Adrian Tchaikovsky - Children of Time

Bianca’s palps quiver. I even had my own crystal, did you know? And the Temple found out, and took it away. I was close…

Portia does not need to know what she was close to. Bianca has one obsession, and that is speaking to the Messenger, sending a message back to that swift-moving star. It is a subject of debate within the Temple every generation – and in every generation there is one like Bianca who will not take no for an answer. They are watched, always.

Portia’s position is wretched because, left to herself, she would probably support Bianca. She is swayed by the majority, however, in the way that most large decisions fall out when the great and the good stand on the same web and debate. The Temple old guard, the priestesses of the former generation, hold the message sacrosanct and perfect. The path of Portia’s people is to better appreciate it, to learn the hidden depths of the message that have yet to be unlocked. It is not for them to try and howl into the darkness to attract the Messenger’s attention. Passing overhead, the Messenger observes all. There is an order to the universe, and the Messenger is proof of that.

Each generation a few more voices are raised in dispute, but so far that enduring meme has won out. After all, did the Messenger not intervene during the great war with the ants, with no need for anyone to ask for help? If it is within the Messenger’s plan to help Portia’s kind, then such help will come without being solicited.

Why come to me? I will not go against Temple , Portia tells her as dismissively as she can manage.

Because I remember you from when we were still truly sisters. You want the same thing as me, only not quite enough.

I will not help you , Portia declares, her weariness adding a finality to the phrase. There is no speaking back to the Messenger anyway. Our people need the Temple as a source of reassurance. Your experiments would likely take that from them, and for what? You cannot achieve what you wish, nor is it a thing to be achieved.

I have something to show you. Suddenly Bianca is signalling and some males are bringing in a heavy device slung between them, stepping in sideways to lower it to the taut floor, which stretches a little more to take the weight.

It has long been known that certain chemicals react with metals in curious ways , Bianca noted. When combined, linked properly, there is a force that passes along the metals and through the liquids. You remember such experiments from when we were learning together.

A curiosity, nothing more , Portia recalled. It is used for coating metals with other metals. I recall there was an ant colony induced to make the task work, and they produced remarkable goods. This memory from her comparatively innocent youth lends her a little strength. Many noxious fumes, though. Work fit for ants only. What of it?

Bianca is attending to her device, which resembles the experiments that Portia recalls in that it has compartments of chemicals within other chemicals, linked by rods of metal, but it has other metal parts too: metal painstakingly teased out until it is as fine as thick silk, coiled densely in a column. Something changes in the air and Portia feels her hair prickle, as though a storm is coming – an event that always inspires a very reasonable fear because of the damage that natural fires can cause to a city.

This toy of mine is at the heart of an invisible web , Bianca tells her. By careful adjustment, I can use it to pluck the strands of that web. Is that not remarkable?

Portia wants to say that it is nonsensical, but she is intrigued, and the idea of some all-encompassing web is attractive, intuitive. How else could they be connected with…?

What you say is that this web is what the Messenger speaks to us through?

Bianca skitters about her novel device. Well, there must be some connection or how could we receive the message? And yet the Temple does not speculate. The message simply ‘is’. Yes, I have found the great web of the universe, the web that the Messenger plucks its message upon. Yes, I can send our reply.

Even for Bianca this is a bold and fearful boast.

I do not believe you , Portia decides. You would have done it already, if it could be done.

Bianca stamps angrily. What point in calling to the Messenger if I cannot hear her words? I need access to the temple.

You wish the Messenger to recognize you, to speak to you. So it is Bianca’s ego that really drives this experiment. She was always thus: always ready to measure legs with the whole of creation. This is not the time . Portia feels exhausted once more.

Sister, we have no more time. You know that , Bianca wheedles. Let me fulfil my plan. I cannot leave this to future generations. Even if I could pass the Understanding on, there will be no future generations worth speaking of. Now is the only time.

There will be future generations . Portia does not step out those words, only thinks them. Fabian has seen them: living like beasts in the ruins of our cities, heads crowded with Understandings that they cannot use, because all the architecture of their mothers’ world has gone. What use is science then? What use the Temple? What use art when there are so few left that all they can do is feed and mate? Our great Understandings will die off, generation to generation, until none of those left alive will remember who we were. But the thought is incomplete, something nagging at her. She finds herself thinking of the selection of Understandings – those lost survivors will presumably have some long-ago Understandings to assist them in their hunting, and those offspring that inherit such primal Understandings would become the new lords of the world. But that will not be all that they inherit…

Portia leaps up, electrified into wakefulness as though she had inadvertently touched the wrong end of Bianca’s machine. A mad thought has come to her. An impossible thought. A thought of science.

She signals one of her attendant males and demands to know if Fabian has returned. He has, and she has him sent for.

I must work in my laboratory , she tells Bianca, and then hesitates. Bianca is half-mad already, a dangerous maverick, a potential revolutionary, but her brilliant intellect was never in doubt. Will you assist me? I need all the help I can get.

Bianca’s surprise is evident. It would be an honour to work with my sisters once more, but… She does not quite articulate the thought, but she tilts her eyes over towards her machine, now inactive and no longer stressing the air with its invisible web.

If we succeed, if we survive, I will do all I can to take your plea to Temple. And a rebellious thought of Portia’s own. If we survive, it will be by our own merits, not because of the Messenger’s aid. We are now on our own.

‘Mason.’

Holsten started, half asleep over his work, and almost fell off his chair. Guyen was standing right behind him.

‘I – ah – was there something?’ For a moment he was racking his brains to remember whether he had already finished the translations that the commander had been asking after. But yes, he’d sent those over for Guyen’s personal inspection yesterday, hadn’t he. Had the man read them already ?

Guyen’s face gave no clues. ‘I need you to come with me.’ The tone could quite easily have accommodated the inference that Holsten was about to be shot for some treason committed against Guyen’s one-man regime. Only the lack of an accompanying security detail was reassuring.