Daros, page 36
Frim pointed back into the blue tunnel from which she’d emerged. “But I have something else to offer as well. Just as you have lived beyond the death of your race, so too have the Mara Shi. Barely. Your victims, and also your conquerors. We have a chance to set right the wrong done to them. And Homitta can help, I think, although I don’t yet understand how.”
Danger.
Despair.
Koro’s weapon dropped again. “The Mara Shi? They persist? But that is not possible.” She turned to Tuvo and spoke to him. He made a loud, shrill noise, then spoke back to Koro, his words coming out at a furious pace. The two of them conversed quickly for a brief interval. Then Koro turned back to Frim. “Even if you speak truth, then the Mara Shi using Homitta would be no better than the Zeelin using it, or when the Kenthar did the same, long ago. Millions would die. Billions. That is why Homitta may never be used again. The Homitta were bred when the stars were empty. They suited that time, but not this one. They were at first a great Gift, but they have become a terrible weapon. That is the indelible sin of the Kenthar. We must bear it alone, with remorse and atonement. We cannot permit others to repeat it. That would multiply our guilt beyond measure.”
The Sigil at Brecca’s wrist hummed to life. “There is a way,” said Lyra. “My companion, Evon, worked it out with Guzma and confirmed his findings through a year of research and study. None need die. We merely need to guide Homitta. Use its gift sparingly, only where the stars remain empty.”
Koro honked. “That might have been possible once, but no more. It would take a Rood to exert that control. The Kenthar used their last one centuries ago. After that, the Homitta should have slept forever. And yet they persisted in using Homitta without any control, sterilizing worlds, committing genocide against others, just to spread themselves more widely.”
Brecca spoke up. “So that’s what Homitta is? Some kind of terraforming engine?”
“Elaboration. More than that,” replied Lyra. “Homitta were bred to disperse people among the stars. The race that engineered them passed through our galaxy when it was much younger. They met the Kenthar, and they enjoyed and befriended the young, ambitious species. They gave the Kenthar several of the Homitta, embedding one in their world, then placing others in systems the Kenthar might someday reach.”
Koro nodded at this. “The Gift.”
Lyra continued. “The Homitta would modify their target planets to make them suitable for the beings it transported. Unfortunately, that usually included destroying any sentient life forms who already existed on a target world. That was not the intent, though. Early on, the Kenthar were far from any other sentient species, so the worlds they colonized were empty. This was how the Kenthar came to have a core of many homeworlds, all well-suited to their biology.”
“So what’s a Rood?”
“Elaboration. The Roods were control devices, meant to guide the use of Homitta. Koro is right - the Kenthar used all they were given, and that should have ended their expansion. But their scientists discovered a way to trick the Homitta into action without a Rood. That’s when the Kenthar began their wild expansion, destroying whole worlds and populating them with newborn Kenthar.”
“Newborn? Like babies?” Brecca had an image of a world suddenly populated by tiny naked infants.
“Elaboration. No. The Homitta consumes whoever enters, then projects variant paraclones to the targeted new world. The paraclones are generated fully developed, including the stored memories and knowledge of the initial subject.”
Koro was displeased. “Your word for them is ugly. ‘Paraclone’ is blasphemous. We call them Yonithe. The Envoys. The initial subject is Atoik. The Sacrifice.”
Lyra continued. “I accept your moderated nomenclature. Blasphemy is not a concept I understand. Apologies. The Sacrifice, Atoik, is trained with all the knowledge and skills needed to settle the new world and develop necessary basic or even advanced technology and engineering. The Kenthar ships would then arrive as soon as possible to provide additional support.”
Frim spoke up. “I understand, now. That is what the Zeelin want. To use this Homitta to take over all the systems it can access. But this part of the galaxy is densely settled, with multiple cultures established on many worlds. To use Homitta in this way would be to murder entire worlds, entire races.”
Brecca was taken aback. “Your people would do that?”
Frim’s nasal openings flared. “My leaders would not think twice. To them, it is a natural outgrowth of their philosophy. To conquer others in this way would be to prove we were stronger, and that the weaker races deserved to be culled. It is the Principle of Selection.” Frim looked down. “This is why we few Zeelin resist our leaders. This is wrong, and it is evil. The Principle of Selection is false guidance for a sentient and ethical race. Its extremity produces tyranny and dysfunction. Those who live under it have unhappy, controlled lives, forced to do what they are told under threat of death. It is no way to live.”
Koro nodded at this. “We, too, lost our way. The Kenthar had no particular lust for power. We just lost any respect for others. Our culture was dominant, and others were weak. They were unimportant and often annoying or inconvenient. It was easier to end their lives than it was to learn about them and interact with them, to cater to their needs or desires or threats. That is the nature of our great sin. We grew lazy and uncaring in our strength, and from that came our greatest evil.” She turned and spoke to Tuvo, probably filling him in.
Brecca spoke to Lyra. “So how did the Mara Shi survive the colonization?”
“Elaboration. The functioning of the Homitta was mysterious. Usually it wiped worlds clean of sentient life, leaving empty cities and towns behind. But on some worlds, perhaps where it did not perceive the residents as a threat, or perhaps where it failed to recognize their sentience, it let them live, just as it let the non-sentient life persist. The Mara Shi were one such race, that survived the Homitta.”
Brecca thought about this. Frim came over to listen. “So the Mara Shi were left there because Homitta thought they were trees, or cows, or something?”
“Elaboration. It is hard to say why they lived, but they did. The new Kenthar projected by the Homitta suddenly arrived in great numbers, and they began building, farming, mining, smelting. The Mara Shi tried to assert their ownership. To get the newcomers to withdraw, or at least to coexist. The Kenthar would have none of this. They ignored the Mara Shi and took what they wanted, went where they pleased. The Mara Shi resisted, but then the Kenthar fleet arrived with soldiers and heavy weapons. They began a campaign, destroying Mara Shi cities and sending armed teams out to remote settlements. Within a generation, the Mara Shi were reduced to a fraction of their prior numbers. They saw their demise approaching with haste. It is then that they devised their revenge. Revenge, and also an end to the expansion of the Kenthar. An end to the Kenthar entirely.”
“The pathogen,” said Frim. “A weapon both terrible and ingenious.”
“Wait a second,” said Brecca. “You’re telling me that sentient telepathic boxes of meat and goo were able to design pathogens? To fight the Kenthar? They can’t even feed themselves.”
“Elaboration. Guzma is not a Mara Shi. We have seen images of them projected to us from Guzma. They were graceful, sinuous creatures whose jelly-filled bodies traveled on hundreds of iridescent legs. They all died, down to the last one. They are gone from the universe, never to return. Guzma was manufactured by them at the same time as they built the pathogen. His genetic code is tremendously complex. It contains not only biological information for traits and behaviors, but in its many non-coding zones, it records all of Mara Shi history, language, drama, art, literature, music, and culture. And also its science, technology, and engineering. Compressed into a language expressed by the simple patterns of the genetic molecules bound up in Guzma’s cells.”
Brecca was struggling to understand. “Like their DNA? All of that is written in his DNA?”
“Elaboration. Like DNA, but Guzma’s cells use far more complex molecules than your four easily-damaged strands of base pairs. Where your paltry 23 chromosomes code only six billion bits of information, most of it useless garbage, Guzma’s cells hold a billion times that, with none of it wasted.”
Frim spoke. “So we put Guzma through Homitta, and it sacrifices him and sends thousands of copies of him to colonize a planet somewhere.”
“Elaboration. That is almost Evon’s plan, but what you propose has two significant problems. First, the paraguzmas would arrive as powerless and dependent as he is. They would lie on the ground where they appeared and proceed to slowly desiccate and starve. Second, as Koro says, Homitta would project them to settled worlds, and the local populations would almost certainly be murdered by Homitta to make way for Guzma. They would be replaced by blobs of slowly-drying meat scattered around the landscape.”
Brecca imagined that the instruction manual for how to use a Homitta must include this outcome as a major warning. Probably in big red letters.
“So, if we had a Rood, we could avoid that second problem, and just send Guzma, or the paraguzmas, to uninhabited worlds. That avoids the murder part. Except I guess we’d be setting the guzmas up to die.”
“Elaboration. Correct. Once he learned of Guzma’s true nature, Evon went to great lengths to discover or reconstruct a Rood. This was a daunting task, one that he spent a great deal of time and money pursuing. On one of the original Kenthar homeworlds, now populated by the Virtin, one of the Roods survived, unearthed in an excavation. It was stored in a bin at a university with other Kenthar artifacts. He arranged to have it brought here, where he would acquire it and use it to help Guzma restore the Mara Shi. Or at least, a version of them.”
Brecca felt a shiver on her neck. She made a shape with her fingers. “A Rood. Is it about so big, bent, green, with a gem in it?”
“Elaboration. Of course. You have had it all along. It is why Evon was seeking you out when he died. His arrangement was to get it from Corax after you dropped it off, but I detected it as you descended. With the invasion going on, Guzma urged Evon to get to you as quickly as possible to recover it, and to avoid Corax entirely.”
Koro gave an intense noise, almost like a scream. “You have a Rood? You must show us. Tuvo!” She spat out a string of her own language. Tuvo leapt into the air and screamed as well.
Brecca unfastened her pocket and fished out the metal chevron her father had shown her. That was only a few days before, but it felt like forever, a different galaxy and a different life. The Kenthar made a cacophony of noises and spoke to each other. Koro said, “Roods are known only from legends, centuries old. We lost knowledge of their form and design. But it is so beautiful. More so even than I imagined.” Then she lapsed back into her own language, speaking with Tuvo. Some of their words became rhythmic and ceremonial again.
Brecca was glad they were having some kind of transcendent religious experience, but she had another pressing concern. “So, the Rood thing here maybe keeps us from being the evilest mass-murderers the galaxy has ever known, if we can figure out how to use it. But what about your first problem? We can’t just make more Guzmas.”
“Elaboration. The Mara Shi knew the Kenthar would track them down and kill them all. The Kenthar have better sensory organs than nearly any other known sentient species, at least on oxygen-rich liquid water worlds. They’re also able to attune themselves to intelligences and detect them over great distances. That makes them ruthless trackers and hunters.” Brecca might be imagining it, but Koro seemed to stand taller when Lyra said this. Brecca remembered the threat Koro had made. I have your spoor now.
Lyra continued. “That is why the Mara Shi designed Guzma as they did. They needed to make something that was not them. Something hardy, that required almost no nourishment, that had almost no physical needs. That nobody would perceive as a threat, or as food. The Mara Shi were themselves telepathic, and they could feel and sense the flow of time and destiny more strongly than most others, and they imbued Guzma with these traits. And of course, they poured into him all of their knowledge, their culture, their great works, hoping that someday who they were, what they did, and what they valued could live again. Just not in the same form.”
Brecca pondered this. “So, Guzma is kind of like a seed. He has all this information, this potential, but he’s nothing but a hardy nugget, mostly inert, designed to survive until conditions are right and he can grow again.”
“Elaboration. The human preference for metaphor seems inefficient and silly, but that is not a terrible analogy if I understand Earth-based life correctly.”
Brecca ignored this. “So how do we get Guzma to sprout? Can we do that here, before we send him? So that we send whatever he’s supposed to grow into through Homitta, and not just him?”
“Elaboration. That is the plan. Guzma is designed as an aggressive symbiont. The Mara Shi encoded in him an ability to infest and collaborate with all of the various life forms they had encountered, which includes a tremendous variety of genotypes, cell compositions, life mechanics, and biochemical models. He is able to merge his cells into the bodies of others, and he is programmed to detect and disable immune responses and alter his host’s cellular genetics to promote and cement the symbiotic relationship. He goes beyond mere infection and genetic change and causes organisms to consume their older parts and regrow their constituent cells. He and his host merge into a new combined organism with traits and components from both.”
“Well, that’s grotesque. Like, horror holo stuff. He’s a virus?” Brecca made a face. She remembered touching Guzma, and his slime was on the carpet back in the ship. The idea that he could have taken her over and altered her into a slime-covered Breguzma or something was nasty.
“Elaboration. That is a crude and inaccurate approximation. Viruses have less genetic information than their hosts and are able to effect only small changes, usually detrimental and focused on their own reproduction. Guzma has much, much more genetic information than his likely potential hosts, and his purpose is to create a viable mutualist symbiont. One that preserves the library of information that he carries, and in which all cells are remapped and regrown with the new combined genome.”
Brecca had a thought. “Evon was going to do it, wasn’t he? Bond with Guzma, then send himself through Homitta?”
“Elaboration. Yes. He was a very brave and generous being. Also foolhardy and tremendously curious.”
Koro raised both her right hands. “Tuvo will do it. There would be no greater honor, no greater atonement for our great sin, than for the Kenthar to sacrifice themselves to give life back to those whom we murdered. To those who brought about our righteous reprisal and destruction.” She spoke excitedly to Tuvo. Brecca might be imagining it, but Tuvo seemed less keen on the idea than Koro was.
No.
Forbidden.
Taint.
Lyra elaborated. “That is not possible. As part of his archive, Guzma contains copies of the same pathogen that killed the Kenthar. If a Kenthar were to bond with him, the disease would eventually kill both of them. Both of you.”
That would be some kind of poetic ending for two races that had all but destroyed each other, thought Brecca. She decided not to raise that particular point. But the list of possible hosts was shrinking at a disquieting pace. She assumed Lyra was out. She wasn’t a biological organism, and a planet full of sentient spaceships with meat globs plastered to them was unworkable, anyway. She thought that she could volunteer, that it would be the brave thing to do. But she didn’t want to do it. Didn’t want to be infected, didn’t want to die, even if dying let weird copies of her live on and reseed a lost race. She felt a heat rise on her neck and face. No. This was too much to ask.
Frim was looking at Brecca carefully. “I can do it,” she said at last. “I am willing.” Brecca remembered then that Frim could sense her emotions. Frim had sensed her fear, her reluctance. And Frim had stepped forward. Not afraid. Ready to sacrifice. Brecca felt a hot shame rise in her, mixed with relief and gratitude. She reached out to touch Frim’s arm. The Zeelin covered Brecca’s small hand with her large one.
Yes.
Intended.
Foreseen.
Substitution.
Bing, bong. “Argument level: Complex, noble, futile. Argument is invalid. If you had revealed this plan to me, Guzma, I could have told you of its unavoidable failure. Zeelin biology includes high levels of selenium, common in the oceans of their homeworld, but depleted on the Mara Shi homeworld. That element is utterly toxic to Guzma’s cells. Evon learned this weakness through experimentation back on Vonar. There is no way the hosting could succeed. Both would die. I am surprised you did not foresee this outcome.”
Devastation.
Mistaken.
Desperation.
Supplicant.
Brecca?
Friend.
Brecca’s relief faded as fast as it had come. The fear was back. She was the only one left. She felt queasy. She looked around, at the Kenthar, staring at her, at the green wall, and the blue tunnel behind. A tunnel she’d walk into and never leave if she did this. Frim gave her hand a gentle squeeze. It was a comfort. Frim was probably good at that. It came with the whole empath thing.
The prospect reviled her. She tried to force it from her mind.
Painless.
Loving.
Coexistent.
Entwined.
Seriously not helping, Guzma. She swallowed, tried to clear her mind, but hot fear would not subside. Not all the way. This would be the bravest thing she’d ever have the chance to do. Bring back a whole species from extinction. Restore their lives, their culture. Countless Guzbreccas would read from their genes and learn. Recreate art and stories and science, bring the dried-up lifeblood of a whole species back surging into the universe.
