‘What about them?’ she asked sharply.
‘Well, y’know.’ He shrugged expressively, hoping not too much shame was showing.
‘No, Del, I don’t.’
‘Oh, come on. They’re not as . . . well, as enlightened as we are. The times they grew up in were different.’
‘And?’
Dellian was really starting to wish he hadn’t begun this conversation. ‘Okay, the kind of people Saint Alik was dealing with – the New York gangs, for one. They’re not the kind of people we can give full access to an initiator, are they? Really, I mean. Hell alone knows what they’d build!’
‘Human civilization is always regulated, Del. It’s how it maintains itself, the eternal balance between freedom and authority. We all live in the middle, obeying the rules for the common good.’
‘Maybe,’ he grumbled. ‘But the people from Earth might not be as accepting of limits when they see what we’ve accomplished, what our technology can provide.’
‘You’re being very judgy all of a sudden.’
‘Hey, you’re the one who normally has contingencies for everything. I’m just asking the question, that’s all.’
‘A lot of things will have to be agreed if FinalStrike is successful. We can start with some kind of citizens’ convention, I suppose, to agree a new constitution. When that happens, we can talk about introducing initiator restrictions, like the Neána did for their society.’
‘Okay. But I’m not convinced that attitudes will change.’
‘Are you saying we shouldn’t liberate the humans who were captured?’
‘No! But, it’s just . . . nothing is easy any more. When we left Juloss, I thought there’d be a couple of battles – tough ones – but after that it would all be over and we could all settle somewhere together and have a normal life.’
‘It wouldn’t be the first time someone won the war then lost the peace. But really, Del, we have to win it first. Then we can start thinking what comes next.’
‘Yeah, but we will have to change ourselves. That’s what worries me, Yi: what we’ll become.’
‘If we change ourselves, and control how we change, we can keep hold of our souls. I’m not sure the Olyix did that.’
‘I hope you’re right. But we’ve been pretty monomaniacal about spreading terrestrial DNA across the galaxy. That’s a form of conquest, too.’
‘Not going to happen, Del.’
He wanted to believe her. But not even Yirella could see clearly through so many variables. So he had to go on faith instead. That was easy. ‘Okay, so back to this tech equivalence. I was wondering if the Neána are hiding in slowtime enclaves, if that’s what their abode clusters actually are? What if they’re heading for the heat death of the universe in parallel to the Olyix, and one day both of them will finally confront each other?’
‘Great Saints, Del, where’s all this coming from?’
‘I dunno. Just trying to think outside of training and what we’re doing. I want the big picture, Yi. Like you have. But I don’t think I can do that, being me.’
‘Del . . . are you thinking of elevating up to corpus? Is that what all this is about?’
He shrugged limply. ‘I wouldn’t want to do it alone. If I did, that is.’
Her hand came down on his shoulder, making him halt. He found himself looking up at her face, and the sorrowful expression she wore. ‘You’re not dumb, Del. You don’t need this right now. We have a vital role in FinalStrike.’
Again the doubt, but the words did comfort – especially coming from her.
‘Afterwards,’ she said, ‘if you still really feel like this, then we’ll elevate to corpus together.’
‘Saints, you’d do that? Seriously?’
‘Yes. And you know why?’
‘I never understand you.’
‘Because it’s reversible. If it’s wrong for us, we just come back to being us.’
He had to grin. ‘I thought you were going to say something about destiny, or love, stuff like that.’
‘Right.’ She licked her lips. ‘You only want to try it because all your bodies would be having sex together.’
‘Hey! I never thought of that. Wow!’
She sighed in martyred exasperation. ‘Come on. Before your brain melts. I want to see what Immanueel’s got for us.’
Twenty of the research facility’s cells contained quint bodies. They’d been immobilized on top of a weird stool-like pillar, with their stumpy legs encased in black sheaths that were fused to the floor and a steel bracelet that encased their mid-torso skirt of manipulator flesh. Their neck and lower head was also collared by metal, leaving the apposition eye peering out above. Actinic white light shone down on them, which somehow added to the discomforting impression they were being crucified.
Less surprisingly, the Ainsley android was in a cell with one of them. It and Immanueel’s big humanoid body were crowding in on the suspended quint: a timeless image of impassive scientists studying a specimen.
‘Making good progress,’ Ainsley said as they came in. His featureless white hands were applying small scarlet hemispheres to the alien’s translucent flesh. Dellian could see fibres had sprouted from the base of each of the little gadgets to weave around the dark organs inside; they were all heading for the core of the torso where the brain sat. Somehow, he could tell the quint’s golden eye was unfocused.
‘Progress to what?’ he asked.
‘Memory extraction,’ Immanueel replied. ‘Unfortunately, none of our marines managed to isolate a ship’s central neural array before the onemind eradicated itself.’
‘Same problem I had back during the Vayan ambush,’ Ainsley said. ‘As soon as the onemind realizes its integrity has been compromised by intrusion systems, it does the honourable thing and suicides. With something as massive as an arkship, which has a neuralstratum the size of a skyscraper, that takes time, and I could extract some memories. But the Resolution ships here were quick, and the habitat onemind had plenty of warning. It erased its critical memories before you guys even busted your way inside it.’
Dellian stared at the quint, keeping his face neutral. ‘But the quint didn’t suicide?’
‘They did not,’ Immanueel said. ‘At least not all of them. The squads and marines used a lot of entanglement suppression when you took the Olyix station, which breaks up
