It didn’t help his mood to reflect that just beyond the floor beneath his feet the host planet’s atmosphere raged: a perpetual hydrogen storm, laced with high-frequency radiation and charged particles.
Absently he reached into his drab monastic robe and touched his chest. He stroked the cool, silvered Planck-zero epidermis, sensed the softly gurgling fluid within, where alien fish swam languidly. Here in this dismal swamp, immersed in the primeval, he could barely sense the mood even of Arles, who stood right next to him. He longed for the cool interstellar gulf, the endless open where the merged thoughts of Commissaries sounded across a trillion stars…
‘Hama, pay attention,’ Arles Thrun snapped.
Hama focused reluctantly on the soft round faces of the drones, and saw they betrayed agitation and confusion at his behaviour.
‘Remember this is a great day for them,’ Arles murmured dryly. ‘The first Commission visit in a thousand years – and it is happening in the brief lifetime of this creature.’ His silvered hand patted indulgently at the bare head of the drone before him. ‘How lucky they are, even if we will have to order the deaths of so many of them. There is so little in their lives – little more than the wall images that never change, the meaningless battle for position in the cadre hierarchies…
And the dance, Hama thought reluctantly, their wild illegal dance. ‘They disgust me,’ he hissed, surprising himself. Yet it was true.
Arles glanced at him. ‘You’re fortunate they do not understand.’
‘They disgust me because their language has devolved into jabber,’ Hama said. ‘They disgust me because they have bred themselves into over-population.’
Arles murmured, ‘Hama, when you accepted the burden of longevity you chose a proud name. I sometimes wonder whether you have the nobility to match that name. These creatures’ names were chosen for them by a random combination of syllables.’
‘They spend their lives on make-work. They eat and screw and die, crawling around in their own filth. What need has a candle-flame of a name?’
Arles was frowning now, sapphire eyes flickering in the silver mask of his face. ‘Have you forgotten the core tenet of the Doctrines? A brief life burns brightly, Hama. These creatures and their forebears have maintained their lonely vigil, here beyond the Galaxy – monitoring the progress of the war – for five thousand years. We have neglected them; isolated, they have – drifted. But these drones are the essence of humanity. And we Commissaries – doomed to knowledge, doomed to life – we are their servants.’
‘Perhaps. But this “essence of humanity” is motivated by lies. Already we understand their jabber well enough to know that. These absurd legends of theirs—’
Arles raised a hand, silencing him quickly. ‘Belief systems drift, just as languages do. The flame of the Doctrines still burns here, if not as brightly as we would wish. And, Doctrinal or not, this Post is useful. Always remember that, Hama: utility is a factor. This is a war, after all.’
Now two of the drones came before Hama, hand in hand, male and female, nude like the rest. This pair leaned close to each other, showing an easy physical familiarity.
They had made love, he saw immediately. Not once, but many times. Perhaps even recently. He felt an unwelcome pang of jealousy. But on a thong around her neck the female wore what looked hideously like a dried human ear. The fish in his chest squirmed.
He snapped: ‘What are your names?’
They didn’t understand his words, but comprehended the sense. They pointed to their chests. ‘La-ba.’ ‘Ca-si.’
Arles smiled, amused, contemptuous. ‘We have the perspective of gods. They have only their moment of light, and the warmth of each other’s body … What is it, Hama? Feeling a little attraction, despite your disgust? A little envy?’
With an angry gesture, Hama sentenced both the drones to the Cull. The drones, obviously shocked, clung to each other.
Arles laughed. ‘Don’t worry, Hama. You are yet young. You will grow – distant.’ Arles passed him the Memory.
Hama weighed the Memory; it was surprisingly heavy. It contained the story of the war since the Commission’s last visit to this backwater Observation Post, a glorious story rendered in simple, heroic images. The contents of the Memory would be downloaded into the Post’s fabric and transcribed on its walls, in images timeless enough to withstand further linguistic drift. Nothing else could be written or drawn on the surfaces of the Post – certainly nothing made by the inhabitants of this place. What had they to write or draw? What did they need to read, save the glorious progress of mankind?
‘Carry on alone. Perhaps it will be a useful discipline for you. One in three for the Cull. And remember – as you condemn them, love them.’ Arles walked away.
The drone couple had moved on. More ugly shaven heads moved past him, all alike, meaningless.
Later that night, when the Post’s sourceless light dimmed, Hama watched the drones dance their wild untutored tangoes, sensual and beautiful. He clung to the thought of how he had doomed the lovers: their shocked expressions, the way they had grabbed each other’s arms, their distress.
After another sleep, La-ba and Ca-si were thrust out of the Observation Post. Only one of them, La-ba or Ca-si, would come back – one, or neither, depending on the outcome of their combat. This was the Cull. A way of sifting out the strongest, while keeping down the population.
To La-ba, stiff in her hardsuit, it was a strange and unwelcome experience to pass through the shell of the Post, to feel gravity shift and change, to feel up become down. And then she had to make sense of a floor that curved away beneath her, to understand that the horizon now hid what lay beyond rather than revealed it.
The Post was adrift in a cloud, a crimson fog that glowed around La-ba. The endless air, above and below, was racked by huge storms. Far below she saw the smooth glint of this world’s core, a hard plain of metallic hydrogen, unimaginably strange. Lightning crackled between immense black clouds. Rain slammed down around her, a hail of pebbles that glowed red-hot. They clattered against the smooth skin of the Post, and her hardsuit.
The clouds were a vapour of silicates. The rain was molten rock laced with pure iron.
The Post was a featureless ball that floated in this ferocious sky, a world drifting within a world. A great cable ran up from the floor before her, up into the crowded sky above her, up – it was said – to the cool emptiness of space beyond. La-ba had never seen space, though she believed it existed.
La-ba, used to enclosure, wanted to cringe, to fall against the floor, as, it was said, some infants hugged the smooth warm walls of the Birthing Vat. But she stood tall.
A fist slammed into the back of her head.
She fell forward, her hardsuited limbs clattering against the floor.
There was a weight on her back and legs, pressing her down. She felt a scrabbling at her neck. Fingers probed at the joint between her helmet and the rest of the suit. If the suit was breached she would death at once.