by Alex Deva
— Just do it. Please.
The Dacian closed his fist and punched his jaw, not terribly convincingly.
— Harder.
— Come on, Lawry. I’m not a kid.
— You’ll see. Do it.
He sighed, and hit himself hard in the belly. To his surprise, he felt no pain.
“Whoa,“ he said, out loud.
— We’ve set a low-pass filter on your pain signals, so whatever pain your transceiver sends us back on Earth, not all of it ends up reaching your brain.
— Are you saying I can get hit and nothing will happen?
— We haven’t tested — no, wait, somebody here says that it’s been tested before. Secretly. But yeah, that’s it in a nutshell.
— Why, never in my wildest dreams… Fuck me, I gotta try this!
Grinning wide like a maniac, he sprinted directly to the third group of aliens, and found the ones that had hit him earlier.
“Sorry, had to run. Where were we?“
The creatures obliged. They attacked him from three directions, kicking, hitting, throwing things at him; he felt the impacts, but they didn’t cause him pain. As he eased himself into the fight, he started to get a really odd feeling.
It was the weirdest fight he’d had in his life. Ever weirder than the last time he’d fought: in a gravity-changing starship, against armed soldiers from a land he never knew existed and who were thousands of years younger than himself. He discovered that he had no idea how to defend himself, no idea what to expect, no idea where to kick. One of the attackers was much faster than he was, either that or he was changing his shape. The other insisted on kicking his shins, for some reason. Maybe it thought that was a human’s weakest spot, so in a half-second he tried the same with it: he turned, feigning a curved punch, but he kicked forward at the alien’s supports. It fell down, unmoving.
The other two stopped. The really fast one disengaged, for some unfathomable reason, and disappeared; soon after, the alien on the floor vanished, too. In the absence of a more xenobiologically sound conclusion, Aram simply assumed that they were brothers. Or sisters.
Faced with the insurmountable odds of one-to-one close combat, the third alien decided to surrender, or perhaps postpone his victory, and vanished as well. Gasping for air, Aram composed himself and looked around.
— Nice, he heard Lawry.
The group parted, and an orange feathered snake-like thing stepped forward from its middle. The first thing Aram did was to inspect it for shins.
“Thank you,“ the alien said, in a melodic, feminine and definitely non-aggressive voice.
“Anytime,“ said the Dacian, non-plussed.
“Those… bullies were only making things hard for everybody. We are all happy to be rid of them.“
“I’m sure they’ll come back,“ said Aram.
“No doubt. But perhaps with a lesson learned, and perhaps they will bother somebody else.“
The Dacian nodded, not particularly convinced. The bullies he’d known in his life had a way of coming back with exactly zero lessons learned, and bothering the exact same people.
“You are a human,“ stated the orange feathered snake.
“Who’s not looking for another fight,“ said the blond man.
“Is it true? Has the Complex succumbed because of you?“
“No. This general fuck-up,“ he stressed, looking upwards, hoping Rrapi would hear, “was the fault of the Mallam. We humans aren’t really capable of such advanced crap.“
— Aram.
— What?
— Maybe stop telling snaky aliens what we can and can’t do?
— Yeah. Sorry.
“The rumours are that this is all happening because of you.“
“We didn’t come here looking for trouble. We didn’t mean for any of this to happen.“
The orange feathered snake pondered in silence for a few seconds.
“Your two friends are being held for ransom by a group of notorious dealers. My people saw them not long ago.“
Aram did not waste time wondering about what people those might be. “Which way?“ he asked.
There is no multitude of ways to approach somebody on a flat surface where the only obstacles are crowds of alien beings. No caves to hide in, no forests, no buildings — everything is line of sight, and the line goes forever. Once Aram singled out the small group of five creatures, two of which were Mark and Zi, there was no stealthy alternative; he simply walked to them.
The two impressively large guards turned to face him. The Dacian raised his hands and yelled:
“I surrender! I’m a human, too! Take me! I surrender!“
The dog-faced tree branch felt very unsure about this. Arguably, having a third stranded human to bargain with was, on the face of it, good news; but a volunteer? Were these humans truly this gullible? And, if not, then what? The new human was different from the others — for one thing, he was visibly faster — but he did not appear to be challenging the situation. What were the options? Have the guards attack it? Where would be the gain in that?
If only the contact returned sooner with news from the Mallam…!
The newcomer, his limbs still raised for some reason, passed the two guards who were looking at their boss for orders. Let him in, the dog-faced tree branch sent on his internal comm channel. The big aliens obeyed, not forgetting to casually state that the deal was for two humans, and that a third human, especially such a fast one, would necessarily count as an increase in expenses.
“You alright?“ asked Aram, rather pointlessly.
Mark and Zi laboriously tried to stand up. Aram reached down to help, but grabbing his hands seemed to be a problem for them. Mark’s fingers kept slipping, and Zi nearly lost his balance. After a lot of work, they achieved some pretence of verticality, and could redirect some of their energies to the complex act of talking.
“Hi,“ managed Mark.
“You’re in a bad way, so I’ll make this short,“ said Aram. “I have really interesting news, and it may also be good news.“
“Doi…?“
“She’s fine. They’re both fine. Listen, I need to talk to Zi for a second.“
Mark tried to straighten up.
“Die?“ he asked, his eyes steely.
“That’s what I’m trying to prevent,“ said the Dacian evasively. “Hang on just a second here.“
The dog-faced tree branch watched them with some worry.
“What are you doing?“ it asked.
“Group prayer,“ answered Aram. “Do you mind?“
Dog-face was contrived, but the plausibility of the answer was appealing; it inspected Aram for whatever signs of dishonesty its species thought it might recognise, and eventually felt that, given the reward, a little extra patience would pay off.
Aram leaned to Zi’s ear.
“Failed,“ grunted the Albanian.
“Listen here, you modern idiot. There’s a way to get you out, but you’re so near the edge that you can’t be conscious during it.“ Aram thought it might be better to underline that particular side of the argument, rather than mention their hope that the Square would have no use for corpses.
“I’m gonna have to knock out the two of you.“
“How?“ asked Zi.
Aram smiled. “How do you think?“
Zi managed a grimace. “I… do.“
“Won’t work, friend. You can’t do yourself in, your brain won’t allow it.“
“I… do… Mark.“
It took Aram a few seconds to get it. “You wanna knock out Mark?“
“Yes.“
“Really? You serious? Are you up to it?“
The Rook soldier stood up to his full length, grabbing a handful of Aram’s chest. The Dacian didn’t resist. He could see what Zi was doing: calculating, rehearsing, planning.
It took a full minute, and then the Albanian let go and stepped on to Mark, steadying himself on the Brit’s shoulder. Their gazes met. Mark’s breath intakes we
re short and shallow. He winced, as he straightened up. He was on the edge of his edge.
“It was… an honour,“ said Zi.
Mark opened his mouth to reply, but before he managed a word, the Albanian’s right hand pulled back a full half metre, and hit the Brit squarely in the side of the head.
On any other day, Mark would’ve seen it coming, eschewed, defended himself, planned a counterattack, fought back, possibly won. But on this day, when his central nervous system was grossly overworked and his brain was at the verge of collapse, the proverbial drop — more like a bucket, in this case — was far too much to cope with. True to function until the last moment, Mark’s simulated form crumpled and fell on the floor.
“Hey now,“ said dog-face. “What kind of prayer…“
Aram caught Zi just as he was about to fall on his back; steadied him, looked him in the eyes, and said: “At least you’ll skip over the darkness.“
And then, with a vicious curved punch strong enough to down a horse, he hit the Rook right in the face.
None of the systems involved in the trans-galactic telesentience procedure had been programmed to deal with massive mechanical trauma. Taking the initiative, one of the failsafes triggered a subroutine which triggered a larger event in an even larger process, and like a domino game, Mark and Zi’s connections started failing.
It took perhaps all of three seconds, and then Aram was the only human left standing. He looked at where his friends had been, and then enunciated, clearly and slowly:
“Well. Fuck, king, hell.“
As the two guards instinctively reached out to grab him, the Dacian vanished, too.
XXXI.
“I hate that thing,“ he said, as two pairs of hands grabbed him and helped him out of the chair. For some reason, his teeth were clattering and he couldn’t unclench his fists. He started taking in huge breathes of actual, real air and said, forcefully: “I hate it. If I never have to get back in there, it’ll be too soon.“
“I’m so sorry,“ said Doina from, from a screen. He had forgotten she was there, watching. A few steps to a side, Lawry smirked from her wheelchair.
“You OK?“ she asked, sympathetically.
Aram nodded, still looking at the tab where, walking casually behind Doina, in stepped captain Ileana Toma, otherwise known as the alien Keai. Aram had truly liked Toma, and had real trouble accepting that he’d been so easily fooled.
Still, he had to concede — that person looked entirely human. In fact, she behaved more like a human than some of the people he’d recently met. Like those half-men, half-machine Bishop soldiers, for example.
And was it really that wrong to like an alien who’d been wearing a human body so much longer than he had?
She, or it — no, she, he decided! Life was complicated enough without gender confusion — had explained that Toma’s body was not the only one she’d worn during her stay on Earth, but had been vague about details. And the Dacian did not like evasive people. The women of his time had no time or use for such things. At least the women he’d met, in his relatively little universe (how little it really was, he’d never dreamed!). But two thousand years would naturally come with some changes, he was ready to admit.
He frowned at her, and she gave a little smile back, and that annoyed him.
“They’ve stopped digging,“ said Doina, as she was looking ahead to something Aram and the rest could not see.
Well, that was it, then. Nobody dared say a word.
“Requiescat in pace,“ said the little girl, and bit her lip.
They’ll be fine, thought the Dacian. If that alien gives them up for dead and this other alien holds good on her promise and I didn’t fuck up worse than anybody ever has or will. They’ll be fine.
“Per istam sanctam unctionem ignoscat tibi Dominus quicquid peccaveris sive deliqueris,“ came the words from Karel Souček, on another tab screen. Aram understood the words, but had little idea of their meaning or purpose.
The alien, who had literally built the starship, had shown Doina how she could tune into that Square, or anything coming from it. Of course, she’d know. You can’t be forty thousand years old and build starships, without learning a thing or two about tuning into other aliens. Aram had no idea about the technicalities of the process — and he was, truth be told, somewhat relieved that no other human alive did — but he didn’t feel like he needed to, either. If it worked, then it worked. Let others get headaches trying to understand how. All that mattered to him was that, up on board Doi, in one of those floating fields where Doina could bring up stars and planets, they could detect the huge underground tunnel at the end of which Mark and Zi lay drowned in two large metallic vats.
Of course, not all animals abandon their prey if it dies too soon. Some do; most do not. But the alien, and that blue-haired suicidal bastard who was under his protection, were not animals. They would not dare kill Mark, who was part of a Builder starship’s crew, and they would not dare steal his corpse. The Squares were terribly advanced and powerful, but it certainly did appear that even they wouldn’t dare risk open war between their masters, the Eight, and the race of Builders. Not for a meagre little blue ball called Earth.
That was, in any case, the premise of their plan. The plan.
Aram’s plan, on the other hand, had been a little different to begin with. It started with the same premise (Aram thought that there was no difference between ancient Rome and intergalactic politics) but his idea had been to use Effo’s cannon to shoot holes through the surface of the Earth until they’d force the runaways up like moles. Sure, these holes would’ve been a little bigger and deeper than when hunting for moles, but so what? He wasn’t gonna shoot through any human settlements. Forests and fields and the like, was his thinking. They could’ve filled them back in after that, somehow. Surely they could fill in holes, in the twenty-fourth century.
Keai’s plan had been more elegant. The alien had offered to build another of the matter transfer pods that had initially been used to carry Doina, Mark and himself. Initially (when? Aram had no idea, but it had to be many thousands of years before) the starship had come equipped with three, and all three had then been used up. But it was possible, for someone with vast knowledge of such things, to build a new one. After all, Doi could pretty much conjure any object she wanted, beginning — oh, what a day that was! — with water.
Using such a transmitter pod, placing it on the opposite side of the Earth so that the object to be transferred was on a straight line between the pod and the starship, it would then be commanded to emit that strange ribbon of darkness that Aram still remembered from that hill in Apulum. The ribbon would find Mark’s and Zi’s telesentience equipment, with them inside, change them into he knew not what, and carry them forward — energy of that kind, like light, travels only in a straight line — to be received on the other side of the orbit, where Doi would be waiting.
Nice. Elegant. Simple. No turning the landscape into cheese. No digging for moles from space.
The wrinkle in both their plans, but especially in Aram’s, was that using Builder technology against a Square would have been an open act of war. Especially if said technology came in the form of a rather big fuck-off space cannon. Aram’s solution to that was that once they’d discover the tunnel they would send in human troops (if those Bishops could be even called human) that would “encourage“ the Square to abandon the, well, dying bodies of Mark and Zi. Hopefully without first making sure that they’re truly dead. Which was another wrinkle. Keai’s plan entailed that they would simply allow the Square to run off, once they’d left the TS stuff behind, and then, with the alien safely away, engage the matter transport ribbon. Also risky, but slightly less so.
He could unclench his fists now, and he felt a little better. He rubbed his hands on a towel, then used it to rub his face. He held the towel over his face a few seconds longer than strictly needed, then he wrapped it methodically, laid it on the back of the chair, and sat down.
�
�Yeah, I’m OK,“ he finally muttered towards Lawry.
She didn’t acknowledge. She was inspecting some radar data that showed the orbital region where the Builder’s pod was supposed to be. The radar showed nothing at all, just as expected. Keai had said that it was better to attract as little attention as possible, not the least because the pod would be flying over southern Canada at that point.
The tension in the laboratory was thick and tangible. With the exception of the technicians who were minding the telesentience equipment, doing post-checks and shutting it down, nobody had much to do. Everything would now depend on the careful psychological gamble that a really, really different alien would do what they hoped it would do. She was looking at the radar data because she was trained to read it, and it was, in any case, better than folding towels.
Keai’s reveal, the self-entitled “fletcher“ Builder, had come as a great surprise to everybody. Lawry had not had a chance to meet Toma at that point, but, just like everyone who had, she wondered if, being face-to-face with her, she would’ve detected anything alien. Most likely, not — but one could not help but wonder.
Come on, she thought. Just give them up for dead already.
There were a few medics in the laboratory, of course. Given some telemetry, they would’ve been able to make an assessment about how late would be too late, even though Keai had given assurances that Builder resuscitation techniques were a few notches above human standards. Even so, there would still be a “too late“ deadline, and the Square would still be considering it, and the only ace in their sleeve was the fact that the alien would only count on human resuscitation abilities. That, knowing its own, immensely more advanced capabilities (hadn’t it put together a man’s brains after he’d blown his head off?) it would assume that Mark and Zi were… dead enough.
“They’re moving again,“ said Doina’s voice, choked.
“With or without them?“ asked Tiessler. He had gone back to his cruiser, more or less against his will, and was quietly watching the events from orbit. For her part, Dahlberg was gone, busy trying to organise her security forces on the surface, where chaos reigned supreme.
