<That may be the entire point. Several attempts have been made to study these creatures in situ; Palasian System was a fairly spectacular failure on many levels, but did at least demonstrate that they will fight to the very end. What we need to learn is whether the clone warriors will discriminate against any one Caste or social group. If such an exception does arise, then we may have discovered who their makers were related to. Logically the ones most like them will be the ones they spare.>
Roche nodded. <What about Cane? How does he fit in?>
<I suspect he knows he is being watched. You know that I released him from his cell on the Midnight, and that he and I colluded to ensure your escape from Sciacca’s World. If he has suspected that I am an agent for someone more powerful, and if he now believes that I am gone, then it will be interesting to see what he does next. And believe me, I will be watching him very closely indeed.>
<Rufo suggested we look at the introns in his genetic code.>
<I know. I have already done so. His introns contain information I cannot interpret. The Crescend and his allies have been alerted to the possibility that this might be important, and will look at it immediately. Cane is, however, the exception to everything we have seen so far. If he is an aberration, a nonaggressive freak, his introns may contain nothing of use. At best, the information may turn out to be misleading.>
That seemed a depressing prospect to Roche. As much as she didn’t want to believe that Cane would betray her, that would be better than drawing erroneous conclusions about the rest of his kind because he comprised a flawed data set.
<So what’s this about Sol System?> she asked.
<Sol System is one of a number in a very old area, long abandoned for lack of resources. It has been fallow for many thousands of years, apart from the odd fanatical splinter group, such as the Sol Apotheosis Movement, and the occasional archaeologist. At least a dozen systems within the region are rumored to be the birthplace of Humanity.>
<And that’s where the clone warriors are converging?>
<It seems so. Along with other forces, now. The Commonwealth of Empires is not the only regional government fearing a disaster from that area. Representatives from many Castes will be there, fearing threats different in name but similar in details.>
<At your urging, no doubt.>
<Indirectly, of course. We expect the clone warriors to attack. They will come with the fleets, hidden or walking in disguise among them.>
<And while everyone is looking to see who they attack first, you’ll be waiting to see who they attack last.>
<Correct. When we have that information, we will be better positioned to retaliate.>
She shook her head. <It seems a bit risky, Box. I mean—>
A chime interrupted her.
“Marine Commander Gent wishes to talk to you,” said Kajic.
<As expected,> put in the Box.
She ignored it. “Okay, Uri, put him through. Voice only, at this end.”
An image of Gent’s face came to her via her implants. He was standing on the bridge of the Starburst; his eyes wandered, having no fixed image of her to latch onto. “I have received a communiqué from—” he began.
“I know, and I appreciate you going out of your way to help us like this.”
Gent looked flustered for a second, then nodded formally. “It is the least we can do.”
Besides which, thought Roche, he was required by law to assist in any regional disaster.
“Well, Commander,” she said, “if that’s all...”
“Not entirely. I wanted to discuss the matter of Auditor Byrne.”
Roche frowned. “What about her?”
“She requested a ship to conduct a sweep of the outer fringes of what’s left of the system. I loaned her the Lucetice-2 for a couple of hours, once it had finished ferrying passengers.”
“I don’t know anything about this.”
“But she said it was your idea.”
“She did?”
“Yes, and seeing as we’ve now lost contact with her, I thought I’d check with you to see what—”
She cut him off. “Give me its location.”
A chart superimposed itself upon Gent’s face. A red ring enclosed a small dot some distance from those marking the squadron. “They’ve drifted a fair way,” said Gent. “Given that we need to move smartly in order to make this rendezvous—”
Again she didn’t give him time to finish. A cold feeling had blossomed in the pit of her stomach. “Uri, I need Lud— fast.”
“Yes, Morgan.”
<Box—>
<I know. I am checking it now.>
<Use the autosurgeon to crack the seals—with my authority so you won’t be traced.>
“Lud here.”
“This is Roche. Do you have genetic records of your clan members?”
“Yes. We keep detailed—”
“I need them. Can you send them to me now?”
“Of course.” The outrigger didn’t argue, even though the puzzlement was evident in his voice. “Give me a second to locate them.”
<Maii?>
<I read nothing,> said the reave. <Nothing at all from that region.>
“Is something wrong, Roche?” Gent looked perversely pleased.
She ignored the question, and his attitude. “Target the Lucence-2, Commander Gent. If I give you the word, I want you to hit it with all you’ve got.”
“What?” His expression wavered between amusement and alarm. “Are you serious?”
“Just do it, Commander. And tell me: how well is that ship armed?”
“Well enough,” he said. “Look, what the hell is going on?”
“Transmitting those codes now,” said Lud.
“Thanks.” The cold feeling was growing. <Box?>
<I have conducted a visual inspection and am taking a genetic sample now. The tissue is extremely dehydrated, suggesting an extended exposure to vacuum.>
<Longer than a day?>
<Much.>
The feeling in her stomach turned to nausea. “Gent—shoot that ship! Now!”
“Are you out of your mind?” Gent bristled, outraged. “I can’t just fire on my own people. I need a reason!”
“How could you possibly know that?”
<I have the test results, Morgan,> said the Box, confirming that the body is neither the outrigger known as Yarrow, nor is it of similar genetic stock to Cane. Auditor Byrne died at least five days ago.>
“Fire, Gent! Fire!”
But the dot on the chart that was Lucence-2 had already begun to move. Too rapidly for pursuit to begin, and much more quickly than Gent’s willingness to fire, it accelerated into the gentle gravitational well of the destroyed system.
Faster and faster it went, until it reached the minimum speed required for a slow-jump; then its hyperspace engines kicked in, space rippled, and—
It was gone.
* * *
Lud was the first to speak.
“Byrne?”
“The clone warrior hid in Yarrow’s all-suit after the ambush around Aro, as he thought,” Roche explained. In hindsight it was all too clear. “But then she killed Byrne when Byrne tried to heal who she thought was Yarrow. The clone warrior took on Byrne’s identity and hid the body in Yarrow’s all-suit, which she then teleoperated the rest of the way. It was she who broadcast the distress call that led me to Mok, and she who manipulated the spine into helping me. She led the attack on Galine Four, she wanted us to be suspicious of Yarrow and she even let us think she had died by letting Yarrow’s suit be destroyed...” Roche shook her head, appalled. “We’re lucky she decided not to stick around.”
<Yes,> said the Box. <It is clear now that she gave up on attack long ago and decided instead to concentrate on escape.>
“My ship—the crew!” Gent was still stunned by the sudden turn of events.
“Face it, Co
mmander. They’re not coming back.”
“You knew this would happen!”
“If it’s a scapegoat you want, look no further than yourself. You let your guard down. You should have checked with me before giving anyone a ship.”
“But I—” Gent stopped, swallowed. “I was not fully aware of the dangers.”
Roche felt almost sorry for him. No one had expected anything like this. “None of us are,” she said, thinking of the Box as well as her.
“So that’s it?” said Haid from the bridge. “She gets away?”
“Not as easily as that.” Roche sat up and fumbled for her shipsuit. Sleep was even farther away than she had thought. “We’re going to follow her.”
“Through hyperspace?” said Gent. “That’s impossible!”
“Not when you know where she’s going.” Roche stood. “Uri, set a course for Sol System, shortest possible route. I want to beat her there if I can, or at least be right behind her when we arrive.”
<This is the correct course of action,> the Box whispered in her mind. She didn’t need it to tell her that.
“Ameidio, get those last few refugees off the ship as soon as possible—in survival capsules if necessary. I want to move within the hour. Maii?”
<Yes, Morgan?>
<I want you to take all we’ve learned about this—everything from Rufo and the irikeii—and give it to Lud. Not so he knows, but so it will surface if he hears we’ve failed. Can you do that?>
<Yes. Word of our deaths will trigger the release of these memories.>
“Lud?” To the outrigger last of all she said: “Thanks for your help. I’m sorry we have to leave, but—”
“Do that.”
Only Gent remained on the open line, red-faced and blustering. “Do you have even the slightest idea what you’re doing, Roche?”
“Yes,” she said, thinking of Sol System—of all those ancient places and the beings converging upon them. “We’re going home...”
APPENDIX
THE OLMAHOI:
Reconstructing the Myth for Beginners
(R. Pyatt Adamek, ‘595 EN; Introduction, pp. 1-7)
There is no word in the Olmahoi language for “alone.”
In fact, the Olmahoi Caste1 has no spoken language at all, nor any desire to possess one. Being a race of natural epsense adepts, they employ instead a complex palette of emotions, sensations, and associations to talk between themselves, with the ease of thought itself. Mere words not only seem primitive and crude in comparison, but are quite outside the average Olmahoi’s experience as well.
A Pristine Human might as well try to communicate with a bacterium by chemicals, or with a bee by dance. Even the concept of “loneliness,” which we take for granted, is foreign to them: when one’s entire family, one’s entire Caste, is but a thought away, one is never alone.
Their uniqueness is marked on many other levels. Olmahoi society2 is completely unfathomable and literally impenetrable to anyone not possessing epsense ability. They are, from a Pristine perspective, the most exotic of the known mundane Castes, not only in physical appearance, but in reproductive androgyneity as well. They are immensely knowledgeable in all fields and possess an average intelligence greater than that of Pristine Humanity; yet, in apparent contradiction to this sophistication, they have proven themselves on many occasions to be ruthless combatants.3 And while each Olmahoi individual is a member of a far-flung interstellar empire, he still wears the long robes made from the skin of the Drish’en and prefers to live underground, both in the manner of his distant ancestors.4
Yet communicate with the Olmahoi we do. Through a medium of epsense “translators,” trade has existed between our two Castes since the arrival of the Eckandar Trade Axis in this region of the galaxy some fifty thousand years ago. Now, after many millennia of contact, our involvement with them is a given, and seems certain to remain that way in the foreseeable future.
It is strange, then, and not a little disconcerting, to be reminded of how little we actually know about them.
On a fundamental level, there is the matter of their epsense abilities. N-body theory, from which stems the science of epsense and various related disciplines, hints that such a talent cannot evolve by chance, no matter how great the complexity of a mundane Caste member, it has to be guided into being by conscious, intelligent will, without which even a fledgling epsense predilection (such as that which occasionally arises in an individual of any Caste) will falter.
That the Olmahoi appear to have defied current scientific theory may seem a small matter for scholars to debate: it is, after all, a fait accompli. With elongated tails tapering from the back of every Olmahoi’s skull—these being the principal organs of the epsense, uncannily like an extra spine hanging free of the body—the Olmahoi possess tangible, physical evidence that this improbable evolutionary path has been followed at least once in the history of the universe. Studies of the Olmahoi physiognomy concur, revealing vestigial organs associated with the “vulgar” senses, such as a mouth and throat now used solely for ingestion that once possessed vocal chords and a tongue, ears associated with balance but still possessing the basic structures of an organ designed to detect sound, and so on.
However, proving that the ancestors of the Olmahoi did once possess function vulgar sense-organs is not enough to explain how an epsense ability could have evolved to supersede them. It is precisely by exploring this puzzle that science hopes to glean deeper truths lying beneath the status quo—to probe Humanity’s place, not just in the Outer Arms, but in the greater galaxy as a whole.
If the Olmahoi possess a naturally occurring epsense ability, how did it arise? Current evolutionary theory5 is simple and obvious. The Olmahoi home planet, Hek’m, is an icy, inhospitable world, and has been for many millions of years. Food is scarce; the Noma Araku, an extinct species of biped distantly related to the modern Olmahoi,6 relied upon lichens and fungus growing on cave walls to balance an irregular diet of vegetable roots. For a predatory species to survive even a few generations, it must evolve new means of locating prey. Epsense ability is one such means: a way of hunting life directly, by seeking the spoor of thought itself. From this small beginning, evolutionary theory tells us, the Olmahoi Caste was born.
But neither the Noma Araku nor any other species of known biped leading to the modern-day Olmahoi has been proven to have possessed epsense ability, no matter how small. And indeed, the evolution of intelligent life in any form, on a planet such as Hek’m, is itself a statistical unlikelihood. The physical evidence available7 indicates quite strongly that the species directly preceding the modern Olmahoi appeared almost overnight, approximately fifty thousand years ago, and was already in full possession of the range of epsense powers with which we are familiar today.
This evidence, and a smattering of facts adding suggestive credence, lie at the heart of the counterargument against evolution: that of intervention.
Again, this theory8 is intuitively simple, although its ramifications are far-reaching. If epsense ability cannot evolve by chance, then it must have been deliberately nurtured in the Olmahoi Caste. Genetic analysis offers circumstantial support for this conclusion. The Olmahoi genome is elegantly complex, capable of creating a race of individuals whose only remarkable feature, it sometimes seems, is their lack of individuality,9 but with just enough diversity to maintain a viable gene pool. Furthermore, the exon-to-intron ratio10 is very low, suggesting that the genome might have been “trimmed” some time in the past, possibly to protect against mutation.
The critical question, and the one that has prevented this theory from gaining wide acceptance in the scientific community, is obvious: who intervened in the evolution of the Olmahoi Caste to ensure its epsense development?
Even among those who support the interventionist line in principle, there is a wealth of disagreem
ent on this particular point. For once, it is a lack of evidence, suggestive or otherwise, that confounds the issue. There are no ruins on Hek’m to hint at the presence of an earlier, advanced civilization capable of such genetic and epsense manipulation, so it could not have been the Olmahoi natives. Likewise with the other Castes—High or mundane—currently inhabiting this region of the galaxy: none have ever possessed the ability (or the predilection) to perform such a feat; not even today, let alone fifty thousand years ago. So it must have been another Caste entirely, perhaps one of the five pre-High Human Castes mentioned in the Gil- Shh’ana Fiche, or another even more mysterious. Or, most peculiar of all, the Olmahoi themselves might be that very unknown Caste: the descendants of travelers from a distant and relatively unknown part of the galaxy, stranded on Hek’m millennia ago and only now rediscovering the legacy of their past.
Although the key to unlocking this mystery should, one might think, lie in the hands of the Olmahoi themselves, any racial memories, archetypes, or legends they might once have possessed about the origins of their epsense abilities are sadly no longer extant.11 As a result, the origin of the Olmahoi Caste is either a vexing thorn in the side of anyone who would understand the continuing evolution of Humanity, or a tantalizing glimpse of a history still waiting to be discovered.
The emphasis of this Introduction, and indeed the greater part of the work, is on the latter. There is much that is unique and beautiful among the Olmahoi, and much that we fail to understand. Most notable of all is the Grand Design: the web of minds that is centered on Hek’m, where the Olmahoi naturally congregate; quite possibly the most intricate mental structure in the universe, with tendrils stretching across the galaxy. To describe it in words is to attempt the impossible. Yet the renowned Linn Queale perhaps came close, with the following excerpt from his best-selling Galactic Reference Book:
“If empty space is a flat plain, with minds like bumps projecting from it, then the Grand Design resembles a cartographer’s nightmare: towers, prominences, and spires project from it as far as the psychic eye can see, with strange ridges and rills, repeated figures and harmonic cadences, changing constantly in every direction—all linked by slender bridges that defy imagination, looping from peak to peak in a dance that resembles nothing so much as the dance of ocean weed in the grip of a cyclonic storm.