Boralene Read online

  The neurostim hadn't completely faded from his system, and under its effects the heady scent was almost intoxicating. For a brief moment he wondered what it would be like to kiss her with such heightened senses, to hold her in his arms. Given how incredible such moments with her had been under normal circumstances the experience would probably be earth-shattering.

  Flushing, he shifted in his seat and forced himself to focus on his news before he embarrassed himself. “What do you think of archaeology?” he asked.

  Callista paused in the middle of a feline stretch, which either by coincidence or timing on her part happened to show her lithe body to distractingly good effect in her form-fitting garments. She gave him an odd look. “That's what your ever so important news has to do with?” she demanded, half amused and half annoyed as she settled back into her seat in another artful pose.

  He smiled ruefully. “Bear with me.”

  “Tease,” the silvery-haired woman murmured, then giggled at the disbelieving look he gave her for, of all people, being one to talk. “I can honestly say I've never given archaeology much thought,” she continued in a more serious tone, “although it sounds pretty boring.”

  It was hard to keep from grinning outright. “So not much interest?”

  Callista eyed his eager expression, with mild annoyance that it didn't seem to be directed towards her, or at least not entirely, and shrugged. “I suppose I should be asking why you're so excited about it.”

  Tycho finally let his smile widen and accessed his work through her system, projecting it on the screen above her lounge table. Callista's gaze strayed between him and the image, as if waiting for him to elaborate. Instead he simply displayed his initial findings about the yellow dwarf system, watching as her expression strayed from amused boredom to confusion, then shock, then intense fascination.

  “This can't be right,” she murmured, leaning forward. And for once her movements, usually artfully choreographed to radiate seductive grace, were completely businesslike.

  He felt a surge of satisfaction at her response. It was what he'd been hoping for, almost an exact mirror to his own initial reaction to his findings, and he knew it wasn't because she doubted the information.

  Her mind was just still working around the ramifications of this discovery being real, same as he'd done. Something that might take hours for her to process the full import of.

  “But how is this possible?” Callista demanded after a minute or so. “We've searched entire galactic clusters for any sign of intelligent life besides us, or even life more complex than single-celled organisms or at best simple lifeforms. Our scientists have become more and more convinced with every passing millennium that Homeworld, and humanity, is a cosmic fluke. We're alone in the universe.” Her eyes strayed back to the data in front of her, expression awed. “Or at least we were.”

  Tycho felt terrible having to dash the eager hope in those beautiful eyes, but better now than before she got too excited. “I'm afraid we still are,” he said gently. He leaned forward and pointed to the pertinent information.

  The silvery-haired woman frowned and looked closer, then her expression grew crestfallen. “Oh.” Her smoky eyes turned to him questioningly. “Then why are you so excited about this?”

  He allowed his smile to return, along with his enthusiasm. “Because as far as I can tell they've been there for tens of thousands of years, undisturbed and thinking they were alone in the universe. Developing organically from essentially cavemen without language to what they are now.”

  “And what are they now?” she pressed, finally showing some real interest. “How far have they developed?”

  “They're in the first stages of space flight. Just barely set foot on the moon of their planet.”

  That seemed to entrance Callista. “So they're taking the baby steps towards galactic civilization.” She leaned forward eagerly. “What about their society? Their art? Has the drone sent us sensor images of the clothes they wear, the places they live?”

  Tycho grinned broadly. “Even better than that.”

  She opened her mouth, likely to ask how, then abruptly paused. “This really is a major discovery, then.”

  He nodded soberly. “Big enough to overshadow getting a new puppy, I'm afraid. In fact, I think this world might hold the answers to what's been missing in my life. In all our lives.”

  To his surprise Callista didn't have anything to say about that. Instead she brushed it aside, smoky eyes staring into his earnestly. “I have to know, Tych. Why are you coming to me with this first?” At his surprise she raised her voice slightly, taking on a quality he recognized from her debates. “If it's just blatant nepotism, wanting to give this news first to a friend, I suppose that's understandable. But something like this shouldn't be kept secret, as just your personal momentous news to spring on friends and acquaintances.”

  Tycho fought down a surge of annoyance. “You're talking to me like I'm an opponent in a debate.”

  She blinked, looking suddenly abashed. “I didn't-”

  He spoke over her, gently but firmly. “That's why I came to you first, Calli. Because this is momentous news, perhaps the most momentous we've seen in millennia. I want to make sure the news not only reaches every human in the universe, and that they understand its import, but that it doesn't cause an . . . excess of irrational response.”

  She stared at him for a few long, tense seconds. “Irrational response,” she repeated thoughtfully.

  Tycho nodded. “History's shown us plenty of examples of how unpredictable people are in responding to earth shattering discoveries. Even now, with a lot of our . . . harsher behaviors blunted by the intervention of companions and the AI caretakers, there's no way of knowing how news of a world populated by billions of humans we never even knew about, humans living the way we did a hundred thousand years ago, will be received.”

  Callista slowly nodded. “Yes, I can see that. More than I would've before I spent so much time around you, a real human, and saw how events in real life can change how we respond to things.”

  He smiled eagerly. “That's right.” Leaning forward, he rested his hand on her knee and stared deep into her entrancing eyes. “And you're the genius when it comes to understanding the vulnerabilities of human emotions. I can't think of anyone better suited to helping me prepare this news to share with hundreds of billions of people in a way that doesn't risk tearing our society apart.”

  She looked down at his hand, cheeks flushing. “Then-” she began, voice unusually throaty. She paused and daintily cleared her throat. “Then I suppose you should show me the rest of it.”

  He leaned back, smiling wide. “The best is yet to come. Actual audio and visual broadcasts intercepted by the drone.”

  Her gray eyes widened. “Communication attempts?”

  Tycho shook his head. “Local entertainment. Although they've provided a vast wealth of information about their culture and belief systems.”

  “Oh, like the allnet?”

  “No, they haven't advanced nearly that far yet. They're barely to the point where they can create basic networks. At the moment they use signals embedded in carrier waves, mostly audio but with visual a recent and rapidly spreading development.”

  “Radio waves?” Callista marveled. “Then they really are primitive. They might as well be using signal flags or bonfires.”

  Tycho pulled up the video of the family that had first struck him so deeply, watching her closely as he played it for her. And from the way her eyes shone with wonder he had a feeling she was as moved as he'd been.

  “That language isn't familiar at all,” Callista said after a few minutes, brow furrowed. “It doesn't sound anything like the universal language we'd developed by the time we got into space, even in its formative years.”

  Tycho nodded. “This is English, the most commonly encountered language in the broadcasts. It's one of thousands of languages spoken on the planet.”

  “Thousands?” she repeated incredulously.
“How is that possible?”

  He hesitated, then shrugged. “AI conjecture is that at some point after being placed on Earth the humans there briefly lost spoken language and were forced to develop new ones over time. Perhaps due to a memory wipe or something similar. Some of the languages have similar roots, but there are enough distinct ones to suggest many formed on their own without outside intervention.”

  “So thousands of disparate tribes spreading across the globe, unable to even speak to each other.” The idea seemed to sadden her, and she was quick to focus on the broadcast again. “Do you understand it?”

  “I do. After the AI translated all the languages it could find I spent some time in a data stream in the slowest slowtime and learned the most relevant and useful ones.” Tycho paused, briefly contemplating the experience of being able to express himself in such a staggering variety of new ways, many of which would be clunky or even effectively impossible in the universal language.

  Not to mention all the concepts common on Earth that humans no longer really had a need to understand, let alone have words for. Most of which were unpleasant, he'd found. Although he'd also gained quite a few exciting insights about human interaction from his study of all those languages and the linguistic principles that structured them.

  But that was neither here nor there. “Luckily you won't need to do the same. The AI can translate for us without any trouble.”

  Callista frowned. “Obviously. But if so why bother to learn the languages yourself?”

  That . . . was a good question. The simple answer was that Tycho had wanted to immerse himself in these broadcasts without any form of intermediaries. To be able to witness them firsthand without any possibility of mistranslation or censorship; he wouldn't have put it past the AI to keep some unpleasant realities from him, considering it for his own good.

  In fact, much to his regret it hadn't taken him long to find just the kinds of things that the AI certainly would've prevented him from witnessing.

  Tycho's fairly straightforward reasoning for learning the languages was harder to explain to Callista than he'd expected. After trying his best for a few minutes the silvery-haired woman's only response was to shrug indifferently. “Seems like a lot of effort to go to for something the AI could do for you, but then I've noticed you're not really the type to make things easy for yourself.”

  He flushed at the near insult. Turning back to the broadcast on the display he told the AI to begin translating.

  The English the people on the broadcast were speaking immediately morphed to the universal language, voices still exactly the same. As if the people had simply switched languages mid-conversation.

  Callista watched to the end of the family life segment with rapt attention, biting her lip as tears glistened in her eyes at some moments. Tycho continued on to the other things he'd been fascinated by: the colossal crowd between the incredibly tall buildings all celebrating together, and the sports game, and loud, flashy commercials trying to entice viewers to try their products.

  All these things had seemed amazing to him, but as he watched Callista watching the display he saw her begin to look anxious at the sight of the densely crowded celebration, and flinch and lean away from the display at the noise of the cheering crowds from the sports game. Her expression became irritated with the commercials, and then finally she lost her cool entirely when they moved on to one that showed a bunch of happy children screaming in delight as they rushed en masse towards some sort of amusement park.

  “Where are their companions, or I guess for this world their parents?” she snapped. “Who's protecting them?”

  Tycho hesitated. “I think the commercial is just hyperbole. I'm sure all the parents are waiting just outside the display field of view.”

  Callista shuddered. “So why create the impression of such danger, then? Is that supposed to make people more likely to visit that place?”

  “I, um, didn't get the impression of danger from that commercial. More like excitement and wonder.”

  The silvery-haired woman looked at him in disbelief. “What about that awful physically competitive brawl?” It took a moment for him to realize she meant the sports game, and he shook his head. “The crowd of people practically trampling each other to grab that big sparkly ball?” He shook his head again, becoming more bemused by the moment. “So none of that seemed horrifically chaotic and on the verge of disaster at every moment to you?”

  Tycho stared at Callista in shock, unable to believe her response to what he'd shown her. When he'd first looked at these images he'd seen group bonding, celebration, joy shared among loved ones and members of closely interwoven communities.

  How was it possible all she saw was chaos and danger?

  When he was slow to answer Callista turned away from him and minimized the recordings to one part of the display, going back to the other data the drone had sent them. It didn't take long before she abruptly frowned. “Wait. Is this correct that the snippets you've been showing me so far are from a selection you manually sorted out, one which makes up only about eleven percent of all the radio signals the drone has sent us?”

  Tycho hesitated. He'd really hoped this wouldn't come up, especially now when she'd been viewing the innocuous stuff in such a negative light. “Yes. The rest of the signals are either too fragmented to get anything useful out of, are boring or irrelevant, or-” he took a deep breath and steeled himself. “Or they contain material that is . . . distressing.”

  Callista's frown deepened, eyes shifting from the display to stare at him intently. “Distressing how?”

  He sighed. “You know all those downsides about interacting with real humans our companions keep warning us about? Well it turns out they're either unimaginative or they've kindly been sparing us the grisly details.”

  “What sort of details?” the silvery-haired woman demanded. “What are you hiding from me?”

  Tycho felt his shoulders slump in defeat. “Human interactions aren't all parents hugging kids, celebratory parades, and lovers kissing under a starry sky. There are some very dark things as well. Things I would prefer you didn't have to see.” He lowered his voice to a near whisper. “Things I wish I hadn't.”

  Callista left her chair and came over to sit beside him, gently taking his hand. “But you did,” she stated. He nodded uncertainly. “I don't want a fantasy of what this world is, Tych. Not if you're trying to tell me it has what's been missing from your life. If you're going to try to give me that nonsense here you might as well just toss me into a full immersion world on the allnet. So show me.”

  He nodded uncertainly and began to call up some of the tamer of the disturbing videos he'd encountered. But the command wasn't even out of his mouth before the woman beside him abruptly raised her hand to stop him.

  Instead she gave the command herself, selecting clips at random to make sure he didn't further try to hide or sugar coat the material.

  The first video that came up was a historical recreation, or perhaps some sort of entertainment fiction, of a battle between armies of men in uniform wielding ballistic weapons. The effect those weapons had on the soldiers wasn't anywhere near as grisly as what would happen in reality, but rather than those sorts of gory details the men simply sprouted holes in their uniforms and made a pretense of falling to the ground screaming and then going still.

  Even so it was a shocking thing to see. Callista could only manage about fifteen seconds of it before she ordered a new clip brought up. This one showed a fight similar to the boxing Tycho had done with Hollan, except here there were no companions to intervene. Instead both men pummeled each other brutally until their faces were bloody and they were staggering from exhaustion and injury.

  That one didn't last long before she stopped it, either. The next clip showed an obviously shifty man trying to talk a naive couple into a bad deal that would ultimately ruin their lives. This was a subtler form of awful, and it wasn't until the couple had been made fully aware of what had been done to t
hem that Callista gasped and ordered the display to change to another clip. She leaned closer to him, clutching his arm for support and comfort as they continued to watch.

  The silvery-haired woman's lovely features grew paler and paler as she witnessed the deceit, the cruelty, the exploitation, the simple malice and the vicious savagery. The violence, the slavery and child labor, the bloodshed and murders, the wars and genocides.

  What finally made her snap was watching a man seated behind a curved table dryly recounting the details of a young woman being attacked in the safety of her own home. Painting a picture of the horrific violations she'd suffered at the hands of two intruders without going into actual detail, which somehow made it even worse.

  When an image of the poor woman's bruised and haunted face appeared on a display wall behind the dryly speaking man Callista abruptly lurched off the chair away from Tycho, falling to her hands and knees a few feet towards the door. He looked away as she retched all over her tastefully selected carpet, then curled in on herself weeping.

  Turning off the display, he hesitantly knelt beside her and rested a gentle hand on her shoulder. He tried to think of something to say, some comforting words, but couldn't think of any in the face of the litany of barbarity they'd just witnessed.

  At his touch Callista twisted around to rest her head on his knee, still hugging herself and shuddering. He kept stroking her shoulder, trying to offer her strength, as he remembered his nightmarish experience witnessing these things for the first time. He'd been as big a wreck as she was by the time he'd finally had enough and had the AI redact the worst of it.

  After weeping quietly for a few minutes she finally turned to glare at him with red-rimmed eyes. “Is this accurately representing conditions on that planet?” she burst out.

  Tycho hesitated. “Well they call that last clip “news”, so I'm going to say yes.”

  Callista sat up, lovely face twisted into an expression of revulsion. “It's awful! What sort of barbaric place can manage even their meager level of technology and still behave like they do? That's not humanity, that's not how humans are.” She hesitated, voice becoming small. “Is it?”