“Because this particular devil needs a bargain made with it before it will do its worst. That bargain was never made.”
“No riddles,” snapped Tokarov, “just tell us the damned truth!”
“This is the truth, and it’s more damned than you’ll ever know. It needs a sacrifice to be made to it. The sacrifice was too great…”
“What does that mean? What sacrifice?” butted in Petrov.
“…foul machine, it should never have been built. You don’t know what it’s like on Earth, you don’t know what they’re capable of…”
“How could it be worse than what it’s already doing?” demanded Lukyan.
“…a generation of collapse, three generations of barbarism, one of totalitarianism, people don’t count for anything…”
“You said it would destroy settlements,” said Tasya.
“…neither a machine or a synthetic intelligence, they made their monster and then they wanted to give it a soul…”
“What sacrifice?” persisted Petrov.
“…silicon-woven synapses, quantum neurones, not better or worse than a human brain, just different, very different…”
“The sacrifice?” Tokarov asked.
“…a new biology, a new life form, unknowable, a tabula rasa…”
“The sacrifice, Kane,” said Katya. He stopped suddenly, his eyes on her. He seemed very old suddenly, an echo of fear in his eyes.
“Yes,” he said almost in a whisper, “the sacrifice. Kane. Me. I was the sacrifice.” He took a deep breath and looked at them slowly in turn. “The Leviathan is currently nothing more than a very clever robot ship. It was intended to be an extension of a human will, a Terran will. It was built to… use… a human to fire its mind, to become a living creature.” The others had grown very quiet. “A human who would become bound to it, become the Leviathan, even as the Leviathan became that human.”
In the silence, Katya asked, “But, if you didn’t want to do it, if you didn’t want to become this thing, why would they choose you? You’d be a thousand times more dangerous. They’d choose somebody they could trust, somebody who wanted to merge with it.”
“Perhaps I did want that once, Katya Kuriakova,” he said darkly. “Perhaps I wanted that more than anything else. To burn and destroy all Russalkin resistance, to sink your boats and drown your cities. Perhaps I dreamed of that every night.” In his eyes, Katya saw he meant every word and she unconsciously took a step back.
“But you didn’t,” said Petrov in cool tones that verged on cold. “Why not?”
“Things change,” said Kane vaguely. “When I left my home, I wanted to burn Russalka so thoroughly it would appear as a new star in Earth’s sky. By the time I arrived, I wasn’t so sure. Then I saw our troops go in, wave after battering wave. They came back, patched themselves up and dived straight back in again. Again and again and again until they were all dead or deserted. And then there was just me.”
“They didn’t all die, they went home,” said Petrov.
Kane looked at him like Petrov had laughed at a funeral. “Yes, that must be it,” he said bitterly, “they all went home.” He lowered his face. “So it was just me in the Leviathan. The power to kill you all right there in my hands. And I thought,” he looked up, “’Stuff it. I declare this war over. No more deaths.’ I should be in the history books, really. The only man to decide to stop a war unilaterally just like that. So I escaped from the Leviathan and took up the happy life of a rollicking pirate. And look where it’s got me. Telling fairy stories to a bunch of people I wanted to kill ten years ago who now think I’m mad.”
“Good enough for me,” said Petrov. “We’ll carry out this mission, Kane, and disable the Leviathan. You’re coming.”
Kane blinked with mild astonishment. “I was under the impression it was my idea in the first place.”
“What internal defences does it have?”
Kane frowned at him. “How would I know? I was on good terms with it.”
“You must have seen schematics?”
Kane laughed humourlessly. “You really don’t get it, do you, lieutenant? I wasn’t along as a trained and trusted executive officer or something. I was along as potting mulch for the Leviathan to plant its intellect in.”
Now it was Petrov’s turn to frown. “I don’t know what that means.”
“It means, lieutenant, that it was a suicide mission. I’d be a god, if only of war, for a few months and then I was to destroy the Leviathan and myself, not that there’d be much difference between us by that time. Nobody knew what the effects of being bound to a synthetic intelligence for very long would do. As I said, using the Leviathan was supposed to be a last resort.”
Tasya was looking at Kane oddly. “Let’s get that minisub repaired and seaworthy,” she said in a strange, uninflected voice. Petrov looked at her, then at Kane and nodded.
Kane walked away without looking left or right. Katya followed him to a crate by the far wall where he sat and watched the technicians from both crews examine the Baby.
“I have a feeling I know what you’re going to ask me, Katya,” he said, watching them work.
“I doubt it.” Inexplicably, she felt herself growing angry. She couldn’t understand it; here was a man who hadn’t unleashed certain death on Russalka and yet she somehow found herself resenting him. “You said you knew your duty.”
“I did. I do.”
“Then why didn’t you… merge or interface or whatever it was you were supposed to do with that thing out there?”
He looked at her, raising his eyebrows warily. “If I had, you’d probably be dead now.”
“Not the point. Your duty was to Earth; to Terra and all the Grubbers. You were supposed to mop us up so they could have our world. But you didn’t.”
“I couldn’t.”
“You betrayed your own people and then turned pirate here.”
“Looks like I’ve got quite a death wish.”
“So why didn’t you fulfil it in the war like you were supposed to? Do you like letting people down?”
Anger flickered across his face in a spasm. Katya was surprised to see it shadowed by sorrow. It gave her a small thrill of pleasure and that made her ashamed. She was getting to him.
“You don’t know what I wanted then or what I want now.”
“Why didn’t you just go home? Come up with some story about the Leviathan malfunctioning and then just go home? Why did you stay here?”
“And why would I want to do that?”
“I don’t know. To be with your Grubber friends, with your family.”
His face whitened and for a second she thought he was going to hit her. “You think I should stay with my family?” he said in a tight whisper that sounded nothing like his normal voice.
Katya was very aware that she’d travelled into dangerous waters. “I just thought…”
“I’m with my family, okay? I’m with them.” He stood up and walked quickly away, through the open air lock and into the complex. Katya watched him go with a sinking feeling that she’d just said the most stupid thing she had ever said in her life, though she didn’t know why.
She turned and almost walked into Tasya. “What did you say to him?” she demanded.
“Nothing,” Katya replied, confused. “Well, nothing much. I just asked… if he’s a Grubber… a Terran, I mean, why didn’t he go home?”
“What makes you think this isn’t his home now?”
“He doesn’t have family here, does he? They’ll be…”