Orduval felt his legs grow weak and shaky, and he slowly sank down until he was sitting in the dust. "What are you?"
"You're a bright spark, Orduval, just like your brother and your sisters. Let me ask you this: do you think that after you lot left it, Earth just ceased to be?"
No more anti-convulsives.
Orduval clamped down on his feelings and tried to understand more clearly what he had just been told. Really, he should have fathomed this being's source once it gave him its name. "You are a technological product of the human race…from Earth."
"Close enough."
Orduval narrowed his eyes, stared at the cat, and made an abrupt reassessment. "You're a product of a product."
"Startlingly fast."
"Does humanity still exist?"
"Now you're getting ahead of yourself. Yes, humanity, in all its wonderful and sometimes repulsive variety, still exists and has spread throughout many star systems, and will soon be coming here."
Orduval began to feel bolder. He stood up. "And do humans tell you what to do?"
"Sometimes they do, though not very often. Generally, the machines rule the Polity. We're better at it."
"Polity?"
"Empire, dominion…call it what you will."
"Why do you bother to rule?"
Again that tiger shrug. "Why not?"
Orduval closed his eyes. He could feel himself absorbing this new data and placing it on hold, ready to apply it to the huge body of knowledge resting in his narrow skull, before making massive reassessments. He replayed the conversation thus far, then asked, "Why am I different? You inferred that rescuing me was a different matter from rescuing all those others."
"I was instructed not to reveal myself or to interfere here. I've been ignoring that order and until now got away with it. You were one of four people—you can guess who the others are—I decided to watch very closely. You would have died here, either quickly from exposure or your injuries, or later from your fits. My intervention will be discovered, though perhaps not for some time."
"You did not need to actually show yourself to me. I'm sure you could have anonymously engineered a scenario similar to the others."
"Similar, maybe. But then there were those fits…"
"What about them?"
"Well, I interfered a bit more than can be covered." Tigger looked to one side, exposing his teeth, then turned back to centre his gaze on Orduval again. "Your problem was interesting to neurologists on Sudoria, in the Orbital Combine stations and in Fleet—mainly because of the notoriety of your three siblings. No engineered scenario would prevent those neurologists getting a bit uptight after seeing the first scan made of your brain after your return home."
"That block you put in?"
"More than that."
"You've done something else?"
"Where's your star, Orduval?"
Looking inward, Orduval felt his mind was closed like a fist. The white star, that point at the centre of his being, seemed now to be missing.
Tigger continued, "I made surgical alterations—very small ones. I've stuck a device in your skull that shifts the balance of your neurochemicals closer to that possessed by your brother Harald. From this device a mycelium is growing which will finally complete the job. I designed it all myself."
Orduval felt an instinctive urge to protest, but immediately rejected it. He held no love for experiencing the alternative to what this entity had done to him.
"So what now, you're going to keep me prisoner?"
"No, you can bugger off if you want, and we won't meet again for some years."
Orduval knew he could not walk away from all this, so wondered just how well this entity knew the workings of his mind. The questions were building up inside him, like the preparatory quakes before a volcanic eruption. "What do you want me to do, then?"
"I want them to think you dead. If you like I can give you a new identity, though I'd have to give you a new face too."
Orduval smiled at the metal tiger and gestured back towards the cave mouth. "If you can continue to provide for my more prosaic needs, Tigger, I will be happy to stay here for now."
The cat grinned back.
7
After the first two generations of Sudorian pioneers, the technology for tank-growing human beings was still in use, but with an increasing lack of expertise in that area and a dearth of resources it became a risky affair, with a less than fifty per cent chance of success. We needed people, though, for without a certain population density the establishing of many of the basic requirements of civilisation becomes impossible. In those early years women were applauded for their contribution to society as mothers. There was no real marriage at the time, though casual partnerships were formed and, continuing with the system used for the tank grown, children were communally raised in creches, whilst the mothers went back to work and to further pregnancy. Inevitably patriarchalism raised its ugly head and things began to change. The first such change was when the Planetary Council made abortion illegal. The second change was when the Orchid Party—highly patriarchal from the beginning—and the growing representation of the Sand Churches attempted to extend the law further to prohibit contraception. For eighty years women were incrementally and increasingly restricted by new laws and amendments to existing ones. It was only during the War, with the formation of the Woman's League and its landmark inclusion in Parliament, that this trend was reversed. However, patriarchalism is still prevalent, mostly among the personnel of Fleet.
— Uskaron
McCrooger
From the grobbleworm stalls Rhodane led the way alongside the canal. The noise of the hive city was a continuous roar in the background and it seemed to mostly consist of Brumallian chatter. I supposed that those living here came to tune it out like any other city dwellers tune out noise, but Rhodane soon disabused me of that notion. Halting shortly after we left the stall, she tilted her head, listening for a moment, then informed me, "The Consensus acknowledges and accepts your presence."
"As a Speaker for the Consensus do you also speak for all the people here in this city?"
She glanced at me, raising an eyebrow. "No."
"I see, do you then speak for a council of representatives of these people?"
"No." She was smiling now.
I guess until then I had not truly considered what this 'Consensus' might be. In the back of my mind I had toyed with the idea of it being some democratic council of regional representatives, rather like the Sudorian Parliament, and that, as is always the case in politics, the term 'consensus' was distorted to fit reality rather than being used to actually describe it.
"Rhodane, what is the Consensus?"
"It is the Brumallian consensus."
"So you speak for all Brumallians on this planet?"
"No," again that smile, "I speak for the consensus of all Brumallians on this planet."
"So there are no real rulers?" I suggested.
"None."
"I am surprised." An understatement, as I simply did not believe her.
"What then do you have in the Polity?"
"Rulers and ruled—just like everywhere else."
As we moved on, I noticed Brumallians studying me, but without surprise now—more out of curiosity regarding something about which they had already been informed. It occurred to me that if news travelled so fast in the hubbub, and in the pheromones in the air, there would be no need of media here to ill-inform public opinion. It tired me even thinking about it. Where were the controls? Could a touch of xenophobia spread amidst the citizenry, and thereby cause the Consensus to decide—or rather to be—that the best place for a Polity Consul Assessor was the bottom of the sea with lead weights tied around his feet?