The Gap into Madness: Chaos and Order (70 page)

This
ignorance stretched across the whole spectrum of sentience. At one extreme,
humankind had no idea how an Amnioni experienced sensory input. What gave an
Amnioni physical pleasure? What constituted pain? How did the visual field
appear? Were members of the species attracted to each other? And at the other,
humankind had no information about Amnion culture. What relationship, if any,
did individual Amnion have with their offspring? Did they in fact have
offspring at all, or was every member of the species impersonally manufactured
in some way? And did they produce art? Did their social structures provide for
imaginative creation? If so, of what did it consist?

No one
knew.

Language
was the only tool humankind had to work with. This was like using a pair of
field glasses to study the wonders of the galaxy. The tool had neither the
range nor the precision for the task.

Obstacles
abounded, not least among them the fact that Amnion intraspecies communication
did not rely exclusively on sound. The projection and manipulation of
pheromones also played a significant part, as did — according to some theorists
light and colour.

But
precisely what part did pheromonic signals play? Were they analogous to “body
language” in humans — a more or less conscious form of posturing — or were they
denotatively encoded? If the former, they were of secondary importance: translation
could function without taking them into account. If the latter, however, they
were essential to comprehension.

In
addition, finding accurate approximations or analogies for alien concepts was
inherently difficult. Each species was hindered in its attempts at
comprehension by the very limitations which enabled or enriched its own
language. A case in point was the Amnion use of the word “defensives” to refer
to “warships.” Was “defensive” truly the best human word the Amnion could find
to indicate the intended function of a warship? Did the Amnion perceive their
own genetic imperialism as a form of “defence”? Or was the word merely an
instance of the rhetorical legerdemain diplomats and politicians loved — an
effort to make a threat appear benign through the manipulation of language?

Precision
would have been useful in such matters. Instead it was impossible.

One of
the most critical examples involved understanding the apparent lack of personal
pronouns in the Amnion language. When diplomats or other “decisive” figures
spoke, they made no reference to themselves as individuals. They claimed no
individual agendas, acknowledged no individual desires. Regardless of the scale
of the issues under discussion, they either spoke for the Amnion or did not
speak at all. Only human beings incompletely altered by mutagens used such
words as “I”, “me”, and “my”.

A
corollary problem involved the apparent absence in Amnion speech of a number of
abstract concepts much relied on by humankind, among them “good”, “evil”, “justice”,
“mercy”, and “loyalty”. It was theoretically possible, however, that such
concepts did exist between Amnion, but could only be communicated by means of
pheromones. The ideas themselves may have been considered too intimate or
revealing for speech.

By
contrast the use of personal pronouns — at least in human terms — was at once
so ordinary, so ubiquitous, and so practical that any language which didn’t
employ them seemed almost imponderably unwieldy and restrictive.

What
did the lack of personal pronouns imply about the nature of Amnion intelligence
and thought patterns, or the character of Amnion ambitions?

These
questions were urgent because Amnion genetic imperialism was taken as given.
Knowledge of the enemy was a necessary weapon. If the Amnion couldn’t be
understood, how could they be defeated?

Efforts
to account for the known characteristics of Amnion language revolved around one
or the other of two distinct hypotheses, each with its own adherents and
detractors, each with its own implications for humankind’s dealings with
forbidden space.

One
postulated what was sometimes called a “hive mind”. Drawing analogies from
certain species of insects, this theory suggested that all Amnion partook of a
communal intelligence which had its physical centre or nexus, its “queen”,
somewhere deep in alien space. Individual members or units of this mind had a
separate corporeal being, but no separate thoughts or volition. Instead each
was effectively a neuron or ganglion of the hive mind, transmitting data inward
— and action outward.

Proponents
of this theory used it to explain why the first human experiment with a mutagen
had driven its host mad. As the woman who had volunteered for the experiment
was transformed, she had lost her reason because distance — if nothing else —
had cut the now-Amnioni off from her/its source of identity and purpose. Under
this hypothesis, great store was placed on reports that some humans had heard
Amnion make reference to an entity, construct, or concept called the “Mind/Union.”
What could this be, if it were not the “queen” of the “hive” — the centre of
intelligence and intention for the whole species?

If the
hive mind theory was accurate, then the single most effective tactic humankind
could use against the Amnion would be to locate and extirpate the “Mind/Union”.
Without its “queen,” the entire species would collapse into its own kind of
madness.

The
opposing hypothesis was more insidious — and, in a sense, more frightful. Its
proponents dismissed the “Mind/Union” as a corporeal entity or nexus; rather
they considered the term to be an abstract concept — the equivalent of words
like “good” and “evil”, which humans used to rationalise their actions. And
they dismissed also the argument that the woman who had first accepted a
mutagen had gone mad because of her separation from the “Mind/Union”: they
insisted instead that her madness had been a consequence of having her genetic
identity ripped away.

The
opposing hypothesis held that the Amnion were driven, not by a collective
intelligence or hive mind, but by the essential coding of the nucleotides which
comprised their RNA. They had no humanlike abstract concepts for the same
reason that they had no humanlike personal pronouns: they needed none. Their
imperialism was genetic in content as well as in form; in inspiration as well
as in effect. Commandments analogous to the human lust for reproduction
impelled their actions. They were unified and moved by impulses at once more
profound, more global, and more imaginable than the directives of some
impossibly distant — as well as impossibly homogeneous — “queen”.

Adherents
of the genetic imperative theory argued that no surgical strike anywhere in
forbidden space could have a meaningful impact on the threat which the Amnion
presented. The motley and multifarious pageant of life in the galaxy would
never be safe until every single Amnioni was stricken from existence.

HASHI

H
ashi Lebwohl considered the quantum mechanics of reality as he
shuffled through the corridors of UMCPHQ toward the docks. Werner Heisenberg,
that strange man, had named the truth decades ahead of his time when he’d
postulated that the position and velocity of an electron couldn’t be determined
simultaneously. When one knew where a given particle was, one couldn’t identify
its movements. When one quantified its movements, one could no longer establish
its location. Knowledge precluded knowledge: in some sense the effort to
understand reality prevented comprehension. And yet without that effort
humankind would never have known that electrons existed; that the macroverse
depended for its predictable solidity on the indefinable activities of the
microverse.

Hashi
himself was a kind of atomic particle, transforming realities as he moved;
bringing new facts to life and losing old as he slopped along in his untied
shoes toward the berth where the Suka Bator shuttle waited.

The
conceit pleased him. The UMCPDA director assigned no moral valence to truth.
Nevertheless he admired it enormously. To his eyes, the quirky yet seamless flux
of facts and interpretations which defined reality was a process of surpassing
beauty.

He was
on his way to define certain truths, thereby causing others to become
unknowable.

No one
had asked him to ride Koina Hannish’s PR shuttle down the gravity well to Earth
in order to attend the next session of the Governing Council for Earth and
Space. Protocol wasn’t among his duties. Whatever happened when the GCES met in
extraordinary session to consider Captain Vertigus’ still-secret Bill of
Severance, it was none of Hashi Lebwohl’s business.

Similarly,
Security on Suka Bator wasn’t his concern. His mandate, levied onto his
chagrined head by an openly angry Warden Dios, was to pursue the UMCP’s
investigation into the terrorist attacks which had killed Godsen Frik and very
nearly done the same to Captain Sixten Vertigus.

Such
considerations didn’t stop him. Regardless of the fact that his
responsibilities were presumably elsewhere, he dug his id tag and other
credentials out of his pockets, flapped them like a scarecrow’s hands in the
surprised faces of the dock guards, and talked himself aboard the poised craft
as if he had a sovereign right to be there.

He was
the UMCP’s director of Data Acquisition; difficult to contradict. Certainly
none of UMCPHQ Security’s personnel were likely to refuse him. Instead they
would consult with Director Dios. If Warden Dios disapproved of Hashi’s
actions, the guards could always decline to let him leave the shuttle.

He didn’t
think Warden would disapprove. Despite the unfortunate contract Hashi had given
Darrin Scroyle and
Free Lunch
, he guessed — or perhaps simply hoped —
that Warden would continue to trust him a little longer.

Subatomic
particles combined and recombined constantly to form new facts, new realities;
new truths. Hashi intended to repay Warden’s trust. If that required the DA
director to put himself at risk, he accepted it.

Authorised
or not, his attendance at the GCES session would be dangerous. Koina Hannish
had relayed to him a warning from Captain Vertigus.
Tell Director Lebwohl I’m
afraid there’s going to be another attack.
The Captain’s exact words,
apparently.
During the next session. Tell him if he’s ever been a real cop —
if he cares at all about the integrity of the UMCP, or the rule of law in human
space — or even if he just wants to clear his reputation — he’s got to keep
kazes away from the hall.

. Hashi
in turn had informed ED’s Chief of Security, the man charged with the safety of
the Council. Other people might have dismissed the warning as the frightened
delusion of a senile old man: Hashi didn’t. In his view, an opponent who deemed
Godsen Frik worth murdering was capable of anything.

But of
course fulsome, futile Godsen wouldn’t have died if he’d obeyed the summons of
the great worm; if Warden Dios hadn’t restricted him to UMCPHQ in an apparent
effort to protect him. A fascinating coincidence, full of implications and
uncertainty. If one knew what events were, one couldn’t tell where they were
going. If one knew where they tended, one could no longer identify them.

Sixten
Vertigus’ warning was one reason Hashi had decided to attend the extraordinary
session.

Another
was that he wished to talk to Warden’s new UMCPPR director, Koina Hannish.

As he
stepped through the passenger hatch of the shuttle, he caught her attention.
She’d been studying a sheaf of hardcopy — briefing documents, no doubt,
intended to prepare her for her first GCES session. Surprised, she looked up at
him with her eyes wide and her lips slightly parted. Her instinctive grace didn’t
desert her, however: she may have been taken aback, but she wasn’t — as dear,
departed Godsen might have said — “flummoxed”. Her face showed nothing as Hashi
offered himself the g-seat at her side, sprawled into it, and cocked his head
against his shoulder in order to regard her over his smeared glasses. Instead
she smiled, using only the corners of her mouth.

“Director
Lebwohl,” she murmured, “you astonish me. Is this a social visit, or do you
think” — she fluttered her sheaf of hardcopy wryly — “I haven’t been adequately
briefed? You’ll have to be quick, I’m afraid.” She glanced at the cabin
chronometer. “We’re scheduled to launch in two minutes.”

In
reply Hashi gave her his most amiable grin — the one which made him resemble a
doting uncle, cheerful and slightly mad. “My dear
Director
Hannish” — he
stressed her title humorously — “I would not presume to
brief
you.” This
was a joke: it was often said of him that he did nothing briefly. “You
understand your own duties far better than I. And I would not impose myself on
you socially at such a time.”

As if
that were a sufficient explanation, he subsided.

An ED
Security guard stood at the front of the cabin, looking across Hashi, Koina,
and the other passengers: two of Koina’s aides, a Security communications tech,
and Deputy Chief of Security Forrest Ing. Clearing his throat uncomfortably, he
said, “Director Lebwohl, you’d better belt yourself in. We’ve been cleared for
launch as soon as the hatches are sealed.”

Hashi
blinked as if he found the admonition incomprehensible. But then he sighed in
understanding and fumbled for the g-seat straps. When he was done, he smiled at
Koina again.