Otherwise, Iswander was happy to let scientific investigations continue so long as they didn’t interfere with the extraction work. He had a lot of ground to make up.
Ships flitted around the bloaters, and tankers filled with purified ekti-X hung near the clustered spheres. By now, fifteen of the giant sacks had been drained, and the empty membranes hung like husks in space. As he watched the workers tow another flaccid membrane out beyond the traffic areas, Iswander was reminded of old sailing ships on the seas of Earth, hunting whales for the blubber. He knew he was anthropomorphizing the nodules, which certainly weren’t alive, weren’t aware. They were just gas bags filled with stardrive fuel. They weren’t even biological, as far as anyone could tell.
Elisa stood with him in the admin module looking out the windowports. “As soon as possible, we will bring clan Iswander back to prominence, sir.”
“Your confidence is contagious—as well it should be.”
Her smile was hard. Elisa Reeves was not soft by any measure, but she was a beautiful woman. Elisa Enturi, he corrected himself; she no longer wanted to be known by her married name.
“Garrison is gone,” she had reminded him when she took her maiden name again. “He was dead to me before the explosions killed him and my son. I don’t want to carry his name around like old luggage. We both need a fresh start, sir—and this is the place to do it. Once you begin supplying limitless cheap ekti-X for the Confederation and the Ildiran Empire, the Sheol disaster will be forgotten. Everything else will be seen as a mere setback.”
“Thank you for that, Elisa,” he said—but he wouldn’t soon forget the 1, 543. Nevertheless, he realized that reliability and loyalty were very attractive qualities.
Alec Pannebaker loved zipping around in an inspection pod while the extractors plunged nozzles through the tough bloater membranes and began pumping out the murky contents. It was like protoplasm inside a gigantic cell, and each bloater contained an amorphous dark structure at its core, like a rudimentary nucleus. Iswander’s processing stations centrifuged the base material to remove unwanted compounds and then filled hundreds of canisters of ekti-X.
Ten years ago, Pannebaker had served aboard a Roamer skymine, and he understood ekti processing. He made sure Iswander understood that draining bloaters was a thousand times more efficient than traditional stardrive fuel operations.
Elisa said, “Once we start distributing our ekti, sir, the Roamers are going to go nuts. We’ll have to be very careful not to let anyone else discover where our operations are.”
“We’ve got plenty of reasons to keep a low profile,” Iswander said. “And I can’t trust anyone more than I trust you, Elisa. I want you to handle the distribution. Our first major shipment should be ready to go soon.”
“I’ve already started making plans, sir. If we bring our ekti-X to a central point—say, Ulio—I can hire pilots to distribute it from there.” She looked out at the expanding operations, the extraction and refinery. “This is something we both needed.” The bitterness in her voice had not faded.
“A new start,” he said. “Everybody loves a redemption story.”
FIFTY-FOUR
EXXOS
Trapped in an incomprehensible pocket behind the universe, Exxos and his black robots struggled to understand the Shana Rei’s hatred and capriciousness. Was it curiosity, or just a penchant for destruction? The cold inkblot creatures had offhandedly dismantled two more robots for no comprehensible reason, unless they were bored or frustrated.
“How can you help us fight?” the Shana Rei demanded.
“We have abilities that you cannot know,” Exxos bluffed. “We will demonstrate them—when necessary.”
With racing thoughts, he collated everything he had learned, including unreliable knowledge from his databases of Ildiran myths. He needed to comprehend the Shana Rei before he risked offering further answers.
The robots drifted in a netherworld of darkness surrounded by a cloud of debris from their dismantled ships. Suddenly a flicker of light rippled through the void, and all the inkblots flinched. The representational eyes flickered and blurred, then blazed more intensely.
“What was that?” Exxos asked. “Please explain.”
“Pain. More pain. It grows worse.”
“Where does the pain come from? What hurts you?” Exxos said.
“Pain comes from the evolving universe. Pain comes from the stain of life, from thoughts and order being imposed upon the natural state of chaos.”
“My robots are powerful, but our sentience causes you no agony. We are different.”
“You are different.”
“We are powerful.”
“That remains to be seen.”
The black blots swelled and closed in on Exxos, and he thought they might call his bluff and dismantle him, but the Shana Rei kept talking in their vibrating portentous voices. “In the beginning, all was silent, all was black, all was peaceful. But now the chatter of thoughts, the burning of stars, the outcry of gravity is one endless scream in our minds. We cannot unmake it fast enough.”
“Our goals are aligned,” Exxos immediately pointed out. “We wish to destroy as well.”
“We intend to destroy everything—including you.”
“No, not us. My robots are unique. Do not underestimate what we can do.” Exxos had to convince them. “Listen—and hear our silence amid the scream of creation. A powerful silence. We know how to create the silence you need. If you destroy us, you will lose an opportunity to win your battle.”
“We will not destroy you. Yet.” The eye in the inkblot vanished, then reawakened. “The greatest agony is caused by the frenzy of life, the pulsing of minds, the energy of thoughts. We are exploring, reaching out. We have found an Ildiran ship and swallowed it. We have found the hydrogues and will systematically eradicate them. But they do not cause us the worst pain—there is something new, something greater.”
The surviving black robots floated motionless in the entropy bubble, unable to escape. Exxos calculated their probability of survival as… very small. “We know the Ildiran race fought you long ago,” he said. “You failed. You lost. You need our help.”
Another flicker of light rippled through the void, causing the Shana Rei to flinch. Exxos observed, but remained unable to draw useful conclusions. Something in the outside universe was disturbing them, but he did not understand what it was.
The nearest inkblot swelled. “Ildiran thism burns like a net made of agony. We would have disintegrated the thism network long ago, but the faeros fought beside the Ildirans. In a similar way, the extended verdani mind forms a deadly web that traps us. We nearly destroyed it once, but some trees survived… and now we can feel that the worldforest thrives again. The task ahead of us is great.”
Exxos insisted, “Our robots also attempted to exterminate humanity and the Ildirans. Robots and Shana Rei fight the same battle. We know how to destroy it all. Together, we can succeed, if you trust us.”
Apparently they did not want allies. “For millennia, we retreated to where we found a glimmer of peace, but now the universe is stirring, like a monster emerging from a chrysalis. Something powerful threatens us in a way we have never before experienced. We were driven to act, triggered to return.”
The dark blots insisted that their war was not just a physical one, but a conflict that required more than weapons and ships and explosions. The Shana Rei would lash out in less-comprehensible ways against the cosmic shrieks of life. They would attack their enemies via their psyches; they would follow the paths of thism that were strung like hot wires from planet to planet, cutting with razor edges into the minds of the Shana Rei.