Sufficiently Advanced Technology (Inverse Shadows) (30 page)

Dacron listened absently as the AIs expounded on Joshua’s exploits as a young magician. It was hard to understand why he might have wanted to spy on girls, but then he
was
born to a more restrictive society than the Confederation. The Confederation asked that only consenting adults be involved; Darius had a complex network of social obligations that made it harder for young people to indulge themselves. Contraception was very limited, outside of magicians; they might not even have condoms. If they hadn’t had a high infant mortality rate, they might have suffered a major population explosion.

“But I have no difficulty in controlling magic,” he said, finally. “Why did he have so many problems?”

“We have questioned him about magic words, now that we have established that his powers do not work in high orbit,” the AIs said. They’d cross-checked everything Dacron had told them with Joshua, allowing them to build up a much greater dictionary of the magic language. “It seems evident that while he understands the words he uses, he does not understand the alphabet – the programming language – underneath them. Indeed, he isn’t even aware of its existence. The thought of respelling a word to produce a different effect was alien to him. That is... unusual.”

Dacron nodded. English – which had been the basis for Standard, as well as the language spoken on Darius – had been remarkably flexible, unlike many other languages. It allowed for a certain degree of precision as well as rearranging the language and adopting words from other languages. Other, more restrictive, languages had actually impeded social development. It had been a trick commonly used by colony worlds that didn’t intend to allow technology to reappear after they destroyed their colony ship. Sometimes it worked, at least until the Confederation or someone more hostile arrived; sometimes it led to a bitter civil war years after the original landing.

But it shouldn’t have happened to Darius. They certainly should have been capable of analysing their magic, even if modern science didn’t work on their world. Admittedly, the AIs were vastly smarter than any combination of humans, and they had plenty of other knowledge to draw on in their vast datafiles, but surely someone should have done more over a few thousand years. The more he looked at Darius, the more he thought that the whole planet had been carefully structured to prevent actual social development. It was quite likely that Warlock’s Bane, a highly-successful city, would be crushed when the next Pillar arrived.

“That seems to be the pattern,” the AIs agreed. “And that leads to another question. Why is that the pattern?”

They paused, significantly. “It is possible that the odd damage inflicted on Joshua’s mind might lead to paranoia, if not outright insanity,” they added. “That might explain why Scions cannot work together as a group.”

Dacron nodded. “Humans are strange,” he said, “and to think that they created
us
.”

He paused. “Do you think I should attend the meeting with the bookseller?”

“We think it might be interesting,” the AIs said. “We will watch it for as long as we can.”

“Good,” Dacron said. “And when do you want me back at the shuttle?”

“Tomorrow you can work more magic there,” the AIs said. “And then your produce can be moved to the space station for analysis.”

Dacron nodded and headed downstairs, towards where the food was being cooked by a pair of local servants. Master Faye had insisted on supplying them, probably intending to have them act as spies; Jorlem had insisted that nothing of importance was to be discussed aloud. A second problem was that they couldn’t ward the building against magical spying, even though Dacron thought he understood the theory. It would have also prevented Confederation technology from working at all.

He took a bowl of stew and sat down to eat it, considering the problem. It was quite easy for equipment to be damaged by outside energies, but it should have been possible to analyse the energy, work out what it was and then build something to protect against it. Magic, however, seemed to be difficult to analyse. So far, nothing from a basic faraday cage to a focused force field provided any protection to modern technology. And there was no way to tell just
what
the magic was doing. The technology just...
glitched
.

Adam had outlined a theory from studying the Ancient worlds. Reality itself didn’t work the same way on the dead worlds, he’d claimed, and then argued that technology that depended on a constant structure of physical laws would simply fail to work if those laws kept changing. It was possible that technology glitched every time the local structure of reality changed... which
would
tie in with the projected effects of manipulating the quantum foam. But it seemed too big for a human mind to comprehend. Could it be possible that someone might alter a universal constant and destroy the entire universe?

Dacron pushed the thought aside as he finished the stew and headed outside, picking up his hooded coat from behind the door. Hardly anyone walked out after dark unless they had a very good reason; there were certainly no streetlights or anything else to light the city. The shadows clung to the walls, almost as if they were alive, but Dacron had no difficulty seeing through them. They were nothing more than illusions caused by the darkness.

High overhead, the skies blazed with twinkling stars. It was strange to realise that Darius’s population had managed to deduce that they lived on a sphere, but they had never managed to work out that the stars were other suns, just a long way away. But who knew what would have happened on Earth if there had been no moon, or asteroid belts to help bootstrap the human race into space? It was quite possible that humanity would never have been able to leave its homeworld, let alone build the Confederation. And then another alien race would have arrived and humanity would have found itself at their mercy.

The market was closed up as he approached, the shops shut and carts moved away, or covered with sheets to protect them from overnight rain. Dacron heard the sound of snoring from one of the carts and realised that the owner was inside, either guarding his goods or simply too cheap to buy a room in an inn for the night. Or maybe he was just hiding from his wife. The bookseller’s cart was at the far end of the street, with a faint light showing from the window. Dacron muttered a quick update to the AIs and then stepped up to the cart, knocking on the door. A moment later, it opened and he was beckoned inside.

Dacron hadn’t exactly believed the report that stated that the cart was bigger on the inside than on the outside. He had known better than to think that Elyria would
lie
, yet the report had been completely unbelievable. How could
anyone
believe it to be true? And yet the moment he stepped inside, he realised that Elyria had – if anything – understated the matter. The bookshelves ran into the distance, further than the eye could see. There were
thousands
of books in a cart smaller than a basic shuttlecraft.

The bookseller shook his hand, nervously. “Welcome,” he said, as he removed a pile of books from a wooden chair and motioned for Dacron to sit down. “This is the only place I can talk to you freely.”

Dacron looked around, feeling magic fizzing everywhere. “This room is warded, I assume,” he said. “Do you believe that someone will spy on us?”

“Someone is already spying on you,” the bookseller said. There was a long pause. “You come from another world, don’t you?”

“... Yes,” Dacron said, finally. He was surprised – and more than a little puzzled. The only locals who knew the full story were Master Faye and his apprentice. Everyone else should know nothing more than that they were rich strangers from out of town. “How... ?”

“The Guild works hard to keep knowledge flowing around the world,” the bookseller said. “We know that we are not native to this world. Do we come from your world?”

“It is probable,” Dacron said. They had believed that all knowledge of Darius’s origins was lost. “How did you manage to preserve the knowledge of your own origins?”

“I can only tell you what has been passed down the ages,” the bookseller admitted. “The story claims that we were hoping to find a new land to call our own. But when we arrived, most of the population went mad. Much knowledge was destroyed in that terrible time, before the first magicians provided a stability, of sorts. The guild had managed to keep the knowledge of how to produce a printing press, but little else. We set ourselves the task of recording all of the remaining knowledge, as well as everything new.”

“Interesting,” Dacron said, after a moment. Passing information down through history verbally was often subject to information degradation. The written word, on the other hand, tended to survive longer. “How far back do your records go?”

“We have kept history for over two
thousand
years,” the bookseller said. There was a hint of very definite pride in his voice. “No one else records history any further back than two
hundred
years.”

Dacron thought, rapidly. Simple logic suggested that Darius had to be much older, at least assuming that the colony ship had left Earth during the First Expansion Era. But a ship from that time could never have
reached
Darius, certainly not without ending its voyage at any of the countless habitable worlds between Earth and Darius. The most logical solution was that someone – almost certainly an Elder race – had transported the ship directly to Darius, probably by creating a wormhole. It was relatively simple to use a wormhole to jump
into
the future. Thousands of years would have passed during the colony ship’s voyage through the wormhole. Done properly, they might never have realised that they’d been redirected.

“We know very little about the world we left,” the bookseller said, after a moment. “There were some suggestions that it had been destroyed, but we do not know.”

“Earth... Earth abides,” Dacron said. The Thule had bombarded humanity’s homeworld savagely during the opening stages of the Thule War. Later, the Confederation had embarked upon a massive restoration project, but defeating the lethal nanotech the Thule had introduced to Earth had been tricky. Even now, there were few settlements on humanity’s homeworld. “How did you know about us?”

The bookseller looked embarrassed. “I caught one of your people,” he reminded Dacron. “Master Faye should have killed her, or enslaved her; forgery is a very serious offence. Instead, he treated you all well, so I became curious and spied on you. And then I worked out the truth. You found us again, after all those years.”

“Yes,” Dacron said. He would have to report this development to Jorlem. They’d thought that no one on the planet knew the truth about the planet’s origins. “There is a whole human community out there that will welcome you.”

“Good, because this world is dying,” the bookseller said. He looked up, sharply. “And you’re in terrible danger.”

Dacron blinked. “We are?”

“You are,” the bookseller said. “Master Faye is already planning your destruction. Or didn’t you realise that he was stalling when you negotiated with him?”

“But why?” Dacron asked. “Why... ?”

“It always happens,” the bookseller said. “The Pillars destroy all hope of stability. And
you
are the greatest threat of all to their order.”

CHAPTER
T
WENTY-
F
IVE

Dacron took a moment to process all that he’d heard. “The Pillars lash out at the rest of the population,” he said, finally. “That’s why there is no real stability.”

“Correct,” the bookseller said. “How much progress can we make when society is upended time and time again?”

That fitted in with what they’d already deduced – and early human history, although
that
hadn’t included magic. The states that levied high taxes either stagnated or were defeated by their neighbours who became richer after practising smarter economic policies. But the Pillars were effectively all-powerful within their bailiwicks and could wreck them without the slightest hope of anyone saying no. Just because Master Faye was an enlightened absolute ruler didn’t mean that his successor would be the same.

“You’re saying that he’s planning to attack us,” he said, grimly. “How?”

“The Pillars don’t work together very well, but they’ll cooperate on something like this,” the bookseller warned. “We think he’s going to recruit a few Scions – lower-level ones, mainly – and send them against you. Those of you who survive the first attack will probably be quickly murdered.”

Dacron winced. The locals had
no
idea how much firepower could be unleashed against Darius by the
Hamilton
, let alone a Peacekeeper planetoid. If worst came to worst, a supernova torpedo would detonate the star and Darius would be vaporised. But he knew that the Confederation was unlikely to reach for the hammer at once, particularly if the
Hamilton
was untouched. They’d probably fall back, consider what they’d learned and then plan a return to Darius. Master Faye might assume that would be the end of the matter, or... or he might have a plan for striking the starship out of orbit.

That can’t be possible
, he thought, grimly.
If magic doesn’t work outside low orbit, they couldn’t even reach Hamilton
.

“They want to keep their little paradise,” the bookseller said. “And we need your help.” He looked up at Dacron, pleadingly. “Can you help us?”

“We would be delighted to help,” Dacron said, honestly. The Interventionists would be more than willing to help – and as Darius was a human-settled planet, there would be no objections from the Isolationists or the Darwinists. Besides, their best estimate of Darius’s population was little more than fifty million. A couple of cityships could take them onboard and leave Darius behind forever. Indeed, it might be the best possible solution. “But how do you even exist?”

The bookseller smirked. “There are hundreds of guilds that reach outside the cities,” he said, seriously. “They’re quietly encouraged by us, because they help preserve knowledge, and the smarter Pillars tolerate their existence. As far as most of them know, the Booksellers Guild is just another guild. They don’t see what hides behind our travels.