Well of Furies

PROLOGUE “You are human,” the Rinneret said, in poor Galactic. It waved ten of its arms, writhing. “So my mother told me,” answered Amir Tarkos in English. The Rinneret, Tarkos knew, would have no English language translation program available. Humans were just too new to interstellar civilization, and too primitive, to earn that kind of interest. Tarkos added in very precise Galactic, “You are very observant.” It was the closest he could come to sarcasm in the formal lingua franca of the Galaxy. The two of them stood on hard-packed sand, surrounded by black spires of rock. No other life graced the landscape but a few scraggly plants that crept like vines over the dry ground. The air was mostly nitrogen, with only a suffocated hint of oxygen, and even less of water. The sun above, Qualihout, glowed dimly through a thin layer of meager clouds. This planet, as yet named only Qualihout One, was a Neelee ecoforming project, in the very beginning stages of seeding. In high orbit overhead, Neelee robots crushed huge blocks off of a captured comet, readying boulders of ice to drop on the dry world. The planet had been evacuated in preparation for the bombardment, making it a good place to commit a crime. Tarkos wore a light spacesuit, but without the helmet. The spacesuit was far too large for him, and he wobbled and tottered around in it, arms held out to his sides. The Rinneret did not seem to notice the strange awkwardness of his motions. And why should it be able to tell? Tarkos was probably the first human it had seen in person and up close. A simple breather covered Tarkos’s mouth. He squinted at the blowing sand, blinking tears as the parched wind scoured his eyes. The Rinneret instead had scurried into their meeting place mostly n***d, a single pipe feeding oxygen into its mouth from a pack on its long back. “Humans are a servant race,” the Rinneret said, seeming to hack and cough up each word. It resembled nothing of terrestrial origin so much as a centipede, three meters long, and with a carapace of dirty green. Its hard black eyes fixed Tarkos in severe inspection. “You were savages, without fire, twenty thousand years before this day.” Tarkos did the math in his head. Assuming the Rinneret meant twenty thousand Rinneret years, that would mean about thirty thousand Earth years. Tarkos discovered with disappointment that he couldn’t really say with confidence whether humanity had mastered fire, thirty thousand e-years before. So he settled for, “I’m sorry you feel that way.” “You are like a fungus, compared to us. Twenty thousand years ago, we had mastered fusion and interplanetary travel and the secrets of artificial minds.” “And look where that got you,” Tarkos said in English. “Exiled from Galactic Civilization, not a world of your own outside your home system, and about to get your chitin-covered a*s busted by a savage human out of uniform.” But then he added, in Galactic, “The Rinneret are famous in the Galaxy for their… commercial activities.” The Rinneret waved its arms. Tarkos wished he could remember the complex emotion cues he’d seen described in the Rinneret Expressions! video he’d watched the night before, chin on his palm as he tried to stay awake. But really, every Rinneret expression looked to him like a centipede stretching its front legs. Time to get to work, Tarkos thought. “Do you have the material?” he asked. “Yes.” “I must examine a sample.” The Rinneret waved a single thin arm. “And I must see your payment.” Tarkos pointed at the cylinder that stood upright on the hard dirt behind him. Blown sand had already begun to collect on its downwind side, forming a vane of dry dust. “That’s the magnetic bottle. Seventeen standard units of antimatter are suspended inside.” When he turned back, the Rinneret was holding a black box in one of its small claws. Tarkos didn’t recognize the weapon, but the polished lens on its front told him everything he needed to know: a laser, aimed at his abdomen. “Oh, you really don’t want to shoot me,” he said. At times like this, Tarkos wished Galactic had a few tough slang words. “Explain,” the Rinneret said. “The magnetic bottle there behind me is keyed to my vital signs. If I die, the magnetic field turns off. The anti-matter will drop in the bottle, and touch the regular matter that forms the container. Half of this continent will promptly be destroyed. If I choose, I can also send a command from within this suit to turn off the magnetic field. Same result.” The Rinneret swayed slightly, still holding the weapon aimed at his chest. Finally, it said, “I have determined you are a worthy partner for commerce.” It swung its thin arm around to the backpack and stowed the laser. “You have potential.” “For a fungus,” Tarkos muttered. “Your people must not join the Galactic Alliance.” Tarkos frowned. He had not expected a running political commentary from this Rinneret. It seemed unusual. Was this Rinneret from some kind of political faction, instead of a crime syndicate as he had expected? “The Galactic Alliance quarantined Earth for millennia,” the Rinneret continued, “it let millions of you die, as you made mistakes, many mistakes.” It leaned its wide head forward. “Though you disgust us, with your slow intelligence and your bones buried in your flesh, we would have taught you commerce. Now, if you join the Alliance, you will be the servants of the Neelee or Brights. It would be wiser to serve us.” Tarkos considered saying, “Then would you teach us how to use fire?” Or maybe just, “Excuse me while I vomit a little bit now.” But, duty called. He told the Rinneret, “I need to see a sample.” The Rinneret seemed to hesitate, as if it wanted to continue its argument. But then it leaned back and a knee-high, insectile robot emerged from behind one of the black spires of rock. The robot carried on its back a brushed metal cube, about 60 centimeters on a side. When the robot stopped between them, the Rinneret bent down and pulled a small cylinder from the top of the cube. It set the cylinder on the dirt before Tarkos. Tarkos picked it up. He lifted the matter analyzer hanging from his belt and pressed it to the cylinder and waited. The composition of the material within was transmitted to his implants: water, carbon, iron, silicon, trace metals and organics—the predicted profile. Tarkos unscrewed the cap of the cylinder and slid out the glass container inside. He peered at it, where it sat in the big, awkward glove of his palm. Tiny green and gray creatures, some looking organic, some looking like machines, churned inside the bottle. No doubt about it: inside the cylinder, a dense snarl of self-replicating machine-animal symbionts crawled about. Here, in his palm, Tarkos held what might be the most dangerous stuff in the Galaxy. Anti-matter could blow anything up, of course, but what would happen if these cybernetic organisms were loosed into new ecosystems? Unlike anti-matter, they could reproduce. No one in the Galactic Alliance knew who had first made these tiny symbionts, but the one known stellar system where these symbionts existed freely—called by Galactics simply “the Green Disk”—had eons before been converted over to a vast asteroid field, wholly populated with these tiny organisms and machines. The Alliance did not want to find out if that would be the fate of other star systems that became inhabited by the self-replicators. This fear did not, of course, inhibit those who thought the self-replicators might make a useful weapon, or perhaps a tool for radical ecoforming. “It’s viable,” Tarkos said, more to himself than to the Rinneret. He looked at the cube. “How much is in there?” “Four thousand standard units.” Tarkos let his mouth fall open. He tried to swallow but could not. His mouth and throat were painfully parched by the dead atmosphere. “Four thousand units is a big sample.” He looked up at the Rinneret. “This is not from the Green Disk.” The Rinneret said nothing. Tarkos put the glass cylinder back in its case, screwed the cap on, and pointed it at the Rinneret. “This is not from the Green Disk. This is a large sample, very active. The Galactic Alliance has quarantined the Green Disk.” “We will exchange now,” the Rinneret said. “Wait,” Tarkos said. He set the sample gently at his feet. The robot collected it and put it back into the cube. “My clients need to know if you can be relied upon to provide more material like this. Do you have another source? A more reliable source? Another Green Disk, somewhere else, but undiscovered by the Galactic Alliance?” The Rinneret waved its arms slowly, creating the impression of a wave running up and down its length. This expression Tarkos did remember: careful consideration. “This is a delicate question,” the Rinneret said. “I….” Its voice died in hesitation. Tarkos couldn’t help himself. He betrayed his eagerness and leaned forward slightly, waiting for the answer. And then, so unexpected that it made him jump, a bright message of throbbing red letters streamed across Tarkos’s visual field: PRIORITY RECALL REQUEST ABORT MISSION IMMEDIATELY. Tarkos almost shouted in frustration. He had to hope that the Rinneret could not understand human facial expressions as he cringed, scowled, swore, shook his head in a violent no, and finally grit his teeth audibly. Tarkos hated using his brain implants to compose text messages. He was the mental equivalent of a one-finger typist who didn’t know where the letters lay on the keyboard. But, while the Rinneret hesitated, he managed to transmit a reply: NO NO NO NO NO NO. IT’S GOING TO TALK! The Rinneret reared back. “You are transmitting!” It pointed a single thin arm at Tarkos’s head. “With that ugly extruded face appendage on your anterior.” “Well,” Tarkos said, “I didn’t think you’d be able to tell.” The Rinneret reached back and pulled the laser from its backpack. Tarkos sighed and pulled his breathing mask off. He interfaced with his suit, and the helmet resting behind his neck slid up and over his head. The helmet was far too large, like the suit. With both hands Tarkos lifted it off. Inside the helmet had been a sleek, armored helmet, which locked down now to mate with his armor. He flexed forward, bringing his fists together in front of his chest, and the cheap oversize spacesuit he wore split along the back. It fell to his feet and twisted in the punishing wind of Qualihout One, revealing the pale gray armor underneath. The Rinneret fired its weapon. The laser burned a trail across Tarkos’s arms and chest. His armor squealed in protest, registering the damage. For a moment Tarkos held his breath, the natural and involuntary reflex whenever a beam cut across him and he expected the delayed pain of a deep laser s***h. But no, the laser was as weak as it appeared, and only vaporized a shallow cut into his armor’s shielding. In the distance, thunder sounded. Tarkos turned his head to look. A tower of smoke rose from the ground, perhaps two kilometers away. The ground shook as the white cloud twisted and dispersed in the wind, forming a billowing inverted cumulus. And, atop this mountain of smoke, a ship rose on a tail of flame. “Chemical rocket boosters,” Tarkos said, nodding in appreciation as the ship leaned toward orbit. “Really old school.” The Rinneret writhed in anger. “Listen to me,” Tarkos said. “Your fellow Rinneret have just abandoned you here. You are alone. If you cooperate, we—” The Rinneret fired the laser again. Alarms resounded in Tarkos’s armor, but the beam just ablated some more shielding. Tarkos’s visor turned black in defense. Camera views filled his vision. The Rinneret stared in horror now as it finally recognized the claw insignia on the front of Tarkos’s armor: sigil of the Harmonizer Corp, the life warriors of the Galactic Alliance that were more commonly called the Predators. The most feared police force in known space. “As a member of the Harmonizer Corp,” Tarkos said in formal Galactic, letting his suit project a booming voice. “I arrest you for crimes of transport of protected life forms, transport of dangerous life forms, unlicensed sale of commonwealth life forms, and—” “Impossible,” the Rinneret shrieked. “No human barbarian could be a Predator!” Tarkos heard another sound now: Clop-clop-clop, clop-clop-clop, clop-clop-clop. A beat like the hammering of the hooves of a racing horse, growing louder as it approached. The Rinneret reached again to its backpack, and this time brought forth a long black tube. A different weapon. A serious weapon, if size were any judge. “You should really put that down,” Tarkos said. “Before you point that at me, let me explain why you should drop the weapon, and then lay on your back, arms in the air. You see, I should warn you that my partner—” And then 300 kilograms of armored predator, shaped like a polar bear and racing as fast as a cheetah, shot out between two rocks to their side. Tarkos saw only a blur, before the massive creature slammed into the side of the Rinneret. He cringed in sympathy as he heard the carapace of the Rinneret c***k. “That my partner, Bria, is a Sussurat,” Tarkos said, as Bria and the already unconscious Rinneret tumbled, their limbs hammering the ground and stirring up a cloud of dust. Tarkos shook his head. “They never let me finish that sentence, and they’d be so much better off if only they would.”