Tracking facial analytic vectors now. Mood-model reference Avernon constructed.
Smile arc Δθ ≈ 11.7˚
Intent.Interpretation = tactic::rapport attempt.
‘I don’t know your name, Pilot,’ Duke Avernon continues. ‘What is it? You can speak, by the way.’
OutstreamConnection.status = 100 per cent confirmed
Internal.Ident.Label = Rhianna_Chiang
Internal.Ident.Label.status = unsatisfactory
‘I’ve had to reconstruct . . . Well, everything, Pilot. But this is life, trust me. Now tell me your name.’
The thing that was Rhianna Chiang tests its output channel.
‘Nnnname . . .’
‘All right, if you need time. Let me show you what you look like. Here’s a mirror holo.’
ImageField.hasAttribute(contains face) = true
Eye-like mouth-like components present OK.
Remainder is [Adjectival.Query(Topology.Similar) = splayed]; attitude is vertical.
‘Ah, so I won’t need to reinitialise you this time. Very good.’
It is no longer Rhianna; no longer Pilot; no longer human, the construct embedded in the wall.
Self.Status =
Self.Status =
Self.Status =
timeouttimeouttimeouttimeou—
ThreadEndInterrupt
Self.Status = pending
‘My.’
Let n:Name = Concept.heuristicMatch(‘one who knows’)
‘Name.’
Result n = null
Retry n = Concept.heuristicMatch(‘one who knows’, RadixContext.ancestor_languages)
‘Is . . .’
Internal.Ident.setLabel(n)
Self.Status = activated
‘ . . .Kenna.’
Two thousand eight hundred milliseconds pass.
‘Repeat that, please.’
SpeechBuffer.replay( )
‘My. Name. Is. Kenna.’
NINETEEN
LUNA, 601000 AD
Kenna sat between the empty high-backed seat reserved for Ulfr – unoccupied these past hundred millennia – and the one occupied by Sharp, his crystalline antlers shimmering with reflected light. Before them hung a many-dimensioned strategy model, which from time to time they altered, and returned to meditating on. Meanwhile, at the far end of the hall, Roger and Gavriela were wielding refined crystal blades, testing new designs, their cuts leaving glimmers of gamma radiation in the vacuum.
Only zero-point energy could affect the darkness directly, but there were many aspects to warfare, and more than one kind of enemy.
It was an ordinary lunar day, until the moment a sapphire blue glow began to manifest near the geometric centre of the hall. Kenna dismissed the model and strode forward, while Roger and Gavriela stood with blades ready. Sharp remained where he was.
A crystal humanoid stepped out of the light.
No one moved.
The newcomer’s face rippled in something like a smile.
—Fascinating. I’m so glad I returned to the old solar system. Nearly passed right by, you know.
Once upon a time, this base had been hidden. Now its great buttresses and many balconies glinted against the lunar landscape. Being open necessarily meant being defensible, and so their fortress was; but Kenna believed the stranger was no enemy.
—Greetings, sir. My name is Kenna.
—And greetings to yourself. How very interesting. You have modern forms, not too different from my own, yet you are individually very old, every one of you. Archaic, even.
Call it a form of first contact.
For so long, they had cast their plans and made their preparations without dealing with wider humanity and their descendants. Ragnarökkr could, if necessary, be fought in the future using only resources from the past and the things that Kenna and the others constructed; but what if they could find allies among the newer peoples?
She was about to say as much when the newcomer added:
—Ancestral humans and Haxigoji. Brachiating primates. And you still use names?
Kenna felt something akin to a stab of rage, immediately deconstructed and brought under control. This New Man sneered out of fear, his superiority an illusion. The blades, she thought, made him uneasy.
—If you had a name, sir, what would it be?
The man stared at the shields and weapons decorating the hall, then back at her.
—Why, then. Call me Magni.
Kenna bowed her head. He had processed the linguistic/cultural history implied by her name very fast indeed, given how ancient that knowledge was: the tongue known as Norræna was over half a million years dead.
—Welcome, good Magni. You understand why we prepare to fight?
To his pacifist eyes, she suspected, these were disturbingly martial surroundings. Surely, though, Magni and his contemporaries knew what was coming eventually.
—I understand why, Lady Kenna, in half a million years, it would be a good idea to have fled this galaxy. You’ve achieved modern bodies. Why not travel, and see the cosmos?
—You know why. If people always flee, eventually every galaxy will fall.
Magni shrugged in a very human way.
—Everything dies finally. We’ve already left the homeworld behind.
—Yes, you have.
Magni looked surprised, correctly reading the undertones in her words.
—And you’re making use of it?
—Did you think an army could consist of four individuals? Kenna smiled. We will be billions when the time is right. And welcoming to our allies.
For nearly six hundred millennia, she had been refining logosophical models, and there were some she could have deployed now as a form of persuasive rhetoric: those that showed how evolutionary strategies based on fleeing invariably led to an impoverished state, and finally extinction. But Magni would dismiss them as relevant only to others, not to his refined self.
—I really don’t think so.
Magni raised his hand, a languid salute to Roger, Gavriela and Sharp, then spun on one heel, turning the gesture into a geometric rotation cloaked with sapphire light. For a second it glowed; then the light and Magni were gone.
Roger was the first to comment.
—If that’s how the children turned out, I’m not impressed.
—They’ve tried communicating with the darkness. Gavriela was looking where Magni had stood. You can tell they’ve tried and failed.
Sharp’s antlers swung as he shook his head: once a purely human gesture, now natural for him as well.
—Tried and died, I think.
It confirmed what they had predicted. But there was more to think about: the advances of contemporary humanity, apparently negated by fatalism, to judge by Magni’s rejection of fighting at Ragnarökkr. After a moment, Gavriela gestured towards Ulfr’s empty seat.
—Being civilised is not what’s going to save us. The further back you go, the truer the warrior.
—We can’t force his return. Kenna raised her palms. You know that.
Roger and Sharp commented together, a form of resonance occurring ever more frequently as the millennia passed:
—Our preparations are the same, regardless.
—They are indeed. Kenna inclined her head.
—So I’ll check the body halls. Roger’s face looked like diamond. It’s time to speed up the growth.
—It is that, agreed Kenna.
Roger teleported out of the hall.
TWENTY
EARTH, 2034 AD
Christmas was coming and the weather was hot. It might be the northern hemisphere, but this was California, which made its own rules. Lucas was bemused because the only snow in sight was polystyrene in window displays. Thanks-giving (which he mockingly celebrated as Bloody Ungrateful Day) had been spent at Brody’s place. Amy had cooked and Jacqui had helped, because one of the things the half-brothers had in common was culinary ineptitude.