Snare

  ‘Exactly. Hypothesis: Loremaster Millou has already told you things forbidden under the Treaty.’

  ‘Yes, but she had no choice. We found the wall with the sculptures on it. Your ancestors must have made it.’

  ‘They were not my ancestors. I co-existed with them.’

  ‘Sorry. I should call them the Settlers, Loy says.’

  ‘Loremaster Millou is correct. Yes, the Settlers created long-lasting records of their circumstances.’

  ‘Loy told me that the world is huge. If you were so worried about the Chof, why did you settle down right on top of them?’

  ‘The world is indeed very large, but it is mostly water. There is only one land mass, a pangea as such are called. It would have been possible to settle on the opposite coast from the Chof, yes, but in the past, H’mai colonies have always spread across any land mass upon which they found themselves. Inevitably the descendants of the Karashiki and the Companies would have made contact with the Chof at a time when none of the original Settlers were alive to guide the meeting. We – I mean they, including the woman upon whom I am modelled – the fleet council decided after much debate that it would be better to supervise the process and set up laws and procedures to protect the indigenes, to teach the colonists from the beginning that the Chof are sapient beings like ourselves. Further questions?’

  ‘Yes. Who were my ancestors and where did they come from?’

  Sibyl leaned back in her armchair; her illusion of a face turned pale and for a moment seemed to dissolve into a stack of tiny cubes. When she spoke, however, the illusion came back strong. She twined her fingers together, glanced away, her eyes narrowed in thought. ‘I will explain with basic definitions. Your ancestors were soldiers. They were also victims of a great crime. The crime was necessary to save billions upon billions of lives. There was an enemy that our ordinary soldiers could not defeat. This enemy wished to feed upon other sapient races as you feed upon saurs. Your ancestors were created to kill this enemy.’

  ‘Wait! What do you mean, created?’

  ‘I cannot answer that question with any precision in terms you can understand. Giving you the correct terms will take –’ here Sibyl paused ‘– twelve to fifteen standard hours, and even then there is no guarantee you will understand me.’

  ‘Sibyl, I’ve got to have some sort of answer. It doesn’t need to be precise.’

  ‘Very well. You have released me from a constraint. I will answer in terms that are not precise. Do your people still remember the role of the female in human reproduction?’

  ‘If you mean producing eggs in her womb, of course we do.’

  ‘Very good. The word you need to know is clone. They recruited the best soldiers they could find to supply them with reproductive materials, eggs and sperm both. They changed the nature of these materials in the fertilized egg. Then they treated the earliest stage of each embryo with a substance so that it divided into many embryos, identical and healthy. They grew them in vitrinuters –’ another pause ‘– think of glass bottles, very large. In less than a year they had thousands of infants. They placed these infants in other mechanisms and raised them to adulthood in four more years. They continued growing infants for some years more.’

  ‘What? How could –’

  ‘Please.’ Sibyl held up a hand for silence. ‘Think: magic. They used magic to speed up the growth process for their altered H’mai. These men and women could see, hear, smell, and do things no other H’mai could. Each possessed special talents in the areas of memory, perception, and warfare.’

  ‘Oh gods!’

  ‘No, they were not gods. They were specially created H’mai.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I know. I was saying those words because I suddenly understood something.’

  ‘Very good. What do you understand?’

  ‘The Kazraks say that all those talents came from demons. They must have meant the people who made those – what was that word?’

  ‘Clones.’ Sibyl deigned to smile. ‘You have guessed correctly. The ancestors of the Kazraks – the Karashiki – had a very low opinion of my people. They expressed this contempt by using words such as demon, jinni, and the Great Shaitan to describe us.’

  ‘Did they really think you were demons?’

  ‘Of course not! They were using what is called a figure of speech. The person from whom I was created did not like Mullah Agvar, and he did not like her, but I never made the mistake of considering him stupid or superstitious.’

  ‘His descendants aren’t using a figure of speech. They think you really were demons.’

  Sibyl’s illusionary eyes blinked several times. ‘This is distressing. They have lived too long in isolation.’

  ‘You could say that about all of us.’

  ‘Very true.’

  ‘Were these soldiers the same as the Inborn?’

  ‘They were a new kind of Inborn. The Inborn who existed before them were civilians given special talents but who were born in the ordinary way. They were not raised in glass bottles. They had parents who raised them in homes.’

  ‘I see. Go on.’

  ‘These soldiers were created, cloned, grown in tube-wombs and in the process conditioned to be human by psycho-formative imprint technology. They were trained to be soldiers in special hidden camps. They were then released upon the enemy’s home planet. They were told to destroy the core-mind of the alien race. They did. We committed two great crimes: one to breed soldiers like horses, the other to exterminate another sapient species. But without those crimes, billions would have perished. The situation was so desperate that some members of the governing Council thought that the soldiers might be the only H’mai to survive the war. It fell to them to save the H’mai race if they could or to continue it on some hidden world if they could not.’

  ‘But the soldiers – we – won the war.’

  ‘Yes, you won, but at great cost. Most died. Some thousands however survived, a body of soldiers who could kill anything, hide anywhere, soldiers trained to have no mercy, who had reason to hate the Council for their creation.’

  ‘I think I see. You had to get rid of us.’

  Sibyl winced. ‘I apologize for the behaviour of my people, but yes, we had to get rid of you. The Council settled your people on a continent of your own on a planet named Ruby. There were problems there with another race, the Hirrel, who occupied the other continent. Your language – you speak Hirl-Onglay. This name means Anglis as spoken in the territories of the Hirrel.’

  ‘But what happened? Why did we come here?’

  ‘Your ancestors had studied databanks concerning the ancient ways of H’mai upon Old Earth, the home planet, because they wanted to be free of the Council and live the way humans lived in primitive times. They decided that they would live like a group of ancient H’mai called variously the Soo or the Skithyans. The government agreed to send them to a planet where they could live as they wished.’

  ‘The accident must not have mattered to them, then. They got what they wanted anyway.’

  ‘They received some of what they wanted, not all. So did the Karashiki. Each group wished to live in isolation from all other groups. After the accident, that was not possible.’

  ‘So you all worked out a system of separation, and everyone agreed to lie to their children.’

  ‘Yes, but lie is a harsh usage.’ Sibyl leaned forward in her chair. ‘We did it because we thought it was best.’

  ‘You still lied.’

  ‘Oh very well then! We did lie. That is why I decided to keep living in this form. Someday, I knew, someone would want the truth.’

  ‘But you hid the complex away?’

  ‘No. When Sibyl became a REV N’Dosha was a flourishing community. Everyone knew about this cave.’

  ‘Did the Settlers hide it during the Chof Wars?’

  ‘No. Just before the wars started, a volcanic eruption further down the N’Dosha fault caused massive earthquakes. The side of the trap above this installation gave way and bu
ried the entrance. The Settlers would have dug it out again, but the war intervened.’

  ‘You were cut off, then.’

  ‘Completely.’ Sibyl’s voice suddenly shook, and her eyes widened. ‘For two hundred and fifty years I was isolated. Fortunately, as a REV I access no emotions, so the isolation did not –’ Her illusory face suddenly froze and became as flat as a drawing on a piece of rushi. When she spoke, only her lips moved. ‘The isolation was burdensome, yes.’ Somewhere behind her a high-pitched bell chimed. Sibyl’s image inflated into three dimensions and began to move, stiffly for a few moments, then with a natural fluidity. She sat back in her chair and smiled. ‘Fortunately, the Settlers had got as far as digging out and repairing the two solar pillars, and I had power with which to operate. To keep myself occupied I ran long data chains and analyses that resulted in the book of predictions called The Sibylline Prophecies. From my analyses I saw that eventually someone would find the complex again. I just never thought that the Chof would find it first.’

  ‘And when they did, you helped them. So much for letting them develop in their own way in their own time.’

  Sibyl vanished. The illusionary chair and the blue quartz platform remained. Ammadin waited until Sibyl reappeared.

  ‘In this form,’ Sibyl said, ‘I cannot handle contradictions.’

  ‘But you did things that were contradictions.’

  Once again the image vanished, and once again, after a wait, it reappeared.

  ‘In this form,’ Sibyl said, ‘I cannot handle contradictions.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Ammadin said. ‘I keep forgetting what you are.’

  ‘I am not surprised that this is so.’

  ‘Now, let me make sure I understand. Your people created mine to fight and die for them. Then, once most of us were dead, you decided that you were too good for the survivors. You had to get rid of your own creation, but we were too dangerous to just kill off.’

  ‘I never relayed any such information to you.’

  ‘No, but it’s obvious.’ Ammadin crossed her arms over her chest. ‘Am I right?’

  ‘Yes, you were too dangerous to attack. No, we did not decide that we were too good for you. We were afraid. You were fearsome.’

  ‘Are we still?’

  ‘In your present situation, armed with spears and knives, no, you are not fearsome.’

  ‘Let me rephrase my question. Do these traits, the ones you just told me about, the traits that made us like the Inborn, do they breed true?’

  Sibyl’s image froze. When at last she spoke, only her mouth moved.

  ‘Yes.’ Her voice sounded hollow. ‘They breed true.’

  ‘Then we’re still dangerous. You should have made us marry into the Cantons or Kazrajistan.’ Ammadin uncrossed her arms and shook them; her muscles had tensed to the point of aching. ‘That would have thinned our bloodlines.’

  The image moved and became three-dimensional again.

  ‘Perhaps so.’ Sibyl’s voice sounded alive again as well. ‘But let me clarify. This decision to treat your ancestors so badly was not my decision. It was made by the ruling government, the Rim Council, as it was termed and may indeed still be termed. I have no information as to its continued existence.’

  ‘Suppose they’d asked you? Would you have agreed with them?’

  ‘No, I would not have agreed. But I would have had no other idea of how to solve the problem your ancestors presented.’

  ‘That’s fair.’ Ammadin considered her next question. Those that she’d so carefully prepared were beginning to seem oddly trivial. ‘You talked about the Hirrel. One of our gods is named Hirrel.’

  ‘This is true. Each of your gods is named for one of the sapient species that made up our interstellar culture. The figurines you carry each represent one of these species. This was done in case a rescue unit managed to reach Snare. The Settlers wanted your people to treat this unit with respect rather than destroying them as invaders.’

  Ammadin stared at her for a long moment. She could not speak; she could barely breathe.

  ‘You are distressed,’ Sibyl said.

  ‘Distressed? Not exactly. I’m furious.’

  ‘I do not understand the cause of this emotion.’

  ‘You’re telling me that my gods – you’re telling me that there are no gods.’

  ‘I am not competent to judge the question of whether any power that might be termed god or gods exists or does not exist. The figurines that you call gods, however, are not gods in any sense of the word. They are representations of the sapient species that together instituted the Rim Council.’

  ‘You – your people – they tricked us into worshipping something that doesn’t exist.’

  ‘Most sapients who worship a god or gods worship something that does not exist. If such a thing as a god does exist, it would not equate to the representations they make of it.’

  ‘That’s not what I’m talking about. The gods lie at the root of who the comnees are. Bane, for instance.’ Ammadin felt her hands tighten into fists beyond her power to stop them. ‘What happens to Bane without gods?’

  ‘Your Banes were instituted as a logical set of instructions to preserve the native environment and the indigenes. I will admit to having a hand in their creation.’

  ‘You are not a god.’

  ‘No, I am a REV image produced by electronic fields in an arrangement of devices.’

  ‘You’re not understanding me. You had no right to make up Banes and then tell us they came from the gods.’

  ‘This is true. I remember feeling doubts, but the step seemed to be necessary to protect the indigenes. Still, I fail to see how those twenty rules could be so important to you.’

  ‘Twenty? There are hundreds of them.’

  Sibyl’s image briefly froze. ‘I can only conclude that the Companies have elaborated upon those twenty and created entirely new ones as well.’ She thawed and smiled, entirely too smugly for the dead thing she claimed to be. ‘You spirit riders are as much to blame as Sibyl is, therefore.’

  ‘Blame? No. That makes it better, somehow. It means that at least part of them belongs to us. And what about the quests? What about going into the sea caves or the Mistlands for visions? Did you make that up, too?’

  ‘No. Dallas ador Jenz, Father of Arrows, found such rituals to be a part of the Soo-Skithyan culture. He considered them an essential part of true humanity.’

  ‘All right, good. Then those belong to us, too.’

  ‘In fact, Sibyl objected to the choice of the Mistlands as a site for questing. I feared that the indigenous life cycle might suffer from human presence there.’

  ‘Oh did you?’ Anger began to pound in Ammadin’s blood like a drug. ‘What about your own people? The H’mai. Remember them? What about us?’

  ‘I drew up the Banes to protect you, too. If the Chof had been given unlimited access to technology –’

  ‘It would have damaged their culture, yes, I know.’

  ‘Let me finish!’ Sibyl leaned forward, raising a hand palm out. ‘If the Chof had been given unlimited access to technology, the outcome had a high probability for being disastrous to the H’mai, given the complexity of the Chof brain and the potential of their intellects.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘They are much much smarter than we are. I don’t know how to make it any clearer. Consider how quickly and well they learned all our various languages, how easily they switch back and forth between them.’ Sibyl sat back in her chair and folded her hands in her lap. ‘I did not want the Chof to absorb the H’mai any more than I wanted the H’mai to absorb the Chof. I see by your facial expressions that you are still angry.’

  ‘Yes, but I’ll grant that you meant well. It’s the way you did it! Having us worship something that doesn’t exist, and then –’ Ammadin paused, gulping for breath. ‘And then bringing me here. Damn you, Sibyl! You brought me here to destroy my people, didn’t you?’

  ‘What?’ The image froze.
‘I had no such intention. I brought you here to help me deal with Yarl Soutan. You are the one who has asked other questions.’

  ‘Oh? It’s pretty damn obvious that you’re still angry with Lisadin for giving us horses. And how come you told me that it was time for us to know the truth?’

  Sibyl faded to the edge of vanishing, then suddenly solidified and moved. ‘You have detected an error in my functioning,’ she said. ‘I behaved in a contradictory manner.’

  ‘I know that. Why?’

  ‘I thought that it would aid in the survival of the indigenes if spirit riders knew certain basic truths. So I tempted you to ask the questions so I might supply the answers.’

  ‘Eight hundred years too late! We’ve woven your lies into our lives. Can’t you see that? We believed them all, we depended on them, we’ve lived them. You can’t take that all away from people and expect them to go right on the way they did before. Why should anyone follow Bane if a bunch of H’mai just made it all up?’

  ‘Attitude adjustments will need to be made, yes, among the spirit riders.’

  ‘Is that all you have to say? How can we trust our laws any more? We followed them because we thought the gods gave them to us, but the gods are just a bunch of figurines. And you’ve got your filthy nerve, saying you’re cutting the cinch but the saddle won’t fall.’

  The image blinked its eyes. ‘I do not foresee the consequences you imply with that metaphor.’

  ‘No? Then your information about us is all wrong. Once my people know the truth –’

  ‘Do not tell them the truth! This information should be kept to a small group, a council of spirit riders. You may then make decisions based upon it in private. The technology will remain magical to the uninitiated.’

  ‘We should become a lot of stinking mullahs and priests, you mean? Lie to our own people? No! We will know the truth. All of us.’

  ‘The consequences of that will, as you have surmised, be unfortunate for your people and dangerous for all other sapient societies on this planet.’

  ‘Right now, right here, I can’t care about that.’

  ‘Your ancestors had little grasp of consequences as well. That’s what made them so dangerous.’