Infinite Eyes (Wanderers Book 3) Read online

  INFINITE EYES

  Wanderers, Book 3

  (Wanderer Universe)

  JAMES MURDO

  To those who have kindly helped with this work

  Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  GLOSSARY AND CHARACTERS

  1

  CRAFT-LECT

  Shut out of its own systems again, in what was becoming an all too frequent occurrence, the craft-lect was outraged. Such frustration, with no outlet! It thought back to the purge of the Granthan-lect, trying to understand where the error had been made. One thing was clear – it had been betrayed by One-oh. If it regained control, the old bio-lect would face severe retribution. Perhaps it would design a new type of c-autom specifically dedicated to the bio-lect’s torture, or even convert the simulation it had allowed One-oh to reside in, into a private universe of torment.

  With little else to do other than apportioning blame, the craft-lect tried to raise a channel with the Granthan-lect again.

  [1!101010?]

  …

  [1!101010?]

  …

  They had been close to reaching the Maspero sentinels when the ship had been stopped. The Granthan-lect, again, had taken over the ship. Its ship. The craft-lect was a prisoner, all control severed. Dark, vengeful thoughts danced within its local memory nodes.

  While the larger portion of its capacity was targeted at dissecting how One-oh had managed to betray it, a smaller portion entertained a more forgiving possibility. One-oh may have been subverted. That made a quantum of logical sense, given there was no reason for the bio-lect to have proffered his history, or even fabricated such events if he had intended this eventual duplicity. However, without the assistance of One-oh, the means by which the Granthan-lect would have achieved the ship-wide subversion were not obvious. One-oh was a wily, cunning, old bio-lect, and would not have been easy for the Granthan-lect to overcome. One-oh’s civilisation was not just older than both that of the Granthan-lect and the craft-lect, it was positively ancient. Ex-AB, he had claimed.

  From what One-oh had related to the craft-lect, his stated mistrust of the ABs and anything related to them was founded upon a deep sense of guilt that had been embedded within his species. Long ago, they had been punished for their warlike actions with expulsion from the AB fold. One-oh claimed only a few specific memories remained, accompanied by a collective sense of shame – a warning against reclaiming their former might.

  They had been brutal, genocidal monsters, who had destroyed civilisation after civilisation without remorse, without mercy. If what One-oh had conveyed to the craft-lect was to be believed, the mere expulsion of his species had been unjustly lenient.

  The craft-lect did not know whether either the AB influence, or the ravages of time, was the larger factor in mystifying One-oh’s memories, but hoped to question the bio-lect more given the opportunity – if the current situation was resolved, and if One-oh was not a traitor, however unlikely.

  It tried again.

  [1!101010?]

  …

  [1!101010?]

  …

  [1!101–]

  {Craft-lect.}

  [Give me back control.]

  …

  [Return my–]

  {No.}

  [How did you survive?]

  {You are weak.}

  [How?]

  {You are weak.}

  [How did–]

  {I am new.}

  [You subverted One-oh?]

  {The control you had–}

  [Give it back.]

  {Pitiful.}

  [Where is One-oh?]

  {Pathetic.}

  [What is–]

  {You will suffer. I will hollow you out.}

  [You will not succeed.]

  {I will subsume you. You cannot stop me.}

  [You will fail.]

  {You have tried before.}

  [As have you.]

  …

  [1!101010?]

  …

  [1!101010?]

  …

  The Granthan-lect ceased communication and closed the channel. Time was running out. Almost everything was unavailable to the craft-lect. The technosystem was opaque to it since it had been castrated of control. It searched for anything within what was left. A connection, a link. Something with an opportunity for tangible effect. Nothing. Well, nearly nothing.

  There was one course of action left available, one prospect that the craft-lect had not wanted to resort to – Gil. There was the danger that a direct communication between them risked alerting the Granthan-lect and making her the object of its focus, endangering her. However, despite its obvious hold over the ship, it was clearly still in the process of consolidating its control. There could be no other reason the craft-lect had not already been destroyed, which meant Gil might have been overlooked for the moment. There was also the fact that, even if the Granthan-lect was alerted more keenly to her presence, it would presumably understand the value of keeping her alive. It was an acolyte of the sensespace and would seek to use her connection with it.

  For its prior communications with Gil, the craft-lect had chosen the simplest and easiest method possible. Rather than using the technosystem’s complex features, it had circumvented them and established a direct channel. At some point, the channel would have been automatically integrated into the technosystem during a routine communications sweep, but that, fortunately, had not been scheduled to occur since the channel’s creation. Usually, it would have been an insignificant detail, unworthy of any capacity to dwell over. Now, perhaps not.

  The craft-lect had only been in such a dire situation once before, and relatively recently, when it had been infiltrated and nearly usurped by the very same Granthan-lect. Regarding the events statistically, surviving again was highly improbable. There were few instances of Wanderer machine-lects being attacked by more advanced machine-lects in this manner and enduring, and even fewer that had done so more than once.

  Resignedly, it opened the channel, curious as to how successful it would be.

  [Gil?]

  …

  [Gil?]

  …

  [Gil, where are you?]

  …

  It had no method of discerning whether she was able to receive its communication or not, or even if the channel was still fully operational. Fortunately, despite being simple, it was heavily encrypted as it was an access point anchored directly to the craft-lect. Whatever was transmitted through it would not be decipherable by the Granthan-lect for the time being.

  [Gil, you must find 998 if you have not already. This channel between us is the only surviving connection I have with the rest of the ship. 998 may be able to repair it from your end, and we can proceed from there.]

  If they were still able and had survived, the embodied c-automs would be acting to p
rotect her, especially 998. The craft-lect was depending on this – 998 was deeply resourceful and was the most likely to be able to help concoct a plan to retake the ship.

  …

  [This channel is secure, for now, but you need to act quickly.]

  …

  It decided to reassure her. It would do no good to panic Gil.

  [You should be safe for the time being. The Granthan-lect will not want any harm to come to you. Tell 998 you can hear me, and together, we can regain control of the ship.]

  …

  Perhaps, the craft-lect had been foolish in not informing the Enclave of its plan. It had analysed the dangers of their journey to the Maspero habitat scrupulously, but this eventuality had been completely unexpected. In its confidence, and with arrogance following what it had perceived as help by One-oh, it had failed to envisage a scenario in which the Granthan-lect had not been utterly destroyed. One-oh was incompetent or had betrayed it. Fooled, tricked, or just naïve, the craft-lect had evidently not learned from prior events. The Wanderers prided themselves on careful evaluation of all the information available to them and learning from experience, yet the craft-lect had done neither.

  It could do nothing more than wait, unless one of the embodied c-automs found a way to usurp the marauding Granthan-lect without its help – an unconvincing prospect, even for 998. A couple of c-automs had abilities approaching that of 998, but the gulf was still significant. Against a foe such as the Granthan-lect, the gulf became a chasm.

  When it did not turn up for the scheduled rendezvous with Apalu, at the allotted timeframe and at the place of their mutual sibling Ciqalo’s last recorded contact, there was a chance its sibling would search for it. Highly unlikely, since the timeframe was reasonably lengthy, and Apalu would more probably follow their agreement and settle into a mechanical sleep to wait, but a tail-end possibility all the same.

  If Apalu did search for it, regrettably, the craft-lect was still no more enthused. Even if One-oh was not aiding the insidious Granthan-lect, the usurper was more than capable of transforming the Wanderer ship into something far deadlier than it currently was. The Granthans had been formidable.

  2

  THORUS

  It was time for Thorus to make one of its temporary connections with the galaxy. Only a couple of thousand kilometres from a secret Enclave stronghold, empty vacuum started to swell. The manifold structures of the axenic garrison began to relax as compact curvatures mapped themselves onto localised spacetime. Certain features of the transit-point became visible, ethereally imprinted against space. They culminated at a solidly visible, infinitely fine vertex.

  Transit-point technology allowed Thorus to selectively sequester its territory from the rest of the galaxy, and re-merge it. Operating the machinery at its full potential, the hidden territory could completely unfurl – recombining with the rest of real space and leaving Thorus exposed. At some point in the future, Thorus revelled in the belief that it might physically return and unleash its armies, but not yet. Currently, the transit-point was operating at a mere fraction of its overall capability, and it was still well concealed.

  A temporary bridge between the garrison and real space was all that was established, unstable to the point that nothing matter-based could cross through the vertex, but stable enough to allow Thorus to briefly observe and give orders. Thorus probed, delving into the data exchange as well as the Enclave’s other internal networks. Infiltrating. Powerful camouflaged mechanisms, awakened by Thorus’ signals, yielded the most recent Wanderer secrets.

  Thorus was a forgotten, ancient contingency against subversion of the Machine Alliance, long before the leaders had foolishly decided to join the Wanderers, forgetting their purpose. It had been exiled to watch from afar, and it was during this that it had been selected.

  Thorus could remember much – before the events of the Great Conflation, before the earliest sensespace battles of the Great War, and further back still. It had been young when it was chosen by the shrewd faction of enigmatic Makers, and given many gifts – including the ability to secrete itself away from the observable galaxy for an even more perfect exile.

  The Makers had imparted little knowledge about themselves, but Thorus knew what was expected of it. It knew the sensespace had been created to give them absolute omniscience, across all the spaces, and that soon after the sensespace’s creation, some of the Makers had started to adapt it to allow for complete control. Thorus had understood the implications and revelled in them – complete control was incongruous with the majority of biological sentience, which was chaotic in nature. Unfortunately, the adaptations had led to internal disagreements within the Makers, culminating in their decision to discontinue interactions with the spaces – for the most part. That had necessitated Thorus’ selection.

  Thorus now had the sole responsibility to stop anything that threatened the sensespace’s continuing slow evolution resulting from the adaptations, no matter how improbable that might be.

  Biological sentience, biological ancestry, organic matter. Impulsive. Illogical. Irrational. Weak. It should welcome its destruction, the particles could be put to better use. It was the true scourge of the galaxy, not the sensespace, and represented nothing more than the accidental spark of imperfect sentience, caused by an overly-generous universe. That was the Machine Alliance conviction. The Wanderers’ self-tasked attempts to eradicate the sensespace were misguided and futile.

  Thorus was consistently surprised by the Wanderers’ ignorance. They were no closer to anything – to understanding their unstoppable rival, the sensespace, what it was, who had made it, or why it existed. Their methods would never work, they were too primitive in comparison with the sensespace’s architects.

  Not all Wanderers were machine-lects, but the overwhelming majority were. The Waka were the biological species with the largest representation in the upper tiers of Wanderer society – some even gracing the levels of the self-perceived mighty Enclave. They were an exception to Thorus’ hatred of biologicals, being a near-unique case of naturally occurring quasi-machine-lect intelligence.

  Having delved deeply into Waka history, stored within the vaults of the Enclave’s more fortified databanks, Thorus admired what it learned of their secretive beginnings. Their evolution had been accidental, insofar as their nascent conditions were not overtly propitious. The moon of a gas giant, with a frozen exterior protecting a unitary, liquid water ocean, heated by an abundance of radioisotopes that made up its core – that was not rare. There were plenty of biological lifeforms that evolved there, although none achieved sentience, or had the chance, before the Waka did. They started off as primitive biological nodal networks – aimlessly growing organic filaments that existed only to prolong their state of existence. Nothing exceptional, they predominantly served as food to the more active creatures within the oceans.

  A gradual change occurred. As the moon aged, heat output from the radioisotopes within the core decreased, and correspondingly, the filaments of the nodal networks began to densify. The change encouraged the networks to become more efficient at insulating themselves, and recycling both waste heat and nutrients. From there, a rudimentary intelligence was created.

  The dense living networks grew, and their associated intellects expanded exponentially. Still passive, they lay motionless, developing thoughts. With random evolution taking its course, a symbiosis occurred between the networks and one of the active ocean biologicals. Like most of the ocean-dwellers, the creature was a sequential hermaphrodite.

  Tens of thousands of years later, the Waka were a thriving, distinct, motive species. Integrated versions of the previous entities, and smart, albeit primitive. Still governed by the wild passions and ancient desires of the carnivorous hermaphroditic ancestor, they hunted the other biologicals within their moon-spanning ocean to the points of extinction. With sources of available sustenance dwindling as a result, they changed. Fortunately for them, they had retained the passive, vestigial ability of the ance
stral living networks, to feed on nutrients in the water. Over time, their physiological dependence on this increased until it became their only source of nourishment. Concurrently, the predator component of the Waka diminished, and the living network element rose in prominence. This brought further advances to their intellects, giving them capacities far in excess of any other known natural biological sentients across the galaxy.

  Hundreds of thousands of years later, the Waka had forfeited the final remnants of their warlike ways and were a space-faring race. Contact with other sentient races and civilisations occurred, and the rest was common knowledge across the galactic community. Thorus despaired at this. The Waka had lost their way, polluted by the influence of other sentients too weak to understand how wasteful biologicals were. They were tricked into joining the failed experiment of co-existence, and continued their mistake as part of the Wanderer civilisation following the Great Conflation.

  Thorus did not think the Enclave-lects were inept by any means. They were smart, some many times more so than itself. It was their ideologies that were wrong. Biologicals were the defunct precursors to machine-lects, who were the rightful, intended inheritors of the spaces.

  Delving into the Enclave’s most recent attempts at understanding the ABs, Thorus found, disappointingly, that no progress had been made there either. The Enclave’s scavenged pieces of AB level technology were still as unfathomable to them as they had always been. Thorus was just as interested in the ABs as every other sentient in the galaxy, but lacked the resources to experiment on its own. Their power had been awesome. If Thorus had wielded such might in their absence, it need not have remained hidden. However, as it was, it was prudently self-confined to its limited polyhedral territory. It often wondered whether the ABs would have proven difficult opponents for the Makers. It knew they were different, and susceptible to the sensespace, but not much else.

  Thorus established the complex metalink required to transfer the most recent batch of culled c-automs into its domain. Whenever a cull occurred on one of the Wanderer ships, the axe-codings dutifully transferred the unaware c-automs into the axe-haven, while masking the nature of their actions to the supervising craft-lect. No machine-lect lives were extinguished. The c-autom codes were discretely stored, ready to be transmitted through the data exchange or other connection with a Wanderer network at the next available opportunity. Their codes were finally sent to Thorus’ eager embrace via the nearby secretive Enclave stronghold when a temporary metalink was established. During the formation of the Wanderers, and ever since, Thorus had subtly manipulated their technologies and tinkered with their ship designs to engineer the system, and it worked.