The Deep Link (The Ascendancy Trilogy Book 1) (11 page)

Amharr paces back and forth through his vessel's crux,
chasing one thought and then the next, unable to understand their chaotic
procession. The human's mind has slipped away from his. He's going mad with
contradictions and can't accept it.

He'd just managed to establish a superficial silence, a
peace between his own mind and the imprint of the human, when something went
horribly wrong. Her input dwindled away and disappeared, leaving a sucking void
inside of him. Then it returned in a howling madness that filled him with
despair. He regained control of himself quickly, but that feeling... that
feeling must never exist inside of him again.

Amharr doesn't understand it. Even now, a considerable
time after the flickering of the human's input, all he can think of is the
chaos inside her mind and the terrible turmoil it causes her—
him
—the
turmoil it causes
them
.

"Dominant?"

Gra'Ylgam stares at him from across the room, his inquiry
about the next stage of the assessment still unanswered.

"We will venture deeper into their territory,"
Amharr says.
Where is she now
?
Is she alright
?
Why does it
matter to me
? "No—we will stay here," he amends.

The Kolsamal looks confused.

Amharr stops pacing in the middle of the room and stares
at the floor, remembering Kriahm's defiance. Kriahm is avid and dangerous, and
now out of his reach. An incalculable risk.

Everything is out of my reach
, Amharr thinks
angrily.
Everything has become a risk
.

"I need more time," he says.

He approaches Gra'Ylgam and senses faint residues of the
human's body in the thick layer of autotrophs covering the Kolsamal's skin. He
leans forward, sniffing the air.

Gra'Ylgam contracts his muscles and stands still.

Amharr latches on to his face, his fingers instinctively
finding the same spots of barren flesh as every time prior. His hand spreads,
the Kolsamal's face opens, and thousands of nerve tendrils shoot out of the
radix in Amharr's palm and into the Kolsamal's skull.

They dig into his neuronal network and feast. They fire up
and emulate, stimulate and duplicate, transport information and try to feed the
insatiable need that smolders inside of Amharr. But, predictably, they fail.
All he finds are Gra'Ylgam's memories of mindless chatter with the human. It
satisfies nothing more than minor curiosities. It's better than nothing. It
will do. For now.

The overall sea of information in the Kolsamal's brain is
held together by transitory links that break and reform as the need arises. Yet
they always mirror the same basic attitudes: they're always tinged by the same
ancient components—old bits of data stored in chemical chains that filter all
sensations and shape each train of thought.

The Kolsamal are shackled by their genetic memory. Even
though at first, long ago, it made Amharr doubt their suitability as a
dominated race, it has come to offer him a soothing, well-known tapestry of
concepts that he sometimes indulges in exploring.

The Kolsamal almost faced containment when they were first
discovered, due to their ability to encode information within their genes
during a single lifetime. It was their symbiosis with the autotrophs living on
their skin, making them independent from everything else but ultraviolet light
and water, that made them a valuable asset. But the only way to keep them
subdued was to separate and isolate them so that no information could ever be
exchanged between castes. This way their knowledge could never accrue,
preventing them from becoming a threat.

Once every ten generations, the entire caste of Kolsamal
aboard an Ascendancy vessel is wiped out and replaced with cloned offspring
from a Nobelanin storage facility, carrying nothing but the limited information
needed to perform their duty under a Dominant, their evolution as a species
forever stifled.

Gra'Ylgam is ninth generation, born in a lineage of caste
leaders, slightly more intelligent and more docile than the other Kolsamal.
Better suited for interaction with the Emranti. Because of this, Gra'Ylgam is
wise and prudent, and very observant of his fellow Kolsamal. The abundance of
his thoughts is always a treat for Amharr.

Not this time.

His ordered mind seems almost too familiar to Amharr,
offers him no challenge, no resistance, no satisfaction. It is devoid of any
flavor.

Unlike hers
.

Amharr explores it nonetheless.

He sees his own vessel with Gra'Ylgam's eyes, sees the
walls and floors and rooms all changed, dark and cold, and menacingly alien. He
feels his self-perception shift and settle within this foreign body, made of
decaying flesh and indurated bone, so seductively self-sufficient and
independent of its surroundings.

Amharr drifts into Gra'Ylgam's most recent memories and
easily classifies everything yet unknown to him. He hunts through episode after
episode, through day after day, searching for any bit of news or irregularity.
He finds nothing. He quickly grows restless again. But as Gra'Ylgam's pain gets
stronger, his self-control fades. His thoughts keep darting back to something
that fills him with dread. It draws Amharr's attention.

What Amharr finds inside the Kolsamal's intricately woven
thought patterns startles him. It's a memory of his caste, very recent, riddled
with conflict and fear, and something else: hatred. Directed at him.

Amharr gives heed to his curiosity and relives the memory
at an accelerated speed. In it, Gra'Ylgam is facing a large number of Kolsamal
youngsters, tenth generation, all in an uproar. One of them bellows out
Amharr's name. He wants to slay him single-handed. The others spur him on,
calling out reasons why it must be done, why the time is right for the Kolsamal
race to break free of the Dominants.

He sees a tide of glinting eyes and bared teeth, of sharp
claws and flexing muscles—a deluge of ancient hatred triggered by young
determination, closing in on him.

Amharr also finds an unexpected sentiment in Gra'Ylgam.
The elder is actually worried about Amharr being punished for something that is
not his fault. Worried that the rioting youngsters will make matters even worse
for all Kolsamal in the Ascendancy.

Amharr breaks off his exploration. His tendrils retreat,
and his hand dislodges from Gra'Ylgam's face. His legs tremble as he sits on
the floor.

Gra'Ylgam's face bleeds. He sits quietly next to Amharr.

"Have you expected this development?" Amharr
asks.

"Yes, Dominant. But not so soon."

"Is it because of the human?" Amharr already
knows the answer.

It was always a matter of time, though it's surprising how
quickly his condition has become known to his serfs, without it ever having
breached the ranks of the other Emranti aboard the
Undawan
. Is his race
more ignorant than a dominated one?

Gra'Ylgam blinks, and swallows the trickling blood and
excess of cytoplasm oozing down his face.

"Who will lead the mutiny?" Amharr asks.

"Dha'Szato, the tenth generation leader who is to
follow me. He is very young; the ancient truths are still fresh in his
inherited memory and make him dare things otherwise forbidden. He knows his
generation precedes a Clearing, and he will not accept it. He will take his kin
into death against the Emranti on this vessel, even before we finish our
current assignment and leave the sector."

"Can you reason with him?"

"I have failed thus far." Gra'Ylgam stares at
him—insistent, hopeless. They both understand the stakes. The mutinous Kolsamal
are fueled by their suspicion of Amharr's inability to lead, strong in their
belief that they can gain the upper hand over the rest of the Emranti aboard
the vessel without Amharr's command. If they revolt, the inevitable massacre
will end in the loss of the
Undawan
, the alerting of the Raimerians and
the subsequent annihilation of their entire caste. Not to mention Amharr's
certain execution for treason.

"How many have sided with him?" Amharr asks.

"Almost two hundred and fifty."

That makes for an even fight against the fifty Emranti
aboard. But the Kolsamal are mad with the scent of opportunity, and the Emranti
won't be aided by his connection to the vessel. Which is
also
beginning
to fade, pushed out of his grasp by the increasing chaos of emotions spurred by
her
.

Amharr rises and glares at Gra'Ylgam. "You do not
have enough recollection of what interests me," he says. "I no longer
need you."

Gra'Ylgam wishes to say something, but hesitates.

"You need not fear for your own life," Amharr
assures him. "Or your place in my consideration."

Gra'Ylgam nods his gratitude, and leaves.

Amharr paces the room several times, trying to collect his
thoughts. He is just as uncomfortable as before, unable to focus on the news of
the mutiny, unable to think of a rational assessment, unable to regain his
clarity and decisiveness however hard he tries.

That despair... That horrible feeling that tore into him as
the human's input disappeared from his mind fills him with renewed dread.

She's all he can think of, and not even those thoughts are
clear.

-

Back in his personal chamber, Amharr can barely quiet
himself enough to sit in his nest.

Throughout his adult life, through all the dangers and
difficult situations he's seen, his anxiety has never remained this pitched for
such a long time. And he's never been unable to control it. This time he may
require external help, or even a complete purge of his median brain to rid
himself of the unruly mixture of alien memories and unchecked urges. It's an
appalling prospect. He will
not
purge, not lose so much of his own
memories and correlations in the process, just to take the easy way out of his
predicament. It's the coward's way—unfit for a Dominant.

He relaxes and glances out the transparent wall of his
room upon the crowded vastness of the Helix. So many stars, so many worlds and
creatures, all frothing with life and activity. Everywhere he turns there is
demand for order, and a readiness to break it. It is an endless process upon
which he must act, and which acts upon him in return.

So much demand, so little balance.

His muscles tense again and the excitement buzzing through
the nerves in his spine spills over once more. He releases the energy through
his feet and hands, and the hungry vessel drinks it down.

Has the human ever faced a demand for structure that can
measure up to the one he faces constantly? Most likely not. Her species hasn't
yet reached the awareness of the Helix that he has, that all High Emranti do.
They have no knowledge or prediction of beings as complex and powerful as he
is. How could she possibly understand him?

I don't understand her either
, Amharr admits. But
that can be amended.

Seated as comfortably as is possible of late, he closes
his eyes and rummages through the human's memories.

A particularly prominent one catches his attention. It's
not recent, and doesn't seem to be related to any vital aspect of her
existence, yet it's somehow linked to every major decision and choice the human
has ever made. It even affects her interpretation of unrelated memories, older
and newer, without any logical explanation.

Amharr hasn't noticed this strange interconnectivity in
the human's memories before. They don't appear to be ordered chronologically,
or parsed by their relevance. They exist in multiple states at once, connected
randomly. Their organization makes no sense to his highly structured mind.

How is it possible for her to determine reality if her understanding
of it isn't cumulative, but self-referential? How does she even remain
sane
?

Amharr employs all the patience he can muster to study the
piece of memory he has singled out—to understand it.

In that memory, the human is still young but somewhat more
evolved than in her faulty memory of the Totorkha's plasma feeding frenzy. She
is among a large number of human nestlings of similar size, gathered in an
enclosure with seating furnishings and various utensils, whose use is entirely
incomprehensible to Amharr. The other humans are gathered around her, making
pointless conversation, voicing observations and asking questions, most of
which—
all
of which are perceived as hostile.

Why would she regard herself in danger among her own kind?
Among other nestlings, of all things.

One of the nestlings stands out in particular. It seems to
be a male, physically superior to her. He stands closer than the rest, and
dominates the others. She sees him as an enemy, the manifestation of her fears
and insecurities, the incarnation of her failure to measure up.

"You have no place here, you bug-eyed imp," he
says. "Crawl back into that hole with the rest of them alien
critters."

She clenches her fists and stands still, afraid to speak
or move, afraid even to look up. Amharr is afraid along with her, dipping into
a long-forgotten sense of helplessness, as he inhabits her memory.

"You have no business being here," the male
nestling says.

"That's right," the others agree. "You're
not one of us."

"Where's your parents, beetle-face?"

They make a cackling sound and bare their teeth at her.
Her eyes sting, but she tries hard to show no reaction.

"Hey, we're talking to you." The male nestling
steps closer until his face is right above hers. "Answer us,
bug-face
."

She swallows. "The hive..."

"What? I can't hear you."

"They're back at the hive." Her voice breaks in
her throat.

"Where the alien bugs are, right?"

"Yes," she whispers.