Children of Memory Read online

  ADRIAN TCHAIKOVSKY

  CHILDREN

  OF MEMORY

  Contents

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  WHAT HAS GONE BEFORE

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  PART 1: THE ANCIENT MARINER

  1.1

  1.2

  PART 2: TO DARKNESS AND TO ME

  2.1 Liff

  2.2 Miranda

  2.3 Gothi/Gethli

  PART 3: THE WORLD TREE

  3.1

  3.2

  3.3

  3.4

  PART 4: MERE ANARCHY IS LOOSED

  4.1 Liff

  4.2 Miranda

  4.3 Liff

  4.4 Miranda

  4.5 Liff

  4.6 Gothi/Gethli

  PART 5: THE RAVENSSAGA

  5.1

  5.2

  5.3

  PART 6: A WORLD IN A GRAIN OF SAND

  6.1 Liff

  6.2 Miranda

  6.3 Liff

  6.4 Gothi/Gethli

  PART 7: AGE SHALL NOT WEARY THEM

  7.1

  7.2

  7.3

  PART 8: LOOK UPON MY WORKS, YE MIGHTY

  8.1 Liff

  8.2 Miranda

  8.3 Liff

  8.4 Gothi/Gethli

  8.5 Liff

  8.6 Miranda

  8.7 Liff

  8.8 Gothi/Gethli

  PART 9: INFINITY IN THE PALM OF YOUR HAND

  9.1

  PART 10: TWILIGHT OF THE GODS

  10.1 Miranda

  10.2 Liff

  10.3 Miranda

  10.4 Liff

  10.5 Gothi/Gethli/Liff

  10.6 Miranda

  10.7 Miranda

  PART 11: THE FERRYMAN

  11.1 Holt

  11.2 Liff

  PART 12: NOR THE YEARS CONDEMN

  12.1 Miranda

  12.2 Liff

  12.3 Kern

  12.4 Miranda

  12.5 Liff

  12.6 Miranda

  12.7 Gothi/Gethli

  12.8 Liff

  12.9 Miranda

  For Irene Pepperberg and Alex

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thanks to my early readers Annie Czajkowski and Roland Oughton, and to my agent Simon Kavanagh, for looking at this after I’d begun to go cross-eyed with it. Thanks also to Michael Czajkowski for his invaluable advice on planetary science. Finally, a nod to my research sources, Bernd Heinrich’s Mind of the Raven and Jennifer Ackerman’s The Genius of Birds.

  WHAT HAS GONE BEFORE

  The Terraforming Age

  I

  Thousands of years ago the humans of Earth reached out to the stars. Under the terraforming project of Doctor Avrana Kern, they began to reshape worlds to make them hospitable for Earth life. Only one planet, Kern’s own project, was close to being finished when the end came. A political crisis on Earth resulted in a cataclysmic war that poisoned the human homeworld, set civilization back into an age of ignorance and unleashed an electronic attack that was transmitted out into space to shut down humanity wherever it could be found.

  II

  On Kern’s World, her facility had already fallen victim to sabotage and she preserved herself as an uploaded artificial mind, watching over the planet she had remade. An uplift nanovirus that had been released onto the world, intended to raise up primates she’d never had a chance to install, instead began its work on a variety of invertebrates, most particularly one species of spider.

  III

  In another star system, over the neighbouring planets they named Damascus and Nod, a handful of terraformers survived the electronic attack. One, Disra Senkovi, used the same nanovirus to uplift octopuses to build a civilization on the water world of Damascus. Erma Lante and others instead went to Nod, finding there an alien ecosystem, the first truly extra-terrestrial life humanity had ever discovered.

  IV

  On Nod dwelled a composite microbial life form capable of recording all its past experiences within its cells. After discovering and analysing Earth biology, the Nodan organism then colonized Lante and her fellows, devouring and rebuilding and becoming them. In a tragedy of misunderstanding, the entity next spread to Damascus and destroyed the Octopus civilization there while trying to understand it, leaving the Octopuses living in orbit and space, and in crisis.

  The Second Dawn and the Age of the Ark Ships

  V

  On Kern’s World, over many generations, the Portiid spiders developed a complex society, including organic technology and computing performed by colonies of ants.

  VI

  On Earth, humanity clawed its way back into space, rediscovering the records of its predecessors and the coordinates of the terraforming missions. The after-effects of the war had left the planet a poisoned wreck, so in desperation ark ships were built, fleeing outwards on the promise that there were other worlds out there prepared for human life.

  VII

  The ark ship Gilgamesh reached Kern’s World and encountered both the Portiids and the artificial intellect of Avrana Kern. After coming to the brink of war, the Portiids infected the Gilgamesh humans with a version of the same nanovirus that had set them on the path to sentience, bridging the species divide and allowing humans to become Human, capital H. An uplifted species capable of recognizing the Portiids as fellow sentients, with whom they can share their world.

  The Age of Exploration

  VIII

  Generations later, a Human–Portiid vessel carrying an uploaded instance of Avrana Kern reached Nod and Damascus, encountering both the Octopus civilization and the Nodan organism. Kern found the latter desperate to experience a wider universe, now that contact with humans had shown it the true scale of existence. Kern convinced the entity that communication would provide it with the stimulation it needed, whereas devouring would only ever reduce the universe to copies of itself. Peaceful accords were reached between the inhabitants of Kern’s World, Damascus and Nod, the tentative beginning of a cross-species interstellar society.

  IX

  Later, after having had access to research previously off limits due to the risk of Nodan infection, Octopus scientists tested out a refinement of a starship engine. This permitted faster-than-light travel within the bounds of relativity, allowing the new combined culture to travel swiftly between the stars. Their missions are now many, but chief amongst them is to search for and reach out to other life, whether alien, remnants of the terraforming age, or even ark ships from ruined Earth still trying to find a home.

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  Terraformers and their worlds

  Avrana Kern – Kern’s World

  Disra Senkovi – Damascus

  Erma Lante – Nod

  Baltiel, Rani, Lortisse – Nod

  Renee Pepper – Rourke

  Alex Tomasova – Rourke

  Mikhail Elesco – Rourke

  The crew of the ark ship Enkidu

  Heorest Holt – Command

  Halena Garm – Security

  Olf – Engineering

  Mazarin Toke – Science

  Esi Arbandir – Classicist

  Dastin Gembel – Science second

  The crew of the Portiid vessel Skipper

  Bianca – Portiid spider, in command

  Avrana Kern – uploaded intelligence

  Miranda – Interlocutor

  Portia – Portiid spider

  Fabian – Portiid spider

  Paul – Octopus

  Jodry – Human

  Gothi & Gethli – Corvids

  The people of Imir

  Liff – a child

  Her parents

  Molder – her uncle

  Garm – guard hog

  Arkelly – Councillor

  Yotta – a child, Liff’s friend

  The Widow Blisk

  Miranda – a teacher

  Portia – a hunter

  Fabian – an engineer

  Paul – an artist

  PART 1

  THE ANCIENT MARINER

  The Ark Age

  Long ago

  1.1

  Not with a whimper, but a bang.

  The ship had shot Heorest Holt full of all the right drugs to ensure a peaceful re-entry to life, but he hadn’t been ready for what sounded like the end of the world. It had only been a subjective moment since they’d all been gathered in Command, discussing the target, celebrating their success. Esi Arbandir, their chatty classicist, had even brewed up something alcoholic and drinkable from the Enkidu’s ancient printers.

  Their success: being further away than any of their people had ever gone, older than anyone ever was. A fragment of Earth that was, against all odds, going to live on. The ship was still holding together and, although Olf from Engineering had been dolorously tallying the failures and dead systems, the simple fact that he was alive to speak and they to hear seemed to cheat all probabilities; to cheat even certainties, up to and including death itself. They’d survived. They’d made it. Almost two and a half thousand years in silent, cold transit across the void. And now they’d even collected data. Back then, in that previous waking, Holt had been given a wealth of hope. The star system that they’d set their sights on was there, and if that shouldn’t have been too much of a surprise, well, the planet was there too, immediately detectable. A system of fourteen worlds tugging at their mother the star and one, fifth out from the sun, that the Ancients had chosen as enough like Earth to transform into a paradise.

  Or that was what the classicists claimed, and wh
at else did poor, fugitive humanity have to work with? As the drink flowed, the half-dozen of them had speculated about just what might await them there. Olf talked about a pristine world, built for them by their unthinkably distant ancestors and then left, like goods with the wrapping still intact. As though somehow the Ancients had been prescient, knowing of their own upcoming downfall as well as that Holt’s people would come to succeed them, aeons later. That they had rebuilt a planet as a Just Reward For Those Who Were To Come, and then quietly left. And, with that drink flowing, the thought hadn’t seemed so outrageous. They’d toasted it. Esi the classicist had chattered away about what else the Ancients might have left: the intact machines, the archives of lore, the wonders of their lost age. The Ancients themselves, perhaps, living in some perfectly regulated society which would welcome their penurious relatives. From Earth? they’d say. Why, we thought there was nobody left! Come in, come in and partake of our plenty!

  Science chief, bald old Mazarin Toke – well, they were all hairless as eggs, out of suspension, but he’d been bald before they went under – had come out of sleep blind and with one arm and leg withered. He wasn’t taking it well. They’d printed him a mobile chair, and he had his second, Gembel, to act as his hands and eyes, but the drink had made him mean and dour, even as he celebrated with them. The Ancients, he proclaimed, would probably still be there but, having been cut off from wider Earth, they’d have degenerated into savages, living like beasts in a world designed to meet all their needs and present no challenges. We’ll probably have to hunt them for meat, he’d declared with sour joy, and everyone had rolled their eyes, but toasted with him anyway.

  Only Halena Garm hadn’t appeared at the impromptu table, cheering on the future. She’d been trying to glean more about the planet, their destination. It wasn’t her job, they called out to her genially. It was, she said. She was Security head, and what greater challenge did Security have than the planet itself? She wasn’t worried about beasts or atavistic Ancients. She was worried about incumbents on the new world who wouldn’t take kindly to a failing boat full of their distant relatives pitching up out of the black. They’ll have their own problems, she’d said. Of which we’ll just be one more.

  And so she’d sat there trying to bootstrap the ship’s instruments to full functionality while the rest of them celebrated. Once, just once, she claimed there was a signal. A transmission coming from that distant orb. But the ship hadn’t recorded anything but static and she couldn’t repeat it and at last she’d given up in disgust.

  They’d gone back into suspension, eventually. Olf had forcibly sobered himself up and run through all the proper checks – Engineering’s final report had been sobering for the rest of them. The ship was in the red on almost every metric. We almost didn’t make it, was what they’d told each other. But they were so close now. Just a short step across the icy abyss to their new home. Maybe it had a name, that unseen world, with inhabitants who knew what it was called, and its long and storied history. Perhaps the greatest crisis the cap-in-hand refugees from Earth would face would be one of diplomacy, negotiating for landing sites and living space. But Holt had felt sanguine about that. It would be his responsibility, and he knew he could do it, no matter what compromises were needed. The fate of the human race was at stake, after all. He would find a way.

  But maybe the world had no people on it, to name it and present diplomatic obstacles. Maybe it was a paradise, like the classicists promised. No hoary and advanced society of Ancients; no state-of-nature nouveau primitives or barbarous tribes or mystic masters with strange mental powers; no talking animals like something from a child’s story. In that case, the honour would fall to them, the Key Crew of the Enkidu, the last scions of Old Earth. They’d talked round and round the table: names historical and names potent, names brimming with meaning, names that rolled lyrically off the tongue. In the end it came down to Captain Heorest Holt, head of the Command team. He’d looked over each of them with great fondness, his crew, his people, his friends. Esi, life and soul of the party; small, reliable Olf; bitter Mazarin with young Gembel refilling the old man’s cup; even stern Halena who’d at last been persuaded to join them. They had trained together – all save Gembel, anyway, who wasn’t allowed to get a word in edgeways to make himself known. Unlike so many of the ark-ship crews, they’d been given time to reshape themselves around their colleagues until they fit like puzzle pieces. They were a team. And they’d done it. They’d piloted this gallimaufry of failing systems across actual light years, based on nothing more than fragile maps recovered from millennia-dead orbitals. And the star was there; and the planet was there; and hope was there.

  ‘Imir,’ he’d told them all, raising his glass. Honestly, by that point in the proceedings, he couldn’t have said exactly why. He just looked down his long nose at them and told them it was deep and significant and meaningful, while having the vague idea it was from some old story he’d read once, when he was a child. A story with talking birds and strife, and new life being built upon the ruin of something vast and terrible. And Imir seemed good enough to everyone, even to Mazarin Toke, and so they’d toasted that. Then it had been time to get sober again and back into the beds in the suspension chamber. If he’d wanted to sit and wait until their arrival then the grandchildren’s children of the children he’d never have would have grown old and died before planetfall.

  And now here he was. Moments later. Centuries later. In the middle of waking with grace and composure, about to set the new world to rights, but something had detonated. Abruptly, all the air in the suspension chamber was very keen to be out of the suspension chamber, and he, Holt, sitting up, yawning, was ripped from his pod and spilled across the floor. He felt a dozen hoses and ducts of varying degrees of intimacy yanked out of his body, and he knew he was going to die. Yet he didn’t die. The air howled past him into nowhere, and then stopped doing that just as he was sure there was no air left to go anywhere. The deck beneath him shuddered to the thunderous closure of bulkheads.

  The lights died. All he could do was lie there, collecting himself, scrabbling for the last rags of that grace and composure he’d felt so full of a moment before. And he was Command. He should be leaping into action, telling everyone what to do. Except he didn’t know what to do, he didn’t know anything.

  There was a light. Just a little red one. He tried to get to it, managed to find his feet, then find the wall the hard way when he misremembered the dimensions of the suspension chamber. Found a bank of switches under his trembling hand. His fingers remembered how to open a channel, which was just as well because the rest of him had nothing useful to contribute.

  ‘This is Holt,’ he said into the staticky void. ‘This is Command. What’s going on?’

  After too long, the jagged, broken-up voice of Olf came through: Engineering, the one department Holt really, really wanted to hear from.

  ‘Captain,’ from Olf. ‘Heorest. Stable. We’re stable. I think we’re stable.’

  And, as if needing Olf’s reassurance before venturing out again, the lights in the suspension chamber came back on. Holt looked around, shrugging out of the open-backed gown he’d slept in, fumbling in the lockers for a shipsuit. Olf’s pod was open, the lid now hanging off at an alarming angle. His own had slapped shut after ejecting him. Bare-footed, he stumbled over to look at the others. Halena’s was empty, the lid almost shut but trailing hoses caught in it. He couldn’t put any good interpretation on that. Oh, perhaps she’d got the jolt at the same time he had, but had just gotten her head together more quickly. It seemed more likely, though, that Olf had felt a stronger need to be Secured than Commanded first off.

  Esi and Mazarin were still under. Nothing needed Science done to it, apparently, and everyone knew the classicist would be the last to be woken, unless one of the Ancients was staring them in the face. Except, while Esi’s readouts were all within tolerable amber, Mazarin’s were either in the red or just out like blown candles. Olf had fitted a new pod for him, after the mess the last one had made of the man, but perhaps the failing systems had been integral to Mazarin, and not part of the ship at all. He was dead, and that was that. And he hadn’t been the easiest man to get on with, but he had been One Of Us.