Sidespace (8 page)

“Is the tectonic activity destabilizing the planet?”

‘Not to a measurable degree, as far as can be determined with current scans. However, on a geologic time scale it might be doing so. I can’t yet estimate how long this behavior has been occurring.’

“It has to have been a long time, relatively speaking. How many of these towers are there?”

‘Extrapolating from their spacing in this region, 112 to 147.’

She grimaced at Caleb before gazing out the viewport in contemplation. “I don’t guess we need to test how it’ll react to provocation, do you?”

“Oh, I think we do—but using a probe and from excessively far away. A minimum of a megameter.”

“Right.” She sighed. “I’m not inclined to spend the next several hours dodging these towers, and I don’t see anything else here, so let’s head on out. We’ll climb to high orbit and launch a probe into one of them.”

They had barely cleared the visible atmosphere when Caleb bolted out of his chair. “What was that? Swing to starboard.”

“You got it.” She continued arcing up but veered around. “I’m not seeing—what was that?”

“Exactly.”

‘That’ was a spherical object hurtling away from the top of the closest tower and deeper into space.

‘The object’s trajectory suggests the planet’s satellite is its destination.’

“And thus ours as well.” She adjusted course to catch up with the object.

Caleb had planted his palms on the dash to lean closer to the viewport. “The tower ejected it, like a ball out of a cannon.”

The visual scanner located the object and zoomed in to reveal a tight nest of vines and bark toppling end-over-end through space.

She frowned. “I don’t understand. Don’t pieces need to stay connected to the whole in order to live?”

‘Perhaps this life form has evolved. This may be a form of reproduction.’

The moon was growing larger in the viewport. Unlike the hurled object, their intent wasn’t to crash into it, so she decelerated.

Minutes later the object did precisely that, colliding with the lunar surface and flattening out but not shattering apart.

“Wait a minute.” She peered at one of the smaller HUD screens. They hadn’t paid much attention to the satellite on their arrival. “This moon has the beginnings of an atmosphere.”

‘It also has the beginnings of plant growth.’

Sure enough, long-range scans picked up pockets of organic life, islands of foliage and a few miniature trees. “I’ll be damned. It’s terraforming the moon.”

“A flora-based intelligence which is not only space-capable, but advanced enough to terraform dead worlds? That’s not something you see…ever.”

“And yet. Valkyrie, run a full spectrum scan of the lunar surface. We’ll study it later and try to determine how the terraforming is being accomplished.” She drummed her fingers on her leg while she waited.

‘Completed.’

“All right. Back to the original plan. Let’s announce our presence.” She left the moon behind and approached the planet once more. The ship’s targeting locked in on the top of one of the towers breaking through the atmosphere, and she wasted no time firing a probe into the center of it.

The reaction to the probe’s impact was as rapid and violent as the first planet’s had been when she’d broken off a single leaf, and an order of magnitude larger in scale.

The tower spit the probe back out at a substantial fraction of the speed at which it had arrived. The top layers of the structure expanded and split into feeler-like appendages, which then searched the area for the source of the intrusion. Within seconds the appendages grew in length, apparently stealing bulk from lower down.

A few more seconds, and projectiles started launching out of the inner ring of the tower; a shocking number of them headed in their direction with impressive velocity. Given they were cloaked, the sole logical explanation was the…entity…had extrapolated their general location from the trajectory of the probe.

Her hand hovered above the throttle. “I can’t believe the amount of propulsion those structures are able to create with no motors—not even a pneumatic system.”

“It’s learned to use the tools available to it very well.”

“Way to understate,
priyazn.
”

He shot her an amused look, but it quickly faded as across the planet, every tower began launching its own projectiles into space. The projectiles had no motive power of their own, and once their momentum gave out they could only drift, so the
Siyane
wasn’t in any legitimate danger. Nevertheless, the ferocity of the attack was sobering.

Caleb ran a hand down his jaw and departed the cockpit to pace around the cabin. “This intelligence obviously isn’t content to remain confined to its own planet, and it’s just as obviously belligerent in disposition.” He stopped to gaze at her. “We have to warn Akeso about it.”

“You’re worried this entity will try to take over the other planets in the system? But it will need, I don’t know, centuries to develop the ability to travel so far, if it ever can.”

“Good—that’ll give Akeso time to prepare. Listen, Akeso does not comprehend the concept of something other than itself. The idea that something might show up and attack it is as foreign as…as murder is to an infant.”

“Wasn’t our presence kind of a contradiction to its worldview?”

“You’d think, but it didn’t seem concerned by our little inconsistency. It viewed us as…curiosities, nothing more.” He groaned and sank against the data center. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to make it understand. Assuming it will interact with me again. But, dammit, I have to try.”

“Absolutely.” She nodded as if
she
understood. She didn’t, but she couldn’t refuse him in most circumstances, and never in the face of such an alarming level of distress. “We’ll go back now.”

5

EKOS-2

AKESO

E
VENING HAD TURNED THE SKY
a deep persimmon. The remaining sunlight enriched the colors of the ubiquitous flowers and foliage to even greater vibrancy, as if the saturation filter had been notched up several levels.

Caleb noted all this in passing as he strode deliberately toward the creek. He didn’t know how he was going to do this, only that he had to make the attempt. He heard the soft depression of the grass beneath Alex’s feet as she followed behind him. The sensory enhancement he’d been enjoying courtesy of Akeso was fading but not yet gone.

Intellectually he recognized there was no need for him to visit the same tree which had initiated the earlier encounter. Akeso’s life essence encompassed the entirety of the planet’s surface, and one manifestation of it was as good as the next. He could reach down and embrace a random blade of grass and achieve the same result.

But he wasn’t a planet-spanning intelligence; he was human, and humans both craved the familiar and relied on visual cues upon which to hang esoteric concepts. No matter how many times his mind insisted it didn’t matter, his heart insisted he had bonded with
this
tree. And since it didn’t matter….

He closed his eyes and drew the air into his lungs, working to immerse himself in the environment of this world once more. The air had become healthy for them to breathe within minutes of the
Siyane’s
arrival. He listened with open ears to the bubbling water of the creek. The purr of leaves as they gently rustled in the breeze. The peacefully joyful song of bountiful life humming all around him.

He reached out, palm open. A vine instantly extended toward him and sent its leaves dancing playfully along his skin in greeting, but that was all. He rubbed his thumb over one of the leaves, urging it to stay. Still nothing. His jaw clenched in frustration; he willed it relaxed. Vexation would not aid his cause.

“Please, I need to speak with you. You’re in danger. I need to make you understand. I need to show you, so you can protect yourself.” He doubted Akeso comprehended words in any concrete way, but he hoped it was able to sense the desperation in his voice, in the aura of pheromones he was surely exuding and the constriction keeping his muscles taut.

“You helped us. You saved her life. Let me help you in return.”

The song in the air grew in complexity, its murmur enveloped him and—

Coolness, refreshing after the long warmth.

Warmth, welcome after the night’s chill.

Both at once, here and there.

A seedling fighting to rise through the soil.

The first rush of air on the tip of its shoot.

Trees grown so tall they gaze out upon vast steppes.

Up to the growing twinkle of lights above—

This. We call them stars, and they are Not-All.

You are Not-All.

Yes, but there are many. Many like me, many unlike me. Many who would do All harm.

All does not fear harm. All never dies. All is forever.

All replaces, renews, replenishes. All is All.

Here, now, yes. But if Not-Alls encroach, they can kill All.

All does not experience death. All replaces, renews—

No! Dangers exist out there strong enough to hurt you, and you will not be able to replace or renew or replenish what is lost. They will destroy you and everything you are.

Not-All wishes to hurt All?

Not me. Never. Not those who accompany me. But others who do wish to hurt you are coming—not soon, but they are coming. You must prepare yourself. You must…you must be ready to fight.

All is and has always been. Nothing has ever existed against which All need fight. All knows not of struggle.

I know you don’t, and it breaks my heart to have to teach this to you. But if you want to live on, if you want to feel the warmth of the sun rising and setting for a multitude of days, you must come to know struggle. You must learn to defend yourself.

Not-All thinks strange, impossible ideas…yet All senses Not-All believes them. What would Not-All have All do?

Look inside me, and you will discover everything you need to know. And…

…I’m sorry.

Towering trees thrash.

Hurtle pieces of themselves into space.

A knife plunges into a man’s heart.

Blood. So much blood.

Gunfire.

Explosions.

The stench of burning flesh in the air.

Spears of metal.

Spears of timber.

The snap of bones.

The snap of a plant stalk.

Pain.

Strangled, gurgling breaths, lungs filling with blood.

His own.

A different pain.

Anguish.

It churned together until he could no longer tell where his anguish ended and All’s began.

Not-All causes death? All does not understand. This cannot be Not-All.

Yes, it can be. It is. It’s part of who I am—who Not-All is. But Not-All also loves, and fights for life. All can see this.

All sees much. All does not comprehend how Not-All can both love life and take life.

I take life
because
I love life. I take life in order to protect life. Because—this is what you must realize if you are to survive—not everything that lives is good. Not every being loves life and wishes it to continue. There are Not-Alls who destroy callously, who cause pain and torment and do not suffer for it. These are the lives I take, without regret, to preserve virtuous life such as All.

All cannot take life.

Then All will die.

All never…All is troubled.

If All chooses to fight, how will it do so?

If All’s will to live is strong enough, All will find a way. It’s called ‘survival instinct,’ and it’s a damn powerful weapon.

All will consider what Not-All has shown it…but All believes Not-Alls should leave now.