Wolff coughed the dusty air from his lungs and folded his arms. “All right, Viprion, I will listen to you this once, but only if you’re going to tell me it in a way I can understand, none of your sarcastic highbrow shit.”
“Agreed.” Viprion found another wall still standing, and they sat down against it. He breathed and appeared to concentrate fiercely before he began.
“Society today is built on the shoulders of the Meritocracy—”
“I thought you were going to tell me about the computers?”
“Look, Citizen Wolff, if I am going to tell you this, you are going to have to permit me to, and you are going to have to listen.” Viprion waited, but Wolff kept his mouth shut, and he at length continued. “The Meritocracy, the time at which the Pagan Atheist lived, was the most industrially and economically productive society history has ever known. It was under the Meritocracy that men reached for the stars and left Earth, formerly the only place inhabited by them.
“The earliest societies were tribal democracies. Throughout history, men have kept trying to revert to the ideal democracy that serves small groups, and every time it has been corrupted. The tribal democracy is not viable on large scale, and these tribes were superseded by feudal systems where the aristocracy were the descendants of those who led, those who thought, and those who were most violent.”
“What, like today, then?”
Viprion glared at Wolff. “No, not like today. I have told you not to interrupt me. Societies on Earth went through fascism and communism, both one and the same. The Meritocracy came to power in the middle of the great Information Revolution, in which the world was largely dominated by stagnant, bureaucratic democracies. The Meritocracy appealed to the people of that age. It offered support for the weakest, and privilege for those with the ambition to better themselves.
“The Meritocracy evolved into the present day Blood aristocracy because its selection system was too good. Or rather, the social system the Meritocracy spawned was. High-ranking meritocrats claimed their right to breed with someone close to them in station, and the distance between the social classes increased. Certain genes—the heritable constituency of man—that confer characteristics the Meritocracy valued, such as patience, attentiveness and an aptitude to learn, became concentrated in the upper castes. Undesirable traits, such as aggression and the tendency to be irrational, ended up dumped in the gene pool of the lower castes.
“The culture the Meritocracy engendered was so effective at breeding and sorting genes, it took only a little over a millennium for genetic polarisation to occur. After that, it didn’t matter if there was provision for a man to move between castes in society, because no man of low caste ever had the aptitude to move. No one ever proposed the system we have in place today. There was no revolution or revolt. The Meritocracy simply evolved into modern society by its own dynamics.” Viprion sighed. “Often I have wondered if our species has become stuck at a genetic junction, because genetically inferior men can still breed, and there is no selection to remove bad genes from the species. Hence the bottom castes have become a dumping ground for genetic rubbish.”
Wolff ignored this inflammatory remark. “So Blood is just the better of these gene things that everyone has?”
“No, there’s a difference between men of the Blood and men who are merely of high caste. The Blood is something else, either a complex mutation or an artificial set of genes. Early on in the time of the Meritocracy, something happened that introduced both the Blood and the Moiety.”
“What’s the Moiety?”
“I told you this would be difficult for you to understand. I’ll come to the Moiety later. The Blood is a series of genes in man’s own DNA. Because DNA is redundant, a man has two versions of any given gene, one from the mother, and one from the father. A man of the highest Blood lineage, such as an Archer or homozygous male, has the Blood version of every gene, and can use the most demanding of computer interfaces, the crown. A man with no Blood has the null version of all the Blood genes. Men on the scale between, men of the Blood, have various combinations of null and Blood genes, and all interface to computers with varying degrees of efficacy.”
“But if I am half of the Blood, I have half of those genes from my father, so why is it you call a man such as me a halfBlood and not a man of the Blood?”
“Indeed, your interface ability is probably more effective than a man with duplicates of fewer Blood genes, but a man who is half of the lowest caste is of no use for anything, however strong his Blood. Half of him may be Blood and strong genes from the upper castes, but the other half is balderdash from the lower castes, and it conflicts and causes problems should that man ever breed.”
Wolff frowned. “What do you mean, breed? Are you saying I’m sterile now?”
“Not quite. The high and low castes are but a few generations away from being separate species. High caste and low caste men have the same number of chromosomes, but the genes have moved around. This works when two members of either caste interbreed to produce a halfBlood, since the child will still have two copies of each gene, but that individual will mix up the DNA from its parents, and produce eggs or sperm with two copies of certain genes and devoid of others.”
Wolff nodded. “HalfBloods are shunned by both castes.”
“And rightly so. They poison the gene pool from the point of view of either caste. The only thing that will contemplate breeding with a halfBlood is another halfBlood, and the offspring in such a case are rarely born alive, and when they do live, they are demented and plagued with illnesses.”
It probably was true. It wasn’t worth arguing about. Even if Wolff had wanted to argue, he had no knowledge to back himself up.
“What, then, is the Moiety?”
Viprion considered, and then continued. “Well, genes in the bodies of every man exist in two forms. Firstly, that man’s own unique genome that makes he or she the individual they are, and which is present in all their cells. Secondly, the genome of that man’s mitochondria. Mitochondria are organisms that live within the cells of men and provide them with energy, and no man can live without them. Many men can share identical mitochondria, and they come from your mother—they can’t be passed on through the male line. But there is another genetic form that can exist within men, the Moiety. The Moiety are in some ways like mitochondria, but they are not necessary to life and not all men have them. They are passed through the female line, like mitochondria, but they exist without the cells, in blood plasma.
“Without the Blood, the Moiety is useless. Indeed, men not of the Blood who have the Moiety are reported to hallucinate and become delusional and then insane if electronic devices are implanted in their bodies. Men of the Blood who also have the Moiety are capable of growing their nervous systems on to electronic implants and thus becoming able to commune with machines. This is why the Archers are of the purest Blood lineages. Their computer communion is the greatest and most complex any man can ever experience. The only purpose of the Moiety is to serve men of the Blood.” Viprion paused to gaze at Wolff. “Your mother carried the Moiety, and you are a halfBlood. When your bail slave chip was implanted, your nervous system grafted onto it, and it is through that chip that you can know computers. I have heard of it afore, although it is uncommon for a man of your origins to have both Blood genes and the Moiety.”
Wolff remembered how he’d first become aware of the machines soon after beginning work at the salvage station. That made sense. “You said the Blood was introduced as a what, a mutation, or an artificial event?”
Viprion examined his fingernails. “Supposedly. I assume you have heard the name Pilgrennon before.”
“I thought that was a swear word. Or part of the name of the year.”
“Men who use the term as an expletive,” Viprion said, punctuating his remark with a glare at Wolff, “are blaspheming and are usually ignorant and of low caste. You are correct in that it is from Pilgrennon’s life that our year, Pilgrennon Epoch 4037, derives its nomenclature. Pilgrennon is a figure from history so long passed it is barely discernible from legend. What is known today has been pried from the fragmented minds of various ancient computers around the galaxy. He—from what is known, it is understood it was male—was the first man of the Blood, and his descendants are the founders of the four purest Blood lineages. Certainly men of knowledge, who have studied the genetics agree that the Blood genes appeared roughly four thousand years ago, which would put their emergence at the time of Pilgrennon’s life.
“There are some cults who argue that Pilgrennon was the Pagan Atheist, but that can never be proven or disproven, and no reference to Pilgrennon’s mate has ever been found, although she must have carried the Moiety and been of strong Blood, otherwise their children would not have been pureBloods. There are a great many cultural versions of the legend, the evolution of modern society, Pilgrennon’s gift and Pilgrennon’s curse, and the resulting burden of the Blood castes.”
“Burden?” Wolff scoffed. “The Blood castes have a burden?”
Viprion’s expression did not change. “Of course,” he said, coldly. “The Archers.”
“The Archer!” Wolff cried, and sprang to his feet. Down in the valley whence they’d come, a solitary figure, bearing the unmistakeable shape of a bow, made its way. “That’s her!”
Viprion let out a shout. Many more forms were approaching, in the distance on the banks farther up the valley. Wolff did not want to wait to find out if they might be friend or foe. He took off and began to run back down the valley toward the Archer. The tide was coming in, and water had started to fill the dip in the land.
“Wolff, wait!” Viprion shouted behind him.
Wolff skidded to a halt and spun. Something had occurred to him. “You knew I was a bail slave, that I was a halfBlood and could communicate with computers, didn’t you, from the start?”
Nothing could be read from the castellan’s expression. Wolff breathed hard. His first deduction led to vaster ramifications. “Why did you ask me those questions, when you knew the answers? Why did you let me see the seignior? You thought I might be able to defeat him, didn’t you? I’m a halfBlood, and so’s he. You pitted him against me because you wanted to seize control of the circumfercirc!” Wolff stepped back, overcome by the magnitude of the way he’d been exploited. “You knew who Taggart was! That was what all that business with the beacon in the runnership was about! You knew the marauders were going to attack! You orchestrated it to coincide with the ion storm! You invited the Kuiper Belters to attack Carck-Westmathlon! You wanted them to kill the seignior, so you could seize control of the circumfercirc, and conveniently blame it all on an insurgency afterward. You made a pact with the
Bellwether
, but it went wrong, didn’t it? And now billions of men and morrans are dead because of your actions, and the only reason I lived was because you thought you could trade my life for your own!”
“Listen to me, Wolff.” The castellan took a step toward him, his face desperate. “There are more important things to consider now—”
“No, Viprion! Because you’re a dishonourable fucking cunt, and you don’t care about anyone but yourself!” Wolff rammed Viprion hard in the sternum and the castellan staggered and fell on his backside in the rising water. Wolff strode away from him, glancing once over his shoulder. “Arrol, are you coming with me or not?”
Rh’Arrol ran after him. Wolff shouted back to Viprion, “They kill those not of the Blood, and they torture and kill those who are of the Blood, remember that, Viprion!”
The castellan’s sardonic voice mocked him. “She’s better than you, Wolff. She’s so much better, she can’t even see you. You can’t change it! That’s the way it is.”
Wolff ran toward the Archer, and as he did the mob spilled over the crest perpendicular to his path and began rushing down the valley in pairs, holding laser weapons. One of the forerunners raised his gun at Jed, the man beside him stepping to the side, but before either could take aim, the Archer’s bow released with a loud crack, and her arrow whirred through the air, too fast to be seen. The man flung the weapon to the ground and screamed as purple flame guttered from his lower abdomen around the metal shaft. His hands grappled the arrow’s tail, and he fell to the ground with a strangulated gulp of air. His companion reeled as though blind.
Jed already had another arrow fitted, and the following bandits held back in newfound fear of this adversary from the deep skies, and what she could do with what had seemed a straightforward and rather archaic weapon.
“Jed!” Wolff shouted.
She turned, as did the aggressors.
Wolff pointed at the case as he splashed through the shallows, but Jed was drawing her bow again, this time pointed at him. She held her sight on him as he drew closer, and as he sprinted toward her, he knew she fully intended to shoot him dead.
Wolff heard running footsteps behind him, and a man sprang, arm reaching for the case. With lightning reflex, Jed recalculated and fired. The arrow hit the man straight between the eyes as his outstretched fingers reached toward the handle, and purple sparks geysered from his forehead. Wolff swerved aside, and Rh’Arrol let out a cry. The man fell into the water, and mauve flame tore across the surface.
Wolff slowed as he closed the distance, holding up the case like a shield, but she pointed her third arrow straight at him.
Her face twisted and her bow came aslant, the arrow taking flight and whipping down into the sea a few yards away to rupture into violet fire. Her knees gave way. When she screamed, it was the feral cry of one under true torture.