20

 

Habidah charged out of Meloku’s manor. She didn’t look at the stunned doorman, didn’t speak. Above, Meloku’s infrared shadow leaned over her window, almost in reverence.

Habidah scanned the sky as deeply as her augmented senses allowed, and shunted feeds from her team’s satellites into her visual cortex. The planarship could be whatever color it wanted. Right now it was deep-sea black. Aside from the stars it occluded, it left no trace. Even still, its shadow would excite astronomers around this world.

Habidah could only just make it out in other spectra. Ways and Means’ aft platforms glowed hotly in infrared, ebbing engine heat. The planarship drifted lazily across the sky in high semi-synchronous orbit. It was a dark mass of dozen-kilometer-long platforms studded with missiles, spaceplanes, detachable factories, and sensors. Nine of these segments were arranged in a three-by-three block. A tenth sat at the front. That one housed the amalgamate’s mind. Nothing human was allowed there.

Joao had already alerted the rest of the team. They were all already listening. She asked Joao, “Did you tell the university what’s happened?”

“I’ve included everything we know in our last report.”

“Heard back?”

“Not yet, but we only just sent it–”

“Open the communications gateway. Tell the university Ways and Means is here and one of our anthropologists is a spy. Demand an answer. Hell – send our reports to every academic institution you can think of. Journalists. As many people in the Unity as are willing to listen.”

Habidah chewed her lip as she waited. Then Joao said, “No answer.”

“Contact anyone in any news agency. Anyone who will answer.”

“Hold on. I’m getting an… it’s an automated answer. Our messages back to the Unity have been ‘temporarily blocked due to a security emergency.’”

Habidah slammed the heel of her hand into the bricks of Meloku’s manor. Slim chance their last messages had gotten through, either. This was just the first time the amalgamates had admitted it.

Silence stifled what was left of the night. No one knew what to say any more than she did. She said, “Keep trying. Send an additional request to evacuate us. Whatever’s going on here, I’m sure I don’t want to be a part of it.”

“Requests for four individual evacuations, sent,” Joao said.

“Five,” Habidah said, without thinking.

Feliks said, “I doubt you’re going to get Meloku to come with.”

The gateway had closed. Ways and Means was all but invisible now. It had wanted to announce its arrival, though. Whatever plans the amalgamates had for this plane, she was sure its people wouldn’t want to be any more a part of them than she did.

She had a responsibility to help as many as she could, even if she could count them on one hand.

“Five,” she repeated.

Joao paused before answering. “All right. Requests sent. We got the same answer back.”

“Keep sending them.”

Habidah stared at Meloku’s manor. There were no shadows behind the illuminated curtains, no more infrared blurs close to the windows. Habidah walked in the opposite direction. The cobbles left her step unsteady.

There had to be a way to puzzle out what was happening. This world had no exceptional natural resources, no civilizations that should have gotten the amalgamates’ attention. Only a continent devastated by plague and war.

Maybe that had something to do with it. The amalgamates refused to cure their plague. Certainly now that Ways and Means was here, they had the resources to eradicate that plague any time it pleased.

She sat hard by a garden wall and folded her knees. A crawling sensation started at her neck and spread down her back. The amalgamates wanted these people dead. Or dying.

It was suddenly too obvious. Weak, wounded civilizations were easy to lead. Terrorists and tyrants on billions of planes could attest to that.

And Meloku had placed herself at the administrative center of a continent-spanning religion.

“They’re taking control of this continent,” Habidah said, both aloud and to her team.

Demiorganics didn’t convey tone very well, but they hardly needed help to capture Kacienta’s skepticism: “Why would they ever want anything as small as this world?”

Feliks said, “It’s not that far out of bounds. They’ve taken over other planes before. Incorporated them into the Unity.”

“Advanced planes,” Kacienta said. “Planes that had something to offer, some resource or technology.”

Joao said, “The only thing that makes this world different from trillions of others is the people. And, some atypical religious beliefs aside, the people aren’t that remarkable. You can find low-technology civilizations all over the multiverse.”

Feliks said, “They’re not remarkable. Just vulnerable.”

Habidah added, “And easily manipulated.”

“Manipulated to do what?” Kacienta asked. “What could they possibly do that the amalgamates couldn’t themselves?”

A long silence followed. Finally, Feliks ventured, “Work with people. The amalgamates don’t have the resources to take care of everybody themselves. That’s why they have agents. That’s why they said they sent us to begin with – to help them understand this world.”

Joao said, “Right.” Even his transmission had a nervous tremor to it. “The amalgamates usually hire out to take care of low priority tasks, like dealing with people. They have agents.”

“Or stooges like us,” Habidah said.

Joao asked, “So what would the amalgamates need the people of this world for?”

Habidah shook her head ruefully. She cast her gaze upward. Ways and Means was halfway behind a cloud, but she could see through that. There was no sign of further engine activity, and only modest thermal leakage. She could only think of one job large enough that the amalgamates would need a population like this plane’s.

She said, “To work for settlers.”

Feliks supplanted, “Colonists.”

Now even Kacienta seemed shaken. “What do you mean, ‘work for’?”

Habidah pulled herself to her feet, though she wasn’t sure where she was going. A hot, heavy pressure built in her chest. “Slave for. Indigenous servants.”

Feliks said, “A servile class.” Silence followed, as even he couldn’t seem to be able to follow the thought to its conclusion. “Maybe they’re even going to be taught to be willing.”

Habidah said, “Meloku put herself right at a center of power, started making an impression on its leaders. She told me she’d forecasted Ways and Means’ appearance. She set herself up as a prophetess. A good position to tell the locals of a race of saviors coming. I wouldn’t be surprised if Ways and Means was sending agents to every court on the plane.”

Meloku said, “A well-reasoned theory.”

Habidah glanced sharply to the manor. She had accepted, a long time ago, that the amalgamates could listen in to everything. This felt different. Meloku wasn’t an amalgamate. She was just an intruder.

“Go fuck yourself,” Joao advised.

Meloku ignored him. “I want to assure you all that it’s not as bad as you’ve made it sound. If the amalgamates intended to harm anyone on this plane, they would have already. What’s happening here will be as good for them as it is for us.” The amalgamates must have told her more in the past few minutes, or Habidah had guessed wrong and she’d known more than she’d said. “We have refugees all over the Unity. Some planes are still trying quarantines, evacuations. Their evacuees can’t return home. They need a new one.”

Habidah said, “A new home with people already living on it.”

Meloku said, “Again. If all the amalgamates wanted to do was conquer, they wouldn’t need to infiltrate its systems of power. All of the armies on this world couldn’t stand up to a single orbital defense drone.”

Feliks said, “Easier to convert than to conquer. More productive, even.”

“Exactly,” Meloku said, missing Feliks’ bite. “There are millions – billions – of people in the Unity who need new planes. Easier to bring them to a place with people to build their homes, staff their industries, be their neighbors. The amalgamates can do a lot, but they can’t make a world feel like home. By the time the evacuees arrive, we’re going to make sure the natives are ready to accept them.”

“‘Feel like home,’” Habidah repeated, trying to count how many horrors Meloku had elided. The natives would never be the equals of the settlers. “No, no, no. If that was all, you wouldn’t need us. You’d come here with only loyal agents. You wouldn’t need to trick anthropologists.” It clicked all in one moment. “Unless the amalgamates are stretched thin. They’re doing this on hundreds or thousands of planes, and don’t have enough agents to scout them. So they have to use dupes like us to fill the gaps.”

Kacienta said, numbly, “We helped you get a foothold into the plane, to understand the locals. That’s all we were ever here for.”

“Your reports have been sent back. They’re being read on plague-stricken planes even now. Nobody lied about that.”

“With references to your project censored,” Joao said. Meloku didn’t answer, which was as good as a confirmation. “That’s another thing I don’t understand. Why the security? Why block our calls? What does it even matter if the rest of the Unity knows about this?”

Once again, Meloku said nothing. Habidah doubted she knew the answer.

Feliks said, “The amalgamates have never been afraid of anyone in the Unity finding out that they’ve occupied other planes. It’s not as though ordinary people have ever had the ability to stop them. They’ve never been afraid of ordinary people before.”

Habidah said, “Then they must be afraid of something else.”

Before Habidah could finish her thought, Meloku said, “This conversation is over.”

“Then get off–” Habidah hadn’t gotten more than two words in before she realized the call had ended. Her sense of the others’ presence, always present in the back of her mind, had gone.

She tried to reestablish contact, without success. There was nothing wrong. Her satellite was still above the horizon. She had a solid connection to the field base’s NAI, and even saw each of her team members’ vitals when she checked. She just couldn’t speak with them.

She reached the shuttle and ascended the boarding ramp, but Meloku had been right. She couldn’t leave Avignon, not without revealing the shuttle in daylight. She was stuck here until nightfall.

After that – she didn’t know. The fire in her veins cooled. She doubted she’d be able to talk to the others until she got them face-to-face. Only Feliks had been at the field base. The others were scattered over Italy, France, and the Germanic states. If Meloku were to take control of the shuttle, she might not ever see her team again. But Habidah doubted Meloku would go that far. Meloku had cut them off out of spite rather than any real need.

She wasn’t afraid of Habidah or any of the others. They couldn’t threaten the amalgamates.

Feliks had been on to something, though. The amalgamates were afraid.

Habidah slumped into an acceleration couch. She watched the branches of the nearest trees sway against the shuttle’s cameras. All her life, she’d thought many things about the amalgamates, but never imagined that they could be scared. They were too powerful, too above her. Eternal.

 

The shuttle would only return her home. Its NAI refused to take her to search for Kacienta and Joao.

By the time it settled outside the field base that night, she’d come no closer to answers. She trudged out into the farmhouse. The lights lining the ramp down flicked on as she stepped through. If anything, it made the base seem more desolate. The viewwalls were off. The lights followed her from corridor to corridor.

NAI was only quasi-sentient. It wasn’t capable of understanding what had happened. When she asked to send a message, it simply told her that the base’s communications gateway wouldn’t open. Someone on the other end had blocked the gateway from forming.

She expected to find Feliks at his desk. Instead, he was stretched out on one of the beds he’d used to examine plague victims. Habidah stepped quietly, afraid of what she’d find. But he was awake, watching something. Pale red light shone from the ceiling.

He said, “I was hoping they wouldn’t stop you from traveling back.”

“What are you doing?”

“Trying to figure out how much longer I’ll be with you.”

She looked to the image on the ceiling. Veins, muscle tissue, nerves and bone rotated round a helix of numbers. They were labeled with Feliks’ name. “Do you really think you’ll see something the rest of the Unity hasn’t?”

“Of course not. But I like to study. It’s a kind of solace.”

The final stages of Feliks’ disease had already begun. Every part of his body was weathering a slow, grinding attack that the lab’s instruments could hardly see. His marrow’s ability to produce fresh blood cells had faltered. His demiorganics sporadically refused to carry signals. Now his muscles were dying, including his heart. His pulse experienced long periods of thready, irregular activity.

Habidah said, “You’d think they’d reopen the gateway to let you back home, see your world another time.”

Feliks said, “I wouldn’t think that. Anyway, I wouldn’t have come on this assignment if I needed to see home again.”

“Stop that. I’m trying to be angry on your behalf.”

Feliks snorted.

Habidah asked, “You’re really at peace with it, aren’t you?”

“I don’t know if I would call it ‘peace.’ But I’m more comfortable with it than I was before I started studying this world.”

“I’m not. Everything we’ve seen, everything I’ve learned about what we’re doing here, just makes it worse. I mean… fuck, Feliks, what are we supposed to do now?”

“‘Let it happen,’ would be my guess.”

“I can’t.”

“We don’t have any choice. Refusing to accept that might be the biggest reason any of us are suffering right now.”

“That’s a ton of shit. People are suffering because they’re dying, losing their friends and families.”

Feliks shrugged. “That’s my experience of dying. All I can do is share it with you.”

Habidah had a thousand things to say to that, but she held her tongue. She wouldn’t tell a dying man he was wrong to have found solace.

Feliks said, “More of the Unity is coming around to think the same way.”

“That we’re all doomed?”

“I have less than a fraction of the intellectual resources the amalgamates devoted to the problem. The fact that one of them is here says a lot.”

Habidah said, as the realization struck, “The amalgamates are looking at ways of surviving the plague beyond curing it.”

“Plague exiles should be a temporary problem,” Feliks said. “The amalgamates could solve it any number of ways. Put the exiles into cold stasis or slingshot them around a pair of suns at relativistic speeds. Shelve them on empty worlds. Basically put them aside until they develop a cure. Settling an already inhabited world is a permanent solution.”

Habidah said, “They’re setting up house here in the event the rest of the Unity dies.”

“On many other planes like this one, I’ll bet.”

If that was true, it seemed to her like the amalgamates were getting ahead of themselves. A plan like this wouldn’t save more than the minutest fraction of the Unity’s population. The Unity was in bad shape, but not close to disintegrating.

She was missing something, but couldn’t feel the shape of it. Not yet. The amalgamates did like to think ahead. The Unity wasn’t dead, not yet, but maybe this meant they were writing it off.

Habidah strode the length of Feliks’ office. She had never felt claustrophobic underground before. The weight of the earth pressed the two of them together.

Feliks asked, “What do you want to do?”

“Get off this plane. Cure the plague. Send Ways and Means home.”

“You’re not important enough. None of us are. All we can do is help one person at a time. Isn’t that why you saved the monk?”

“That was all I could get away with. And even that was a stretch.”

“How much do you think you could get away with now?” he asked. “If you were to start saving more of the natives now, do you really think the amalgamates would stop you?”

Habidah stopped pacing.

Helping Niccoluccio had been a stone tossed into a pond. A brief splash and then nothing. She hadn’t saved him, not like she’d hoped. He’d lost his vocation, his friends, everyone he’d known. No wonder she hadn’t heard from him since she’d left him in Florence. She couldn’t have saved what he needed saved. And now Ways and Means had come to overturn everything that remained. She’d preserved his body, but she couldn’t shelter him from loss any more than she could protect Feliks.

After a long breath, she said, “I could never save enough.”

Feliks blew air through his lips, unsuccessfully trying to hide his frustration with her.

She said, “I wish I could be more like you, but I can’t. I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right.”

“No, you’re right. I should try. I can help more than him.” Niccoluccio had been something, at least. He just hadn’t been enough.

He shook his head. “Not in the long run. Not any more than the people out there could cure their own plague.”

“Some of them are at least trying to help.”

“Doctors and priests and nuns. Most of them are dead. You’re right. The children who fled from their parents, and the parents who fled from their children, are the ones who stayed safe.” He touched her wrist. “At some point, we need to figure out when we’re hurting ourselves more than we’re helping others, and pull back and take care of ourselves.”

She swallowed. She reached with her free hand to touch Feliks’ fingers. The two of them did nothing but look at each other.