-- o --
Beneath a blood-crimson sky where ribbons of black cloud twist and boil, a ruined city sleeps. What once were grand apartments, shops, offices, museums and monuments are now heaps of crumbling stone and twisted steel, melted plastic and broken glass; on elegant boulevards, smears of carbon mark the graves of trees. By a debris-filled trench that had been a river, a palace, glowing faintly with a green luminescence, lies scattered like a child's building blocks, its treasures lost forever. Steel pylons wilt beneath the lightning that flashes unceasingly from the angry heavens.
And the heart of this city? A huge crater, blackened and blasted and empty, a poisoned, fatal wound. The icy wind that howls across it sets orange dust to skirl and dance; grains stream from two charred tangles of metal and plastic that lie at the centre of the devastation, revealing two small black spheres that glitter darkly.
- xy -
He clambered over masonry and gravestones coated in melted coloured glass, ignoring the low energy warnings that flickered and buzzed at the periphery of his vision. He was the last, he knew it; the others should have reported in a week ago. They'd be after him now, be careful. Summoning up the map, he scanned the glyphs that overlaid his sight. Ah yes, Paris. Home territory. Lucky.
A sensor in his head glowed. She was somewhere near, her scent was strong. At last! He wished that he had time to prepare for her, to recharge, to cover up the oozing wound in his left side, but no time remained. Scrambling over blackened concrete and metal sheets cut and bent like a giant's nail clippings, he found a clearing in the rubble, where one of their bombs had landed. A radiation meter shrilled in his head; he switched it off, for it no longer mattered. She was coming to him. She would find him soon.
- oo -
A growing rumble underlies the wind's keening, a dazzling pillar of blue flame lights the sky. A black dot at its tip resolves into a bulbous craft, all green and grey and flowing curves, that settles into the crater in an ochre cloud of frenzied dust. For a while there is only the wind's howl and the ticking of the ship as it cools, then a door hums open and a creature shuffles out into the acid air. Beneath the membrane that protects it from the toxins in the atmosphere, the flat head quests from side to side, faceted sensory stalks bulging. Three sets of barbed mandibles click and chatter in contrapuntal anticipation. Wrapped feelers poke and prod.
The burragar is happy, for here is a mystery, an unexpected happening in the All. This world once teemed with life, but now is dead and barren. Why? What has happened? The ship, an extension of the burragar's consciousness as the burragar is of the ship's, flashes its atmospheric analyses onto the membrane's surface; high concentrations of heavy metals and radionuclides, also catalytic organics of a destructive nature. Conclusion: a fierce and deadly war between two or more technically advanced species involving atomic and biological weapons, resulting in their destruction and the elimination of all life. It cites three other examples that the burragar's race has discovered.
-- Could there be survivors? Perhaps below?
-- Most unlikely, replies the ship. My instruments indicated no energy sources strong enough to maintain bio-compatible conditions within one hundred kilometres of the surface.
-- But what could have caused such a war? Were they not aware of the All?
-- Insufficient data exists for that judgement. But the Universal Pattern indicates that evolutionary competition for a scarce resource of physical or spiritual importance can occur even between intelligent species.
The burragar's left auxilliary abdominal appendage, feeling its way over a long-corroded mass of metal and plastic, nudges a black sphere, which rolls into the sand. The burragar utters a high-pitched hum of surprise and articulates to pick it up, a portable analyser bulging through the membrane to examine the alien artifact.
-- Harmless, hard, impregnable, reports the ship. Clearly protective of something. Perhaps this will help to answer our questions.
The burragar observes a second sphere glittering in the changing light; an instrument darts towards it and collects it in its jointed legs.
-- Similar but not identical. A different model?
** Warning: radiation dosage exceeding safe levels. Recommended action: return at once.
Leaving the ship's sensors to image the sites of the finds, the burragar shuffles inside. The door droops shut behind it.
- xx -
She swam weeping through the earth, fingers clawing at stones and broken glass, her eyes and breasts weeping. Oh, my sisters! Will I never commune with you again? She paused for a moment in her tunnelling, and a thrill ran through her outstretched arms and down her body. Ah! It is him! She changed direction, sliding in the viscous fluid that lubricated her path, and burrowed desperately upward. I must reach him, must find him! He will assuage my loss...
- oo -
Leaving the membrane to deliquesce, the burragar rests against a comfortable inclined plane that has grown out of the ship's floor and places the spheres into depressions that open in the control panel in front of it. Within seconds, the ship's advanced analytical organs register their preliminary report in a flickering kaleidoscopic display of coloured lights: both spheres impermeable to forms of energy known to be inimical to carbon-containing polymers of mesothermal origin. Conducting facets on one sphere suggest an unlocking mechanism based on correct application of a sequence of electrical voltages; the other has a number of microscopic cavities of a suitable shape to receive macromolecular signals. Conclusion: spheres are products of similar but distinct high technologies, and most probably contain organic material regarded as valuable by the spheres' builders.
The burragar clatters its mandibles in pleasure. Eagerly it sets in the train the commands that will ask the All for the keys to the locks on the spheres; deep in the ship quantum devices blur into uncertainty, testing all possible combinations in all possible universes before resolving on an Answer. The spheres sink from sight and are replaced by images that hang in the air. The burragar watches, humming deep with excitement as probes extrude from the ship and the Answers are transmitted. There are two soft clicks and each sphere reveals its secrets, one unravelling like string and the other opening like a flower. The burragar's feelers burst into a triumphant tattoo of taps, which increase in speed and complexity when the ship reports that the spheres consist of millions of microscopic cavities containing organic macromolecules typical of type two life-forms.
- xx -
She changed direction, thinking to surprise him, and burst through the wall of the crater into the dead light. He stood with his back to her, silhouetted against the bulbous red sun, a thing of hair and metal, sweating oil, armoured weapons sac dragging on the ground behind him. As she howled out her loss he turned towards her, red lit eyes glowing, joint fluid and wires spilling out of the hole in his side. Ah! he is wounded! she thought. Then programmed instincts took over, and she leaned back and opened her metal legs.
- oo -
Rapidly the ship scans the contents of the cavities and displays images of the structures it finds. A long helical molecule fades into existence, details clarifying as the ship's analysers discover them; the two outer chains winding round each other like twining branches, the flat, cyclic compounds of carbon and nitrogen, in complementary pairs, attached to and stacked between them. And other molecules, clearly organic catalysts, complex globular structures with grooves in their surfaces that fit snugly in and around the helix. The burragar buzzes in recognition; a typical type two genetic system. The ship confirms its guess, animating the image to show the catalysts at work, unwinding and duplicating the strands in an elegant molecular dance. The burragar chitters in contentment; all conforms to the Universal Pattern, all is in harmony. It has seen this many times before, but still it is beautiful. Tired, it sucks at a nipple that appears in the wall, shuffles into a warm, soft swamp, and rests.
- xy -
He heard a noise behind him and turned quickly, raising his missile tube, cursing his dead sensors. Too late; her weapons port irised open and a crackling pulse of red light arced towards him. Frantically he threw himself to the ground, his own shot going wild, knowing that hers would not miss. Then, miraculously, the tracking glyphs changed direction, passing him by; his head swivelled to follow the missile as it exploded against an Androgenesis Clinic sign lying half-buried in the rubble, the erect phallus inscribed on its surface erupting into blinding white light. Ah. Primary instincts took over. Useful. Remember.
Dust and shrapnel billowed over the crater as he scrambled for a hiding place. Briefly, he saw her through the gloom, metal belly swollen with weapons, grease trickling from eyes and breasts, carbon fibre hair swinging in the wind, the tips questing, searching. Ducking out of sight as the blue searchlights of her eyes turned towards him, he surveyed his status. Secondary and tertiary weapons systems inoperative, left side sensors dead, energy dangerously low. Not good. Try a new tactic. Clutching at his throat, he tore it open and pulled out his voicebox, laying it on the ground in front of him.
"Wait!" The metallic tones cut sharply through the swirling air. "Truce! Parley!"
- oo -
** Awake! Awake!
The delicate alarm summons the burragar from its rest. Concerned at the ship's distress, it examines the results of its analysis. Two images, deduced from the contents of the spheres, hang in space. One is of a bipedal creature, clearly descended from tree-dwellers, homothermic, with a high sense organ to body mass ratio. All features typical of creatures aware of the All, just what the burragar was expecting. The other - is identical, or very nearly. There is less facial hair, two large glands near the top of the torso which are rudimentary in the other, and an invagination of flesh at the lower limb joint where the other has an evagination, but otherwise the same. The burragar hoots in annoyance. The creatures are too alike. There must - must! - be a fundamental difference, at the genetic level, a reason for self-aware creatures to fight each other to extinction. The All demands it. Anything else would be unthinkable, a denial of the Universal Pattern. The difference must exist, and must be found.
- xx-xy -
His words impinged on her sensors, cutting across the search algorithms. She was surprised; she had not realised that the final versions were capable of speech, though, now she thought of it, the slurred grunts that the last one had made as she dismembered it could have been so intended. Searching her memory (no! I must not think of my sisters now!), she located the words he used and their meanings. Interesting. Probably a distraction tactic, but possibly a way to achieve her aim without exposing herself to danger. After all, he is wounded. She took cover and framed a reply.
"What is there to discuss? You know that it is too late. I felt the last of my sisters die an hour ago, in this place."
Ah, he thought, she has taken the bait! And she is the last as well! Unless she is lying, of course; they were always known for guile. Drawing up his weapons sac, he slipped silently through the rubble towards her.
"I had no choice. You know that."
"Nor did my sister!"
"I too am alone. The last of my brothers died a week ago."
She repressed a howl of triumph. Her goal was so close! "Then this is the final battle. Whoever wins shall control the Earth." Her sensors located the position of his voice; she moved towards it.
- oo -
-- Ship! Give me a comparison of the genetic data. Find the difference!
The ship's devices whirr and click, determining the average sequence of the three billion units forming each genome in the samples from each sphere. Anxiously the burragar awaits the answer. The anxiety that it and the ship feel will not fade until this apparent contradiction is resolved. At last the analysis is complete - and even before the ship reports, the burragar can sense from its unhappiness that it has failed to restore the Pattern. The answer, when it comes, is worse than the burragar supposed. The ship can find no significant genetic differences between the two creatures.
- xy -
He saw her move and his rangefinders checked the distance. Still too far away, keep her talking.
"But must it be so? Can there not be peace? We have warred for so long. We have destroyed the world we both seek to win. Can there not be an end to the hatred?"
"That is not possible."
"It is possible if we choose it. We are the last, you and I. If we make terms, then there is none to stop us."
He saw her halt, considering his words, consulting her programming. Black oily smoke slid between them like a snake.
"No, it is too late! Too late... Ever since the Century of Liberation, when we freed ourselves from our fate as brood-mares for your sex, you have hunted us and we have hunted you..."
"What choice did we have? In the Century of Disaster you took away our jobs, our roles in society, our place in the family. Then you developed the Parthenogenesis technique and took our biological purpose too. We had to resist!"
"So your sex has always claimed. We have never seen it that way."
Almost there. "Ah, these are old arguments; let us not rehearse them again. What are your terms?"
"You know them; they are what you can never give. Recompense for the centuries spent in slavery, for the millions of our lives wasted in the furtherance of your sex, the opportunities lost. But give up that which you guard so that you can never enslave us again, and we will let you live."
"You know I cannot do that, even if I wished to. My programming will not permit it." He consulted his sensors. One more step.
"And mine will not permit the peace you ask. And so it ends."
She stepped forward, bending her body back; her weapons port opened and a fiery globe engulfed the rock behind which his voice box lay. His missile tube rose from his belly and a volley of rockets streaked towards her. As he dived for cover, he heard her screams; ha, a hit! But the screams rose, electronic and piercing, into the ultrasonic, blinding his remaining sensors, and suddenly black dots buzzed and darted around him, chilling the air to liquid. Sirens blared in his skull and he knew with a dull despair that he could not continue, that all was lost; unless... one last desperate chance...
- oo -
Upset, the burragar calls up images of the average genome calculated from the thousands of molecules in each sphere. Perhaps there was something that the ship had missed... Forty six tightly bundled helices, joined at their centres into twenty three pairs of functionally equivalent molecules, appear for each sphere. The burragar despairs. The ship is right, there is no difference between them. Except... except...
-- Look ship, that pair there!
The ship expands the images.
-- See, the two molecules in that pair are the same size in this genome, but different sizes in the other! The Pattern is restored!
The burragar chitters in contentment, then stops when the ship continues to broadcast despair.
-- They are functionally the same.
-- But they are physically different!
-- The expression patterns are the same.
The images change, showing the functional analysis of the molecules, the active and inactive areas coloured in red and black. In one genome, the smaller molecule in the pair is almost completely black, the larger crimson with activity. In the other, the two identical molecules glow dull grey-red, showing reduced expression. Overall activity for both pairs is the same.
-- But there must be some difference! The creatures were not identical.
-- Yes. I have found it.
-- Show me!
The small inactive molecule expands, filling the view space with darkness. Then, near one end, a few faint lines of red appear, most correlated with lines in the other molecule of the pair. But one is not; a tiny region of code two hundred and forty units long, less than one ten millionth of the total, active briefly at the beginning of the development of the organism.
-- That is the difference? Is it significant?
-- Numerically, no. On average, genomes in the same sphere differ from one another by six thousand units. The difference caused by this region is less than one twenty-fifth of that.
-- But functionally? What does it do?
-- It changes the levels of a few messenger chemicals, which in turn create the physical differences between the creatures.
-- And on the organs of cognition? Enough to alter their perception of the All?
-- No. Their nutritional requirements are the same, their atmospheric and temperature requirements are the same, their response to electromagnetic radiation and other forms of energy is the same, their cognitive organs are the same. There are physical differences, yes, but they are purely to ensure proper recombination of their genetic units. These creatures are the same. They show every sign of rationality, of knowing of the All. They could not have gone to war against themselves. Yet clearly they did. I cannot explain it. The Pattern cannot explain it. We must conclude - and the Burragar hears the ship chitter in despair - that the Pattern - is broken...
- xx -
Her arm hung at her side, bloody and dead, oil trickling down the lifeless fingers. She fired the draining spheres again and again, screaming pain and revenge for the murder of her sister. In a sudden movement, the murderer darted out from behind a broken statue and ran straight towards her, missile tube raised. From the flickering of his eyes she knew that the spheres had done their work, and her scream became a cry of triumph as she arched her body and opened her weapons port to release the killing flame. But with a sudden roar his weapons sac blew away and he flew towards her, arms outstretched, mouth open in a scream that he could no longer enunciate. Hastily she sent out deflection and absorption spheres, but he cannoned into her and his missile tube jammed in her weapons port. She felt the tube's vibration as the last of his missiles fired into her belly and saw the light in his eyes finally flicker out, and then her stomach bulged and ripped open as her weapons store exploded, and there was an agony and then no more.
And a vast mushroom cloud, crowned by lightning, churning and rolling and red and purple and black, enveloped the ruined city. When it dispersed, many hours later, a huge crater lay where it had been. At its centre, two tangles of plastic and steel and carbon lay a little apart from one another, popping and fizzing, and in them, released from their confinement, two black facetted spheres shone in the setting sun.
- oo -
And the burragar lies huddled in a corner of the ship, curled in a tight ball, feelers quivering and jerking spasmodically, squealing with more distress and agony than it can bear. For the Universal Pattern is destroyed, and as the ship sets a course into the depths of space, away from its home world forever, the burragar, shivering, twitching, repeats, again and again:
-- Not logical! Not logical!
And in the darkness, the ruined city sleeps.
Mark Tolley
23rd November 1996
3289 words