. The domed compartments that comprised the city were ever shifting.

  The city (they didn’t know what it was actually made from) of the Teraphod’s homeworld maintained the same jellyfish like structure, malleable with chromataphoric cells as the teraphods themselves, as though it was built from teraphod genetical material. Chromataphoric cells were a good foible for any alien race to have. It made them decidedly not human, and although their squidlike bodies did an ample job of it, it was nice to be reminded.

  The whole of the teraphod race could see through the walls too, so there was no way to get in by stealth. The two be-suited intrepidators stood out like the proverbial not sore thumb at a blind carpenter’s convention.

  “Can you think of nothing? I thought you were supposed to be a thief.” Kyle said to Cetee as they approached the first enclosure. It could be considered a wall, at a stretch, but only in the way that cells have walls.

  “Well, I don’t think anyone has ever thought to try this. I’ve never even heard of this armour Orpal gave us, and it is pretty specialist kit. I wouldn’t even have known to come here because the teraphods don’t talk to anyone and nobody knows what they’ve got.” Cetee’s cutting torch sprang into light.

  “Well, they’ve got the fourth piece.”

  A teraphod peered at them. Its tentacles swam langorously behind its body.

  The laser cutter was bright. The teraphod’s face changed to match its colour.

  “How the hell do you expect us to find it, Orpal? Everything down here looks the same.”

  “Well, the emitter doesn’t,” replied Orpal. “I’ve been assured it’s down there.” (Talking to the two of them at once took no additional effort on Orpal’s part, although Kyle and Cetee had a little trouble getting used to three-way conversation. Orpal had been blessedly quiet on the sybaritic ships, directions being unnecessary, so this time was a first for both of them.)

  “Assured by whom?”

  “An old friend.”

  “All your friends seem to be old.”

  “That happens when you get to my age.”

  “Well, you better hope your friend is right, I don’t think they’re going to be too happy about us taking it.”

  “No, I don’t suppose they will.”

  “And we’re unarmed.”

  “Don’t panic, I’m sure my source will see you back safely.”

  “How come your friend hasn’t already taken it?”

  “Why, it has no need of what you seek. Its quest is one greater than yours.”

  “It?”

  “Yes, it is a robot.”

  “Oh, for crying out loud,” Cetee understood. “The only robot capable of living down here would Lore. And for it to be down here it has to be a rogue-cut off from the main. What have you gotten us into Orpal?”

  “Yes, it’s a rogue, but I promise you it will see you safely back.”

  “How, exactly?” said Kyle, as Cetee finally cut through. The teraphod that had been watching looked on in what Kyle could not tell, its features so alien. It did nothing and did not try to attack them, but began secreting something from another translucent place and covering the hole over. They swam on and in, in part propelled by strokes and in part the armour. The teraphod finished its repairs and the hole closed behind them.

  “Where now?” called Kyle. He looked at a navicom he held, which picked up non-biological emissions, but the beeping display only showed that the prized archeofact was somewhere beneath them. He checked his wrist time display, and decided he and Cetee were doing fine. The water down here wasn’t water, it was hydro-oxypilium, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to be stuck down here when its acidity finally broke through the armour’s protective shell and hit his skin. There was an hour and a half left, according to his calculations.

  Orpal was not expecting any great difficulty. The Teraphods were not a violent race, just reclusive.

  “Down two clicks. Keep going.”

  The mass of Teraphods was swimming away from them, the majority uncurious, which was perhaps why they had survive so long in this planet’s seas. Long enough to evolve naturally skin-ships that could take space flight, even though they didn’t want to leave their planet, they recognited the threat of extinction that staying in one place posed, having watched the dwellers in the sky and land above perish time and again in great cataclytsms that left them largely untouched as even when the great oceans shifted with the poles, they were merely sloshed about. Although a few drowned in the air, obviously.

  They would become curious enough, thought Kyle, when the emitter was in their hands.

  They swam downward. Cetee was getting annoyed, unaccustomed to the armour and missing her own, as she swam, following Kyle and admiring his rear.

  The teraphods avoided them.

  They swam on.

  Then, in the deep, a hundred metres below (now one hour in) something glinted.

  Kyle brought up the rear now. He missed Cetee’s armour too. This suit did nothing for her figure.

  “Come on, hurry it up, you’ve already been down an hour!” Cetee berated Kyle.

  “Well, we’ll be going back quicker.” Kyle replied and boosted the propulsion kit in his suit to catch Cetee up, where ahead, she was cutting through yet another wall.

  “Orpal,” she said, “your hunter’s too slow.”

  “He had his uses, Cetee,” replied Orpal.

  “I’d appreciate it if you two at least pretended I could hear.”

  “Whatever for,” Cetee replied. “You’d only go and get lost without us.”

  “Of course I’m bloody well lost, have you seen any directions since we’ve been down here?” Kyle was feeling agitated and he could smell his own body odour in the armoured suit. His hair was plastered to his forehead and he wasn’t even exerting himself. He wondered if Cetee’s cheeks were flushed as they were prone to getting when she exerted herself.

  “Nope,” replied Cetee, “but I don’t usually have any trouble with directions this simple. All we’ve done so far is head straight down.”

  They swam down further and further, Cetee ahead most of the time, with the teraphods following and closing up each hole their laser cutter made as they passed through. The teraphods seemed slightly miffed that someone would go cutting holes in their city, but their annoyance was only definable in the slightly darker hues they took on as they shifted colours.

  “Anyway, where is it?”

  “I don’t know,” admitted Orpal. “You’ve less that an hour left. Hurry up.”

  “How are we supposed to get back in time, Orpal? The teraphods have been closing each hole we make behind us.”

  “Don’t you worry about a thing. The Lore bot will get you back safely, I’m sure of it.”

  “I’m not worried,” replied Cetee, “I’m concerned.”

  “My friend will get you back. You just get there.”

  There! There in the depths, a non-reflective surface, one that didn’t change in response to light, and what was that next to it?

  “The Lore rogue!” It was changed into rock. The portion of rock was different to the rock around it, and Cetee only spotted it because she was looking for any incongruities. The rock that was different was roughly twice the size of a man, but Cetee, in her wide travels, also knew that Lore bots could change their density to take on any form. While the bots weight would never change, it could make itself into any shape, even human, should it so wish, although it would weight far in excess of any human Cetee had ever met. Her implants helped too. Cetee could see things with her preternatural eyes that Kyle never could.

  It spoke, “Welcome. I‘ve been sat here waiting for someone to come and rescue me for ages.”

  “Are you our contact?”

  �
��Are you my saviour?” It replied.

  “Eh?” said Kyle.

  Cetee looked equally confused as she reached out her hand to take the piece.

  “You see,” said the Lore bot. “I came for that too. I thought it would help me get back into the collective. But they won’t let me leave.”

  Pointing up, above them were the teraphods. Thousands of them.

  Dear god, thought Kyle. Is this what you have in store for me?

  And the armour sizzled.

  *

  Shit, thought Orpal.

  *

  Deep space, Shell ship unique class, Habla’saem.

  Habla’saem had rocked himself to sleep not six hours previously. He had taken the news badly. Now he was awake again he was worried.

  There’s something wrong with this, thought the socioassassin, taking the news the night before. Now the socio-assassin – through beautificous qubit cryptography – had a deeper understanding of his mission, and it frightened him.

  There were troubling reports on the news that the Cascade emitter was being reassembled, but he couldn’t tell by whom. The emitter was the last great mystery, and no-one knew where all the pieces were kept, but the news reports said that two had gone missing now, one stolen from the archeog Cablas and one stolen from the Hedonal’s sybaritic ship. It did not bode well. If the device was assembled the importance of Habla’saem’s little war would pale into insignificance.

  The emitter, with its final message and access to god’s plane, had long been sought. For someone to complete the greatest quest in all history could even mean an end to his war. The Enlightened would soon lose interest were the completed emitter to show up, as would the Lore, the Tradition and the maybe even the Ecentrists.

  Someone else was playing the game, someone playing a game not entirely new to Habla’saem, but nobody had told him the rules. The Lore would be on their way to extinction soon. Given time, the Enlightened with their symbiotic ships would wipe out the Lore for their inherent unnaturalness, for the way that they could take on the properties on a nano-level of anything they wished. Nanotech was the enemy as far as the Enlightened were concerned. The whole of the Enlightened followed the scholarly opinions given to them in much the same way other societies followed strong leaders or elected principals. It was through this that the Enlightened had been raised. Um’lael Sabreme was too highly regarded for them to ignore his opinion.

  And yet, something didn’t quite sit right with Habla’saem. The Ecentrists, who stoically refused to shake the boat, had joined the battle. But there was something wrong. If the Ecentrists had not joined the battle the Tradition would have remained neutral, but for his plan to work the socioassassin needed the Tradition to stay out of hostilities. But this was not happening.

  The war is going well, but the Lore are taking too heavy a battering, too quickly. The Tradition would see the threat of extinction. They would surely step in. Then all bets would be off. This wasn’t what he had planned at all…

  The news showed him what he wanted to see. He lay back against his softly cushioned sofa and sighed in discontent. Making war should be less complicated than it was.

  Habla’saem took the news again.

  First there was the war in sector 4390/narc class ceb 45~90. It was far removed from his sector, but close enough for discomfort.

  He took a sup of stum. It was smooth on his palette.

  Secondly there was the retrieval of the pieces of the emitter. Habla’saem knew it to be the greatest archeofact to survive enlightment, over 100,000 years old and still no one knew from whence it came. He thought the piece was probably Ecentrist, as none other leaned toward the engineering of such advanced tech.

  He tilted the bottle and filled his glass again. It was high time he got drunk.

  Third, the white hole. A new weapon perhaps. He would have to be careful, or his beautifully engineered war could spill over and change the balance of the universe forever.

  There was only one answer to save his precious war. The Ecentrists would have to be given the final weapon. If he could finish the war quickly it would all be over. If the war was protracted, as it would be if the Tradition’s independents stepped in, the Lore might survive, the Enlightened might back out, and the Ecentrists wouldn’t be able to follow the Lore into subspace…

  *

  Inside the white hole

  The Ecentrist zealot Cardinal Class/Michael piloted through the hole and in two point seven? recalculating all the time…eight thousand/ bits? Km/secs?

  Now it was confused.

  It should have seen the ship Huna a thousand seconds ago. Confusion wasn’t a natural state for an Ecentrist bot. They ordinarily knew exactly where they were going and why.

  It recalculated. There was an exit coming up, and it was closest to Huna from what it could tell, but the power of the white hole was throwing its calculations off. Even a third level mathematical caste should have been able to cope with these calculations, but something was throwing it seriously awry.

  Like the trinity told all their zealots – any complications, you can’t risk the enemy finding you. The white hole was the triumvirate’s ace card. It allowed them to travel in an instant to places that would ordinarily take them years. It allowed them to pursue the war on a wider front.

  But the Lore could use the white hole if they found it. The fifth level mathematical castes of the Lore would have no trouble with the complicated calculations. Trinary was complex enough to allow it, but quinary would suit itself perfectly to travel within the white hole. No, it would not do to fall into Lore hands from the white hole. It had to try to get out but it had failed. Cardinal class zealot didn’t like the taste of failure.

  There was no sign of Huna. It was perfectly lost in the white hole. Coming back from sector 49/49349~space (near) it couldn’t risk floating about in space. The risks of discovery were too great. If the Lore discovered the white hole they would know how to use it and the war would never be over.

  It was a simple equation that Michael could manage. It prepared to detonate itself. It would not do to fall into the Lore’s hands.

  And at the same time, it emerged from the white hole directly into the city that used white hole tech to travel into Cablas…

  The teraphod city. Tenaphoria.

  Coincidence is just god’s hand at play.

  *

  Tenaphoria Sect 9745 a¬subplate liquid/retra

  Kyle looked at the masses of jellyfish squid above him. The piece of the emitter was in his hand but time was up. He hoped the acid worked quickly, he didn’t want to die in pain. His flesh began to sizzle and he took Cetee’s hand in his. He felt his skin burn.

  The Lore rogue loomed up from the rock, morphing, changing shape. What was it doing?

  It took on the appearance of a massive winged beast. The pain was now unbearable. Cetee had already passed out. Kyle was near to losing consciousness from the pain. The Lore rogue loomed over them. There wasn’t time. Kyle could just see what the Lore bot was attempting to do. It was trying to save them from the acid. Wrapping them in its wings. He was so close now. On the edge of oblivion.

  Then, in the next instant, everything went white.

  *

  Chapter Ten

  Tenophoria - Sect 9745 a¬subplate liquid/retra unclaimed

  Orpal was suddenly rocking on what used to be a submerged pinnacle of rock, but which had again become a mountain now the seas were gone. He stabilized himself.

  The occasional teraphod could still be seen twitching, starved of hydro-oxypilium. Flipping tentacles reached out desperately for the new rain, which fell all around. Had they had human features or even gills they would have been gasping.

  The effect of a zealot detonating itself, in precisely the position that the teraphod’s gateway met sea and white hole, was transcendent. Night became day, good became evil and what had kept the teraphods alive and in glorious seclusion for so long became their downfall. In an instant the seas were vapourised and
the teraphods could no longer breathe.

  The planet’s heavy acidic seas were falling, but the Lore bot had metamorphosed into a Gat Moriumthraite, one of his favourite shapes, and two protuberances like bat wings sheltered Kyle and Cetee in their still sizzling suits from the worst of the fallout. They were at the bottom of a huge ravine, and the jellyfish-like structures of the teraphod’s home city lay over them like bed sheets. The Lore bot stood on two legs not designed for walking and propelled itself up the sheer sides of the ravine to where Orpal waited, cutting through the gelatinous sheets with razor sharp claws until they were clear. The rain fell on. Small pools of water accumulated.

  Orpal’s landing legs would not reach the mountainside and he looked like a bug on a stick as the trio approached under the Lore rogue’s power, flying unnaturally without the use of its wings straight up the side of the rock until they reached the pinnacle, where a cloud of pure acid rain was already floating, cloaking the newly-formed mountain.

  The Lore Bot named Archeon started to laugh.

  “Orpal, you old bastard!” he said as he morphed into a sasensquatch and entered the hatch, following its two human charges, which it pushed through ahead of it. They came round at the sound of voices and looked up to see the thick-limbed sasensquatch looming largely over them. The burning rain did not affect it in the slightest, but the two humans breathed a sigh of relief as they unfastened their helmets. Their burns were slight and would soon heal.

  “Archeon! It’s been too long. How did the fish treat you?”

  “Really, Orpal, you know they’re cephalophod genus, what, have you gone senile in your exile?”

  “Exile?” mouthed Kyle to Cetee, whose hair was plastered and had turned white from exposure to the acid of the teraphod’s former homeworld.

  Cetee shrugged generically.

  “Now now, less of the senile, wardog. I’m not the one who’s been living twenty leagues under the sea, am I?”