Pax Multi Pt. 08

After the two of them had stumbled back to the bed -- well, it was mostly Lou doing the stumbling, carrying all of her weight -- Beatrice panted and said: "Arguments are most satisfying."

Lou laughed.

It was during the fourth month that Lou realized he had quietly shifted from hunting to fabricating meat more and more often -- and he had barely noticed that he had done it. It wasn't because he didn't like the hunting. There was a delightful pleasure in stalking prey and loosing an arrow into it, aiming to ensure the animal in question would drop dead instantly, no matter what Amy said about their cyberbrains. But...Lou found that he preferred, vastly, to spend time with Beatrice and relaxing around the cottage.

"This must be what AnComs live like. The ones that don't get all the social following, I mean."

"Hmm?"

Beatrice was cuddling up against his back while the wasp Beatrice was reading a printed out replica of a magazine from the middle of the 20^th century. Spider Beatrice was currently out and about for reasons that Lou hadn't asked upon and wasn't curious about. Beatrice's fingers brushed through his hair as he looked out the window of the cottage at the small bubble of habitable space carved out of the cargo space of their star ship.

By now, the space beyond that invisible (to his eyes at least) wall had gone from the relatively cluttered Alpha Centauri system to the utter and complete void of interstellar vacuum. Though, even that wasn't that clear as far as vacuums went. There was enough hydrogen for the ram scoops on the lighthugger to draw it into the stabdrive and accelerate it out of the back of the ship, producing the constant single gravity of thrust that made the cargo section feel so very Earth-like. There was nothing to see out there save for the slowly increasingly distorted stars. Ahead of them, light was being shifted to higher and higher wavelengths as the ship rushed towards the light, like the doper scream of an oncoming train. Reds became oranges, orange green, and blue became ultraviolet and worse. And behind them, the stars were shifting the other way, seeking to catch up with a ship that was becoming more and more stretched and distorted by the relativistic effects of its long voyage. Red became infrared and microwaves.

"Nom!" Beatrice bit down on his shoulder.

"What? Oh! Right!" Lou shook himself from his head to his toes. "Right, sorry." He chuckled. "So, most AnComs have access to community resources -- nanofabricators, what land they have allotted based off that arcane system of theirs..." He sighed. "To get more than that, you have to convince people that you should have it, that requires social capital, which is more easily exerted by people who are popular and charismatic." He shrugged. "I mean, if we were just normal AnComs, this is what our life would be like. Fabricator, freedom, and-"

"Fucking!" Beatrice thrust an arm into the air.

"W-Well, we wouldn't be married, as AnComs....well, actually, we would be, if we wanted to be..."

Beatrice nodded. "Excellent. I do want to be married. Can we get married a third time, just for us?"

Lou blinked. "A third time?"

"I am presuming that the marriage at Earth will happen. Which means that if we got married here, in deep space, just for ourselves, then it would be the third time," Beatrice said, cheerfully.

Lou grinned. "A secret marriage...it appeals to my classical roots, considering how many secret marriages cropped up in the Bard's works."

Beatrice frowned. "Okay, never mind."

"What?"

"I don't like the number of his plays that end with everyone dead and sad," she said, shaking her head. "Especially that Titus Andronicus play." She churred. "Imagine! Feeding someone their children in pies, that's just...utterly terrible. What is pie?"

"It's a baked pastry," Lou murmured, leaning back against Beatrice, enjoying her comforting closeness. "You should learn what they are, according to the literature of the era you're studying..." He nodded to her wasp body, who had turned another page in her magazine. "Wives must bake their men pies."

"Oh, this so far, is giving me advice in saving bacon fat for explosives," Beatrice's wasp body said, closing the magazine. "Do we need explosives? I don't think we need explosives, but if it's this important-"

"We do not need explosives," Lou said, chuckling.

The next morning, Lou woke up blind.

He sighed, lifted his arm to tug at the blindfold that covered his eyes -- but he was stopped by the fact that his arms were bound to the side of the bed by what felt like spiderwebs. He chuckled, softly. "Okay, Beatrice, very funny. Why am I wearing a blindfold?"

"No reason!" Beatrice said -- a faint clicking and clattering sound coming to his ear. "...the whisk is the...one with...it's this one! I found a picture. Not that I am using a whisk. I just...was curious. For entirely innocent, non-pie related reasons." More clattering and clicking -- and the unmistakable clack of eggs breaking. More clattering.

"You do know I can help, right?"

"Help? Help doing what? This is an innocent engagement." There was a short pause. "I know! You can go for a walk."

Hands tore off the bondage and helped Lou to his feet. He allowed himself to be guided out of the cottage and then tugged off the blindfold, grinning at the moth body that had guided him out. She smiled at him, then said, very seriously. "Do not enter into the cottage until you are allowed."

"I will be like your own personal Orpheus," Lou said, bowing to her. "...better, actually, since I won't look back."

"Good!" Beatrice frowned. "Though, if I ever went to Hades, you'd just need to have me breed a new bioform. Assuming, of course, I do not conquer Hades with hordes of chitinous horrors."

"Pluto would not know what hit him," Lou said, then kissed her cheek, making her giggle.

Lou decided to give his wife as much space as he could. He headed for the center of the cargo hold, called up the elevator, and then stepped inside. He programmed in the control for the cryocrypts, humming to himself as he listened to the whiring of the lift as it moved along the spine of the ship, drawing closer and closer to the obscene energies of the stabdrive. At the midsection of the ship, the elevator stopped and opened into the spindly corridors that threaded their way between the sarcophagi. The largest, which hung in an intricate latticework of wires and cables like a primitive biplane, was the pod for the whale diplomat and her entourage. There was the regal purple sarcophagi that contained his father and mother, situated side by side. There was Amy's pod, which was utilitarian pod with graffiti tagged on the side in what was unmistakably her handwriting.

IF HORNY, OPEN, STICK DICK INTO ME, I WON'T MIND, AMY

PS: WAIT FOR ME TO WARM OR WEAR A THERMAL CONDOM <3

Lou pursed his lips, shaking his head slowly. "AnComs..."

He found Godfucker's sarcophagi after a short walk and smiled to see that it was painted a warm sky blue, with a happy little sun drawn onto the side, as if the skinny, gangly AnCom wanted to ensure he'd have sweet dreams. Lou breathed a slow sigh out, then put his hand on the side of the metal container -- feeling the heat throbbing from it. Despite the term 'cryocrypt', the air was anything but chilly. Each pod was pumping the heat from their containers into the surrounding atmosphere, giving it a balmy temperature. It was a deliberate piece of inefficiency -- most of the heat was actually shunted through the liquid cooling system that threaded through the cabling, which itself was taken out to the ice armor of the ship. But just enough was vented through the atmosphere to ensure this part of the ship was kept warm and comfortable.

"You know, GF, I do miss you," Lou said, casually, leaning against the pod, his arms crossed over his chest. "I..." He paused, then looked down at himself, and only just then realized, he was wearing no shirt, no shoes, and what could barely be considered underwear. He blushed. "You would think I had gone completely native now." He paused, then sighed. "GF, I do wish I had some of your council...I...have been thinking about my people. About the Neapolitan. About my father and mother...I confronted them, you know. About the fact that my father had dishonored himself by sleeping with Amy behind my mother's back."

He shook his head. "She was neither shocked nor offended. Behind my back, with me as unwitting as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern she was carrying on just as many clandestine affairs. Everything they had taught me...and..." He sighed. "Am I fool for caring at all? Beatrice...she loves me and she wants me to be happy. But she's not human -- she doesn't understand what it means to believe in something, then have it...crushed."

He snorted. "Listen to me talking. I'm a fool, of course she understands that. That's her whole life." He pinched the bridge of his nose. "I suppose that I'm more worried that she'll say what I'm thinking: That I should...abdicate. That I should wash my hands of it, declare nineteen years of my life and everything I've ever worked on as a complete waste of time and...and just...become a hermit living on Earth with the rest of the Anarchist Commune."

"Is it..." He looked at the sarcophagi and at the frozen face of what, against all odds, had become one of his dearest friends. "Is it big headed to be so concerned about this? Am I...am I being egotistical?"

"No, my good chum, I believe your concerns are perfectly valid."

Lou slowly, carefully, turned his head to the left.

Sitting upon the spars connecting one of the Plural sarcophagi to the rest of the strut work was an chimpanzee. His fur was black and his face had the genial cheerful expression common in many of the monkey and ape Upkin species. The only indication that he was anything but a comical or educational figure in some children's cartoon from the 21st century was the combat grade nano braclet that was attached to each of his four limbs. The bracelet was made of hard white, shiny material that looked almost like bone, meaning it was almost certainly biological nanotech and not the more common hardtech nano -- and as Lou watched, the chimp held his wrist out, flexed his hand, and extruded a small nozzle of bone that created a blue flame, which he then used to light a cigar held in his other hand. He puffed upon the cigar, then blew out a smoke ring, the nozzle retracting into the bracelet as he looked at Lou.

"After all -- your decisions are going to do more than impact your own self, my dear space prince. They are going to be taken as read as a tacit endorsement and, dare I say, as a advertisement for vast swaths of the Neos and AnComs." He smiled, twiddling the cigar in Lou's direction. "Meaning a great deal of care should be taken in your future actions."

Lou blinked slowly. "...and...you are?"

"The name is Cornelius," he said, cheerfully.

"From...Planet of the Apes?" Lou asked.

"Oh bother, I've been sussed," Cornelius murmured, then puffed on his cigar again. "I thought you neos disdained anything after the Napoleonic Wars as not worth your time."

"There are some films and pieces of literature from the 20^th century that are worth saving -- generally, the cutoff date is the Marvel/Disney merger," Lou shook his head. "What on Earth are you doing up? Are you part of Endless Song's entourage?"

"Oh, you presume that just because I am a talking Chimparmy with four combat capable nanobraclets in my body that I am a part of the UpKin? I may be an AnCom. Or a citizen of your fine kingdom! Or, perhaps, a Federal-"

"If you were a Neopolitan, you would know to call me Sire," Lou said, smiling. "If you were an AnCom, you would have a lager genitalia."

"That is a hurtful but accurate stereotype!" Cornelius exclaimed. "And how do you know I am not a Federal?"

"The only people that Federals hate more than Upkin are humans with increased melanin content," Lou said, shrugging one shoulder. "And considering the rather appalling examples of propaganda I've seen in my historical research, I think half of them would count you as both. While it's not impossible that you're a Federal agent..." He paused. "You could be a Plural. But I was under the impression that their memetic research doesn't touch on Upkin as much as it does on baseline humans. But...you are right. Who do you work for and why are you awake, Cornelius?"

Cornelius puffed on his cigar, then swung himself down so that he was hanging off his feet, before dropping down and onto the grating before them with a clunk. He stood to a rather impressive height, considering his body structure, and then nodded. "My full title is Cornelius, Director of Interclade Intelligence Services. You are aware of the distinctions between clades?"

"Yes -- a clade is an upkin...well...species is too simple," Lou said, nodding. "There are chimps that are part of dolphin clades, dolphins in chimp clades, and so on. It's more about a way of thinking than a biological thing."

"Precisely!" Cornelius said, cheerfully. "I was inserted into Endless Song's entourage as a lowly aide, but the real purpose behind my expedition was to discover what precisely happened to Dr. Listens Deeply and Considers All."

"...who?" Lou asked.

"That's precisely why I sought to waken myself mid flight, once I learned that you, fortunately, are as romantic as I had heard." Cornelius said, puffing on the cigar again. "I do not have access to the deeper system layers of the lighthugger, meaning that I must rely upon you. Fortunately, I believe that the evidence I have will convince you of the righteousness of my cause, my good chum...and even if you do not, being awakened, then going back into cryogenic sleep after a few hours of conversation is far from the worst thing." He grinned, slightly. "And it will at least alleviate your boredom. Three months alone with only the missus? I'd be nearly round by this point."

"I love my wife, sir," Lou said, flatly.

"Ah, young love, so glossy, so untarnished. Enjoy it while it lasts."

Lou frowned. "The evidence?"

"Correct," Cornelius said. "Let us begin with, of course, the War. During the Battle of Proxima, an entire UHP fleet is wiped out during a high speed orbital pass battle near the primary of the Proxima system-" Lou's eyebrows went way up, since that was going back further than he expected. "The star itself collapsed and produced a reality warping field that killed every single member of that entire fleet. The fact it wiped out the Bug fleet was seen as secondary. But as long range telescopy and probes began to bring in data, a strange thing began to happen: Physicists attempting to understand the data began to go mad."

Cornelius paused, dramatically.

Lou inclined his head, then gestured to Cornelius to indicate he should continue.

"Well!" Cornelius wiggled his eyebrows dramatically. "A young physicist at the tail end of the war by the name of Dr. Listens and Considers All hit upon a unique solution to the problem. He exposed the data to unwilling sentients, then began to question them indirectly. From their statements, he began to bring out information that pointed at unexpected and fascinating new weapon systems that could win us the war. Until, then, your charming wife decided to up and surrender. And then Dr. Listens...vanished. Vanished without...a trace."

"The Invisible Hand, the Federal Ship that's tailing us," Lou said. "It arrived in system months ahead of us, but it came to Charon days after we got there. But...the Federals would...unless..." He frowned. "Unless they had a fancy new weapon system to gain."

"Unless they had a fancy new weapon system gain indeed!" Cornelius exclaimed, then puffed on his cigar.

"Did you notice the Serviles?" Lou asked.

"I noticed them, it was hard to be in the ambassadorial camps and not notice the poor fellows," Cornelius murmured, his brow furrowing. "But I take it you noticed something more, my good chum?"

"There were more of them -- at least, I thought there were more of them, than there should have been. More machines. More devices. More...everything." Lou rolled his shoulders slowly, then tucked his arms against his chest. "But I thought that I was being paranoid -- after all, the real assassination attempt was from Epoch."

"Indeed it was..." Cornelius tapped at his cigar, sending ash drifting down to the ground. "Unless, of course, the Federals weren't preparing an assassination. High energy particle physics generally requires a great deal of heavy construction. Radiation shielding, radiation sources, radiation detectors, all the fun radiation!"

"But if this doctor -- if he is there, if he is working with Admiral Bosch, if they are making a weapon...then what am I supposed to do about it, beyond being on guard?" Lou frowned. "The Invisible Hand is two light hours ahead of us at cruise speed. It's not getting any closer -- it's just getting further away slower as we catch up to it's cruise speed. It's basically unreachable."

"Not quite," Cornelius said, cheerfully. "This ship has fabrication capacity and remass aplenty now that the ramscoop is on. You can begin to plan an expedition -- once you reach the same cruising speed as the Invisible Hand, the two ships shall be at relative stops. You then take your shuttle and move between the two, investigate, then fall backwards."

"That's insane," Lou said, shaking his head. "The faster you go, the harder it gets to go faster. It'd take every droplet of reaction mass you could cram into a shuttle -- and that'd be a shuttle with a stabdrive, which is hard enough to make under the best of times, and we're not a fabrication ship, we're a councilor ship, full of ambassadors not industrial facilities and raw materials. And more than that, it would be breaching the sovereign territory of the Federated States -- which is what I've always been told is a classic cassias beli. All for a scientist that you have no hard evidence for!"

"But I do know precisely what it is that Dr. Listens would be most interested in researching. The Battle of Proxima," Cornelius said, puffing on his cigar, then blowing the smoke directly into Lou's face as he stepped closer. Lou coughed, waving the smoke away. "It was a phyrric victory for Mrs. Benoit, because she lost a smaller fleet than we did. But she still lost a fleet. And unlike ours, her fleet died of unknown causes, the ships flung into the wild blue yonder. Brain dead. Still warm, until our scopes lost them. I believe that whatever happened to Proxima poses a direct threat, if weaponized, not to individual bioform...but to the hive mind in its entirety."

A soft chirrup came from Cornelius' wrist. He sighed. "Bugger. I have to get back to my crypt."

"You have a time limit?"

"Of course," Cornelius said, casually. "Endless Song has no idea I'm part of IIS. Most clades hate us, because we keep trying to prevent them from starting wars and stabbing one another in the back." He sighed. 'It is a hard lot in life, but someone must. For the greater good and all that. Now, I understand if you are fine with allowing a direct threat to your wife's mind, body and soul-"

"We'll get the data," Lou said, frowning, his mind whirling as he thought. "Just...trust us. We have months to plan and prepare before the intercept window opens."

"Capital!"

And with that, Cornelius sauntered off, swing into a sarcophagi, and left Lou with his stomach knotting and his hands shaking.

***

Lou emerged from the elevator to find that two of his wife's bodies were out by the side of the cottage, hastily patting down with shovels a line of disturbed earth that looked alarmingly like a hastily dug grave. Lou hurried forward. "What happened?" he exclaimed, nerves exploding through him. The two bodies -- his spider and wasp wife -- swung around, their eyes widening.