The Wind From a Burning Woman: Six Stories of Science Fiction (27 page)

She was terrified and exultant, so worked up that her body temperature was climbing. The fightsuit adjusted her balance.

At the count of ten and nine, she switched from biologic to cyber. The implantafter absorbing much of her thought processes for weeksbecame Prufrax.

For a time there seemed to be two of her. Biologic continued, and in that region she could even relax a bit, as if watching a fib.

With almost dreamlike slowness, in the electronic time of cyber, her fightsuit followed the beam. She saw the stars and oriented herself to the cruisers beacon, using both for reference, plunging in the sword-flower formation to assault the thornship. The cuckoos retreated in the vast red hull like worms withdrawing into an apple. Then hundreds of tiny black pinpoints appeared in the closest quadrant to the sword flower.

Snakes shot out, each piloted by a Senexi branch ind. Hardfought! she told herself in biologic before that portion gave over completely to cyber.

Why were we flung out of dark

through ice and fire, a shower

of sparks? a puzzle;

Perhaps to build hell.

We strike here, there;

Set brief glows, fall through

and cross round again.

By our dimming, we see what

Beatitude we have.

In the circle, kindling

together, we form an

exhausted Empyrean.

We feel the rush of

igniting winds but still

grow dull and wan.

New rage flames, new light,

dropping like sun through muddy

ice and night and fall

Close, spinning blue and bright.

In time they, too,

Tire. Redden.

We join, compare pasts

cool in huddled paths,

turn grey.

And again.

We are a companion flow

of ash, in the slurry,

out and down.

We sleep.

Rivers form above and below.

Above, iron snakes twist,

clang and slice, chime,

helium eyes watching, seeing

Snowflake hawks,

signaling adamant muscles and

energy teeth. What hunger

compels our venom spit?

It flies, strikes the crystal

flight, making mist grey-green

with ammonia rain.

Sleeping, we glide,

and to each side

unseen shores wait

with the moans of an

unseen tide.

She wrote that. We. One of herourpoems.

Poem?

A kind of fib, I think.

I dont see what it says.

Sure you do! Shes talking hardfought.

The Zap? Is that all?

No, I dont think so.

Do you understand it?

Not all...

She lay back in the bunk, legs crossed, eyes closed, feeling the receding dominance of the implantthe overness of cyberand the almost pleasant ache in her back. She had survived her first. The thornship had retired, severely damaged, its surface seared and scored so heavily it would never release cuckoos again.

It would become a hulk, a decoy. Out of action. Satisfaction/out of action/Satisfaction...

Still, with eight of the twelve fighters lost, she didnt quite feel the exuberance of the rhyme. The snakes had fought very well. Bravely, she might say. They lured, sacrificed, cooperated, demonstrating teamwork as fine as that in her own group. Strategy was what made the cruisers raid successful. A superior approach, an excellent tactic. And perhaps even surprise, though the final analysis hadnt been posted yet.

Without those advantages, they might have all died.

She opened her eyes and stared at the pattern of blinking lights in the ceiling panel, lights with their secret codes that repeated every second, so that whenever she looked at them, the implant deep inside was debriefed, reinstructed. Only when she fought would she know what she was now seeing.

She returned to the tunnel as quickly as she was able. She floated up toward the blister and found him there, surrounded by packs of information from the last hardfought. She waited until he turned his attention to her.

Well? he said.

I asked myself what they are fighting for. And Im very angry.

Why?

Because I dont know. I cant know. Theyre Senexi.

Did they fight well?

We lost eight. Eight. She cleared her throat.

Did they fight well? he repeated, an edge in his voice.

Better than I was ever told they could.

Did they die?

Enough of them.

How many did you kill?

I dont know. But she did. Eight.

You killed eight, he said, pointing to the packs. Im analyzing the battle now.

Youre behind what we read, what gets posted? she asked.

Partly, he said. Youre a good hawk.

I knew I would be, she said, her tone quiet, simple.

Since they fought bravely

How can Senexi be brave? she asked sharply.

Since, he repeated, they fought bravely, why?

They want to live, to do their... work. Just like me.

No, he said. She was confused, moving between extremes in her mind, first resisting, then giving in too much. Theyre Senexi. Theyre not like us.

Whats your name? she asked, dodging the issue.

Clevo.

Her glory hadnt even begun yet, and already she was well into her fall.

* * * *

Aryz made his connection and felt the brood minds emergency cache of knowledge in the mandate grow up around him like ice crystals on glass. He stood in a static scene. The transition from living memory to human machine memory had resulted in either a coding of data or a reduction of detail; either way, the memory was cold, not dynamic. It would have to be compared, recorrelated, if that would ever be possible.

How much human data had had to be dumped to make space for this?

He cautiously advanced into the human memory, calling up topics almost at random. In the short time he had been away, so much of what he had learned seemed to have faded or become scrambled. Branch inds were supposed to have permanent memory; human data, for one reason or another, didnt take. It required so much effort just to begin to understand the different modes of thought.

He backed away from sociological data, trying to remain within physics and mathematics. There he could make conversations to fit his understanding without too much strain.

Then something unexpected happened. He felt the brush of another mind, a gentle inquiry from a source made even stranger by the hint of familiarity. It made what passed for a Senexi greeting, but not in the proper form, using what one branch ind of a team would radiate to a fellow; a gross breach, since it was obviously not from his team or even from his family. Aryz tried to withdraw. How was it possible for minds to meet in the mandate? As he retreated, he pushed into a broad region of incomprehensible data. It had none of the characteristics of the other human regions he had examined.

This is for machines, the other said. Not all cultural data is limited to biologic. You are in the area where programs and cyber designs are stored. They are really accessible only to a machine hooked into the mandate.

What is your family? Aryz asked, the first step-question in the sequence Senexi used for urgent identity requests.

I have no family. I am not a branch ind. No access to active brood minds. I have learned from the mandate.

Then what are you?

I dont know, exactly. Not unlike you.

Aryz understood what he was dealing with. It was the mind of the mutated shape, the one that had remained in the chamber, beseeching when he approached the transparent barrier.

I must go now, the shape said. Aryz was alone again in the incomprehensible jumble. He moved slowly, carefully, into the Senexi sector, calling up subjects familiar to him. If he could encounter one shape, doubtless he could encounter the othersperhaps even the captive.

The idea was dreadfuland fascinating. So far as he knew, such intimacy between Senexi and human had never happened before. Yet there was something very Senexi-like in the method, as if branch inds attached to the brood mind were to brush mentalities while searching in the ageless memories.

The dread subsided. There was little worse that could happen to him, with his fellows dead, his brood mind in flux bind, his purpose uncertain.

What Aryz was feeling, for the first time, was a small measure of freedom.

* * * *

The story of the original Prufrax continued.

In the early stages she visited Clevo with a barely concealed anger. His method was aggravating, his goals never precisely spelled out. What did he want with her, if anything?

And she with him? Their meetings were clandestine, though not precisely forbidden. She was a hawk one now with considerable personal liberty between exercises and engagements. There were no monitors in the closed-off reaches of the cruiser, and they could do whatever they wished. The two met in areas close to the ships hull, usually in weapons blisters that could be opened to reveal the stars; there they talked.

Prufrax was not accustomed to prolonged conversation. Hawks were not raised to be voluble, nor were they selected for their curiosity. Yet the exhawk Clevo talked a great deal and was the most curious person she had met, herself included-and she regarded herself as uncharacteristically curious.

Often he was infuriating, especially when he played the leading game, as she called it. Leading her from one question to the next like an instructor, but without the trappings of any clarity of purpose. What do you think of your mother?

Does that matter?

Not to me.

Then why ask?

Because you matter.

Prufrax shrugged. She was a fine mother. She bore me with a well-chosen heritage. She raised me as a hawk candidate. She told me her stories.

Any hawk I know would envy you for listening at Jay-axs knee.

I was hardly at her knee.

A speech tactic.

Yes, well, she was important to me.

She was a preferred single?

Yes.

So you have no father.

She selected without reference to individuals.

Then you are really not that much different from a Senexi.

She bristled and started to push away. There! You insult me again.

Not at all. Ive been asking one question all this time, and you havent even heard. How well do you know the enemy?

Well enough to destroy them. She couldnt believe that was the only question hed been asking. His speech tactics were very odd.

Yes, to win battles, perhaps. But who will win the war?

Itll be a long war, she said softly, floating a few meters from him. He rotated in the blister, blocking out a blurred string of stars. The cruiser was preparing to shift out of status geometry again. They fight well.

They fight with conviction. Do you believe them to be evil?

They destroy us.

We destroy them.

So the question, she said, smiling at her cleverness, is who began to destroy?

Not at all, Clevo said. I suspect theres no longer a clear answer to that. Our leaders have obviously decided the question isnt important. No. We are the new, they are the old. The old must be superseded. Its a conflict born in the essential difference between Senexi and humans.

Thats die only way were different? Theyre old, were not so old? I dont understand.

Nor do I, entirely.

Well, finally!

The Senexi, Clevo continued, unperturbed, long ago needed only gas-giant planets like their homeworlds. They lived in peace for billions of years before our world was formed. But as they moved from star to star, they learned uses for other types of worlds. We were most interested in rocky Earth-like planets. Gradually, we found uses for gas giants, too. By the time we met, both of us encroached on the others territory. Their technology is so improbable, so unlike ours, that when we first encountered them, we thought they must come from another geometry.

Where did you learn all this? Prufrax squinted at him suspiciously.

Im no longer a hawk, he said, but I was too valuable just to discard. My experience was too broad, my abilities too useful. So I was placed in research. It seems a safe place for me. Little contact with my comrades. He looked directly at her. We must try to know our enemy, at least a little.

Thats dangerous, Prufrax said, almost instinctively.

Yes, it is. What you know, you cannot hate.

We must hate, she said. It makes us strong. Senexi hate.

They might, he said. But, sometime, wouldnt you like to... sit down and talk with one, after a battle? Talk with a fighter? Learn its tactic, how it bested you in one move, compare

No! Prufrax shoved off rapidly down the tube. Were shifting now. We have to get ready.

Shes smart. Shes leaving him. Hes crazy.

Why do you think that?

He would stop the fight, end the Zap.

But he was a hawk.

And hawks became glovers, I guess. But glovers go wrong, too. Like you.

__?

Did you know they used you? How you were used?

Thats all blurred now.

Shes doomed if she stays around him. Whos that?

Someone is listening with us.

Recognize?

No, gone now.

The next battle was bad enough to fall into the hellfought. Prufrax was in her fightsuit, legs drawn up as if about to kick off. The cruiser exited sponge space and plunged into combat before sponge-space supplements could reach full effectiveness. She was dizzy, disoriented. The overhawks could only hope that a switch from biologic to cyber would cure the problem.

She didnt know what they were attacking. Tactic was flooding the implant, but she was only receiving the wash of that; she hadnt merged yet. She sensed that things were confused. That bothered her. Overs did not feel confusion.

The cruiser was taking damage. She could sense at least that, and she wanted to scream in frustration. Then she was ordered to merge with the implant. Biologic became cyber. She was in the Know.

The cruiser had reintegrated above a gas-giant planet. They were seventy-nine thousand kilometers from the upper atmosphere. The damage had come from ice mineschunks of Senexi-treated water ice, altered to stay in sponge space until a human vessel integrated nearby. Then they emerged, packed with momentum and all the residual instability of an unsuccessful exit into status geometry. Unsuccessful for a ship, that isvery successful for a weapon.