Artemis Awakening (9 page)

“The former empire was vast and powerful beyond anything we can imagine. Their ships flew faster than light, connecting into a network of worlds so far apart that the stars that warmed them were invisible to each other. The empire may even have bridged galaxies. Its technologies were not merely those of the physical world—metal and micron—but of the mental world as well.

“Their ships were powered by engines we can barely imagine, guided by pilots who could sense the subatomic world and speak to the particles that inhabit it. Communications went beyond the limitations of time and space, surging between mind and mind. Yet even possession of capacities that defied all that had limited human endeavor were not enough to satisfy the rulers of the empire. You see, no matter what tools they created, no matter how they resculpted their minds and bodies, they were still human. Human ambitions and human weaknesses destroyed what human intellect and human achievement had created.

“Where the first rumbles of discontent began no one can agree. I won’t bore you by reciting the names of places and peoples that would mean little or nothing to you. Suffice to say that after centuries of relative peace and incredible prosperity, the structure of the empire began to crack.

“For a long, long time, theoretically the empire had been ruled by scions of one family. In reality, the structure of rulership was more complicated. Even with genetic engineering, nothing could assure that a generation unborn would have the talents needed to face challenges yet unimagined. Instead, those who showed talent for rulership were adopted into the reigning house.

“Even with this bridge to power, the time came when the rulers found themselves challenged from without. Being adopted became something to avoid. Instead, those with the talents needed by the imperial house sought to retain their own names and family affiliations. First on the outer edges, then to the very heart of the empire, a spider’s web of cracks spread. The time came when the empire did not exist except in name. It had become an affiliation of rivals working in the name of the empire, although more interested in their own advantage than the preservation of the whole.

“Your planet, Artemis, had been created during a time before that spider’s web was complete. Some say Artemis was the empire’s last great creation. What is important for you to know is that having access to Artemis was always considered a mark of great prestige. It remained so until the empire fell. Artemis was a secret shared by those who otherwise felt they had nothing in common.”

Griffin looked away from the flames to his two—no, four, listeners. Four pairs of eyes—two human, one ursine, one feline—watched but, other than Bruin leaning to shove the teapot closer to Griffin, there was no interruption.

After pouring himself a cup of the lukewarm tea, Griffin resumed. “Now, within that spider’s web of associations there were some—I’ll call them families, for lack of a better term—that held more power than the rest. Being human, alliances were often sealed in a very human fashion. The old tradition of adoption remained. In recent years, the even more ancient tradition of the marriage alliance had regained popularity. So it was through marriage that two important families decided to seal their new alliance. For reasons of prestige and of secrecy, the wedding was to be held on Artemis.

“Thus men and women who might otherwise not have agreed to come to the same location agreed to meet on Artemis. Artemis, after all, was safe. Its very location was known only to a comparative few. Despite generation after generation of wrangling for power, Artemis remained neutral ground, self-sustaining and therefore kept out of the web of interstellar commerce that connected the other systems, even as they fought increasingly violent wars to deny any such connection.

“These families came for a wedding, but what they met was a funeral. Historians still argue as to who arranged the betrayal. Some say it came from both sides, each seeking to destroy the leaders of the other. Some say a third party or parties learned that their rivals were gathering in one place. Whatever the source, the end result was the same.

“Stealth ships eased into orbit around Artemis and unloaded heavily armed commandos. These wore armor carefully sealed against their first attack—a plague of nanobots programmed to seek out and disable any technological device more elaborate than a series of gears. Artemis might appear to be charmingly primitive, but its rustic aspect was made more enjoyable by a carefully hidden rapid transit system, extensive medical services, as well as the little comforts without which guests from off-planet really could not be expected to enjoy their holidays.

“Once the technology was disabled, the end result was inevitable. The commandos slew all the members of both wedding parties—an action that is often used as evidence for the theory that the attack was planned by a third faction. Anyone from off planet was also killed. Locals, however, were left alone as long as they didn’t interfere.”

Griffin stopped, remembering something uncomfortable he had come across in the journal of a woman who represented herself as a leader of one of the subgroups of commandos. He wondered if he should mention it, then recklessly decided to take the risk.

“In fact,” he said, “various reports noted that, on the whole, the locals did not interfere. There were a few incidents recorded, but even before the commandos issued their warning, the Artemesians showed a singular lack of interest in becoming involved.”

He looked at his two auditors, but flickering fire shadows masked both Bruin’s and Adara’s features, making it impossible for him to read their expressions.

“Do you know if this is true?” Griffin prompted. “Does your lore say anything about this?”

Adara said, “I am no loremaster, but it seems to me I have heard some such thing—that this was a war between seegnur and seegnur, not something that involved us.”

Bruin added, “Surely staying uninvolved would have seemed a reasonable decision—a choice for life over death. Why would you expect otherwise?”

Griffin knew why he expected otherwise and knew to his shame that the knowing came from the depths of his own privileged upbringing. If service providers did not provide their services with some sort of loyalty, then what comfort could you feel in their omnipresence?

He couldn’t make himself explain, so settled for stammering. “It is … simply another conflicted point on the record, you know. One of those things … well, we’d like cleared up.”

Bruin ran fingers over his thick-furred head. “Well, we two are hunters, not historians or loremasters. Perhaps these can answer your questions. Tell me, Griffin Dane,” Bruin continued in the tones of one who is completely aware he is changing the subject, “do you think those nanobots of which you spoke still exist? Do you think they are what caused your ship to crash?”

Griffin nodded slowly. “I have speculated that this might be the case. My shuttle was of a type that has been used and improved upon for centuries. When I say ‘improved upon’ I don’t mean gussied up with all sorts of unnecessary elaborations but instead refined and repaired until the chance of such a failure was very low. I’d gone over all the shuttle systems myself shortly before departing my ship. It seemed in fine repair then. I also thought I’d stayed at a high enough altitude to avoid contamination.”

“And yet it broke,” Bruin said, not as one who denies, rather musing aloud. “I cannot say I understand how these shuttles operate, but I do understand your confusion. It would be as if my knife’s blade snapped in my hand while being put to no particularly demanding task.”

Adara broke in. “Griffin, you can’t possibly have ended your tale of the beginning of the end. It seems to me that all that ended were the lives of a few seegnur here on Artemis. What happened after?”

Griffin forced a chuckle. “I told you I tend to go off on tangents. What happened wasn’t at all simple. I told you how two very important families hoped to seal an alliance here on Artemis. Instead many senior members—the very ones who had hoped for an alliance—were killed. Therefore, those two great families not only failed to make their alliance but also failed to maintain their integrity.

“From what I have read, the remaining members fell to squabbling among themselves. The tenuous spider’s web of empire ceased to be a web at all, but became a series of cracks and fissures. Within a decade or so after that failed wedding, even the illusion of the empire ceased to be. Within a hundred years, a terribly destructive war had spread to every pocket of the civilized universe.

“Bombs that could burrow to a planet’s molten core were launched, splitting planets to fragments. Specialists in faster-than-light travel were assassinated wholesale, thereby eliminating the psychic skills needed to fly the most sophisticated ships. Faster-than-light travel remained possible, but now that the courses of ships could be predicted, defenses could be erected…”

Griffin saw he was losing his audience and backed away from further details. If he was honest with himself, he didn’t understand the fine points any better than these two knife-wielding primitives did. He was a better than average pilot. Even without his computer, he could calculate courses—as long as he had access to astrogation maps. However, imagining days when ship and pilot were one, the pair twisting space and time so that half a galaxy might be bridged in a single jump seemed so fanciful as to be nothing more than magic.

He took a deep breath and redirected his tale.

“In those days of war and destruction,” Griffin said, “Artemis was lost. Not many had known of her in the first place, but when I began my research, I had the distinct impression that someone or someones went out of their way to wipe any mention of the planet from the records. Hints remained, here and there, but even for most historians, Artemis became a mythic place, joining the ranks of Atlantis, the Western Isles, Shangri-La, Blue Moon, and the Impassible Void. Artemis remained lost until a cache of old documents was found on my own homeworld.”

“By you?” Adara asked breathlessly.

Griffin laughed. “Oh, no, not by me. My lucky break came later.”

Lucky break? Not so lucky if I end up stranded. I was prepared to spend a year or so here, but never the rest of my life.

Bruin rubbed one stubby finger around the curve of his ear. “So tell me, son, did you expect that these nanobots would no longer be working? Seems a risky thing, coming here in a ship that might have the guts eaten out of it in a heartbeat.”

The implied criticism stung, but Griffin was careful to control his automatic desire to snap in self-defense. As he had told his tale, it had come home to him how very much he needed these people.

“Actually,” Griffin replied, “I did think the nanobots would have stopped functioning by now. They are usually programmed to deconstruct in a relatively short time. You see, even back when the idea of nanobots was first postulated—some historians argue that the idea has been around far longer than interplanetary colonization—there have been theories that the ’bots might rebuild themselves into something destructive. There were other reasons for me to believe the nanobots would have degraded as well.”

A cock of one of Bruin’s bushy eyebrows asked the question.

“Well, for one, the commandos didn’t destroy the planet,” Griffin said. “They could have and—by the standards of the war that followed—they should have, unless they felt they had further use for it. What use would Artemis have been to them if they couldn’t come down from orbit without crashing?”

“Reasonable,” Bruin agreed, his voice a soothing rumble. “And you did say that you thought you’d kept your vessel high enough that it would be safe from contamination.”

Griffin nodded. “That’s right. It’s hard enough to seal personal armor against such attacks, but nearly impossible to seal a ship. I’m not up on the technological considerations, but one of my brothers explained it to me when I first started considering this trip. My first move on arrival was making some orbital maps. Then I took the shuttle in for a high altitude pass. Scanners can do a lot but, eventually, I was going to need to go down.”

“Need?” Adara asked softly.

“Well,” Griffin replied a touch defiantly, “maybe ‘want’ is more honest. After all, that’s why I came here, to see Artemis firsthand, to learn who still lived here. When a civilization is as low-tech as this one, there’s only so much one can learn from orbit…”

He trailed off. How to explain how simple it had all seemed back home in the Kyley System? He believed he had discovered the long-lost coordinates for Artemis. He would go there, confirm his find, maybe make contact with a few of the more isolated natives. Following that, he would return home triumphant. A lifetime of research would follow … It had all seemed so simple.

He heard himself mutter the last words aloud. “It all seemed so simple.”

“Then you must have made plans against the possibility of those nanobots, eh?” Bruin prompted with unexpected gentleness.

“I did,” Griffin said, feeling himself flushing, “but probably not in the manner you’re thinking. I brought sealed packets containing other nanobots, these geared to undo the damage the first had done. I thought if I found remnants of the old technology I might be able to reactivate it.”

“And those packets?”

“Most of them are in orbit,” Griffin said, “and the ones I brought with me are buried with the shuttle, as impossible to reach as if they were still on my ship.”

He stared at the fire, despair rising. It had all seemed so simple.

“But someone will come looking for you,” Adara said, seeming to read his mind. “Surely this is so. You said you had a mother and a father, six brothers … How many sisters?”

“Three,” Griffin answered automatically. “But they won’t know where to look. No one will know where to look! I’m the only one who had the coordinates and I didn’t share the information. Too much rested on me being first. I told them I was going off to examine some ruins in another system. These days interstellar communication is limited to what ships or message drones will carry. They won’t expect to hear from me for quite a while. Even when they suspect I’m missing, they might eventually duplicate my research, but for now I’ve got to assume no one knows where I am—that I’m stranded here for a long time—maybe even for good.”