The unknown creators were dubbed the Originators. Later research would link them to the creation of the unspace Throughways too. Right then, humanity seized on to one key idea. Whoever or whatever they had been, the Architects feared them. Even their million-year-old relics were enough to send the gargantuan destroyers away.
*
In the wake of the Lycos discovery, a survey team on Charm Prime reported finding similar relics on that barren, blasted world.
Charm Prime had been named by a real joker. The world was arid, devoid of life. The same hadn’t always been true. There were signs of a thriving biosphere and some kind of civilization dating from at least a hundred thousand years before, including roads and the ground-down traces of ruins. The fate of the world and its inhabitants was unclear, but lingering areas of radiation raised some grim possibilities. However, in the midst of the largest and most intact ruin was what hazmat-suited archaeologists had labelled a shrine. It didn’t seem to be made by Originators, but the contents were uncannily similar to the objects found at Lycos. They had already been old, perhaps venerated, when the Charm Prime civilization had been bombing itself and its world into oblivion.
Nobody wanted to settle Charm Prime bar one apocalyptic religious sect. However, a short Throughway linked that world to Karis, where a commune government had been taking in large numbers of refugees. Karis was a good world, able to support many fleeing humans. And when its government took possession of the Originator relics, there wasn’t much the Charm Prime faithful or the archaeologists could do. Scientific research and faith both came second to saving lives.
Not long after, an Architect did come to the burgeoning world of Karis. There was little attempt at evacuation. They trusted the Originators to save them.
They were mistaken. Karis joined the ranks of reworked worlds, another planet-scale martyr to the Architects’ craft. That was how humanity learned the second lesson on Originator regalia. You cannot move them. Oh, on-planet, certainly. But the moment mankind took these objects into unspace they became just . . . things; useless sticks and stones. Objects of ritual significance only. Just another inexplicable mystery attached to the Originators, that hypothetical ancient civilization which raised only unanswerable questions.
Except the relics could be moved in a way that preserved their integrity. A few years after the loss of Karis, during the thick of the war, Colonial diplomats finally disentangled the Essiel’s most important message. It was what Hegemonic representatives had been trying to communicate ever since humans first ran into them. The Hegemony was asking humans to submit to their rule, not through threats, but via a particularly potent promise.
The Essiel knew all about the Architects, from before humans had even smelted bronze. They, too, had discovered the protection these long-gone Originators could still provide. But they had discovered how to transport the regalia. Every single Hegemony world was protected from Architect attention. In return for the subservience and obeisance of their subjects, they offered life.
When this became clear, human worlds began to open private channels to the Essiel. The Hegemony began to acquire human subjects, one planet at a time. And what could the Colonial governments do, precisely? It wasn’t as though they had a better offer, right then.
Kris
Kris had lived out of the Vulture God for four years. She knew it backwards. She knew its sounds too, but they had always been the sounds of other people: Barney cursing recalcitrant mechanisms, Olli clattering about in one of her frames as she worked on the remotes, the tap-tap of Kittering’s many feet, Rollo’s rich voice.
Alone in unspace, the ship was ghastly. Her every step, every shuffle, echoed against the metal walls. Idris had said, be still, close your eyes as they dropped into the void, but that wasn’t an option. Without those little scuffs and rustles from her, there was only the silence . . . and the silence was terrible because it wasn’t quite complete.
She was alone on the Vulture God. Or no, she wasn’t alone.
She’d read about this, watched mediotypes: your mind populated the absence with a spurious presence. It was just sensory deprivation, operating on a hitherto unexamined sense. Pacing past the little cells of the crew cabins, Kris could sense there was something out there. When she moved, it moved, when she was still, it waited. A little closer every time, stalking her at its leisure.
People went mad, tried to destroy themselves, tried to destroy their ships. The alternative would be coming face to face at last with It . . . and that was literally unbearable. You’d do anything to avoid looking into that mirror.