Orphans of Earth (26 page)

A closer look revealed that the habitat wasn’t as crowded as he’d first thought. It was just arranged differently from how he was used to. Instead of keeping things around the edges of working space, the Yuhl spread out in all directions. There were no clear paths; the jagged angularity of workstations and other equipment overtook everything. That there
were
clear spaces he was certain, for the Yuhl moved through the habitat with graceful ease; but he, as a human used to straight lines and well defined corridors, had trouble finding them.

The conjugator led the way, his long legs much more lithe and graceful in the reduced gravity as he wove through the chaos. Alander followed as best he could, afraid that he would overstep and break something. Everything looked so fragile—and sharp. Masklike faces turned to follow him as he went, their expressions primordial and eerie. He felt like he was passing through a peculiarly Oriental vision of hell.

“Where are you taking me?” he asked, ducking under a fan of pointed glass sticks that emitted light from each end.
Silent Liquidity
translated his words into the Yuhl language and used the membrane keeping his air in as a vibrating medium to repeat them.

“To the Praxis,” the conjugator replied without turning.

“I’m still not really clear on this,” said Alander. “What is the Praxis, exactly? A person? A thing? A type of government?”

“
It is
all of this
and more
.” The conjugator made a pointing gesture at one of the Yuhl they passed. The Yuhl reciprocated the action. Alander had seen the signal before; it seemed to be one of respect or perhaps even a salute.

“I don’t understand,” he said, starting to feel frustrated that the conjugator wouldn’t even face Alander as he spoke.

“You are not required to.”

“Look,” he said tiredly. “If we’re ever going to come to any sort of agreement, then
my
people will need to understand
yours.
We have to be able to reach some kind of agreement that—”

“There
can/will
be no agreement,” said the conjugator. “You are the
already/dead
.”

Alander sighed wearily. “Yes, so we’ve been told. But we refuse to accept that role. We intend to fight.”

The conjugator reacted to the word by jerking his head back and uttering a sequence of strange squeaking sounds. A laugh, perhaps? Alander wondered.

From behind him, Ueh said: “The
already/dead
do not fight.”

“Exactly. So we’re not them.”

“Silence
helot
has no voice here
!” There was no mistaking the command in the conjugator’s voice.

Glancing back briefly, Alander saw Ueh’s expression change to one of crossmatched diagonal lines, and he fell back a pace in deference. Alander felt vaguely sorry for the alien.

“If you’re not going to allow him to speak,” said Alander to the Yuhl ahead of him, “then why is he here at all?”

“His voice is half,” the conjugator said. “
He has been separated by
you
must assume responsibility for him
.”

Alander pondered this, wondering where in the conversation with either Ueh or the conjugator he had missed this important point. “Are you telling me he’s my ward—or my slave?”

“He is your conscience.”

“What?”

Conjugator Vaise didn’t answer. Instead, he raised a hand in an unmistakable
stop
gesture. They had reached a frosted glass wall that stretched the entire width of the habitat. Beyond it on the far side, Alander could see shapes moving to and fro, although he couldn’t quite make them out.

“
These subjects protect
this vessel
protects the Praxis
,” said the conjugator. “You
try to harm the Praxis/they will stop
you.”

“Who’s going to stop it from trying to harm me?” said Alander.

Again, the conjugator didn’t reply. Instead, he stepped back as the wall before them dissolved into a startlingly beautiful waterfall of tiny glass beads that gently washed down and disappeared into the floor. A mass of organic tissue—far too vast to take in with one glance—waited on the far side, arranged in fleshy pseudopods that stirred and lifted with constant, incomprehensible motion.

Alander took an uneasy step back. “What the hell is this?”

Ueh stepped up beside him, his alien hand on Alander’s back preventing him from moving any farther away.

“
The Praxis will not harm
you
will only be eaten
,” said the conjugator.

Alander barely had time to register the alien’s words before one of the pseudopods suddenly opened like a flower—a
mouth
—and rushed forward to engulf him. Powerful, ropelike muscles seized his body and pulled him effortlessly into the fleshy maw. He experienced a brief, sickening feeling of being crushed and suffocated, and then everything went black.

* * *

Why didn’t the I-suit save me?
was Alander’s first thought on the other side of the blackness. Then a second, confusing notion:
How can I be thinking if I’m dead?

“You cannot be dead,” said a voice, “if you were never really alive to begin with.”

The voice, although whispered and soft, startled Alander.

“What? Who—?”

“I am the Praxis.”

The darkness peeled back to reveal something Alander automatically thought of as a face, even though it bore no resemblance to anything he had ever seen before. It was red and moist-looking, with a wide central cavity. It was open at the top, sloping back and out of sight down the creature’ s back. Sensory organs, including numerous compound eyes, lined the left and right sides of the cavity. The image faded into darkness in all directions, so Alander couldn’t see where the face truly ended or even began.

“You’re not a Yuhl,” Alander said.

“I am from another species altogether,” the Praxis replied. “I am the caretaker of the
Yuhl/Goel
.” The creature’s mellifluous voice divided easily to pronounce the alien term.

“You tell them what to do?”

“I find out what it is they want to do and help them do it,” it said. “In return, they keep me alive.”

“They feed you?” Alander pressed. “Things like me?”

The edges of the cavity lifted, then sagged. “I am a physical being as well as a mental one, and as such require sustenance in both areas. But I assure you, had my goal been simply to devour you, we would not be talking now.”

Alander felt no sense of intimidation or threat in the Praxis’s words. If anything, he felt himself encased in a strange and seductive calm. He felt at peace with himself and everything around him.

“I guess I’ve been absorbed, then,” he said after a moment’s reflection. He nodded to himself at the realization. The concept didn’t trouble him as much as he felt it should. “Is that why the Yuhl will only talk to people with physical bodies?”

The huge creature remained silent for more than thirty seconds, the edges of its cavity shifting in a subtle and almost hypnotic undulating motion.

“Your friend wishes to speak with you,” the alien said finally. “He requires reassurance that you are all right.”

“My friend...?”

Axford’s voice erupted into the darkness, his anger unnatural in the calm Alander had found since awakening.

“If I don’t hear from him in the next sixty seconds, then I’m leaving,” Axford snarled. “And you can damn well say good-bye to your pal here, too.”

“Can I speak to him?” Alander asked the Praxis. If Axford said he was going to leave in sixty seconds, then he meant it. And he would stand by his threat to execute the Yuhl hostage, as well.

It wasn’t the alien who replied, however.

“Peter?” said Axford with some surprise, some relief. “Is that really you?”

“Yes,” said Alander, his gaze roaming aimlessly about the darkness, not sure where to direct his response. “Don’t do anything rash, Frank. Don’t do anything at all just yet. I’m fine.” He resisted an impulse to add,
I think.

“Where the hell have you been?” Surprise and relief were quickly exchanged for anger. “First I lose your feed, then
Liquidity
can’t locate you—”

“I can’t explain right now,” he said, thinking
, I couldn’t even if I wanted to.
“But I think everything is going well enough.”

“Are you sure?” Axford sounded uncertain, as though he was ready to leave even though he had received a reply.

“Fairly sure,” said Alander. “I’m going to need a little longer. You’re going to have to be patient, okay?”

There was a pause before Axford said anything. “Okay,” he said. “But if I don’t hear from you in ten minutes, then every ten minutes thereafter, I’m assuming you’re no longer a viable proposition and clearing out.”

“Understood,” said Alander. “I’ll be in touch.”

Turning his attention back to the Praxis, he said, “You didn’t need me to do that, did you? You could have faked my voice to offer him the reassurance he needed.”

“We have nothing to hide, Peter,” said the Praxis. “But if it would have been beneficial to our cause to deceive your friend, then yes, your voice—and image if need be—could be emulated.”

Alander nodded thoughtfully. “And you can do this because I’ve been...absorbed?”

“I now possess in me everything there is to know about you.”

Again, he felt that this should have troubled him, but he had been anaesthetized against any form of anxiety.

“So let me get this straight,” he said. “Having absorbed me, you’ve modeled me inside you?”

“I am keeping it simple, though,” said the alien, “because I am aware of your conSense-related disorientation.”

“But this is
you
I’m seeing right now?”

The face flexed again. “I’m an artificial intelligence housed in a biological construct.” Its voice swept across Alander like a gentle breeze. “My creators based me on their own forms, but only loosely, and I have been modified extensively since. The last of my kind, I am even more of an individual than I ever was.”

“Someone
made
you?”

“A long time ago, now,” it replied with something like sadness in its tone. Alander had no doubt it was there purely for his benefit.

“But why?” he asked. “What for?”

“Many things,” the Praxis said. “Tasks so complex that what I do for the
Yuhl/Goel
seems like child’s play in comparison.”

Alander pondered this. “I’m guessing the Yuhl came across you during their scouting raids in another region of space. They say they’ve been traveling for twenty-five hundred years. In that time they would have undoubtedly come across other species. You’re just one of them, and they’ve put you to good use, right?”

“On the contrary,” said the Praxis. “It was I who adopted them. I have ridden the coattails of the Ambivalence far longer than either your or their species has been recording history.”

“Then you know things about the Spinners and Starfish that even the Yuhl don’t?”

“Perhaps.” The word was a sigh. “But that is something we can discuss at a later date. For now, I simply wish to meet you.”

For a fleeting moment Alander wasn’t sure whether the creature had actually said “to eat you.” But whatever was said, he felt no threat inherent to the words. If anything, the voice of the alien had a faintly amused edge to it.

“Are you going to let me go?” he asked.

Amusement became disdain. “You believe I would kill you, having absorbed your body and gone to so much trouble to re-create you?”

“It would hardly be regarded as killing,” said Alander. “Not in your eyes, anyway. What was it you said when I awoke? Something about me not being alive in the first place?”

A sound, deep and bassy, rolled and echoed through the darkness. Alander had no doubt the creature had just laughed.

“You are offended by my observations?” the creature asked.

“Not particularly,” Alander said. “Although as an intelligent life-form, I feel I
should
be.”

“You cannot reproduce and you cannot change,” said the Praxis. “Two prerequisites for intelligent life, in my opinion.”

“I can change,” Alander defended himself.

“Fundamentally, you cannot. That is what it means to be an engram. You are defined by who you were, not by who you might be now. The slight randomization you experience only alleviates the symptoms, never the problem.”

“I
feel
alive.”

“And in most respects you are. The distinction between a conscious, rational, intelligent being and one that has the capacity for life in the biological sense is arguably a small one. It is one you might care to dismiss as irrelevant, in the present circumstances. Your priority is survival, as it should be. Reproduction and change can come later.”

The massive, alien face didn’t move, but Alander sensed that he was being tested, toyed with.

“What is it you want from me?” he asked. “Why am I here?”

“I could well ask you the same questions. What do
you
want from
me?
Why have
you
come
here
?”

“You’ve absorbed me,” he said sardonically. “I would have thought you’d know the answer to both those questions.”

There was a slight hesitation before it said, “Your impatient and angry friend, Francis Axford, wants us to ally with you against the creatures you call the Starfish. Your other friend, the one who goes by the name Caryl Hatzis, would want you to ask us how we have survived for so long. There you have the fundamental dichotomy between your two major allies: offense and defense. And you are stuck in the middle, Peter Alander: you who could well be the only
singular
person left in all of humanity.”

Alander would have flushed, had he had a body to do it in. “Remember, though, you’re picking up these thoughts from me. I undoubtedly have a biased viewpoint.”

“I prefer bias. Its flavors are that much more... interesting.” The Praxis managed a convincing interpretation of a throaty human chuckle. “Caryl Hatzis sounds like an interesting person, someone I would very much like to eat one day.”

This time Alander had no doubt what the alien had said.

“I doubt she’d let you anywhere near her, especially if she knew
that
.”