Priam's Lens

by Chalker, Jack L

  “Very well. But it is a bit late to be offended. The question is, can you get down the shaft?”

  The creature slithered over the rubble, then extended tentacles to hold on to what it could and stared down into the shaft. Finally, it pulled back.

  “Get down, yes,” it said. “Back up much harder.”

  N’Gana studied what he could see of the shaft. “I assume this Jastrow used the service ladder here, which is in this indented area?”

  “Yes,” the master computer responded. “It is the emergency service access and exit.”

  “How deep is the shaft?”

  “One point two kilometers,” the mentat told him.

  That brought them all up short. “How deep?”

  “One point two kilometers, give or take a few meters. Straight down. There are, of course, many other floors, but the security storage was at the very bottom for obvious reasons.”

  Harker whistled. “Well, that lets out dropping cables down, I’d think. Even if we had such cables. So what do we do now?”

  “Hamille, with one of us for backup, goes down there and gets the damned modules,” N’Gana replied. “Any volunteers?”

  “I don’t have the imprinted information and I don’t think Kat is the best one in a technical situation,” Harker noted. “The kids are getting claustrophobic even in this spaceship hangar of a building. That leaves you, Colonel.”

  “Colonel—I can do it,” Kat said. Harker turned to her as if she’d just gone nuts, but he needn’t have worried.

  “No, Doctor, Mister Harker is correct. It’s my job.” The mercenary looked down at Hamille. “Rest first or should we just go do it?”

  “Let’s do it,” the Quadulan croaked. “I would rather be tired than dying of thirst.”

  N’Gana took a deep breath, went over to the shaft, judged the distance as best he could, then jumped over to the indented platform from which the ladder descended straight down into the darkness. Hamille looked down into the pit, then slowly oozed in, the rows of tendrils now extended slightly, giving it a millipedelike appearance.

  “I thought with that rotor action of yours you’d just fly down,” Harker said.

  “In the shaft?” Hamille responded. “I fly like spear. In there, you fly like rock. Get down fine, but the landing would be messy.”

  With that, it oozed further on in and vanished, and those who remained behind could hear N’Gana begin the long slow descent as well.

  Harker turned to Kat. “Why in hell did you just volunteer to do something nobody sane would volunteer to do?”

  She shrugged. “Haven’t you noticed? He’s got problems. Mogutu noticed, after we were down. He went out of his way to do things the colonel might well have done for himself, and he was constantly worrying.”

  “N’Gana’s just hiked over a terrain under severe conditions that few others could,” Harker countered.

  “Yes, but I’ve seen his face when he didn’t know it, and heard him sometimes in the night. I don’t think he knew it or he wouldn’t have come, but I’m pretty sure it’s his heart. Back in civilization, he’d be put in stasis, they’d clone another heart from his heart cells, and he’d be better than new in months, but here—no. I think his tolerance for pain may be enormous, though.”

  “You think he can get back up?”

  “I don’t know. I hope so. I don’t think he wants to die, particularly down there, but unless you take physicals every few months and follow the rules all the way, it can always happen. I think he knows it full well, too.” She paused. “He must have been a hell of a soldier in his day.”

  “I never used to like him, and he had a reputation as a bloody butcher,” Harker responded. “Now, though, I’m not at all sure.”

  They went over and sat on a long crate. Littlefeet and Spotty huddled together, staring at the mysterious shapes suspended all around them.

  “Cold,” she said, and he nodded.

  It was cold in there, in a relative sense. Littlefeet had been colder, up on the mountain, but this was a different kind of cold. Dry, a little dead, and going right through you.

  “Sorry, kids. I warned you not to come along,” Kat said, sitting nearby. “It’s kind of a creepy dump, isn’t it?”

  “Dump?” Littlefeet asked. “If you mean strange, yes, it is. As strange as anything the demons build. Was this the kind of place where our ancestors lived?”

  She laughed. “No, no. It was the kind of place where they worked, or some of them did, anyway. They had their own kind of power, like the demons have, and their own machines, like the ones demons fly in. The voice is a machine. It was built, not born, and information was fed into it instead of taught like we were. With that information—using all this, and with the aid of just a very few humans—it could build great machines, great ships that could go between the stars.”

  It was tough explaining this to a pair who had no technological background at all. Even the word “ship” had no real meaning for them, and the only machines they knew were magical things of the enemy.

  Spotty looked around, a little scared, a little awed. “Where is this—thing that speaks in a man’s voice?” she asked. “Why can’t we see it?”

  “You are looking at me,” the mentat responded. “I am everything you see here, and much of the rest of the complex. Oh, I have a brain, if you want to call it that, and it’s in one place deep in the center of this complex of buildings, but my eyes, my voice, the things I see and hear come from every part of this place that’s still connected, that still has power. I’m even in another far-off place at the same time. That’s because the man who was here before you turned on the power there. The surge was enough for me to feel it and find it.”

  “You mean like the demons talk through their lines in the sky?” Spotty pressed, showing an intelligence than her quiet subservience had concealed.

  “Yes, sort of. I don’t know how they do it, and I think they probably would barely recognize how I do it, but the general idea is the same. In fact, at one level, energy is energy, whether it’s my kind, the demons’ kind, or things like the lines in the sky or lightning. I’m awake now because some of their energy proved convertible to what I needed. Unlike you, I do not need food or water, but without energy, electricity of some sort, I either go to sleep or even die.”

  “Plants get energy from the sun. Are you a plant?” Lit-tlefeet asked. “The others called this place a ‘plant.’”

  “Not that kind of plant, no. But, again, the idea is the same. Flowers and trees and grass get their energy, their food, from the sun.”

  “Do you move? Can you walk?” Spotty asked it.

  “No, I can’t. I’m stuck here. Anything that comes in I can see, hear, and work with. But they must come to me, as you did. I cannot move.”

  “A big rock once spoke to me,” Littlefeet remembered. “When I was a kid and all, I got scared and ran. I guess that was something like you, huh?”

  There was a moment’s silence, and then the mentat responded, “That was me. So you were one of the boys who came along after those creatures killed poor Jastrow. I would not have known you had you not spoken of it. Your voice has changed. In these three years you have become a man. And now you are here.... How... coincidental....”

  Both Harker and Kat Socolov sensed a slight hostility creeping into the mentat’s otherwise bland tones, but it wasn’t enough to start wondering about it. Not yet.

  “We might as well try and get some sleep if we can,” Harker suggested to them. “Until we hear from that hole over there, all we can do is worry and wait.”

  • • •

  There was no effective light at the bottom of the shaft, but the moment N’Gana almost slipped on the rubble of the collapsed elevator car and started cursing, a sliver of pale yellow light shone through a small opening in the wall between the car and the shaft itself.

  Voice-activated, he thought. Handy.

  With even that little bit of light, he could see the remnants of Jastrow�
��s frustration. So close and no cigar, the colonel thought. There were long, bent pieces of metal, indentations where things had been pounded or attempts had been made to pry open a larger hole, but it had ultimately only damaged the tools.

  Jastrow must have been almost mad down here. The hole was a bit jagged, perhaps large enough for one leg. There even seemed to be some dried blood on some of the jagged edges, which meant that Jastrow may well have tried to force his large body into a very tiny hole.

  Inside, there were rows and rows of storage consoles. He could clearly see the posts where human agents would sit, with robotic security controls around them. It looked so normal, as if everybody had just shut down and gone to dinner, and yet it was so unapproachable.

  He felt the Quadulan ooze up next to him. The thing was furry, but it felt more like being touched by a porcupine. He rolled back to give it full access to the hole. “Think you can get in there?”

  Although it was a bit larger around than the hole, it was an enormously flexible creature and very, very tough. “Piece of meat,” it said.

  “Piece of cake,” N’Gana corrected.

  “Whatever. Question is, if security is still powered on, will it take passwords from Hamille?”

  “That’s part of why I’m here. It’s aware of us now, so we might as well get started.”

  The Quadulan eased up to the hole and then began pulsing its body, stretching itself out as much as it could, and then it pushed on in, oozing through like paste through a straw. It was not as easy as it looked, and Hamille was extremely slow and cautious. More than once, one of the sharp edges snagged the skin or threatened to dig deeper, and the creature had to stop, back up a bit, and try it again. Still, within a quarter of an hour, it was through.

  Almost as soon as it hit the floor, a series of tight red beams struck it, and a voice that sounded very machinelike and inhuman said, “Halt and give the proper password signs or leave as you came. You are targeted by seven different lethal devices.” It was designed to sound artificial so that there would be no doubt in the intruder’s mind that it was dealing with a tightly programmed machine.

  N’Gana felt some sharp pains in his chest that brought him up short for a minute, but he willed himself to ignore them. They had not come this far to have him blow it.

  He took a deep breath, pressed his face against the hole in the wall, and said, in his best theatrical voice, “And let the heralds Zeus loves give orders about the city for the boys who are in their first youth and the gray-browed elders to take stations on the god-founded bastions that circle the city!” he intoned. “Let it be thus, high-hearted men of Troy, as I tell you! Let that word that has been spoken now be a strong one, and that which I speak at dawn to the Trojans, breakers of horses. For in good hope I pray to Zeus and the other immortals that we may drive from our place these dogs swept into destruction whom the spirits of death have carried here on their black ships!”

  There was silence for a moment, and Hamille felt as tense as N’Gana. Then, just as the old colonel feared he had blown a line, the red targeting beams switched off.

  “Code accepted,” announced the security voice.

  It was an appropriate passage from a little-known translation, with a devilish little trap in it. A part of Hector’s great speech before the battle, but with some sentences left out here and there. The result fit the defenders of Helena against the Titan invaders as well as it did the defenders of Helen thousands of years ago on a far distant planet.

  The Trojans, too, had lost to the invaders in their black ships just as the defenders of Helena had lost to the invaders in their shimmering white craft. The Trojans stupidly fell for a simple trick and lost it all; the defenders of Helena dithered until the invaders had already breached the inner walls and they could no longer decide. In both cases, their worlds died by the unwitting duplicity of their defenders. Ancient Troy vanished off the face of the earth for three thousand years, and existed after only in partly excavated ruins. Helena was in a century of darkness which might last as long as Troy’s but for this one second chance.

  It was odd, he thought, fighting the pains, that only military men knew any history in this day and age. Nobody else really cared. Nobody else had to repeat the mistakes of the past.

  He leaned back into the hole. “Hamille! Do you have them?”

  For a moment there was no answer. Then the croaking voice of the Quadulan came back, echoing slightly, “Yes. I see them. Old-fashion memory bubbles, but labels are clear. Need to type in code phrases to unlock case. Very hard with my tentacles. Will do it.”

  “Take it slow! No mistakes!”

  The three phrases, one from each member of the triumvirate who created this project so long ago, were all in Greek. One was a line from a poem about Helen of Troy, the second a quotation from the Epistle of Saint Paul to the Ephesians, the third a line from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. All had to be typed in on a Greek alphabet manual keyboard embedded in the security casing by a creature for whom the instrument was not designed.

  The pains had subsided, almost vanished, but now they seemed to be starting up again as he saw in his mind’s eye the serpentine alien trying hard to hit every last alpha and omega.

  It could have been worse, he told himself. It could have been ancient Mandarin.

  And if it worked, if Hamille got it all right, if that case popped open and the electronic code keys were in its grasp, could they make it back up? Could he make it back up? It was a very long way, and he was so very, very tired.

  • • •

  Time passed slowly while they could do nothing but sit and wait, hungry and thirsty, and very, very tense. With so much idle time, though, none of them could avoid talking about things most on their minds.

  “What happens when and if N’Gana and Hamille come back with the keys?” Kat mused. “I mean, how the hell do we send it up to the others? Whoever does will be the same kind of target that Jastrow was.”

  “I will send them from the spaceport security system, which is still operational if I can shift the majority of power to it,” the mentat told them. “The codes are supposed to be on standard data keys, although encrypted. I can’t read them or copy them, but I can transmit the encrypted codes. If, as you say, your people have the station in standby mode, then it will receive the signals. Once it does, then targeting and shooting will be as simple as someone up there in the command and control chair willing it so.”

  “The moment you send, they’ll blast you,” Harker pointed out. “Probably send some of their creations down to make sure we’re not hiding any other surprises, then they’ll reduce this whole thing to lava.”

  “I know. I do not know how to deal with that, but I must accept it. It is difficult for me to contemplate the end of my conscious existence, but I see no other way. I have understood this ever since Jastrow filled in the blanks, as it were. You must be well away when I transmit. Out of the coastal plain, certainly. We have no way of knowing how long it will take those on Hector between getting the codes and being ready to implement them. I should like to be able to see it in action, even once. If I am to cease to exist, I should like to know that it was for a good cause.”

  God, I think we ’re building our machines too well, Kat thought, but said nothing. Instead, she asked, rather rhetorically, “And then what happens to us, I wonder? We’re not going to get back to the ship. Not with those monsters in the way and the rafts surely dissolved by now.”

  “We survive until they come to find us and take us off,” Harker said. “And you get to really do a field study.”

  She sighed. “I wonder if they’ll bother to try and find us? How could they anyway? We’ll just be two more savages out there on a world that, even if it’s freed of the Titans, will be a pretty low priority for exploration and rebuilding, I suspect.”

  “Well, we have nothing else we can do but settle down and wait for them, no matter when or if they come,” he noted. “Not unless we build and launch a boat that can sa
il out to the island. It’s a possibility, if we use all natural wood and have the time—and I think we’ll have the time.”

  “Do you really think that’s possible?” she asked, genuinely interested.

  “I think it’s possible, yes. I know how to do it, although that’s with modern tools and the like. From scratch it’ll take a lot longer, but it’s possible. If the grid’s down and the Titans are run off, at least nobody will want to stop us, and maybe we can have a straw hut and a fire and all the rest. That’s if we survive the next few days, anyway.”

  “It’s worth a try. I’d like to try,” she told him. “I keep being afraid that we’ve already been somewhat reprogrammed.”

  “Huh? What do you mean?”

  “The general program for all survivors. The one they transmit constantly over the grid, and which transfers itself to us via that nightly special rain. I’ve been thinking about it and about us and how we changed even in so short a time. We should be dead. Instead, we’ve become more like Littlefeet and Spotty. Think about it. After the first couple of days, did any of us think of doing the absolutely normal thing and finding some kind of cover or shelter from that storm? No. Even though we knew that it was ruining our stuff, we started walking right out into it. That’s the first directive. Be sure you can get the message. Maybe even the chemical bath. We’re already part of their experiment. Everything in the world, this world, gets bathed like that. We eat it, drink it, wash in it. Even if the grid collapsed, I think it will continue, at least for a while. And yet I want that boat, Gene. I really do want to ride in that boat.”

  It may have been hours, it may have been a day, but suddenly there was a sound from the shaft. Slowly, an exhausted Hamille oozed out onto the rubble and collapsed, breathing very hard. They rushed over to the Quadulan expectantly. “Where’s the colonel?” Kat asked.

  “Did you get it?” Harker wanted to know.

  “Go down and help the colonel,” the alien croaked, each word a heaving breath. “He is not that far but he is in trouble.”

  Harker sprang to the shaft, saw the jump to the ladder, made it, and quickly started down, his old ship’s reflexes giving him total confidence.