Sufficiently Advanced Technology (Inverse Shadows) (33 page)

The Scion advanced on Elyria, his face hidden inside the cloak. Joshua tried to stagger to his feet, despite the shock, knowing that it was futile. He couldn’t beat a Scion in open combat... he struggled, trying to think of a tactic that might work, but nothing came to mind. The Scion reached for Elyria... and she sprayed something in his face. He stumbled backwards, coughing, and collapsed to the ground. A moment later, Elyria turned and helped Joshua to his feet.

It was hard to ask the question, but he needed to know. “What... what did you do to him?”

“He still needed to breathe,” Elyria said, and winked at him. A flash of lightning revealed the Scion on the ground, sleeping like a baby. “I hit him with knock-out gas. Don’t go too close or it might get you too.”

Joshua had to laugh. He’d known that magic didn’t save a person from needing to breathe, but he’d never considered the implications. What if someone removed all the air from around a magician? He’d suffocate to death before he could use a spell to fix the problem, assuming he realised what was happening. His chuckles died away as he looked at the Scion. The man was harmless now, but how long would it be before he woke up?

“I’m not sure,” Elyria admitted, when he asked. “Baseline humans should be asleep for several hours, but your people have been meddling with your own bodies. And the gas wouldn’t affect a Confederation citizen at all.”

“Then we kill him,” Joshua said. He stepped forward, ready to bring his foot down on the Scion’s throat. “There isn’t any other choice.”

Elyria stared at him. “He’s harmless!”

“He’s harmless
now
,” Joshua said. “When he wakes up, he won’t try to take us alive. We have to kill him now, while we have the chance.”

Looking at her, he felt a sudden hot flash of envy. It was so
easy
for the Confederation; they didn’t have to destroy their foes and lay waste to their worlds to win. Their technology allowed them to take prisoners and isolate them permanently, if necessary, or keep criminals under control without having to risk other lives. And they didn’t have to worry about mad magicians who might be capable of so much more than rational magicians.

Maybe they could have blocked the Scion’s access to his powers, or simply taken him into orbit, if they’d had a working shuttle. But they didn’t.

“Leave him,” Elyria said, finally.

Joshua swallowed hard, but obeyed as they continued to head further down the valley. The rain was starting to fall again, sending streams of water running past their feet as they walked onwards. Joshua glanced behind them nervously, realising that they were in danger of being struck with a flash flood, and then led her up the side of the valley. They would find it harder going to pick their way through the trees, but it would be safer than the valley if the rain kept falling.

“Crap,” Elyria said, suddenly.

Another flash of lightning blazed through the sky, revealing three more cloaked figures surrounding them. They had to have used very capable stealth spells, Joshua realised; he hadn’t sensed their approach... he realised his own mistake and swore out loud. Elyria had left enough of her blood back in the shuttle to allow a small
army
of Scions to track her.

He lifted a hand, intending to cast a diversionary spell while shoving Elyria away from them, but it was too late. There was a single brilliant flash of light and the world plunged into darkness.

CHAPTER
T
WENTY-
S
EVEN

Dacron was dreaming, or so he thought. Humans often had nightmares, but it wasn’t something an embodied AI experienced, not when AIs had no subconscious to provide the spur for bad dreams. But he was still having strange images flashing through his mind, images that brought with them an indefinable sense of dread. And then his eyes snapped open and he found himself looking up into the face of Master Faye.

The magician looked... tired. No, Dacron realised, it was more than that. He’d been trying to use his magic to peer into Dacron’s mind, only to discover that most of his memories were flickering impressions of what it had been like to be part of the AI
Gestalt
. Even Dacron had trouble comprehending the memories and he’d
been
an AI. Master Faye would have been confronted with a blinding haze of endless thoughts and unlimited power. None of it would have made sense to him.

“I am awake,” Dacron said. He had clearly been damaged, because part of him wasn’t sure if that was actually true. His body felt heavy, almost uncomfortable. “What have you done to me?”

“You had a sensitivity to the magic field,” Master Faye said. He sounded very tired. “I have warded you to ensure that you cannot use magic in this room.”

Dacron said a spell out loud. Nothing happened, not even the faint sense of mighty powers shifting around him when he intentionally mispronounced a handful of words. Master Faye gave him an odd look, and then smiled when he realised that his wards had worked. It struck Dacron that Master Faye hadn’t been
certain
that his spell would work, which was odd. Surely he’d know by now how to keep someone else from working magic...

“It will all be over soon,” Master Faye added. “Your settlement has already been destroyed.”

There was nothing in his voice to suggest that he was lying. “You are provoking people vastly more powerful than yourself,” Dacron said, calmly and rationally. “The Confederation covers a span of space you cannot even begin to imagine, with technology that can duplicate most feats of magic and weapons that can turn your entire star system into debris. What exactly do you hope to gain?”

He studied Master Faye closely. The magician would also know, he suspected, that Dacron and the AIs had solved most of the mysteries behind the magic spells. Given time, he was sure that the AIs would find ways to magic-proof technology and allow the Confederation to operate on Darius without impediment. And then the whole social system that kept the Pillars on top would be broken, easily. Away from Darius, they would have as little power as the rest of the human race.

“You must not be allowed to challenge stability,” Master Faye said, finally. “We have to prevent you.”

“I would not describe your world as stable,” Dacron pointed out, mildly. At least he could ask the direct questions now. “Your history consists of islands of stability that inevitably collapse into chaos, while magicians struggle for power and the common folk keep their heads down. I would have thought that you would be glad of the chance to ensure that your people have a better life in the future.”

“Stability must be maintained,” Master Faye said. “We must rule.”

“But
why
must you rule?” Dacron asked. He kept his tone level. “Human history is full of groups who believed that greater strength gave them the right to rule. And groups who believed that people with one skin colour were superior to people with different skin colours. Your magic does not confer wisdom – and even if it did, would you still have the moral right to rule?”

Master Faye studied him, thoughtfully. “Does your state not have a legend about mice attempting to bell the cat?”

Dacron didn’t recognise the legend, so he shook his head. “The mice were afraid of the cat,” Master Faye said, sounding more normal, “so they had the bright idea of putting a bell around the cat’s neck to inform them when the cat was nearby. But then they had the problem of actually putting the bell on the cat’s neck without the cat’s cooperation.”

“You mean that your Minors could not restrain you if you wanted to do something they didn’t want you to do,” Dacron said. It was an attitude thoroughly alien to the Confederation – but then, the average Confederation citizen was no more or less powerful than everyone else. “Can you not see that they need to make choices about their own destiny?”

“Their choices are meaningless,” Master Faye said. “Stability must be maintained.”

Dacron’s eyes narrowed. He should have seen it at once. “Who am I talking to?”

Master Faye looked at him, puzzled. “What do you mean?”

“Your society has rules and yet the magicians are above the rules,” Dacron said. Joshua had been quite willing to violate taboos as soon as he’d come into his magic. “You shouldn’t have enjoyed several decades of unquestioned rule without a few hundred Scions coming to try to take the city from you.”

“I am powerful,” Master Faye said, flatly.

“But not powerful enough,” Dacron said. “Some outside force has been tampering with your society.” He smiled as he put the pieces together. “You have stability, but you never climb any higher along the scale of technological development. You have a tradition of cities being taken by force, yet the number of takeover attempts seem to be very small compared to the number of Scions. And yet there is a pattern in which successful cities eventually fall to mad magicians who undo all of the good work of their predecessors.”

He paused. “And you have a taboo against breeding new magicians,” he added. He wasn’t sure how that fitted into the mystery, but he was sure he would solve it sooner or later. “I think we offered you something that convinced the outside force that we could no longer be tolerated on Darius.”

Dacron’s smile widened. “What would happen, I wonder, if you and the other decent magicians were rejuvenated?”

“I control myself,” Master Faye snapped. “Do you think I would allow some outside force to control me?”

“Your actions make no sense,” Dacron pointed out. “Even from a purely selfish point of view, lashing out at us is insane. You surely
want
to live for hundreds of years – and besides, you have to know that we would be able to crush you.”

He met Master Faye’s eyes. “And I think you care about your people, more than you want to admit,” he added. “You take your duties seriously; you thrashed Joshua for violating their privacy... why would you do something that threatens them as well as yourself? Your actions make no sense.”

Or perhaps they made too much sense
, he thought, in the privacy of his own head. The damage inflicted on Joshua’s mind might just be a side-effect of part of his mentality interacting with the quantum foam. It was quite possible that the unknown force behind magic could interfere with the thoughts of magicians, maybe even control them directly, without ever having to show itself. Joshua demonstrated that magicians lost their scruples very quickly. Maybe they were guided in a specific direction... that might explain the oddly repetitive nature of Darius’s history.

It was possible, he decided, for a human tyrant to resist his people wanting to be free. Human history was certainly full of examples, but Master Faye hadn’t seemed to be one of those. And the stability he kept mentioning wasn’t stable at all... not from a human point of view. An AI, on the other hand, would see a certain stability as the system played out, time and time again. No, he wasn’t entirely in his right mind.

“Your theories are absurd,” Master Faye said, as he stood up. “Your people will be banished from our world.”

Dacron looked up at him. “And how do you intend to enforce that?”

Master Faye tossed him a single furious look and walked out, leaving Dacron alone. There was no time to waste; Dacron tested his chains and found that they were solid, too strong for even an enhanced human body to break. He pulled at them anyway, wondering if he could pull them right out of the wall, but nothing happened. The prison cell had clearly been designed to hold other magicians.

Curious
, he thought, as he started to concentrate. Humans spent most of their adolescence learning to control the biomods as they matured inside human bodies, but Dacron had had only a few short months to learn. Even so, mastering the use of painkilling nerves was simple enough. All he really needed to do was flex his thoughts in a simple manner...

Bracing himself, feeling his arms going numb, he pulled at the chains as hard as he could. For a long moment, it seemed as if he would fail, and then he saw the bones in his hand start to break. A baseline human would have been screaming in pain, but Dacron felt nothing apart from the frozen numbness that had overwhelmed him. Once his hands were free, he stood up, silently relieved that Master Faye hadn’t thought to chain his legs. It would have made escape much harder.

The outside door was made of wood, but one solid kick broke the lock, allowing Dacron to stumble out into the corridor. A servant turned to face him, her eyes going wide, just before he kicked her and sent her falling to the ground. He kicked her a second time, in the head, then stopped – dead.
His
biomods were already working to repair the damage he’d inflicted on his hands, but the serving girl had no such augmentation. Broken bones always took longer to heal than anything else, even
with
augmentation. The realisation that his human response – his very aggressive human response – had crippled an innocent victim chilled him to the bone. She might remain crippled for life.

Or maybe there was another option. Outside the prison, his magic worked; rapidly, he cast a healing spell, followed quickly by a protective spell. Master Faye’s book of spells had outlined it for him, but the AIs had managed to improve it considerably. Unlike the one that Master Faye had shown him, it provided far more powerful protection and was a great deal harder to break. Dacron looked down at his hands, wondered vaguely how much damage he’d done to himself even
with
biomods designed to adapt quickly to changes in the local environment, and then realised that it didn’t matter. He had to get to the base... perhaps Master Faye had been lying when he said that it had been destroyed. Or perhaps Jorlem had managed to pull the team out in time...

The main door refused to open when he pulled at it. Dacron kicked it savagely, but it didn’t break. An attempt to break one of the windows failed too; he generated a cutting spell that should have sliced through the wood and stone like a fission blade, but it simply bounced off Master Faye’s wards. Shaking his head, Dacron turned and headed for the stairs. He would just have to convince Master Faye to lower the wards, or kill him. Two more servants appeared, running towards him with deadly intent, and he stunned both of them with simple spells. They fell to the ground and he walked past them, knowing that Master Faye presumably already knew that he was free. It would be relatively simple to adapt the wards to warn their creator when someone attacked them.