It made sense to broadcast, on psi level, the delights of the pre-cog plan.
Most races are telepathic to a degree. Let them be made ready for inclusion.
And what, who, better to broadcast this signal than the various races themselves? In captivity. Reduced to zombies... so not as if they’re suffering.
One race wanted harmony, the other survival. The one not sensitive to another race’s suffering. The other didn’t care.
It was logical to use the psi broadcast also to control, if necessary, the AI technology stolen by the Originators from a race that had then been destroyed as potential rivals.
Everything made such perfect sense.
But inherent in the master plan was an individual, an alien who would play a major role in the development of the jellies’ master plan. They didn’t know how, of course. But it was there, a way station that featured Tatia Nerein.
She’d been right. Pre-cog beings can be imprisoned by their own timelines... unless willing to alter the end result. Which they weren’t.
Tatia was central to the jellyfish civilisation. She was going to destroy it.
She took a deep breath and thought of all the hideousness, the fear and tragedy, hate and terror caused because a mild race was determined to harmonise the universe. Remembered the fear and hatred of the alien she’d killed. The humans. The Originators. Felt those emotions grow in her mind until they became everything she was.
Tatia rocked from side to side, convinced her head would explode.
The dam didn’t burst. It vanished.
The tentacle whiplashed away from her hand... but was turning brown before it slipped beneath the waves.
“Get us out of here,” Tatia said. “It’s done.”
Beneath them the sea boiled in anguish.
And for all three humans a sense of something wonderful now lost forever.
“You got all that from a minute or so?” Marc sounded incredulous.
“Like you and that simulity thing,” Tatia said.
“That can take hours,” Kara said. “You still think the jellyfish were innocent?”
They were in the control room, watching the sea turn brown a hundred kilometres below. The jellyfish were dying. Their mathematics, their timeline, had failed them. Such an intense clarity of thought now reduced to a brown sludge.
* * *
There remained a signal to destroy.
The artefacts were simpler than the Originator ship.
They still had a spare, working star drive. Marc had experience of using netherspace to move between two vehicles in normal space. They’d seen what could happen as a result.
Zombie or no, Kara’s sister deserved a better death than plunging into a dying planet, along with the other humans. So did the aliens, but this was family. At the last moment Kara said that she was going with Marc, sorry Tatia, I have to do this.
Space suits on, into normal space. Marc clutching the spare star drive, Kara clutching Marc. Netherspace in an instant. Then inside the artefact.
“Wait.” Kara took off her helmet, recoiled at the stench then walked across to one of the humans. Once it had been a teenage boy, a recent captive.
Give him back his identity in death.
She looked into his empty eyes, held his hand and kissed him gently on the cheek. A kiss for them all.
“We can go now.”
The artefact began creaking just before they entered netherspace again.
Tatia was waiting in the airlock.
The creaking became more intense. A ripple began in the centre, radiating out, making tethered bodies bump into each other. Then the shaking began. Food and excretion tubes were pulled out, spewing their contents into the atmosphere.
Not one body reacted. Only that blank-eyed stare to nowhere.
The artefact took three hours to die. Tatia and Marc said they needed to rest.
Kara watched from the control room the entire time, remembering how her sister had promised to come back and never did. Remembering the life they’d planned together. Wondering if she could ever forgive the man she loved.
At the end, when only a vast oblong cloud of dust remained, Kara sighed, wiped her eyes, asked Ishmael to wake her when the oblong ring fell apart and went to bed. She left Tatia and Marc in the control room, taking a last look at the extinction of an alien race before netherspace surrounded them.
“You’ll be leaving now,” Tatia said.
“I’ll see you back to Earth.”
“Oh, I think Kara and me can cope. And you’ve got your quest.”
“Two or three days won’t matter.” He wanted her so much it hurt.
“Remember that trip back from Cancri?”
“Only too well. Why?”
Marc felt unbearably awkward. “Oh, nothing. Are you and Kara... er...”
“Taking up where we left off? She’s in love with someone. I can tell.” She looked at him innocently. “Why?”
“Just wondered... none of my business,” he stumbled.
“You’re right. It’s not.” Tatia stood up. “Whereas you, Marc, are very much mine,” She held out her hand. “Come along. I know that sex and death are linked but this is only because I want to.”
Not so very much later Tatia raised herself on one elbow and smiled down at him. “Bet you’re sorry you said no before.”
“It was complicated. Note that I didn’t this time.”
Tatia lay down, her head on his chest. “It took so much persuading...”
“Tell the truth,” he admitted, “I was worried... maybe not in that phase any more...”
Tatia poked him. “I’m a phase?”
“I mean this netherspace thing...”
“You were wrong,” she said firmly. “I understand you have to go. But we’ll have a few days. And when your quest is done, you’ll come back to me.”
Seconds later they heard Kara’s voice on the PA.
“It’s begun,” she said. “Come see.”
The two artefacts next to the destroyed one had begun to sway irregularly, a pattern that quickly spread. Fifty oblongs, each five hundred metres tall, bouncing around like toy ducks in the bath. A distant one
