Adrian Tchaikovsky - Children of Time

The ant gatekeepers of the colony receive the correct code-pheromone from Portia, and douse her with today’s pass-scent. She has a certain period of time in which to conduct her business, after which she will become as much a prisoner as Bianca.

She feels a stab of guilt over what she is about. Bianca should have been sentenced by now, but Portia is steeped in memories of her sister’s company and assistance. To lose Bianca would be to lose a part of her own world. Portia has abused her authority just to gain this chance to redeem the heretic.

Bianca is a large spider, her palps and forelegs dyed in abstract patterns of blue and ultraviolet. The pigments are rare, slow and expensive to fashion, so to sport them displays the considerable influence – an intangible but unarguable currency – that Bianca until recently could muster.

Hail, sister. Bianca’s stance and precise footwork give the message a barbed emphasis. Here to bid me farewell?

Portia, already ground down by the vicissitudes of the day so far, hunches low, foregoing all the usual physical posturing and bluster. Don’t drive me away. You have few allies in Great Nest now.

Only you?

Only me. Portia studies Bianca’s body language, seeing the larger female change stance slightly, reconsidering.

I have no names to reveal, no others to betray to you , the accused warns the inquisitor. My beliefs are my own. I do not need a brood around me to tell me how right I am.

Leaving aside the fact that many of Bianca’s accomplices have already been seized and sentenced under the Temple’s authority, Portia has already decided to abandon that line of enquiry. There remains only one thing at stake. I am here to save you. Only you, sister.

Bianca’s palps move slightly, an unconscious expression of interest, but she says nothing.

I do not wish a home that I cannot share with you , Portia tells her, her steps and gestures careful, weighty with consideration. If you are gone, there will be a hole torn in my world, so that all else falls out of shape. If you recant, I will go to my fellows at Temple, and they will listen to me. You will fall from favour, but you will remain free.

Recant? Bianca echoes.

If you explain to Temple that you were mistaken or misled, then I can spare you. I shall have you for my own, to work alongside me.

But I am not mistaken. Bianca’s movements were categorical and firm.

You must be.

If you turn lenses on the night sky, lenses of the strength and purity that we can now produce, you will see it too , Bianca explains calmly.

That is a mystery that cannot be comprehended by those outside Temple , Portia reprimands her.

So say those inside Temple. But I have looked; I have seen the face of the Messenger, and measured and studied it as it passes above. I have set out my plates and analysed the light that it seems to shed. Light reflected from the sun only. And the mystery is that there is no mystery. I can tell you the size and speed of the Messenger. I can even guess at what it is constructed from. The Messenger is a rock of metal, no more.

They will exile you , Portia tells her. You know what that means? For females do not kill other females any more, and the harshest sentence of Great Nest is to deny the accused that metropolis’s wonders. Such felons receive a chemical branding that marks them out for death if they approach any of the city’s ant colonies – and many other colonies beyond, as the mark does not discriminate. To be exiled all too often means a return to solitary barbarism in the depths of the wilds, forever retreating before civilization’s steady spread.

I have taken on many Understandings in my life , Bianca clearly might as well not have heard. I have listened to another Messenger’s incomprehensible signals in the night. The thing you call God is not even alone in the sky. It is a thing of metal that demands we make more things of metal – and I have seen it, how small it is.

Portia skitters nervously, if only because, in her lowest hours, she herself has played host to similar thoughts. Bianca, you cannot turn away from Temple. Our people have followed the words of the Messenger since our earliest days – from long before we could understand Her purpose. Even if you have your personal doubts, you cannot deny that the traditions that have built Great Nest have allowed us to survive many threats. They have made us what we are.

Bianca seems sad. And now they prevent us from being all that we could be , she suggests. And that is at the heart of me. If I were to cut myself away from it, there would be nothing left of me. I do not just feel Temple is mistaken, I believe that Temple has become a burden. And you know that I am not alone. You will have spoken with the temples in other cities – even those cities that Great Nest is hostile to. You know that others feel as I do.

And they will be punished, in turn , Portia tells her. As will you.

Four of them met in an old service room that seemed to represent neutral ground in the midst of those parts of the ship claimed by the various cliques. Lain and the other two all had retinues who waited outside, eyeing each other nervously like hostile soldiers in a cold war.

Inside, it was a reunion.

Vitas hadn’t changed – Holsten suspected that overall she had not been out of the freezer much longer than he had, or perhaps she just wore the extra time well: a neat, trim woman with her feelings buried sufficiently deep that her face remained a cypher. She wore a shipsuit, still, as though she had stepped straight from Holsten’s memories without being touched by the chaos that the Gilgamesh was apparently falling into. Lain had already explained how Vitas had been enlisted by Guyen to help with the uploader. The woman’s thoughts on this were unknown, but she had come when Lain got a message to her, slipping through the circles of Guyen’s cult like smoke, shadowed by a handful of her assistants.

Karst looked older, closing in on Holsten’s age. His beard had returned – patchy, greying in uneven degrees – and he wore his hair tied back. A rifle was slung over his shoulder, barrel downwards, and he had come in armour, a full suit of the kind that Holsten remembered him favouring before – good against Lain’s gun, perhaps not so much against a knife. His technological advantage was being eroded by the backwards nature of the times.

He was also working with Guyen, but Lain had explained that Karst was something of a law unto himself these days. He controlled the ship’s armoury and only he had ready access to firearms in any quantity; his security detail, and whatever conscripts he had enlisted, were loyal to him first and foremost. And so was he, of course: Karst was Karst’s chief priority, or so Lain believed.

Now the security chief let out a loud bark of what sounded like derision. ‘You even broke the old man out of his grave for us! That sick for nostalgia, Lain? Or maybe for something else?’

‘I broke him from a cage in Guyen’s sector,’ Lain stated. ‘He’s been there for days. I guess you didn’t know.’

Karst glowered at her, then at Holsten himself, who confirmed it with a nod. Even Vitas seemed to be unsurprised, and the security chief threw up his hands.

‘Nobody tells me fucking anything ,’ he spat. ‘Well, well, here we all are. How fucking pleasant . So how about you speak your piece.’

‘How’ve you been, Karst?’ Holsten asked quietly, wrong-footing everyone, including Lain.