Event Horizon (Hellgate) (111 page)

“Probably.” Dario’s face was thunderous. “According to the spiritual horde back home – there’s plenty of them! – we pass through
somewhere
before we’re reborn. Years can go by before we come back, and the part that survives had to hang out somewhere after the body was cremated. The brane? It’d surely explain a lot. And don’t forget the people who’re hiding at Orion 359; their enduring personality could be equally as robust as ours. Maybe humans, too – though there’s no evidence. Sorry, guys, you’re on your own there. It’s just as possible humans are too similar to Resalq for the Zunshu to even
care
to differentiate between us. They might easily snuff humans just to be safe. The stakes are high enough to rationalize … proactive extermination.”

“Gods, what an appalling term,” Rusch whispered. “What makes it so appalling is its accuracy.”

Shapiro leaned forward, hands clasped loosely on the table before him. “What would any of us do,” he mused, “if we learned that the one shot at genuine immortality for our entire species was compromised by the mere presence of others?” His brows arched. “Is it
not
genocide if we, and others like the Resalq and the Orion, erase the Zunshu from the face not of their world, but of all eternity?”

The question made Travers dizzy. He sat back, set one hand over his face for a moment. “Are we sure of their information? The research was sound? They
proved
all this stuff about the brane was genuine?”

But Richard Vaurien was a step ahead. “Doesn’t matter, Neil, one way or the other. We find their data convincing, or we don’t … were their priests practising a system of spiritual elitism and racial purism to execute the ultimate con job, perhaps to wheedle their way into supreme global government? The truth is, we might never be sure. But one thing we already know as solid fact: the Zunshu
believed
, with the same brand of faith that made humans go out and persecute whole races, burn people alive.”

“They were on a crusade,” Marin reasoned. “They still are – their weapons are still dropping out of Hellgate, mopping up worlds on our frontier. The people at Orion 359 don’t dare show themselves! A crusade,” he added, “to destroy every other intelligent species that had a presence in their otherworld, to secure their own immortality.”

“Well, shit,” Jazinsky breathed. She angled a dark look at Shapiro. “You wanted the reason, Harrison. You’ve got your straight answer.”

“I’ve got it,” Shapiro agreed. “I just don’t know what in any hell to do with it.” He stood, working his neck around to ease the stiffness of stress. “Lai’a, from what we observed of the Zunshu city, it’s decaying, falling into ruin. Nothing we saw there indicates a people who’d be capable of picking a fight with a flock of sheep. Did the Zunshu abandon this star system, are they on other colonies?”

“No, General,” Lai’a said emphatically. “The Zunshu were never able to find a world better suited to their own special needs than their own home; and they were never likely to run out of space or resources here, since they live in a three dimensional environment on a giant world. At its height, their civilization measured around five billion individuals.”

“And now?” Rusch wondered.

“The current census is in the order of twenty
thousand
individuals,” Lai’a estimated, “and four
million
eggs in stasis. Their race can recover its numbers in two generations, given conducive conditions and the right environmental triggers. And there is no record of any offworld colony, anywhere at any time.”

“So…” Travers looked from Marin to Vidal and Mark. “What the hell happened here? They’re gone, Richard – you saw the vids. The whole thing is crumbling. There’s a few automatics still running, but in another hundred years even they’ll shut down because the folks left here don’t know how to change a light bulb or charge a power cell, much less how to make a new one!”

“Lai’a?” Vaurien prompted.

“Retribution,” Lai’a said calmly.

Marin’s head came up. “Somebody beat us to it?”

“And they
didn’t
come here to talk about any armistice,” Jazinsky observed in acid tones.

“Who?” Travers heard the edge in his own voice. “Not the people from Orion 359 – they didn’t have the tech.”

“It had to be the others,” Shapiro said quickly, “the ones who posted the warning beacons in orbit. The owners of the second language that’s outside the Zunshu vocal capacity.”

“Veldn.” Lai’a pronounced the word deliberately – the first time it had been uttered aloud. “Neither language has an alphabet as such, General; certainly no consonants. However, certain harmonic resonances are suggestive of patterns that
could
be approximated in conventional speech. The Zunshu computer core records the name as an associated series of resonances which might be interpreted as VLDN, possibly
FLTNg
or
VfLThNg
. By far the most pronounceable phonetic for Resalq and humans is
Veldn
.”

“Well, now.” Shapiro took a drink from the water glass that had stood by his plate, ignored. “A species whom the Zunshu attacked?”

“It would appear so.” Lai’a streamed data to the screen, images of star systems, planetary and biological information cascading through the left of the display. “As nearly as I can place the event in time, the Zunshu priest-shamans encountered the Veldn
first
as persistent and very powerful personalities in the brane. Navigational information provided by the Zunshu priests guided a transspace mission, leading to first contact between a Zunshu probe and the Veldn people, approximately six centuries ago. Shortly thereafter, numerous Veldn colonies were obliterated in a pattern entirely familiar to Resalq and humans. As many as a half billion intelligent life forms perished –”

“Wouldn’t that just pump another half billion souls into the brane?” Vaurien wondered. “That’s exactly what the Zunshu
didn’t
want!”

“Their strategy was always one of containment, Colonel,” Lai’a told him. “The brane is an extremely large continuum. Given a small
enough
population of other, more robust forms there, the remaining Zunshu could realistically hope to survive by simply avoiding them. This population control within the brane relies on prompt curtailment of the procreative potential of any competing physical species.”

“Of course.” Vaurien’s face was shadowed. “I imagine the Zunshu exterminated several species before they got to the Resalq.”

“Four others,” Lai’a reported, “which are likely utterly extinct. The species at Orion 359 survives as much by luck as by cunning. The Resalq were assaulted around a millennium ago; humans entering the Deep Sky much more recently have been devastated by the same weapons systems simply because they occupy the same target worlds. The Veldn were the final species to be assaulted by the Zunshu.”

“And the Zunshu made their big mistake,” Shapiro said darkly. “They picked on someone their own size, and were hammered for their trouble.”

“Comprehensively,” Lai’a affirmed. “The ‘chronicle,’ as they termed their ongoing recorded history, describes the destruction of mining operations and observatories throughout the Zunshu 161 system, before the Veldn turned their attention to the homeworld. The intention,” it added, “was not complete extermination. One habitable city was left – albeit with severely disabled hardware – plus a caretaker population for the generation nest. The Zunshu have
never
been in any danger of actual extinction.

“They had lost their grasp of machine culture long before the Veldn arrived. Artificial intelligence went offline; automata were destroyed. The surviving Zunshu were highly spiritual but technologically simple people to whom machines were almost anathema. Certainly, no one survived who knew how to service, repair and manufacture complex equipment. With the AI and automata gone, their society degenerated rapidly. Six centuries later,” Lai’a added, “the living Zunshu appear unaware of their own history, much less the faith of their ancestors. Firm evidence exists to suggest they were shocked into regression and have not yet begun to re-emerge from a dark age of superstition and ignorance.”

“They paid a high price,” Rusch said bitterly, “for this religious mania.”

“If it
was
mania.” Jazinsky lifted a brow at Mark. “I want to run their data. I know exactly what Lai’a is describing. The ‘universe in a brane’ is a theory dating back to our late twentieth century. The physics are … like poetry, a sprite dancing just out of reach, beyond your lights. Given the Zunshu cortical structure and the fact their brains continued to grow, lifelong, under intellectual stimulation, they might have resolved issues our physicists never did.”

“The otherworld continuum might be
real
?” Marin asked softly.

“Don’t discount the possibility,” Jazinsky warned. “The Zunshu didn’t even blink at exterminating whole species in what they perceived as the ultimate self-defense … their morals are questionable, but one thing is no doubt. They were
smart
.”

“They still possess the potential,” Lai’a said coolly. “The brains of the current population are underdeveloped, but the latent potential remains.”

“And I don’t buy the religious mania argument,” Mark added. “That kind of insanity overtakes primitive peoples, Lex. Education, intellect, civilization, tend to eliminate extremes. Mania could have possessed a sector of the Zunshu public, but not all of them, not over the number of centuries during which they were the great destroyers. True, the original information returned by their shaman-priests would soon have been written into scripture which became more and more convoluted and dogmatic with time. But Roy, here, is the perfect example of an individual who felt the lure of spirituality for very personal reasons, studied the history of religion and was … repulsed.”

He made a good case, Travers thought. Even Rusch herself was murmuring noises of agreement while Shapiro said, “The population in the city is – what, uneducated?”

“The surviving Zunshu are predominantly young, isolated, ignorant, with no knowledge of the function of the broken machinery among which they live.” Lai’a paused to stream biological information to the screen. “I deep scanned several hundred individuals by routing the last gundrone into areas I would not have recommended to Resalq or humans. Many individuals were left behind in the rush to escape us; they are adept at hiding. Very few Zunshu appear to live to old age. Young individuals are riddled with disease arising from the contaminants in their environment, of which they are unaware. The city is decaying. Decay is always toxic.”

“So …” Shapiro took a long breath. “So today’s Zunshu probably have no notion of the ambitions and offences of their ancestors.”

“Since the machines quit, their knowledge of history,” Roy Arlott said thoughtfully, “would be reduced to myth, the stories one generation tells the next. The epic sagas soon become garbled, inflated, illuminated. The current Zunshu probably believe their ancestors were hammered into submission by the gods because of some mortal sin.”

“Which isn’t too far from the truth.” Vaurien gave Shapiro an almost infuriated look. “The young Zunshu still alive in a ruined city certainly aren’t responsible for anything their ancestors did –”

“But our worlds are still being attacked,” Travers said too loudly, and dropped his volume with an effort. “All this happened centuries ago. The Veldn swatted them like bugs? Fine. But the
Wastrel
stopped the device intended for Borushek just a month ago!”

“Strategy,” Lai’a said simply.

Travers groaned as he felt a familiar, sinking feeling in the pit of his belly. “I’m listening.”

“The ordnance assigned to obliterate any species was committed to transspace in one mass launch,” Lai’a told him baldly. “The human term was ‘fire and forget’ weapons.”

For a moment Travers struggled with the information, and Vidal swore in a harsh whisper. “Then, the weapons are out there,” Mick rasped, pulling both hands across his face. “They were seeded into the driftways ten centuries ago, and there’s nobody left to argue into a recall. The folks in the city have regressed
way
past the point where they’d even know what we’re talking about. They just run away when they see you coming.”

“Xenophobia is as basic to the Zunshu nature as racial purism,” Lai’a said. “It is possible the information to effect ordnance recall is in the data transfer, but I have yet to identify it. Be aware, the computer core is partially corrupt. Information retrieved from it is correspondingly incomplete. Like the key to open those stasis chambers, the key to issue a weapons recall may no longer exist.”