“Shall we go home?” Kara asked.
The other two nodded. Seen one huge tombstone die, seen them all. All three humans felt a little flat. Can something extraordinary, something far beyond the imagination of most people, end with both a bang and a whimper?
“What exactly did you do to them?” Kara asked Tatia, meaning the jellyfish aliens.
“I made them feel bad about themselves.”
An understatement. For a few seconds Tatia had poured all her anger, disgust, hatred, terror, contempt into a highly telepathic creature with no prior knowledge of negative emotions. It went insane. A self-loathing madness that infected the entire race within seconds. Harmony vanished. They began to die.
“How did you know?” Marc asked.
Tatia shrugged. “Because I was bred to it.” She wondered if there’d be guilt for helping destroy an alien race. Probably not. Them or us.
“Too bad you didn’t have an AI. It would have made life easier.”
“But I did! Although it’s gone quiet since you guys arrived.” She told them how important the AI had been for her, not least replaying her favourite vids.
> Check her out, Kara told Ishmael.
< Done already, no AI. But there is something. Or the remains. Very small chip. It’s being absorbed by her body. I think it was maybe designed to boost her thoughts, emotions. It was in the middle of her basal ganglia.
> Oh, wow.
< No need for sarcasm. It’s the brain’s comms centre. And because of where it was, no record of surgery, that chip’s been there since she was a kid.
> Could it also have acted like an AI?
< I have no idea. It’s gone. Whatever it was, not one of us. But it might have boosted her psi ability.
Kara decided that Tatia was one extraordinary woman. And maybe best she believed that an AI had kept her sane.
> We’ll let the auto-doc have a look. After, tell her the AI blew, result of frequent alien contact. Leave a little scar where the AI was cut out.
< You’re all heart.
> She’s happy. Someone else can spoil it.
“Look!” Tatia gasped.
The first construct disintegrated as it reached the planet’s atmosphere. Vast chunks glowing red thundered towards the surface.
Each segment hit with the power of a small atomic bomb. The sea roared and boiled. Gouts of water and steam reached angrily for the sky. There were forty-nine more constructs about to follow.
< Think we better leave. There’s a chance the planet will destabilise.
> What happens then?
< We all get wet.
> That’s not funny. We just committed genocide.
< You just saved the human race and countless others. Get over yourself.
They decided to move away but remain in normal space. The end came twenty-four hours later, after the planet had been wracked by vast tsunamis and a whirlpool had appeared that covered nearly a quarter of the globe.
The planet began to bulge at one side.
Became pear-like, the waist narrowing by the second and at the narrow end a solid, ice-covered sphere no more than five hundred klicks across.
Three humans stared at the main vid screen in horrified fascination as the sphere began to glow. The mantle no longer cooled by water temperature or reinforced by the oceans’ weight. Molten iron spouted from newly formed cracks in the surface. The core was now fully detached from the ocean, the latter rapidly reforming into the shape of a thunder cloud.
“I did that,” Tatia whispered.
“We all did,” Marc tried to reassure her.
“Crap!” Kara said fiercely. “They did it to themselves. Sure as hell they won’t do it again. We’ve seen enough. Let’s go home.”
It took three days to get back to Earth space. Marc left them when the moon could be seen in normal space.
“I have to,” he said to Tatia, almost wishing she’d try to persuade him to stay. He wouldn’t, but nice to be asked.
“I know. Hope you find it.” No point in asking him not to go. He was a pilgrim on a mission.
“I promised Kara I’d come back and tell her. I will for you too.”
She thought how absurd the physics of netherspace meant he’d always be a step from her, no matter how far he travelled. She and Kara watched from the control room as he stepped into netherspace. The last they saw was Marc riding an electric blue before questing tentacles found him.
Kara hadn’t yet told Tatia about Greenaway... about being in love with Tatia’s father. Partly she wanted to wait until sure of him. Partly she was in no mood for heart-to-heart conversations. She wanted to be by herself, curled up in her bunk. Thinking about Greenaway. Deciding that maybe her life needed to change.
< We’re receiving transmissions from a Wild ship.
> And?
< Things have quietened down. No more AIs going crazy.
> Any news on Greenaway?
< There was a contract on him. He went underground.
Ishmael wondered if now was a good time to tell Kara she was pregnant with Greenaway’s child. And then wondered why he hadn’t aborted the foetus without Kara knowing.
Because I care? Because I’m a me?
14
“Whatever happened to that lock of my hair?” Tatia asked, when the Thrown was a day out from Earth. They were in the control room, watching a blue and white heaven grow large on the screen.
“Ishmael?”
< Marc took it with him. But we still have the box.
“Guess that means he’s coming back to you,” Kara said. So maybe the wooden shard had made it possible for Marc to return. Why hadn’t he admitted it? Because he hadn’t known – or didn’t want the closeness that implied? Because if he was involved with Kara, he might not become so with Tatia, and that could mean... she gave up. Play with all the possibilities, the what ifs and maybes could send a person, an alien or an AI insane.
“Oh, he is,” Tatia said, then asked the question Kara dreaded. “Were you going to tell me about you and Dad?”
Dad, not “my father”. Dad, assuming
