Charles Gannon - Raising Caine

Shethkador did not show the extent to which Olsirkos’ mysterious comment and confidence intrigued him. He stopped before the entry to the Sensorium. “I require that the honor guard precede me and sweep for any anomalies before I enter.” Olsirkos gestured the guards through an iris valve that opened upon a circular, dimly lit chamber. A pong of thick, unctuous musk and decaying incense wafted out.

“I will want a complete operational report when I am done here. Be sure that it is extremely detailed,” Shethkador warned Olsirkos. “I may have need of the smallest particulars.” His honor guard, finished with their sweep, stood aside at rigid attention as he entered the reeking, domed chamber.

After the antique iris valve rasped closed, Shethkador sealed it with his personal code and crossed to the small, featureless panel where the Catalysites were stored. He passed his hand over the panel, which, sensing the requisite amount of Symbiot in his bloodstream, slid open. He removed one of the tightly sealed opaque vials waiting in a row, tapped for the panel to self-seal, and positioned himself on the cushions he had selected.

Among the Awakened, who were the unofficial meritocrats of the Evolved, some relished the power and reach of a Catalysite-assisted Reification, claiming it to be the ultimate dominative euphoria. Shethkador was not among their number, and secretly contemned such Awakened as weak-minded sybarites. After all, they reveled in the dominion enabled by the Symbiot without bothering to reflect that they were relying upon an external source to attain that acme of power. Well, no matter: that weakness would eventually be their undoing when the genelines of their Houses came to contend with another that was populated by fewer lotos-eaters.

Shethkador elected to forego the meditative preparations; it was superstition rather than effective practice, in his opinion. He popped open the vial and inserted his finger into the complex microecology within until it met the sluglike dermis of the Catalysite.

He contemplated a quadratic equation until the perfusive flood of burning had swept out into his body. It left a singed tingling in its wake and a perception of the universe as a hierarchy of pressure-sensitive control cells, each cluster of which was itself but a small cell in still greater control clusters, and which all expanded upward and outward into a limitless whole that was greater than the sum of its parts, and through which his awareness grew and expanded, rushing toward an infinitely receding periphery that was the demarcation line of—

All things stopped. Were frozen in the impossibly small spatio-temporal lacunae that separated every action from every reaction, even on the level of entangled quanta. Guided by instinct and the Symbiot within him — and he detested being uncertain of where the former ended and the latter began — he found the incomplete cluster he sought: the Autarchs of the Ktor.

Who were slightly more than fifty-five light-years distant.

Davros Tval Herelkeom, senior of the five Autarchs who had made themselves available, acknowledged Tlerek’s contact: “Your signal is clear, Srin Shethkador. Your House sends its compliments and anticipates a report of success.” Which was a strange greeting in that this affirming welcome should have come from Tlerek’s great-uncle once removed, the Tval Kromn Shethkador, who was present in the group. On the other hand, if these walking fossils are currently split among themselves, it might be deemed an unacceptable entreé to House-domination if both Shethkador voices become preeminent in this counsel.

Tlerek sought a tone of response that was at once direct, assertive, and tinged by the annoyance he felt over the resolution of the war upon Earth. “Regrettably, I must disappoint the anticipations of both my House and the Autarchs. The Aboriginals stayed their vengeance against the Arat Kur homeworld, largely because they discovered my identity as homo imperiens .”

A long pause, and then a contentious, angry query from Beren Tval Jerapthere. “You have failed?” Beren’s tone bordered on effrontery.

“ I did not fail, but I report failure. Do you wish my report on the conclusion of the war?”

Beren became peremptory. “Yes, at once.”

“I am pleased to comply. The fleets of the so-called Consolidated Terran Republic successfully misled the Arat Kur and Hkh’Rkh into believing that their initial attack upon Barnard’s Star was a genuine surprise which decimated their formations. This was a ruse. The human fleets reappeared after the invaders divided their forces and were committed deep within the gravity well of Home, or, as the Aboriginals call it, Earth. Aided by a Dornaani computer virus introduced through a joint Custodian-Aboriginal clandestine operation, the forces of our proxies were neutralized or eliminated, with many of their hulls falling into the hands of the ‘Terrans.’”

Davros Tval Herelkeom resumed control, somewhat archly, of the contact. “Current disposition of enemy forces?”

“I am unsure, but the most technologically advanced of the Aboriginal fleets are currently here in far orbit about the Arat Kur Homenest, which has surrendered to them.”

“The Arat Kur surrendered?”

“Yes. You may recall my prediction that I would lose the ability to mislead each side into believing that the other was obdurate in their hostility if the Aboriginals discerned my true speciate identity. Which they did.”

Ruurun Tval Tharexere, oldest of the Autarchs and of his unity-obsessed House, entered his observations into the contact. “This is most unwelcome news.”

“With all respect, Autarch, the course of events followed my misgivings as players follow a script. The Aboriginals detected the forensically inconclusive waste-emissions from the false environmental suit and that, in conjunction with the military and diplomatic peculiarities of the conduct of the conflict, led one of them to hypothesize my true species.”

Beren’s resentment and rage were palpable through the contact: he had been the architect of many of the stratagems that had gone awry. “You would blame our plans, our technicians, for your own failures? Failures against Aboriginals?”

“Instruct me, Autarch: how were these my failures? Did I not point out the risks in the suit’s design and the underlying xenobiological conceits? And did I not predict that the Aboriginals had an excellent chance of defeating the Arat Kur?”

“Yes, but their defeat was an acceptable outcome if it created an opportunity to entice the Aboriginals into wholesale genocide. The ostracization they would have faced for that act would surely have pushed them in our direction, and so, under our dominion.”

“And I warned, did I not, that the plan’s signal weakness was that I had to be physically present in order to obliquely encourage that genocide?”

“Yes, but—”

“By your leave, Autarch, my House will wish to inspect the transcripts of this exchange, and I humbly request that I may finish without interruption.”

Beren’s almost shuddering response conveyed barely suppressed fury. “You — your request is…granted.”

“My thanks, Autarch. I warned, did I not, that being physically present amongst the Aboriginals would give them the time and opportunity to conduct detailed analysis of the suit and its components, even if only by external sensing?”

“I cannot, at this time, find mention of—”

“I asserted this on the third day of tactical planning, Autarch. Please consult the transcripts. It was one of my first objections.”

Beren paused. “Ah — yes, now I recall.”