Jack Chalker - Medusa - A Tiger by the Tail

“They intended to do just that, as the old Altavar told us. But they are an enormous, mostly mobile population, spread out over half a galaxy, wherever there are Coldah. They faced an empire of vast proportions and unknown capabilities. They had to know how we thought, what our tactics were like, how we’d fight, all the rest. They had time. It’s still three hundred years until the scheduled hatching, or breakout, or whatever it is the Coldah do. It was over four hundred when we first arrived here. They spent fifty years or more just getting to know us through the Wardens, watching us work, and realizing just how different our relationship to the Wardens was from theirs, and only then did they really send for their fleet, which must be assembled from incredible distances and then can only be spared in small pieces. It was easier for them to establish factories on worlds beyond the Confederacy, even Warden worlds themselves, and build the force they needed, along with using the Wardens to breed the Altavar necessary for the fight. By the time they had their fleet and their military ready, Kreegan.was Lord of Lilith.”

“And he stumbled on the whole truth?”

“Much as I did. On each world there was one point, one weakness, that was the Coldah’s window to the outside. Don’t ask me how it works or why, I don’t know. But there was one point, usually in an inaccessible and nasty place on the globe, where this happened. On Lilith it’s very near the north pole. On Charon it’s a small island off the southern continent. I don’t know how Kreegan happened on the north pole, but considering that the descendants of the original exploiter team had set up a planet-worship religion on Lilith they must have put him on to it. The signal strength, as it were, at each of those points is so strong it bleeds over directly onto ours, exciting our own Wardens and our brain’s awareness and control.”

“No wonder, then, Kreegan became Lord.”

Morah nodded. “Local Altavar, bred for the conditions and for unobtrusiveness, try to discourage anyone from getting too close without blowing their cover, often masquerading as wild animals themselves. They mostly staff monitoring and control devices to keep tabs on the Coldah, whose signals increase consistently until they leave. By that monitor they can predict the Coldah’s eventual behavior and be ready for it.”

He thought a moment. “Then the ice demons weren’t the only ones. There were those nasty beasties in the Charonese desert with tentacles, too, if I remember.”

“Oh, the narils. Actually, they’re not Altavar, but Altavar pets, in a way. An attempt to breed an animal with their own biochemical structure that was sensitive to the Warden frequencies. It worked only slightly, though. Some got into the wild and adapted themselves to the desert, that’s all. The Cerberan bork is another botched attempt, only that time their result scared them so much they haven’t tried it again.”

“I still don’t understand why they’d go for Kreegan’s plan, though.”

“Oh, that’s simple. They still weren’t quite ready to tackle us yet. They were pretty sure he couldn’t succeed, but he hit it off with them for some reason, and they agreed to go along simply because, no matter what, it would give them the strategic and military information they craved. If it worked, so much the better. But they couldn’t stand for us in any event, a race with a powerful empire that also could reach, and even make use of, the Coldah and their symbiotes without a lot of mechanical aids.”

“So what will they do to the Confederacy now—and to us?”

Morah sighed. “They will use small but deadly forces to hit weakly defended planets throughout the Confederacy. Eventually the remnants of this fleet not concerned with the Medusan Coldah’s new habitat and settlement will join m scattered action. They will collapse the empire back into planetbound barbarism, but on hundreds of worlds. The Confederacy itself will continue to hold fanatically, all the while contracting to a defensible size and base, but they will be effectively neutralized for a long time. What they will eventually do, or become, you and I will never know, my friend. We’ll be long dead.”

“And the Diamond?”

“The Altavar computers can stabilize the Medusan variety for a while, perhaps rebuilding Medusa or, more likely, just letting it go. We will settle the Medusans on Lilith and Charon, and progressively we’ll switch the programming on them over from Medusa to whatever new world they settle upon, if not with the current generation, then with their children. The Altavar will be around, but remain as unobtrusive as possible, for the next three centuries. Then, one after another, the Coldah will emerge in natural fashion, and, theoretically, our Warden powers will die out and we’ll be just plain folks again. Or maybe we won’t. Whether or not the Medusan young become Charonese or Lilithians or remain their own kind even with the Coldah gone and with subtle suggestion from the Altavar master computers will tell us a lot. If they do continue to breed true, then the Coldah’s leaving will have no effect. If we, in those three centuries, can learn how to keep those Wardens alive, or replace them with synthetic equivalents as the Altavar now could do if they wanted, we Warden Diamond races could emerge as true, spacefaring, Homo excelsius. The Altavar can make their Wardens do whatever they want by mechanical processes. We can do it with sheer willpower, and remake ourselves if we like.”

He nodded slowly. “And you were a biologist.”

“I am a biologist. Sooner or later, working with the Altavar, I will know enough, or my staff will, aided by the computers of Cerberus, now free to expand their potential. We must build up our industry again quickly, and that is the first and vital task. We have the work force with the necessary skills in the Medusans, but we must rebuild the factories, out here first, then in space. The technological brains are all over the Diamond, and now the lid on technological development the Confederacy imposed is gone.”

“You’re certain toe Altavar won’t interfere?”

“So long as they perceive no threat from us, they win not. This is long-term planning, Mr. Carroll. It will take years to rebuild the industry and expand reasonable production. We have three centuries to do it all and learn what we have to learn. At the end of that time, if we have fathomed the full secrets of the Warden organism, we will sit here on our three remaining worlds in relative savagery and wave good-bye to the Coldah and the Altavar. Then we will go out ourselves, and see what of humanity survives and rebuild our civilization in strength, not ignorance. It is a challenge not only for us who will start this work but for our children and grandchildren who will complete it. And if we do our job right, they’ll do it without the mistakes of the past rising again to stupefy human civilization. A race that can, by force of will, become any creature it needs to, destroy mountains with a finger and a push of will, and change bodies, sex, or whatever it is at any time, will be a new type, of creature, or creatures.”

Yatek Morah leaned back, drained bis drink, then pulled out and lit a Charonese cigar. Then he added, “Next time, we will be the demons—or the gods. And what about you, Mr. Carroll? Where do you fit in to this unique new future?”

He leaned back comfortably and put his feet up on the table. “I think I have some unique qualifications in your grand scheme, Morah. I think I’m going to fit in fine around here, all four of me. But first a little unfinished business, if you’ll do me a little favor.”

“We’ll see. Now that you know it all, I still have a nagging feeling that there’s something you haven’t been telling me.”