“Perfect mass-energy conversion,” Kempster muttered, his eyebrows beetled in concentration. “Now there’s an idea.”
“And why wasn’t the same method used against the Laymil habitats?” Renato Vella said, warming to his theme. “If you have a
weapon which can destroy a planet so thoroughly as to eradicate all traces of it, why leave the remnants of the habitats for
us to find?” “Yes, yes, why indeed?” Kempster said. “Good point, lad, well done. Good thinking.”
His assistant beamed.
“We still think the habitats destroyed themselves,” Parker Higgens said. “It fits what we know, even now.” He looked at Ione,
visibly distressed. “I think the memory may show the start of the planet’s destruction. There is clearly some kind of conflict
being enacted on the surface as the ship leaves orbit.”
“Surely that was an inter-clan dispute, wasn’t it?” Qingyn Lin asked dubiously. “That’s what it sounded like to me.”
“You are all mistaken in thinking of this problem purely in terms of the physical,” Lieria said. “Consider what we now know.
The planet is confirmed to have been in existence at the same time the habitats were broken. The Laymil entity whose memory
we have accessed is concerned about the transformation in the life-harmony gestalt which is being propagated across an entire
continent. A drastic metaphysical change which threatens nothing less than the entire Laymil racial orientation. Director
Parker Higgens is correct, these events cannot be discounted as coincidence.”
Ione glanced round the group. None of them looked as though they wished to contradict the Kiint. “I think I’d better review
this memory myself.” She sat in the chair next to Malandra Sarker.
Show me.
As before, the Laymil body hardened around her own, an exoskeleton which did not—could never—fit. The recording quality was
much higher than before. Oski Katsura and her team had been working long hours on the processors and programs required to
interpret the stored information. There were hardly any of the black specks which indicated fragmentary data drop-outs. Ione
relaxed deeper into the chair as the sensorium buoyed her along.
The Laymil was a shipmaster, clan-bred for a life traversing the barren distance between the spaceholm constellation and Unimeron,
the prime lifehost. It hung at the hub of the ship’s central life-support ovoid as the drive was readied for flight. There
was nothing like the human arrangement of decks and machinery, present even in voidhawks. The protective metal shell contained
a biological nest-womb, a woody growth honeycombed with chambers and voyage-duration pouches for travellers, creating an exotic
organic grotto. Chambers were clustered together without logic, like elongated bubbles in a dense foam; the walls had the
texture of tough rubber, pocked with hundreds of small holes to restrain hoofs, and emitting a fresh green radiance. Organs
to maintain the atmosphere and recycle food were encased in the thicker partitions.
The all-pervasive greenness was subtly odd to Ione’s human brain. Tubular buttress struts curved through the chamber around
the Laymil body, flaring out where they merged with a wall. Its three hoofs were pushed into holes, buttocks resting on a
grooved mushroom-stool; its hands were closed on knobby protrusions. A teat stalactite hung centimetres from the feeding mouth.
The position was rock solid and immensely comfortable, the nest-womb had grown into a flawlessly compatible layout with the
shipmaster’s body. All three heads slid around in slow weaving motions, observing small opaque composite instrument panels
that swelled out of the wall. Ione found it hard to tell where the plastic began and the cells ended; the cellular/mechanical
fusion was seamless, as though the wombnest was actually growing machinery. Panel-mounted lenses projected strange graphics
into the Laymil’s eyes, in a fashion similar to human AV projectors.
As the heads moved they provided snatched glimpses into other chambers through narrow passageways. She saw one of the Laymil
passengers cocooned in its voyage-duration pouch. It was swaddled in translucent glittery membranes that held it fast against
the wall, and a waxy hose supplying a nutrient fluid had been inserted into its mouth, with a similar hose inserted into its
anus, maintaining the digestive cycle. A mild form of hibernation.
The Laymil shipmaster’s thoughts were oddly twinned, as though the recording was of two separate thought patterns. On a subsidiary
level it was aware of the ship’s biological and mechanical systems. It controlled them with a processor’s precision, preparing
the fusion tube for ignition, maintaining attitude through small reaction thrusters, computing a course vector, surveying
the four nest-wombs. There was a similarity here to the automatic functions a human’s neural nanonics would perform; but as
far as she could ascertain the shipmaster possessed no implants. This was the way its brain was structured to work. The ship’s
biotechnology was sub-sentient, so, in effect, the shipmaster was the flight computer.
On an ascendant level its mind was observing the planet below through the ship’s sensor faculty. Unimeron was remarkably similar
to a terracompatible world, with broad blue oceans and vast white cloud swirls, the poles home to smallish ice-caps. The visual
difference was provided by the continents; they were a near-uniform green, even the mountain ranges had been consumed by the
vegetation layer. No piece of land was wasted.
Vast blue-green cobweb structures hung in orbit, slightly below the ship’s thousand-kilometre altitude. These were the skyhavens,
most two hundred kilometres in diameter, some greater, rotating once every five or more hours, not for artificial gravity
but simply to maintain shape. They were alive, conscious with vibrant mentalities, greater than that of a spaceholm even.
A combination of spaceport and magnetosphere energy node, with manufacturing modules clumped around the hub like small bulbous
tangerine barnacles. But the physical facets were just supplementary to their intellectual function. They formed an important
aspect of the planet’s life-harmony, smoothing and weaving the separate continental essence thoughts into a single unified
planetwide gestalt. Mental communication satellites, though they contributed to the gestalt as well, sang to distant stars.
That voice was beyond Ione completely, both its message and its purpose, registering as just a vague cadence on the threshold
of perception. She felt a little darker for its absence, the Laymil shipmaster considered it magnificent.
The skyhavens were packed close together, with small variants in altitude, allowing them to slide along their various orbital
inclinations without ever colliding. No segment of the planet’s sky was ever left open. It was an amazing display of navigational
exactitude. From a distance it looked as though someone had cast a net around Unimeron. She tried to gauge the effort involved
in their growth, a planet-girdling structure, and failed. Even for a species with such obvious biotechnology and engineering
supremacy the skyhavens were an awesome achievement.
“Departure initiation forthcoming,”
the shipmaster called.
“Venture boldness reward,”
the skyhaven essence replied.
“Anticipate hope.”
Unimeron’s terminator was visible now, blackness biting into the planet. Nightside continents were studded with bright green
lightpoints, smaller than human cities, and very regular. One southern continent, curving awkwardly around the planet’s mass
away from the ship’s sensors, had delicate streamers of phosphorescent red mist meandering along its coastal zones with exploratory
tendrils creeping further inland. The edges were visibly palpitating like the fringes of a terrestrial jellyfish as they curled
and flowed around surface features, yet all the while retaining a remarkable degree of integrity. There was none of the braiding
or churning of ordinary clouds. Ione considered the effect quite delightful, the mist looked alive, as though the air currents
were infected with biofluorescent spoors.
But the Laymil shipmaster was physically repelled by the sight.
“Galheith clan essence asperity woe.”
His heads bobbed around in agitation, letting out low hoots of distress.
“Woe. Folly acknowledgement request.”
“No relention,”
the skyhaven essence answered sadly.
As their orbits took them over the continent, the skyhavens would hum in dismay. The life-harmony of Unimeron was being disrupted,
with the skyhavens refusing to disseminate the Galheith clan essence into the gestalt. It was too radical, too antagonistic.
Too different. Alien and antithetical to the harmony ethos that had gone before.
A tiny flare of sharp blue-white light sprang out of the red mist, dying down quickly.
“Reality dysfunction,”
the shipmaster called in alarm.
“Confirm.”
“Horror woe. Galheith research death essence tragedy.”
“Concord.”
“Impetuosity woe release. Reality dysfunction exponential. Prime lifehost engulfed fear.”
“Reality dysfunction counter. Spaceholm constellation prime essence continuation hope.”
“Confirm. Hope carriage.”
The shipmaster quickly reviewed the other Laymil hibernating in the nest-wombs; both mental traits converging for the evaluation.
“Essencemasters condition satisfactory. Hope reality dysfunction defeat. Hope Galheith atonement.” “Hope joined. Rejoice unity
commitment.”
Where the flare of light had sprung, the jungle was now alight. Ione realized the glimmer of orange must be a firestorm easily
over ten kilometres wide.
The spaceship was crossing the terminator. Skyhavens ahead glowed a fragile platinum as the Van Allen radiation belt particles
gusted across their web strands.
“Departure initiation,”
the shipmaster announced. Ionized fuel was fired into the fusion drive’s magnetic pinch. A jet of plasma slowly built up.
Information streamed into the Laymil’s brain, equations were performed, instructions were pushed into the nest-womb’s neurons
and the coincident hardware’s circuits. There was never any doubt, any self-questioning. The terms did not apply.
Unimeron began to shrink behind the ship. The shipmaster focused his attention on the spaceholm constellation, and the frail
song of welcome it emitted, so much quieter than the prime lifehost’s joyous spirit. And the memory expired.
Ione blinked free of the stubbornly persistent, green-polluted images. Emotions and sensations were harder to discard.
“What is a reality dysfunction?” she asked. “The shipmaster seemed frightened half to death by it.”
“We don’t know,” Parker Higgens said. “There has never been any reference to it in any of the other memories.”
“Ione Saldana, I believe the term reality dysfunction refers to a massive malevolent violation within the Laymil life-harmony
essence,” Lieria said. “The nature of the Galheith clan was being radically altered by it. However, the impression conveyed
by the memory is that it is more than a mental reorientation, it also incorporated a distortion within the local physical
matrix. Example: the energy flare.”
“It was a weapon?” She shot a tense glance at the two astronomers.
Kempster scratched at his shadow of stubble. “That flare definitely started a fire, so I would have to say yes. But one forest
fire is a little different from something which can cause a planet to vanish.”
“If it went on to spread through the entire planet’s life essence, as seems more than likely,” Malandra Sarker said, “then
it would have Unimeron’s entire technical resources at its disposal. Placed on a war footing, a race like that would have
a frightening armaments-production wherewithal.”
“I disagree,” Renato Vella said. “Granted they could build fleets of ships, and hundreds of thousands of nukes, probably antimatter
too. But they are not that much further advanced than us. I still maintain the energy required to destroy a planet is beyond
this level of technology.”
I was just thinking of the Alchemist,
Ione said to Tranquillity. She was almost afraid to mention it in case Lieria could intercept the thought.
What was it Captain Khanna said? One idea in a lifetime is all it takes. The Laymil might not have had the initial physical
resources, but what about the mental potential of a planetary mind devoted to weapons design?
The possibility is an alarming one,
Tranquillity agreed.
But why would they turn it on themselves?
Good question.
“Even if they built a weapon, why would they turn it on themselves?”
The group regarded her with puzzled faces—a child innocently flooring adult logic with a simple question. Then Renato Vella
smiled suddenly. “We’ve been assuming it was destroyed, how about if they just moved it instead?”
Kempster Getchell chuckled. “Oh my boy, what a wonderful notion.”
“I bet it would require less energy than obliteration.”
“Good point, yes.”
“And we’ve seen they can build massive space structures.”
“We are evading the point,” Parker Higgens said sternly. “We believe this reality dysfunction, whatever it is, is behind both
the removal of the Laymil planet and the suicide of the spaceholms. Our priority now has to be to establish what it was, and
if it still exists.”
“If the planet was moved, then the reality dysfunction is still around,” Renato Vella said, refusing to be deflected. “It
is wherever the planet is.”
“Yes, but what is it?” Oski Katsura asked with some asperity. “It seems to be many things, some kind of mental plague and
a weapon system at the same time.”
“Oh shit,” Ione said out loud as she and Tranquillity made the connection simultaneously. “Laton’s energy virus.”
Tranquillity allowed the group to access the report from Dr Gilmore through the hall’s communication net processors, giving
the images direct to Lieria via affinity.