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392 lines
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OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO oOOOO OOOO. OOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
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OOOO .OOOO OOOO OOOOOOOOo OOOO OOOO"
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OOOO oOOOO OOOO OOOO "OOOO. OOOO OOOOo .OOOO'
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OOOO .OOOO" OOOO OOOO OOOOoOOOO "OOOO. oOOOO
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OOOO .OOOO"""OOOOOOOO OOOO OOOOOO "OOOOOOO'
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OOOO oOOOO ""OOOO OOOO "OOOO OOOOOO
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| There Ain't No Justice |
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| #126 |
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|---------------------------------------------------------------------------|
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- Metamorph -
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Chapter 06
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by Arifel
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VI
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`Public pay-phones must survive in a world of
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unfriendly, greedy people, and a modern payphone
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is as exquisitely evolved as a cactus.'
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- bruce sterling, `hacker crackdown'
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i made several more films. one of my friends knew someone who knew
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someone else who had a contact in that shadowy world of extremely rich,
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decadent people who commissioned snuff films and the like. some of
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these films involved supposed aliens, all the parts of which i played.
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my special effects budget was low; if i couldn't be bothered altering my
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appearance to suit the part, i built mechanical shells which i could
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control directly.
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some of these films would have been considered decidedly nasty by other
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standards. i entered a period where i gave free reign to the darkest
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corners of my imagination, no restraints at all; De Sade would have been
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proud. looking back, it would be hard to decide which one was the
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worst, but the one i had the most fun making was a farcical history of
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bestiality. it ran for fifty minutes, involved Catherine the second,
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fanciful ancient Egyptian rites and an extended sequence about
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Aelfthryth, the wife of English King Edgar in 965 who was reputed to
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have magickally changed into equine form to romp with wild horses.
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it was just after finishing this film that i discovered the appeal of
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what i called limited public performance. i was in the city, waiting
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for one of my contacts to show up when a team from one of those
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television prank shows appeared, filming a clown walking down the street
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with a fifty-dollar bill on a piece of string. a couple of Goths
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detoured around this character, to avoid being filmed.
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`god, that's stupid.' one of them commented. an idea came to me; i held
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up an index finger in a `watch this space' gesture and followed the
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clown, making rapid changes to the inside of my chest cavity. the Goths
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followed me slowly, pausing when the cameraman turned to film my
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reaction.
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i stood there, head to one side, as if listening to a far-off sound that
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only i could hear. then i held my middle, glancing down in surprise;
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something fist-shaped bulged up underneath my T-shirt and exploded out
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the front in a mass of blood; a chest-burster from Ridley Scott's film,
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`Alien'. the tiny creature shrieked, wriggled out of my body, fell to
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the ground and raced off between the legs of the cameraman. as the
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sound-man fainted and dropped his furry microphone, i looked back at the
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Goths and grinned, a trickle of blood running down from the corner of my
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mouth.
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i disguised myself as a traffic-light signal box, planted myself in the
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ground alongside a real signal box and waited; eventually, a maintenance
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engineer came to inspect this unplanned addition, unlocked my door and
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ran off screaming at the sight of glistening red intestines and slowly
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pulsing internal organs where banks of switches should have been.
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i ate foliage until i'd expanded my mass sufficiently to take on the
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form of a small aeroplane, a Lear Jet. i followed a 747 and pretended
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to mate with it. i discarded the mass by forming hundreds of
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glass-bladed knives and dropping them out of the sky on to the people in
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a crowded football stadium.
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there was a shop that sold alternative music recordings, T-shirts,
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videos and the like; they also sold strange, gothic artwork on
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commission. i grew things shaped like Gigeresque ceremonial daggers out
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of polished bone and gave them to the owner. i made more films,
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impossibly perverse horror and pornography, as if fascinated with the
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conjugation of sex and death.
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i took on a form somewhere between a gargoyle and a vampire, and
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hunkered down on skyscraper ledges late at night, screaming into the
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darkness.
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i visited night-clubs as a vampire. i selected one person out of a crowd
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at random and followed him for a month, examining every detail of his
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life, every moment, no matter how banal.
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i built a small nuclear fusion device, ferried it up to the dark side of
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the moon, set it off.
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i hid myself within a camouflage form, almost transparent, a glass
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statue; i entered a geriatric hospital and killed all of the patients
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with an overdose of an euphoric poison, then planted heavy wooden stakes
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through each dead person's heart. i stood in the stairwell, listening
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to the shouts as the nurses found the bodies, and wondered if i'd lost
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touch completely. i didn't know if Lydya knew what i was doing, or if it
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was being followed by the other Metamorphs. i was reasonably sure that
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if they did know, i would been seen to have transgressed the Law. i
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reasoned that if i was doing wrong, they would have told me.
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for a few months, i got worse. then i realised what was wrong. i went
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to look for Lydya.
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she was out in the northern part of the pacific ocean, busily sinking
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Japanese whaling ships by the simple expedient of burning holes through
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their hulls with a laser. i'd rowed out to meet her from Darwin; she'd
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hijacked a Caribbean pirate ship and had mounted the laser - stolen from
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an American military base - on the foredeck, powered by a custom fusion
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reactor. we didn't waste any time with preliminaries.
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`i think we should go out and talk to those aliens.' she didn't say
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anything; the whole issue had been debated on our network, back and
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forth, since we'd returned with the news. i waited until it was obvious
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that she wasn't going to say anything, then added: `i have a plan.'
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`let's hear it, then.' i climbed over cables and pieces of discarded
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equipment, reached out and drew her to me. where our skin touched (she
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was wearing a purple-and-green wetsuit), tendrils writhed out, data
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lines spread and touched, swapping information far faster than we could
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have spoken it.
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i proposed either building our own copy of the American space shuttle or
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hiring a real one, flying it out to near where the aliens were and
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opening discussion with them from the point of view of a `primitive'
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race. i didn't know if the aliens would be able to tell that we weren't
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human, even if we used out best disguises, so as a backup i intended to
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have a second group of Metamorphs pretending to be Moridani, in a larger
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space-craft, as advanced as we could make it. i felt that this kind of
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misdirection would work; pretending that they'd need a ship to get
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around in. if the situation between the first ship and the aliens got
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uncomfortable, we could have the second ship come in and destroy any
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evidence. i agreed that no matter what we did, we'd attract the
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attention of this NoSanNoOs that Saranaxio-Feylen-Nadawi-Kenak had
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mentioned. i felt confident that we could eliminate the ships in the
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asteroid belt; i didn't know if we could stop them signalling to their
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waiting companions elsewhere.
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`if we simply sit around here doing nothing, they'll come, eventually.
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if we go out to meet them, they'll come sooner. but if we go out, we'll
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learn something about them.' she thought this over.
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`i've been thinking about going out and looking for the Moridani. or
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anyone who's not with the NoSanNoOs. there can't be just one race
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opposed to them.'
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`well. do you think we should do this before or after dealing with the
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presence in our system?'
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`my plan is open-ended. no idea how long searching the entire galaxy
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will take. your plan at least can be staged and organised.'
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`and we can use the fake Moridani ship to go looking afterwards.' she
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smiled.
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`i'll put the word out on the net.' i held her closer, rested my chin
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on her shoulder.
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`can i ask you an, uh, awkward question?' she laughed silently. `do you
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have functioning genitalia at the moment?'
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`give me a few minutes.'
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we were ushered into the office of the head of the National Aeronautic
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and Space Administration, a grizzled old man by the name of Benton.
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Lydya was dressed severely, businesswoman style, wearing mirrorshades. i
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was dressed similarly suit-fashion. we appeared to be in our
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mid-thirties. he looked about to waffle, so i cut him short and said,
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`we'd like to rent a shuttle for a private mission.' he sat down,
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blinked. he decided to be as blunt with us as we were being with him.
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`there is a waiting period, you know - quite a few missions queued up
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and already paid for...' i smiled.
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`we can pay any price you'd care to name. we can even supply engineers,
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equipment, materials, to build another shuttle if necessary. we could
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simply have built our own, but it would take too long. i'm sure that
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for sufficient remuneration, one of the missions ahead of us could be
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moved back.' he sat back, elbows on the arms of his chair, fingers
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steepled together, eyebrows beetled.
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`this isn't some kind of joke, is it?' i handed over our credit
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balance. he glanced at it; his eyebrows did a little dance.
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`i know you don't like strange people driving your shuttles, so we can
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pay for the services of a pilot and co-pilot, but i'm afraid we must
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insist that the rest of the crew be made up of our people.' i handed
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over a schedule, sixty pages of detailed notes, plans and time-lines.
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`we're ready to go right now. all we need is your assent.' i was
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prepared to bring in presidential influence if necessary, but the credit
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balance had hypnotised him. he forced his eyes up from the (even to me)
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impressive figure and smiled weakly.
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`when would you like to leave?'
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there were six of us; NASA pilot Alex Stewart, copilot Marianne
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Martindale and navigator Shelby Stevens were the human component of the
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crew. Lydya and i had combined mass and information to make a third
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body, packed with nanotech weaponry and mass-destruction devices that
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could be assembled and used within seconds, stored in a male human form
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that we referred to, jocularly, as `Killer Kadugan'. we then reverted
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to as human a form as possible while still being Metamorphs. it would
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take almost a minute to undo in case of an emergency, but a high-
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resolution scan of our bodies would show us to be superficially human.
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Killer Kadugan was only human on the outside, and only barely that; his
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body was almost two and a half metres tall and muscled like a
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body-builder who'd been brought up on steroids. he didn't say much. i
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occasionally caught some interesting looks from Stevens and Martindale
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in Kadugan's direction.
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the launch was uneventful. it was somehow more exciting than the
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flights i'd made on my own; possibly due to the build-up of suspense
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before the launch, or the (admittedly remote) possibility of the whole
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thing blowing up on the pad. once we'd made orbit, we sent Kadugan back
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to check the payload (extra fuel and some `prototype' life-support
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gear), and then we faked an accident.
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`Uh, Huey's got an interrupt.' muttered Martindale. `Huey' was one of
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the three computers that ran the shuttle (which we'd renamed `Hot Needle
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of Enquiry' without bothering to inform Larry Niven). this fault was
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something which Lydya had forced, microscopic feelers extended from her
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hand into the machinery, shorting out vital components.
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`take him off-line.' ordered Stewart. as she did so, `Louie' failed
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also; before anyone could do anything, the engines had fired up, retros
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firing (it seemed) at random, the ship rotating end-over-end briefly
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before the main engines kicked in. there was confusion, shouts, pieces
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of debris floating around in our faces; by the time they managed to shut
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the engines down, we were on our way to the asteroid belt.
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we'd had to fiddle the engines' design before we left, otherwise we'd
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never have made it. as it was, we spent an interesting two months in
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that shuttle (it was lucky that we'd had that protoype life-support gear
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on board) with the NASA people without letting on who we were, although
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the two women somehow managed to find time alone with Kadugan, and
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Stewart was giving Lydya those kinds of looks for the last week of the
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flight before we got within visual range of the alien craft.
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just before we reached that point, i casually glanced out one of the
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ports and noticed a faintly blinking signal off to one side. that was
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the Fake Moridani ship, ready to step in if they got the signal from us.
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the aliens, when we reached them, were entirely passive. no external
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signals that the humans could detect; nothing that we could see with any
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of our own passive senses. they might as well have been abandoned. we
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clumsily steered the shuttle through their midst, shining lights on
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them, wondering if we dared to go out and try to knock chunks off them
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with a mining hammer. we let the NASA people zap one of the arrow-head-
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shaped ships with a beefed-up message laser; nothing happened. we were
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about to give up and head back home when the fourteen arrow-ships
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suddenly moved to surround us, a loose sphere formation, all pointing
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inwards. from what i could sense passively, they used a variant of the
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reactionless drive for close-range manouvering.
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we sat like that for a few hours before one of them decided to shoot the
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rear end of the shuttle off with some kind of beam weapon. we barely
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managed to keep the cabin pressurised; Martindale was frantically
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signalling our distress when the arrow-ships spun away from us,
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seemingly simultaneously (although playing it back slower, i could see
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each ship, one after the other, being hit by streams of almost-light-
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speed particles from the fake Moridani cruiser). they'd decided to hit
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them as hard as possible. Lydya and i started receiving messages from
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the Metamorphs on board the cruiser. they'd blocked the pumpkin-shaped
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ship, which had started sending oddly-coded signals just as the
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arrow-ships had surrounded us. once the arrows had been disabled, the
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cruiser flashed up to us and surgically disabled the pumpkin-ship with
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thin streams of high-speed dust.
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the NASA crew were almost frantic by now; we'd given up any pretense at
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being human (Lydya had dissolved from the waist down and was repairing
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the back of the ship, and i'd forced my hand through the side of the
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hull in order to get a better link to the other Metamorphs). when we
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were sure they were safe, we sent them back to earth with Kadugan and
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floated over to the pumpkin ship.
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it was an odd design; nested toroidal sections around the main drive,
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which was a deceptively complex subspace gradient effector (it worked by
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pushing the ship out of real space; the further up the subspacial
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gradient it went, the faster it could appear to move through real
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space). the design betrayed thousands of years of improvements.
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there was a space about the size of a football field at the centre of
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the ship that we couldn't see into; we had to enter the craft (through
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the hull, which was a lot stronger than it had any right to be - ceramic
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metal reinforced at the atomic level) and then kick our way through to
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the inner section. none of the sections were pressurised, although i
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did detect traces of nitrogen and oxygen here and there.
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the inner section was empty except for a box the size of a bus, made of
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the same substance as the ship's hull; featureless except for a symbol
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painted (well, not so much `painted' as `atoms altered to reflect light
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differently') on the side - the dark-red circle with the segmented
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circle around it. suspicions confirmed. while our companions in the
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cruiser examined the humanoid bodies in the arrow ships - close enough
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to human normal so that they'd pass for human under a casual inspection
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- Lydya and i circled the box, looking for a way in, or a port, or
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something to give away its function.
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`it's the source of the signals which we're blocking,' the net reported.
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`they're being sent - or trying to be sent - along the (folded-space)
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concept. if this is as advanced as their technology gets, then we won't
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have any problem dealing with them.' we decided to tow the thing back
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to a temporary research facility established on Phobos, which we
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believed was sufficiently far enough away from Earth to be safe.
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however, when we moved the pumpkin-ship, the signals stopped. the faint
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traces of EM energy which we'd sensed inside the box stopped, also. it
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appeared to be dead. Lydya kicked it.
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`it's crude, i know, but the only thing left to do is break it open and
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study the pieces.' i regarded it, rubbing my chin (my recent stubble
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breaking off in the vacuum).
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`i think we'd be better off just dropping it into the sun.'
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`Luddite.'
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it was just as well we didn't. after a month of intense research, we
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established that the box was some kind of crystalline array designed to
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shunt subatomic particles around like a three-dimensional multiple state
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machine; the most complex computer i'd ever seen. it was dead, of
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course, and there wasn't any way of telling what had been stored in it,
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but we all agreed that it would easily have had the capacity for
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sentience. there was some simple interfacing machinery at one end of the
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box, very much like the keyboard and monitor of a standard personal
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computer in that they would allow the machine to communicate with the
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outside world. it had chosen not to.
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i began to think that we didn't have a good enough grasp on this
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problem, and that Lydya had been right; we needed a second opinion. it
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didn't take me long to decide to go with them when they took the cruiser
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and headed off for the centre of the galaxy. we didn't know if what we
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were looking for was there, but it was as good a place to start as any.
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hopefully, we'd find someone to ask along the way.
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� �� � � �� �
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