Thirty-five
Lee Wokan witnessed the startling and terrifying
battle between the Hive and modified forces controlled by what he had been
told was an alien refugee. They had lied. He knew now beyond doubt that
only the Dalikor technology could have used ingenuity so natively human.
The alien refugee was somehow another issue altogether. No alien mind had
defeated General Executor Gorlon Hague and his Hive forces.
He paid a final visit to Overlord Khalin Nome before
abandoning Bolphan and the other nine cities of Covonia to its fate at the
hands of the Alliance court system. Entering Nome's personal chamber, he
drew his sidearm and fired, taking dead aim upon the outrageous insult of
the likeness of Myla Rhodes standing at Khalin Nome's side.
The light of the discharge flared and died against a
magnetic shield. When Lee's eyes readjusted to the dim lighting, the
child stood unharmed and smiling vaguely in his direction.
"Is there anything else you would like to fire at
within my personal quarters while you are venting your childish anger?"
Khalin said.
The weapon dangled at Lee's
side. "Do you know what you've done, you fool? The Alliance court has convened by now. It will find you guilty of the
crimes of which you stand accused, and Covonia guilty by complicity. Do
you understand the magnitude and consequence of the charges against you?"
"And you dare call me a
fool? Your petty Alliance bureaucrats are irrelevant. I have something I wish to
prove to you before I die."
"And that being?"
"I wish to show you that Jzon Dalikor would have rid
humanity of the Hive, had he been allowed to complete his work. I will
finish the job humanity assigned Mesina and her team of researchers. I
will show you the futility of your cowardly anger and the impotence of
your self-styled rulers of the Alliance."
"You and your monster will not have an adequate
lifespan to show us anything," Lee spat at the man. "And when you are gone, we will
defeat the Hive in our own time without creating other kinds of monsters
to take their place."
Khalin shook his head solemnly. "Not without turning
humanity itself into the monster you fear. Our only tie with our
biological heritage lies with the Naturalists, and you have consistently
refused to assign them the Earth-like worlds they need to flourish."
"They would devolve into savages and mutate away from
the genetic standard! They would cease to be human!"
"Human by what standard?" Khalin said. "You deny the natural forces
of evolution and enforce your genetic standard by augmenting humanity with
a technology that blinds them to what it means to be human, a technology
that will continue to slip from your fingers like water, as with the
Chineen Hive. You force a
standard upon men, but not upon the tools you use. You betray humanity
itself to sustain the brutal and heartless future you envision for
yourselves."
"Gorlon Hague apparently believes much the same as
you do," Lee Wokan said with a calmer frown, "except that he believes
machine intelligence capable of operating autonomously and overseeing
humanity's welfare. I do believe he admires the Chineen Hive despite its
blind adherence to a crippled executive program."
"Machines are just tools," Khalin said. "A tool
cannot be held above the freedom of men."
"But man is a tool-using species," Lee reminded the
faltering Overlord. "That is the natural course of evolution. The
Technocrats, not the Naturalists, are humanity's future. Look at the
mindless child at your side as a prime example. Can she ever possess the
mind, the knowledge, or the intelligence to stand against the likes of the
Hive, or Jzon Dalikor, or the monster you've created to take his place?
You of all people must know the power your Myla Rhodes wields. She'll
sweep us all aside and seek her own solutions to the problems you and the
Hive and the Alliance have posed to her naive concept of personal
happiness. She will replace your beloved humanity with versions of
herself, and she will replace augmented humanity as well, and neither will
she have need of machine intelligence to augment herself. She is all
rolled up into one, perhaps humanity's future in the end, but not now in
this period of our history, not if I can stop it.
"There is only one unknown factor left, Khalin, one
entirely personal question I would ask of you. I'm simply curious. The
clone at your side and the Dalikor avatar share a common, entirely human
DNA pattern. Who was she, the original?"
"She is my last chance to salvage everything of any
value I have contributed to humanity," Khalin said softly.
“You are not going to tell me who she was.”
“No.”
“But you created her to take Dalikor’s place. You
confess that to me.”
Khalin took a moment to organize his respond. "There
have been unexpected complications. I would have given Myla the chance to
mature thinking herself human before telling her what she is, and why. I
had no way of knowing that outside events of such magnitude would
intervene and alter my plans."
"I should interrogate you, Khalin. I could force you
to reveal everything."
"Myla will reveal everything to you soon enough."
Lee sighed in exasperation. It accomplished nothing
to bicker with a relic of history. "The girl cannot survive, you crippled
old fool."
Khalin Nome waited until the irritating little man
turned way and stormed from his chambers. "Then neither will you," he
murmured in Lee's wake. "Unless the mistakes we have made are corrected,
neither will any of us."
