Children of Time (21 page)

The changing chemical codes of the colony provide a constant challenge to the Paussids, and individual beetles exchange chemicals continuously to update one another with the most efficient keys for unlocking and rewriting the ants’ programming. However, the simple feat of living undetected amongst the ants is left to the Paussid’s secret weapon: a refinement of their ancestral scent that Bianca has detected and become fascinated by.

Portia has listened carefully as Bianca sets out her plan. The scheme seems somewhere in between dangerous and suicidal. It calls for her and her cohorts to seek out the ant column and ambush it, to walk straight into it past the multitude of sentries as though they were not there. Portia is already considering the possibilities: an attack from above, dropping from the branches or from a scaffolding of webbing, plunging into that advancing torrent of insect bodies. Bianca, of course, has already thought this part through. They will find the column when it is halted for the night in a vast fortress made of the bodies of its soldiers.

I have developed something new
, Bianca explains.
Armour for you. But you will only be able to don it when you are about to make your attack.

Armour strong enough to ward off the ants?
Portia is justifiably doubtful. There are too many weak points on a spider’s body; there are too many joints that the ants can seize upon.

Nothing so crude.
Bianca always did like keeping her secrets.
These Paussids, these beetles, they can walk through the ant colonies like the wind. So will you.

Portia’s uncertainty communicates itself through the anxious twitching of her palps.
And I will kill them, then? As many as I can? Will that be enough?

Bianca’s stance says otherwise.
I had considered it, but even you, sister, could not stop them in such a way, I fear. There are just too many. Even if my protection kept you safe for that long, you could kill ants all day and all night, and still there would be more. You would not keep their army away from Great Nest.

Then what?
Portia demands.

There is a new weapon. If it works . . .
Bianca stamps out her annoyance.
There is no way of testing it but to use it. It works on these little colonies here, but the invaders are different, more complex, less vulnerable. You will simply have to hope that I am correct. You understand what I am asking of you – for our sisterhood, for our home?

Portia considers the fall of Seven Trees: the flames, the ravenous horde of insects, the shrivelling bodies of those who were too slow or too conscientious to escape. Fear is a universal emotion, and she feels it keenly, desperately wanting to flee that image, never to have to face the ants again. Stronger than fear are the bonds of community, of kinship, of loyalty to her peer group and her people. All those generations of reinforcement, through the success of those ancestors most inspired by the virus to cooperate with their own kind, now come to the fore. There comes a time when someone must do what must be done. Portia is a warrior trained and indoctrinated from an early age so that now, in this time of need, she will be willing to give up her life for the survival of the greater entity.

When?
she asks Bianca.

Sooner is better. Gather your chosen; be ready to leave Great Nest in the morning. For tonight the city is yours. You have laid eggs?

Portia answers in the affirmative. She has no clutch within her ready for a male’s attentions, but she has laid several in the past. Her heritage, genetic and learned, will be preserved if Great Nest itself is. In the grander scheme of things, that means that she will have won.

That night, Portia seeks out other warriors, veteran females she knows she can rely on. Many are from her own peer group, but not all. There are others she has fought alongside – whom she has sometimes fought against, in displays of dominance – whom she respects, and who respect her. Each one she approaches cautiously, feeling her way, telegraphing her intent, paying out Bianca’s plan length by length until she is sure of them. Some refuse – either they are not persuaded by the plan, or they lack the requisite degree of courage, which is, after all, near-total fearlessness; a devotion to duty almost as blind as that of the ants themselves.

Soon enough Portia has her followers, though, each one then taking to the high roads of Great Nest to make the most of this night, before the morning calls upon them to muster. Some will resort to the company of their peer groups, others seek out entertainment – the dances of males, the glittering art of weavers. Those who are ready will let themselves be wooed, then deposit a clutch of eggs in their peer house, so as to preserve as much of themselves as they can. Portia herself has learned many things since her last laying, and feels some remorse that those Understandings, those discrete packets of knowledge, will be lost when she is lost.

She goes to temple again, seeking that fugitive calm that her devotions bring, but now she remembers what Bianca has said: that the voice of the Messenger is not alone, that there are faint whisperings in the crystal that worry the priestesses. Just as she has always believed that the mathematical perfection of the message must have some greater, transcendent significance beyond the mere numbers that compose it, so this new development surely has some wider meaning too vast to be grasped by a poor spider knotting and spinning that familiar tally of equations and solutions. What, then, does it mean? Nothing good, she feels. Nothing good.

Late that night, she sits in the highest reaches of Great Nest, staring at the stars and wondering which point of light up there is whispering incomprehensible secrets to the crystals now.

3.7
WAR IN HEAVEN

Kern had severed all contact, leaving the mutineers’ shuttle to glide on towards the green planet, eroding the vast intervening distances a second at a time. Holsten did his best to sleep, crouching awkwardly on a chair that was ideally designed to cushion the stresses of deceleration but very little else.

He drifted in and out of slumber, because Kern’s absence had not shut down radio communications. He had no idea who fired the first linguistic shot, but he was constantly being woken by a running argument between Karst – on the pursuing shuttle – and whoever was manning the mutineers’ comms at the time.

Karst was his usual dogmatic self, the voice of the
Gilgamesh
with the authority of the whole human race behind him (via its unelected representative, Vrie Guyen). He demanded unconditional surrender, threatened them with a space-borne destruction even Holsten knew the shuttles were not capable of, vicariously invoked the dormant satellite’s wrath and, when all else failed, descended to personal abuse. Holsten developed the idea that Guyen was holding Karst personally responsible for the mutineers’ escape.

There was mention made of him and Lain, however – that was the only positive. Apparently Karst’s orders did include recovery of the hostages at some level, though possibly not top priority. He demanded to speak to them, to be sure they were still alive. Lain shared a few acid words with him that both satisfied him on that issue and dissuaded him from asking any more. He continued to include their return unharmed in his list of monomaniac demands, which was almost touching.

The mutineers, for their part, bombarded Karst with their own demands and dogma, going into considerable detail about the difficulties the moon colony would face, and asserting the lack of need for it. Karst countered with the same reasons Lain had already given, albeit less coherently, sounding very much like a man parroting someone else’s words.

‘Why did they even give chase?’ Holsten asked Lain wearily, after this slanging match over the comms had finally defeated any possible chance of further sleep. ‘Why not just let us go, if they know how doomed this whole venture is? It’s not just for us two, surely?’

‘It’s not for
you
, anyway,’ she riposted. Then she relented, ‘I . . . Guyen takes things personally.’ She said it with an odd twist, so that he wondered just what her experience of this might be. ‘But it’s more than that. I accessed the Key Crew Aptitudes, once, in the
Gilgamesh
’s records.’

‘Command access only,’ Holsten noted.

‘I’d be a pisspoor chief engineer if that could stop me. I wrote most of the access scaffolding. You ever wonder what our lord and master scored so high on, that he got this job?’

‘Well
now
I’m wondering.’

‘Long-term planning, if you can believe it. The ability to take a goal and work towards it through however many intervening steps. He’s one of those people who’s always four moves ahead. So if he’s doing this now, it may look just like pique but he’s got a reason.’

Holsten considered that for some while, whilst the mutineers continued ranting at Karst. ‘Competition,’ he said. ‘If by chance we get past the satellite and on to the planet . . . and survive the monster spiders.’

‘Yeah, maybe,’ Lain agreed. ‘We sod off to Terraform B, or whatever the place is, then come back a few centuries later to find Scoles is well established on the planet, maybe he even cuts a deal with Kern. Guyen . . .’

‘Guyen wants the planet,’ Holsten finished. ‘Guyen is looking to beat the satellite and take over the planet. But he doesn’t want to have to fight anyone else for it, as well.’

‘And more – if Scoles does set up there and sends a message saying,
Come on down, the spiders are lovely
, then what if a load of people want to join him?’

‘So, basically, Guyen can’t ignore us.’ And a thought came to Holsten on the tail end of that: ‘So basically the best result for him, other than surrender, would be Kern blowing us to bits.’

Lain’s eyebrows went up and her eyes flicked over to the wrangle in progress at the comms.

‘Can we hear if Karst is transmitting to the satellite?’ Holsten asked her.

‘Don’t know. I can have a go at finding out, if these clowns’ll let me try.’

‘I think you should.’

‘Yeah, I think you’re right.’ Lain unclipped her webbing and pushed herself carefully from the seat, attracting the immediate attention of most of the mutineers. ‘Listen, can I have the comms for a minute? Only—’

‘He’s launched a drone!’ the pilot shouted.

‘Show me.’ Scoles lunged forwards, got a hand on Lain’s shoulder and simply shoved her, breaking her grip on Holsten’s seat back and sending her tumbling towards the back of the cabin. ‘And she doesn’t get
near
anything until we know what’s going on.’

There was a clatter and an oath as Lain hit something and scrabbled for purchase to prevent a rebound.

‘Since when do these shuttles carry drones?’ Nessel was asking.

‘Some of them are equipped for payload, not cargo,’ came Lain’s voice from behind them.

‘What can the drones do?’ someone demanded.

‘Might be armed,’ the pilot explained tensely. ‘Or they could just ram us with it. A drone can accelerate faster than us, and we’re starting deceleration anyway. They must have launched it now because they’re close enough.’

‘Why are we letting them catch us?’ another mutineer yelled at him.

‘Because we need to slow down if you don’t want to make a big hole in the planet when we try to land, you prick!’ the pilot yelled back. ‘Now get strapped in!’

Amateurs
, Holsten thought with creeping horror
. I am on a spacecraft intending to make a landing on an unknown planet, and not one of them knows what they’re doing.

Abruptly
down
was shifting towards the front of the shuttle as the pilot fought to cut their speed. Holsten scrabbled with his seat, sliding forwards until he got a grip.

‘Drone’s closing fast,’ Nessel reported. Holsten remembered how swiftly the little unmanned craft had closed the distance between the
Gilgamesh
and the planet, the time before.

‘Listen,’ came Lain’s forlorn voice as she worked her way forward again, hand over hand, ‘was there any traffic between Karst and the satellite?’

‘What?’ Scoles demanded, and then an ear-wrenching screech erupted from the comms that had everyone clutching at their ears, Nessel slapping at the controls.

Holsten saw Scoles’s lips shape the words,
Shut it down!
It was plain from Nessel’s frustration that she couldn’t.

Then the sound was gone, but it had paved the way for a familiar voice.

It came over the speakers with the booming volume of a wrathful god, uttering the elegant, ancient syllables of Imperial C as though it was pronouncing the doom of every hearer. Which it was.

Holsten translated the words as:
This is Doctor Avrana Kern. You have been warned not to return to my planet. I do not care about your spiders. I do not care about your images. This planet is my experiment and I will not have it tainted. If my people and their civilization are gone, then it is Kern’s World that is my legacy, not you who merely ape our glories. You claim to be human. Go be human elsewhere.

‘She’s going to destroy us!’ he shouted. For a long moment the mutineers just stared at one another.

Lain hung on to the seat backs, pale and drawn, awaiting developments. ‘So this is it, then?’ she groaned.

‘That’s not what she was saying,’ Nessel objected, although precious few people were listening to her.

Welcome to the classicist’s lot
, Holsten thought drily. He closed his eyes.

‘The shuttle’s changing course,’ the pilot announced.

‘Bring it back on. Get us down to the planet, no matter what—’ Scoles started.

The pilot interrupted him. ‘The other shuttle. The Security shuttle. We’re still good, but they’re . . .’ He squinted at his instruments. ‘Drifting? And the drone’s off now . . . it’s not following our course adjustments. It’s going to overshoot us.’

‘Unless that’s what they want. Maybe it’s a bomb,’ Scoles suggested.

‘Going to have to be an almighty big bomb to get us at the distances we’re talking about,’ the pilot said.

‘It’s Kern,’ Lain declared. Seeing their baffled faces she explained, ‘That warning wasn’t just for us; it was for everyone. Kern’s got them – she’s seized their systems. But she can’t seize ours.’