Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

scale. I
don’t even know what my own life is worth. I’m too small. I’ve
nothing to measure it against.’
    ’But it was that very scale that saved you. What defence do we
have, we feeble humans, against the Xeelee?’
    ’None.’
    ’Wrong. Listen to me. We are fighting a war on an interstellar
scale. The Xeelee push out of the Core; we push them back, endlessly.
The Front is a vast belt of friction, right around the Galaxy’s
centre, friction between huge wheels spun by the Xeelee and
ourselves, rubbing away lives and material as fast as we can pour
them in. It’s been this way, virtually static, for two thousand
years.
    ’But if you are caught in the middle of it, your defence is
numbers. Your defence is statistical. If there are enough of you,
even if others are taken, you might survive. We have probably been
using such strategies all the way back to the days without fire or
tools, on some treeless plain on Earth. When the predators come, let
them take her - the slowest, the youngest or oldest, the weakest, the
unlucky - but I will survive. Death is life, remember; that was what
Teel said: the death of others is my life.’
    Luca looked into Dolo’s eyes; the low-quality image had only
empty, staring sockets. ’It is a vermin’s strategy.’
    ’We are vermin.’
    ’Does the arch still stand?’
    ’It is sited on the far side of the asteroid, away from the main
weapons sites. Yes, it stands.’
    ’Let it be,’ Luca said. ’The religion. The worship of Poole at
Timelike Infinity.’
    Dolo’s head pushed closer. ’Why?’
    ’Because it gives the troopers a meaning the dry Doctrines can’t
supply. A belief in a simple soldiers’ heaven makes no
difference.’
    ’But it does make a difference,’ Dolo said quietly. ’Remember that
we need to manage the historical stability of the Expansion. Far from
being damaging, I now believe this proto-religion might actually be
useful in ensuring that.’ He laughed. ’We will probably support it,
discreetly. Perhaps we will even write some scripture for it. We have
before. In the end we don’t care what they think they are fighting
for, as long as they fight.’
    ’Why?’
    ’Why what?’
    ’Why do you do this? And - ’
    ’And why do I so obviously enjoy it? Ha!’ Dolo tipped back his
Virtual face. ’Because it is a kind of exploration, Novice. There
will always be another battlefield - another star, even, one day,
another Galaxy - and each is much like the last. But here we are
exploring the depths of humanity itself. How far can a human being be
degraded and brutalised before something folds up inside? I can tell
you, we haven’t reached the bottom of that yet, and we’re still
digging.
    ’And then there is the war itself, the magnificence of the
enterprise. Think about it: we are trying to build a perfect killing
machine from soft human components, from swarming animals who evolved
in a very different place, very far from here. It is a marvellous
intellectual exercise - don’t you think?’
    Luca dropped his face. He said, ’How can we win this war?’
    Dolo looked puzzled. ’But we have no interest in mere winning, but
in the perfecting of humanity. And to achieve that we need eternity,
an eternal war. Victory is trivial compared to that.’
    ’No,’ Luca said.
    ’Novice - ’
    Dirt showered over him. Fragments rained through Dolo’s Virtual,
making it flicker. Luca looked up. A machine had broken through the
roof of the cavern, revealing the light of the Galaxy Core.
    Skinsuited troopers clustered around the hole. One leapt down and
just picked up Luca under his shoulders. Luca cried out at the pain
of his wound, but he was hoisted up towards the sky and released.
    For a second, two, he floated up through the vacuum, as if
dreaming.
    Then more strong hands caught him. He was wrapped in a med cloak.
It snuggled around him and he immediately felt its warmth.
    Everywhere he looked he saw more teams digging, and bodies
floating out of the dirt. It was as if the whole Rock were a cemetery
fifty kilometres across, disgorging its dead. And over his comms
system he could hear a great murmuring groan. It was the merging of
thousands of voices, he realised, the thousands of wounded that still
littered this battered Rock, who themselves were far outnumbered by
the dead.
    ’No,’ he muttered.
    A visored face loomed over him. ’No what?’
    ’We have to find a way to win this war,’ Luca whispered.
    ’Sure we do. Save your strength,