Free Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky

itself is subject to variations in its transcription. It was designed that way in order to creatively accomplish its hardwired aim: to bring the host to a detected level of sophistication set by its creators and, once its victory conditions are met, to cease further assistance. Its creators included such safeguards so as to prevent their protégés continuing to develop into superhuman monkey-gods.
    The virus was intended for a primate host, however, and so the end state that it has been programmed to seek is something that
Portia labiata
can never become. Instead the nanovirus has mutated and mutated in its inbuilt quest to reach an impossible goal, the end that justifies all conceivable means.
    More successful variants lead to more successful hosts, who in turn pass on the superior mutated infection. From the microscopic point of view of the nanovirus, Portia and every other affected species on the planet are merely vectors for the onward transmission of the virus’s own evolving genes.
    Long ago in Portia’s evolutionary history, her species’ social development was greatly accelerated by a series of mutations in the reigning infection. The virus began to transcribe learned behaviour into the genome of sperm and egg, transforming acquired memes into genetically inheritable behaviour. The economic, force-evolved brains of Portia’s kind share more structural logic with each other than chance-derived human minds do. Mental pathways can be transcribed, reduced to genetic information, unpacked in the offspring and written as instinctive understanding – sometimes concrete skills and muscle memory, but more often whole tranches of knowledge, ragged-edged with loss of context, that the new-born will slowly come to terms with throughout its early life.
    The process was piecemeal at first, imperfect, sometimes fatal but more reliable with each generation as the more efficient strains of virus prospered. Portia has learned a great deal in her life, but some things she was either born with, or came to her as she developed. Just as all new-hatched spider-lings can hunt and creep and jump and spin, so Portia’s early moultings brought with them an innate understanding of language and access to fragments of her forebears’ lives.
    That is now ancient history, a facility that Portia’s people have possessed from back before their histories began. More recently, however, they have learned to exploit the nanovirus’s enhanced capabilities, just as the virus in turn is exploiting them.
    He has the Understanding
, Portia confirms, a flick of one palp indicating her male follower.
But we will trade like for like. You have Understanding of how to live here and the precautions you take. That is what we seek.
    The next moment, she realizes she has overplayed her hand, because the big female goes very still on the web – a particular hunting stillness that signals raw aggression.
    So your Great Nest will come to our lands after all. You are not here to hunt, and yet tomorrow your kin intend to hunt here.
Because such traded Understanding would not benefit Portia herself, but only generations to come, those whose genomes are as yet unwritten.
    We seek Understanding of all places
, Portia protests, but the language of motion and vibration is a hard one to dissemble in. Enough unintended body language leaks into it to confirm the suspicions of the big female.
    Abruptly the local leader has reared up, two pairs of legs raised high and her fangs exposed. It is a brute language unchanged for millions of years:
See how strong I am
. Her rear legs are bunched ready to spring.
    Reconsider
.
Back off
, Portia warns her. She herself is tensed up, but she is not showing submission nor retreating, nor measuring her legs against the other’s.
    Go now, or fight
, the angry female demands. Portia notes that she does not necessarily have the wholehearted support of her fellows, who are anxiously flagging up concern or sending cautioning words along the