Chương 41: Chapter 19 — Shifting Tides

The sisters were late. Specifically the Sydean Lineage, who had gone off for a quick jaunt to the core and not returned. They were the only ones who were ever out of contact for any length of time, and their very purpose meant they went deep into the parts of the System where Cato had yet to gain foothold. Every time they vanished from comms it generated a little spark of anxiety.

Ever since he'd needed to intervene against the assassination squad, that spark had been just a bit brighter, and it was even worse now that they were Bismuth. He didn't know what being fully made of System-stuff meant, in the short or long term, and whether or not they would stay on his side.

Maybe not every version of him worried, as there were plenty of worlds where he was entirely busy with local affairs and would never have to deal with the matters of the frontier, but even in his multiplicity he shared priorities and memories. So when they missed their check-in with Cato-Nesil, a few portal links outside the hazy threshold to the inner worlds, various Catos started making plans.

He couldn't really apply force outside of territories he'd already infiltrated, and with the new portal restrictions even trying to push surveillance through was extraordinarily difficult. The crusade quest was of surprising if questionable help; there was a significant movement of Golds and Platinums, which meant a given lineage could cross over portals without drawing attention, but spending too much on any one world would stand out.

Various Lineages could do preliminary scouting, but actually trying to spread Cato was risky with so many eyes, and high ranking ones at that. Nor was there any useful way to ask about the missing lineage. Golds inquiring after a Bismuth would be strange enough, but the Sydean Lineage were purposely not conspicuous. Despite their rank being enough to draw attention, if they simply passed through a world nobody would have thought twice about them.

Even if they could have followed the missing pair into the core, there was no way to isolate the path the Sydean Lineage took. One day stretched into two, then five, then more, and the potential scenarios became more worrying. They might be captured, or dead. The System was a hostile place, and the sisters had major enemies — including Muar, who was still somewhere out and about and wouldn't be fooled by identification-obscuring artifacts.

Or they may simple have abandoned their charge, as they were the only ones at Bismuth and nobody knew all the consequences of that transition. The System might simply have made them turn traitor. The little amount of data he had from interacting with them post-Ascension suggested they were acting somewhat out of character, but there were so many reasons for that he couldn't discern the reason. Guessing wasn't useful, so Cato was forced to go to one asset that might actually be able to help.

"Dyen," Cato-Mishkel sent, on the world where the Sydean had bunkered down. Dyen had received much the same upgrades as the Sydean Lineage, including the communications link that let Cato track him fairly easily, though not the combat algorithms. He still didn't trust Dyen enough to give him the same edge as Raine and Leese, and if it ever came down to it he knew who he wanted to win a fight.

"I need a favor."

"What happened?" Dyen replied immediately, sidestepping what Cato intended to say.

"Something to do with this quest?"

"It might, but I don't know," Cato said, not needing to ask which quest.

"Raine and Leese left for the core, and they haven't returned."

"I guess you're not in the core, then," Dyen said, and Cato finally was able to get a lock on Dyen's location. Unfortunately, it was only location-by-inference, as none of Cato's orbital surveillance could pick up the Sydean. At such a long range, the System stealth was more than enough to defeat simple passive, optical sensors. Especially since Dyen was, so far as Cato knew, also Bismuth and at the point where ordinary physics started to get truly twisted.

In a way it was surprising that the electromagnetic communication glands worked through the stealth.

"Unfortunately," Cato said, not seeing any way to reserve that piece of information despite his mistrust for Dyen's loyalties. If he wanted Dyen to help then the Sydean at least needed a realistic understanding of what was required.

"I'd like you to see if you can track them down. Find out if they need help."

"I can do that," Dyen replied after a moment.

"But I want a favor too."

"I figured you might," Cato said. Dyen wasn't an ally like Raine and Leese, more of a mercenary. Though what he could supply Dyen was severely limited.

"When you take the Tornok homeworld, I want to be there," Dyen said, his transmitted voice cold and hard. The Sydean had lost none of the anger against the Tornok Clan. Cato was tempted to blame the anti-entropic nature of essence, seeping into physiology and preventing changes in outlook and temperament, but Dyen had every natural reason to carry fury with him for the rest of his life.

"I can do that," Cato agreed. He wasn't sure when he would be dealing with the Tornok Clan's homeworld, or how. It was too far in the future, and there was also the worry that Dyen was going to act like the Azoth from the annexation attempt and try to wipe out everyone there. If so, Cato would have to kill Dyen himself. Maybe he should have added something to Dyen's altered biology in case of such an extreme, but that would have violated too many closely-held principles.

It was one thing to kill someone, and it was another to betray them with a substrate that he'd provided in good faith.

"Then I will find them," Dyen said, entirely unconcerned with whatever might be lurking in the core. There were two ranks above Bismuth, Cato knew, as well as the gods, but beyond that he had no information. Even Yaniss didn't exactly know, for while she had described the apparently infinite landscape of a war world, it was not a place she had stayed.

Yaniss was not so combat-focused that it held her attention, and access to regions, dungeons, and quests were all controlled by factions so entrenched she couldn't even think about making inroads. The core worlds were no more monolithic than the clans he'd encountered on the frontier, or at least so Cato understood from the fragments he'd heard from Yaniss and various bits of surveillance. All the most powerful clans had holdings there, so his guess was that it was some kind of deadly court.

He couldn't imagine that people raised from birth for combat, and with all their power gained from killing, would then play well together at the highest echelons of power. Even fearful kings and armchair murderers created deadly power games when there were real stakes. His communications network tracked Dyen across several worlds until the assassin vanished across the border, out of Cato's reach.

Cato hated that he couldn't do anything himself, and wondered if he shouldn't have encouraged other versions of Raine and Leese to rank up in order to help — but considering the worries around the Bismuth transition, there were strict limits to what any of them were willing to risk. Not only was there the issue of potential mind control at higher ranks, but apparently there was actually some degree of compulsion from the quest — though, it was an open question, now, whether all quests had a degree of compulsion.

Obviously there was the weaponization of the dopaminergic pathways, as finishing quests and objectives felt good. But even beyond that, they were goals written into the System's reality itself. Following a quest was just like going downhill, the path of least resistance. The frames he'd built for the sisters and for himself could deal with some of the biological adulteration, but ultimately he couldn't block the altered reality of the System.

For all the small quests, it wasn't much different from a general froth, sending people to and fro to complete their own personal objectives. A Brownian motion of ranking up and "getting stronger" — a phrase that Cato was coming to hate. The Crusade quest, though, was some great strange attractor, pulling people away and off toward other parts of the System. The various Lineages found that it was easier to take breaks from System frames to clear their heads and ensure they stayed on task.

Cato couldn't help but be aware that it was, to some extent, his responsibility. Whoever – or whatever – governed the inner workings of the System was ultimately at fault, but it was the natural and inevitable response to his actions. Blaming the System for defending itself was impossibly disingenuous, despite the horrific nature of that reaction.

For the moment the target for the Crusade seemed to be the area near where he'd cut off systems, the dozen or so worlds where he'd attacked as distraction, doing no actual damage and not even injuring any people. He'd even targeted dungeons where he knew someone was inside, letting the group "defeat" downgraded warframes.

An information-dense enemy would have realized that zero injuries was statistically improbable, and perhaps someone would figure it out in time, but in the immediate chaos and aftermath it just seemed like victory on their end. He was giving them time to settle again before considering exactly where and when to start the propaganda campaign, as some worlds seemed ripe for it and others the exact opposite.

Retooled factories were printing up millions of tons of simple polymer leaflets, colored plastic with a few words and pictures, each one tailored to the species inhabiting the world below. There was no telling what the impact would be, but he really didn't want to try anything more extreme just yet. Morvan's declaration still made Cato uneasy. There was no telling what his cousins would think to do.

Neither Morvan nor Kiersten had shown up again in any of the worlds Cato had under surveillance — or indeed, anyone he suspected of being from Earth, such as the neopredator that had accompanied his cousins. Most of his attention, even for the entrenched versions furthest from the recent action, was directed toward where he expected the conflict to come, so the transmission from Cato-Uriva caught most versions of him by surprise.

Cato-Uriva himself was absolutely staggered, because years ago, after the actual System-God had appeared and the connection had been lost with the sisters' frames, he'd assumed that their forms had been obliterated. Especially considering the followup that had destroyed his moon presence, and ever since then he'd been building up in the outer reaches of Uriva's system.

All that remained were a few satellites and a version of himself in half-hibernation, to shortcut the hours-long turnaround time of signals between the surface and the gas giants. It was this version which had taken the call, and sent out the news to all the others through FernNet and FungusNet.

"Cato?" The message system flagged the broadcast with all sorts of alarms, given that not only was it from an instance of Leese that was completely different from any that were known to be active, but the internal chronometer was ridiculously off. That wasn't supposed to happen even if she had been unconscious; the timekeeping biomachinery was tied to the cellular life cycle, so the only way that it wouldn't increment for five years was through relativistic dilation or some sort of magic.

Cato was pretty sure he knew which it was.

"Are you okay, Leese? Anything I can do?" All his forces were days away, further out than in most systems, given the proactive nature of the local deity.

"I have space if you want to abandon that frame." Though he doubted she would, since Raine's comms hadn't appeared.

"Not yet," Leese sent back.

"I want to get Raine out, too, and for that, World Deity Initik wants to talk to you. Directly."

"Oh." Cato blinked in his small virtual office, dropping into a time-accelerated framejack just to process that request. None of the wargaming simulations had ever suggested this possibility. Negotiation with the System Gods did appear in the furthest outliers of the probability cloud, a few fractions of a percent in situations where he had taken over vast swaths of the System's worlds, or somehow fully isolated them from the System itself.

The versions of him in the cut-off section might well be dealing with the manifestation of those low probabilities at that very moment, but the possibility of the Urivan System-God trying to talk to him before hostilities open didn't even appear.

"I can send a frame down in a few hours," he said, shifting back into real time. There was still one bioproduction facility in somewhat near orbit, but no active frames. The logistics of deep hibernation were fraught enough that just building a new frame from a bioprinter was a better option. It'd also give him a chance to synchronize with his self in the outer system, just in case the current versions of the sisters wanted to send themselves over.

Despite knowing that the System-God couldn't really do anything to him, and that this particular encounter was just one tiny facet of a long and difficult campaign, he found himself unaccountably nervous. He paced the virtual office, opening and closing his hands in a habit gained long ago when he was a child on a farm, while he kept the channel open with Leese.

"Do you know exactly what he wants? Any information you can give me?"

"I have no idea. He just showed up and now he wants to talk to you." It took Cato a moment to parse that, before realizing she likely didn't know about the time passage. For some people it might have been a good idea to ease someone into the knowledge, but after years with Raine and Leese he knew better. Even if the ones he was familiar with had diverged from this Leese, the fundamental nature was the same.

"You've been in some kind of stasis for a bit over five years," Cato told her.

"I thought Initik had just killed you, and I've been building up forces further out ever since. Now that I know you're still alive—" Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Initik said he'd let us go if he could talk to you," Leese interrupted him.

"If we've been missing for five years and you didn't know, then going along with it is the best bet." She was upset and he didn't blame her. He wasn't a god himself, but he knew that the sisters, even the versions more diverged and after the deep time immersion, still considered him a bit of one. Though the Urivan Lineage had continued on from the moment of capture, living and working on the station in the outer system, that meant nothing to the embodied versions who had been prisoners the whole time.

He'd failed them. He filled her in on some of the events during the time that she'd been gone, but kept scrupulously away from talking about what the divergent versions of herself and Raine had been up to. It was one thing to know there were alternates out there based on conscious choices they had made, and another entirely to know there was a version that existed only because the original pair had been presumed dead.

It was something that had happened more than once in the annals of digital life, and there was never any telling how someone might take it. Even people used to duplication and divergence could find themselves at a loss. Unsurprisingly, the older versions of the Urivan Lineage decided against transferring to a nearer satellite. The divergent Lineages collaborated, but didn't really talk as such, so of course they weren't going to want to meet a version of themselves that was even more strangely related.

Which was fine, as he had always known that he would have to be the arbiter for any diversion strangeness that had appeared. When the frame was finally done, Cato linked himself to it and clambered into the now-familiar glider that he'd used for de-orbiting so many times. Engines fired, shoving him back into the cushioning gel as his delta-v dropped precipitously.

The System occupied more space in the Uriva orbitals than in most, considering the links upward to the moons, but given the staggering volume involved, there was still more than enough room to maneuver.

"Okay, starting to enter the System now," Cato told Leese, and was unsurprised when moments later the glider was teleported elsewhere, appearing with no relative velocity on a tiny island in the middle of the southern ocean. Of all the times he'd used them, he could count the number of actual proper landings on one hand. At least he was allowed to exit the vessel of his own accord, which was even less common than actually landing the glider.

The island was completely cleared, a level surface with grass, a few trees, and single gazebo-like structure. Leese was seated there by herself, but a large crystal disk projected the image of a dark-carapaced Urivan in some ridiculously fantasy holographic display. The System-god Initik, obviously.

"Cato," Initik said, a low grinding rumble.

"I am," Cato said, then nodded to Leese.

"Where is Raine?"

"It surprises me that you seem concerned about agents of yours that are obviously disposable," Initik observed.

"There's a saying about making assumptions," Cato replied, his tone drier than he intended, so he took a moment to control himself.

"Send her out and we can have whatever conversation you like."

"How can I know that you'll stay once you have what you want?" Initik countered, the insectile being's claws clicking as they moved restlessly.

"It doesn't cost me anything," Cato said, sitting down next to Leese and acting unconcerned.

"In truth, I would love to talk to a System-god. We've been strangers, clashing in the dark from the beginning, and nobody seems to have a direct line to you types."

"Mortals don't," Initik agreed, and Cato internally bristled at the term. The analysis programs he was running recognized the signs of a sudden framejack from Initik, an alteration of micro-movements to indicate a faster time passage. It wasn't the same as it would be for Cato, since his was merely mental and Initik's seemed to cover his physical body as well, but it was the same principle. Then the framejack ended, Initik waved his hand, and the Urivan version of Raine appeared next to Leese.

"What—" she began, then stopped as she took in the surroundings, Cato's human frame, and Leese.

"Why don't you two go back," Cato told them, since he'd be far happier once there was nobody at risk.

"I've got everything set up for you above," he added, more privately. The glider had a FungusNet node, transmitting to the satellites above, though even without it he could have dropped something into the atmosphere to serve as a relay.

"Right," Leese said, glancing at Raine. Cato could sense some quick radio communication between the two of them, and then they simply slumped in their chairs as they abandoned the frames. He could have finessed it more, but he thought it more important to get the pair out of danger than hide a fairly obvious ability from Initik.

"Puppets of some sort?" Initik asked, though whether it was genuine curiosity or some attempt at polite conversation Cato didn't know.

"It's complicated and mostly irrelevant," Cato said, facing Initik's projection fully and lacing his fingers together as he reclined in the chair. Various simulations ran in the background to provide options and details, including the possibility that Initik had already gotten intelligence from the Sydean Lineage, but the actual conversation was his to conduct.

"I'm sure there's a lot of things both of us could say, but what exactly prompted you to initiate contact?"

"What happened at Haekos and Koh-rel," Initik replied, which was pretty much what Cato expected.

"Not only the threat you have demonstrated, but the surprising gentleness with which you handled the inhabitants of those worlds — and all the others you severed from the System."

"My grievance has never been with the people, only the System," Cato responded with a shrug, though it pleased him that someone had noticed. The more people who realized, the easier his task would be in the end.

"The two cannot be separated," Initik said, his mandibles moving in a way that Cato only recognized as displeasure thanks to the analysis done for the Urivan frames.

"The System shapes people, gives them purpose — no, I am not here to discuss theology. I am here on behalf of my people."

"I wasn't aware you were an elected official." Cato was only half-joking. It wasn't clear at all how the System-gods were created as, even though the obvious path was to ascend a second time at Alum, he hadn't run into anyone with any credible stories about it.

"They are my people," Initik said sharply, not at all amused.

"I have safeguarded them for over a thousand years. I was there when the System came, and I have been guiding them ever since."

"Wait, you remember your System apocalypse?" Cato asked, disbelieving. Obviously it was possible, but he would have thought it was only those who were fully absorbed in the System that would have managed to go all the way — or people like his cousins, who had uncounted hours sunk into games with a similar environment.

"Apocalypse?" Initik seemed to be tasting the word, which was a little bit difficult in System tongue.

"No. I was hunting a meat-on-legs." The System-god paused, shifting his gripping claws.

"Our language was less complex, in those days. I was hunting, when the System's words appeared before me and I understood. From then on, I no longer had to go hungry, nor did we have to wander the plains searching for the bounty of the earth."

"Wait," Cato said, leaning forward as he tried to understand what Initik was saying.

"The System arrived before you even settled down? You weren't growing plants in rows or keeping animals for food?" The System's language was insultingly light on terminology for agriculture and farming, likely because there was no need for those concepts when it was impossible to actually tame the land.

"We weren't," Initik said slowly, as if the concept was entirely alien to him. Which it probably was. It sounded like the System had arrived at some point during their stone age, or maybe even earlier. Not that he could expect the technological framework of an alien species to mimic that of Earth, but agriculture was pretty key to being able to settle down and start thinking about how to perform tasks better. If so, then the advent of the System was not so much an apocalypse for Initik and the Urivans.

They had nothing for the System to destroy save for a proto-language, and were effectively uplifted to the pre-industrial era in a single step. Considering what the System provided, it could be considered even further than that, but the point was that the System would absolutely seem like a unilateral upside. It was a complete dead end and suffocatingly oppressive, but such a local minimum would be very enticing.

"Our stories are certainly different," Cato remarked after that bit of consideration, since he didn't see any way to delve into it in a useful way.

"But like you are working on behalf of your people, I am working on behalf of mine. The System killed so many of my people — more than exist on any world in the System. And it continues to expand and threaten other innocent civilizations. I have no idea how bad it was on what the System called Gogri, but even if they were halfway between your society and mine, than it likely killed millions."

"The problems of other worlds are not my concern," Initik said, waving aside Cato's words.

"I cannot expect to govern them or understand what they want. But my people need the System. Without it, how do we find food and drink? It gives us strength, power, longevity. Before it, our people barely lived past the first clutch, and even in the System it is not a sure thing." Initik became more animated as he talked, gripping claws flexing and waving over his shoulders.

"I know you say you want to help people out of the System, and you think it is better for them, but my people cannot survive without it." Cato opened his mouth, then closed it again as his common sense caught up and squelched his desire to dismiss Initik's concerns. The way that the insectoid alien had phrased something tickled a memory he had from long ago, some speculation about different approaches and xenobiologies.

From nature's point of view, a creature's duty to their species was done once their reproductive capacity was depleted, and no few entered a very rapid decline afterward. Most of the time that was tied to age, but there were some examples of it being the other way around, where each generation ended because the next was born. The idea of a sapient life form being subject to such a restriction wasn't completely outlandish, even if it was horrific.

"Raine, Leese?" Cato sent to the sisters, who were in a portioned segment of the satellite's computronium — at least for the moment.

"I hate to bother you, but I'm negotiating with Initik and I think there's something very important. I know you did more biology work on the Urivan frames than I did, was there anything in there about early senescence?" He'd done a lot of Urivan microbiology, but the way the entire biochemistry worked over very long timescales was not going to be obvious from the nature of the cells and genetic information.

The sisters had done the highest level analysis, and aside from glancing over the readouts from the bioengineering toolsets he hadn't delved too deep himself. The information was still stored in databases somewhere, but he was light-hours away from those.

"Yes, actually," Leese replied after a moment. The contact was audio-only despite them being hosted on the same satellite as him, which was a little bit worrisome, but he was stretching a point to intrude on them anyway. Not that they were fragile, but he was sure they would prefer privacy as they sorted out being time-displaced and duplicated.

"I didn't bother to bring it up since we wouldn't be dealing with it, but females, especially, have some catastrophic outcomes after reproduction. None of which mattered in the System."

"Thank you," Cato said, and pressed his lips together as he regarded Initik. His normal arguments, his normal assumptions, just wouldn't work for Initik. Somehow, he'd stumbled across perhaps the only situation where the advent of the System was actually a net positive for the species in question, and the local authority knew it. Not that the exception changed his mind; a single bit of good didn't offset the genocidal murder of uncounted sapients, but it was a different problem.

"I can see why that would be a problem," he said to Initick, emerging from the framejack.

"Not an insurmountable one, but — let us clarify things first. You're wanting to negotiate with me, for yourself? On behalf of some faction of World Deities?"

"Myself," Initik confirmed.

"Only one or two of my number truly appreciate the threat you present, even after your showing against the Eln and Lundt Clan worlds."

"Then I understand the risk that you're taking by talking with me," Cato said, marking the names Initik mentioned for later inquiry, then shook his head.

"Well, I am entirely happy to negotiate with you or anyone, so long as you understand that removing the System is going to happen. But I have no desire to conquer, let alone rule. Obviously I don't want to enable abuses, either, but by and large I have to trust people to govern themselves." He tilted his hand back and forth in an equivocal gesture.

"Something to be worked out as System support is replaced with technology."

"And as I have said, the System is necessary for my people," Initik said, sounding irritated for the first time.

"Unless you are claiming you can replace what is necessary with this technology."

"I can," Cato confirmed, tapping his fingers on the armrest of the chair as he thought.

"You are in a unique position, compared to most. The System came to you before you managed to build anything up for it to destroy. That's not an insult; civilizations take enormous amounts of time to get going, and nature is a harsh and uncompromising mistress. You could even be considered lucky that the System swooped in to shortcut thousands of years – or more – of incremental progress, but it's not the only approach. In fact, I can do even better." Initik clicked doubtfully, not that Cato blamed him.

Someone claiming they have all the answers and more was instantly suspect, because nothing was ever so easy. But for Cato, it was fairly simple.

"Where I'm from, we have certain understandings about how bodies work," Cato said, choosing his words carefully. Initik had been, by far, the most effective and annoying roadblock for Cato's plans, and had nearly stopped Cato's campaign dead before it had even started. The god also wasn't stupid, and it was obvious that flippantly invoking technology was far from sufficient. Just because Initik lacked scientific knowledge didn't mean he wouldn't understand a reasonable explanation.

"It took us thousands of years to acquire the knowledge, let alone to create the tools to interact with bodies properly, but I have that knowledge and those tools. Your problem is one that we have seen before, and one we have solved before." He spread his hands then clasped them together as he regarded the Urivan.

"Something embedded in your bodies believes that your lives are finished after reproduction. A thought generated by nature, an idea whose time has come and gone, yet the consequences remain. The System language doesn't have all the words to describe, but for me it as easy to address as it is for you to conjure fire — and I can fix it permanently, so your children and your children's children never have to worry about it."

Despite Initik being merely a hologram, Cato could feel the Urivan's regard like a physical force.

"Strong claims," Initik said, with a clear and very justified skepticism.

"Ones I can prove," Cato told him.

"Given time. Agriculture and mechanics are readily apparent, but with the genetics changes — well, I would need volunteers. We would need communications, a partnership, even, in a way. You can't exist outside the System and my tools can't exist within it, but individuals can go back and forth. Say, if you let me put something near one of your moons."

"The problem is," Initik said slowly, his claws clicking as they moved restlessly.

"The problem is that I can't trust you and you can't trust me. Anything I tell you might well be used against me by you or the other gods, should they find out. And any cooperation you provide might similarly be turned against you." Cato nearly smiled. That sort of blunt and clear-sighted admission made him think that Initik was the kind of person he could actually work with — but it also reinforced how dangerous he was.

Someone so aware of the truths of the situation, and so uncompromising in articulating them, most certainly had far more he wasn't saying.

"That's true," Cato conceded after a moment, thinking about how damn useful it'd be to have Initik shed some light on what might have happened to the Sydean Lineage — and how he didn't dare mention it.

"But under the circumstances, I am willing to risk any ill intentions on your part, if you're willing to risk some of your people so I can demonstrate I truly am capable." Initik was silent for a time. Cato knew that, no matter what he asserted or what reassurances he gave, Initik had to believe there was a good chance anyone he sent would die or worse. Yet from someone familiar with the System, with all its severe depredations and violent confrontations, it couldn't be any more of a risk than day to day life.

"That may be possible," Initik conceded.

"There is even a group that is perfect for part of that role, as they are already familiar with your agents. The Warden's Claw will do as I tell them. I simply need to prevent them from following the [Crusade]."