Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky Page B

we’ve had no transmissions from any other arks to say that they’ve found anywhere to stay. Doctor Avrana Kern, this is all we have. Please may we settle on your planet?
    Because he was thinking in human terms, he expected a decent pause then for his opposite number to digest all that potted history. Instead, one of the science crew shouted out, ‘New energy readings! It’s activating something!’
    ‘A weapon?’ Guyen demanded, and all the screens briefly went blank, then flared to life again with nonsense scattering across them: fragments of code and text and simple static.
    ‘It’s got into the
Gilgamesh
control system!’ Lain spat. ‘It’s attacking our security – no, it’s through. Fuck, we’re open. It’s got full control. This is what it did to your drones, Karst, the ones it didn’t just vaporize. We’re fucked!’
    ‘Do what you can!’ Guyen urged her.
    ‘What the fuck do you think I can do? I’m locked out! Balls to your “cultural specificity”, Mason. It’s all over our fucking system like a disease.’
    ‘How’s our orbit?’ someone asked.
    ‘I have no feedback, no instrumentation at all.’ Vitas sounded very slightly tense. ‘However, I’ve not felt any change in thrust, and mere loss of power or control should not affect our position relative to the planet.’
    Like all those hulks orbiting Earth
, Holsten thought helplessly.
Those fried, dead ships, with the vacuum-dried bodies of their crew still in place after thousands of years.
    Abruptly the lights jumped and flickered, and then a face appeared on every screen.
    It was a bony, long-jawed face; that it was a woman’s was not immediately obvious. Details kept filling in: dark hair drawn back, skin shaded and textured, harsh lines about the mouth and eyes; unflattering by modern criteria but who could name the ancient aesthetics that this face acknowledged? It was a face from an era and a society and an ethnicity that time had otherwise erased. The kinship between it and the crew of the
Gilgamesh
seemed tenuous, coincidental.
    The voice that rang out through the speakers was unmistakably the same, but this time it was speaking the crew’s own common language, although the lips did not sync.
    ‘I am Doctor Avrana Kern. This is my world. I will brook no interference with my experiment. I have seen what you are. You are not from
my
Earth. You are not
my
humanity. You are monkeys, nothing but monkeys. You are not even
my
monkeys. My monkeys are undergoing uplift, the great experiment. They are pure. They will not be corrupted by you mere humans. You are nothing but monkeys of a lesser order. You mean nothing to me.’
    ‘Can she hear us?’ Guyen asked quietly.
    ‘If your own systems can hear you, then I can hear you,’ Kern’s voice spat out.
    ‘Are we to understand that you are condemning the last survivors of your own species to death?’ It was a remarkably mannered, patient display from Guyen. ‘Because it seems that is what you are saying.’
    ‘You are not my responsibility,’ Kern pronounced. ‘This planet is my responsibility.’
    ‘Please,’ Lain said, ignoring Guyen when he gestured at her to shut up. ‘I don’t know what you are, if you’re human or machine or whatever, but we need your help.’
    The face froze, nothing but a still image for a handful of heartbeats.
    ‘Lain, if you’ve—’ Guyen started, and then abruptly Kern’s image began to break up, distorting and corrupting on screen, features bloating or atrophying and then flickering into nothing.
    The voice spoke again, a plaintive whisper in its native tongue, and only Holsten could know what it was saying.
I am human. I must be human. Am I the system? Am I the upload? Is there anything of me left? Why can I not feel my body? Why can I not open my eyes?
    ‘The other thing, the Eliza thing, it was mentioning some other help,’ Lain murmured, although surely even a whisper would be overheard. ‘Can we just ask it—?’
    ‘I will help