Zima Blue and Other Stories

  We'd arrived somewhere.

  It was a chamber, large as any enclosed space I'd ever seen. I felt gravity; too much of the stuff. The whole chamber must have been gimballed and spun within the splinter, like one of the gee-load simulators back in Tiger's Eye. The vaulted ceiling, hundreds of metres 'above', now seemed vertiginously higher.

  Apart from its apex, it was covered in intricate frescos - dozens of pictorial facets, each a cycling hologram. They told the history of the Swirl, beginning with its condensation from interstellar gas, the ignition of its star, the onset of planetary formation. Then the action cut to the arrival of the first Standardist wasp, programmed to dive into the Swirl and breed like a rabbit, so that one day there'd be a sufficiently huge population to begin mining the thing; winnowing out metals, silicates and precious organics for the folks back home. Of course, it never happened like that. The Royalists wanted in on the action, so they sent their own wasps, programmed to attack ours. The rest is history. The frescos showed the war's beginning, and then a little while later the arrival of the first human observers, beamed across space as pure genetic data, destined to be born in artificial wombs in hollowed out comet-cores, raised and educated by wasps, imprinted with the best tactical and strategic knowledge available. Thereafter they taught the wasps. From then on things heated up, because the observers weren't limited by years of timelag. They were able to intervene in wasp evolution in realtime.

  That ought to have been it, because by then we were pretty up to date, give or take four hundred years of the same.

  But the frescos carried on.

  There was one representing some future state of the Swirl, neatly ordered into a ticking orrery of variously sized and patterned worlds, some with beautiful rings or moon systems. And finally - like medieval conceptions of Eden - there was a triptych of lush planetary landscapes, with weird animals in the foreground, mountains and soaring cloudbanks behind.

  'Seen enough to convince you?' Wendigo asked.

  'No,' I said, not entirely sure whether I believed myself. Craning my neck, I looked up towards the apex.

  Something hung from it.

  It was a pair of wasps, fused together. One was complete; the other was only fully formed, seemingly in the process of splitting from the complete wasp. The fused pair looked to have been smothered in molten bronze, left to dry in waxy nodules.

  'You know what this is?' Wendigo asked.

  'I'm waiting.'

  'Wasp art.'

  I looked at her.

  'This wasp was destroyed mid-replication,' Wendigo continued. 'While it was giving birth. Evidently the image has some poignancy for them. How I'd put it in human terms I don't know--'

  'Don't even think about it.'

  I followed her across the marbled terrazzo that floored the chamber. Arched porticoes surrounded it, each of which held a single dead wasp, their body designs covering a hundred generations of evolution. If Wendigo was right, I supposed these dead wasps were the equivalent of venerated old ancestors peering from oil paintings. But I wasn't convinced just yet.

  'You knew this place existed?'

  She nodded. 'Or else we'd be dead. The wasps back in the Royalist stronghold told us we could seek sanctuary here, if home turned against us.'

  'And the wasps - what? Own this place?'

  'And hundreds like it, although the others are already far beyond the Swirl, on their way out to the halo. Since the wasps came to consciousness, most of the splinters flung out of the Swirl have been infiltrated. Shrewd of them - all along, we've never suspected that the splinters are anything other than cosmic trash.'

  'Nice decor, anyway.'

  'Florentine,' Wendigo said, nodding. 'The frescos are in the style of a painter called Masaccio; one of Brunelleschi's disciples. Remember, the wasps had access to all the cultural data we brought with us from GE - every byte of it. That's how they work, I think - by constructing things according to arbitrary existing templates.'

  'And there's a point to all this?'

  'I've been here precisely one day longer than you, Spirey.'

  'But you said you had friends here, people who could help Yarrow.'

  'They're here all right,' Wendigo said, shaking her head. 'Just hope you're ready for them.'

  On some unspoken cue they emerged, spilling from a door that until then I'd mistaken for one of the surrounding porticoes. I flinched, acting on years of training. Although wasps have never intentionally harmed a human being - even the enemy's wasps - they're nonetheless powerful, dangerous machines. There were twelve of them, divided equally between Standardist and Royalist units. Six-legged, their two-metre-long, segmented alloy bodies sprouted weapons, sensors and specialised manipulators. So far so familiar, except that the way the wasps moved was subtly wrong. It was as if the machines choreographed themselves, their bodies defining the extremities of a much larger form, which I sensed more than saw.

  The twelve whisked across the floor.

  'They are - or rather it is - a queen,' Wendigo said. 'From what I've gathered, there's one queen for every splinter. Splinterqueens, I call them.'

  The swarm partially surrounded us now - but retained the brooding sense of oneness.

  'She told you all this?'

  'Her demons did, yes.' Wendigo tapped the side of her head. 'I got a dose after our ship crashed. You got one after we hit your ship. It was a standard sporehead from our arsenal, but the Splinterqueen loaded it with her own demons. For the moment that's how she speaks to us - via symbols woven by demons.'

  'Take your word for it.'

  Wendigo shrugged. 'No need to.'

  And suddenly I knew. It was like eavesdropping on a topologist's fever dream - only much stranger. The burst of Queen's speech couldn't have lasted more than a tenth of a second, but its after-images seemed to persist much longer, and I had the start of a migraine before it had ended. But like Wendigo had implied before, I sensed planning - that every thought was merely a step towards some distant goal, the way each statement in a mathematical proof implies some final QED.

  Something big indeed.

  'You deal with that shit?'

  'My chimeric parts must filter a lot.'

  'And she understands you?'

  'We get by.'

  'Good,' I said. 'Then ask her about Yarrow.'

  Wendigo nodded and closed both eyes, entering intense rapport with the Queen. What followed happened quickly: six of her components detached from the extended form and swarmed into the train we had just exited. A moment later they emerged with Yarrow, elevated on a loom formed from dozens of wasp manipulators.

  'What happens now?'

  'They'll establish a physical connection to her neural demons,' Wendigo said, 'so that they can map the damage.'

  One of the six reared up and gently positioned its blunt, anvil-shaped 'head' directly above Yarrow's frost-mottled scalp. Then the wasp made eight nodding movements, so quickly that the motion was only a series of punctuated blurs. Looking down, I saw eight bloodless puncture marks on Yarrow's head. Another wasp replaced the driller and repeated the procedure, executing its own blurred nods. This time, glistening fibres trailed from Yarrow's eight puncture points into the wasp, which looked as if it was sucking spaghetti from my compatriot's skull.

  Long minutes of silence followed, while I waited for some kind of report.

  'It isn't good,' Wendigo said eventually.

  'Show me.'

  And I got a jolt of Queen's speech, feeling myself inside Yarrow's hermetically sealed head, feeling the chill that had embraced her brain core, despite her pilot augs. I sensed the two intermingled looms of native and foreign demons, webbing the shattered matrix of her consciousness.

  I also sensed - what? Doubt?

  'She's pretty far gone, Spirey.'

  'Tell the Queen to do what she can.'

  'Oh, she will. Now that she's glimpsed Yarrow's mind, she'll do all she can not to lose it. Minds mean a lot to her - particularly in view of what the Splin
terqueens are planning for the future. But don't expect miracles.'

  'Why not? We seem to be standing in one.'

  'Then you're prepared to believe some of what I've said?'

  'What it means--' I started to say . . .

  But I didn't finish the sentence. As I was speaking the whole chamber shook violently, almost dashing us off our feet.

  'What was that?'

  Wendigo's eyes glazed again, briefly.

  'Your ship,' she said. 'It just self-destructed.'

  'What?'

  A picture of what remained of Mouser formed in my head: a dulling nebula, embedding the splinter. 'The order to self-destruct came from Tiger's Eye,' Wendigo said. 'It cut straight to the ship's quackdrive subsystems, at a level the demons couldn't rescind. I imagine they were rather hoping you'd have landed by the time the order arrived. The blast would have destroyed the splinter.'

  'You're saying home just tried to kill us?'

  'Put it like this,' Wendigo said. 'Now might not be a bad time to rethink your loyalties.'

  Tiger's Eye had failed this time - but they wouldn't stop there. In three hours they'd learn of their mistake, and three or more hours after that we would learn of their countermove, whatever it happened to be.

  'She'll do something, won't she? I mean, the wasps wouldn't go to the trouble of building this place only to have Tiger's Eye wipe it out.'

  'Not much she can do,' Wendigo said, after communing with the Queen. 'If home chooses to use kinetics against us - and they're the only weapon that could hit us from so far away - then there really is no possible defence. And remember there are a hundred other worlds like this, in or on their way to the halo. Losing one would make very little difference.'

  Something in me snapped. 'Do you have to sound so damned indifferent to it all? Here we are talking about how we're likely to be dead in a few hours and you're acting like it's only a minor inconvenience.' I fought to keep the edge of hysteria out of my voice. 'How do you know so much anyway? You're mighty well informed for someone who's only been here a day, Wendigo.'

  She regarded me for a moment, almost blanching under the slap of insubordination. Then Wendigo nodded, without anger. 'Yes, you're right to ask how I know so much. You can't have failed to notice how hard we crashed. My pilots took the worst.'

  'They died?'

  Hesitation. 'One at least - Sorrel. But the other, Quillin, wasn't in the ship when the wasps pulled me out of the wreckage. At the time I assumed they'd already retrieved her.'

  'Doesn't look that way.'

  'No, it doesn't, and . . .' She paused, then shook her head. 'Quillin was why we crashed. She tried to gain control, to stop us landing . . .' Again Wendigo trailed off, as if unsure how far to commit herself. 'I think Quillin was a plant, put aboard by those who disagreed with the peace initiative. She'd been primed - altered psychologically to reject any Royalist peace overtures.'

  'She was born like that - with a stick up her ass.'

  'She's dead, I'm sure of it.'

  Wendigo almost sounded glad.

  'Still, you made it.'

  'Just, Spirey. I'm the humpty who fell off the wall twice. This time they couldn't find all the pieces. The Splinterqueen pumped me full of demons - gallons of them. They're all that's holding me together, but I don't think they can keep it up for ever. When I speak to you, at least some of what you hear is the Splinterqueen herself. I'm not really sure where you draw the line.'

  I let that sink in, then said: 'About your ship. Repair systems would have booted when you hit. Any idea when she'll fly again?'

  'Another day, day and a half.'

  'Too damn long.'

  'Just being realistic. If there's a way to get off the splinter within the next six hours, ship isn't it.'

  I wasn't giving up so easily. 'What if wasps help? They could supply materials. Should speed things.'

  Again that glazed look. 'All right,' she said. 'It's done. But I'm afraid wasp assistance won't make enough difference. We're still looking at twelve hours.'

  'So I won't start any long neurodisneys.' I shrugged. 'And maybe we can hold out until then.' She looked unconvinced, so I said: 'Tell me the rest. Everything you know about this place. Why, for starters.'

  'Why?'

  'Wendigo, I don't have the faintest damn idea what any of us is doing here. All I do know is that in six hours I could be suffering from acute existence failure. When that happens, I'd be happier knowing what was so important I had to die for it.'

  Wendigo looked towards Yarrow, still being nursed by the detached elements of the Queen. 'I don't think our being here will help her,' she said. 'In which case, maybe I should show you something.' A near-grin appeared on Wendigo's face. 'After all, it isn't as if we don't have time to kill.'

  So we rode the train again, this time burrowing deeper into the splinter.

  'This place,' Wendigo said, 'and the hundred others already beyond the Swirl - and the hundreds, thousands more that will follow - are arks. They're carrying life into the halo; the cloud of leftover material around the Swirl.'

  'Colonisation, right?'

  'Not quite. When the time's right the splinters will return to the Swirl. Only there won't be one any more. There'll be a solar system, fully formed. When the colonisation does begin, it will be of new worlds around Fomalhaut, seeded from the life-templates held in the splinters.'

  I raised a hand. 'I was following you there . . . until you mentioned life-templates. '

  'Patience, Spirey.'

  Wendigo's timing couldn't have been better, because at that moment light flooded the train's brushed-steel interior.

  The tunnel had become a glass tube, anchored to one wall of a vast cavern suffused with emerald light. The far wall was tiered, draping rafts of foliage. Our wall was steep and forested, oddly curved waterfalls draining into stepped pools. The waterfalls were bent away from true 'vertical' by Coriolis force, evidence that - just like the first chamber - this entire space was independently spinning within the splinter. The stepped pools were surrounded by patches of grass, peppered with moving forms that might have been naked people. There were wasps as well - tending the people.

  As the people grew clearer, I had that flinch you get when your gaze strays onto someone with a shocking disfigurement. Roughly half of them were males.

  'Imported Royalists,' Wendigo said. 'Remember I said they'd turned feral? Seems there was an accident, not long after the wasps made the jump to sentience. A rogue demon, or something. Decimated them.'

  'They have both sexes.'

  'You'll get used to it, Spirey - conceptually anyway. Tiger's Eye wasn't always exclusively female, you know that? It was just something we evolved into. Began with you pilots, matter of fact. Fem physiology made sense for pilots - women are smaller, have better gee-load tolerance, better stress psychodynamics and require fewer consumables than males. We were products of bioengineering from the outset, so it wasn't hard to make the jump to an all-fem culture.'

  'Makes me want to . . . I don't know.' I forced my gaze away from the Royalists. 'Puke or something. It's like going back to having hair all over your body.'

  'That's because you grew up with something different.'

  'Did they always have two sexes?'

  'Probably not. What I do know is that the wasps bred from the survivors, but something wasn't right. Apart from the reversion to dimorphism, the children didn't grow up normally. Some part of their brains hadn't developed right.'

  'Meaning what?'

  'They're morons. The wasps keep trying to fix things, of course. That's why the Splinterqueen will do everything to help Yarrow - and us, of course. If she can study or even capture our thought patterns - and the demons make that possible - maybe she can use them to imprint consciousness back onto the Royalists. Like the Florentine architecture I said they copied, right? That was one template, and Yarrow's mind will be another.'

  'That's supposed to cheer me up?'

  'Look on the bright side. A whi
le from now, there might be a whole generation of people who think along lines laid down by Yarrow.'

  'Scary thought.' Then I wondered why I was able to crack a joke, with destruction looming so close in the future. 'Listen, I still don't get it. What makes them want to bring life to the Swirl?'

  'It seems to boil down to two . . . imperatives, I suppose you'd call them. The first's simple enough. When wasps were first opening up Greater Earth's solar system, back in the mid-twenty-first century, we sought the best way for them to function in large numbers without supervision. We studied insect colonies and imprinted the most useful rules straight into the wasps' programming. More than six hundred years later, those rules have percolated to the top. Now the wasps aren't content merely to organise themselves along patterns derived from living prototypes. Now they want to become - or at least give rise to - living forms of their own.'