by Barry Kirwan
* * *
Louise tested her right arm, flexing it to see if the hair-line break was fully healed. Shooting pains seared their way to her shoulder. She dismissed them. She limped back to the comms console, ignoring the booming thuds coming from the door barring entry to the secondary control room. Hammering, like a heartbeat. A display flashed yellow: message waiting. “Read,” she commanded in Q’Roth. Angular, barbed characters, all twisted iron nails and scalloped shrapnel, cascaded down the screen in foreground and background, the front field moving faster. Its elegance transfixed her.
So, Micah had escaped again, helped by an unidentified ally. Impressive – she hadn’t thought he had it in him. But the local authorities hadn’t taken too kindly to the jump-mine – highly illegal – and had banned further transits in the sector till it had been probed and pronounced clean. Micah and company were fugitives. That didn’t take long.
The pounding on the door accelerated, then stopped. She listened to the yawning silence of the behemoth ship around her. It, too, sensed the mirror – the Hohash, according to the human refugees’ database she’d downloaded on Ourshiwann before her departure. The ship itself had saved her when it had first attacked.
She’d not realised how fast the Hohash could move, nor how dangerous it was to fire a pulse weapon at it – it lived up to its mirror representation. She touched the still-raw scar on her left elbow, from the laser burn it had reflected back at her.
“More hide and seek?” She shouted through the door. “Okay, we’ll play again soon.” She recalled how it had chased her, she moving wildly to avoid its savage side-on thrusts, until she managed to reach the Regen-lab where she’d been reborn. By that time she’d been crawling, with a broken femur and fractured arm, not to mention concussion, and haemorrhaging inside her leg. She didn’t know why it hadn’t taken its opportunity there and then to crush her neck or head, but the ship had intervened, extruding a metal skin door in a millisecond, sealing her safe in the lab.
Two weeks of accelerated healing. During which time Micah had eluded her again. She’d not seen the Hohash since that day, but she heard it haunting the corridors often enough.
Where are you headed, Micah? She called up the nav-charts, and located the nearest Grid Station. Too close, and too small – they’d need anonymity now. She picked a minor hub, six transits from Micah’s previous location. She zoomed in to the hub’s alien manifest. She smiled. Perfect.
She composed another written message – she was becoming fluent by now – to a Q’Roth ambassador visiting the hub, advising him of impending ‘guests’. She sent it as a closed message, not needing a reply, using her adopted Q’Roth callsign, Arctura. In ancient Q’Roth it had the same meaning as the old Japanese word ronin, meaning a samurai who’d left their master; a dangerous renegade. She was already gaining a local reputation.
She was about to switch off when she noticed that the nearby station had a sub-spatial comms booster. She stared at the glowing icon, and tapped into it. The hammering started up again. She sent a one-line message, in English: Micah destination GZH-359A in 4 days. Arctura
The door bashing intensified, like a drum beating out a dervish. She heaved her hand-made high intensity thermal cannon onto her good hip. She aimed it at the door, and flicked the ignition on. Molten flame dripped from the tip of the muzzle. “Coming,” she shouted, slamming her good hand down on the door release.
Chapter 19
Ossyria Prime
Pierre’s quicksilver eyes gazed through the space-portal. The pearl-coloured home world of Ossyria Prime, the Galactic home of medicine, grew large. It appeared as if it had been cut into a dozen horizontal slices, then re-assembled. Each section turned at a different pace, creating a hypnotic effect. He saw no large masses of water: he’d gathered from the Omskrat orb – his handy Ossyrian encyclopedia – that water was largely underground, and only occasionally precipitated in precise locations via environmental control satellites. It took him back to a forgotten childhood – it was the most beautiful marble he could ever have imagined.
Kat entered, the swish of the door irising closed behind her.
“Don’t tell me that’s a natural phenomenon, Pierre.”
He decided to try something he’d been experimenting with, a way of accelerating his cognition. He studied her reflection in the portal, and willed his mind to shift gear. As if in slow motion, her eyes began to close. His mind ran through what she’d just said, using a poly-dimensional scaling technique to study the covariance of her words, her speech rhythm, intonation, body language, eye contact including pupil dilation, and pheromone secretion level. He applied a Neo-Bayesian statistical model of her personality, harvested from every single interaction he’d ever had with her. His brain computed eight potential interpretations of what she had just said, with statistical likelihoods attached. Her eyelids made contact. His mind automatically ran through fifteen different responses he could make, then extrapolated each conversation for the next ten sentences. All but one projection ended with a net sum loss, in terms of her becoming colder with him. Her eyes were nearly open. She had blinked.
“No,” he said, re-focusing on the planet. “It took them forty thousand of our years, forty-five thousand galactic standard angts, more or less, to re-model the planet. It’s ingenious – the contradictory turning rates create magnetic flux inside the planet’s core, itself partly hollowed out and replenished with tera-tons of graphite-like material, generating almost limitless clean energy.” While he talked he suppressed ninety-eight per cent of the technical detail he could have expressed much faster in hyper-math. If he’d been communicating with Chahat-Me using his eyes, he could have transmitted all of it in the same timeframe. The information filtering effort at least slowed down his speech, so he still sounded human. “Also, the different segments are protected zones. They carry out genetic research, and any accidental outbreak of a virus, for example – there have been three over the past six millennia – is naturally confined to its continental slice.”
He watched her reflection, her short-cropped hair, lean lips, and greyish eyes atop a gymnastic physique, move toward him. His sense of smell had been heightened too, and he could sense her emotions via her pheromone signature. Her hand touched his shoulder. “We haven’t talked, Pierre, you know, about … our child.”
His logical brain stalled, as if it couldn’t compute. He was glad for the relief from the endless calculations and speculations: his heightened and accelerated intelligence came at a cost. He kissed her urgently, his silver arms – for he was changing – locked around her waist. He drew back, but held her hands. “I’m worried, Kat … that it’ll become like me.”
She leaned back. “You don’t mean…” She broke away from him, eyes widening. “Nannites?”
He was surprised she hadn’t thought of it. She stepped back to a bench and sat down, pointing to Ossyria Prime. “They can probably take them out,” she said.
He nodded, though his calculations revved up again, and gave it less than fifty-fifty odds. Change the subject. “The Ossyrians used to be war-mongerers, no better than the Q’Roth.”
She moved to the portal and leant her brow against the glass. “What happened?”
Again, tirades of data surged into his mind, but he found a short-cut. “The Tla Beth, one of the most advanced races left, Level Seventeen. Legend has it they wanted to foster a medical race, and were impressed by the Ossyrians’ attention to anatomical detail, whether tending to their wounded after battle, or torturing prisoners. They became the patrons of the Ossyrians for a hundred thousand angts.”
“Probably needed a challenge.”
There, he hadn’t predicted that response.
“I’ve been thinking, about your nannites.” She turned around, blocking his view. “I think you have a choice.”
He wished her eyes worked like his, it would be so much faster. Bu
t this time she had his – and his nannites – complete attention. “What do you mean?”
“From what I remember, you know, the plague-vids from the 40’s, nannites are mission-oriented. They adapt to their environment, working for themselves and their host – without whom they cease to function. They aim to advance and have a better survival likelihood or quality of life.”
His nannite-infused brain was silent. No, not silent, he thought: dumb. It doesn’t want to hear this. But he did. “I’m not sure I follow you.”
“Pierre, you get to decide what advancement is. You can set the mission. Advanced intelligence, that was your father’s dream, not yours. And even he never expected it to go this far. You can stop this development, Pierre. It’s your life, your choice. The nannites will understand your will, and accept it.”
He stared at her, wondering why he hadn’t thought of it. She was right. Advanced intelligence, he realised, didn’t necessarily induce wisdom, nor did it preclude the ability to hide from the truth.
The door opened, revealing Chahat-Me and the Hohash. In a flash Pierre read her eyes: they were to go before a council to see what would be done with them, including the baby. “Kat, they –”
“I know, Pierre, at least I can guess. I’m not stupid. Just think about what I said.”
They crossed a narrow glass bridge so fine they could hardly see it. Beneath, a drop of several kilometres plunged downwards to a murky brown ground level. The bridge connected with a massive pyramid, itself made of Crysmorph – Pierre had studied the specs as soon as he’d come out of stasis – a crystal coded with inorganic DNA so that it could be grown into complex structures. He calculated that this pyramid must have taken four thousand years of accelerated growth to be completed.
Two suns, a yellow one like Earth’s, and a strawberry one, hung low in an apple green sky, creating stunning prismatic effects on the pyramid. Around twenty bridges like theirs struck out to the sides and below, reaching out to other ships. Chahat-Me walked ahead of them, regal, her gait smooth and fluid. The Hohash hovered silently behind them. Kat ambled next to him, giving the appearance of being relaxed, but his observational analyses told a different story. She guarded her belly with one hand, now three months into her pregnancy, and glanced furtively around. She was right to be anxious.
“Pierre, they’re doctors, right? So they must have some Hippocratic Oath, you know, do no harm?”
His mind skimmed over their complex code of conduct and ethics he’d accessed and memorised earlier. “I’m afraid their definition of harm goes beyond the single organism, to the societal structure.” He glanced at her, unsure that would make sense. It was difficult to remember how normal humans thought anymore.
“Great,” she said, “political doctors. So they might deem us unsafe for society. What about you? You’re an advanced intelligence life-form now. You must be approaching their level?”
“That’s just it. My intelligence growth rate shows no sign of stopping. I’m an anomaly – in their Grid Society I’m a freak or an abomination. I’m potentially a threat. They’ll probably vivisect me.”
She placed her hand on his and stopped him. “That’s not funny, Pierre.”
He took her hand, and continued walking. Why had he attempted humour? He went back to her question of fifteen minutes ago. What did he really want? What did ‘advanced’ mean to him? What mission should he give his nannites?
They entered the building not far from its apex, but at this level it was as wide as a hoverball stadium. He glanced downwards and was surprised to see through all the glass floors below, myriad Ossyrians going about their business. Some areas were opaque, but not that many. He looked up and saw the ceiling of their level, a dull greyish reflection of him, Kat, and all around them. He surmised that at each level, you could see below, but not upwards.
They reached a circular reflective Crysmorph wall. Chahat-Me beckoned to him, silver eyes shimmering information. He nodded. “This is it, Kat. At least she is on our side: because we helped her survive, and prevented the Mannekhi from gaining Ossyrian technology. She will present the case for us to be allowed to live out our lives, somewhere.”
“Ossyrian plea-bargaining, eh? Maybe we need a better lawyer.” She shook her head dismissively. “Just kidding, let’s get this over with.”
The room, brighter than an operating theatre, contained two red, high-backed chairs on a round plinth, surrounded by a wide circle of thirty seated Ossyrians. Pierre recognised from the arrangement of the gold, black and blue bars on their head-dresses, that this was a very senior group. One chair, directly facing the red ones, was empty. They both dutifully sat where indicated, the Hohash taking up a position to the left of Kat. Chahat-Me stood next to Pierre. He presumed it was because she was their champion, or else because she was considered contaminated by them in some way. All of the Ossyrians rose, so he and Kat did too, as a white-fleeced Ossyrian with a pure gold head-dress entered, and took the main chair. She sat, and everyone else followed suit.
Kat leaned towards him. “Can you translate what they say? I know it’s tedious for you, and might irritate them, but this is important. I have the feeling my future, and our baby’s, are hanging in the balance here.”
He nodded, and communicated her request to Chahat-Me.
“Okay. It’s begun,” he said. “Chahat-Me is relating all that happened since she met us – she knows about Rashid’s ship and the Q’Roth, incidentally; the Hohash must have shown her. They wanted to know where we found the Hohash – they’re mythical, apparently, no one knows how old they are, and they defy scans or any type of analysis. There haven’t been reports of a Hohash sighting for millennia. Chahat-Me’s told them it found us on Eden. Okay, she’s now telling them what you did to save her and prevent their technology falling into enemy hands. Ah, now about me.”
“What?”
Pierre wondered how to condense the detailed discussions between half a dozen Ossyrians taking place at lightning speed. “They can’t stop the development without killing me. It has to be referred to a higher council: the Tla Beth themselves. I’m an aberration; there’s no precedent in their legal system. The Ossyrians have used nannites in the past, but have never seen anything like this – some unusual interaction between human physiology, my father’s genetic tampering, and the nannites.” He left out the part that a vote to vivisect him there and then was only narrowly defeated.
“A reprieve,” she said, the relief in her voice palpable. “Our baby?”
He looked down at the floor, and breathed out heavily.
“What is it Pierre? What have they decided?”
“It’s okay, Kat,” he said, his voice shaky. “I just didn’t anticipate my own emotional reaction. They can remove the nannites, they’re not bonded yet, they’re dormant – your physiology is unsuitable.” No, he thought, that wasn’t it. Kat was right. They’re inert, because Kat doesn’t want them there. Which means I also have a choice.
He looked up again, trying to catch up quickly. “They will accelerate the baby’s birth outside of you –”
“Hey, wait just a minute –”
“They know where Ourshiwann is. They will…” Take you there, he thought, with the baby. They’re going to separate us. His body flushed with an emotion he’d forgotten he was capable of – anger. His silver hands flexed, his fingers morphing into scalpel-sharp daggers. He stood up, rock steady. “No!” he said, his voice echoing around the room. All eyes were on him, but they were silent. Chahat-Me drew away from him. The Chief Ossyrian stood. Her jaw opened and the high-pitched screeching burst forth. To his left, Kat clasped her hands over her ears, but Pierre stood firm, and within micro-seconds his nannites had attenuated the sound. He focused on his throat, on the sounds the Ossyrian was making. He opened his mouth and shouted back in the same language: “You will not separate us. We are family. You will do no harm to us.” He quoted a litany of complex ethical precedents from Ossyrian history. The Chief Ossyrian sat back in her chair, wh
ile several others rose to their feet. Pierre knew they were a dispassionate race, but back in their genes they had the capacity for anger and outrage, and he saw it bubbling to the surface in their faces; all except Chahat-Me, her expression a mixture of shock and pride.
His own mind hurled objections to what he was doing – Kat would be better off without him, back with Blake, Micah, and Antonia. He needed to become what he could become – he was a scientist, no matter if his father engineered him that way, it was his nature, his destiny. How could he bring up a normal human child? But he choked off all these thoughts, forcing coherence in his mind. He read the eyes of one of the Ossyrians studying a screen – she was scanning him. It had happened, he now knew: the nannites had finally built the bridge between his right and left hemispheres of his brain, across the chasm known as the Corpus Callosum. His logical and intuitive brains had just been hot-wired. There was no turning back. He was no longer human. But he was one again, not divided. He was more powerful, and he knew what he wanted.
He spoke again, in their vocal language, shocking them into silence. “We all three go to the Tla Beth, or to Ourshiwann, but we stay together. This is beyond you now.”
He felt tiny pin-pricks on his neck as aerial micro-syringes injected him with powerful anaesthetics, but his nannites neutralised them. His whole body, all his skin, flashed silver. He stared at the Chief, and shook his head. Then he walked up to her, and his eyes worked so fast that the Ossyrian leader had a hard time keeping up.
