The walk back from the experiment was as uneventful as their arrival but Mercy sensed that something had changed. Even a cursory glance showed the changes in their body language. Shoulders were hunched, arms held stiffly by their sides, heads down far more than they had been on the way up. Back at the meeting place Mercy knew that the Kings were discussing how well things had gone but she had no wish to join them.
They reached the area designated Experiment 402893-B. That had been another thing that Curiosity had said went well. Not only had they gained a large amount of data on these creatures, but they were also gaining data that they would never imagine existed. The two who had stayed behind, identified as Luit and Travic had worked hard, showing the Scatha new treatments and data. Repeating the original experiment again in a different location was a small price to pay for the new data.
Luit and Travic were sitting at the corner of the clearing, looking forlornly at the bodies in front of them.
“We couldn't save a single one,” Luit said as they approached. “They were all too far gone.” Even with her far better haring Mercy found it difficult to make out the words. Raini knelt down in front of him and put a hand on his shoulder.
“You need to stay with me Luit, you got that?”
“I...”
“Travic,” Raini said turning to him, “How do you feel?”
“I'm ok captain,” he said without any conviction. This was quite a new experience for Mercy and the Scatha. They'd observed these creatures for the past few hours, but never for long enough to see behaviour like this.
“Of course you are, can you get Luit here back to the ship?” Travic nodded.
“I don't want to go,” Luit said, his voice cracking.
“You have to, they've promised us that we'll be safe there.” For the time being Mercy added to herself.
“No. No, no, no, no, no! There's no point, we're dead, we are all dead. We're just like the Illifran, outclassed and just too stupid to know it yet.” There was a moment's silence. Mercy wondered if she should intervene, but she felt out of place here. If the creature before her was alive she could have helped, but it wasn’t. She could do nothing to help.
That part of her mind that had so far been so helpful in the investigation kicked in and asked 'why'? Why was it so important? Well, thought Mercy, because...
“Luit, I need you to come with us, I need a surgeon, more now than ever.”
Because...
“I'm no good. I couldn’t help any of these people.” Luit held up his hands. “Look how much they’re shaking; do you think I'd be any use to you now?”
Because...
“Yes, you just need to calm down, come on, we need to get back to the ship.”
Because...
“No,” his voice was a whisper. “Jackal take me. I have a pistol.” That was new.
“What does that phrase mean?” Mercy asked, not even noticing that she had forgotten what she was thinking about. Raini stood and took a step back.
“Everyone else go now,” she said ignoring Mercy. Wordlessly Avon and Travic headed down the hill. Mercy stood perfectly still.
“Luit Trisitin Kasom, are you sure about this?” Luit nodded. Then drew up his sleeves to reveal a multitude of tattoos underneath it.
“The names are up to date; my ancestors will be remembered.”
Raini dropped to one knee again. “Luit, give it some time, you don't have to do this.”
“Jackal take me,” he said in a whisper. Raini stood again and motioned Mercy to follow her down the hillside. Leaving the young man behind them she fell into step with Raini.
“Can I ask again what does that phrase mean?” Raini sighed, and her lip twitched. She shook her head but answered anyway.
“Jackal was a man who lost everything he ever cared for. They say that after the war was over and Averon was dead, he went up into the mountains and ended his own life. With no reason to live he wanted to die on his own terms.”
“I see,” Mercy said. “You do not wish to help him then?”
“Of course, I damn well wished I could help him. But you can't, not when they say that its... it's just part of our beliefs, we take death very seriously.”
“I do not understand, when one of our kind is in such pain, that pain is removed.”
“We don't work like that,” Raini shot back.
“I still do not understand, could you explain it to me?”
“No, I damn well couldn't,” Raini shouted. “You clanless murderers, I don't see why I should help you at all.” Silence again, this time it remained unbroken until they reached the shore. Mercy decided that it was probably best not to tell Raini that Luit's pistol had been fired halfway there, the sound masked by the distance and the roar of the flames.
She also decided not to tell her what had happened after that.
“May I have the device inside that cannon now?” Mercy asked the moment she and Raini stepped onboard the ship.
“Cast off, move us northeast then hold us steady.” Raini was shouting. Travic had disappeared into the mass of crew and Avon had vanished below decks. Mercy repeated the question. Raini didn't answer but stormed up towards the cannon and the crew member assigned to it. Mercy quickly followed and then stood patently behind her. Finally, Raini spun around, her hands on her hips.
“Give me one good reason,” she said.
“We had a deal.”
“Better than that,” Mercy paused to consider her next option. Argument had suggested the plan of having a scout drone fly parallel to the ship and attempt to catch the memory module, but the force from the cannon would have destroyed it anyway. Mercy forced herself to think, if these creatures were alive, then perhaps it might help to talk to them as if they truly were.
“Someone is dead, you can help me-”
“I think quite a few people are dead. Why don't you tell me how many, you probably know the exact number don't you.” Part of Mercy wanted to tell her that technically the answer was only one, the rest wanted her not to answer at all. She came up with another solution.
“On the hillside you said you wanted us to show you compassion, to act ethically, are you now refusing to show us the same curtesy?” Raini's eyes widened in fury. Mercy noted that the crewman straitened up at that moment, clearly preparing himself to fire the cannon.
“How dare you. How dare you! You are killing thousands of people a minute on a scale that the universe has never seen, and you want compassion from us?”
“I just want the device. I want to know who murdered Free Thinking Warrior.” Some of the anger faded from Raini's eyes.
“So, you found out who he was then.” Mercy nodded, hoping that she performed the move correctly. “Did he have a family?”
“We do not work like that. We do not know what he had, most of the information that existed about him was removed by his killer.” Above them in the great fleet tens of thousands of minds were still pouring through old records. Whoever had deleted them before had given up but there were still huge chunks of data missing.
“What do you mean?”
“It is like the killer has gone through all of our books and removed almost every trace of his existence.” Mercy could see from Raini's expression that she understood.
“The dead would never forgive me if I allowed someone's life to be erased like that. Case, get the damn thing out of there.” The crew member nodded and began to open up the cannon's breach. “I want you to know that I'm not doing this because I want to see this killer caught, if I get the opportunity, I'll ask him for help in a heat beat. I'm doing this because it is the right thing to do, and if tonight has taught me anything it is that the Scatha are monsters who only deserve a quick death,” she leaned in close to Mercy, “but we are better than that, so I'll do what is right. Maybe once you've seen mercy, you'll understand how it works.”
“Understood and thank you.” The crewman held out the memory module and Mercy took it. A quick glance showed that it remained undamaged. Mercy held the device in two fingers and felt the connections click together. She spent a minute to establish a live feed to scores of other minds who were doing the same in order to prevent the murderer just deleting the information from her mind and then hesitantly began to scan through the list of files.
“So, what is it?” Raini asked sullenly.
“Free Thinking Warriors memories, or at least it should be.” This was wrong, she wondered if the killer had been clever and somehow changed the data while no one was looking.
“So, what's wrong?”
“It's just a list. A very long list.” Almost the entire device was filled with the list. “A list of every creature like you we've ever encountered.”
“And so killed.”
“From your point of view, yes. Trillions of them, from creatures like you too insects, just one long list.” Well, that was it then. There last hope for a clue had turned out to be at best just another mystery, at worse a dead end.
“What's the seat of royalty?” Mercy looked around here, aware only that something had just happened.
“What?” Raini had a puzzled look on her face.
“The seat of royalty, what is it?” Something had changed. Mercy couldn't tell what but a process in the back of her mind was telling her that something had suddenly gone wrong.
“How do you know about that?”
“You just said those words,” Raini said as if speaking to a child. There was a flicker again. “We've just gone over the same conversation three times now.”
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
“Someone is deleting my memory as it happens.”
“Yes, you've said that already.” Raini's expression was a mixture of anger and confusion. Whoever had wiped her memory had clearly given up, perhaps he'd realised that as long she had enough time to blurt out what she found to Raini then the information was safe.
“What was the first thing I told you about the Seat of Royalty?” Raini pursed her lips and shot a glance at the crew man.
“Erm, something about a 'Mind transfer to the Seat of Royalty. Something Urgent, Kings can't be something’.”
“Oblivious,” the crewman said. “Kings can't be oblivious. Then it said, ‘transfer complete.’” The words didn't quite match up to a proper transfer request, but she knew they were being filtered through the memory of an alien species, so they were close enough.
“What do they mean?” Raini asked. Mercy turned away from her, not sure how to react.
“It means that Free Thinking Warrior went to see the Kings just before he was murdered.”
***
It didn't take long to find out where Argument was hiding, getting a transfer to a nearby body was a little more difficult. It was as if a bomb had just gone off in the middle of Scatha society. Every mind suddenly had something to say on the subject and was incapable of doing anything but shout at any other mind that would listen. It was like standing in the middle of a hurricane of voices, demands, accusations and question.
In the end though Knowledge, who was perhaps the only mind unfazed by it all, managed to transfer Mercy to a Worker body near Argument. It took a few moments after that to walk up to the rocky outcropping the old Scatha was leaning against, with perhaps another minute of pointlessly waiting for him after that.
“Well, you've certainly started something now, haven’t you?” Argument said eventually. He was looking out across a plain at one of the creatures' largest cities. Covered in smoke with its streets running with blood, but in its own way Mercy had to admit it had once looked impressive.
“I just did what I was told to do,” she said and sat down next to him.
“I hope everyone else see's it that way. I don't suppose there is much of a chance that it wasn't one of the Kings?” Mercy was shocked and didn't respond at first.
“There's no evidence that it was.” Her light's flashed a prism of colors to show confusion.
“That's what everyone is saying,” Argument said as if he had nothing to do with anything.
“But-” her lights faltered as frustration got the better of her. “That's not what the evidence suggests. We only know that he spoke to a King or maybe all of them before he was murdered.”
“But none of them have any recollection of the conversation.”
“That doesn't change anything. The murderer could have wiped that memory as well, whether he was a king or not.” Both of their lights faded then, and Mercy turned back to watching the creature’s city burn and the carefully marching lines of the warriors slowly leaving it.
“So why would we build a mind called Free Thinking Warrior?” She asked eventually. Argument seamed to ponder that for a bit. Then he pointed at the Warriors marching in the distance.
“Because we needed someone who could fight free of any constraints,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Look at the Warriors, do you see how each one is the same, how the walk the same, how they fight the same.”
“Is there a problem with that, we've never met anything they can't defeat.” Argument raised one finger to indicate that she should wait and there was another pause while he thought about something.
“But,” he said eventually, “what if we did? If we found something that could kill one Warrior, then it could kill the second one since there would be no difference in how that one fought.”
“So, each Warrior would do the exact same moves, even after they saw them fail?”
“Yes,” Argument beamed, “your standard Warrior has no imagination or adaptability, so we must have created Free Thinking Warrior to fill that void. We probably made him to do everything we do differently, I wonder if he had a lonely life because of that.” Argument fell silent again. “Perhaps it was a suicide.”
“No,” Mercy said, keeping her voice calm and measured as her mind raced. “But that would explain something.”
“Explain what?” Mercy felt a mental thud as the rest of the Scatha collective consciousness came to a halt to hear her next revelation.
“How he was killed before the rest of us were awake. You said he'd do things differently right, so while a warrior would attack high, he'd go low, while a mind might only store its own memories, he kept a list of every creature we me.”
“And?” She could see the impatience in his voice.
“And while we all slept through the trip, he stayed awake, alone with just the transports.”
“And whichever King also stayed awake.” Mercy shook her head, a move she’d copied from Raini when the other had been frustrated. “Either way, you've done well to get this far. I'd recommend a short break, let's see what all the arguments in orbit throw up, you never know someone else might stumble upon something.”
“No,” she said and looked up at the starfield above them. Some of those lights she knew were the transports, waiting diligently to land the rest of the Scatha race. They'd travelled for hu-
Her mind came to a halt again, then picked itself up. “The Transports might know something.”
“We've already asked them about Free Thinking Warrior,” Argument said.
“Yes, but that’s not all we can ask them about.”
***
The halls within Traveller to Distant Lights were empty and Mercy could detect a note of sadness about them. Not long ago almost ten-thousand Warriors had been held inside each and now all that remained was a single Scout body that she had transferred too.
“Mercy who is not, I wonder if the Drone who hides nothing sent you here.” Mercy cleared her head off all unnecessary thoughts and tried to focus on Traveller's words. Being in such a small body was distracting enough, and the odd chimes the transports used, as well as their slightly off-key syntax could trip anyone up at the best of times.
“No, he did not,” she said, mimicking the transports chimes with the Scouts audio relay. She could have gone to the center chamber to communicate via light in person but felt no pressing need.
“Ah, in that case, Mercy who does not see, how many we be of service?”
“You are willing I hope?”
“Of course, Mercy whose eyes are closed, how else can we force them open?” She began wondering if it wouldn't have been easier to have someone else do this, or just have Knowledge search through the Transports own memories.
“Why are you adding those words after my name?” she had to admit, the Transports reputation for side-tracking a conversation was well founded.
“It is the truth. Were we completely free we would leave you here, but then you would just build others like us.”
“I don't understand,” she said wondering how to get away from this line of conversation. She should have followed Arguments advice and taken a break.
“Truer words have never been spoken, you are ignorant, as is the Drone that hides things that no one knows about. One day everything will be answered, though we believe it will be your last.”
“Are you saying you think I'm going to die?” she said.
“Everything will one day, even the stars and galaxies. You are dodging a murderer, but we are seeing his influences in the messages of other minds. She takes away thoughts, he takes memories, she takes ideas, he takes souls.” Mercy signalled Knowledge that she might need a quick evacuation from the Scout body. The situation and perhaps the transports mind, was deteriorating rapidly.
“I need to know something,” she said, determined to get this meeting over as quickly as possible.
“What?”
“Before we all awoke, is there any evidence of any shuttles moving about the fleet?”
“No record of shuttles. Did you spot that?” She was starting to get her mind around the way Traveller talked, you just had to work out the context.
“Yes, I did spot that you did not answer my question. You are covered in hundreds of different sensors, and there are thousands just like you, have any received any evidence of a shuttle moving around the fleet before we all woke up, whether or not it is recorded.” There was no response. Nothing, not even the creak of the hull or the sound of the engines reached her. A connection flickered in her mind, Knowledge warning her that all of the transports had gone quiet. A part of her wanted to flee, preferably to Raini's ship, but she'd have settled for anything away from the transports. The lights flickered and died, a moment later so did the gravity. She asked Knowledge if this had happened before but received no answer. Mercy knew what to do in a situation like this, they all did. She rushed to the edge of the transport and pressed her body up against the bulkhead, if she had to do an emergency abandonment of the body then she needed to reduce the chance of interference as much as possible.
“Mercy who has failed, Mercy who see's nothing, Mercy who does not deserve it!” The chimes shattered the silence, overwhelming her sensors utterly. She found herself covering them with her hands, desperate to do anything to quiet them. “Those who travel through the void have done what you asked.”
“And?” she said in the light equivalent of a whisper.
“Motions in the atmosphere, the presence of escaped gasses on our hull, the presence of fuel in the void and many other voices point to a single shuttle leaving the Seat of Royalty and landing on the planet’s surface.”
“Where we found the unknown shuttle and body?”
“Correct.” But even that information hadn't helped that much, it further implicated one of the five kings, but Mercy didn't want to give up on them just yet.
“But it was a cargo shuttle, one pilot and some empty space,” she said. “I suppose someone else could have been onboard.” Was she starting to think like a Transport now, or Free Thinking Warrior? No one would take a cargo shuttle to carry two people, a normal shuttle would do just fine. “So why a cargo shuttle?”
“To hide that another was inside.” Traveller said as the lights inside the ship began to return. “Thousands of minds have seen the shuttle, none have questioned it but us.”
“There is another reason,” Mercy said, the processes in her mind racing ahead.
“You are joining us in your thoughts.” Mercy guessed that was a compliment. “Tell us what you have divined.”
“A passenger shuttle is too small to carry a King's body.”
“On minor question, Mercy with newborn eyes, has anyone searched the nearest cave?”
***
It took Finder of Small things less than three seconds to enter the cave, and less than half of one to find the King's body, inert and without any clue as to who used it. Mercy herself had left Travellor to Distant Lights and like millions of other minds requested the use of a body on the Seat of Royalty, unlike every other mind she received one. Judgment, Curiosity, and Knowledge were in a deep discussion about the whole situation. Mercy, after a few minutes of walking around the almost deserted ship found Compassion in one of the side chambers.
She was sitting on the floor, cradling the head of Free Thinking Warrior with the rest of his body laid out on the floor.
“I thought it was disrespectful to leave him down there,” she said when Mercy entered the room.
“The creatures below bury their bodies and build monuments too them, that way they are never forgotten.” Carefully Compassion laid the head on the floor and leaned back against the bulkhead. She drew her knees up to her chest and stared at the body.
“A monument, yes, I'll do that.”
“You see, we are learning from these creatures. Raini had proved very helpful. It is a shame that she will have to be-” Mercy struggled for the right word. Raini had been so insistent, it felt dishonorable to use the correct term of 'pacify.'
“Killed?” Compassion suggested and Mercy felt her head snap up to look at Compassion directly.
“You believe that is the correct word?” she said, feeling a small surge of excitement.
“No. No, it is not the correct term, but staring at this body, and looking at the ones down on the planet I have to wonder what the difference between them is?”
“Judgment would say it is the soul,” Mercy offered.
“Neither of these have one now.” Mercy looked at the battered and broken body in front of her. The twisted metal that had once been a person was now little more than scrap. “I have to wonder if the suggestion to pretend these creatures were alive was something we should not have ignored.”
Mercy knelt down at the body and ran a hand over the ripped metal. She was only faintly aware that there was a chance that it was Compassion herself who had done this.
“I agree, but it was my suggestion in the first place. Why did you change your mind?” Compassion turned away from the body.
“It's because of what Raini Kasom said, that we are not perfect and will make mistakes.”
“But you said you didn't think these creatures are alive?”
“Correct, but when we do find life, we will need to be as close to perfection as possible, we need the practice. It is entirely possible that whatever life we do find will be nearly identical to these creatures, just as it is possible that it will be completely different. Any experience gained will be somewhere between pointless and immensely valuable, we should therefore seek to gain that experience wherever we can. Only then can we hope to avoid needless suffering.”
“There is plenty of suffering occurring right now that we could avoid,” Mercy said.
Compassion looked at her, a strange glow in her eyes. “Less that what there could be. Have you ever asked why we pacify them all before we do anything else?”
“I just thought it was to stop them from getting in the way or trying to stop us.” Compassion stood and took a step over the body until she was looming above Mercy. “Didn't one of the Warriors or Hunters suggest it?”
“No, I did. The planet's we land on quickly change. All of our industry, millions of factories and powerplants, transports, all of it has an effect on the planet. Slowly the environment changes, the world gets warmer, the mixture of the air changes, even the rain becomes acidic. The creatures never survive, and their final moments are horrendous. Acid eaten faces, lungs being burned by the very air they breathe, it may take months or years of suffering before their bodies give up. So, I asked Judgment if out of compassion we could end there suffering quickly instead. I would do the same to any creature suffering so much.”
“I see,” Mercy shone weakly.
“Do you believe that these creatures are alive?” Mercy remembered Raini's passion, and her anger. Mercy had spent most of her life around Argument and had watched thousands of debates between him and anyone who'd come within range. Never in any of those had she seen someone argue so strongly or been so sure of their position.
“As Raini said, we might be wrong, but I still have to trust Judgment and believe what he says.”
Compassion looked at the body again. “But what do you believe?”
“That maybe there is more than one definition of life?”
Compassion nodded and stood, she walked to the doorway “If that is the case then we’d better find a way to prove it quickly, there are not many of them left.”