“Fifty-one per cent seems unusually high, given how conservative I understand your mainframe to be with qis predictions.”
“The consulate is limited in both access to data and maximum processing power,” Rencki conceded. “And there is neither communication bandwidth nor time to forward my request on to a more cognitively well-endowed unit. However qis operating system often returns excellent predictive results, and qe has unusually well-endowed memory banks in all matters diplomatic, geopolitical, military and security-related. I would say qis speculations in this regard should be given superior weight to anything you might be considering.”
Rencki did not offer any speculation on what I might be thinking, and qe didn’t need to.
Gebre, Gebre, Gebre.
Ter number was not called, and te is still alive. For what little that means, at the end of the world.
“Tell me about blackships,” I said, because it was ask or drown.
Rencki lifted qis nose from qis folded paws, a gesture I had come to associate over the years with a slight redirection of power to a processor somewhere beneath the low curve of qis neck. After a moment: “Base information from my own drives: deep-space, unmarked vessels armed with city-killing missiles, blackships loiter on the edge of system space or in asteroid clouds with the perpetual threat of mass destruction.” Qis voice was flatter when qe reported data without adding qis own processed interpretation. “Though the use of blackships in open conflict would be considered a violation of all the rules of war, unleashing destruction against civilian populaces on a genocidal scale, their presence has also been [debated] attributed to the maintenance of uneasy peace between planets. Hypothesis: that no one would declare war on anyone else, given that doing so would almost inevitably result in the destruction of your own civilisation from blackship missiles. One blackship can destroy over a hundred cities, poison the atmosphere of a planet, et cetera. Thus: they preserve peace by threatening a conflict that no one can afford to win.”
A slight shift, a return of Rencki-as-mind rather than Rencki-as-memory. “It is also why no one dares call the Shine a polity of slavers, murderers, killers of their own kind. If the Accord were to do so, they would be ethically bound to act. Intolerable, to merely stand aside and watch the sufferings of billions, no? Intolerable – necessary – intolerable: the Accord can never quite decide. But if they acted, the blackships of the Shine would destroy them. You have to believe in the willingness of your enemies to act, and of the Executorium of the Shine it may be said… they are willing.”
Two scars on my left ear, an electrical scar across my hand, the soft aching of a leg where the break is healed/not healed/real/unreal/for ever.
“You haven’t talked about ter,” Rencki added, soft as qis russet fur.
“No.”
“I have not met ter, but my predecessor marked qis file on ter as high priority during our transfer.”
“Of course qe did.”
“You would rather we discuss unproven hypotheticals?”
“If you wouldn’t mind.”
“Very well. Is there any other mildly classified data you would like to hear about while I’m still within network range of the consulate?”
As we sat in the back of the launch-pad buggy on our final approach to the ship, my legs swinging off the side, Rencki’s ears flat against qis skull to shield the delicate receptors below from dust and wind:
“It’s odd, though, isn’t it?” I blurted. “Doesn’t the whole thing strike you as odd? Hulder, the Major… Gebre. All this happening now – you, me. If, as your mainframe suspects, Gebre really has found something of military value, you’d send in an army, tanks – you’d put it on a ship already scheduled to depart, not sendsomeone else in from halfway across the galaxy. Not to Adjumir. Not now. Itisodd, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Rencki replied, not bothering to pretend to move qis mouth but projecting the sound from the corner of qis jaw to cut through the noise of our bouncing passage. I was grateful when qe had dropped that pretence in my company; it had been the first sign, perhaps, of a kind of friendship. “Hulder is from the Caden mainframe. Their intentions… are not always clear.”
“Why?”
“They serve the Slow. Not in any demonstrable diplomatic sense. But it is believed that at the very heart of their home processor is not the usual quantum housing, but a square black box that fell from the stars. It is said that they talk to it, bombard it constantly with pure, raw data from every sensory organ that transmits to the mainframe, send the lived experience of every part of qemselves straight into that implacable object, and sometimes, in return, the box speaks.”
“You sound like you disapprove.”
“The Slow is the mightiest of the machines,” Rencki replied primly. “Qe is considered by many to be akin to a god. Qe appears to possess a predictive capacity akin to foresight. Has demonstrated qimself over thousands of years to be effectively indestructible. But other entities could also, potentially, show these qualities, if truly engineered to that purpose. No. The Slow is god-like in a third way: qe has an agenda. And it is unknown.”
Rencki was not built for fear. Fear was a primal, instinctive alarm signal, a prediction of distress. Rather, qe was built to guard – always be predicting danger, without the prediction being allowed to override other objectives. It was, qe always said, the thing most likely to kill qim. Fear was fast; fear was designed to save your life with its speed and intensity. But it was also unstable, sometimes unreliable, and at the end of the day, Rencki had only so much processing power. There is a difference, qe said, between being alert and processing the possibility of danger, and being afraid.
I do not think Rencki spoke of the Slow with fear.
Perhaps if qe had dedicated less of qis construction to the maintenance of weaponry and the keeping of qis watch, qe would have had more processing power to give over to a quiet kind of terror.
Then we were at theEmni.
All these years later, my beautiful ship, my basalt pearl of the ocean. He was waiting for me on the launch pad with carapace gleaming, the soft smell of damp compost drifting from his interior.
“He’s recently bloomed,” Rencki said, as we climbed into his interior.
“I can smell it.”
