Adrian Tchaikovsky: Children of Time

Within tolerance , it replied. And if she probed behind that bland summary, she would see precise readouts of the lander craft, its state of readiness, even down to the vital signs of its ten-thousand-strong primate cargo, the chosen few who would inherit, if not the Earth, then at least this planet, whatever it would be called.

Whatever they would eventually call it, once the uplift nanovirus had taken them that far along the developmental road. The biotechs estimated that a mere thirty or forty monkey generations would bring them to the stage where they might make contact with the Sentry Pod and its lone human occupant.

Alongside the Barrel was the Flask: the delivery system for the virus that would accelerate the monkeys along their way – they would stride, in a mere century or two, across physical and mental distances that had taken humanity millions of long and hostile years.

Another group of people to thank , for she herself was no biotech specialist. She had seen the specs and the simulations, though, and expert systems had examined the theory and summarized it in terms that she, a mere polymath genius, could understand. The virus was clearly an impressive piece of work, as far as she could grasp it. Infected individuals would produce offspring mutated in a number of useful ways: greater brain size and complexity, greater body size to accommodate it, more flexible behavioural paths, swifter learning… The virus would even recognize the presence of infection in other individuals of the same species, so as to promote selective breeding, the best of the best giving birth to even better. It was a whole future in a microscopic shell, almost as smart, in its single-minded little way, as the creatures that it would be improving. It would interact with the host genome at a deep level, replicate within its cells like a new organelle, passing itself on to the host’s offspring until the entire species was subject to its benevolent contagion. No matter how much change the monkeys underwent, that virus would adapt and adjust to whatever genome it was partnered with, analysing and modelling and improvising with whatever it inherited – until something had been engineered that could look its creators in the eye and understand.

She had sold it to the people back home by describing how colonists would reach the planet then, descending from the skies like deities to meet their new people. Instead of a harsh, untamed world, a race of uplifted sentient aides and servants would welcome their makers. That was what she had told the boardrooms and the committees back on Earth, but it had never been the point of the exercise for her. The monkeys were the point, and what they would become.

This was one of the things the NUNs were most incensed about. They shouted about making superbeings out of mere beasts. In truth, like spoiled children, it was sharing that they objected to. Only-child humanity craved the sole attention of the universe. Like so many other projects hoisted as political issues, the virus’s development had been fraught with protests, sabotage, terrorism and murder.

And yet we triumph over our own base nature at last , Kern reflected with satisfaction. And of course, there was a tiny grain of truth to the insults the NUNs threw her way, because she didn’t care about colonists or the neo-imperialistic dreams of her fellows. She wanted to make new life, in her image as much as in humanity’s. She wanted to know what might evolve, what society, what understandings, when her monkeys were left to their own simian devices… To Avrana Kern, this was her price, her reward for exercising her genius for the good of the human race: this experiment; this planetary what-if. Her efforts had opened up a string of terra-formed worlds, but her price was that the firstborn would be hers , and home to her new-made people.

She was aware of an expectant silence and realized that she had got to the end of her speech, and now everyone thought she was just adding gratuitous suspense to a moment that needed no gilding.

‘Mr Sering, are you in position?’ she asked on open channel, for everyone’s benefit. Sering was the volunteer, the man they were going to leave behind. He would orbit their planet-sized laboratory as the long years turned, locked in cold sleep until the time came for him to become mentor to a new race of sentient primates. She almost envied him, for he would see and hear and experience things that no other human ever had. He would be the new Hanuman: the monkey god.

Almost envied, but in the end Kern rather preferred to be departing to undertake other projects. Let others become gods of mere single worlds. She herself would stride the stars and head up the pantheon.

‘I am not in position, no.’ And apparently he felt that was also deserving of a wider audience, because he had broadcast it on the general channel.

Kern felt a stab of annoyance. I cannot physically do everything myself. Why is it that other people so often fail to meet my standards, when I rely on them? To Sering alone she sent, ‘Perhaps you would explain why?’

‘I was hoping to be able to say a few words, Doctor Kern.’

It would be his last contact with his species for a long time, she knew, and it seemed appropriate. If he could make a good showing then it would only add to her legend. She held ready on the master comms, though, setting him on a few seconds’ delay, just in case he became maudlin or started saying something inappropriate.

‘This is a turning point in human history,’ Sering’s voice – always slightly mournful – came to her, and then through her to everyone else. His image was in their Mind’s Eye HUDs, with the collar of his bright orange environment suit done up high to the chin. ‘I had to think long and hard before committing myself to this course, as you can imagine. But some things are too important. Sometimes you have to just do the right thing, whatever the cost.’

Kern nodded, pleased with that. Be a good monkey and finish up soon, Sering. Some of us have legacies to build.

‘We have come so far, and still we fall into the oldest errors,’ Sering continued doggedly. ‘We’re standing here with the universe in our grasp and, instead of furthering our own destinies, we connive at our own obsolescence.’

Her attention had drifted a little and, by the time she realized what he had said, the words had passed on to the crew. She registered suddenly a murmur of concerned messages between them, and even simple spoken words whispered between those closest to her. Doctor Mercian meanwhile sent her an alert on another channel: ‘Why is Sering in the engine core?’

Sering should not be in the engine core of the needle. Sering should be in the Sentry Pod, ready to take his place in orbit – and in history.

She cut Sering off from the crew and sent him an angry demand to know what he thought he was doing. For a moment his avatar stared at her in her visual field, then it lip-synced to his voice.

‘You have to be stopped, Doctor Kern. You and all your kind – your new humans, new machines, new species. If you succeed here, then there will be other worlds – you’ve said so yourself, and I know they’re terraforming them even now. It ends here. Non Ultra Natura! No greater than nature.’

She wasted vital moments of potential dissuasion by resorting to personal abuse, until he spoke again.

‘I’ve cut you off, Doctor. Do the same to me if you wish, but for now I’m going to speak and you don’t get to interrupt me.’

She was trying to override him, hunting through the control computer’s systems to find what he had done, but he had locked her out elegantly and selectively. There were whole areas of the facility’s systems that just did not appear on her mental schematic, and when she quizzed the computer about them, it refused to acknowledge their existence. None of them was mission critical – not the Barrel, not the Flask, not even the Sentry Pod – therefore none were the systems she had been obsessively checking every day.