Galactic Empires (38 page)

"Then it is a good thing that you happen to be here," the Ghost said, without a trace of inflection in its artificial voice.

"And it's all about a bar. A Ghost artifact in trouble in a bar," Elah said. She laughed. "How squalid. How absurd. Such a thing could never happen on Earth."

"Evidently," Eve murmured, "this is not Earth."

"This is stupid," Donn said. "It's got nothing to do with Benj."

"But we need you," the Ambassador said simply. "You personally."

"Go," Samm said. "There's nothing you can do at the
Miriam,
for now. If anything turns up…"

"Mom?"

Rima, her face buried in a handkerchief, waved him away.

So the four of them crowded into the bubblelike transparent hull of the
Suzy IV,
Samm Wyman's aging flitter: Donn, Elah, the Ghost, and Eve Raoul. Where the Virtuals brushed against the Hitter's hull, they crumbed; Eve Raoul brushed stray pixels from her sleeve like flies.

You could get from any point to any other on the Reef by walking through the innards of the old ships, or by walkways and bridges thrown up over the centuries. Donn would have preferred to walk, to burn off some energy. But the
Suzy
would be quicker, and so here they were. Elah had insisted on coming along, as "trouble" of any sort was now the Commission's business, and so Eve had to come too—that or be shut down, Donn supposed, as Eve seemed tied to Elah, no doubt through some projection system lodged on her person.

So the flitter closed up around them, its systems humming, and rose from the Reef of ships like a stone thrown up into a bowl of stars.

Donn peered down as the Reef opened up beneath them. It was a logjam of ships, a roughly lenticular mass with ragged edges, entirely lacking in symmetry. The Boss was a fierce lantern at the zenith, so that the tangle of superstructures cast complex shadows. Many of the ships, like the
Miriam,
were of the ancient, durable GUTship design, a stalk topped and tailed by lifedome and GUTdrive. But there were more exotic designs, including the old generation starship at the hub of the complex, a frozen ocean of comet ice meant to propel its crew's descendants to a new world that had never been reached. Here and there in the long shadows of the Reef, you could see tangles of silver rope, ships without hulls or bridges or obvious drive units—ships that weren't of human design at all.

And today, ships of the Coalition's Navy hovered over the crowded craft. They were Spline warships, living ships, balls of flesh studded with sensor mounts and weapons emplacements. They rolled like threatening moons, the green tetrahedral sigil of a free mankind tattooed onto their flanks.

Elah lifted her face to the light of the brilliant star that hung over all this. "I've been stationed here a year already, and I just can't get used to the sky. Strictly speaking, the Boss is cataloged as VI Cygni Number Twelve. Did you know that? Recently it's been flaring—there's some remarkable imagery; I can show you if you like. And this grouping of stars is called the Cygnus OB2 Association. It's all so different from what you'd see from Earth. That central monster casts shadows light-years long from clouds of interstellar dust, shadows distorted by the finitude of lightspeed—quite astonishing."

Donn was more interested in the cultural side of what she had to say. "Cygnus? What does that mean?"

Elah waved a hand, dismissive. "An old name from Earth. PreOccupation. Its meaning is lost."

Donn had never given much thought to Earth, a place remote in space and in history-or it had been, until the Coalition came. "Where is Earth, from here?"

Eve glanced around and pointed. "About five thousand nine hundred light-years away, thataway. Right around the Galaxy's spiral arm."

"Can you see the Association from Earth?"

"You'd be able to see the Boss with the naked eye if not for dust clouds in the way."

"Humans have traveled far from their origins," the Ghost said.

"You bet we have," Elah said with fervor. She pointed at right angles to Earthward. "We're filling up this spiral arm, and we're heading that way-toward the Galaxy Core. We've already pushed into the next spiral arm inward, the Sagittarius Arm."

The Ghost spoke, its artificial voice sonorous in the enclosed space. "And that, of course, is the source of all our trouble."

Donn knew it was right. Thanks to the explosive expansion of mankind, suddenly the Ghost communities scattered around the Association, including the enclaves in the Reef itself, had become alien islands stranded in human space.

The Reef as a whole had moved several times since its formation, embedded hyperdrive engines lifting the whole shebang across light-years, always moving further from Earth, off along the star lanes of the spiral arm. The Association had proven a good place to live, with plenty of worldlets and asteroids to mine for resources—even a few human colonies, refugees of one calamity or another, to trade with.

And here the Reefborn had forged tentative links with the Silver Ghosts, who were undergoing their own expansion out of the heart of the Galaxy They welcomed small Ghost colonies into the Reef itself. You could say that the Reef culture was a composite of human and Ghost, an experiment in cohabitation.

For a time, even after the Coalition had made contact, the Reefborn had profited from trade between two interstellar empires. There had been a strange period when autonomous Ghost enclaves had been granted room to live under the new regime: Silver Ghosts, living under Coalition authority.

But times had changed, and the Coalition's embrace had become harsh.

Those elderly hyperdrive engines had all been confiscated or disabled, for a start, to be refitted into Navy ships. The Reef would never again go jaunting out of human ken into the alien dark. And the Ghosts had been taxed, marginalized, and suffered discrimination of all kinds.

With the crises over the Silvermen and the abductions, the Ghosts' position was becoming untenable. And perhaps, Donn thought, it was all coming to a head, with himself caught mysteriously in the middle of it.

The
Suzy
began its descent into the forest of infrastructure.

Minda's Savior:
the bar announced its name in signs written in several human languages, and some nonhuman. Donn had once been shown how the name was inscribed in electromagnetic patterns invisible to human senses but vivid to a Ghost. There was even an image, painted rather than Virtual, of a young human girl accepting the gift of its very hide from a hovering Ghost. All this was based on a story, three centuries old, that the first contact between humans and Ghosts had involved a young girl who had been saved from freezing by a Ghost sacrificing its own life for hers. But the official Commission line was that the Minda story was just Ghost propaganda.

Inside, the Savior was basically a bar, selling intoxicating chemicals of various kinds diluted by the ice of a comet that had once orbited Sol. But there was also a kind of mud bath, salty and warm, meant to accommodate Ghost patrons. The light in this corner of the bar came not from the usual hovering light-globes but from glowing rope draped from the ceiling, Ghost technology.

There was no Ghost in the mud bath today, no Ghost in the bar save the Virtual projection of the Sink Ambassador. Only the Ambassador-and a Silverman, standing like a chromed statue in one corner, confronted by an angry human crowd.

They weren't actively doing anything to it, not touching or harming it in any way. Yet they surrounded it, sitting silently, defiantly drinking the Navy drink called Poole's Blood, walling in the Silverman with human flesh. Donn knew some of these people. Here was Bareth Grieve, one of the Reef's elders, a friend of his mother's and a member of the Reef's Grand Council. This morning Grieve and the rest barely acknowledged him. They were just a mob who had trapped a Silverman.

Elah was taller than most in the bar, as indeed was Eve. Donn had heard an insulting theory that Reefborn were becoming dwarfed, as populations stranded on islands often were, apparently. "What a spectacle," Elah said now, with utter contempt. "Makes you ashamed to be human."

The Ambassador murmured, "You can see why we have a problem. They've been like this for hours."

Eve said, "Something has been done to mat Silverman. Look, Donn-can you see?"

At first glance the Silverman was typical of its sort: a kind of sketch of a human figure, head, torso, arms, and legs, but shorter than an average humanlike a statue in Ghost-hide silver. It lacked detail, it had fingers but no toes, no fingernails, no navel, no genitalia, the face just a bland outline, all orifices sealed up save the eyes and mouth. It was as identical to the rest of its kind, just as every Ghost looked the same as every other. But this one had a sort of collar around its neck, of some heavy blue metal.

"
That
doesn't look like Ghost technology to me, that collar," Eve murmured. "That's human. They've done something to this thing. What, though?" She snapped her fingers, and a data slate appeared in her hands.

"It is an eerie construct, that Silverman," Elah said. "Look at it, all but faceless, expressionless, walking among us… And if you were going to develop a weapon to penetrate a society like this, an assassin to work in a human environment of rooms and corridors, a human shape is exactly what you would give it. It's not surprising people are wary, especially in a politically underdeveloped society like this one."

Donn bridled at her casual insults. But the Silvermen
were
odd. They had only been appearing on the Reef since the arrival of the Coalition, while relationships between the Ghost and human communities on the Reef had steadily deteriorated. They wandered the Reef's corridors and haunted its bars and libraries, theaters and forums, even its churches. They simply
looked.
They stepped out of the way of humans. They would tolerate being touched, their silver flesh poked by curious children. They would speak if spoken to, answer questions if asked, but only of the most direct sort. But they volunteered nothing.

The Silvermen were a strange, eerie, uncomfortable presence. And they simply showed up, appearing as suddenly and as randomly as the human abductees disappeared. The Silvermen were antiabductees.

And they were clearly Ghost artifacts, for that silvery flesh was Ghost hide.

The Ambassador asked, "What are these people doing?"

"Maybe this is punishment," said Donn, "for the abductions. People want something to hit back at."

"They are not harming it."

"I wouldn't like being trapped like that. Pinned up against a wall, ignored."

"A human sort of harm, then. To learn such lessons is the Silverman's purpose. So I believe."

Donn stared at the Ghost. As far as he knew, this was the first time any Ghost had discussed a "purpose" behind the Silverman visitations.

Elah, naturally, had overheard, too. "It's here to learn, you say?"

"I speak at second hand," the Ambassador said. "You know that Ghost society is not like yours, not hierarchical. Our society is like our bodies, an embracing of diversity. But I believe that the faction behind the Silvermen intends them as an experiment to learn more of humanity."

"By sending these homunculi among us as spies," Elah said.

"Not that. They are all but mindless, intended as passive observers. They simply live a facsimile of a human life, for a period. The way each of us thinks is shaped by how we sense the universe, how we experience it and manipulate it; we are our bodies as well as our minds. We understand what you are doing," it said bluntly to Elah. "Your Coalition and the Expansion it is driving. We do not understand
why
you do mis. Perhaps your restlessness is something to do with your ape anatomy, your manipulating hands, your heritage of the trees and the savannah."

Elah laughed. "You insult us without even trying, don't you? So do you think the experiment has worked?"

The Ghost admitted, "I don't believe we anticipated the hostility they have encountered."

Donn said, looking over at the Silverman. "It isn't human
enough,
perhaps."

Elah said, "In some corners of this Reef, people gang up on the Silvermen and dress them up in clothes! All to reduce that feeling of otherness about them. And in other corners, the Silvermen are insulted, abused by the families of the abducted. There's never been a physical attack before, however." She faced the Ambassador. "If you want us to help you, Ghost, you need to be honest with us.
How
are these homunculi being planted in the Reef? Is it through some teleportation mechanism? And is it the same mechanism that is used to abduct humans from the Reef?"

Again that long hesitation. "There is another faction-its motives are noble."

"Tell us, Ghost!"

"Yes," it said softly.

Donn blew out his cheeks. "I never heard it confirmed before, about the abductions."

Elah said stonily, "Are you disappointed?"

"Yes. Because it means that all the paranoids were right-all those who swallowed your anti-Ghost propaganda, Commissary."

"Don't push your luck, boy," she murmured.

"It does explain what they've done to that wretched Silverman over there," Eve said now. "I've been running some tests." She showed them a slate of results that meant little to Donn.

Elah nodded. "That collar they stuck on it is full of processors. It's a sentience booster." She smiled at Donn. "Do you see? This lynch mob has made the Silverman
smarter.
More self-aware."

Donn frowned. "Is that legal? And,
why?"

"I don't think the law matters much here. And as to why-isn't it obvious? Yelling at those other dim homunculi was no longer enough to get rid of the rage. They made
this
creature smart enough to understand what it was suffering, what its perceived crime was. And who knows what they have planned for it once this long vigil is done? Can't you see the logic, Donn Wyman?"

At the sound of his name, the Silverman turned. It was the first movement it had made since Donn and the others had walked into the bar. "You are Donn Wyman?"