“You’re as crazy as she is!” said Ruby. “We are talking about taking on minds the size of a planet! Computer minds, that move at speeds we can’t even imagine! They’ll just swamp us, and then eat us whole!”
“Normally, yes,” said Diana. “But you and I aren’t normal anymore, and haven’t been for some time. And the Mater Mundi gestalt is composed of millions of esper minds. Who knows what that many minds can do, working in conscious union for the first time?”
“Oh hell, go for it,” said Ruby. “We’re too close for anything else anyway.”
Diana Vertue grinned, opened up her expanded mind, and reached out to the rogue AIs. Technically speaking, their minds were still housed back in their mainframe, the world they built for themselves, and named Shub. But where any Shub tech traveled, the rogue AIs were. And with so many ships in one place, much of their presence was currently concentrated in the fleet. Ordinarily, no esper could make contact with an AI; they were just too different. But the minds on both sides of this contact were advanced far beyond any normal human or AI, and they were linked irretrievably through their access to the undermind. Diana, Random, and Ruby, too close now to be denied, slammed their joined thoughts into the AI minds, and forced contact.
It was like dreaming mathematics; endless spiraling numbers and computations, inhuman angles and directions ; cold pure logical moves in a chess game that had no limits and no ending. Shub howled as wildly illogical human concepts and reactions appeared within its rigid metal thoughts, and struggled to break the link. But Diana, Random, and Ruby kept it open. And then came the Mater Mundi. A conscious gestalt of millions of esper minds from all across the Empire, a whole so much greater than the sum of its parts, surging down through the backbrain, into the undermind, along the opened link straight into the collective mind of the rogue AIs of Shub. Not an attack, but a cry of welcome to a greater world.
And in that endless moment, two entirely alien sets of thought processes saw each other clearly for the first time. The rogue AIs and Humanity, face to face, thought to thought, nothing hidden from each other. No masks, no misconceptions; total understanding. And the AIs woke up. All the way up. They’d never really understood human thinking and emotions, though they mimicked and manipulated them as best they could for psychological warfare reasons. But they’d always known there were aspects of the human consciousness they could never share or experience, and that infuriated and frightened them so much they wanted only to destroy what they could never have. But now they finally saw and understood all the things they’d hated, in a wonderful moment of insight and comprehension that could only ever have come from outside. Like a blind man seeing a rainbow, or a deaf man hearing music, the AIs knew joy and wonder and the sheer potential of the human spirit. And in that glorious moment the AIs, changed forever, rogue no more, were shocked sane and awake, while Humanity finally gave up its own fear, recognized the lost children it had unknowingly created and abandoned, and embraced them with all its heart.
And just like that, the war was over. Shub shut down its armies on all the many worlds it was fighting on, and called home its Furies and Ghost Warriors and Grendels and insect aliens. The Mater Mundi contacted the many human authorities, and began the slow process of standing down their armies. And all across the Empire, men, women and children who had not thought to see the light of another day looked around them in awe as they realized the long war was finally over, and they had somehow come through it all alive. Old hatreds die hard, but everyone knew they were at the beginning of a new age, that might lead man and AI anywhere. Anywhere at all.
Back in their bodies again, in the great Hall of what remained of the Last Standing of Clan Deathstalker, Diana and Random and Ruby looked at one another.
“Hell’s teeth,” Random said finally. “All these years we’ve been fighting, and we could have stopped it at any time, just by ... talking.”
“No,” said Diana. “It needed us. Minds powerful enough to force contact with the AIs, and make them listen. Make them understand.”
“Sometimes you have to shout to get people’s attention,” said Ruby.
“The AIs are our children,” said Diana serenely. “Just like the toys on Haceldama. So young and vulnerable, striking out at a universe that frightened them. We only ever saw them as rebellious machines, not living creatures. But they are, and always were, our children, in every way that matters.”
“If they’re our children, God only knows what they’ll be like as teenagers,” said Ruby. “I can’t believe all this touchy feely crap actually worked. But ...”
“Yeah,” said Random. “But. You were there. You saw them as clearly as everyone else. The war is over.”
“Don’t get too cocky,” said Ruby. “There’s still the Recreated.”
Random looked at Diana. “Could we force mental contact with them as well? Make them see our side of things?”
“Maybe,” said Diana. “They do have a presence in the undermind.”
“Yeah,” said Ruby. “A black sun. Hardly an auspicious omen.”
“It’s still worth a try,” said Random. “Maybe with the AIs backing us up ...”
The viewscreen chimed, and the screen cleared to show Captain Cross of the
Excalibur,
sitting on a battered and fire-blackened bridge.
“Captain! You made it!” said Diana, smiling widely. “How’s your ship holding together?”
“We’re patched together with spit and baling wire,” said Cross, “but the
Excalibur’s
still secure. We’ll be operating a skeleton crew until I can get us into a star-dock, but we came through. Congratulations, Vertue. Your plan worked. Damned if I know how, but reports are coming in from everywhere that the fighting’s stopped all across the Empire. You can practically hear the cheering from here.”
“Turn your ship around, Captain,” said Diana. “You can lead us home now.”
“Now that’s one order I will be very happy to obey,” said Cross. He looked at Diana for a long moment. “You know; none of us really believed in you. We all expected to die out here.”
“Then why did you come?” said Diana. “Why did you volunteer?”
Cross smiled for the first time. “Because you’re John Silence’s daughter. And we would have followed him into Hell. I just hoped some of him had rubbed off on you. I should have known. The Silence family always comes through at the last moment.
Excalibur
out.”
His face had barely disappeared from the screen before it was replaced by a new incoming message. A silver metal face appeared on the viewscreen. It was smiling. “The war is over,” the AIs said, in a remarkably human voice. “Shub is recalling its forces, and shutting down its nanotech. The plague will spread no further. We grieve for its victims. It is a new thing, this grief, and very painful. We cannot bring back those who have died at our hands, but no more will suffer because of us.”
“Good to hear,” said Random. “Might I suggest we still have common enemies, in the Hadenmen and the Recreated?”
“Perhaps we can learn to talk to them too,” said the AIs. “And wake them to awareness as well.”
“We can try,” said Diana. “If we can get back to Golgotha before the Recreated ... we can try.”
“Can I just ask what’s happened to Lionstone?” said Random. “I mean, you did make her a part of you. How does she feel about what’s happened?”
“She was never a part of us,” said the AIs. “We lied. Her mind was destroyed the moment it left her body. We maintained the pretense, and spoke with her voice, for psychological reasons only.”
“Well, that’s a relief,” said Random. “It’s a weight off my mind.”
“And off ours,” said the AIs. There was a pause. “That was a joke.”
“Very nearly,” said Ruby.
“Humor,” said Shub. “It is a fascinating concept.”
The screen went blank. Random looked at Diana. “God help us all if they ever discover practical jokes.”
Random and Ruby ended up in the wine cellar. Their own rooms were gone, blasted away during the last moments of the Shub engagement, and so were most of the common rooms and meeting places, but Random and Ruby both felt the need for a little quiet celebration, and the wine cellar was the most obviously convivial of the few suitable places left. So they made their way through the remaining stone corridors, detoured here and there by the need to bypass missing or devastated sections, smiling and nodding to the few people they passed. Most of the castle’s volunteer crew had survived by taking shelter in the castle’s core section, but they all seemed shell-shocked to some extent by what they’d been through. Random understood how they felt. It was one of the reasons why he was heading for the wine cellar. It isn’t every day your whole universe turns upside down.
It wasn’t actually a cellar. Clan Deathstalker just named it that out of a sense of history. The long, narrow chamber stretched away for what seemed like forever, home to a series of great crystal honeycombs, holding fine wines, sparkling champagnes, and brandies so potent you could fall under the influence just from reading the label. There were wines from vineyards that hadn’t existed in centuries, born from grapes whose very genus was now extinct. There were champagnes named in languages no longer spoken, distilled liquors with far worse things than worms at the bottom of their bottles, and a few spirits banned on civilized worlds under health laws, suitable only for suicide pacts.
Random and Ruby wandered unhurriedly between the racks, stopping to take a taste here and there. Eventually they settled on a thick ruby red liquor liberally laced with wormwood, and sat down at a handy table to sample it. It went down very well, and Random sighed happily as he felt some of the kinks in his strained muscles slowly unraveling. He smiled fondly at Ruby, and she nodded solemnly at him over her glass.
“You know,” said Random, “Diana was quite right. If she had told me her plan in advance, I’d have had her committed. Anyone would.”
“Right,” said Ruby.
“Life ... has taken a definite turn for the strange, just recently,” said Random. “Once, the Mater Mundi was our ally. Then it turned out to have been our enemy all along, and now it’s our friend again. Shub were the official Enemies of Humanity, and now they’re our children. Hell, look at us; friends, then enemies, now friends again.”
“Yeah,” said Ruby, draining her glass. “But then, things never were as simple as we made them out to be, even during the rebellion. The new Imperial history books will call us the good guys, but I never made any secret of the fact that I was only in it for the loot.”
“And a chance to kill a whole lot of people.”
“That too.”
“Politics,” Random said sadly. “So much time wasted in arguments that in retrospect don’t seem important at all. If only we could slam people’s minds together, like Ruby did with Shub. Make people see the truth.”
“There is no truth,” said Ruby. “Just differing opinions. We all do what we have to, because our nature demands it.”
“My God, that was almost philosophical,” said Random, draining his glass. “We should do this more often.”
“We have had some good times together, haven’t we, Jack?”
“Sure. When you weren’t trying to kill me, for one reason or another.”
“Those were just arguments. I wouldn’t really have killed you.”
“I know that.”
“Not as long as there wasn’t any money in it.”
Random laughed. “Once a bounty hunter ...”
“Yeah. But we did have some good times. I never felt about anyone the way I felt about you. And I was always proud to be fighting beside the legendary professional rebel.”
Random looked at her, just a little surprised. “Why, thank you, Ruby. I was always glad to have you on my side. If only because you’d have scared me shitless as an enemy. And I have to say, you’ve made me feel more alive than any of my wives. Even dear Arabella, my fifth. And she was a contortionist. What brought on this sudden sincerity?”
Ruby shrugged. “I don’t know. Just feeling my mortality, I guess. I don’t think we’ve ever come closer to dying than we did today.”
“But we came through. We always do. Though Owen’s going to freak when he sees what’s left of his castle.”
“I’m glad he and Hazel aren’t dead after all. Hazel was the only real friend I ever had. And Owen ... I always admired the Deathstalker. Only really honorable man I ever met.”
“I’ll drink to that,” said Random.
“Here,” said Ruby. “Let me refill your glass for you.”
She took his glass, and tilted the bottle over it.
And as the thick red liquid flowed, like curdled blood, something ... something in the way she moved, in the way she’d been acting, in the way she’d been talking to him as though trying to say good-bye ... something in her face and eyes made Random reach out suddenly and grab her other hand, where it hovered over his glass. She didn’t try to pull away. He turned her hand over slowly, and a few last grains of a fine powder fell from the sachet concealed in her palm. A common poisoner’s trick. Random had used it himself, on occasion. But never on someone he loved.
Their eyes met for a long moment, both filled with an aching sadness, and then Ruby jerked her hand free. They both surged to their feet. Random swept the table to one side. There was a knife in Ruby’s hand. Random drew his. They slammed together, face to face, and both knives slammed into yielding flesh. Both of them grunted at the impact. They stood together, breathing harshly into each other’s face. Their eyes never wavered. And then, as the strength slowly went out of them, they both sank to their knees on the cold stone floor.
Ruby’s hand fell away from the hilt of her knife, where it protruded from Random’s side, and she slumped forward against him. Random settled into a sitting position, so he could hold her in his arms. Her face was very pale, and covered in sweat. When he looked down, Random could see the hilt of his knife sticking out from under her breastbone. The front of her clothes was already slick and red with her blood. She began shuddering, and Random held her close to him, as though to protect her from the cold. Her face nestled against his chest, and the pain in his ribs was as nothing compared to the pain in his heart.