Chapter Ten of my current wip. As before, all and any comments very much appreciated

Jess watched with approval as Joel brought the flier down, barely skimming the evergreen canopy that covered this side of the island.

“Hey,” Kookka growled at him. “Have a care. Those trees could hide volcanoes.”

“It’s true,” Jess said. “Though unlike those to north of basecamp, not active. Ancient volcanoes underlie everywhere here. Every hill and mountain, once an active volcano else volcanically raised. Never known such a place.”

“And the Sanki choose to live here?” Joel asked him. “Don’t they realise how dangerous?”

“The Techs brought them here,” Jess relayed some of what he had learned in the Briefing. He himself had been on this planet before that move, when the only breed-pool had been confined to the landmass now labelled as Four.

Kookka nodded towards a swathe of trees. “No water source here, you say?”

“That’s the report from a hundred years back. Maybe they were surveyed at the height of the dry season?”

Kookka grunted agreement. “Our breed-pool aren’t like flora to hide life in their seeds. Nor those ‘nasties’ found under rocks. They need year-round water.”

Even so, when Jess had Joel bring the flier close to the southern shore his eyes remained alert. A lot could happen in 100 years. Though in his experience, the less developed the breed-pool, the less they moved of their own accord. The coast here was rugged, sea-carved rocks in fanciful forms giving way to a steeply sloping beach of sparkling black sand. While birds and bats were here in abundance – and no doubt slitherers, biters and rats that could swim – there seemed to be no other fauna. That he could see.

“Now island hop to the next island but one, to east,” Jess instructed. Briefly glimpsed on his first recce-flight, he had noted its barrenness, unusual in an area of rich green flora.

*

“A poetic sight,” Joel said as he brought the flier in low, seeking a suitable place to land the dodecagonal craft. “An island sea-girt and sea-washed.”

“Not entirely sea-washed,” Jess said. “See to west, that higher land probably escapes the highest waves.” Enough that a few scrappy trees grew there.

But there was no denying what Joel had said. The higher crests of the dark island rocks stood out above the water, yet every small and large crevasse between them foamed and glittered with squirming captured waves. And now they were closer Jess could see what else filled those fissures. A profusion of sea-fauna and flora in every colour the Monza eye could discern.

As soon as Joel had the flier safely landed, Jess was out on the rock and looking around him at the unexpected mass of life. He could hear the heavy slop of Kookka’s boots, and a lighter squelch of Joel’s.

“Careful of slipping,” he called back.

“I’ll wager the Techs don’t know about this,” Joel said.

“Food,” Kookka said, having found firm footing beside him. “All waiting for the harvester. But I’ll wager that’s not why you’ve brought us here.”

“Two things – three, now,” Jess said. “But I don’t know where to begin.” He turned, to include Joel in this. Too often, though never intentional, Jess and Kookka stood as a pair that excluded the others.

“You want to know more about what I said.” Joel seemed suddenly shy of his inflammatory claim.

“Not the first I’ve heard it,” Jess said. He glanced at Kookka.

Kookka nodded. “Yea, but tales are tales are tales. I’d take more notice of someone who’s been there. What say you, Jess? Has Joel been there? To Adamzal?”

Joel didn’t answer. He looked down.

“That’s what he told me when I attended him in the Sleep-Room,” Jess said.

Joel’s head jerked up. “I wasn’t lying.”

“No,” Jess calmed him. “I know some Monza do go there. I met a couple on Colabri. But I also know that those who visit have their memory wiped – at least, enough that they don’t remember beyond the going. But you say something happened during the jump to erase the wipe?”

“Possible?” Kookka asked. Jess nodded. “Only I don’t want some bud making a fool of me with his high tales. Next he’ll be saying he’s been to Pendolsphere and—”

Jess shot a discouraging look at Kookka. And if anyone had been to Pendolsphere… He had to tell Kookka his fears, that he mightn’t have seen an Itamakku. But how to say it? Instead, he returned his thoughts to Joel, and Adamzal.

“You’ve regained memories? You know why you were there – on Adamzal?”

“Liaison.” Joel sighed as if in relief at being able to talk. “I’m good with lingo. That was my job, to liaise with the Amzal on behalf of the Techs.”

“But what were the Techs doing on Adamzal?” Kookka asked him.

Joel looked first at Jess before answering him. “Harvesting Imms. Monza Imms.”

It was the last thing Jess had expected. The juxtaposition of those two words… coldness filled him. Monza Imms: Pinkies, the Techs called them. Himself, Joel, Kookka, his team, every Monza he ever had known: Monza Imms. But not his milk-mother; all milk-mothers were mature Monza, but infertile. The workers at the Kreegirn mine, too, where he and his sister…they’d been Monza Imms too.

He slipped that memory aside and ran a hand round his chin as if he’d suddenly noticed an itch. Not an itch but a softness, and not of bare skin. Soft as silk yet with a texture alien to the Monza. He felt his eyes tighten as he frowned. What the Pendoling…?

“There are Monza on Adamzal?” Kookka asked.

“Immature Amzal, really, but they’re no different to us. Except that they’re smaller.”

“I’m confused,” Kookka said.

“Guess you would be,” Jess said. “You were still a suckling when the virus struck. You wouldn’t have heard the ancient stories. With the death of the breeders – the radices, they called them, the fertile females – everyone shocked, tongues stilled, lips sealed for several cycles after. When the stories began again, it was the Techs’ own version. And that’s the only one that’s been told since. But I was out of the nurseries-proper by then, I was in the schools, and I can remember.”

“In the beginning Amzal and Monza were one,” Joel said, which drew a bewildered look from Kookka.

“I’ve not heard that since…I don’t know, not since I was in the nursery. Before the loss,” Jess said. “Where’d you hear it?”

“It’s what the Amzal say.”

“There was a disagreement between them,” Jess recounted the Techs’ version. “The Amzal said the Monza wanted too much territory.”

“Now that I have heard told,” Kookka jumped in. “And that’s what started the Amzal War.”

“You mean the one which ended with the virus sown?” Joel shook his head to say that wasn’t true.

“No, the Amzal withdrew,” Jess gave the old alternative version, the one his lips and thoughts had been sealed on for too long. “Not wanting involvement with Monza technology, they put distance between them.”

“It’s true,” Joel said. “The Amzal have no liking for Monza technology. Yet that’s not the true story either. There are always two sides. It was the Techs broke away. They’d found a way to replicate without need of the breeders, the radices. Though maybe they’d always been able. Anyway, they had no need of the old ways.”

Jess frowned. “What are you saying?” He’d not heard this part of the story. To replicate without need of fertile females. To replicate, not reproduce. “Clones?” That word hit him hard in the stomach. “Can’t tell one from another. They don’t even assign themselves names. Numbers. Tech 5050505. Clones. But if they can replicate…” He didn’t want to complete that thought.

“They’ve no need of the Monza,” Joel said it for him. “No need of we who remain immature, lacking the fertile females to effect the change.”

Again, Jess’s hand went to his chin. But feeling the strange silky texture, that hand fell away. For all his height and strength, his legs threatened to fail him. His head felt swimmy. He wanted to sit but didn’t trust to sit in the flier for the minimal chance of a Tech overhearing his thoughts. And neither would he risk sitting amongst the scuttling liminal fauna here.

“There are breeders – radices – on Adamzal,” Joel said. “The elder Amzal take the twin Imms to the breeders, one to mate, one to change to a milk-mother or worker. More Imms are born. The Amzal have an abundance of Imms. At first I thought it was their surplus they were giving to our Techs, but that’s not how it is. It’s a quota set by treaty. After the war – which according to the Amzal was initiated and pursued by the Techs until, unable to sustain more damage, the Amzal finally submitted – they agreed to pay an annual quota of Imms to the Techs. The Techs use them as labour in the Kreegirn mines, the fields, the factories, wherever. As slaves. Possibly those you’ve seen as Monza Imms were Amzals.

“That’s…” Jess hadn’t the words to express.

Kookka squatted low on the rocks, disregarding any indigenous fauna with nippers or stings. “I don’t want to believe this. Yet it fits. It even answers those Pendoling questions I’ve yet to ask. But by the highest sphere, I wish it didn’t.”

Jess had only the vaguest awareness of his body though maybe he nodded agreement. He had worked the mines, though as a metallurgist not as labour. He had seen the conditions. He’d questioned at the time how the workers could tolerate that. His sister had been with him there, as a data-collator. The organizational, managerial strata entirely comprised Monza Imms, although he hadn’t realised it at the time. While the actual workers he now realised had been Amzal slaves.

His thoughts raced on. “The Techs don’t need fertile females for their survival. Clones, self-replicating. And even if the need arose, they could as easily take a new breeding female from the Amzal.”

“I tell you, the Amzal are terrified of the Techs,” Joel said. “Whatever asked, they’d give.”

“But why this GM Programme?” Kookka scratched his head. “That’s what I don’t understand. All this psi-skying, to jump across who knows how many galaxies. All this cutting and tweaking of genes, when all that’s needed is to take a breeding female from the Amzal. This makes no Pendoling sense.”

“Do we serve them? Or do they serve us?” Jess wasn’t sure if he’d said that out loud. Perhaps it was only a self-held thought. How often he’d wondered it.

“We serve them,” Joel said. “As long as we don’t mature, we don’t stop growing. Giants they’re breeding in us. Strong armed workers to do their bidding – whatever that bidding might be. Oh, and in case you’re wondering the truth of that virus, let me assure you that not only do the Amzal lack the technology, but also they’re ignorant of the psi-sphere. They’re confined to Adamzal. Which once was the Monza’s own home planet. So how could they have sown a virus?”

Jess groaned. “They killed the breeders.” That still hadn’t sunk in. “Then set about altering alien species – as replacements? That makes no sense. Have I already said that? But it doesn’t. Why? Is it all a pretence? And even if, then still I ask why?”

“And without their technology, what are we?” Joel said.

“They’re farming us, that’s what I think,” Kookka said.

Jess squeezed his eyes tight. Ancient memories. Part-forgotten questions. And he still hadn’t said of his encounter, and the unfamiliar feelings that had engendered.

To be continued

Thank you for reading. As always, your comments much appreciated