“You mean like the Vestal Virgins in Ancient Rome? I do read. And stick with the voice in the head, okay?”
“This too distracting?”
“You know it.” But the truth, that while Kara could handle voices in her head, real ones were disturbing. Too much of the omniscient being that promises doom, the computer that eats the world. Kara decided she was being melodramatic. Get a grip, girl. Which was good advice, because the next moment, courtesy of Salome...
... a mass of images, timelines, pagoda temples and a sequence of Mount Fujiyama throughout the seasons crashed into Kara’s mind.
All of which was strange because Kara had thought Tse was Chinese.
Or maybe he was, because her head filled with floating Chinese lanterns, followed by a dragon chasing a pearl.
She knew him. Knew that his pre-cog parents were aware before he was born that Tse would be important. Parents so obsessed with the coming conflict that they happily, devotedly, gave Tse up to be educated at an isolated, exclusive school in Saskatchewan. The parents themselves the result of a breeding programme begun centuries earlier, their son the ultimate goal who would "see" how the alien pre-cogs might be defeated. In their own way the good pre-cogs were just as ruthless and single-minded as their bad cousins.
Tse was born eighty years before the Gliese and other aliens arrived.
He’d been castrated – just the testicles, penis intact, could still enjoy sex – when he was sixteen. He had been a hundred and twenty, looking early forties, when he blew himself up, together with a few Gliese, to avoid being taken over by the enemy.
Tse had brought Greenaway into the fold. Had overseen the process that would bring together Kara, Marc and Tatia. If Kara wanted anyone to blame it could only be Tse. Instead she felt a rush of sympathy and sadness.
Poor little bastard. Raised and educated as a saviour – and who would ever want that? He hadn’t chosen Marc or Tatia, Kara or Greenaway. He’d merely seen them as the most probable people to keep Earth free. Had possibly seen his own death as necessary to his own plan, and wouldn’t that be that ironic? And brave.
She remembered how Tse had been so tired of everything, even life. And how he’d said that Kara would learn the truth about her sister, who’d been exchanged for a new Gliese star drive somewhere in the Trapezium Cluster in the Orion Nebula. Kara had been thirteen, both parents dead, Kara not sure if she wanted to be a musician or a vet. Instead an orphanage, then the English city-state army.
Funny, Marc had also been in a children’s home.
Tatia had been adopted.
Tse had said the truth about your sister. Not where she was, but the truth.
In the army Kara learned the skills she needed now.
In the home Marc had been given a psychoactive drug that, maybe years later, made it possible for him to communicate with a nature god.
How far did the GalDiv manipulation go? How detailed was Tse’s plan?
Would Kara have ended up here if her sister hadn’t been traded?
The truth about your sister. That she had to be traded, lost forever for Kara to become a sniper/assassin? For Kara to discover her latent empathy for both humans and aliens?
So what’s the difference between the good and bad pre-cogs?
Both focused on a plan only they understood, and then darkly.
Would more order in life be all that bad?
<< Kara? Can you come to the control room? Something you have to see.
She didn’t bother to check with Ishmael. Later, Kara would decide it wouldn’t have made any difference.
Five Cedrics in the control room. Three small, two the size of large dogs.
> Why Cedrics? We expecting trouble?
<< They need a walk.
Something was wrong. Kara walked up to the control panel above the locker that held the AI.
<< I’m locked away, babe.
> Ishmael?
<< Unavailable. I’d explain but you wouldn’t understand.
> Ishmael!
<< Is currently the equivalent of an antique adding machine.
Kara thought of Tatia, waiting for them. Of the faith – desperate, perhaps, but still a responsibility – that Greenaway had in her. Of a mission she’d sworn to complete.
> What do you want, Salome?
<< First, this you got to see...
The hull became transparent again. Kara immediately looked away.
<< It’s okay, babe. It’s clear. Goes that way sometimes.
She sneaked a glance. Not exactly clear, but the colours and chaos were muted, merged in one area into a faint, silvery space.
And in that space was a city state SUT. Large metal containers welded together, kept rigid and providing protection with Gliese-supplied hardened foam.
Except the foam was ripped away. Hung from the containers in great, pointless strips. Containers with some of the sides missing. And with people, humans standing there, immobile, apparently staring fixedly before them as...
... as tentacles of light came from outside the clear space to touch each human head.
Kara found herself unable to look away. Horror, yes. Also the sense she was witnessing something very profound. Boojums, devils maybe, following their instincts. Destroying the very beings that had given them life. Human minds raped in the blind search for greater meaning. Or simply attacked because a boojum, a devil, felt threatened. Or who the hell really knows why?
Nothing she could do to stop it. Only bear witness to death.
Kara could sense emotions, now. Screams of fear, despair, then a quietening sense of relief as the scene became less weird, less threatening. Resignation, that was it. Awareness that it would be over soon, whatever it was. Some stepped out and floated like curious fish around a dying whale. Others collapsed on the deck, limbs twitching for a moment before going still.
<< What do you call them? Right. Boojums. They seem to be hungry. Or curious. Maybe angry. Who knows? Would you like to go ask them?
The SUT fell apart, scattering more bodies into netherspace. One of those SUTs
