This Alien Shore Page 15

  “Some ask for but token things, thinking the point of that moment is to reaffirm their loyalty with the ultimate statement of selflessness. Those people are fools. Others may ask for the station they covet, backing in their first guild investments, a choice position for a loved one or ally. The list of requests is as long as the list of guildmasters. How does one make the most of such a moment? There is no preparation for this, you understand, the ceremony is kept such a secret that the answer serves as a test of sorts, to see what manner of Gueran has been raised to power ... how quickly he thinks, how perfectly he weighs the various options, and what his political priorities are....” She paused, letting Stivan’s helpless brain absorb that final confirmation of terror : Secret ceremonies. No one knows. She is telling me. It didn’t take rational thought to draw a conclusion from those bits and pieces; the connection was primal, as much a part of his neural circuitry as the desire to eat or drink ... or flee.

  “And so, you see, the question was put to me. And in that small eternity I wondered, what did I want most in the whole of the outworlds, and could the Prima give it to me? It wouldn’t do to ask for the impossible ... nor to understate the moment’s opportunity. Surely this moment was as much a test as a reward.”

  He saw them waiting, the man and woman both. Strangely, there seem to be fine lines connecting the two of them, that trembled in the still air between them like a spiderweb. The longer the vision remained in his head, the more clearly he could see them.

  “At last I said, I want a program.

  “What manner of program? the Prima asked.

  “My thoughts were racing; I took my time before speaking. Give me something that will remove a man’s initiative, I told her. Give me a program I can plant in a man’s brain, which when activated will remove all capacity for self-motivation. Not only of the body, I added quickly, but of the mind itself.

  “There was silence for a moment. Then she said, There are very few programmers capable of designing such a thing. ”

  He saw as the woman turned back to glance at the man. Devlin Gaza? His nod was so slight as to be almost imperceptable. The silken lines between them shimmered as he did so.

  “At last she nodded. Very well, she told me, if it can be done, it will be done.

  “So you see,” Delhi said quietly—the pictures vanished in a flash of light, “I can do that now. Burn out that part of the brain which provides the spark of initiative. Make a man into something which can only react ... and obey.”

  She stepped around him, into his field of vision once more. For a moment there was silence. Then: “Raise your left arm, Stivan.”

  To his horror he saw his arm moving upward, as if pulled by a puppeteer’s string. When it had reached the level of his shoulder and it was clear he was not going to halt on his own, she said curtly, “Stop.”

  He did.

  “Put it down.”

  He did.

  “Excellent. Let us hope that internal commands work as well.”

  She walked around to where his keyboard lay, and studied the hand-inscribed sigils on its keys. Customized icons, every last one of them. Her silence, and her utter stillness, hinted at some internal monologue ... or dialogue, perhaps, with the computerized presence that surrounded them.

  Suddenly one of the images formed in his mind’s eye, placed there by an outside force. To his horror he could feel his brain stirring in response, a cascade of neural connections triggered by the familiar symbol. He couldn’t stop it. He wasn’t even part of it. He was a spectator in his own brain, watching his own secret icons appear and disappear before him as one would watch a viddie.

  “Excellent,” she said at last. “Gaza did well.” She gazed at him directly—eyes so cold, expression devoid of all human sympathy—and said, “It’s so hard to interrogate a human brain, since one single thought can shut down the brainware. One flash of an icon, prearranged, to alert the internal security systems that all input is to be rejected. I’m sure you have such safeguards, Stivan. So you understand, there was no other way to question you. I am so sorry. You were a good servant.” She looked deep into his eyes, as if searching for something within him. The sensation was sickening, as if some huge predatory creature had flicked out its tongue to taste him. “Now let us begin, shall we? I’d like to review your most recent discoveries, and outload them for my records. I regret that your brain will be ruined in the process... but I’m afraid that the program does irreparable damage when it’s used. Something one reserves for enemies, Stivan.” Her expression hardened. “Or traitors.”

  The flow began then, secret data worming its way out of his brain in response to her electronic summons. It wouldn’t have been so bad if he could have closed his eyes. The flow involved no visual processing; if he could have shut his eyes, he could have pretended it wasn’t happening, could have cowered in some hidden little portion of his brain and pretended nothing was wrong, until it was over.

  As it was, he had to stare at her until the end.

  The assivak crouches with its prey before it; the tiny creature is now immobilized, barely strugging. Silk wraps it tightly from head to toe, making any form of resistance impossible. Bright powdered wings that once tamed the skies are now glued to its side, and its faceted eyes gaze helplessly out through a tangle of sticky strands.

  It was doomed from the start, of course. Any creature who sets foot in the assivak’s web belongs to her. She may not choose to feed immediately, but once she does, there is no question of the outcome.

  Carefully, almost daintily, the assivak begins to suck out the life juices of its prey.

  What is true genius, if not the perfect balance of inspiration and perseverence?

  CHEULGU KIM Ancient Truths for a New Age

  INSHIP: MERCURY

  THE HARVESTER was a strange and wonderful creation. With silver wings that spread out for miles in every direction, shifting moment by moment as some new solar current tickled their paper-thin substance, it seemed more like a living creature than what it was, a man-made construct of plasteel struts and sheets. Out here the wings were mostly folded, of course; only within the bounds of a fertile solar system would they stretch out to their full length, like a bird of prey splaying out his feathers to catch the wind. Here the galactic breezes were quiet, mere echoes of the storms that had once sparked on some solar surface, billions of miles away. Here the vast creature was quiescent.

  Beneath those wings, sheltered in a cocoon of paper-thin hydrogen collectors, would be more substantial cargo: elements harvested from the outer planets by tiny probes, who now lay tucked within the bosom of their mothership, sleeping the mechanical sleep of their flight. Precious metals and radioactives, gases compressed nearly to the breaking point, and anything else that the nodes needed for construction and energy were all stored away for the decade-long journey.

  It was life, Hsing mused, or at least the source of life. As much as the sun of Guera made life on that planet possible, as much as Sol warmed Earth so that life could prosper, these vast collectors made life possible in the nodes. Because you couldn’t support living worlds with no new raw materials, no fresh energy input. The stations of the outworlds were nearly perfect closed systems, and even so, there was a limit to how often the same materials could be reused. An endpoint even to recycling, when metal and plastic had been reshaped so often that molecular integrity could no longer be guaranteed. The Earth Tithe made up for some of that, of course, with its requirement that every ship coming from the dirtworlds bring with it a mass of raw materials for the Guild to use as needed. But that just barely supported the building of new stations, new ships, and necessary repairs. Without the harvesters making their constant journeys to living systems for supplies, there would not be enough new energy in the outworlds to keep trillions of humans alive. Much less to keep them happy.

  Hsing stayed at the viewpoint until the harvester receded into the distance, as did most of the passengers surrounding him. You could almost sort them into racial
categories by the distance they kept from him: the Guerans close by, undisturbed by his Guild office; other Variants keeping a few steps away, wary and respectful; the few Terrans on the ship staying as far away from him as they could at all times. Was it his power that unnerved them, he wondered, or simply the fact that his Variation was hidden, causing them to imagine the worst? Or was it the “ferocious war paint” (as one Terran had labeled the kaja) which spoke to them on a more primitive level, warning them not to get too close? What did they imagine he was going to do if they did invade his personal space? Eat them?

  It was doubly ironic, being that his own Variation had been corrected long ago. Some people made that choice. In his case it had been pretty simple, really, a choice between having a body that would respond to his commands and one that wouldn’t. He’d had the procedure done as soon as he was old enough to make his wishes known, and had never regretted it since. Oh, there were Guerans who would accuse him of throwing away a rare opportunity, those who would remind him in no uncertain terms that some of humankind’s greatest works of genius had come from minds that others would consider “handicapped.” It was bullshit as far as he was concerned. Maybe relevant enough for folks like Masada and his wife, whose cognitive patterns had shifted into an alternate mode, but how did it benefit the human mind to be trapped in a body that couldn’t respond to it? He thought Ra was crazy, for not having her visual circuits fixed. He knew that Delhi would trade in her current body in a nano for one that worked, if the operation required to do so didn’t put her whole consciousness at risk. And even Masada had a wellseeker programmed to tune out the worst of his sensory distortions, at least when it would affect his work.

  We’re all human, right? But you didn’t tell the Terrans that. God, no! One must preserve the mystique at all costs.

  Today he had managed, for perhaps five minutes, not to think about what was happening back home. It took effort. For a Guildmaster to abandon his domain for a year meant leaving his holding in the hands of those who coveted it the most, and for all that the Prima herself had promised to protect his interests, she wouldn’t even be aware of the kinds of subtle maneuverings that went on there, not until it was too late to stop them. No outsider could possibly know. You had to be in the middle of things yourself to catch all the cues, you had to be meeting with people who were plotting to bring you down so that you could see them with your own eyes, searching for that one quickened breath or awkward glance which would hint at a rebellion in the making....

  He felt helpless here, and frustrated, and at times even angry. There was no point in the last emotion and he knew it, but being human he suffered it nonetheless. The Prima had given him a choice. The Prima had told him he didn’t have to go. The Prima had assured him that she could find someone else to carry the precious virus to Masada, so that he could be convinced to sign onto the project. It didn’t have to be Hsing.

  Only it did.

  He knew that he had carried the whole fate of the Guild in his hands, and it was an awesome feeling. He knew that there were maybe ten people at most that the Prima would trust with such an assignment, and that he was the first she had asked. That was worth something, wasn’t it? That was the kind of favor he could parlay into power at some later date, an implied obligation on her part that he would save until the day he needed it most. It had seemed, at the time, like that made all the risk worthwhile. But now, eight months later, he wasn’t quite so sure. What if he came home to find that he had been ousted from power, and had to climb his way back up from the bottom again? Would he have to waste that precious favor just regaining what this mission had cost him?

  It’ll all be worth it if we beat this virus, he told himself.

  He wished he could fully accept that. There was a part of him deep inside, a selfish part, that warned him that a dead virus would be damned little consolation if he did indeed lose everything he had. Was that something to be ashamed of, or was it simply part of being human?

  “Guildmaster?”

  The sudden voice from behind startled him. He turned to find one of the ship’s stewards waiting at a polite distance, eyes averted. The man’s kaja warned him not to read too much meaning into the lack of eye contact, merely to accept it as an accompaniment of his Variation. He quieted his nantana nerves and waited.

  “The captain would like to see you,” the man said, and then added, almost apologetically, “if you can spare the time. ”

  It took little effort to interpret the man’s tone and pick apart its hidden meanings. The captain’s real words had been much more forceful, but the steward balked at delivering them precisely as ordered. The last words were strictly his own, meant to ameliorate the aggressive power of the implied command. Not an uncommon blend of messages, in such strained circumstances as these.

  How very strange it was, moving into another man’s territory, where the title of a Guildmaster meant so little. In any other setting a captain would have bent over backward to see that Hsing didn’t take offense. In any other setting a Guildmaster’s word was law. But when you locked up five hundred people on a single ship for six months, and gave one man the responsibility of keeping them from killing each other out of sheer boredom, the balance of power shifted accordingly. Hsing didn’t like that fact, but he acknowledged it.

  “Very well,” he said. Was it his imagination, or did he see the steward’s shoulders slump in relief? “Take me to him.”

  The captain was in one of the small briefing chambers at the front of the ship, flanking its bridge. Hsing knew it well. He had fought for more than a week at the beginning of the voyage to get Masada access to one of the well-equipped spaces, so that when his work required a more sophisticated display than the vid labs could handle, he could have it. Hsing had won that battle, but barely. No doubt resentment still lingered. No doubt that was half of what this meeting was about.

  They’d give him the whole damned ship if they knew what Masada’s work was about. Unfortunately, he thought with a sigh, we can’t tell them that, can we?

  The captain waited until the steward had shown him in and left them alone together. He was a sturdy man anchored solidly in the prime of his life, and the joint pleasure and responsibility of his office were written boldly in the lines of his face. Right now it was the lines of tension that showed the most, wrinkling his simba kaja. Not a good omen.

  “Guildmaster Hsing.” He nodded toward a chair at the far end of the table, but Hsing shook his head. He wouldn’t sit while the captain was standing, it would put him at too much of a spatial disadvantage. He saw the captain’s eyes narrow briefly as the simba assessed his defiance, but what did the man expect? Hsing was the man’s superior in every forum but this one, and he wasn’t about to let the captain forget it.

  A real simba would have snarled its annoyance at him now, and stiffened in predatory posture. This man did neither of those things, but Hsing wasn’t fooled by that. The reaction might be hidden inside him, but it was there all the same.

  “I’ve been having reports from my stewards of problems on the ship.”

  Hsing waited politely.

  “First it was the viddie library that was affected. Access slowed down by 10%, then 20%, now 40%. Then some of the vids became unobtainable ... apparently the directory’s been dumping its less popular offerings to save space for processing. Now my nutritionist says that his programs are slowing down, which means that meals aren’t there when people want them. Not a good thing, on a ship like this. I need people calm. I need them happy. Keeping them that way is my job. Not interfering is yours.”

  For a moment he was tempted to simply say what he was feeling: What the hell do you think I have to do with all that? But you didn’t confront a simba like that. An iru might try it, or some other kaja that lacked social sophistication, but not a nantana.

  Instead he did the social equivalent of baring his neck. “Of course, I would never interfere with this ship’s functioning.”

  It worked; several of the harsher
lines creasing the man’s brow relaxed ever so slightly. “Perhaps you wouldn’t. But your companion has.”

  “Dr. Masada?” He was genuinely surprised. “He brought his own equipment with him.”

  “You asked me a few weeks ago if he could use some of the ship’s processing capacity for his research. I said yes, provided he didn’t interfere with any of the ship’s programs.”

  “I’m sure he didn’t,” Hsing said quietly. Then, when he saw the captain’s expression harden, he added quickly, “Why would he? What would he have to gain?”

  Grim-faced, the captain handed him a hardcopy readout, printed on thin white plastic. Fifteen pages: an inventory of net usage since the first day of their voyage. Hsing tried to make sure that his expression revealed nothing as he studied it.

  The records clearly showed that Masada had been using the ship’s innernet for data processing, and using it freely enough that the system had begun a partial shutdown of peripheral services. Food wouldn’t be cut off entirely, of course. Nor would the viddie program, or any of two hundred other systems that the passengers relied upon for survival or entertainment. But the borrowing of a byte or two here, a few million there, had its price. Nineteen of the ship’s primary systems were already affected. Twenty-seven more were soon to follow, assuming the current pattern of usage continued. At that rate of consumption, it was estimated that the average ship’s program would be running at half-efficiency within days. He could see why the captain was concerned.

  When he indicated by looking up that he was finished perusing the document, the captain said to him, “He’s your charge. You asked for permission for him to use our system. Very well, you deal with him now. I don’t know what the hell he’s doing—you say it’s top secret stuff, all right then, I won’t ask—but I want him out of our system, and I want him out now. We’ve got more than four months left to this trip, and I’m not going to spend it on a crippled ship.”