Date Point: 15y5m6d AV
Folctha, Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
Allison Buehler
No fear. That was the part that surprised Allison, in the back of her head. She wasn’t afraid of her dad any more.
He still cut the same imposing figure she remembered. Not big, but tall, patrician in bearing and manner. He still had that same no-nonsense short back and sides haircut, though it had gone almost completely steel gray over the years. He still had those eyes, not blue like the rest of the family’s but a kind of dull green-gray.
But he was on her turf now.
And she hated to admit it, but it felt good having backup. Next to a bruiser like Julian, dad just…wasn’t all that imposing, not anymore. Vemik managed the same feat being barely five feet tall and had loyally stood next to her along with Julian. Xiù positioned herself strategically in the kitchen.
Yan stood out, slightly to the front, fully upright with his crest practically crackling with restrained hostility. Yan Given-Man wasn’t having any of dad’s nonsense.
Jacob Buehler paused at the end of the driveway and surveyed them for a second, then cleared his throat and took a few steps forward. He was just as clean-cut as she remembered in the way he dressed. His shirt and jacket were tailored, his shoes were as dark as midnight, and the crease of his trousers could have cut something. He had a small box under one arm, about the right shape to contain a dinner plate and gift-wrapped in simple silver paper.
He looked Allison in the eye as he reached the doorstep. “…Hello, Allison.”
“Father.”
He nodded slightly and cleared his throat, stealing a sideways glance at the Ten’Gewek. “…It’s…been a long time,” he said.
“Yes. It has.”
“May I come in?”
Allison let him wait a second while she stared at him, then stepped back and aside to make room. He glanced at Julian, climbed the steps and wiped his feet.
“You have a nice home,” he commented, once he was inside.
Allison ignored the compliment. “I’m sure you recognize Julian and Xiù,” she said. Jacob greeted them both with a nod. “These are Yan Given-Man and Vemik Sky-Thinker.”
“…Yes.” Jacob gave Yan the wary look of somebody who was being sized up by an obviously hostile man who could effortlessly overpower him. “You’re quite famous yourselves,” he told the two ETs.
Yan grunted. Vemik made no sound at all.
Stymied by the icy reception, Jacob cleared his throat again and put the gift-wrapped box down on the kitchen table. “A house gift,” he explained.
So, that was where they stood. He was treating her like a stranger. Honestly, Allison could live with that.
“Thankyou,” she said, not looking at it. She extended an arm and gestured toward the living room, where Amanda, Ramsey and Tristan were waiting. “They’re through there.”
“Thank you.” Jacob opened the door. Beyond it, the boys stared at him looking pale and tense. Amanda stood up slowly and smoothed down her skirt. His jaw moved slightly as he looked at them, then he turned back to Allison.
“This is a conversation for my family,” he said. “May we have some privacy, please?”
“No.”
Everyone looked at Yan, who’d growled the syllable with all the menace of an irate bear. He stumped forward with deliberately room-shaking steps until he was right in Jacob’s personal space. Even though he had to look up slightly to meet Jacob’s gaze, his crest and his sheer mass won out in every other regard.
“You say things, we all will hear them. A man who scares own woman, own children, no man at all.”
Jacob didn’t wilt but he did look away, toward Allison. “It’s your house,” he pointed out.
“And Yan is my trusted friend,” Allison replied. “You’ll listen to him.”
Outnumbered, out of his element and outgunned, Jacob paused a long while, then breathed out slowly and nodded. “…Fine.”
He brushed through into the living room, found the recliner opposite his wife and sons empty, and sat down.
Vemik sat himself down on the couch next to the boys, Yan sat on the floor in front of them, while Julian and Xiù took the love seat under the window. Allison closed the door behind herself and stood in front of it.
About the only sounds in the room for several seconds were those of breathing and the slight white-noise fuzz in the air as Xiù activated the privacy field around the window, sealing them off from the outside world.
Jacob spoke first.
“…Are you okay, boys? Been doing your homework?”
Tristan and Ramsey answered simultaneously, in the robotic, rote way of kids who knew exactly what answer was expected of them. “Yes, Dad.”
“Hmm.” Jacob grunted, then looked at his wife. “Amanda.”
“Jacob.”
The silence descended again, until Allison finally reached the limits of her patience and made a frustrated snarl. “Oh for crying out loud! Don’t either of you kno w how to talk to each other?!”
“This is a little awkward…” Amanda said, but Allison was having none of it.
“Then let me make it not awkward!” she snapped, and strode into the middle of the room. “This is a moment of opportunity for you two. Right now your family is broken, your home is broken, you’re broken. Both of you! You drove away your daughter! You’re driving away your sons! Now, do you want to keep going that way, or do you want to stop and ask yourselves just where it all went wrong and how you can put it right?”
Jacob opened his mouth to reply and she rounded on him. “I wasn’t finished!”
“You didn’t start!”
“Oh, I started. I started when I was fourteen goddamn years old, you just weren’t listening! I started when I got the hell away from you two and went to Boston! Answer me this, when I did that…did you lay all the blame on me? Was I just the wild child who’d have been trouble no matter what you did, or did you stop and wonder for one second whether maybe you went wrong?”
“Of course we wondered!” Amanda retorted.
“Then why are you still making the same mistakes?!”
Allison had to clench her fists to stop her hands from shaking, and she had no idea how her voice hadn’t closed up into an emotional croak. She returned to the door and took a deep breath before turning around. “Don’t you think maybe I wanted a family I could love?” she asked. “You think I wanted to have to leave? I wanted parents who loved me…what I got was Jacob and Amanda Buehler.”
“Allison, of course we loved you—” Amanda began.
“Bullshit!” Allison spat. “You don’t love your kids, you love whatever makes you acceptable to your neighbors and your church. You didn’t really want a family, you just wanted to tick that box so folks would think well of you!”
Jacob stood up. There was a creak as Yan, Vemik and Julian all shifted their stances and after a hesitant second he sat down again. He took a deep breath then glared at Allison.
“Is that what you tell yourself?” he asked.
“I remember a childhood filled with four words: ‘What Will People Think?’ Over the littlest, pettiest crap like what kind of music I listened to in my own bedroom with my headphones on. Or when my best friend was a boy.” Allison crossed the room, sat down on the love seat’s arm next to Xiù and took her hand for comfort. “So you tell me.”
They boys were nodding, but both of them went rigid and pale when Jacob turned his attention their way.
“…This isn’t about the past,” he said after a while. “It’s about the future.”
“Yes. Their future.”
“You’re at a crossroads,” Julian spoke up. He shuffled to the front of the couch and sat forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “And which way you go all depends on what you decide you value most. But be honest with yourselves: At least that way you can figure out where you go.”
Again, there was that moment of outrage where Jacob looked like he wanted to spring to his feet and re-assert himself. Allison had seen it many a time, often with him fetching a belt for good measure.
This time, Julian, bless him, used some of that bro-wisdom or whatever the hell he’d been learning from his friends and did…something. Allison didn’t know what, really. All it looked like to her was that he’d raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms, and somehow all the fight drained right out of her father.
Christ it was cathartic watching him not be the most powerful person in the room. The implication was clear: Violence was on the table if Jacob forced them to resort to it, and Jacob knew that was a futile war.
“What do you value?” Allison asked him.
“…I came here to get my family,” Jacob replied.
“Answer the goddamn question. Why did you come here for them? Was it because you genuinely care about them, or is it just about saving face for you?”
“Now wait just a minute–!”
“Oh, no. Of course, you’re just reclaiming your property.”
Jacob did something different this time. Rather than surge to his feet, he sat back in his chair and tapped his thumb on its arm for a few seconds, calculating.
Eventually, he took a shallow breath and spoke with care. “Would you believe me if I said I genuinely love them? I don’t think you would,” he said. “Maybe I want the best for my family. Maybe I wish things had been different with my only daughter. Maybe I’m a bigger monster in your head than I am in reality.”
He stood up. Julian did as well while Yan and Vemik stiffened, but this time he ignored them. “I didn’t come here for you, Allison: I came here for them. And I think emotions are running too high today. Perhaps we all need time to think.”
Xiù finally spoke up. “I agree,” she said. When Allison looked at her, she gave a supportive little shrug. “We were never going to fix this today,” she pointed out. “Not realistically.”
“We’ve barely begun,” Allison said.
“That still leaves the not insignificant matter of my children,” Jacob said testily. “I don’t intend to leave without them.”
“Well on that front,” Julian spoke up, “Things have been decided for you. The local police have been notified, as have CPS back in Salt Lake City. Xiù, babe, can you get the order?”
“Right.”
Xiù hopped up and vanished through into the little room out back of the living room that served as their collective office space. She was back in seconds, and handed it to Jacob without a word. He scanned it with a practiced eye and an expression of acute irritation flickered across his face as he saw the Folctha flag and court seal at the top.
“The order states that the children are to remain in the custody of their mother, who is to be supervised by agents of the court,” Xiù summarized. “Her passport will be denied at the jump gate, so she isn’t leaving…and there really isn’t anywhere else to go on this planet.”
“And who might these ‘agents’ be, I wonder.” Jacob’s tone of voice contained no suggestion that he was really asking a question.
“I hear you’re a smart fella,” Julian growled. “Figure it out.”
Jacob grunted and flipped the page. “There’s an appeal process? Could I get somebody else appointed as agents? Somebody without a personal stake in this?”
Julian shrugged. “I’m sure somebody at the courthouse can help you.”
“…I see. In that case, I’ll be staying at the Marlowe Hotel, on New Worlds Plaza. You know it?”
“Yes.”
“Then…I’ll come back the same time tomorrow. Assuming that’s good for everyone.”
“Tomorrow evening, after dinner.” Allison said. “I have work.”
“…I’ll come back tomorrow evening, then.”
“You do that.”
She followed her father out through the kitchen and down to the front door. He stepped outside and looked up—Folctha’s nightly rains were threatening to arrive soon, and the air was heavy with cool moisture before sunset.
“It’s a heck of a thing,” he said quietly. “You could almost forget we’re on an alien planet.”
Allison didn’t reply. Instead, she leaned against the doorframe and folded her arms until he cleared his throat and turned around. He looked like he wanted to say something…whatever it was went unsaid. Instead he took a step back, turned away and walked down the path with his phone out and vanished down the sidewalk.
Allison let out a long, tense breath and locked the door.
She was immediately swallowed up by Xiù, Julian…and Vemik. When Yan threw his weight on the pile as well, Allison had literally found herself being crushed under too much affection.
“I’m okay. I’m okay…” she promised, though she was deeply grateful and held them all close until it was difficult to breathe.
“So now what?” Xiù asked, as the knot slowly untangled.
Allison sighed. “I have work tomorrow, and to be honest the idea of getting away from this shit for a few hours is…It sounds like heaven.”
“We have a plan, there,” Julian revealed. “Something to take it out of all our hair for a couple hours.”
“Oh?”
“Well, your mother’s pretty religious, yeah?”
“I guess. I mean, fuck knows what that means now she’s been kicked outta the Temple and her house, but…”
“Well, we have a multi-faith center downtown, and if they don’t have any Mormon facilities I bet Gyotin would pounce on the chance to learn about it,” Julian said. “And while he’s working his magic on your mother…”
“…Some of the other folks down there can help Ramsey and Tristan,” Xiù finished.
“…I like it.”
“It was Yan’s idea. Sort of.”
“…Thanks, Yan.”
Yan just grunted, but he looked pleased. Allison considered the idea.
“You’d better warn Gyotin not to pull his tea ceremony act with her,” she said. “No hot drinks, remember?”
Julian chuckled. “I bet that’ll disappoint him a little. Gyotin’s gone full limey on all matters tea.”
“Hey, there’s nothing wrong with tea!” Xiù protested.
“Never said there was. I used to brew something on Nightmare, outta Mangrabber leaves. Kinda miss it, actually…”
“Cimbrean Tea infusions are pretty good, too.”
“…Yeah, but I think Imma gonna stay away from head trips,” he shrugged hugely. “After the Rite…it’s special, y’know?”
“…It’s the sap that’s psychedelic, shǎguā,” Xiù corrected him. “If you make an infusion it just tastes…kinda a little minty and a little bit like rosemary. No trip.”
“Oh! Well. Hell, that sounds kinda nice, actually.”
“I wonder where Mormons stand on Cimbrean tea?”
Allison shrugged. “I dunno. Herbal infusions are fine, but…”
“Strange rules these more-men have,” Yan grunted.
“You ain’t kidding, big guy. But I suppose they’d argue about all the magic plants you guys use to talk with the gods.”
Yan and Vemik looked at each other and shrugged. “Is plan. Shame we can’t bring boys to farm,” Vemik said. “Do them good to work!”
“Don’t write that off just yet, but yeah.” Julian leaned back and stretched his spine. “For now, little steps. This is as much about Amanda as it is about the boys. Let Gyotin work his magic.”
“What about you guys?” Allison asked. Julian shrugged.
“I gotta go back to the farm with these two, make good for the bull they ate.” He knuckled Vemik in the upper arm.
“I’ll supervise the trip to the faith center. I’ve kinda wanted to get to know the Starminds better anyway,” Xiù said.
Allison nodded. “Okay. Promise me we’ll get a chance to do something together once this settles down?”
“Promise.”
“Absolutely.”
“We throw a big feast!” Vemik agreed chirpily.
“I didn’t mean—” Allison couldn’t help herself: her face split into a smile and she laughed. “…Thanks, Sky-Thinker.”
Vemik grinned: He had Helped. Yan meanwhile waved his tail in the general direction of the living room, where Amanda could be heard clucking over her sons again. “Many things to do first.”
“Right.”
They got back to their various roles around the house, but Allison found herself feeling…lighter, somehow. She’d faced a man who used to terrify her, and found herself stronger than him. That was a liberation she’d never expected to enjoy.
She intended to make the most of it.
Date Point: 15y5m6d AV
The White House, Washington DC, USA, Earth
President Arthur Sartori
It was late evening on what had been a blessedly quiet day. The big news to cross Sartori’s desk that day had been an update on the quiet political wrangling between Russia and China over how best to divide up the planet Lucent for colonization. Apparently the Russians wanted a unified planetary Internet while the Chinese were digging their heels in and insisting that each colonial Internet should stand almost separate, linked only via their (narrow, easily monitored) connection to Earth. The Great Firewall of China was alive and well.
Let them work it out among themselves. If they wanted to get tangled in the weeds discussing communications policy while the first colonists were still living in tents and prefabs then that wasn’t America’s problem.
He took a sip of his whisky—one single, small glass of bourbon at night once he’d changed into his comfortable clothes—and swiped to the next report.
Ah yes. The leak. He smiled, set his tablet aside, and turned on the TV.
He found what he was looking for in the form of a studio full of four “experts” and one overworked presenter who was doing his best to keep the peace.
“…I mean, some of the leaked footage is horrifying! and yet there’s been no comment from the President all day! Doesn’t he care?”
“President Sartori’s a thoughtful man, he never rushes into these things, we’ve seen that time and again. I’m sure he isn’t ignoring this, just…taking his time to consider.”
One of the panelists gave an incredulous little laugh. “What’s there to consider?” he demanded. “This is…monstrosity! It’s evil on an interstellar scale!”
“For one, the costs of going to war.”
“We always knew what the Hunters are…” one of the other panelists began. She was interrupted.
“Exactly! And in any case, this is disturbing enough that the leader of the Gao personally oversaw this mission. Look at that. You can’t tell me anything that would prompt a dictator like Daar to personally intervene isn’t worth our President’s attention!”
Sartori grinned, and sipped his whisky. The footage didn’t feature much of the furry barge of murder, only a flash here or there really, but what little it did was definitely not safe for younger eyes. Which was good. War is hell, and the point needed to be made, forcefully.
“Exactly! What Tom calls thoughtful, I call cowardly. Say what you will about Daar but a coward he ain’t.”
Sartori chuckled and toasted his on-screen insulter. “Fuckin’ A.”
The presenter cleared his throat. “So, what’s the next step for the intelligence services? I presume they’ll want to find out how this got out…”
“That may not even be possible, depending on who leaked it, when, from where…AEC is an enormous international effort representing thousands of people from two planets!”
“So they should just give up?”
“No, of course not…”
The argument stretched on, with passionate and at-times contradictory points being made thick and fast, but all of it was exactly as Sartori had hoped for. People were mad, the media wanted them to be mad, and the narrative he wanted spread was being spread and made to look like it was in opposition to his wishes. All things considered, it was practically perfect.
There were a few personal considerations. Daar’s most admirable and most difficult trait was his scrupulous, effectively absolute commitment to personal fidelity. He had no problems with a tactical deception but he, himself, would never lie, or permit a lie to be told on his behalf. The furthest he would go down that line was carefully-crafted silence, or the utterance of extremely precise and cautious truths. Even that was something he preferred to avoid, since he “wasn’t a Goldpaw contracting officer.”
Which meant the deception demanded very careful timing. For now, the Great Father’s office would remain silent and refuse comment. With luck the media would keep digging, and he would eventually be “compelled” to make a public statement requesting military aid. Sartori would have his Cabinet defer until public pressure reached a fever pitch, and then with a show of reluctant determination…commit to the fight.
The first draft of his own first response should be ready and waiting in the oval office by morning.
Satisfied, he changed channel and put his feet up. Watching his beloved Mets lose to the hated Yankees would be just the appropriate spice to round off an odd evening.
Date Point: 15y5m6d AV
POW Holding Facility, Planet Gao
Cytosis
Interrogations broke the monotony, not that there was much of that nowadays. Cytosis’ compliance had brought him many luxuries: books to read, writing tools, even a small device that played music. It was loaded with an astonishing variety of songs, most of which were…
Well, they were alien. Music was alien in general; there was no equivalent in the Hegemony, it was a pursuit of senses that Igraens had left behind aeons ago.
Most of it was formulaic. Interesting at first, but once the listener knew the formulas, the underlying logic of it, the pieces grew dull. One of his books explained the history of Human music, and he’d learned that the genres that least pleased him were so-called “pop” music—the fact that “pop” was short for “popular” baffled him.
Harmonies, though…He could truly enjoy harmonies. The intricate interplay of subtly differing frequencies, which his sensitive, inherited Gaoian ears could sort and classify with surprising precision. The Gaoians had preserved much of their true Deathworlder heritage, and their keen senses had in fact improved over time.
The Humans, though, had voices that transfixed. Choral music especially held his attention, when the chords they assembled hung like shimmering fabric in the air, evoking mental images of cold stone and high architecture. He could listen to it for hours.
Being dragged away was irksome, but he knew better than to resist. He’d need weeks of good behaviour before they returned his music if he didn’t “play ball,” so yet again he meekly let himself be hooded and led, turned and twisted so that he didn’t know where one room was in relation to the other, and sat down in the comfortable chair opposite his second interrogator, Homer.
Homer was nothing like Bill. Bill was built like a sturdy fortification, with a tubby belly and hairy arms. Homer didn’t seem to suit his name at all: he was slim, clean, precise and had long fingers. He was almost totally bald, but wore a rough stubbly beard that framed rather than softened his cheekbones.
“Good day, Cytosis.”
Cytosis duck-nodded. They never referred to the time of day. He’d decided that according to his own personal rhythm it was morning, though, so he replied appropriately. “Good morning.”
“What did you make of Spem in Alium?”
“It’s…astonishing. I count at least thirty distinct voices, all singing something different. I think more.”
“Forty, total.” Homer looked pleased: the piece had been his recommendation.
“Consider me duly impressed.” Cytosis coughed and adjusted his seat. “So, what’s our topic of discussion for today?”
“The Gao again. The Hierarchy’s intent was to use them as a contingency species, as I recall…”
Cytosis duck-nodded and settled in. Now that he’d cast off his inhibitions about sharing, he found he actually relished the chance to both educate and be questioned on Hierarchy operations. There was no point in feeling any guilt or shame over it, now, and he was actually learning things about their methods himself, from analysing them. “That is correct. Their purpose was two-fold. First, as a benign force of competition to stave off stagnation, and secondarily as the raw material to form a military if need be.”
“I’d say that plan backfired.”
“Indeed. Are you intending to gloat?”
Homer shook his head. “Not at all. But I am interested in the details. How long have you been planning this contingency?”
“By your calendar…” Cytosis consulted his mental look-up table, “…approximately twenty-five thousand years. We first observed them in their hunter-gatherer phase, after language nucleation but before any of the rudiments of civilization. They were highly tribal and clannish and their world was much richer at the time, with diverse, highly competitive life. In the modern scale we would have rated Gao a respectable class-eleven, and trending upward. It was in little immediate danger of becoming a Class-Twelve—the microbiology was relatively benign even then, the climate’s too predictable and the tectonic activity is relatively gentle. But engineering Gao back down to a Class-Nine was no small task.”
“What about their gravity? Doesn’t that figure into the scale?”
“Not as much as is widely believed. Very low gravity certainly matters, but Gao isn’t a low gravity world, either. It’s close enough to other Deathworlds that it enables most of the benefits, but low enough to enjoy the benefits of low-gravity evolution as well. You must be aware of how high-maintenance your own body is, relative to the needs of other species…An active Human eats as much as a Guvnurag, and the Gao might conceivably have grown just as large as some of your apex predators on Earth, in due time. Imagine Gaoians literally as big as a Kodiak bear! We didn’t consider that an ideal outcome.”
Homer raised an eyebrow at that comment but didn’t say anything at first. Amusement, possibly? It was difficult to tell.
He shook off his silence and glanced at his notes. “The Gao used to be full-blooded Deathworlders, then, rather than a marginal case. Isn’t your normal procedure to exterminate such species?”
Cytosis scratched at his wrist where his paws were restrained. “Our usual policy is to exterminate even the marginal cases,” he said. “However, we are always in need of contingencies and those require deep time to develop, and we found an excellent candidate in the Gao. Deathworld species make the best source material, but of course we can’t permit a contingency that is beyond our control. Therefore, we shape them.”
“How?”
“It depends on the species. A common theme, however, is to preserve the most desirable traits while slowly reducing the threat they represent to something more…manageable. It is a fine balance we must achieve. The contingency must be capable of great ferocity, adaptability, resiliency and cunning when needed, but must be controllable and docile at all other times. They should also be capable of absorbing heavy losses to their peoples and recovering quickly. And ideally, their instincts should be highly competitive.”
“…in other words, the Gao.”
“Indeed.”
“…what, exactly, did you do to them?”
“Many things.” Cytosis accessed his copy of the case file. It was an incomplete summary rather than an exhaustive itemization of every step the Contingency specialists had taken, but it was dense with information regardless. “The first thing we did was depopulate their world by initiating a gamma ray burst in a nearby star. Ninety percent of their land-dwelling life went extinct, and their world was reduced to a class-eight almost overnight. We also appeared amongst them in engineered biodrone forms to lead them through the difficult Formation period.”
“Explain.”
“Formation is the process by which we inculcate a desired social structure into the target contingency species. How we do this varies, but in the case of the Gao we appeared as, effectively, demigods. Their Keeda tales are a direct consequence of our intervention, and have a basis in ancient events. Remarkable, really. They preserved the kernel of what we wanted them to remember all this time…”
“…What else did you do?”
“All the Gao that survived had heavy genetic damage. This was by design. We used our biodrone forms to intervene with a suitable light show, repaired each member directly…and altered their reproductive scheme. That must have been obvious to you, once you learned of our involvement.”
“…What was the purpose of that?”
“Firstly, to shorten their gestation time. Secondly, to reduce the time between cubs. Thirdly, to speed up their maturation time and extend their reproductive lives, though that came at the cost of total lifespan. The result was a species that could very quickly produce large numbers of military-capable males, raise them to adulthood in acceptable timeframes, and produce many offspring per female. We also reinforced their fertility’s link to health, particularly the health of the sire. Our goals were a very high proportion of serviceable soldiers in any given generation. We succeeded, wildly.”
“…Did it not occur to you that their instincts may not adapt to such a wild change?”
“Irrelevant. Social conditioning can overcome any instinct.”
“Given that they broke free of your control, I’d contest that claim.”
Cytosis shrugged. “Their conditioning wasn’t broken from within, but by an external event, namely contact with you. Though, admittedly, they were more vulnerable to external influence than we’d have liked…The fatal crack in the armor there is probably the fact that we lost control of the Stonebacks over a thousand years ago.”
“Still, though. They did that themselves. Your ‘social conditioning’ didn’t take.”
“True, but one anomalous Clan wouldn’t have made a difference without a destabilizing influence.”
Homer didn’t reply to that. Instead he backtracked and asked another question. “…How did you lose control of the Stonebacks?”
“That’s complex. The short answer is they became opaque to us and bred their traits largely independent of our direct influence. That was fine because we had used our influence on the rest of their society to guide their development with reasonable success. With encouragement, they began breeding themselves into elite soldiers and builders. What we had not anticipated was the quality of their leadership.”
“I hate to keep rabbit-holing, but that one I need explained, too.”
“Their intellectuals had long ago split into Highmountain, a Clan we quite thoroughly infiltrated. We anticipated that the Gao’s eventual species-wide leadership caste would emerge from them. We had, in fact, expected it to emerge this generation, in the form of Loomi.”
“That’s the current Champion of Highmountain,” Homer checked.
“Indeed. He’d been groomed for the role since birth, but he proved…dissatisfactory.”
“How so?”
“He’s everything we believe a leader should be. But as you observed, we did not account for all their psychology, nor understand the consequences of that blind spot. The result was that Daar emerged.”
“…You missed him?” Homer’s tone was incredulous, and Cytosis had to agree. Daar had begun making waves almost from when he was a cub. Dismissing him as a quirk who would never amount to a real factor in the equation had been one of the Hierarchy’s more grievous errors.
“Indeed.” Cytosis emoted grim amusement via an ear-flick. “Suffice to say, our surveillance was…lacking. Daar is everything Loomi is, and much more besides. Beyond that, he possesses this…’spark’ of leadership we were missing. He also preserves all the other traits of a Stoneback and this has proven disastrous.”
“What traits?”
“They are a wild and untamed breed, deliberately so. Normally this would manifest as a passionate hot-headedness, for instance in One-Fang. Their Clan has always been on the edge of self-immolation. Stonebacks, conversely, have discipline. They’ve always needed and bred for it. We had not appreciated the degree to which that would undo our plans, however.”
“You also failed to account for his friends and confidants.”
“Of course. That was implied in having missed the cultural singularity.”
“Okay, you need to explain that, too.”
Cytosis cast his memory back to the moment the concept had first been explained to him, long ago now. “I believe the Americans of your people have a saying: ‘comes the moment, comes the man.’ It neatly summarizes a useful meme that we have used in our social engineering programs over the arc of our history. Our intent was to shape the Gao into a unified force under Loomi’s leadership, ideally by precipitating a crisis which would have sidelined Stoneback. Before we could achieve that, however, your species arrived—”
“—And we set in motion a series of events you could no longer control,” Homer concluded.
“Precisely. But more than that, you removed Daar from even our nominal influence. I do not know if you understood the depth of your victory at that point. The result is that he is now the greatest Gaoian to ever live.”
Cytosis shook his head bitterly. “We really should have had him assassinated when he was young,” he lamented. “Instead, he’ll likely live many more years given his dam and sire, and he may well live long enough to personally realize Stoneback’s ancient dream and destroy us all. Without him, Humanity would be alone, isolated, and frankly your eradication and erasure from the history books would be only a matter of time. With him…Well. It’s inconceivable to me you didn’t realize his value.”
He had to give Homer credit. The man gave nothing away as he slowly adjusted his posture and then checked his notes again.
“…You need to forgive me but this all seems a bit far-fetched.”
“How so? Genetic manipulation is direct and easy to do. One look at the Discarded should illustrate the claim. As far as social engineering, that is simply a matter of having enough agents in enough places who can whisper the right words to the right people at the right time. Given enough time, almost any outcome can be planned, iterated, and ultimately achieved. Stoneback was our great blind spot and it cost us everything.”
“You mentioned that before. How did Stoneback unravel your plans? And how is any of this their, as you said, *‘ancient dream?’*”
“…You’re either an excellent liar, or you really haven’t figured it out yet.”
“Answer the question, Cytosis.”
Cytosis flicked his ear again then sat upright. Well, well. Maybe Human intelligence wasn’t quite so omnipotent after all. Either that, or Homer truly was a most excellent liar…or had been kept in the dark. It was impossible to tell, but there was no point in playing games. Not if he wanted to have music to listen to when he got back to his cell.
“It’s simple,” he said. “Great Father Fyu discovered us.”