Sufficiently Advanced Technology (Inverse Shadows) (10 page)

Joshua looked down at Rose. “Was there anyone else who could have fathered the child?”

Rose flushed as red as her namesake – it had to be humiliating to answer to a boy a year younger than herself, let alone in front of an entire audience – but she managed to answer the question.

“No, My Pillar,” she said. There were some faint and rather nervous chuckles from the audience. Joshua was an apprentice, not even a Scion. He was hardly a Pillar. And there was only ever one Pillar in a Bailiwick. “I never slept with anyone else.”

Joshua switched his gaze back to Julius. “If the child is yours,” he said, “will you marry her?”

“Yes,” Julius said. His mother managed to give him a truly fearsome glare. “I meant every word I spoke to her.”

“Very well,” Joshua said. “For the moment, we will assume that the child is yours. Upon its birth, we will perform a testing spell to determine paternity. In the event of the child actually being yours, you will be married – and you will be considered to have been married from the date her parents brought this case. Your child will not be considered illegitimate.

“Furthermore, your parents will pay you and your wife a substantial sum to allow you to set up your own separate household,” he added. He would never have considered
that
before going to live with Master Faye. “She will not need to live with her mother-in-law.”

The woman switched her glare to Joshua, which suggested either nerve or stupidity. Joshua resisted the urge to hex her and looked at Rose. “In the event of the child
not
being Julius’s child, there will be no marriage and your parents will be expected to pay compensation,” he said. “If Julius was the only man in your” – he almost said something rude – “life, you should have nothing to worry about.”

“Thank you,” Rose said, very quietly.

“But this is
outrageous
,” Goodman Fauves said, quickly. “I cannot afford a whole separate household for my son. Master Faye, you must...”

“The sentence is confirmed,” Master Faye said, in a tone that allowed no further debate. “And in the event of anything...
happening
to Rose between now and her giving birth, you will be interrogated under truth spells and, if you should happen to have encouraged it, you will be executed.”

He looked over at Joshua as the bailiffs escorted the two families out.
Very well done
, he said, mentally.
You could not have done a better job
.

Joshua flushed. Praise from Master Faye was rare.

You may handle the remaining cases
, Master Faye added.
I need to concentrate
.

Concentrate?
Joshua echoed.
On what?

I have the strangest feeling that we’re being watched
, Master Faye said. Joshua had never sensed him feeling
doubt
before.
I want to try to isolate the feeling. A Scion may be considering targeting us
.

Joshua swallowed. Master Faye had a reputation for being tough, but there was no shortage of Scions who might want to take Warlock’s Bane from him. And Joshua might not be able to help. His magic was not up to Scion standards, not yet.

“Bring in the third case,” he ordered the bailiffs, finally. He had work to do.

CHAPTER
E
IGHT

Very few societies could have detected the snoop. It was microscopically small, far too tiny to be seen with the naked eye. The device had found a home within the courtroom and had broadcast everything it picked up back to the
Hamilton
, where the AIs processed it before relaying the information to the human researchers. Thousands of other snoops drifted over the planet, studying the inhabitants closely. There was so much data that even the AIs had trouble analysing it all.

“There are blank spots,” the AIs reported finally. “Observe.”

Elyria studied the planetary map thoughtfully. For no apparent reason, there were places out in the countryside – or a handful of buildings within the city – where the snoops simply went dead. It should have been impossible. A civilisation with equal technology to the Confederation would have been able to detect and eliminate the snoops, probably through targeted nanotech, but Darius shouldn’t have been able to do it at all. And once they died, the snoops effectively vanished. It was unlikely that they could be recovered.

“The ones in the cities all appear to be the homes of the...
magicians
,” Adana said, calmly. “Perhaps they have some sort of magic spell preventing the snoops from intruding.”

Adam gave her a sharp look. “What kind of magic spell could work against something they couldn’t even imagine?”

“Humans were imagining post-singularity societies a long time before we broke the scarcity barrier,” Adana reminded him. “Besides, just because we don’t know about a particular type of energy doesn’t mean that our shields won’t protect us.”

Elyria shook her head and continued studying the data. Unlike the RIs, the AIs could look at Darius without deciding that they were staring at the impossible – and dismissing the whole thing as sensor error – but they were having problems understanding the planet’s society. As far as she could tell, their original conclusions had been right and there were hundreds of relatively small states, bound together by a trading network... yet she couldn’t see why they hadn’t started unifying themselves. Many primitive planets had had empires that dominated half the world, even if they hadn’t developed steam power.

The locals would have panicked if they’d realised just how comprehensively they were being probed. There were snoops drifting through the entire planet, but concentrating on a number of cities and recording everything they saw. Some cultural practices made sense, others were just mysterious. The governing system was a puzzle. As far as they could tell, Master Faye was the ruler of Warlock’s Bane, but why? Was he an elected Mayor, a Prince... or what? Each of the major cities seemed to have their own ruling citizen – and a number showed signs of recent civil war. Could it be that victory went to the strongest?

“It’s probable that the ones who are capable of using magic are the ones in charge,” Adana said, as they debated the problem. “Kahn and his descendants were simply superior to the locals; the magicians here might have the same advantage.”

“In that case, we might have the ruling magician challenged by other magicians,” the AIs offered. “That would explain the signs of civil war.”

“And why some of the states appear to be poorly ruled,” Elyria said. “And why the traders don’t seem to go everywhere.”

Humans had been trying to govern themselves ever since they had crawled out of the ocean, but it had never been easy. Power corrupted – and even the pre-singularity democratic societies had often been governed for the good of the governing class, rather than the population at large. Some unaccountable politicians – whatever they called themselves – had thought they’d meant well, but there had been no real checks on their power. Others hadn’t bothered to hide the fact that they were in charge and the rest of the population had the choice between bloody rebellion or doing what they were told.

As far as they could tell, the Pillars – to use Master Faye’s title – were the rulers of the city-states, but they didn’t seem to have much of an administration. A handful had small armies and secret policemen – their cities were not the nicest places to live – while others just seemed to govern at one remove. Master Faye seemed genuinely interested in the well-being of his people, which didn’t necessarily make him a good ruler. A good ruler would absent himself as much as possible, rather than involving himself in everything and destroying innovation and independent thinking.

“Without taking biological samples, we cannot be certain,” the AIs said, “but they do appear to be baseline human. We have located a handful of graves and we believe that we could simply take the bodies without anyone noticing...”

Elyria snorted.
That
was hardly a requirement, normally. But if the source of their magic, for want of a better term, was something genetic, they’d have to start scanning local bodies sooner or later. It might well upset the locals if they ever found out. Some civilisations had developed powerful beliefs centred on their physical bodies, either burying them or destroying them after death. The Confederation, which included millions of people who had uploaded themselves into AI cores and left their bodies behind, didn’t share such taboos.

“Something to focus on later,” she said. “What else can you tell us about their society?”

There was a long pause. “Their language appears to be derived from English, which was spoken during the First Expansion Era and eventually evolved into Standard,” the AIs said. “The language does not actually appear to have changed very much, although it is missing a great many concepts that they simply do not share. Our scans of their books confirm that their written language is effectively identical to English. Oddly, the language does not appear to have evolved as much as we would have expected. There are also no regional dialects.”

“None at all?” Elyria asked, in some surprise. “That’s... not possible.”

Languages evolved – and two different groups, who had started speaking the same language, might be incomprehensible to each other after spending several centuries apart. There were primitive worlds that had probably originally been settled by a monoculture – only a handful of colony worlds had been settled by multiple different cultures – that had evolved a few hundred new cultures and languages of their own before rediscovery.

Given a proper tech base, however, it was less likely for languages to fission into multiple different tongues. A global communications network, complete with entertainment channels as well as verbal chatter, bound the population together, making it easier for them to understand one another. Humanity had certainly evolved a single language over thousands of years, mainly through English displacing a number of older tongues before becoming Standard, but it had been a long process. Darius... didn’t seem to have changed much at all.

“Given their... abilities, it is possible that they have a global communications network based on magic,” Dacron offered. “We have yet to comprehend their educational system.”

“But then they’d have magic everywhere,” Adam protested. He shook his head. “Nothing about this society makes
sense
.”

“I thought nothing about the
Ancients
made sense,” Elyria said, snidely. “This society is human. We will learn to comprehend it over the next few months and years...”

“We know one thing about it,” Gigot said. Her voice was very flat. “This society is in desperate need of an intervention.”

She brought up the recordings of the courtroom and displayed them. “They allowed a young boy to judge the population.”

Elyria shrugged. “These people may not live very long, by our standards,” she pointed out, mildly. “Fifteen – assuming that the boy
is
fifteen – is a mature age for them.”

“I know that,” Gigot said, with some irritation. “My point is that he doesn’t seem remotely qualified to serve as a judge.”

“This society isn’t anything like as developed as the Confederation,” Adana said, calmly. “We should not expect them to be ultra-civilised.”

“And the
punishments
!” Gigot insisted. “They sentenced a man to a period of slavery!”

“Under the circumstances,” Adana said, “it was a remarkably mild punishment. Most primitive societies would have cut off a hand, leaving the criminal permanently mutilated, or simply killed him. Few in the Confederation would understand the fact that these people do not have unlimited resources. A single act of theft could be disastrous to the victim.”

“The method used for enslaving him may be more worrying,” the AIs injected. “Master Faye did something to him and... he became a slave.”

Elyria nodded, sourly. They’d watched carefully as Master Faye made passes in front of the man’s face, turning him into an obedient servant. It reminded her of the subversion implants used by the Thule, except Darius didn’t have any concept of brain implants. She couldn’t blame Gigot for being horrified, not when using mind control on an unwilling victim was one of the Confederation’s few taboos. The AIs had talked about trying to monitor the next slave’s brain patterns to see what happened when he was enslaved. Elyria found the whole concept rather sickening.

The same pattern had repeated itself elsewhere on the planet, convincing her that Darius might well be very dangerous to the unwary. Some tiny states seemed to be ruled by magicians who used the spell on their own people regularly, others seemed to use it very rarely... and still others simply used outright chattel slavery, complete with whips and chains. There was definitely no unified system of justice, let alone law and order. The law seemed to be what the magicians made it.

“They don’t seem to have much interest in the night sky at all,” the AIs offered, changing the subject. “If they’re aware of the comet, we haven’t been able to pick up any sign of it.”

“Curious,” Elyria said. “Does that mean that the testing theory is correct?”

The researchers had come up with a number of theories for explaining Darius. One of the most popular ones had been that the whole planet was intended to encourage humans, the test subjects, to develop the ability to interact with the quantum foam, although no one had been able to understand just how the ability had developed in the first place. If so, the mystery aliens behind it might have pointed the comet at Darius as a test, knowing that if the population failed to master the ability to do something about it, the comet would hit the planet and obliterate the human settlers. But in several thousand years, they should have space travel of their own even if the Confederation’s survey mission hadn’t stumbled across the planet.

“Maybe,” Gigot said. “Or they may not have figured out that their world orbits the local star.”

“They have maps,” the AIs reminded them. “They do know that their world is a sphere.”

The debate surged around the table, with the researchers arguing over the correct interpretation of the data. Elyria kept her thoughts to herself as she reviewed their best guess at the political borders, trying to decide what so many small states meant for planetary development. One trap that many societies fell into was developing a single global state too early for their own good, but Darius seemed to have run into the opposite, thousands of tiny states that were too small for proper development. Why didn’t they try to work together to better themselves?