Leviathan (Asher in Ordered Space Book 2) Page 3

  “I hope you have all overcome the surprise you experienced at seeing us here,” Qwadie was saying. “You may also be disappointed, thinking that the reason for your trip here was a lie, a subterfuge. Not so. The Shamblers are very real and we do need your help to understand them. You see, since the Ferethers destroyed our home world, we have been seeking the key to our own existence. We know now that the history we have learned, the truths about our species that we thought we knew, were all illusion. We wish, more than anything, to know who is responsible for this deception and why it was perpetrated. Here on Lutetia, in the Shamblers, we believe we may have found a clue to aid us in our quest.”

  Asher was still feeling bewildered. He wanted to grab Qwadaleemia, to ask her what the hell she was doing. He and Kaz had risked so much to get the Cythrans away from Hokozana and here they were all but handing themselves over. By now, one or more of the other operatives would have alerted Dalian by subnet. In minutes, the higher-ups would know that the Cythrans had revealed themselves. What would happen then? There were other Security operatives on Dalian—regular, unimaginative Fleet cop types. They might be sent down to apprehend Qwadie and her creche. Hell, even he and Chuck might be ordered to capture them at any moment. A year before, when he had let the Cythrans go, he had been operating in a legal and ethical gray area. He had had no explicit instructions about what to do with them once he got them off-planet, just a vague understanding that he would meet up with a Hokozana ship. If he were to be given a direct order now, there would be nothing he could do. He would have to do his best to capture them, or he would break his Operative Loyalty Oath and be out of Hokozana—and all but unemployable in Ordered Space—forever.

  Of course, this line of thinking just demonstrated how easy it was to forget how smart the Cythrans were. Qwadaleemia spoke again, and Asher knew immediately that she had anticipated the issues that would attend her reappearance in Ordered Space. “I know you will have contacted your ship by now. Soon, you may be ordered to apprehend us.”

  As she spoke, the Coin-Op merc leaning casually against the back wall of the room had straightened, and was running a practiced eye over the Hokozana operatives. Now Asher understood why Embolen had been anxious about he and Chuck carrying their weapons. The Meridian man had known that the Cythrans ran a risk of capture. The last thing he wanted was a gunfight in his conference room.

  Qwadaleemia continued, “Before you think to move against us, please ask your superiors to search the Intercorp Court archives for record number 07-8X1-MN1009. They will find that as of this morning, we are the owners of record of a legally-registered and recognized corporation. What is more, they will find that your company have already acknowledged and returned a request, submitted through proper channels to your Marketing department, for an update to contract. In short, we are now the registered owners of the Meridian Company, and Hokozana has already recognized our authority in that capacity.”

  It was brazen and brilliant. However they had managed to purchase it, the Cythrans owned Meridian, who had hired Hokozana. There was no way to move against them now without breaking a contract, a precedent Hokozana’s execs would be loath to set. Asher found that he was laughing out loud. Chaffee and Ben Aron scowled, but Popescu looked amused. She knew that the Cythrans had outmaneuvered Hokozana, for now. Asher was pretty sure she still thought he had been complicit in the whole thing, though.

  ***

  It wouldn’t be accurate to say that the meeting went as normal after the intrusion of the Cythrans, but Asher was surprised to see it begin to settle into at least a semblance of a typical corporate rhythm. Qwadaleemia, perhaps conscious of the stares she and her creche-mates were getting from the Hokozana operatives, moved to stand near Irrik-Yen and Patrick Embolen, but did not attempt to control the discussion. It was Embolen, who was clearly nervous about the whole matter, who led the meeting.

  “Yes, you see,” began the Meridian man, licking his lips and seemingly unable to stand still, “it’s— it’s time to think differently. A new species, that’s what we’ve found. And it’s a strange one. Perhaps an invented one—do you know what I mean?”

  Nelson Chaffee stepped in. “I’m sorry Mr. Embolen, but we can't just ignore the presence of the Cythrans and go on speaking as though this were a normal meeting. At the very least, we were brought here under false pretenses. And the Cythrans! They are—well, not fugitives, exactly—but we have been seeking them for nearly a year.”

  “And what of it?” said Irrik-Yen, his lips curling back to expose the wicked plate his species used for tearing their prey. “They are the owners of Meridian now, and your people signed the contract. Is it our fault, or the Cythrans’, that you legal department did not bother to read carefully, or failed to consult you biologists?”

  Amina Popescu laid a hand on Chaffee’s shoulder. “It’s OK, Nelson. They’re right, we have a contract. And as you say, it’s not as though the Cythrans are fugitives. They‘re free people, and their positions are now recognized by the courts. Why don’t we hear them out and see what they want?”

  “Wait!” A new voice intruded. As one, the Hokozana team turned to stare at Leah Minter. Asher realized he had never even heard her speak before, beyond an occasional grunt of acknowledgment. “Wait,” she said again. She turned back to Embolen. “Did you say invented? Do you mean these Shamblers are an artificial intelligence?”

  CHAPTER SIX

  It seemed that was just what Embolen meant. The Meridian miners had first come into contact with the Shamblers several weeks before. The large open-pit mine just east of Archon was automated, for the most part, but a team of engineers and geologists was stationed there daily to make sure everything was running within parameters. One day, this team had noticed an anomaly in a highwall, the vertical face of a fifty-foot bench that had been cut by the automated excavators. They investigated, and discovered that the machines had cut across a tunnel buried about two hundred feet below the surface of Lutetia. The engineers reported the incident and went on about their duties, assuming they had simply found part of an abandoned underground mine excavated by one of the prospectors who had pioneered the claim.

  All this was summarized rapidly by Embolen, but he then turned the conversation over to a younger operative, a tough-looking man whom he introduced as Derek Crane, a Miner Class III.

  “I was the one sent to check out the old mine,” said Crane. “Me and my crew, that is. We’ve all got experience in underground workings and a lot of confined space entry in our backgrounds, so we’re usually called when they need someone to check out and seal up an old shaft or whatever.”

  He described how he and his three-person crew had sent an exploratory drone into the tunnel, determining that the air was breathable and the walls and roof structurally sound. “It was weird, though. The walls were real smooth and kind of glassy, like when they’re cut with beamers. No two-bit prospector has that kind of tech. We piloted the drone on back, and found the room. It was maybe fifty meters on a side, with a bank of machines against one wall and a bunch of smooth boulders—that’s what we thought, anyway—strewn all over the place. Imagine our surprise when those boulders started moving.”

  That was what the Shamblers were—boulders. Or that was what they looked like, anyway. Embolen showed them all a picture of one. It was about a half-meter across, and looked like a river-rounded rock. The one in the photo was grayish-brown, but Embolen said they varied in color, with reddish-browns, greenish-grays, and other hues represented. It moved by walking on millions of tiny cilia-like feet that it could extrude from the bottom of its body. It had two depressions that the Meridian folks thought were probably sensory receptors of some kind, but they still weren’t certain what kind of stimuli they were able to detect.

  “So why do you think they might be sentient?” asked Tal Ben Aron. “So far you’re just describing an animal.”

  “Don’t be an idiot,” said Leah Minter. “It’s the computers, of course.”

  “What comp
uters?” Ben Aron asked, but Minter just looked away from him and shook her head.

  “Operative Minter is correct,” growled Irrik-Yen. “The bank of machines found in the room proved to be a computer system—a very sturdy and resilient computer system. Our specialists were—shall I say somewhat overwrought? As you might imagine, finding an alien computer system might be a gold mine for a small corp such as ours. The fact that it was working, after a fashion, was even more astounding. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to make much sense of it, and we were afraid that we did not have the technical knowledge needed to develop the resource. That is when we put out our call on the Dark Wave.”

  “The Dark Wave?” Popescu asked. Asher had never heard the term either.

  Leah Minter gave an exasperated groan. “It’s a high-security non-corp subnet marketplace,” she explained. “You know, where you go if you want to sell stuff without catching the eye of any of the megacorps you probably stole the stuff from in the first place? Do you not surf the waves? It’s been in the newsfeeds.”

  Irrik-Yen waited patiently during this exchange, and then rumbled on. “Exactly, a market away from the corporate eye. A useful place for non-corps of all sorts, and for small corps, too, including Class Sixes such as ourselves. You see, we knew we could call in a Class One or Two corp, and that they would have the technology needed to crack the computer, but if we did, we risked losing control. In the Dark Wave, we could be the big player hiring subcontractors to do the work for us. Or so we believed, anyway.”

  “This is where we come in to the story,” said Qwadaleemia. “Over the past year, we have been working extensively with non-corps in a variety of roles—whatever we could find that paid well and kept our location secret. About seven months ago, we chanced into an arrangement with a small group of entrepreneurs who wanted us for our technical skills. Thereby, we became early development partners in the Dark Wave. Faraneeta here,” she indicated her companion, “has become a talented programmer. She is responsible for much of the security technology that underlies the system.”

  Minter looked doubtfully at Faraneeta. Like everyone at Hokozana, Minter would know that the Cythrans had been archaeo-tech until quite recently and had still been relatively naive about technology when contacted by Hokozana. Asher thought that she was probably skeptical that anyone could achieve the kind of programming proficiency that would be needed to develop the Dark Wave in so short a time. He wondered how she would deal with the disappointment of learning that she was, by a long way, not the smartest person in the room anymore. He had no doubt at all about the Cythrans’ abilities. They were hyper-geniuses, and if Faraneeta had decided to become a programmer a few months ago, then she was probably one of the very best in the Human Zone by now.

  “It was only natural,” Qwadaleemia continued, “that we would be interested in the new technology posted by Meridian. Faraneeta examined the small amount of data they had uploaded, and concluded that the system was designed for bioengineering. Of course, this made us even more interested, and we decided that we needed to gather more data, so we contacted Irrik-Yen, and agreed to partner with them to understand the computer.”

  “And market it,” said Embolen, looking a bit sour. “I guess that’s out now.”

  Qwadaleemia rustled her tendrils in a pattern that Asher’s translator interpreted as [Exasperation/Amusement]. “For the past several days, Faraneeta and Garueeria have spent all of their time in the alien laboratory examining the computer system and the Shamblers. With more data, they came to a startling realization. You see, just over a year ago we were forced to accept the truth that we are a bioengineered species, made from sentient Ferether-like neural networks placed in bodies somewhat altered from the wild Cythran state. Now we have learned that we were designed on this computer system, or one linked directly to it.”

  ***

  Qwadaleemia’s mention of the wild Cythrans carried Asher back to the Bone Trees on Cierren Cythra and the strange forest dwelling epiphyte-farmers he, Kaz, and Jaydrupar had met there. Those had been Cythrans in their natural state, before some unknown entity had taken some of them and replaced their neural systems with bioengineered Ferether symbionts. The new “Cythrans” were then placed back on their home planet in towns that were alien from a human perspective, but not too alien, and given a fake history. There they lived for about sixty years until the Zvezda Company, a small scouting outfit, had built a jumpgate and orbital in Bright-Dim. After preliminary development, Zvezda had put the system up for auction, and the corporate world had descended on Cierren Cythra. It wasn’t long before Hokozana and DiJeRiCo realized that the Cythrans were an engineered species. Jaydrupar, an Intel operative who strongly distrusted the Ferethers, had thought that that strange race had made the Cythrans as some kind of trap for humans. Now, the reigning hypothesis, so far as Asher knew, was that someone else had made them to trap the Ferethers, using bioengineered Ferethers themselves as building blocks. Who that creator might be and what their endgame was, was unknown. Now, it seemed, Meridian’s chance discovery had given the Cythrans an opportunity to discover who they were and why they had been made.

  Qwadaleemia explained how they had spent almost all of the substantial fortune they had earned as part-owners of the Dark Wave to purchase the Meridian Company through back channels. They had then come to Lutetia to assume control of their new investment, and to study the computer directly.

  “That we can do,” said Faraneeta. “Our technical knowledge in computer theory is extensive. However, we have not cultivated any expertise in biology. What we have been able learn from the computer suggests that the Shamblers were intended to be sentient, but it is not clear to us that they are, or if so, what they were created to do. We considered out optiosn carefully, and then contracted you. Of the megacorps we have dealt with, both on Cierren Cythra and since, Hokozana strikes us as the most predictable and straightforward. Perhaps, you might say, the most honorable. Asher is someone we came to like, when he stayed with us on Cierren Cythra, and then to trust, when he helped our creche escape the Ferethers’ destruction of our world. Through contacts we have made in Hokozana over the last few months, we ensured that he was assigned to this team. And now, here we all are.”

  “Contacts?” For the second time today, Asher was stunned. “Who do you know at Hokozana who could get me assigned to this? How can you know anyone, outside of the Cierren Cythra team?”

  Qwadaleemia [Laughed] again. “That is not a matter to discuss here. It is important to our friends in Hokozana that they not be seen to be our friends, at least not yet. I can say, though, that your corp is slowly beginning to see the value of working with us, rather than against us. Or some of its operatives are, anyway.”

  There were significant glances among the Hokozana team at this. Chaffee and Ben Aron both gave Asher and hard look, then turned to Popescu, apparently expecting her to pronounce doom on these unknown operatives who had conspired with the Cythrans. Popescu herself looked at Asher again, her eyes were still filled with doubt, but she no longer regarded him with the flinty gaze she had offered earlier. Perhaps she, at least, believed Qwadaleemia and had begun to think that perhaps Asher had not been the conspirator.

  Asher, for his part, could not think of anyone who had both the power to assign him to the Lutetia expedition and an incentive to work with the Cythrans. Marcolis or Maxim Asher could manipulate things that way but Asher could see no reason why they should. Lori might wish to help both Asher and the Cythrans, but she did not have that kind of power. He resolved to press Qwadaleemia on the point as soon as he could speak to her alone.

  He would have no opportunity to do that immediately. Popescu was staring at the ceiling, obviously communicating with Dalian by subnet, and through the ship’s relay, probably to some hastily-assembled crisis team of Hokozana Intel and Research operatives and Admin executives. Chaffee and Ben Aron looked offended by the entire proceeding. Chuck appeared confused by events, and Asher wondered how much she knew about the
Cierren Cythra affair. Perhaps she was one of those operatives who had not much cared about the events in that distant system. She would have been deep in her studies at the Academy at the time, so she might have had better things upon which to focus her energies.

  Surprisingly, Leah Minter was conversing very closely with Faraneeta. Asher had thought the woman brusque and socially inept, but she seemed to find common ground with her fellow programmer, and the two were deep in discussion, presumably about the alien computer system.

  Qwadaleemia and Garueeria, along with Patrick Embolen and Irrik-Yen, cornered the two Hokozana exobios. Chaffee and Ben Aron, despite their obvious disgruntlement with the entire situation, allowed themselves to be drawn into a conversation about the Shamblers.

  Asher drifted over to stand by Chuck. “Not much going to happen any time soon. Once the scientists get their heads together like this, meetings tend to drag on for a long while. If you like, take a break and get some food. Come relieve me in about a half hour.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Chuck returned in almost exactly thirty minutes. The meeting was still going strong, so Asher let her take over his spot and headed out into the bullpen area of the administration building. He found a Meridian operative, who pointed him in the direction of the mess hall. The route took him past several offices, most of which were empty. Presumably their occupants were currently attending the meeting. It was as he passed one of these that Qwadaleemia caught up to him and grabbed his arm to get his attention.