Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent Read Free

The Qax withdrew AntiSenescence treatment
for two centuries after the Occupation. All the old pharaohs died,
before the Qax began to provide their own longevity treatments. These
modern undead, like Gemo Cana, have been bought by the Qax, bought by
the promise of long life.’ He leaned towards her. ’As they are buying
you, Luru Parz.’
    They emerged from the clean blue calm of the facility, back into
the grimy mire of the town.
    Disturbed, disoriented, she said evenly, ’Symat, the starbreaker
beams are coming here. Once the Qax tolerated activities like this,
indigenous cultural and scientific endeavours. Not any more, not
since the Friends of Wigner betrayed the Qax’s cultural generosity
towards indigenous ambitions.’ The Friends had used a cultural site
to mask seditious activities. ’If you don’t move out you will be
killed.’
    He clambered on a low wall and spread his arms, his long robe
flapping in the thin dusty breeze. ’Ah. Indigenous. I love that
word.’
    ’Symat, come home. There’s nothing here. The data cleansers were
sent through this place long ago.’
    ’Nothing? Look around you, Luru. Look at the scale of these old
foundations. Once there was a host of immense buildings here, taller
than the sky. And this roadway, where now we mine the old sewers for
water, must have swarmed with traffic. Millions of people must have
lived and worked here. It was a great city. And it was human, Luru.
The data might have gone; we might never even know the true name of
this place. But as long as these ruins are here we can imagine how it
must once have been. If these last traces are destroyed the past can
never be retrieved. And that’s what the Qax intend.
    ’The Extirpation isn’t always a matter of clinical data deletion,
you know. Sometimes the jasofts come here with their robots, and they
simply burn and smash: books, paintings, artefacts. Perhaps if you
saw that, you would understand. The Qax want to sever our roots - to
obliterate our identity.’
    She felt angry, threatened; she tried to strike back at him. ’And
is that what you’re seeking here? An identity from unravelling this
piece of obscure physics?’
    ’Oh, there is much more here than physics.’ He said softly, ’Have
you ever heard of Michael Poole? He was one of the first explorers of
Sol system - long before the Occupation. And he found life,
everywhere he looked.’
    ’Life?’
    ’Luru, that primordial supernova did more than spray superheavy
atoms through the crust of the young Earth. There were complex
structures in there, exotic chemistries. Life. Some of us believe
they may be survivors of a planet of the primordial supernova - or
perhaps they were born in the cauldron of the supernova itself, their
substance fizzing out of that torrent of energy. Perhaps they breed
that way, seeds flung from supernova to supernova, bugs projected by
the mighty sneezes of stars!
    ’There is much we don’t understand: their biochemistry, the deeper
ecology that supports them, their lifecycle - even what they look
like. And yet we know there is a forest down there, Luru, a chthonic
forest locked into the substance of the ground, inhabited by
creatures as old as the Earth itself. You see, even in these
unimaginably difficult times, we are finding new life - just like
Michael Poole.’
    Wonder flooded her, unwelcome. Bombarded by strangeness, she felt
as if some internal barrier were breaking down, as if Symat’s bizarre
superheavy creatures were swimming through her mind.
    He peered into her eyes, seeking understanding. ’Now do you see
why I’m prepared to fight for this place? Humans aren’t meant to be
drones, for the Qax or anybody else. This is what we live for.
Exploration, and beauty, and truth.’
     
    She returned to Conurbation 5204, without Symat. She filed a
report for Gemo Cana. Her duty fulfilled, she tried to get back to
work, to immerse herself once more. As always, there was much to
do.
    But the work was oddly