“I’m right here,” Joe says. Kumar looks past him, past us, like we’re living through a bad haunted-house movie and Joe is one of the ghosts. He doesn’t trust Joe, I think. That makes me trust Joe more—for now.
“That was five years ago,” Kumar says. “The settler was smuggled past all security in ways about which I have not been informed—perhaps because I myself still do not arouse trust.”
“No kidding,” Jacobi says.
Kumar is unfazed. “It was this settler who first told a select few about the ancient pieces of memory buried deep in the Drifter. At first, none of us believed, it seemed so fantastical, so opposed to the history taught us by the Gurus. There was discord in the divisions, but word slowly leaked to our top leaders, and then, we presume, to the Gurus. The settler was stolen from our care. I learned later he was executed. That was our first shame, but also the first indicator of how desperate the Gurus were to keep this information away from Earth and from our fighters.”
“They didn’t want us to know about our origins?” I ask.
“That may have been part of their concern. But also… the knowledge that our ancestral forms on the outer moons of the solar system—”
“We call them bugs,” DJ says, looking grimly serious. “That’s what they were. We get used to it. Mostly.” He’s forcing the issue.
“That’s what you see in your heads?” Borden asks.
“Yeah,” DJ says.
“You?” The commander looks at me.
“Yeah,” I say.
Ishida and Jacobi make disgusted faces. Ulyanova eyes the cage limits.
“The bugs had long ago encountered a species like the Gurus, or the Gurus themselves, and had been led by them to fight many wars.”
Litvinov and the Russians jerk as if they’ve been poked, perhaps realizing something significant. This may be their first hint that the Antags themselves have Gurus.
“The Gurus are that old?” Ishida asks.
“It seems they are. Endless wars, millions of battles, billions of deaths, before our progenitors cleared themselves of that plague.”
“It can be done,” Joe murmurs.
“The bugs, as you call them, settled through the outer solar system about four and a half billion years ago. They took their wars with them. That is about the time Mars and then Earth were struck by chunks of some of their moons. We think that at that time, they were divided into rigid social classes. The Gurus aggravated these divisions and set them against one another. Very soon, the bugs began to fight to preserve class and racial mixes, to exclusively honor a certain social or family unit—or some representative philosophy. Wars over philosophy, or within families, can be the most vicious and long-lasting. Their wars under the tutelage of the Gurus may have lasted a hundred and fifty million years.” He looks at me and DJ and tilts his head. “Is any of this incorrect?”
“Not so far,” DJ says.
Kumar seems amused that DJ should become an expert.
“Did the bugs’ Gurus share technology with them—better weapons, better ships?” Ishida asks.
“Their battles kept them mostly in the outer solar system and the Kuiper belt,” Kumar says. “They did not themselves visit Mars or the Earth. But yes, they seem to have been given insights to help them—but only up to a point, a carefully selected strategic point. Only enough to maintain a balance between opposing forces, with occasional swings of victory and defeat. The Gurus always try to keep things interesting. And the bugs must have fascinated their intended audiences a great deal. We are, perhaps, only a late sequel… an afterthought.” Kumar lets this sink in. “After the debriefing of three Antagonist survivors, under cover of gaining tactical knowledge about the battle situation on Mars—”
Joe won’t meet my eyes. He’s been in on it almost from the beginning. Always coming upon surprises, always ending up in the center of action. And only telling me when I might be useful—or if, conceivably, I might get hurt if I do not know.
“—we combined the knowledge gained from them, with the history outlined by the Muskie colonist who had been successfully exposed to Ice Moon Tea. But that was not all. Even then, we were provided with certain confirming truths by Antagonists who had reached similar conclusions, or had themselves been exposed to the green powder—like the female who speaks her mind to Master Sergeant Sanchez and Corporal Johnson. A number of these brave enemies tried to reach out and warn us. Most died at the hands of our troops—sacrificed as they tried to spread the truth.
“Mushranji sent records of these debriefings to Division One, which promptly buried them—followed by more executions. He managed to keep himself separate from all that, to play as if he were still in the camp of those fanatically devoted to the Gurus. But he carefully enlisted and informed other Wait Staff—making sure that none he approached had spent more than three years in the presence of Gurus. That they had at least a minimal chance of being persuadable.
“And soon, Mushranji had a large enough cadre of the informed and the like-minded that Division Four secretly split from the other divisions, from top politicians and administrators. Soon, we began planning and then directing operations on Mars to confirm the existence of the Drifter, its contents, and its effects on a number of other Martian settlers.
“I fear that because of our tight limits, and our failures, all of you became involved in painful confusion. We were still learning, still trying to understand how we might survive this new and growing base of unwelcome knowledge. Mushranji himself kept me in the dark, ignorant about certain matters, that I might play my part better. I hope he is not lost…”
“Antagonista take orders from Gurus, too,” Ulyanova murmurs, again with that peculiar expression—an expression of feeling pain in a place one doesn’t know one has. Her companion, Vera, sticks by her like a faithful puppy.
Litvinov looks away and says softly to her, “We knew this must be so.”
“We are not special!” Ulyanova says. “So many have died to be part of special.” Bilyk’s glower deepens. Did he want to be special, too, or is he just reacting to the loss of friends, the end of ideals, the loss of any real reason to fight?
Tak echoes his dismay. “This has been going on for millions of years?” he asks. At Kumar’s nod, his expression crumples. “What kind of evil shit is that?”
“We do not know the occasions when Gurus broadcast these wars,” Kumar says. “There may have been long gaps when old species burned themselves out, like movie stars at the ends of their box-office appeal, and new species found intelligence, only to have the Gurus arrive, or revive, and recruit them.”
“We’re just entertainment!” Jacobi says, words sharp as flint.
“That is the truth of it, in a nutshell,” Kumar says.
Quiet around the group. The big picture, even the nutshell, is more than most of us can immediately process.
“One big, bloody reality show,” DJ says with a sniff. He rubs his nose, his far gaze showing the wear he has sustained. In the second Drifter, on Mars, for a time he had been truly happy. Then that, too, had been taken from him and destroyed—by Jacobi and her team. And now we may be about to lose Bug Karnak, the ancient archive, and our steward.
Ishikawa says, “What I want to know is, who’s paying the cable bills?”
Nobody feels like laughing. What I feel like is punching my fist into something until it’s mush. Finding out over and over again how much of a sucker you’ve been, what your real place is in this nasty old world, is something Skyrines and other fighters should be used to…