“The only thing that could save us,” she said, “was your relationship with netherspace and whatever exists there. And don’t let’s call them boojums any more. It makes them sound almost friendly. I watched them murder a SUT.”
Marc thought better of explaining it wasn’t like that. Netherspace entities couldn’t be judged by human standards. Then decided to save it for another day.
“So that AI had you under control,” Kara said. “Some sort of signal that suppressed your higher faculties, she said eight megahertz. So I killed it. And Salome was distracted by something I’d said, so couldn’t react fast enough, or was so pissed with me it couldn’t resist an insult and you were suddenly back again and called in the cavalry. How the hell?”
He shook his head. “Not sure. We’re linked, those... entities and me. I sort of broadcast a hands-off idea. Kara good, don’t bite. The SUT AI bad, kill. That’s all I remember.” He was pretty sure there’d been no direct contact with the boojum. Which could only mean that netherspace itself had gotten involved. Which was absurd to the point of insanity. And yet here they were. Alive.
“I know what happened.” Because Ishmael had already told her. “They search for intelligence. You’re hands-off and then I was. But the ship was wide open, they could get inside and there was this super intelligent being waiting for them.” Meaning that human and AI intelligence were essentially the same, even when the AI wasn’t slaved to a person. Which meant... Kara shook her head. Let the scientists and philosophers work it out.
“I guess Salome was like a gourmet meal to them.”
Once again Marc managed not to correct her. “They’d lock on to the nearest source, yes. I wonder...”
“Apparently Salome was drained almost dry. Ishmael says what’s left went to another dimension. But without an energy source it’ll die.” Just as Ishmael would if she died.
“The energy of thought... information is energy...”
“That thing with the SUT? Oh, you don’t know the details.”
< Automatically recorded.
> Show him.
One of the console screens lit up. Kara wondered if Marc would still be so keen on his luminous chums after seeing them in action. Maybe he wouldn’t care.
He was quiet for a few minutes after the recording stopped. “The lion doesn’t hate the gazelle.”
“No,” she said fiercely, “you don’t get away with that. Anyway, how do you know? You ever ask one? And lions are very, very different to those n-space killers... which are unlikely to lie down for a snooze in the shade.”
“You said there was something strange about it?”
“That it was weird and disgusting but curiously familiar.”
“Every society has legends of strange creatures feeding off human emotion,” Marc said. “Or wanting a human soul, like the Little Mermaid. The whole vampire thing. Faerie folk who steal human children. This isn’t new, Kara. Humanity has sensed this, maybe seen it in visions, for thousands of years.”
“Could be more than that,” Kara said. “Alien pre-cogs have been trading with humans for a long, long time. It’s possible people went Up and saw n-space, saw those things when Neanderthals were alive.”
“But you don’t think they’re desperate to take over Earth?”
“I read the old books. There was a whole genre about it, sort of died out after Earth met real aliens. Yeah, maybe those writers had visions. But here’s the mistake: those incredibly powerful gods they wrote about? Could have taken Earth any time they wanted. Except you wave a stone carving at them, chant a few words, human words, and they run away in a frenzy. That is not what supreme beings do. Anyway, why would these things want Earth? They’re already there.”
“You what!”
She sat back, enjoying the moment. “Netherspace exists below, above normal space, right? So your luminous friends, my dear, are right now hanging around a family having breakfast in Bristol, or a riot in New York. Except they can’t cross the temporal or dimensional barrier, take your pick. Unless. Maybe there’s more to summoning a demon than most people know. So the occasional visit, maybe. Conquest? Would we want to live in n-space... okay, you might. Me, I’d miss real air, the sea, rock faces to climb, a meal with friends, lazy Sundays with lovers. Miss combat, the hunt, the test. I’d miss laughter, sadness and the chaos of human existence...”
“I know what you’re doing...”
“Do you really want to give it all up? House by the Severn Estuary? Sunset over the Black Mountains? Fuck, Marc, you never even asked if I locked up.”
“Did you?”
“Can’t remember. Yes, probably. Made sure your house plants were cosy and fed, though. Does it matter you may never see it again?”
“Not planning on dying...”
“Who does? Well, some do obviously. Why give it all up?”
He was silent for a moment, and then: “I don’t know. Only that I have to try.” He reached for her hand. “But I will come back and tell you, good or bad.”
“You’d better. I don’t want to come looking for you.” She paused and then, “Listen, there’s something could make you mad or sad. It’s about an ancient tribe from the Altai in Southern Siberia. It’s your childhood and what was done to you.”
Kara spoke non-stop for fifteen minutes. Marc held her hand the entire time. At the end she grimaced and he loosened his grip. “Ouch.”
“That’s a hell of a story. So we never had a choice, right?”
“Oh, we always had that. But born to make the right one.”
“There’s an obvious confusion, even contradiction.” Marc shrugged. “If there’s the one master plan, as it were, as run by the alien precogs... then what’s the point?”
“There’s an infinite number of plans. But it’s survival of the fittest, or strongest.
