The Dark Imbalance (39 page)

“So I am going to die?”

“Do you
want
to die?”

Another evasive answer. Before she could respond, however, the ship lurched violently, tossing her from side to side in her seat.

When the ship settled again, she said: “Can you get me out of here? Can you fix the fighter so I can use it and get back to the
Phlegethon
? If it hasn’t already been destroyed, that is.”

“Far from it, Morgan. The council has experienced good fortune since the enemy became aware of your decision. No longer required to concentrate their efforts on one location—in order to draw you out, to force you to make a decision, and to influence what that decision would be—many of their number have retreated from the system and begun the long journey home. To their
hosts’
homes, I should say. As the war in Sol System winds down, preparations for the war throughout the galaxy are heating up. We sit on the brink of a new age, Morgan: today, the peaceful domination of Humanity, founded on near-genocide; tomorrow, the battlefield of justice, in whose days lives will be lost and civilizations will fall, and which might, ultimately, lead to a more balanced future.”

“Is that what you want, then?” Roche felt the same confusion about his motives that she had the first time she and the High Human had talked. “I still don’t know whether you believe I made the right decision or not.”

“Does my opinion matter?”

“Of course it does!”

“If I tell you that you made the right decision, I will be accused of wanting war. If I tell you that you made the wrong decision, I will be accused of wanting to commit genocide upon the enemy.”

Roche fell quiet for a while.

“I just wish there had been another alternative.” Her words were soft and low, barely audible above the whispers that filled the space around her.

If the Crescend had heard, he didn’t answer.

The temperature continued to rise, along with the turbulence, and the voices were louder, harder to think through. A golden haze tinged the air around her; the walls of the ship themselves seemed to glow.

“Tell me about your final conversation with Adoni Cane,” the Crescend said.

“What?
Why?
” She was irritated that the Crescend seemed to be trying to distract her rather than doing anything to actually help her.

“Did he reveal anything to you that you didn’t already know about him?”

“Like the fact that he’s an alien, perhaps?”

There was a sound like a sigh. “He said this?”

“He said Humanity wiped out his creators and took over the galaxy. Did you know about this?”

“We suspected,” the Crescend said. “Few records exist from that time, and only the oldest memories of the most inward-seeking of my Caste speak of such events, but we have always known of another race that preceded ours—which may have even co-existed with us for a time. It seemed likely that it was destroyed in the war about which we had also heard rumors. The possibility also existed that these two suspicions were linked to the emergence of the enemy and their convergence on Sol System. Linking all three was the most elegant solution.”

“That explains why we couldn’t find his parent Caste,” Roche said. “He never had one, did he? It was a waste of time looking.”

“Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, Morgan—as you yourself recently said. We needed confirmation before we could be sure.”

She suspected he was still trying to distract her, but she didn’t care. She needed the distraction to take her mind from the sounds of the ship being bombarded by the dust outside.

“So who were they?” she said loudly. “Where did they come from?”

“They are referred to only by euphemism.” The Crescend’s voice never seemed to rise in pitch despite the ever-increasing noise within the cockpit. “And then most frequently as ‘the Concinnity.’ Where they originated, however, remains a mystery.”

“Cane said that they’re a group mind, and that they plan to resurrect the species from the data in their introns.”

“It was always thought unlikely that revenge was the only thing on their agenda,” the Crescend said. “Resurrection of the species was always considered a possibility.”

“What are you going to do about it if they do?”

“What we have always done: observe.”

“You’ll let it happen?”

“It is in accordance with your decision, Morgan.”

“But my decision was made with the understanding that they were
Human
! That if they wiped us out, there would still be Humans left, even if it was
them
!”

“There will always be Humans, left,” the Crescend assured her. “They will never destroy the High Caste. At least not until they have themselves evolved to our level, in their own way. And numerous Low Castes will survive too. The worst-case scenario would be that the mundanes will be wiped out, and then only for a time. In the enemy’s eyes, it would even the score; in our eyes, it changes little.”

Roche pondered this as best she could through the racket. It was true. As important as it seemed to her, the activities of the mundanes didn’t amount to much in the big scheme of things. The High Humans were doing the real work, whatever it was, on a galactic scale. The mundanes just filled in the gaps, gave their superiors something to watch in their spare time....

The cockpit’s life-support suddenly failed, sending a blast of hot air into her face. She made sure her suit was completely sealed, then shut her eyes. Clutching the arms of the crash-couch, she rode out the turbulence, not knowing how much longer it would last and, irrationally, afraid that it might never stop.

“
Would
you change your mind?” The Crescend’s voice was clear and calm in her helmet. “Knowing what you now know, do you think you made the wrong decision?”

She kept her eyes closed and fought down the fear by focusing on his question. “I don’t think so,” she said. “Cane and his race deserved at least a fighting chance. I just wish I hadn’t been so stupid.”

“In what sense?”

“Cane told me he was Human, and I believed him!”

“He never said that, Morgan.”

“Yes he did,” she said. “After Palasian System, when we woke him from that coma Linegar Rufo put him in. He tapped out a message in code—!”

“Yes, but that’s not what he said,” said the Crescend. “His exact words were: ‘I am as Human as you are.’“

Her eyes opened, as if upon a realization she had been blinded to.

“What are you saying?” she asked. “That I’m not Human?”

“You are as Human as I am, Morgan. As Human as Cane. Even as Human as the Box, if you like,” he said. “That’s the way you were made.”

She wanted to recoil from what the Crescend was saying, but she was trapped in her suit, in a disintegrating fighter. She had nowhere to hide from the words, no way to avoid them. All she could do was listen to him.

“The High Caste needed someone to make a decision it was not capable of making—or was not prepared to make. But we could hardly trust such a judgment to someone lacking the necessary attributes. Since mundanes are inherently unreliable, and since the person we required simply did not exist, we decided to make one. We made
you,
Morgan.”

She shook her head.
“
Why?
”

“You are determined and not easily swayed. You see all sides of a dispute and try to be fair. You have a keen sense of duty, on many levels. You are honorable, and will not shirk from the truth. You may not see yourself as such, Morgan, for we also gave you a sense of humility, but you are a good person. A good
Human.
If the fate of the mundanes was to rest in your hands, it was important for you to be so.

“On the other hand, you needed access to information and capabilities beyond the access of a normal mundane—especially once the time came to bring you face to face with the enemy, in the form of Adoni Cane—so my relationship with the Commonwealth of Empires was exploited to allow the Box to fall into your hands.

“The only thing that set you apart from the mundanes around you was your ability to detect the enemy, and even that was limited. You were, to all intents and purposes, an ordinary person, but one fashioned in such a way that you would not break under extraordinary circumstances. That was our gift to you, Morgan—one which has served you in good stead these last few weeks.”

“How much of me...?” She couldn’t finish the sentence. Her mind was full of conflicting images, thoughts, and feelings. Everything seemed to be shaking, falling apart around her.

“I can assure you that you are as real as anyone.”

“Ascensio—the orphanage—?”

“Real memories,” he said. “Taken from someone else.”

She closed her eyes. “Bodh Gaya?”

“Your own experiences. Everything from your arrival at the Military College was you. But that makes those memories no more ‘real’ to you than the others. They are all yours, Morgan. They all contribute to who
you
are.”

She thought of the parents she had hoped to find one day, and whom she had forgotten upon joining COE Intelligence. She remembered her friends in the orphanage, and the conditions that had led her to flee her home planet. She saw again, as clearly as though it happened only yesterday, the flash of the COEI
Gegenschein’s
engines as it broke orbit and headed for her new home, her new future.

All hers.

All faked.

A shrieking of tortured metal rose around her, as though the ship were tearing up.

“I’ve never had any choice, have I?” She raised her voice to be heard over the noise, even though she knew the Crescend could read her mind just as easily as it ever had.

“Of course you have, Morgan. That was the whole point.”

“But you made me in order to do something. There was no way I could avoid that. There’s no way you would’ve let me!”

“Perhaps not, but—”

“And could I have avoided all of
this
?” She saw Maii’s body, the
Ana Vereine
’s pyre, the golden glow of the cockpit around her. “Was I always intended to end up
here
?”

“That question is irrelevant,” said the Crescend. “You are here now, and the ‘now’ is all that matters.”

A siren wailed in her ears.

“Why are you bothering to talk to me at all?” she said angrily. “Why ask me about Cane? Why not just lift the information from my memories? What is it you are after? You want me to absolve you for what you’ve done? Is that it?”

“I have no need of absolution, Morgan. I have no ulterior motives, either. Your role in this phase of the war is truly finished.”

“So now I am being thrown out with the trash?” she shouted. “Is that it?”

“You are not a robot, Morgan,” the Crescend said.

“But I’m not
real
!”

“You may find it difficult to accept, but you are as genuine a being as anyone else you have met. You have mind, you have will, and you have character. Where your body actually came from is irrelevant.”

“Do you expect me to accept that?”

“In time, I think you will.”

“But I don’t
have
time,” she said. “The fighter’s burning up!”

“Yes,” the Crescend said with no suggestion of remorse. “It is. In fact, you have less than a minute before it disintegrates completely.”

She fought down a surge of panic, resisted the tears pressing at the backs of her eyes.

“I’m frightened,” she said, the words both a whisper and a sigh.

The Crescend said nothing.

She closed her eyes again, bracing herself as the fighter began to shake violently. The sound of voices was drowned out by the rattling and creaking of the ship. She thought she might be screaming, but she could hear nothing at all over the noise. She was sound: sound and movement: movement and pain: pain and—

With a burst of heat, everything went silent.

Epilogue

There was no pain; there was no grief. There was only the darkness drawing her in, consuming her. She didn’t resist the warm sensation; she allowed herself to be taken.

The familiar voice of the Crescend filled her with a strange relief. But he sounded different somehow. Closer—almost as though the words were emanating from herself.

she said, as if remembering something from long ago.

She hesitated for a moment. she said.

The Crescend didn’t respond, and an interminable silence followed. She felt something approximating panic wash over her, soaking the empty dark around her.

Her voice resounded through the void. alive
?>

Another silence followed before the Crescend spoke again.

APPENDIX

THE ORIGINS OF HUMANITY

AN OPEN-ENDED QUESTION.

(by Provost Rejuben Tade, extracted from his welcoming address to the Guild of Xenoarchaeologists’ 13,333rd Decannual Intake Expo.)

It is said that unless you know where you started, it is difficult to tell where you are heading. You can plot your course with as much precision as you like; you can map vectors, measure velocity and distance to the nth degree, but without those vital initial coordinates, you might as well be flying blind.

The authors of this axiom were, of course, referring to navigation on land or sea, or even in space. But why should it not be equally applicable to Humanity as a whole?

Anyone with an education would know that the origins of our species are clouded in mystery, buried under the obfuscating weight of five hundred millennia. Half a million years: that’s an awful lot of dust. And if we look closely at this dust, we can make out lumps and bumps along the surface which suggest things that
might
be buried there. But unless we actually brush away these layers of dust, we would never know exactly what lies beneath. When we do, sometimes we find what we imagined we would; other times we find nothing at all. Most of the time, though, we simply reveal new landscapes of dust which seem to bear little relation to the ones above and which might, too, reveal nothing about what remains hidden beneath.

The mystery of the origins of Humanity is one known to all, although appreciated by few. Any individual fortunate enough to resolve this mystery would not so much earn himself or herself a footnote in some dusty xenoarchaeological journal, as guarantee themselves a place among the greats of science. For that person will not only return to us the sense of place, of identity, that has been denied us these long centuries, but will also thereby enable us—to return to our original metaphor—to know where we, as a species, are going. Not in the sense that evolution, social or physical, has a “destination” or a “purpose” in “mind,” but in the sense that changes we do see occurring could finally be measured against a single fixed reference point—the elusive “Alpha Point” (as some scholars refer to it). Without this point, it is inevitable that any observations we make will be corrupted by our own subjective viewpoints, and any objectives we aspire toward will be difficult to achieve.

Some argue that we aren’t flying blind at all, that the question of Humanity’s origins has already been answered. Such people usually, in my experience, possess barely enough knowledge on the subject to have formed an opinion but a profound insufficiency to prove that opinion to anyone’s satisfaction but their own. Exponents of the Out-of-Sol theory spring immediately to mind, along with their archrivals, the Multiple-Genesis-ites. Where they all fall down is in the assumption that we
can
know such things, that the evidence exists and has been misinterpreted or deliberately suppressed. The truth is in fact that information, once set loose in the massive information flows of the galaxy, is very difficult to contain—especially if it is of such revolutionary nature, and even more especially if it is completely verifiable. Were such evidence to exist, more people would know about it in an hour than will ever hear this speech in my lifetime.

In short, conclusive evidence simply does not exist.

So let’s look at what we
do
know...

Roughly five hundred thousand years ago, probably slightly longer, at least four Primordial Castes colonized a large number of systems in a migration we would today call an “outsweep.” This region of space contains several hundred stars, including Sol, and is commonly referred to in old records as the Exordium Worlds; we suspect all were visited around the same time, making it difficult to isolate one as a definite home system. Of course, this difficulty might reflect the limitations inherent in our only available method of dating this expansion. In the absence of actual ruins of any kind, only the remnants of the anchor-point network established at this time gives us any kind of date at all, and even that is uncertain after so long.

To explain why this is uncertain, I always fall back on an old fishing metaphor. I imagine myself casting a line into a pond. On the end of my line is a sinker. As the sinker falls into the water, it creates a disturbance. Ripples spread out from the disturbance with decreasing magnitude until all trace of the disturbance is gone. But the line remains, and it too may create disturbances. My hand may vibrate, or I might tug the rod to attract a fish.

Now, if the line is the crack in space that allows us to break through to hyperspace, and the sinker is the shock that created the hole in the first place, and the surface of the pond is space itself, then the ripples are the echoes not only of the anchor point’s creation but of its continued use. Although these ripples in space do not propagate the same way as ripples in water—tending to radiate in the temporal dimensions rather than those of space, forming localized distortions often and misleadingly referred to as standing waves—they are frequently used as navigational aides, or to find an anchor that has disappeared from charts. Xenoarchaeologists can use these ripples too, since their amplitude decreases at a known rate. One can tell at a glance whether an anchor point is a thousand years old, or ten thousand, or if it was created yesterday. That much is very simple.

The difficulty arises when an anchor point is more than three hundred thousand years old, or has not been used regularly for half that time. The amplitude of the ripples may decrease to the point where they are indistinguishable from the background fluctuations of the universe. While we can still detect ripples from the ancient anchors among the Exordium Worlds, we are unable to tell whether the decrease has come about because of age or disuse. If the former, they might be eight hundred thousand years or more old; if the latter, they might be as young as four hundred and fifty thousand. All we can say with any certainty is that each and every one of the anchors in this area was created around the same time—suggesting that hyperspace technology was only developed
after
the region was colonized.

We do not know where this technology came from or who developed it, but we know roughly when it occurred. Four hundred and twenty thousand years ago, Humanity suddenly boiled out of the Exordium Worlds in an outsweep known as the Second Expansion. This surge is much easier to account for. Lines of datable anchor points expand radially from the region, riding on the back of faster-than-light technology and forming the skeletal remains of vast trade routes that literally spanned the galaxy. Humanity, initially in the form of the four known Primordial Castes, spread like ink through water from planet to planet, star to star, jumping across gulfs previously unimaginable and daring even to send probes out of the galaxy itself—probes that have not as yet reached any of their destinations. What they will see, you and I will probably never know. Only the High Caste—the first members of which Transcended during this time—have that possibility open to them.

Some records paint this Second Expansion as a time of great conflict for Humanity. Some researchers suggest that there might have been one single, mighty war, or there might have been innumerable smaller conflicts. Certainly it was a time of tremendous change, during which Humanity began the speciation that has led to such diversity and richness today. Legends were founded and, almost as quickly, forgotten. We will never know exactly what happened in those times, and for that very reason we will never tire of asking the questions.

Inevitably, as the Second Expansion slowed, the centers of power shifted away from the Exordium Worlds to the core. The ancient shipping routes shifted too, until they settled into the familiar pattern we now call the Great Lanes. This almost certainly happened around three hundred thousand years ago—although, oddly enough, we cannot independently verify precisely when. The Lanes have been used almost continuously since their creation, and have been frequently re-created, so their ripples show few signs of natural aging. That hasn’t stopped people trying to date them, of course, but the results are inconsistent and anomalous. One research group actually dated a pivotal Middle Reach anchor point to be in excess of nine hundred thousand years old—a conclusion which is patently not tenable, inasmuch as it is far older than Humanity itself.

But this is a small mystery, usually raised to trigger the what-if instinct in all of us. The fact remains that the vast proportion of evidence is in favor of the story as I have told it: that Humanity expanded outward from a single system only slowly at first, then much more rapidly when it discovered anchor point technology—changing as it went. And so we continue to change today, even though expansion halted long ago, with the colonization of the entire galaxy. The only new territories we can dream about are those across the intergalactic gulfs or within our own minds. Many observers note that since the most advanced of Humans always seem to choose the latter path, perhaps that says something about the long-term possibilities for physical expansion. Others point out that High Humans may indeed have found a way to cross the gulfs, but have either not yet returned or choose simply to keep their discoveries a secret.

Whichever way one looks at it, the question remains: Humanity has most likely not reached the end-point of its evolution, and where that end-point
might
be depends very much on its beginning. Has Humanity always been so changeable, or so insular at its higher reaches? Is the present ratio of High Humans to mundanes, which has been constant for hundreds of thousands of years, one we can assume indefinitely? Or are we just going through a phase—one that might change with little or no warning, plunging the galaxy into chaos once more?

Certainly, attempting to plot trends in the behavior of Humans throughout the last four hundred thousand years has been a thankless task. Castes tend to develop in isolation, usually from a Low form that has itself devolved some time in the past, occasionally with the help of a benefactor’s biotechnology. Newly vitalized, the Caste then undergoes a period of expansion, sometimes fragmenting as it goes, leaving pockets of itself behind that might in turn one day also expand, depending on the Caste’s ambition or its Batelin Limit. At the same time, many other Castes are behaving similarly, and these expansive types may meet and overlap, or meet and clash, or meet and rebound, depending on their compatibility. The possibilities for trade and conflict are endless, as attested to by the prevalence of the Commerce Artel throughout all reaches of the galaxy.

Other Castes are no longer expansive, having reached the peak of their development, and preparing—whether they know it or not—to change into something new. Lots of Castes advance, devolve, then rise again thinking they’re the first to do so; legends and ancient folk tales tell of angels and the like, all metaphors for former glory days that goad them on, upward again. Some Castes disappear, of course, destroyed by war or technological suicide or absorbed by neighbors. Others never devolve, just go on to greatness, Transcending at the peak of their rise to become immortals of a type we can barely comprehend—secretive and elusive, and capable of understanding beyond our wildest imaginings.

Those who don’t devolve, disappear, or Transcend, achieve homeostasis in the mundane and remain that way indefinitely. Only the names of their empires change, rising and falling like the vibrations in a cosmic string. The Pristines are most notable among these types. The ancient remnants of Primordial Humanity are reluctant to change, but tolerate it in others—for perhaps that is the way it must be, since to grow, one must change. But to change is to risk devolution, and that risk is a great one.

Just one Caste in ten thousand Transcends. The rest devolve or disappear. One school of thought says that the handful of Castes that achieve homeostasis, apart from the Pristine, might only be delaying inevitable decline. But we cannot be certain of this without greater knowledge of our origins. Perhaps Humanity has always been like this, and will never change.

Here we return to our original question: how can we know where we will end up if we don’t know where we began? For an example of how the answer to this might have very real ramifications for all of us, one has only to ask: why
has
the ratio of High to mundane Humans been so constant? It might very well be a natural state for our race, as most people assume—but it might
not
be just as easily. And if not, it can tip either way, in favor of either the High Caste or the mundanes. We know that the ratio changed from no High Humans at all to a relatively fixed proportion in the early days of the galaxy, suggesting that Human nature did favor the High Caste at one point. If that trend had continued, we would not exist today: the galaxy would be populated only by the members of the High Caste, everyone else having devolved or Transcended at a rate too great for mundane stocks to replenish themselves. Clearly this has not happened—but
why
not? What shifted the balance away from the High Caste?

The most obvious possibility is that there is a natural rate of accretion of which we were not previously aware. The effects of a High Caste death-rate would only become visible after the initial members began to age, and there are indeed High Caste deaths on record. But these are exceedingly rare, and it is generally doubted that they would even brake the initial expansion of the High Caste, let alone halt it entirely. So what else is going on? Perhaps High Humans don’t need to die before they need to be replaced: perhaps being old and insular is enough. After all, we are only aware of
active
High Humans; there may be many more who choose not to communicate with anyone, or who have entered a state of prolonged hibernation, or have undergone transformation to another plane of being we cannot imagine.

Whatever the truth, this issue raises a disturbing possibility: that the High Caste maintains the ratio artificially, by either limiting its numbers somehow or maintaining an artificially high rate of mundane replenishment. The latter, of course, might simply be to restock its own numbers—for if High Caste expansion continued unchecked and there were no mundanes left, where would future members come from? Or it might be to give them something to watch, just as some mundane and Low Castes keep inferior species as pets.