Raising Caine - eARC (53 page)
Read Raising Caine - eARC Online
Authors: Charles E. Gannon
Tags: #Fiction, #Science Fiction, #Space Opera, #Alien Contact, #General
Bannor nodded.
Professionals, indeed.
He would have liked to tell Veriden that the moment O’Garran saw the corpses of the two enemy leaders—one by the shuttle, the other in the clearing—he’d identified them as Ktor. But Veriden wasn’t cleared to know that the Ktor were humans, yet. And might never have that clearance. But the charade of Ktor being sub-zero, ammonia-based worms was beginning to wear perilously thin. “Debriefing that clone should be very revealing,” Bannor observed.
“Should be,” Veriden observed with a nod, “as well as tracking down all the serial numbers on all the equipment. But we already know what ship he, and that armored shuttle, were from: the
Arbitrage
.”
Rulaine frowned. “Isn’t the
Arbitrage
a CoDevCo shift-carrier? Their newest?”
Veriden nodded. “It is. Which is going to make questioning the clone all that much more interesting.”
A long silence passed. The distant hum of the medical monitors at Riordan’s bed-side—or would that be pod-side?—was the only sound.
Veriden sighed, leaned forward so her head was parallel with Rulaine’s. “That’s all the news I’ve got to report.”
“Thanks.”
More silence. Then: “Okay, aren’t you going to ask me?”
Here it comes
. “Ask you what?”
She sounded gratifyingly annoyed. “Ask me when I became a part of IRIS? Shit, when I dropped that little secret on you just before we left the clearing you barely blinked.”
“Were you hoping I’d go slack-jawed or do something equally melodramatic?”
“Damn it, you’re a hard case.” She moved to leave.
“There
is
one thing I’d like to know.”
She stayed put. “Yeah?”
“Why didn’t you tell me at the start? Why didn’t you tell any of us?”
Pandora sighed, leaned back. “Because I was only supposed to tell Riordan. Well, Downing, too—I was recruited after he’d left Earth—but who knew things would happen so quickly? Or that I’d wake up inside Slaasriithi space, instead of at Sigma Draconis?”
“Yeah, well, since the rules of the game had changed, and we traveled together for a few weeks, don’t you think you might have been able to slip it in somewhere along the way?”
“No, because the whole damn mission was so irregular and last-second that there was no way to separate the crazy stuff going on from the hinky stuff.”
“What ‘hinky stuff’?”
“Hinky stuff like the way I woke up, checked the legation records, and discovered that the secure EU shuttle that was supposed to transfer all our cold cells to Yiithrii’ah’aash’s ship had last second ‘engine trouble.’ Hinky like there was a TOCIO shuttle that just happened to have been cleared for operations and was on call, but without any particular flight order pending. Hinky that most of the personnel who staffed the legation were transferred as corpsicles, so there was no way for Downing to eyeball and debrief them, or to see if they acted in the flesh as they were written on paper. And then we lost Buckley, which might or might not have been a result of his being a saboteur, or running afoul of one.”
“So, now I understand why you chased after the response team Caine led to rescue Buckley: to protect Riordan. But at least Buckley doesn’t seem to be part of the conspiracy.”
“Yeah, as it turns out. But that’s hindsight. So, to answer your question about why I didn’t announce my credentials: after all that, and not having a crystal ball, I figured I’d better play it cool.”
“And not tell Caine. Or anyone else.”
“Precisely. Look: Riordan’s okay, I guess, but he’s not a pro. If I had just sidled up to him and said, ‘Hey, I’m on your side,’ and showed him my credentials, he might not have even believed me. Actually, that would have been the most professional thing he could have done, because he’s not experienced enough to pick out a genuine solo operator from a crowd. Don’t give me that look, Rulaine. Yeah, I know Caine’s got good instincts. But he’s been pretty lucky, too. Given his lack of training, he could have been dead three or four times if he didn’t think quickly on his feet.”
“Thinking quickly is a skill in itself.” Bannor offered the rebuttal more out of loyalty to Riordan than conviction in its accuracy.
“Well, yeah, sure, it is. But that skill wasn’t the one Riordan had to have if I was going to tip my hand and tell him I was on his team. Because
if
he had believed me, then he would probably have given me away to the real traitors in the group.”
“How so?”
“By changing the way he behaved toward me.”
“In what way?”
“See? This is what I mean: you’re a professional field operator, but you still don’t get it because you’re just a striker. My world is different. And here’s how Riordan would have messed up my world: if I had revealed my identity, he’d probably become careless in ways he wouldn’t realize. He’d start showing an unwonted trust in me, casual speech, relaxed body language, all that. If an enemy pro had infiltrated our team, he or she would spot those changes, and so, would have sniffed me out. Or Caine would have been too careful, would start distancing himself from me—and again, a rival pro would have sensed that over-compensatory reaction and I’d be fingered. So my motto in these cases—better safe than sorry—meant not revealing who I was.”
Rulaine nodded slowly. “Okay, I get it. But I have to tell you: between that strategy and your, well, winning ways around people, I was half-convinced you were our traitor.”
She nodded back. “Good.”
“Good?”
“Sure. Figure it out, genius: I wanted to be the one that no one trusts. I
wanted
any spoken or unspoken suspicion centered on me. Because if it was, then everyone else isn’t so worried about someone watching them—including the
real
traitor. Humans, even pros in my field, tend to have that blind spot; they presume that someone who is under scrutiny is too worried about proving their own innocence to be watching anyone else. Problem was, Macmillan didn’t tip his hand, didn’t give me much to go on. Probably the only thing he ever did that might have given him away I wasn’t on hand to see.”
“Which was?”
“When he sabotaged Riordan’s filter mask. I’m guessing he did that right after we crashed. During our salvage work, we had to take off our masks to keep them from getting soaked. I’ll bet in all the activity, and then the confusion after Hirano was attacked by those pirhannows, he had plenty of opportunity to take care of Riordan’s mask. It was a shrewd plan: let Caine sicken by degrees, weaken the group by taking out our leader—who we’re not likely to leave behind—and freeze us in place. But the water-striders ruined it. Suddenly we had mobility independent of effort. But Macmillan never tipped his hand after that.”
“Where’d you learn your field craft?”
“Officially? I spent some weeks in training with the DGSE at Noisy-le-Sec, but mostly at the School of Hard Knocks.”
“Starting in early childhood, if Mr. Gaspard is correct.”
“He is, although the bastard has no right to talk about it.”
“It doesn’t sound as though you like your employer very much. Well, your ostensible employer.”
“Oh, he’s my real employer, all right. I took his coin
and
I took IRIS’ and didn’t much mind; I deserved them both, and more besides. But no, why should I like him? He’s a prissy classist manbitch who thinks the world was better off when everyone who doesn’t share his complexion was safely under the administration of colonial masters.”
“Gaspard?”
“Sure. Part of the post-war wave of NeoImperialists.”
Rulaine scratched his head. “I’m not even sure what that refers to.”
“That’s because you were on the counter-invasion fleet to Sigma Draconis. Those of us who lagged behind, even by a few weeks, got an earful of rhetoric about how humanity could no longer afford the inequities and inefficiencies which had plagued humankind for so long. So what’s their answer? Any country that they felt couldn’t pull its weight or hadn’t been able to create an orderly government was essentially put on probation.”
“Probation?”
“Yeah; as in, ‘fix your shit or we’re coming in and fixing it for you.’
Coño
, if that’s how it was going to be, why the hell did the Western powers ever leave their colonies? They lost almost two centuries of fun oppressing, raping, and exploiting.” Her terribly bright smile was as bitter and vitriolic as Bannor had ever seen on a human face.
He shrugged. “Then what’s your answer? If we do get into another scrap with our new interstellar neighbors, and that seems likely, then how do we get everyone mobilized, working toward the common goal of survival, of speciate sovereignty?”
“I don’t know, but you sure as shit don’t accomplish it by taking away some of your own peoples’ national sovereignty!”
Rulaine sighed. “Gaspard is a pragmatist. And he probably has a better sense than we do about how much time we have to get our house in order before the wolf comes sniffing around the door again.”
“Yeah, well, it took centuries to make this mess. Only seems fair that it would take centuries to un-make it.”
Bannor nodded. “I get that. But what if we don’t
have
centuries?”
“Look, I’m not saying I’ve got the answers. But the five blocs are going about this all wrong, and they’re not losing a lot of sleep over it, either. The only thing they’ve all been able to agree on is that they should take the unproductive nations out behind the shed and whup them. Yeah, just like old times.”
“So, you hate the nation-states. Surprised you’re not working for the megacorporations.”
“
Them
?” Bannor thought Dora might have expectorated along with her utterance of that word. “Look: nations screw-up like people do; sometimes they mean well, sometimes they’re selfish or delusional bitches on a spree, and sometimes they just plain make mistakes. But the megacorporations don’t make mistakes; if they do damage, it’s because they like the cost-to-benefit ratios, dead innocents notwithstanding. Nations are bulls in the global china shop; corporations are sharks.”
“Yeah, but what about the—?”
Veriden rose. “Rulaine, I didn’t come here to debate politics, the world, and everything. I came to make a report, explain why I didn’t let anyone know I was IRIS, and try to get along. But as you’ve pointed out, I don’t do that very well.” She looked over her shoulder at Caine. “I hope he pulls through. But there doesn’t seem much chance of it now.” She turned and padded away, dwindling down the long hallway that was shaped by walls which swept up into high and impenetrable shadows.
Chapter Fifty-Two
The Third Silver Tower; BD +02 4076 Two (“Disparity”)
Mriif’vaal approached the Rapport Sphere and thought:
Twice in the same week; this is unprecedented in the annals of Disparity. Woe that I should live in such times
.
He touched the outer layer of the sphere. The transparent membrane began allowing his tendrils to move through it. Moving very slowly, his whole body passed to the other side of the barrier much as oxygen passed through it by osmosis.
Between the osmotic Outer Sphere, and the hard, hermetic Inner Sphere, the air was thick: an overpressure environment that ensured that none of the spores and pheromones within the Inner Sphere would escape when the seam into it was opened. Mriif’vaal sighed, stared at the swirling vapors on the other side of the hard, clear surface. Those many airborne transmitters and receptors of meaning were not to be braved by the unprepared. The unrestricted sensory wave that perfused both the body and mind of any Slaasriithi that entered was powerful, paralyzing to the untrained.
Mriif’vaal did not welcome his imminent contact with the OverWatchling’s mind. He did not know any ratiocinator that did. And none of the other taxae had contact with it at all. Indeed, it was probably wrong to even think of the OverWatchling as having a mind. It was more akin to a highly detailed awareness. It deduced, but hardly reasoned; it learned, but was rarely capable of generalizing lessons learned within one domain of knowledge to any other; and while it was capable of change, it was disposed to resist it, in the interest of maintaining the stability of the polytaxic order and the synergies of macroevolution.
But this was not what made the consciousness of the OverWatchling such a ubiquitous source of discomfort among ratiocinatorae; it was the unsettling impression that its awareness
could
have been a mind, but had not been allowed to become one. This invariably led any perspicacious ratiocinator to wonder what dark path of inducement had produced this biomechanical hybrid, this being that was not a being. It did not help matters that the source of the OverWatchlings was not shared with the whole of the Slaasriithi polytaxon, not even with all Senior Ratiocinatorae. It was only known to those Prime Ratiocinatorae whose domains of responsibility transcended the boundaries of an individual world and extended into the interconnections between planets, star systems, and species. It was they who delivered new OverWatchlings to planets that had been sufficiently bioformed to warrant one. They did not divulge where the OverWatchlings originated, or how their biological and mechanical parts were, ultimately, fused. None of which helped diminish the unrest that other ratiocinatorae felt when in contact with the awareness of these pseudo-sophonts. Mriif’vaal splayed his tendrils wide across the Inner Sphere. A seam opened where none had been evident; he entered the pungent miasma.
Moments after he had seated himself, Mriif’vaal smelled a change in the pheromones; Disparity’s newly reactivated satellite grid had linked this chamber of the Third Silver Tower to that one which housed the OverWatchling beneath the First Silver Tower. The room’s audio converter and playback systems activated, but they were rarely significant in communicating with the OverWatchling. Having no mouth, no real body, it could communicate quantitatively through data streams or, when qualitative comparisons or discussions were required, through remote manipulation of the organic emissions within the Inner Chamber. Given the nature of this particular contact, the latter would predominate, or possibly be the sole vector of exchange.
“I am aware of your situation, Senior Ratiocinator Mriif’vaal,” was the verbal equivalent of what the OverWatchling conveyed, albeit over the period of half a minute: it took considerable time for the Inner Sphere’s changed spores to perfuse Mriif’vaal’s receptors, then stimulate electrochemical changes the same way that sights and sounds produced meaning in one’s brain. And in referring to “this situation,” the OverWatchling transmitted meaning that went far beyond that simple word, but invoked a signification-matrix that encompassed all the relevant reports, data, lists, and analyses that were resident in its awareness. Resident, but mostly inert, since its prior experience had not prepared it for such a complicated and nuanced situation as the one it now faced.
“I requested this communing to alert you to the significance of the impending demise of the human named Caine Riordan.”
“Your reason for contact is included in my awareness of the situation. But I do not perceive why a single being’s impending demise warrants this concern.”
“You are aware of the role of the human, of the tacit assurances we provided him and his group for their safety on Disparity, and of his possible further significance to Yiithrii’ah’aash’s mission?”
“The ratiocinatorae have relayed these data points, but I do not understand the implicit connection between a single being and these greater significances.”
Mriif’vaal breathed deeply: it had already been five minutes, and the OverWatchling’s inability to perceive the social and cultural ramification of the matter promised that it would take much, much longer. “I shall explain. Firstly, you may recall that we counseled you regarding the importance of individual human lives when they first crashed upon this world.”
“I am aware of the content of our prior contact.”
Aware of it in the sense of being an immense but uncomprehending recording device.
“What we were not aware of at that time was that this particular being, Caine Riordan, was already Affined to us by an old mark—an unthinkably old mark. We are uncertain of the origin of this mark, but believe it may be connected to the profound sense of importance and urgency that Yiithrii’ah’aash imparted to us about this mission.”
“I have much data that was initially relayed from Yiithrii’ah’aash’s ship, the
Tidal-Drift-Instaurator-to-Shore-of-Stars
. There is no record of any human passenger bearing such a mark.”
“I cannot account for that discrepancy,” Mriif’vaal sent wearily. “It may be that Yiithrii’ah’aash did not wish to call attention to this factor in our communications. It may be that he was unaware of just how old, or just how powerful, this marking was upon Caine Riordan. Conceivably, it did not fully express itself until the human was fully in our environment. That would not be uncommon; many marks sleep until touched by microbiota they recognize and only demonstrate their full intensity when fully awakened thereby. It could have been so here on Disparity.”
The OverWatchling did not respond for a long time; Mriif’vaal estimated it to be a delay of ten minutes. “What may be done? Given this new data, I would have agreed to many of your initial suggestions for action, or for release of assets, which I refused. But the past is past and may not be changed.”
“True.” Mriif’vaal took his time, allowed his body to replenish its pheromones and spore sacs to make his next message particularly clear and forceful. “But you may still change the future, may change the unfortunate course of events that has resulted from the recent past you now regret.”
“I do not understand.”
Mriif’vaal felt the OverWatchling’s growing willingness to alter protocols and precedents, and so, proceeded carefully, like a tracker attempting not to startle skittish game. “There are other old marks, spores, and antidotes. They are resident in your awareness. You may summon the Emitters to produce them. And they are precisely what Caine Riordan needs to survive, for he is dying not from the wounds inflicted by his own kind, but from our own defensive spores. Which, as we communicated to you before, could have been suspended. But that was not done.”
“To do so would have deviated from protocol.” This time, the OverWatching’s reply was evasive, less resolute.
“Clearly,” Mriif’vaal agreed. “But we must weigh that deviation against other concerns. I shall enumerate these concerns. If we allow this human to die when it is known that we may preserve his life, how will this particular group of humans Affine with us? Indeed, given their nonpolytaxic origins and perceptions of life and death, why should they? These beings fought to survive and indirectly defend the sovereignty of our planet. How will we explain to them and the rest of their species that Caine Riordan, an ancient-marked envoy, must be allowed to die—and not from wounds inflicted in the battle, but because of our unwillingness to correct an ailment caused by our own spores? If you would salvage this situation, if you would preserve the chance of an alliance between our races, then you must cure him.” Mriif’vaal realized as he released the last fervent wash of pheromones that he might have pushed too hard.
The OverWatchling’s reply was not brusque, but it was more firm than the prior ones. “What you ask is without precedent. The antidote to which you refer, the prime theriac,has not been used in millennia and there are many injunctions against doing so.”
Carefully now.
“Those injunctions arose from vastly different exigencies than the ones which face us now. They pertain to wars fought in the distant past, wars in which our antagonists were not true humans, but, rather, a malign subspecies derived from them. But
these
humans, the ones who were invited to Disparity, are the originals of their breed. Their genecode predates that of the self-warped subspecies that tormented us, and which recent intelligence suggests is one and the same as the exosapients who have masqueraded as the Ktor.” Mriif’vaal paused, let the OverWatchling process these concepts. Then he circled back to the key assertion. “If the Slaasriithi polytaxon would be Affined to these natural humans of Earth, we must preserve the life of this being that we ourselves have unwittingly brought to the edge of death. If we do not bear the responsibility of action to undo such a mistake, why would his kind believe or trust us in any other particular?”
The OverWatchling was slow in responding. Clearly, the arguments were wearing upon its inclination to remain in compliance with normative protocols. “I still do not perceive the urgency you presume to reside in this single being. Is it not his fate, even desire, to devote his existence—including the surrender of it—to the welfare of his taxon?”
“No. That is not how humans have evolved, either biologically or socially. Because they are not polytaxic, their priorities are radically different. The importance we put upon the collective, they put upon the individual.”
“And we wish to ally with such creatures?”
“Most urgently, I believe.”
“I require confirmation of that assertion.”
“If Yiithrii’ah’aash were here to provide it, I would never have contacted you myself. Consequently, your request for confirmation is, with apologies, illogical.”
Not to say specious.
The answer was very long in coming. “That is true.” As Mriif’vaal waited, it felt as though the world breathed in and out deeply. Then: “Your counsel is prudent. I shall comply.”
* * *
Caine started awake, started again when he discovered Yiithrii’ah’aash’s sensor cluster focused on him, only a meter away. It drew back. “I did not mean to frighten you, Caine Riordan. Apologies.”
“I wasn’t frightened. Not exactly.” Caine was suddenly and acutely conscious of still being in shorts and a tee shirt, the only recuperation clothing he had. Upon recovering consciousness two days ago, he had awakened to find himself lying stark naked in a strange amalgam of a bed, a couch, and an oversized sponge that smelled vaguely like citrus and bergamot. The Slaasriithi had been startled by his attempt to cover himself. His sudden, urgent motions without (for them) ready explanation led them to conclude he might be having a seizure of some sort. When Riordan groggily asked them for a hospital gown, much buzzing and sibilant speech ensued. After thirty minutes, they brought him an otherwise featureless black slate, which, when activated, displayed any number of gowns: wedding, formal, debutante ball. The attempt to find clothing had gone downhill from there, largely because the Slaasriithi, being unconcerned with personal coverings of any kind and quite unfamiliar with human sociology, presumed that all Earth garb was fundamentally a form of signification. To them, the concept of “modesty” was as foreign as the term “nudity” was redundant.
Yiithrii’ah’aash’s sensor cluster regarded him steadily. “I am most gratified and glad that your health returns to you. And to those of your fellows who were wounded.”
Caine nodded; Gaspard, the only human the Slaasriithi had permitted to see Riordan so far, had summarized the aftermath of the battle at the river. Eid had indeed fled to safety. Salunke had been knocked senseless when the explosion of a rifle grenade had blown down a rotting tree which fell upon her. Prior health concerns were also resolving: the wounds inflicted upon Hirano by the pirhannows were healing nicely, and it was speculated that she would not lose her eye. Hwang’s internal injuries had not been so severe that they were beyond the ability of his own body to heal.
But Trent Howarth was dead. No one knew what had happened, but the speed of his exit from
Puller
was reasonably suspected of having compromised his HALO rig. Qwara and Xue had been buried and Riordan himself had been excavated from beneath the bulk of the slain water-strider that had, it seemed, sacrificed itself to conceal him from the Ktor and the clones. The loss of Macmillan was not mentioned. Caine suspected that many simply wrote him off as one of the enemy dead. Riordan was of the opinion that he, too, was a fallen fellow-traveler; the only difference was that he had been a casualty from the time he had left Earth, his soul torn asunder when forced to choose between his daughter’s life and the fate of his planet. Caine wondered if he himself would have fared any better against that most terrible weapon of all: one’s own greatest loves turned against each other.
Gaspard had made many vicariously proud noises about the extraordinary underdog outcome of the engagement beside the river, pointing to the scant losses among the humans and the Slaasriithi. But Caine’s memories kept showing him very different pictures: Unsymaajh toppling from his downward swoop, Qwara pitching backward with only a fragment of her head remaining, Xue’s limp collapse, or the imagined bird’s-eye view of Trent falling falling falling. And unbidden, Keith Macmillan’s tortured face rose up as well.
