She fell. Temperature increased. Pressure on her suit began to constrict her air supply. She used fighter trancing to cut back on her breathing.
Fell.
And broke the trance. Pushed through the dense smoke of exhaustion. Planned the beam web. Counted her reserves. Nudged into an updraft beneath the plant. The thermal carried her, a silent piece of paper in a storm, drifting back and forth beneath the objective. The huge field intakes pulsed above, lightning outlining their invisible extension. She held back on the beam.
Nearly faded out. Her suit interior was almost unbearably hot.
She was only vaguely aware of laying down the pattern. The beams vanished in the murk. The thermal pushed her through a layer of haze, and she saw the plant, riding high above clear-atmosphere turbulence. The zero-angle phase had pushed through the field intakes, into their source nodes and the plant body, surrounding it with bright blue Cherenkov. First the surface began to break up, then the middle layers, and finally key supports. Chunks vibrated away with the internal fury of their molecular, then atomic, then particle disruption. Paraphrasing Grounds description of beam action, the plant became less and less convinced of its reality. “Matter dreams,” an instructor had said a decade before. “Dreams it is real, maintains the dream by shifting rules with constant results. Disturb the dreams, the shifting of the rules results in inconstant results. Things cannot hold.”
She slid away from the updraft, found another, wondered idly how far she would be lifted. Curiosity at the last. Let’s just see, she told herself; a final experiment.
Now she was cold. The implant was flickering, showing signs of reorganization. She didn’t use it. No sense expanding the amount of time until death. No sense—
at all.
The sled, maneuvered by one remaining fighter, glided up beneath her almost unnoticed.
Aryz waited in the stillness of a Senexi memory, his thinking temporarily reduced to a faint susurrus. What he waited for was not clear.
—Come.
The form of address was wrong, but he recognized the voice. His thoughts stirred, and he followed the nebulous presence out of Senexi territory.
—Know your enemy.
Prufrax … the name of one of the human shapes sent out against their own kind. He could sense her presence in the mandate, locked into a memory store. He touched on the store and caught the essentials—the grinder, the updraft plant, the fight from Prufrax’s viewpoint.
—Know how your enemy knows you.
He sensed a second presence, similar to that of Prufrax. It took him some time to realize that the human captive was another form of the shape, a reproduction of the…
Both were reproductions of the female whose image was in the memory store. Aryz was not impressed by threes—Senexi mysticism, what had ever existed of it, had been preoccupied with fives and sixes—but the coincidence was striking.
—Know how your enemy sees you.
He saw the grinder processing organics—the vermiform natives—in preparation for a widespread seeding of deuterium gatherers. The operation had evidently been conducted for some time; the vermiform populations were greatly reduced from their usual numbers. Vermiforms were a common type-species on gas giants of the sort depicted. The mutated shape nudged him into a particular channel of the memory, that which carried the original Prufrax’s emotions. She had reacted with disgust to the Senexi procedure. It was a reaction not unlike what Aryz might feel when coming across something forbidden in Senexi behavior. Yet eradication was perfectly natural, analogous to the human cleansing of food before eating.
—It’s in the memory. The vermiforms are intelligent. They have their own kind of civilization. Human action on this world prevented their complete extinction by the Senexi.
—So what matter they were intelligent? Aryz responded. They did not behave or think like Senexi, or like any species Senexi find compatible. They were therefore not desirable. Like humans.
—You would make humans extinct?
—We would protect ourselves from them.
—Who damages whom most?
Aryz didn’t respond. The line of questioning was incomprehensible. Instead, he flowed into the memory of Prufrax, propelled by another aspect of complete freedom— confusion.
The implant was replaced. Prufrax’s damaged limbs and skin were repaired or regenerated quickly, and within four wakes, under intense treatment usually reserved only for overs, she regained all her reflexes and speed. She requested liberty of the cruiser while it returned for repairs. Her request was granted.
She first sought Clevo in the designated research area. He wasn’t there, but a message was, passed on to her by a smiling young crew member. She read it quickly:
“You’re free and out of action. Study for a while, then come find me. The old place hasn’t been damaged. It’s less private, but still good. Study! I’ve marked highlights.”
She frowned at the message, then handed it to the crew member, who duly erased it and returned to his duties. She wanted to talk with Clevo, not study.
But she followed his instructions. She searched out highlighted entries in the ship’s memory store. It was not nearly as dull as she had expected. In fact, by following the highlights, she felt she was learning more about Clevo and about the questions he asked.
Old literature was not nearly as graphic as fibs, but it was different enough to involve her for a time. She tried to create imitations of what she read, but erased them. Nonfib stories were harder than she suspected. She read about punishment, duty; she read about places called heaven and hell, from a writer who had died tens of thousands of years before. With ed supplement guidance, she was able to comprehend most of what she read. Plugging the store into her implant, she was able to absorb hundreds of volumes in an hour. Some of the stores were losing definition. They hadn’t been used in decades, perhaps centuries.
Halfway through, she grew impatient. She left the research area. Operating on another hunch, she didn’t go to the blister as directed, but straight to memory central, two decks inboard the research area. She saw Clevo there, plugged into a data pillar, deep in some aspect of ship history. He noticed her approach, unplugged, and swiveled on his chair. “Congratulations,” he said, smiling at her.
“Hardfought,” she acknowledged, smiling.
“Better than that, perhaps,” he said.
She looked at him quizzically. “What do you mean, better?”
“I’ve been doing some illicit tapping on over channels.”
“So?”
—He is dangerous!
“You’ve been recommended.”
“For what?”
“Not for hero status, not yet. You’ll have a good many more fights before that. And you probably won’t enjoy it when you get there. You won’t be a fighter then.”
Prufrax stood silently before him.
“You may have a valuable genetic assortment. Overs think you behaved remarkably well under impossible conditions.”
“Did I?”
He nodded. “Your type may be preserved.”
“Which means?”
“There’s a program being planned. They want to take the best fighters and reproduce them—clone them—to make uniform topgrade squadrons. It was rumored in my time—you haven’t heard?”
She shook her head.
“It’s not new. It’s been done, off and on, for tens of thousands of years. This time they believe they can make it work.”
“You were a fighter, once,” she said. “Did they preserve your type?”
Clevo nodded. “I had something that interested them, but not, I think, as a fighter.”
Prufrax looked down at her stubby-fingered hands. “It was grim,” she said. “You know what we found?”
“An extermination plant.”
&nb
sp; “You want me to understand them better. Well, I can’t. I refuse. How could they do such things?” She looked disgusted and answered her own question. “Because they’re Senexi.”
“Humans,” Clevo said, “have done much the same, sometimes worse.”
“No!”
—No!
“Yes,” he said firmly. He sighed. “We’ve wiped Senexi worlds, and we’ve even wiped worlds with intelligent species like our own. Nobody is innocent. Not in this universe.”
“We were never taught that.”
“It wouldn’t have made you a better hawk. But it might make a better human of you, to know. Greater depth of character. Do you want to be more aware?”
“You mean, study more?”
He nodded.
“What makes you think you can teach me?”
“Because you thought about what I asked you. About how Senexi thought. And you survived where some other hawk might not have. The overs think it’s in your genes. It might be. But it’s also in your head.”
“Why not tell the overs?”
“I have,” he said. He shrugged. “I’m too valuable to them, otherwise I’d have been busted again, a long time ago.”
“They don’t want me to learn from you?”
“I don’t know,” Clevo said. “I suppose they’re aware you’re talking to me. They could stop it if they wanted. They may be smarter than I give them credit for.” He shrugged again. “Of course they’re smart. We just disagree at times.”
“And if I learn from you?”
“Not from me, actually. From the past. From history, what other people have thought. I’m really not any more capable than you … but I know history, small portions of it. I won’t teach you so much as guide.”
“I did use your questions,” Prufrax said. “But will I ever need to use them—think that way—again?”
Clevo nodded. “Of course.”
—You’re quiet.
—She’s giving in to him.
--She gave in a long time ago.
—She should be afraid.
—Were you—we—ever really afraid of a challenge?
—No.
—Not Senexi, not forbidden knowledge.
—Someone listens with us. Feel—
Clevo first led her through the history of past wars, judging that was appropriate considering her occupation. She was attentive enough, though her mind wandered; sometimes he was didactic, but she found she didn’t mind that much. At no time did his attitude change as they pushed through the tangle of the past. Rather her perception of his attitude changed. Her perception of herself changed.
She saw that in all wars, the first stage was to dehumanize the enemy, reduce the enemy to a lower level so that he might be killed without compunction. When the enemy was not human to begin with, the task was easier. As wars progressed, this tactic frequently led to an underestimation of the enemy, with disastrous consequences. “We aren’t exactly underestimating the Senexi,” Clevo said. “The overs are too smart for that. But we refuse to understand them, and that could make the war last indefinitely.”
“Then why don’t the overs see that?”
“Because we’re being locked into a pattern. We’ve been fighting for so long, we’ve begun to lose ourselves. And it’s getting worse.” He assumed his didactic tone, and she knew he was reciting something he’d formulated years before and repeated to himself a thousand times. “There is no war so important that to win it, we must destroy our minds.”
She didn’t agree with that. Losing the war with the Senexi would mean extinction for all of them, and their minds as well—as she understood things.
Most often they met in the single unused weapons blister that had not been damaged. They met when the ship was basking in the real between sponge-space jaunts. He brought memory stores with him in portable modules, and they read, listened, experienced together. She never placed a great deal of importance in the things she learned; her interest was focused on Clevo. Still, she learned.
The rest of her time she spent training. She was aware of a growing isolation from the hawks, which she attributed to her uncertain rank status. Was her genotype going to be preserved or not? The decision hadn’t been made. The more she learned, the less she wanted to be singled out for honor. Attracting that sort of attention might be dangerous, she thought. Dangerous to whom, or what, she could not say.
Clevo showed her how hero images had been used to indoctrinate birds and hawks in a standard of behavior that was ideal, not realistic. The results were not always good; some tragic blunders had been made by fighters trying to be more than anyone possibly could or refusing to be flexible.
The war was certainly not a fib. Yet more and more the overs seemed to be treating it as one. Unable to bring about strategic victories against the Senexi, the overs had settled in for a long war of attrition and were apparently bent on adapting all human societies to the effort.
“There are overs we never hear of, who make decisions that shape our entire lives. Soon they’ll determine whether or not we’re even born, if they don’t already.”
“That sounds paranoid,” she said, trying out a new word and concept she had only recently learned.
“Maybe so.”
“Besides, it’s been like that for ages—not knowing all our overs.”
“But it’s getting worse,” Clevo said. He showed her the projections he had made. In time, if trends continued unchanged, fighters and all other combatants would be treated more and more mechanically, until they became the machines the overs wished them to be.
—No.
—Quiet. How does he feel toward her?
It was inevitable that as she learned under his tutelage, he began to feel responsible for her changes. She was an excellent fighter. He could never be sure that what he was doing might reduce her effectiveness. And yet he had fought well—despite similar changes—until his billet switch. It had been the overs who had decided he would be more effective, less disruptive, elsewhere.
Bitterness over that decision was part of his motive. The overs had done a foolish thing, putting a fighter into research. Fighters were tenacious. If the truth was to be hidden, then fighters were the ones likely to ferret it out. And pass it on. There was a code among fighters, seldom revealed to their immediate overs, much less to the supreme overs parsecs distant in their strategospheres. What one fighter learned that could be of help to another had to be passed on, even under penalty. Clevo was simply following that unwritten rule.
Passing on the fact that, at one time, things had been different. That war changed people, governments, societies, and that societies could effect an enormous change on their constituents, especially now—change in their lives, their thinking. Things could become even more structured. Freedom of fight was a drug, an illusion—
—No!
used to perpetuate a state of hatred.
“Then why do they keep all the data in stores?” she asked. “I mean, you study the data, everything becomes obvious.”
“There are still important people who think we may want to find our way back someday. They’re afraid we’ll lose our roots, but—”
His face suddenly became peaceful. She reached out to touch him, and he jerked slightly, turning toward her in the blister. “What is it?” she asked.
“It’s not organized. We’re going to lose the information. Ship overs are going to restrict access more and more. Eventually it’ll decay, like some already has in these stores. I’ve been planning for some time to put it all in a single unit—”
—He built the mandate!
“and have the overs place one on every ship, with researchers to tend it. Formalize the loose scheme still in effect, but dying. Right now I’m working on the fringes. At least I’m allowed to work. But soon I’ll have enough evidence that th
ey won’t be able to argue. Evidence of what happens to societies that try to obscure their histories. They go quite mad. The overs are still rational enough to listen; maybe I’ll push it through.” He looked out the transparent blister. The stars were smudging to one side as the cruiser began probing for entrances to sponge space. “We’d better get back.”
“Where are you going to serve when we return? We’ll all be transferred.”
“That’s some time removed. Why do you want to know?”
“I’d like to learn more.”
He smiled. “That’s not your only reason.”
“I don’t need someone to tell me what my reasons are,” she said testily.
“We’re so reluctant,” he said. She looked at him sharply, irritated and puzzled. “I mean,” he continued, “we’re hawks. Comrades. Hawks couple like that.” He snapped his fingers. “But you and I sneak around it all the time.”
Prufrax kept her face blank.
“Aren’t you receptive toward me?” he asked, his tone almost teasing.
“You’re so damned superior. Stuffy,” she snapped.
“Aren’t you?”
“It’s just that’s not all,” she said, her tone softening.
“Indeed,” he said in a barely audible whisper.
In the distance they heard the alarms.
—It was never any different.
—What?
—Things were never any different before me.
—Don’t be silly. It’s all here.
—If Clevo made the mandate, then he put it here. It isn’t true.
—Why are you upset?
—I don’t like hearing that everything I believe is a … fib.
—I’ve never known the difference, I suppose. Eyes-open was never all that real to me. This isn’t real, you aren’t … this is eyes-shut. So why be upset? You and I … we aren’t even whole people. I feel you. You wish the Zap, you fight, not much else. I’m just a shadow, even compared to you. But she is whole. She loves him. She’s less a victim than either of us. So something has to have changed.