Adrian Tchaikovsky - Children of Time

Scoles let Lain go with an angry hiss, and she instantly started explaining something to Nessel and one of the mutineers, something about restoring some of the links to the shipboard computer. Holsten only hoped she knew what she was doing.

‘Will she try to kill us?’ Scoles asked him flatly.

What can I say? Depends what mood she’s in? Depends which Kern we’re talking to at any given moment? Holsten unclipped his strapping and slowly crawled towards them, with the idea that perhaps he could talk Kern round. ‘I think she’s from a culture that wiped itself out and poisoned the Earth. I don’t know what she might do. I think that she’s even fighting with herself.’

‘This is your final warning,’ Kern’s voice came to them.

‘I can see satellite systems warming up,’ the pilot warned. ‘I reckon it’s locked on.’

‘Any way of getting round the planet, putting the other shuttle in the way?’ from Scoles.

‘Not a chance. We’re wide open. I’m on our landing approach now, though. It’s got a window of about twenty minutes before we’ll be in the atmosphere, which might cut down on its lasers.’

‘Ready!’ Lain chimed in.

‘Ready what?’ Scoles demanded.

‘We’ve isolated the shipboard database and linked it to the comms,’ Nessel explained.

‘You’ve given this Kern access to our database?’ Scoles translated. ‘You think that’ll sway her?’

‘No,’ Lain stated. ‘But I needed access to a transmission. Holsten, get over here.’ There was a horribly undignified piece of ballet, with Holsten being manhandled over until he was clipped into a seat at the comms panel, leaning sideways towards the shuttle’s nose as the force of their cut speed tugged at him.

‘She’s going to burn us up,’ Lain was telling them, as she got Holsten settled. The prospect seemed almost to excite her. ‘Holsten, you can sweet-talk her? Or something?’

‘I – I had an idea…’

‘You do yours and I’ll do mine,’ Lain told him. ‘But do it now .’

Holsten checked the panel, opened a channel to the satellite – assume it hasn’t been eavesdropping on everything, anyway – and began, ‘Doctor Kern, Doctor Avrana Kern.’

‘I am not open to negotiation,’ came that hard voice.

‘I want to speak to Eliza.’

There was a brief, clipped moment of Kern speaking – and then Holsten’s heart leapt as it was overwritten by a transmission in Imperial C. Eliza was back at the helm.

As swiftly as he could, Holsten had his reply ready and translated. Eliza, we confirm we have no intention of interacting with Kern’s World , because he was fairly sure Eliza was a computer and who knew what the limits of its cognition and programming were?

Eliza, please may we speak to Doctor Avrana Kern? , Holsten sent.

The expected voice thundered through the enclosed cabin, ‘How dare you—?’

‘And away,’ Lain said, and Kern’s voice cut off.

‘What was that?’ Scoles demanded.

‘Distress signal,’ Lain explained. ‘A repeat transmission of her own distress signal,’ even as Holsten was sending, Doctor Kern, please may I speak to Eliza?

The response that came back was garbled almost into white noise. He heard a dozen fragments of sentence from Kern and from the Eliza system, constantly getting chopped out as the satellite’s systems tried to process the high-priority distress call.

‘Almost to atmosphere,’ the pilot reported.

‘We’ve done it,’ someone said.

‘Never say—’ Lain started, and then the comms unit went so silent that Holsten looked at its readouts to make sure it was still functioning. The satellite had ceased transmitting.

‘Did we shut it down?’ Nessel asked.

‘Define “we”,’ Lain snapped.

‘But, look, that means that everyone can come to this planet, everyone from the Gil— ’ the woman started, but then the comms flared with a new signal and Kern’s furious voice whipped out at them.

‘No, you did not shut me down.’

Lain’s hands were immediately at her waist, fastening the crash webbing, and then scrabbling for Holsten.

‘Brace!’ someone shouted ludicrously.

Holsten looked back at his original seat, towards the rear of the shuttle. He actually had a brief glimpse back into the cargo bay, seeing the desperate flailing about as the mutineers there tried to fully secure themselves. Then there was a searing flash that left its image on his retinas, and the shuttle’s smooth progress suddenly became a tumble… and from outside there was a juddering roar and he thought, Atmosphere. We’ve hit atmosphere . The pilot was swearing frantically, fighting for control, and Lain’s arms were tight about Holsten, holding him to her, because she had not been able to get all his webbing secured. For his part he gripped the seat as tight as he could even as the world tried to shake him loose.

The doors to the cargo hold had closed automatically. At that point he did not realize it was because the rear half of the shuttle had been shorn away.

The front half – the cabin – fell towards the great green expanse of the planet below.

Portia’s people have no fingers, but her ancestors were building structures and using tools millions of years before they attained anything like intelligence. They have two palps and eight legs, each of which can grip and manipulate as required. Their whole body is a ten-digit hand with two thumbs and instant access to adhesive and thread. Their one real limitation is that they must fashion their work principally by way of touch and scent, periodically bringing it before their eyes to review. They work best suspended in space, thinking and creating in three dimensions.

Two strands of creation have given rise to Portia’s current mission. One is armour-smithing, or the equivalent in a species with access to neither fire nor metal.

The ant column has stopped for the night up ahead, forming a vast and uniquely impregnable fortress. Portia and her cohorts are twitching and stamping nervously, aware that there will be plenty of enemy scouts blindly searching the forest, attacking all they come across and releasing the keen scent of alarm at the same time. A chance encounter now could bring the whole colony down on them.

Bianca is fussing over her males as the butchers set to work killing and dismembering her pets. The males will perform their part of the plan, apparently, but they lack the nerve to form the vanguard. It is Portia and her fellows who will undertake the impossible task of infiltrating the colony while it sleeps, taking their secret weapon with them.

The collection of Paussid beetles that Bianca had accumulated have been driven here from Great Nest. They are not herding animals by nature and the going has been exasperating, meaning that they have arrived alarmingly late in the night, getting close to the dawn that will see the enemy on the move again.

Several of the inventive beetles have escaped, and the rest appear to be communicating via scent and touches of the antennae, so that Portia wonders if some mass action is being planned on their part. She has no idea if the Paussids can think, but she reckons their actions are more complex than those of simple animals. Her world is one in which there is no great divide between the thinkers and the thoughtless, only a long continuum.