But the Spiders had apparently reported Riijkhan’s question to the Chahwyn, who were obviously taking it very seriously. Which implied in turn that there was one hell of a secret lurking somewhere in the Chahwyn’s collective closet.
And if I didn’t do something fast, that secret was about to get me exiled from the entire war. Which was no doubt exactly what Riijkhan had been angling for in the first place.
“If you take me off the field, you will lose,” I said as calmly as I could. “The Shonkla-raa will take over the galaxy, they’ll track you down, and they’ll destroy you.”
The Chahwyn lowered his eyes. “There are worse things than death.”
“Sure there are,” I said acidly. “Slavery is one of them. Watching your friends being murdered is one of them. Having some deep dark secret become common knowledge isn’t.”
His eyes snapped up, his whiskers flattening. “So we were right,” he said. “The Shonkla-raa did tell you.”
If I’d been smart, I would have just said no: straightforwardly, honestly, passionately, with a little righteous bewilderment thrown in.
But I’m never that smart. My brain is that of a truth-seeker, my training that of a professional investigator, my personality that of a damn the torpedoes, full speed aheader. Even as I opened my mouth, my mind was sifting the problem, sorting like heat lightning through everything I knew about the Chahwyn, the Shonkla-raa, and the universe at large.
What could a Shonkla-raa tell me that the Chahwyn wouldn’t want me to know?
I’d heard a little of the story during my one visit to Viccai. Four thousand years ago, the Shonkla-raa had discovered the quantum filament the Chahwyn called the Thread and figured out how to use it for interstellar travel. Over the centuries they’d learned how to ravel off pieces that could be used to link all the inhabited and inhabitable systems together. Once widespread interstellar travel was possible, the Shonkla-raa had built huge warships and sent them out on a systematic subjugation of all the other peoples of the galaxy. Along the way they’d used their skills at genetic manipulation to create the Chahwyn and various other servant races. When the inevitable revolt finally came, the Shonkla-raa had forced the Chahwyn to create the Modhri as a last-ditch, fifth-column-type weapon that they’d hoped to use against their enemies.
Only the end came before the Modhri could be deployed. The Shonkla-raa were destroyed, the surviving races were crushed back to pre-spaceflight levels, and the Modhri was lost and effectively gone dormant. Three centuries after the dust had settled, the Chahwyn had stumbled on caches of Shonkla-raa tech and had used the genetic equipment to create the Spiders and, through them, the Quadrail, wrapping their Tubes around the sections of Thread. When Modhran coral was found and began to spread across the galaxy, the Chahwyn had countered by again using the old Shonkla-raa equipment, this time to create the Melding in hopes of turning the Modhri from a single-minded conqueror weapon into something calmer, more civilized, and less threatening to the galaxy at large.
And as the history lesson flashed across my mind, so did something more recent: the image of the defenders aboard the Sibbrava Quadrail, carefully carrying the injured Belldic commandos to their compartments but merely lugging the dead Shonkla-raa back to the tender like sides of beef.
I’d made sure to take scans of the bodies, hoping to wring out a few secrets about Shonkla-raa physiology that I could use against them. Surely the Chahwyn would want to do the same, and would thus make sure to take special care of the bodies until they could be examined.
Unless there was no need for them to study the bodies. Because they didn’t need to know how Shonkla-raa physiology differed from that of normal Filiaelians.
Because they already knew what all of those differences were.
I should have kept it to myself. But I’m never that smart. “You lied to me,” I said quietly. “You told me the Shonkla-raa created you. That they gene-manipulated God only knows what creatures into the Chahwyn to be their servants.
“Only they didn’t, did they? The Shonkla-raa didn’t create you.
“You created them.”
Silently, with the finality of a sealing tomb, the car door irised shut. “Yes,” the Elder said, his melodious voice resonating with infinite sadness. “And with that knowledge, you must never be permitted to speak with anyone, ever again.”
TWENTY-SIX
The two defenders started toward me. “What are you going to do?” I asked.
“You cannot be permitted to share that knowledge with anyone,” the Chahwyn repeated. “We will take you to Viccai—”
“No, I know that part,” I interrupted, watching the approaching Spiders and trying to figure out what the hell I was going to do if this didn’t work. I knew something about Shonkla-raa, but I had no idea where defender weaknesses were. If they even had any. “I meant what are you going to do once I’m gone and Bayta and Morse have quit and the Modhri goes back to fighting on the side of the Shonkla-raa?”
“I have already told you our plan,” the Chahwyn said.
“You haven’t got a plan,” I said flatly. “You have a repeat of history. Shall I tell you why your ancestors created the Shonkla-raa in the first place?”
The defenders reached me, each shifting to a four-legged stance and lifting three legs toward me. “You created them to be your protectors,” I said. “As you’ve pointed out countless times, you Chahwyn can’t fight. So you created a group of beings that could, enhancing their telepathic abilities so you could more easily communicate with them.”
The defenders paused, their legs hovering in midair like a mobile cage waiting to come crashing down around me. “Do I have to remind you how well that worked out?” I added.
“It will be different this time,” the Chahwyn said. “We have better control of the defenders than we ever had with the Shonkla-raa.”
“No you don’t,” I said. “Maybe they’re obeying you right now, but I don’t doubt the Shonkla-raa did the same at the beginning. The problem wasn’t your engineering, but with the philosophical basis of the whole project.”
The Spider legs were still hovering over me. “Explain,” the Chahwyn said.
“What you did then—what you’re doing now—is creating independent beings with intelligence, strength, and the ability and desire to compete and fight,” I said. “Sooner or later, the defenders will inevitably conclude that they can do a better job of running things than you can.”
“They will obey us,” the Chahwyn insisted.
“Not when they feel the need to break the rules you’ve set for them,” I told him. “As a matter of fact, they’ve already started. Back on the super-express from Homshil I needed to get my Beretta from its under-train lockbox. A regular Spider would never have allowed such a thing. But the two defenders you’d sent saw that it was necessary, and they got it for me. Reluctantly and under protest, but they did it.”
“But they’re bred for loyalty,” the Chahwyn insisted, his voice almost pleading. “How can they defy us and our laws?”
“Because that’s what inevitable means,” I said. “Power corrupts, one way or another. That’s all there is to it.”
“The defenders are Spiders. Their essence is taken from our own flesh.”
“But then heavily modified,” I reminded him. “I’m sure your ancestors were using similar logic when they picked Filiaelians to use as their Shonkla-raa template. They’d probably seen how Filly soldiers could be genetically engineered for loyalty, and figured that would guarantee their new protectors’ compliance and cooperation.”
“Then why didn’t it?”
“Because just like your defenders, the Chahwyn designers were forced to tweak the formula,” I said. “The way the Fillies engineer their soldiers’ loyalty is by sacrificing some of their initiative, intelligence, and motivation. We got a taste of that with Logra Emikai, when the simple fact that a Shonkla-raa was also a Filiaelian santra meant Emikai couldn’t take any action against him. Filly soldiers are even worse—good fighters, but in some ways not much better than ants in an anthill. That kind of strategy requires huge numbers, something your ancestors couldn’t come up with. So instead they were forced to make each individual Shonkla-raa smarter and more independent.”