Adrian Tchaikovsky - Children of Time

He went on into more certain waters, the earliest unearthed records of what he could truly think of as his people. The ice had been retreating. Humanity had sprung back swiftly, expanded, fought its small wars, re-industrialized, tripping constantly over reminders of what the species had previously achieved. Human eyes had looked to the skies again, which were crossed by so many moving points of light.

And he told Kern why they could not go back: because of the war, the Empire’s war from thousands of years before. For so long, scholars had taught that the further the ice receded, the better for the world, and yet nobody had guessed what poisons and sicknesses had been caught up in that ice, like insects in amber, the encroaching cold protecting the shivering biosphere from the last excesses of Empire.

There is no returning to Earth , he sent to the pensively silent satellite. In the end, we could not counterbalance the increasing toxicity of the environment. So we built the ark ships. In the end all we had was old star maps to guide us. We are the human race. And we’ve had no transmissions from any other arks to say that they’ve found anywhere to stay. Doctor Avrana Kern, this is all we have. Please may we settle on your planet?

Because he was thinking in human terms, he expected a decent pause then for his opposite number to digest all that potted history. Instead, one of the science crew shouted out, ‘New energy readings! It’s activating something!’

‘A weapon?’ Guyen demanded, and all the screens briefly went blank, then flared to life again with nonsense scattering across them: fragments of code and text and simple static.

‘It’s got into the Gilgamesh control system!’ Lain spat. ‘It’s attacking our security – no, it’s through. Fuck, we’re open. It’s got full control. This is what it did to your drones, Karst, the ones it didn’t just vaporize. We’re fucked!’

‘Do what you can!’ Guyen urged her.

‘What the fuck do you think I can do? I’m locked out! Balls to your “cultural specificity”, Mason. It’s all over our fucking system like a disease.’

‘How’s our orbit?’ someone asked.

‘I have no feedback, no instrumentation at all.’ Vitas sounded very slightly tense. ‘However, I’ve not felt any change in thrust, and mere loss of power or control should not affect our position relative to the planet.’

Like all those hulks orbiting Earth , Holsten thought helplessly. Those fried, dead ships, with the vacuum-dried bodies of their crew still in place after thousands of years.

Abruptly the lights jumped and flickered, and then a face appeared on every screen.

It was a bony, long-jawed face; that it was a woman’s was not immediately obvious. Details kept filling in: dark hair drawn back, skin shaded and textured, harsh lines about the mouth and eyes; unflattering by modern criteria but who could name the ancient aesthetics that this face acknowledged? It was a face from an era and a society and an ethnicity that time had otherwise erased. The kinship between it and the crew of the Gilgamesh seemed tenuous, coincidental.

The voice that rang out through the speakers was unmistakably the same, but this time it was speaking the crew’s own common language, although the lips did not sync.

‘I am Doctor Avrana Kern. This is my world. I will brook no interference with my experiment. I have seen what you are. You are not from my Earth. You are not my humanity. You are monkeys, nothing but monkeys. You are not even my monkeys. My monkeys are undergoing uplift, the great experiment. They are pure. They will not be corrupted by you mere humans. You are nothing but monkeys of a lesser order. You mean nothing to me.’

‘Can she hear us?’ Guyen asked quietly.

‘If your own systems can hear you, then I can hear you,’ Kern’s voice spat out.

‘Are we to understand that you are condemning the last survivors of your own species to death?’ It was a remarkably mannered, patient display from Guyen. ‘Because it seems that is what you are saying.’

‘You are not my responsibility,’ Kern pronounced. ‘This planet is my responsibility.’

‘Please,’ Lain said, ignoring Guyen when he gestured at her to shut up. ‘I don’t know what you are, if you’re human or machine or whatever, but we need your help.’

The face froze, nothing but a still image for a handful of heartbeats.

‘Lain, if you’ve—’ Guyen started, and then abruptly Kern’s image began to break up, distorting and corrupting on screen, features bloating or atrophying and then flickering into nothing.

The voice spoke again, a plaintive whisper in its native tongue, and only Holsten could know what it was saying. I am human. I must be human. Am I the system? Am I the upload? Is there anything of me left? Why can I not feel my body? Why can I not open my eyes?

‘The other thing, the Eliza thing, it was mentioning some other help,’ Lain murmured, although surely even a whisper would be overheard. ‘Can we just ask it—?’

‘I will help you,’ Kern said, speaking their language again, sounding calmer now. ‘I will help you leave. You have all the universe except this world of mine. You can go anywhere.’

‘But we can’t—’ Guyen started.

Then Lain broke in. ‘I’m back in. Checking all systems.’ A tense minute to ensure that, at the very least, the ship’s computer was telling her that everything was still working. ‘We’ve got new data flagged up. It’s just dumped a whole load of stuff on us. It’s… the Gilgamesh recognizes star maps. Mason, I’ve received some stuff in that jabber of yours.’

Holsten scanned over the jumble of data. ‘I, ah… not sure, but it’s linked to the star maps. It’s… I think it’s…’ His mouth was dry. ‘Other terraforming projects? I think the… I think we’ve been given the keys to the next system. It’s giving us destinations.’ It’s selling out its neighbours , was what he did not say, given that it was listening, it’s bribing us to go away . ‘I think… something here might even be access codes.’

‘How far?’ Guyen demanded.

‘Just under two light years,’ Vitas reported briskly. ‘Just a step, really.’

Through a long, stressed silence, they waited for Guyen’s decision. The face of Avrana Kern was back on some of the screens, glowering at them; twitching, distorting, reforming.

Negotiations with the locals have gone sufficiently well – now that Portia and her party have established their superiority – and the incumbents have lent the three travellers a male to serve as a guide in the lands to the north. The creature is slightly smaller than Portia’s own male companion, but of a quite different character, bold to the point of impudence by Portia’s standards. He has a name: call him Fabian. Portia, whilst aware that males give themselves names, has very seldom needed to know any, even with the concentration of that gender to be found at Great Nest. She guesses that in a small family unit such as these locals, males are likely to be more self-reliant, therefore both more capable and more independently minded. Still, she finds his brashness off-putting. Bianca appears to find him less objectionable and, on their trip north, Portia catches Fabian displaying for her, a tentative offer to gift her his sperm. Bianca has not yet shown herself receptive, but Portia notes that she has not chased him off either.

Portia herself has put several clutches of eggs behind her – females seldom depart Great Nest without having passed on their lineage – and she feels this current behaviour is distracting from their mission. On the other hand, Bianca has fought for her and probably considers playing with this new male her reward. Portia only hopes she can keep her desires in check. It would be more diplomatically advantageous if Fabian was not killed and eaten during the throes of passion.