Free The Heart of Matter: Odyssey One by Evan Currie Page B

them changing back.

PLANET RANQUIL
    ▸THE DISCUSSION HAD taken longer than he had expected, but for Eric, the time had flitted by as if fitted with wings. The story he’d just heard was just like the food, the city, and everything else about the world he currently inhabited.
    So very familiar in so many ways, and yet just alien enough to make him pause whenever he thought on it. There was something about the tale that made him feel…lost and afraid, like nothing he’d experienced since childhood. He’d been afraid many times in his adult life, but he’d not felt so at a loss in decades.
    “As I said, Captain,” Rael finished, not seeming to notice Weston’s introspection, “the Oath and its legends are rather…
complex
. The Oath Breakers were supposedly a group that didn’t want to live within the confines of the colonies’ beliefs.”
    “Religious schisms have brought about more than one break in societies back home,” Eric replied, thinking about what the admiral had told him. “The closest example to this that I can think of would actually be the founding of the North American colonies that I come from. At least some ofthe people came over in order to avoid religious persecution at home.”
    Rael sighed with a shrug. “I don’t know how much ‘persecution’ there would have been, in the event that the legends were true, but there certainly would have been a degree of friction. Even today, those who do not follow the Oath often find themselves…at odds with society in some way.”
    “Religions are like that,” Eric replied, then shrugged. “Actually, people are like that, come to think of it.”
    Rael chuckled quietly as he took another drink. “Indeed. Many of our colonies were founded by groups that had slightly varying beliefs—my own, in fact.”
    “You’re not from Ranquil?” Eric asked.
    The admiral smiled at Captain Weston’s butchering of the planet’s name, then shook his head. “No. I entered the Merchant Service when I was young, traveled across the colonies, and even explored a couple new systems for surveying purposes. When the Drasin threat surfaced a few months ago, my name was chosen by the central computer to serve as the ‘admiral’ of the local defenses.”
    Tanner’s lips twisted slightly as he said his rank, but the man shrugged fatalistically. “At least now there are some local defenses to command.”
    Eric nodded soberly, but saw a chance to find out something that he’d been ordered to. “You mention the central computer…I have to admit, Admiral, I’m not sure I understand that.”
    Tanner blinked, frowning slightly. “What do you not understand?”
    “Is that how your people are governed?”
    Rael Tanner had to think about it for a moment. “I’m not certain that I would say that precisely. Central is a repositoryof knowledge, but it doesn’t give orders. It suggests, occasionally with great enthusiasm.”
    Eric didn’t really understand “enthusiasm” and “computer” combined together, but he supposed it could be a euphemism. He just nodded. “A repository of knowledge? How much, out of curiosity?”
    “I’m afraid that I don’t know the answer to that question,” Rael admitted. “Central is largely closed off, even to me. I can access a great deal of information—more, in fact, than I could hope to process in a lifetime—but I can’t tell how much more is actually there. The system is very old, however, older than our history of spaceflight.”
    Eric coughed, choking slightly as he was caught swallowing some of his drink.
    “D…” He coughed again. “Didn’t you say that your history of spaceflight was fifteen thousand years?”
    Tanner nodded, mildly amused by the reaction. “I did.”
    Eric couldn’t help staring in shock. “You mean you’ve got a fifteen-thousand-year-old computer system, and it’s still running?”
    “Oh, no.” Rael smiled. “It’s far older than that.”
    Eric blinked and set his drink down