Event Horizon (Hellgate) (114 page)

“Damn,” Dario murmured as they left the makeshift Ops room, “I wish Tor was here. He’s going to be pissed as all hell to miss this.”

“Veldn will board in one minute,” Lai’a said calmly.

Marin envied the machine its composure. Shapiro would have used the words ‘pivot point of history,’ and Marin was not ashamed to admit to being overwhelmed. He had felt this before. As he walked with Travers and Vidal, his thoughts turned back to the evening many years before when he had realized, belatedly, disbelievingly and with a dawning delight, Mark was not human. The Resalq were not extinct, and the mentor who gave him back enough peace of mind to heal was –

Alien
. Here, now, the Resalq had come to seem so similar, he was barely aware of their difference. The Zunshu were so completely alien, he doubted Shapiro could have found enough common ground to open a dialog with them, even if he had encountered them at the height of their brilliance. And the Veldn were almost as alien, with just enough similarity to permit communication, albeit through the medium of machines.

He had understood most of the bio data, but struggled with the concept of opportunistic omnivores who fed through multiple ‘mouths’ in the breast. Each mouth ingested raw food pushed directly into the enzyme-filled sac, and sent nutrient-dense liquid to the 30-kilo liver. Right behind the liver, at the mid-point of the main body’s thick barrel, was a vast, six-valved pump attached by membranes to the sponge-mass of the enormous single ‘lung.’ They breathed through vents in spine and flanks, ‘sang’ their language on a single, endless breath, and their spacefarers were biosynthetic.

Marin did not know what he had expected, but as the hangar cycled, blew back up to pressure, and he stepped onto the chilly, windy deck in the harsh shadows of the
Harlequin
, he saw two towering bipeds. They were not much under three meters tall, with wide limbs and an enormous thickness through the chest and abdomen.

“Suits,” Mark said quietly. “They’ve … abbreviated their bodies. Left some parts behind, the way Roark Hubler sometimes takes off the legs when he can’t bear the burden of them any longer. The Veldn could function in zero-gee, or in water, with superb efficiency by uncoupling what they don’t need. It’s brilliant.”

Legs and hindquarters were
uncoupled
, Marin thought with feverish attention to the details. The vestigial arms – which he now knew were for feeding, since they easily reached every ‘mouth’ – were folded in around the breast beneath the armor shell, as were the muscle-thick lifting limbs. The slender handling arms extended at the top of the torso, in a place roughly approximating shoulders. The telescoping neck was at half-stretch, and the sensor-cluster forming the Veldn face was aligned with the small, squat, stumpy ‘head’ above the suit’s massive shoulders. The most disconcerting aspect of the suit was a pseudo-face which visored the helmet, with the dark lenses of four camera eyes surrounded by audio and chemical receptors.

The two figures walked forward with the graceful bipedal motion of the machine while the living part of the Veldn held up both hands in greeting. Marin recognized the synthetic voice as
Shuleern
approached. “I bring you the salutations of the crew of the Guardian ship
Hshtor
, and the well wishes of our people. We salute you, who ride the Time-space-drift as do we, who defeated our weapons and walked the streets of the city of the
Rhammee
, whom you call
Zunshu
. The Phoenix explains, this is your ancestral word meaning enemy.”

The Phoenix? Marin gave a start as he remembered, it was the original meaning of
Lai’a
. The translation engine had cut through the Resalq language as well as the Veldn, and gone to the fundamental term.

Harrison Shapiro had stepped forward as they approached. “May I offer greetings from the united peoples of the Deep Sky. I bring you the good wishes of humankind and the Resalq, from scores of worlds – all of us, survivors of the Zunshu. We came to this system to negotiate an armistice, and find you have trodden this path ahead of us. The Zunshu threat is spent.” He paused. “My name is Shapiro. I represent the government of humankind. Forgive me,
Shuleern
, but I don’t understand. You say we defeated your weapons, but we have not fought the Veldn –
peace
brings us here, we have no reason to fight you.”

For a moment
Shuleern
studied the ten armored figures, humans and Resalq, who were dwarfed by the Veldn. It was looking at faces, and Marin wondered what it made of them. How bizarre a face with a nose and mouth must seem to Veldn eyes. “You are the first,” it said then. “You found this star system. You met the challenge of the weapons …
our
weapons, Shapiro. We ranged them about the system and about the planet of The Enemy. The
Rhammee
.”

“You ranged them – to keep people out?” Shapiro asked.

“And for the confinement of the
Rhammee
,”
Shuleern
corrected. “You discovered the generation nest. The Phoenix deep scanned their biology, transferred the content of their computer core. You are aware that their race can restore its numbers in a single generation – two, if billions are desired.”

“But they’ve lost their technology,” Shapiro observed. “All they would breed is a billion primitives.”

“Primitive forms,”
Shuleern
countered, “with the most fantastically complex brains we have ever encountered. Brains which grow throughout life, given intellectual stimulation. The Zunshu live amid the ruins of a magnificent technology, Shapiro … with
one
brilliant individual their culture will certainly reawaken. It is estimated, they could recover the distance from the rebirth of chemistry and mathematics to the rediscovery of the interstellar engine in a single century.”
Shuleern
paused. “Do you possess awareness, Shapiro? Two Zunshu exploration ships were in transspace at the end of the war.

“These ships remain unaccounted for. Your scientists understand the mechanics of transspace: temporal flux is complex. The Zunshu ships can return at any time, and their arrival would trigger the regeneration of the species. In one educated generation, the Zunshu can be a devastating force; and the returning Zunshu will surely bring with them the data which inspired the holocaust. War would recur immediately. Hence,”
Shuleern
said fatalistically, “our weapons, the gauntlet of which you ran, and defeated – though not without alerting us to your passage.

“We continue to search transspace for the absent Zunshu ships, and we are aware that two ships might become two
hundred
, in the many years since the war. We have as yet discovered no trace of them. The Phoenix is welcome to join us in the hunt, and has been invited. The hazard the
Rhammee
ships represent cannot be understated, and The Phoenix’s defeat of our weapons has demonstrated that we must reinforce the ramparts guarding this planet.

“However, extinction was never intended for the Zunshu as a species. They can return swiftly to greatness. This is their challenge, Shapiro. The means to make the journey were left at the feet of the custodians of the generation nest.”

“And you believe they can recover their technology,” Shapiro said slowly, “without the desire to exterminate every other intelligent species.”

“Their priests are gone, lost with the sinking of the great holy city at the beginning of the war. Without the priests, knowledge that holocaust might benefit their species is also lost.”
Shuleern
paused, and the curiously-faced helmet panned across the humans and Resalq who stood transfixed. “You are aware of the Zunshu motivation?”

“We are.” Shapiro glanced sidelong at the Sherratts, Jazinsky, Rusch. “We have yet to fully examine the data, to ascertain if the Zunshu were deceived by a rogue priesthood.”

“They were not,”
Shuleern
said without hesitation. “Their information is valid. They would,” the sweet synthetic voice said with no trace of inflection, “destroy the universe to preserve the immortality of the race. The universe,” it added, “proved reluctant to accept extinction.”

An odd shiver passed through Marin, leaving him cold to the marrow. He and Travers shared a glance and Neil lifted a speculative brow, but Shapiro was speaking again and Marin forced himself to listen.

“The Zunshu are far from extinct. If they recover their technology, they could come hunting for other species again.”

“They could make the attempt,”
Shuleern
allowed. “However, their purpose is known now, they are infamous among surviving species. Their kind will never be unobserved. Your presence in this system was transmitted to us, and the Guardian ship
Hshtor
was swiftly assigned to investigate. We observed at once, The Phoenix has no connection to the Zunshu.”

“And if – when – the Zunshu rediscover the … the brane, and their part in it?” Shapiro wondered. “It could take a century or ten, but the day is out there,
Shuleern
.”

“It is,”
Shuleern
said readily, “and the question has been debated for many years by our theorists. Not all intelligent species possess any vestige of life’s continuation past biological death. Like so many single-lived creatures, the Zunshu must seek their immortality through their creations and inventions, their art and literature, their children. Their immortality should be mapped in their generations, their contribution to the galaxy, not what they steal from others and from the future … else, the million generations of your descendents, Shapiro, and ours, are forfeit as the price of their eternal continuation as a species within the
Eeneera
.”

Here, Lai’a said softly, “The word will not translate clearly. The basic concept is
otherworld
.”

“Oh, I understand the concept.” Shapiro looked up thoughtfully at the odd face created by the cluster of sensory instruments. “Tell me,
Shuleern
, if you know the answer. The Zunshu turned from exterminating Resalq to hunting down mankind. You know we’re different species, and that the Resalq are native to the Deep Sky…”

“We know,”
Shuleern
assured him. “The Phoenix did not withhold information; nor did we. Your question?”

“Do you know –” Shapiro seemed to hesitate and then plowed on. “Since the
Rhammee
took to exterminating humans, did they meet and identify our kind in the – the
Eeneera
? Or were we simply not distinguished from the Resalq, since we’re physically quite similar? Forgive me for the question,
Shuleern
. I’ve a reason, lately, to be curious.”

Shuleern’s
helmet panned toward him; lenses zoomed a little. “Your life partner was killed in the struggle against our weapons. It does you credit, Shapiro, that you bear us no grudge.” It studied him for a moment. “We have little information regarding the
Eeneera
. We verified the Zunshu data, at the time we penetrated this star system and overrode the AI. The brane
does
exist; the waveform of
Rhammee
personality
does
upload there and not return, unlike several species such as the Resalq, which suffer rebirth. The
Rhammee
reported encountering the waveform of Veldn intelligence in the brane. From our antecedents there, they learned the coordinates of our star. The information returned from the brane was accurate enough to bring them directly to our world; it follows that it was sourced from Veldn intelligence in the
Eeneera
. However, we cannot access the brane. A fluke of Zunshu cortical structure permitted a handful of deliberately engineered mutoids to access it, and these purpose-bred adepts were lost in the war. We have no further information.”

“Their shamans are gone,” Shapiro whispered.

“But the potential remains in the species,”
Shuleern
added, “alongside the potentials for art, poetry, mathematics. Their world has not changed; they, themselves, have not changed. The path trodden by their ancestors can be retraced.”

“And the path taken by the shaman-priests?” Shapiro asked cynically.

“That path, also.”
Shuleern
paused. “You disapprove of the war?”

“No – not at all,” Shapiro said quickly. “We came to this system to try to negotiate our way to an armistice, a peace. If the Zunshu refused to talk, we were ready to turn to other means, as you did, and I don’t doubt the outcome would have been similar, of necessity.” He gestured in the direction of the gas giant. “They have their chance. The Titans have left the gift of fire on the battlefield, if only the savages can recognize it and pick it up.”