“Leon.” Mother’s tone suggested she hated interrupting his vigil staring out the spaceport at the never-ending asteroid bombardment of earth. The stoning might well end if the Nautilus failed to block the last of the vital installations necessary to Earth’s defense from going tits up. Now that their reconnaissance mission across the barrier had come to an end, they had rejoined the other nautili on makeshift shield protection duty for the planet.
“My scanners indicate that the Kang are already on the ground on Earth.”
“The Kang? Is that what they call themselves?”
“Surely you don’t wish to imply it took me more than a few picoseconds to hack their language?”
Leon actually smiled. He could use some of that self-confidence right now; Techa knows his people could.
“The Kang Dynasty is a galactic-scale civilization,” Mother explained. “I have hacked the language of the drones, but there are a variety of castes.” She threw up the visuals of the castes on the smart-screen portal he was gazing out of, labeled: drones, Ming, and Queen. “There may well be other castes. This is just what I picked up so far from hacking the COMMS of the drones on Earth. Mind scanners at Los Alamos Labs, used to survey the scientists to expose possible subterfuge, gave me a way into some of the Kang soldiers’ minds, from which the additional detail on the ordering of their society comes.”
Leon couldn’t help noticing how much different the queen was from the other castes, with a brain nearly as big as the bodies of the drones. She was several times larger, with a tail that was clearly meant as a formidable weapon. She appeared more metallic robot than carbon-based lifeform, as did the other two castes, owing perhaps to a silicon-based substrate. The Ming had bigger brains than the drones, but their bodies weren’t all that different.
“The drone numbers are legion, and quite sufficient to overrun Earth’s defenses, even if the asteroid bombardment fails,” Mother explained.
Leon shook his head slowly. “Techa help us.” In an age where you thrived so long as your tech was more advanced than the next guy’s, Techa had become the goddess most people prayed to. He hoped Mother didn’t take his not praying to her personally.
“Well, that’s it then.” He was already heading for the sliding doors of his private suite aboard the Nautilus. “I can no longer afford to wait for the clone teams on Earth to get back to me. They will or they won’t in time to do some good. It’s time I cleared a path to a future a bit more sustainable on my own.”
Mother didn’t reply. She could read his mind better than he could. If she deigned to speak to him at all it was probably because she sensed he needed help getting out of his own head.
The instant he was on the other side of the sliding doors, facing the ship’s inner courtyard, the lion embossed on the door, leapt off it. The etching was made of nanites that could self-replicate on a dime until they were dense enough to take shape in a 3D world instead of in a 2D one. The lion roared as it paced beside him, nuzzling its rich mane against Leon’s legs, both marking its territory and looking for a reassuring pat on the head. It was typically his job to protect his interiors from unwanted intruders—and that included the saboteurs suspected to be somewhere on the ship. They had been here for The Star Gate mission; there was every reason to believe that saboteurs were still in their midst. No doubt the lion could read his mind and his moods as well as any dog, explaining why he was seeking reassurance.
“Maybe I’ll take you into battle with me this time,” he said, pulling at its mane. “Just how battle-hardened are you?”
The lion grew battle armor, roared to show off his diamond-glazed teeth, materialized an assault rifle in his mouth like a chew toy just so he could show off how readily he could crush it with one chomp.
Leon smiled. “Well, then. If not in this timeline, then in some other, I’m sure. I’ll let you know how many battles we fight beside one another when I get back from the rejuvenation tank.”
The lion roared and trotted back to his resting place in 2D on the sliding doors. He must have sensed Crumley coming, because Crumley filled the void he’d left in the moment he’d left it.
“Leon, I’m all too familiar with that look of determination, the one that says, ‘Damn the odds’.”
“Don’t start, Crumley. It’s not like I have a choice. The timeline sickness will be the least of my problems.”
Crumley groaned and pulled at that silver mane of his at the back of his head that could probably give the lion’s mane a run for its money. “I have some theories.”
“What, that might slow me down from jumping in the rejuvenation tank to jack my nanites to where I can reach out to other timelines?”
“Better yet, that might stop you dead in your tracks.”
Leon’s stride remained brisk. He wasn’t biting on the bait.
“What if the kids are ruthless warriors as a stage in their development? Maybe they’re just not allowed to take their play beyond the sand box until the Kang have gotten the animal in themselves under control. For all we know, the adults are pacifist philosophers, like me.”
“If Mother passed the intel along to you, then you’ve seen their queen. Tell me, does she look like a pacifist to you?”
Crumley groaned. “Let’s not try to judge a book by its cover.”
“You’re our munitions guy, Crumley, when you’re not playing quartermaster fetching us whatever the hell else we might need we didn’t think to bring, along with what you find on location. You blow up people en masse. You mean pacifist, like that?”
Crumley grimaced. “Yeah, like that. Walk softly, but carry a big stick. Maybe as adults they’re slow to provoke and value peace because they’ve learned the hard way the costliness of any other approach. Maybe that’s why planets like Earth get sucked in as their youth population grows and they have more of them to teach these valuable lessons to. Without real populations to perish under their thumbs, there would hardly be any hard lessons to learn, any true consequences for their actions to haunt them the rest of their lives and to keep them in check.”
“I like it, Crumley. It’s a lovely sentiment, one in which everyone wins. Like the way the Romans encouraged the Christians to worship a God who could guarantee them a better afterlife, and then insisted that the suffering in this world was the best way to get access to heaven. And then threw them to the lions in the arena. It’s the psychology of a conquered people that a ruling people used to take the last of the fight out of the slaves. We haven’t yet begun to fight and already you’re praying to the Kang queen, awaiting you in, what shall we call alien Valhalla exactly?”
“There’s no need to be nasty, Leon, especially in the absence of any proof to the contrary. Considering the size of the Queen’s brain, there is every reason for her to believe that like her drone children, we, too, are children, that need to learn the same developmental lessons, share the same consequences. She may be as content to parent us as her own kind. Think about it. A larger trans-galactic civilization to which the Kang Dynasty belongs has to have some way to keep growing without making war with itself, or spreading a warring mentality like a blight across the universe. I’m sure if you give my idea some more thought, you’ll realize how brilliant it and their approach is.”
“What if you’re right, Crumley? And what happens to the Earth after the Kang youth are done using it as their rumpus room? Are we to sacrifice eight billion souls so the Kang can grow up to be decent law-abiding aliens?”
“Well, no, but…”
“Keep thinking, philosopher King. Let’s hope all that ideation so far is just the car backfiring after not being started in a while.”
Leon picked up the pace, leaving Crumley trailing further and further behind.
“At least consider heeding your own advice! It’s not like you’ve allowed the fourth-brain the time it needs to work its magic on you. Let the Nautilus facilitate the meetings with the remarkable men and women aboard this tub that will shake loose the insights you need.”
Leon smiled forlornly without craning back to give him the farewell he deserved. Techa knows he might not even recognize his old friend when he climbed back out of that rejuvenation tank.
Without the distraction of the lion and Crumley back to back, Leon took note of what should have registered earlier.
The ship looked deserted.
Theta Team—they were all down in the Dead Zone, the galaxy that had been abandoned by the advancing singularity wave of the Stage 3 civilization, continuing to gobble up real estate across the heavens.
The fact that Mother hadn’t already printed up replacements for the Theta Team operatives suggested to what extent she remained vested in ensuring their safe return.
Thank Techa there remained one optimist in the bunch.
Of course, she could console herself with innumerable alternate realities that played like so many probabilistic futures to the here and now without being invested in any one more than the other. Even if there was just one of those in which the Nautilus survived, she could latch on to that, run endless analyses to enhance their odds in this timeline. Leon supposed that wasn’t such a bad thing.
But he didn’t deal in probable futures.
Just this one he was racing toward.
Which is why he had to be certain.
***
Leon found Solo waiting for him near the rejuvenation tank in Solo’s suite. He was leaning against his cane, massaging the palm of his right hand on the crystal dome of the cane. “Leon, you understand why my tank is a good deal more advanced than the one in your suite?”
“That’s exactly why I’m here.”
Solo sighed. “Your mind just isn’t genetically engineered like mine. I’m sorry. The nanites can only do so much. They’re built to interact with your genetics. They can do much to supercharge it, but they can’t rebuild you from scratch.”
“If you’re worried about me coming out a more broken man, you’re too late. A Special Forces operative standing helplessly by while the Earth is pummeled is already as broken as he can get.”
Solo sighed and squeezed that cane tighter, leaned on it harder. “You could just rely on me.”
“I’m guessing you’re running up against your own limits trying to get your mind around the entirety of a transgalactic civilization, rocking Stage 3 technology, no less. And that space warping technology we reverse-engineered from that crashed alien ship the last time out, so far only you and Cassandra have been able to let that loose inside your heads for any length of time without going stark raving mad. How much longer can you really crank that handle on the jack-in-the-box before he springs? No, Solo, you’re already carrying far more than you should.
“One of these days you’ll have to catch me up on who made you what you are. I wouldn’t be surprised if you came from one of those Stage 3 civilizations yourself, got left back on Earth for whatever reason. At least that’s me filling in the blanks. Promise one day you’ll tell me how close I am to the truth.”
Leon was already climbing up the ladder on the side of the tank.
“I’ll keep an eye on you while you’re in there.”
“No, you won’t. You have plenty of homework to do after the nun and Cassandra’s going AWOL on us. And I’ll need something actionable when I get back out.”
Leon was about to step over the lip of the tank and submerge himself.
“Leon!” Solo shouted.
“You have anything to tell me after mind-melding with the intel you got from Cassandra and the nun that will keep me from jumping in?”
Solo’s rainbow eyes fired up again, the individual bands of the rainbow brightening before turning against one another, revolving in opposite directions. He was clearly determined to make use of the few seconds Leon was granting him to dig up what he couldn’t ascertain so far: a way forward.
His eyes settled and Solo exited the chamber without saying another word.
Cassandra had a way of gut-punching Leon that took several days or more to recover from—even with his nanites at one-hundred percent. But the psychological blow from Solo walking out of the room like that was worse.
The one thing that someone should have thought to say to give him pause, he had to say to himself: If Mother could already communicate across timelines, what the hell did he think he was going to unearth that she missed? But Mother’s data mining algorithms would always carry her agenda. Leon, on the other hand, was a one of a kind artist of war, bred for just this kind of situation. He would come with his own right-brain intuitions and gut checks. He was a conduit to special knowledge his genetics and upbringing had gifted him with. Maybe there was a God, and Leon was the just-in-time response to their predicament. But to work his magic, he needed access to the big picture, bigger than he had right now. As rationales go, that’s damn thin, Leon.
Leon plunged into the tank, submerging himself, fighting to breathe through the liquid medium until his lungs settled down, accepting the new way of things.
Could his mind accept the new way of things in the cosmos as readily?
SIXTEEN
Natty came sliding into Solo’s suite in his socks, braking to a complete stop using friction alone. “Where’s Leon?” he asked. “I’ve been looking all over for him.”
“Fishing the other timelines in hope of reeling in the one really big idea that can save us all.”
“He left without touching base with me first? He never does that.” Natty’s flabbergasted state morphed quickly into something less benign. “Just to be clear, you’re all my action-figure dolls, you hear me? None of my toy soldiers do anything without me, anything! You want me to slam the lid on this toy chest, just watch me.”
Solo smiled warily at him before walking right by him. “You want our attention, Natty, I suggest you say something worthy of it.”
Solo walked into an adjoining chamber in his suite, a giant empty dome. He projected some of the footage from the Stage 3 civilization he was still processing. Images from the Dead Zone: rotating space stations generating artificial gravity even now—even with the lights long since off. Entire worlds hollowed out and turned into spaceships…
Natty did his sliding in his socks number, entering the chamber to give him a piece of his mind, pointing his finger, wondering why he was having trouble finding the words to tell someone off. He took a closer look at the slice of the Dead Zone Solo was examining. “You know, this gives me an idea.”
Natty ran back out of the chamber and out of Solo’s suite.
He didn’t come to a complete stop until he was some distance down the hall. He eyed the decks after decks rising above his head and sinking beneath him, each one circumnavigating the inner courtyard. Natty had to put his hand up to his eyes to shield himself from the sphere of shimmering white light—indication that the Mars war god supersentience was no longer in idle mode; hence the distinct absence of the destressing tropical jungle with the talking animals.
He could barely see, but he could see enough.
The ship was deserted.
“Did my GI Joe doll captain actually set all of my dolls into play at once—pulling each one out of the toy chest? I’ll skin him alive. Just who am I supposed to play with now?”
Laney’s avatar materialized behind him. “Everyone else aboard this ship is every bit as shell-shocked as you are, Natty. You don’t see us all reverting to our inner twelve-year-old to get through it.”
“Yeah, well, each man to his own coping mechanism as the Titanic sinks, I say. And where is my actual wife in my time of need?”
“She won’t let you near her in this state. As you’ll recall, she nearly divorced you the last time you pulled this nonsense.”
“Fine! Fine!” Natty ran his hands through his hair. “You’ll stay with me long enough to help me pull myself together, right?”
“Sure.”
“Well, come on. I think I have an idea.”
Laney’s avatar shadowed him, looking more ghostly than he would like. He shook his head slowly. “Mother, a little more processing power to the Laney avatar, please! I know you have your hands full not to be wasting mind power right now, but I need to get a grip!”
The Laney avatar solidified. He smiled and rested his arm across her shoulders, only to find himself slapping his thigh. She just looked solid, that’s all. “Mother!” Natty screamed, shaking his fist at the sky. He tried again. Laney wasn’t getting any more solid. “Great, now I have to earn my way into my wife’s avatar’s hands as well. Fine.”
Once back in his and Laney’s suite, Natty made his way into one of his labs. Speaking to the room AI, he said, “Empty this place out. Turn it into a theater in the round.”
The room collapsed the work stations and other furniture back into itself. “Perfect,” Natty mumbled, engaging a hologram of the sector of space Solo was looking at earlier. Since he didn’t exactly have Solo’s abilities, he needed the hologram for a more visceral connection with his subject matter.
“What’s got you so worked up?” Laney’s avatar asked.
“What I said about one man’s reason for shellshock being another man’s highly effective coping mechanism. These abandoned cylinder worlds… Wouldn’t take much to put a lot of them back into service.”
“To what ends?”
“I was thinking we teleport what we can out of the Dead Zone and take them with us back to the Milky Way Galaxy, once we figure out how to get the artifact on the moon to work for us rather than the Kang.”
“You’re afraid we could lose the Earth and the Nautilus both, and enough of these seeds spread far and wide might allow us to rebuild.”
Moving Earth Page 12
