Sufficiently Advanced Technology (Inverse Shadows) (31 page)

“If they knew what we were, they’d wipe us out,” he added. “They seem more inclined to lash out at civilisation with every passing year. We lost a couple of dozen members when a Pillar went mad four years ago. He came far too close to the secret.

“We think that magic helps to drive them slowly mad. Some magicians go mad right from the start and are either killed or expelled by their fellows. Others start becoming increasingly irrational, prone to lashing out at the slightest problem. Even Master Faye, who is relatively controlled for his age, is growing dangerously unstable. We do not expect Warlock’s Bane to remain the same for much longer.”

Dacron wondered if there was more to it than that. Could it be that the force behind magic was actively interfering with the society’s stability? They’d heard enough to know that it was rare for Scions to work with Pillars; hell, they didn’t even work
together
. But if there was something quietly influencing them from behind the scenes, they’d obey – and they wouldn’t even
realise
that they were being manipulated. The AIs had certainly manipulated the Confederation often enough. In hindsight, it was clear that the Confederation had been pushed into sending a team to Darius that would move quickly to active operations on the planet’s surface.

A thought occurred to him and he lifted a hand, waving it around the dimensionally transcendent compartment. “But
you
use magic,” he pointed out. “You used it against my friend too.”

“We know a few spells,” the bookseller admitted, grudgingly. There was a long pause, before he decided that he’d better elaborate. “We discovered that the effects of magic can be minimised if several magicians cooperate to cast the spell. The potential magicians we catch before the Pillars detect them are recruited and trained to work together.”

“And Pillars
cannot
work together,” Dacron said. If the magic really caused paranoia, each Pillar would be wondering when his ally intended to turn on him. “That is their greatest weakness.”

He paused, thoughtfully. “And they can’t detect
you
?”

“They know that there are some magicians who never really rise above the level of apprentice,” the bookseller said. “Luckily, they just consider us contemptible, rather than a threat. It doesn’t really occur to them that cooperation can produce remarkable results.”

“So it would seem,” Dacron agreed. “What happened when you arrived on this world?”

“The population went mad, according to the records,” the bookseller said. “I don’t think the founders of the guild ever really understood what had happened to them.”

Dacron suspected that he knew the answer. A colony ship from the First Expansion Era would probably have been able to land on Darius, if they were lucky, but taking off again would have been impossible. The colonists might have lost most of their technology overnight, a shocking experience by any standards. Or the magic field might have preyed on them, driving enough of the colonists to madness to destroy what remained of the planned society. And so they’d sunk back to near-barbarism.

“I need to relay this to my team,” he said, suddenly. “How long do we have?”

“I don’t know,” the bookseller admitted. “You can warn them now, and then...”

He paused. “
Will
you help us?”

“I believe so,” Dacron said, honestly. “But right now, I have to prevent a disaster.”

He stood up and stepped outside the cart, testing his implants. They didn’t work. Shaking his head, he walked down the street, trying them time and time again. They didn’t even
start
to work until he reached the edge of the market, when he picked up a signal from the AIs. A moment later, before he could start relaying his warning, something crashed into him and he fell to the ground, stunned.

***

The blue-green orb floated in the sea of stars, infinitely fragile against the inky darkness of space. Elyria watched Joshua as he stared, understanding the sense of wonder he felt at what – to any citizen of the Confederation – was a commonplace sight. Gas giants were stranger, terraformed worlds seemed oddly artificial, but a living world was home. Darius would always be part of Joshua, whatever happened to him in the future.

“It’s wonderful,” he said, finally. “I can never thank you enough for this.”

“You’ve helped us a great deal,” Elyria said.
That
was certainly true; between Joshua and Dacron, the AIs now had a working ability to propose magic spells. They even had a working simulator. “And how are you feeling?”

“I’m not sure,” Joshua said. “I’ve never had my body repaired so intensely before.”

They shared a smile, although Elyria found hers to be a little forced. The AIs had kept her updated on the list of health problems they’d uncovered inside Joshua, ranging from cellular damage to bad teeth. It hadn’t taken long for the nanotech to fix most of the problems, outside the ones in his brain, but she had a feeling that repeated use of magic would simply bring the problems back. The AIs were already proposing biomods that might improve the situation, yet even they hadn’t been able to guarantee that they’d work.

Somewhat to her alarm, they’d also removed blood, tissue and semen samples from Joshua, largely without his knowledge. Those samples were already on their way out of the system, where they would later be recovered by a Peacekeeper starship – if something happened to the
Hamilton
. The AIs were being paranoid, even though all of the evidence indicated that magic couldn’t be used away from the planet. Elyria found it hard to blame them.

“No one has ever tried to create new life on Darius,” Joshua said, and then flushed. “Apart from the standard way, of course.”

Elyria smiled, more genuinely this time. Joshua had been wowed by most of the technology around him, even though he’d taken it surprisingly calmly, but it had been the AIs that had really stunned him. She wasn’t sure how much of the explanation he’d followed – how could a primitive from a pre-spaceflight world understand hyperspace fields and quantum communications – yet it had clearly had an effect on him. The Confederation saw Darius as magic; their own technology could
pass
for magic on Darius.

Joshua had been trying to read files while the AIs guided the nanotech to fix his body, although he’d barely scratched the surface of the information available to any born citizen of the Confederation. Elyria had to admire his determination, even though she knew better than to believe he could comprehend technology as diverse as antigravity pods, life support fields and FTL drives. She had a feeling that part of him wanted to ask if he could go to the Confederation, even if the rest of the planet remained outside. The AIs had noted that his request, if it were made, would probably be granted. They’d want to keep studying him for a long time.

And probably ask him to father children
, she thought, wryly. If Joshua could still sense the quantum foam, even away from Darius, it was possible that whatever little quirk he had was merely amplified on the planet’s surface. Or he could just be picking up the outer edges of the planet’s magic field.
Who knows what his children would be like
?

“Master Faye wouldn’t believe any of this,” he added, after a moment. He pulled up his shirt and examined the smooth skin, which had been badly marked by disease years ago. Analysis had determined that it was a very mild variant on smallpox. “Even the best spells can’t prevent the pox from leaving a mark.”

“Or extend your life too far,” Elyria agreed. In theory, there
should
be rejuvenation spells, but the AIs believed that they were simply too complex for human minds. Dacron would have to try one when he returned from his midnight excursion. “Would you be interested in trying spells we created?”

Joshua frowned. “I was always told never to experiment with my own spells,” he said, finally. “I could kill myself, or you...”

“There is little reason to assume so,” the AIs said, abandoning the pretence that they weren’t listening. Everything Joshua said was going into a file for analysis, eventually allowing the AIs to try to extrapolate his future behaviour. “We have calculated the precise nature of the words you need to work more complex spells. All you would have to do is pronounce them correctly and we could assist with that.”

Elyria frowned. “What happens if one of the words is garbled, not all of them?”

“The effects become a little unpredictable,” the AIs admitted. “However, young Joshua has a good memory. We do not believe that he will have a problem repeating the magic words.”

“Right,” Elyria said. She looked over at Joshua. “We won’t force you into trying any of the magic words they think they’ve invented for you. If you don’t want to do it, it should be fine.”

She shifted her glare to one of the AI drones. “And you should know better,” she added. “The prize may be extreme, but there are ethical issues involved. Don’t you know that?”

For a moment, the AI drone looked abashed... and then bobbled its prow in a nod. “We apologise if we pushed too far,” they said. “However, we feel that the experiments must be carried out.”

“Just don’t let Master Faye know,” Joshua said. He looked back at Elyria. “How long are you going to stay here?”

“As long as it takes,” Elyria admitted. It was something Interventionists rarely considered, but then it never took more than a couple of standard years to know a society thoroughly and then start the intervention. They had seriously considered just requesting a pair of heavy transports and then moving half of the population away from Darius. The Confederation would have no trouble settling them on a Ring, or a Structure, or even a handful of Cityships. There would be shock, of course, as they got used to the Confederation, but that happened all the time. It was hardly a problem. “Will you continue to work with us?”

Joshua looked back at the stars. “I want to see the universe,” he breathed. “Could you take me with you when you go?”

“We do not believe that the Confederation would refuse you,” the AIs said. Joshua was human, after all, and the Confederation existed for the benefit of the human race. And he was smart enough not to cling to cultural habits that would pose a problem for the integration process. Not that it really mattered; the Confederation was quite skilled at breaking them down. “Do you wish to emigrate?”

Joshua nodded. “I want to see the universe,” he said, again.

“And you will,” Elyria said, softly. She looked back at Darius, spinning silently below. “For the moment, it seems we have to return to the planet’s surface. Are you ready?”

Joshua grinned. “I would need to explain myself to Master Faye,” he said, seriously. “It isn’t unknown for an apprentice to decide that it’s time to become a Scion, but he does have to tell his master before leaving.”

“You should stay with him until we are ready to depart,” the AIs suggested. “If he believes that you are leaving him, he may become less forthcoming with information.”

Elyria watched the complex interplay of emotions over Joshua’s face and nodded inwardly. Joshua loved Master Faye; the older man had plucked him from obscurity and given him power, but he’d also cursed him with health problems he’d never known he had. Still, opposing him – or even just leaving him – felt like a betrayal. And on Darius, that was far more serious than it would ever be in the Confederation.

“I understand,” he said, finally.

He was rather subdued as they walked back to the shuttle, which had been checked and refuelled by the AI drones. Elyria felt herself worrying about him; he was young, really too young to be making such life-changing decisions for himself. She’d been in her fifties when she’d finally started to look for a career, rather than simply enjoying herself. And yet, all of human history indicated that pre-singularity societies forced their young to grow up very quickly. Joshua was old enough, in some societies, to be married and raising children.

She reached over and placed a hand on his shoulder. “If this makes you uncomfortable,” she said, “just tell us and we’ll stop. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”

Joshua’s lips twitched. “I got in enough trouble for doing what I
did
want to do,” he said, dryly. “There are times when I feel I don’t understand your society at all.”

“That’s a common reaction,” Elyria admitted. “We have so much freedom that it is hard to understand where the lines are drawn.”

She smiled. The Confederation’s laws, such as they were, allowed total freedom, provided that no unwilling people were harmed or threatened with harm. Given the vast number of different sexual tastes in the human race, there was no reason why a man who liked the thought of raping a woman couldn’t find a woman who wanted to be raped. Even some of the weirder perversions could find people willing to try them, or they could be indulged inside a private perceptual reality if they were truly horrifying.

Darius had no such freedom. There
were
laws, some understandably concerned with reducing the risk of incest, some more confusingly intended to ensure that a given woman’s child had been sired by her husband or fiancée. Once engaged, a woman was expected to live in the man’s house – or his parent’s house, depending – and never to leave until she became pregnant, whereupon they could get married. Leaving the house without an escort – a parent or the male partner – constituted breaking the engagement. But men weren’t held under such tight restrictions. The snoops had confirmed that several dozen married men in Warlock’s Bane made regular use of whores.

“Here we go,” Joshua said. He leaned forward avidly as the shuttle dived towards the planet, which was cloaked in darkness. Hardly any lights broke the darkness. What few lights there were on the darkened planet weren’t bright enough to be seen from orbit. “Can I learn to fly one of these?”

“It would be easy to learn,” Elyria said. The AIs were controlling the shuttle, but she knew how to fly and she could take over if they lost the radio link. “You could start with the micro aircraft people fly in the Rings, and then graduate to something more substantial.”

Joshua smiled. “People use magic to fly,” he said, looking down at the planet. “And you have it all
without
magic.”