The Phantom in the Deep (Rook's Song) (18 page)

He needs to think.

The Sidewinder rockets away from the lonely campsite, leaving us far behind.

8

We are carried away on a sourceless wind.  Far and away from
Magnum Collectio
, far away from the sole survivor of humanity, drifting tens of thousands of miles away, passing through Queen Anne, the Seven Dwarfs, the Wild Cards, Holey Roller, Big and Little Ben, Gonzo, and hundreds of thousands of others.  We alight on the bridge of the Cereb luminal ship.  Here, they are busy as bees, though infinitely quieter.  Thousands of petaflops of data are processed every second, over a hundred quadrillion operations are performed per millisecond, and all of it is checked and re-checked by the redundancies known as the Observers.  They sort all of this even as they process the standard senses, such as taste, which they are constantly filing under one of the five tastes: sweet, salty, bitter, sour, or umami.  Every experience is chronicled.  Every experience is prioritized.

Observers suppress indulging in these tastes, aromas, and sounds, all so that they can focus single-mindedly on filtering and purifying the datafeed.  It was of the utmost importance that their assigned Managers and the Conductor received the highest quality of data, untainted by impurities
such as a neglected variable or miscalculation.

Managers pass on the latest data the very instant they receive it.  The computer implants connected to each of their brains measures the data, and the enhanced organic processors feed the information to the brain and decide on its relevance, cross-referencing it across a wide spect
rum of data, and then assign each datastrip a priority.  It is constantly being fed to the Conductor, who isn’t present on the bridge at this time.

We move through several levels, mostly moving up, glancing off of Engineers, Repairers, and countless Cleaners.

Now we reluctantly return to the Conductor.  He has done little but meditate since we last saw him.  It has taken all these hours just to cleanse his minds of the needless details (such tiny minutiae) that can so often clog the arteries of thought and self.

Presently, he stands naked in his room, a scandal even though he is alone.  The air circulating through the room brings such fluttering to his skin, his minds, and his stomach.  It is stimulating
to the point of madness.  Intoxicating, as if injecting himself with some sort of narcotic.  His people have long been hyper-aware of their environment, their brains constructed to collate the data like no other creatures in the universe, and that ability is amplified by advancements unequaled anywhere, so they never needed a narcotic as most other sentient creatures seemed to.  Just living out their days was invigorating enough.

Especially when naked.  And like any
physical obsession—be it sexual addiction or the stimulation of self-mutilation—if overindulged, it can lead to an unpleasant mental state.

The Calculators of old were wise enoug
h to know this about themselves and the rest of their species.  That’s why clothing came first, before all other innovations, with rapid advancements being made in insulation: from heat, cold, and generally all surface sensations.  Mastery of self came first, and that is why the Conductor feels they of all races have pressed this far. 
It wasn’t only command of our environment, but command of our self that made us superior
.

On every level, he knows this.  In all seven of his brains, he knows this.  Even still, he does not clothe himself.

The Conductor walks naked through a field of asteroids, various clusters parting in his wake, as though he is a giant and they are afraid of him.  The asteroids return to their usual trajectories after he’s passed through them.  He turns around and around, sometimes reaches out to select an asteroid, and brings it closer to his face.  His interface with the room’s computer allows him to do this.  He holds miles-long asteroids in the palm of his hand, analyzes them, requests to see their properties with a mere thought, and sets them back in their appropriate orbit.

After a while, the Conductor finally tires of this, and steps once more into a stasis suit, which completely insulates him from feeling anything else.  For a moment, it is jarring.  His body has become fond of these sessions, and now he feels denied some natural part of himself.  A
psychosis grows inside of him.  He both knows it and doesn’t care.

The
magnetic shield opens for him as he approaches the lift, then reactivates once he’s inside.  He goes down several levels, passing the main engine rooms, atmospheric processors, and life support monitoring stations.  When he steps out again, he is on a level reserved for him and only a handful of others, most of them Researchers.  Every ship has them.  Exactly sixteen (four times four) Researchers are placed on each ship.  They are tasked with experimenting with technological and biological processes, with absolutely no expectations involved whatsoever.  Pure science, minus the hypothesis stage.  Total experimentation, though rigidly controlled.

He moves past the Researchers, assimilating their constant influx of data as he goes.
Many of them are working on elements found in the various asteroids that the ship’s arms are collecting even now, searching for any new applications that might come from any of these resources, even though they well know that there isn’t much left to gather from the studies.  The research itself is redundant.  Redundancies never hurt, they only helped.

The Conductor catches salutes from all the people under his command.  None of them are physical salutes
, they needn’t be, only acknowledgements passed along the billion linked nodes inside of him and all around him.

Deeper into this level, passing a blue-lighted area that is off-limits to all but the four most senior Researchers, he finally comes to the area he most wishes to see.  The ship’s computer scans him in a millisecond, confirming his vascular ID four times over
(not a security clearance, merely logging him in), and opens the four protective doors to permit him into a room filled with large, silver cylinders.  Inside, the air is much colder, nearly at freezing levels.  This sensation alone would be enough to drive him mad, were it not for his insulated suit.

The Conductor connects with the hold’s main interface.  One of the senior Researchers happens by him, but does not pause to see what he is doing.
  He requests for one of the cylinders behind him to be opened.  It happens in less than a second.  The Conductor turns, and faces the last of the Line of the Usurped.

The creature appears to be almost a mirror image of him.  Albino, tall and angular, powerfully built and erect of posture.  Only the black eyes, looking dull and lacking the blue pulse of intelligence, reveals that this particular Cereb is
inoperable.  Has been for some time.  Frozen in stasis, it has been partially dissected.

The Conductor recalls when he
was first elevated to his current status.  Fresh out of the incubator, he was made to go up against the ship’s old Conductor in a battle of computational power.  They were linked to various nodes, and challenged with deciphering billions of complex algorithms all at once.  The old Conductor was slower by a full half second.  That was ages ago.  Now, the creature frozen inside the tube is no longer a Conductor, he is just one of the millions of other Usurped that the Researchers keep to study, improve, and finally recycle.

Someday, he will be replaced, too, and will sit where the Usurped sits now
, a member of their worthy pantheon.  He will join the legacy of their Line. 
Only if I am unable to keep up
.  The thought has returned to him many times in these last few years. 
If I can maintain computational growth, I can keep my position
.

Doubtless, every Conductor thought
that same rebellious thing sometime in their existence.  He supposes it’s only natural.  Every creature, no matter their intellectual power or loyalty to odds and truth, feels the pull of self-preservation.  Logically, he knows his position as Conductor is untenable.  Philosophically, he begs to differ.

The Conductor turns to look at a few other cylinders, each of them opening at his command.
  Every single one of them probably once entertained the notion that they might somehow discover the secret to keeping their position as Conductor.  After all, if he is thinking it, then his lessers must have also given the thought more than a passing interest.  In fact, he knows this to be true of some of the older ones.

The Conductor has heard of a great many of the older Usurped who actually tried to fight back.  He comes to one of them now.  It is the Usurped from three generations ago, possessing only six brains at this point, since one of them has been taken apart and dissected at length in order to diagnose the cause of his madness.
  The Researchers keep this one around to teach them about future trouble-shooting.

The Usurped one that caused so much trouble looks much like him, only of a
slightly darker complexion, and slightly taller.  The mouth is slack, the eyes do not pulse blue, but make no mistake, this particular Usurped is still alive.  This one, and all the others.  This one has many scars lining its cranium—since he is never expected to be operational again, there is no reason to waste materials that can be used to heal others, so sayeth the Calculators, always accounting for every little resource.

Even as he presently absorbs quadrillions of data updates and busily sorts them, the Conductor recalls the stories he’s heard about this one, and even drudges up some of the old data. 
It was a violent day, when a massive computer error (they do occasionally happen) caused this one to glitch.  He was able to infect much of the crew with a belief that the Calculators had gotten something seriously wrong, upsetting the integrity of many of the ship’s operations.  Later, when he was usurped by the next Conductor, he lashed out violently against those that tried taking him into custody.  Not only that, but the Usurped’s crew had to be completely replaced—the flawed “coding” had infected their systems, as well as their minds.  Rebellion is rare among Cerebs, but when it happened, its effects were manifold.

Insanity is always a concern.  Always has been.  The Calculators have always accounted for it
, of course, because anomalies do happen, and so they planted redundancies in the system to ensure that it never held back progress.  Sixteen new Conductors are always on standby, waiting to supplant any Conductor of any ship, should such a problem ever arise.

He continues down the
Line.

A few ot
her tubes contain more Usurped.  Others contain biomasses of common interest, biomasses from hundreds of different worlds.  Pets kept by various species, and, in some cases, a few sentient species themselves.  One tube holds a particularly interesting piece to this morbid collection.  A tall specimen, with thews of wiry steel.  Long, strapping arms that look to have the tensile strength to hold up a bridge.  The wide head is connected to a long, muscular stalk.  Hard chitin-like plates the color of dusk grow over much of the body.  The plates naturally overlap one another, as though Nature deemed them worthy of such natural armor.  A powerful body.  A warrior’s body.

The last of the Ianeth.

The last of those that gave the hardest fight.

The Conductor recalls that
struggle.  The Ianeth lasted only a little longer than the humans did, but they were far more relentless, and far more brutal, than the humans ever were.  Their intelligences were enhanced with implants, much like the Cerebrals, only not nearly as advanced.  They had battled long against one another, in wars lasting hundreds of years, and across multiple star systems, which only honed their military skills.  When finally the Ianeth were unified, the Calculators, who had been monitoring this species for some time, became afraid they might use their military might to march across the galaxy and swallow resources.

When the Cerebrals sent their first warships, they did not expect an envoy, and they did not get one.  Instead, the Ianeth showed remarkable adaptability.  Rather than experiencing abject
terror, they launched headlong into battle, almost as if they had been waiting for it.  Later, their Researchers would uncover evidence that pointed to the possibility that some in the Ianeth leadership had detected the Cerebrals, or at least were paranoid enough to believe they couldn’t be alone in the universe, and so had prepared for just such an invasion. 

The Ianeth were the only species to think this way, and
spent centuries fortifying their bodies, augmenting their immune systems so that infections and disease were virtually no longer any concern, and had bolstered their technological resources so that their military power was unequaled at that time.  Except, of course, by the Cerebrals.

The Conductor
stares into the last Ianeth’s eyes.  They are as black as a Cerebral’s, yet as small as a human’s.  The mouth is wide and leathery, sort of like the crocodiles of Earth.  It even has a similar permanent smile, sort of smug.  Perhaps this last Ianeth
is
smiling.  He is, after all, still alive.  In a deep hibernation, to be sure; Ianeth were like Cerebs in that they didn’t quite sleep at all.

Ianeth
were ruthless.  They attacked with dispassionate tenacity.  Like white blood cells, they only knew a threat when they saw one, and didn’t stop to ask questions.  They were highly calculating, yet they still attempted many deceptions, though not nearly as many as the humans.  Ianeth also had no fear.  Not at all.  Not even a soupcon of it.  Not even in their engineer caste, to which this particular specimen belonged.