Peter Hamilton - The Mandel Files

“Is Reiger dead?”

“Dunno. We loosed off Suzi’s missiles. Might have got him.” He steadied himself against Rick, and straightened his back ponderously.

“Reiger,” said Royan. “I’ve heard of him. Tekmerc with a high hazard rating. Is he Jepson’s agent?”

“Yes, he’s Jepson’s.” She gave the Hexaëmeron a long stare. “The one you summoned. Do you have a reason why I should allow you to live?”

“I am not a hazard, Julia Evans, to you or your world,” the Hexaëmeron’s smooth voice said. “I am, as stated, simply a midwife. When the species I contain have birthed, my time will be over. Royan is guilty of judging me by his own human standards. My planet’s life is sturdy, yes, but also highly organized. It is not as competitive as terrestrial organisms.”

“What do you mean organized?” she asked.

“Plants supply animals with all the nourishment they need. Animals are non-carnivorous, they do not prey on each other as is the common practice on your Earth. Our life harmonizes.”

“Fascist Gaia’s world,” Royan said. “Everything knows its place, and stays there. But where would our place be?”

“Is that it?” Julia asked. “Some kind of shared consciousness? An insect mentality?”

“Not at all. Organization is different from obedience. Animal and insect forms have all evolved high social orders. Clannish, if you like. Once established in a territory they will not venture outside.”

“That sounds detrimental to me,” Julia said. “You’d need a certain amount of cross-breeding to continue species viability.”

“Naturally, each clan maintains contact with its neighbours, and major species have a degree of conscious control over their own germ plasm.”

“I still find that trait quite incredible,” Julia said. “Perhaps the most frightening aspect of all. Even if I believe you can vouch for the non-belligerence of the individual species you contain, what is to prevent them from altering beyond recognition within a few generations? If they react and adapt to their environment, they’ll have to undergo considerable alteration, physical and mental. And I have to ask myself how they’ll react to humans. For we are not saints. Nor are our animals. Let loose on Earth, aliens would have to protect themselves from the ignorant, the frightened, not to mention the ideologically inclined. Can you guarantee that these species of yours will not grow horns and fangs, will not hit back?”

“No, of course not. Not if those circumstances arise. That is why I suggested Mars to Royan. It would be worthwhile to consider; I offer to purchase Mars from the human race. You would act as my agent, profiting accordingly. Negotiate for me, Julia Evans, I do not lay claim to that skill, and you are the world’s acknowledged expert. You have the material and political means to bring about this arrangement. In return, I will multiply myself and function as a fully-operational asteroid disseminator plant. One that will respond only to you. In addition, Venus could be terraformed. I contain the genetic codes for an algae which would digest Venus’s atmospheric carbon dioxide. With the resources and wealth that asteroid dissemination would make available to you, the algae’s production in sufficient quantities would pose no problem. Accelerating Venus’s rotation to a twenty-four-hour period would probably be beyond my ability to supply. But I would provide Event Horizon with a human chemistry compatible food crop which will thrive in days that last four Earth months. I can bloom, Julia Evans, if you let me.”

Julia hesitated for a moment. She didn’t doubt the Hexaëmeron could back the offer with solid bioware-alien bioware-and if any word of the offer leaked it would snowball, become irresistible. Politicians would welcome the Hexaëmeron with open arms; the wealth it could provide was enough to fulfil any manifesto. She either stopped it, killed it, now, or events would be ripped beyond even her ability to control. Intelligent benign aliens on Mars, the asteroids converted to bullion vaults, Venus tamed. So very tempting; she could play Midas to the Hexaëmeron’s Dionysus.

And look what happened to Midas.

She glanced round. Rick had an overawed, slightly beleaguered expression on his young face, dazed and doting.

Greg was gaunt, lost in his own torment over Suzi. Consulting Royan was an impossibility; she knew he’d never give her any advice on this, saying, “Look where my expertise has got us.” Even if she had been blind to everything else between them, she was sure of that.

It made her frightened for what would happen afterwards; with the Hexaëmeron free or the Hexaëmeron destroyed, the two of them would still be left to resolve whatever they had. And how wretched he was going to be, not only at failing his one chance at equality, but for creating such a danger and quandary, for disappointing her, making her angry, and stressing her virtually to breaking point. It might even be pushing her love too far. She was afraid to think about that. Instinct and concern had brought her this far, but what was left?

“If you can do this,” she said carefully to the Hexaëmeron, “if you can provide so much, why did you call for Clifford Jepson? Why not just ask for me in the first place?”

“But I did,” said the Hexaëmeron. “You or Clifford Jepson, both of you are similar, both of you with the right political contacts, both of you in positions of direct influence. You both make your own decisions without consultations or reference, and you are not afraid to make those decisions even if they go against what is seen as being in the public interest. Had Clifford Jepson arrived first, I would have offered him the same as I now do to you. Either way, I win.”

“The whole world hates a smart-arse,” Royan said.

Julia walked right up to the Hexaëmeron’s quivering shell, stopping with her nose almost touching. “Is it telling the truth, Greg?”

“Yeah, as far as I can tell. At least it’s very earnest.”

Now she was close she could see Royan’s nose had been eaten away, there were no lips left, and his eyes-she was sure they were missing. The Hexaëmeron had done that, in a moment of fear and panic Royan had said. Could what was virtually a machine intelligence fear and panic? “Keep scanning it, I have a question to ask. I must know if the answer is honest.”

“OK.”

“Was the microbe spliced together, or was it natural?” She held her breath. Had they been deliberately manufactured, set loose on the universe with the intent of conquering?

“That is a null question,” the Hexaëmeron said. “There were no laboratories involved, no instruments nor machines. All that was left alive contracted to this. What I am. The sentience coadunation molecule at the centre of the gene sphere was a product of necessity. Designed, perhaps, though you would call it being driven. There was no free will involved. Primordial life originated as a microbe, as was the first, so is the last. The difference is the genetic codes. Six billion years of history. Do you consider you have the right to extinguish that, Julia Evans?”

“Nobody should have to decide this,” she said, almost to herself. “Not something like this.”

“Anyone who has the ability to decide, will decide. This is inevitable. If you were unable to decide, you would not be here, Event Horizon would not exist in the form it does. There can be no abrogation of your position.”

“Royan?” she appealed.

His deliquescent face remained devoid of emotion. “You already know the answer, don’t you, Snowy? The Hexaëmeron is God’s creature. Why it’s here, I don’t pretend to understand. But I’m sorry I wasn’t strong enough to decide in your place, I would do anything to spare you this. But I guess this is His test for you.”