by Larry Niven
Then . . he noticed something. There were rough patches on the walls, shimmering oddly under his light, a different color than the faint greenish glow currently reflected against his face plate. Bluish.
“Everybody,” he said. “Lights off.”
And when they complied, what he had glimpsed, perhaps only sensed, leapt into relief: three isosceles triangles in electric yellow, clearly indicating the left branch.
“Is that what I think it is?” Anchored to the nylon line, Trudy had drifted up behind him as soon as he stopped.
“I think so, yes.” He raised his voice, forgetting that all he had to do was increase the volume. “People! You who can hear me—” Not all the rebreathers had earpieces. Fewer of them were full-face, allowing speech. “We have a branching tunnel, and I think I’ve found a clue saying to head left. All who agree, raise your right arms.”
To his relief, all right arms raised. They were with him.
“In for a penny, in for a pound,” Trudy said.
“That’s my girl.”
Her answering voice was a touch wan. “That’s what I am.”
“How are you doing back there?” Cadzie asked.
“The air is holding up,” Trudy said, her voice muffled by her emergency helmet. The sound quality was serviceable, but the gear certainly hadn’t been intended for long-term underwater use. “Can we turn up those lights? Give me something to think about. And . . it’s cold. Colder than I thought it would be.”
“Are you all right?” The temperature was 15 degrees centigrade. That worried him.
The powersuit headlights were turned to high, silvery cones in the darkness. The tunnel walls reflected unevenly, as if flecks of glass were embedded irregularly.
“Looks like lava tubes.” Toad said.
“I’m no geologist, but I’m doubting that. I’m starting to think that these weren’t naturally formed.”
“The cthulhu?”
“Suspecting that, yes,” Shaka said, his voice clear in the microphones. “Some of this is natural, but I think they widened the underground rivers somehow. Don’t know how.”
“This looks like heat glaze.” Perhaps, Cadzie thought. If the original material was like an incompletely digested or mixed paste.
“We know they could work metal. Smelting. Refining. If they could do that, they might be able to do this too.”
“And what else?” Cadzie asked.
“I don’t know,” Nnedi said. “I think we’re about to find out, though.”
They continued on and on, until their air was running low and their arms and legs were numb. Jaxxon was the first to say what they were all thinking. “The air isn’t good. I think . . some of these guys only got another few minutes.” They had found five thermal suits, but the batteries were fading.
“But you’re fine, right?” Cadzie asked.
“I’m a warm-weather guy. But I’ll make it.”
A sudden panicked voice. A woman’s. He didn’t recognize it. “I can’t breathe, I can’t . . .”
“Mei Ling!” Thor cried, his basso voice cracking. “Here, take my mouthpiece. Slow down, Shaka. Match speeds with Piccolo—”
A babble of overlapping voices.
“Hold on.”
Mei Ling again, stressed and gasping. “I have to try to . . .” a sudden inspiration. “Maybe there’s some air at the top.”
“Mei! No!” Thor’s voice. Panicked.
In the lead, Cadzie got a visual feed from Piccolo as Mei Ling cut herself loose from the harness, swam upward toward an imagined safety, frenzy driving all logic from her mind. He had to keep going, around another turn, until the tiny screen in his helmet was the only view of what was happening back there. They would try to get her back. Try to set her up to share rebreathers. Maybe they would succeed.
He had to keep going, because unless he was very mistaken, one of his five towed charges would soon be in the same situation.
Dying, in all probability.
For him.
part two
♦
whoville
I met a traveler from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Ozymandias”
♦ ChaptEr 47 ♦
the forge
Light ahead, flickering dull gold and then brightening, but not quite bright enough to read. The ambient temperature had risen steadily for the last half-mile, until the water was as warm as a steam bath. Fishlike shapes glided through the murk. Glowing. Translucent skin, the bones manifest through the flesh. Cadzie had seen vid of deep-sea dwellers on Earth, but to his knowledge nothing like this had been found on Avalon before now. The creatures (he found himself calling them “fish” although they obviously could not actually be) showed only the vaguest curiosity about the human intruders. If he had wished to catch one by the tail, it would have been child’s play.
The tunnel expanded so abruptly that it seemed like the bottom and sides and ceilings had dissolved, and suddenly they emerged into a world of alien light. As the Starborn exited a tunnel and approached the surface of some larger body of water, several unlooped themselves from the tow ropes and swam under their own power. The first six surviving Starborn clambered onto a graveled rock shelf. For a moment they were overcome with awe by their surroundings, enough to numb the pain and fear.
They stood in a vast arching cavern. The pool shimmered from green-glowing eels that glided through the waters like lightly armored fish. A pale dull light pulsed from the walls, which for a few inches above the water line was coated with a luminescent slime. Where that slime proceeded in an unbroken line from the water, at close range the glow was bright enough to show the lines on Cadmann’s hands.
In all, it created enough light to see what existed at the edge of the underground lake, near a shore that retreated far into the shadows: Something that resembled a castle constructed of coral rose out of the water, multicolored in the odd shimmering lights.
“What are you seeing?” Little Shaka sounded as if he couldn’t quite believe his eyes.
“It’s like Whoville,” Evie said.
“What?”
“Like something designed by Dr. Seuss. The colors and shapes.”
Nnedi shook water from her face and laughed. “Partially above the water line, partially below. I’m seeing a lot of separate compartments, and I’m thinking it’s not living space.”
“What, then? Work space?”
“What if we started with that assumption?” Cadzie asked.
“Partially in the water, part out,” Shaka mused. “The water line was higher then, I think. I would look for a separation in function. Below the water line . . maybe the biological research? Above the line things dealing with heat, fire . . .”
He paused. “Fire,” Nnedi marveled. “Aquatic creatures who discovered how to use fire. I want you to think about that. They had to observe it, learn to care for it, and then probably find a way to reproduce it on their own.”
“The taming of fire was probably the single most important discovery in human history,” Shaka said. “One of the few things that separates us from all other animals. We consider it evidence of our superior brains. Well . . the cthulhu would have had less chance to observe fire, and a more difficult time maintaining it. Fewer natural
opportunities to experiment. And yet they still got it right.”
Standing next to Nnedi, Evie seemed as small as a child, a full head shorter as she ran her small, agile artist’s hands over the artificial stone. “Ever consider that they could be smarter than us?” Her grin was a child’s as well, intoxicated by discovery. “Needed to finish evolving to being land creatures, perhaps. I don’t think people could have done what they did.”
“That’s scary,” Shaka said.
“Too bad we don’t have Marco and his drone,” Trudy said. “I’d like to record all of this. See all of it from multiple perspectives.”
Joanie seemed to flinch. “Marco,” she whispered.
“Check on the others.” Cadzie said.
Another eleven survivors dragged themselves up out of the water, stripping off their masks and spitting out water, coughing and gagging. Thor splashed through the shallows to Mei Ling, who lay limp, pale and unresponsive as glowing fish-things skittered out of the way. Under the yellowish light, she looked bleached and bloated, as if she had been underwater for a week.
“Dammit! Mei, come back!” He pushed at her chest, blew into her mouth, massaged nerve centers at the base of her skull. Nothing.
Even those who had been enthralled by the underground city joined them, gathered about and watched soberly as the grim scenario played out.
Cadzie waited as long as he could before whispering, “She’s gone.”
Thor’s eyes blazed at them. His mouth worked, but no words emerged. He seemed to tense totally, knotting his fists as if seeking something to attack.
Then his broad shoulders slumped. His eyes moistened and he wiped them as he rose to face Cadzie.
He seemed . . shrunken. “Before we left . . she said she wasn’t doing it for you.”
“Why, then?”
“She thought you were innocent. And that if there was some way to prove it, the Godsons would change their attitude. Know they were wrong. And if they did . . .”
“They’d back off,” Trudy said, laying a comforting hand on Thor’s shoulder. “They really might. Believe me, they think your colony is lost, and are just trying to help.”
Thor’s voice was ice. “In their way.”
“Yeah,” Nnedi said. “In their way.”
♦ ChaptEr 48 ♦
guilt and responsibility
A militarized skeeter had circled the high alpine meadow. Sixty miles in diameter, the meadow was ringed with mountains, with the mouth of the Snowcone mine at the inside eastern edge. Tsiolkovskii waved the pilot to a landing and hopped down, a solid, bearlike, graying man two inches over six feet, clean-shaven four hours ago but already stubbled. He took a moment to orient himself. So much had happened, so quickly. So many new sights and sounds. A heavier gravity, and this to a man who had never spent more than a week out of Earth normal. He’d need to make adjustments if traveling quickly over broken ground, or engaging in hand-to-hand combat. Every visual, auditory, olfactory and proprioceptive sense was gathering input at maximum speed. He didn’t have time to adjust properly.
He hoped it wouldn’t matter. He knew he could focus enough to get the job done anyway.
That was who he was.
“Major Stype?” he said to the short-haired Amazon who saluted him. He’d had time to study her jacket on the way over. Difficulties: her fiancé had been killed in a diabolically clever ambush. She was, in his very expert opinion, precisely the wrong person to head up the capture mission.
“Colonel,” she said, and snapped to attention.
“At ease,” he said. And then as clearly as he could, added: “I am now in command.”
“Sir, I respectfully suggest that my understanding of the situation—”
“Is unfortunately compromised by your tragedy. This isn’t a search and destroy mission.”
Her eyes told the tale: tightened with brief fury, then went tight but neutral with deeply ingrained discipline. He could appreciate the first, and respect the second. “Sir—”
“Major,” he said, moving closer to her now. “Be happy I’m not excluding you from the team.” His words were carefully and fully enunciated. “You are emotionally involved.” Their eyes locked, blazed into each other until she looked away. Good. “Yes, sir.”
“Tell me what you know,” he said.
As soon as they moved into the throat of the mine, the temperature dropped ten degrees, and the heat-fused walls looked almost like sheets of gray ice.
To Tsiolkovskii the miner looked like a night creature, something that had spent too much time burrowing within the earth. Fishbelly-pale, like a grub with a fringe of dark hair. “Where were they going?” he asked.
The miner spoke no words, but the wildness in his eyes said volumes.
“If you cooperate, it will go better for you.”
The miner, whose name was Kovak, was wide-eyed with fear, breathing shallowly. Tsiolkovskii thought the fear would be useful. Frightened people were less likely to lie if they believed those lies would bring pain or punishment. But the man said, “You have no rights here. You were our guests.”
“And now, you are our prisoners,” Tsiolkovskii said.
“Secure him! Spread out and search.”
“Sir!” Stype said. “We have evidence that the rebels escaped to an underground river on level six.”
Rebels. That was an interesting choices of words. He’d also heard “criminals,” “terrorists,” and “murderers.” To him they were adversaries. He would leave the more emotional terms for the amateurs, among whom Stype now hovered.
He was dubious of her conclusions. “We’ve found evidence of them heading in a dozen different directions.”
“That’s true,” she admitted. “And yet here you are, sir.”
“Yes,” Tsiolkovskii said. “Here I am.”
Something about this mine seemed right. The horses had been spotted grazing on the miniveldt only a few miles from here. The man Stanfield Corning, known as “Piccolo,” was suspected of being with the rebels, and according to records he was a former miner. Mining explosives had been used to trigger the bee attack. And the underground rivers connected with the largest magnetic anomaly. Why might they go there?
In the final analysis, who knew? Ви́лами на воде́ пи́сано, as his father said. Literally: the future is written on flowing water with a pitchfork. No one knows what will happen, and it was not his job to guess.
Instinct told him this was the best option.
“Sir,” Sergeant Lindsey said, “we’ve examined the collapsed caves, and I can’t help but think that the demolitions weren’t designed to conceal intent. There were two dry tunnels, and then an underground river. I think the river was collapsed in such a way as to block entrance without obstructing the flow of water. I’m guessing that’s where they went.”
“Where would this river lead?” Tsiolkovskii asked.
“Assuming they are heading downriver?” Stype asked. “West, under the miniveldt and the western mountains into the desert, to an oasis maybe, and eventually the ocean?”
A shrug. “It doesn’t feel right. It’s possible, though.”
“And upriver?”
“Under the mountains . . into more mountains. No idea what’s up there.”
“Let’s assume downriver for a moment. What’s down there. Anything?”
Sergeant Lindsey spoke up. “If we overlap deep scans and magnetic maps, there seems to be something in the center of the miniveldt, deep underground.”
That caught his attention. “Magnetic? These cthulhu creatures use magnetism, yes?”
“Yes, sir. There was some speculation there might be a nest of some kind here. You could reach it through the rivers.”
The back of his neck tingled. “Tell me more about this nest,” Tsiolkovskii frowned. “Why would they go there?”
Stype didn’t seem comfortable with the question. “Perhaps a place to hide, or . . .”
“Out with it, Major.”
S
he stiffened her spine, as if it actually hurt to speak the words. “Sikes’ allies advance the theory that these ‘cthulhu’ creatures may have been involved in Aaron Tragon’s death. If this nest is really a center of activity, perhaps they are looking for something to prove that.”
“If he’s innocent,” Tsiolkovskii said. “I assume you have an opinion?”
“Sir? He was adjudged guilty.”
“What do you think?”
A pause, as if wondering if he really wanted to know. And then an answer: “I think he’s guilty as hell, sir, and that everyone who helped him is complicit in the murder of our troops.” Her eyes blazed when she said “our troops.” Oh, there it was. Her personal loss, not three days old, already masked under a pretense of impersonal duty.
“And I was told I’d be awakened at Hypereden. Mistakes can be made. I’m learning as fast as I can. I need you to tell me what else you’re thinking.”
“Sir,” Stype said. “I believe that Sikes has misled them, sir. They believe he is innocent, and he is continuing the charade.” She paused. “It would make no sense to assume otherwise. Sir. The murdered man’s daughter most certainly believes it.”
“And therefore?”
She closed her eyes and exhaled. “Therefore, there are gradations of guilt and responsibility.”
“I see,” Tsiolkovskii said. “Outstanding.”
The Grendel Scouts and their allies kept fear at bay by busying themselves studying the city and environs, attention split between cataloging wonders, setting traps and designing overlapping fields of fire.
Not one of them had ever been in a firefight with another human being. Nor had their parents. Or living grandparents.
But Jason and Jaxxon knew the theoretical side of combatives from Von Clausewitz back to Sun Tzu, and of course they’d all watched war movies. Hell of a time to wonder how well theory mapped over with reality.
Little Shaka climbed up into a second-story window of one of the iridescent coral “buildings.” Handholds were surprisingly easy, and one could imagine the former occupants swarming up and around. But once inside, he found a warren of smaller rooms, the connections between them low-ceilinged enough that it was easier to change levels by exiting to clamber up the outside.