The Lion in Paradise

by Brindle, Nathan C.

  Gorsh'kii began speaking to the gathered throng. They lowered their hands, slowly, and as Gorsh'kii continued, what looked like happiness began to show on its compatriots' faces – if, thought Ariela, a human could properly read an Eskaasali'i face at this point.

  "Witnesses agree," Gorsh'kii said, presently. "Is good for Eskaasali'i. Have told what we said, you say, word-for-word?"

  Ariela nodded. "Yes. You must have an excellent memory."

  "Yes. Good head. Now saviors witness?"

  "Yes." Ariela turned to the Marines and Mei. "I call you all to witness this day, that I have made certain representations on behalf of the United States to these Eskaasali'i people, and in my capacity as an Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, in which humans agree to assist them in transitioning from dark to light, and which they have agreed is fair, sufficient, and binding only so far as the agreement benefits both sides. You have heard the representations I have made. Do you agree to stand as witness to these representations and agreements?"

  "Oorah!" shouted the Marines.

  "Yes," said Mei, with a smile. "And I have time-stamped video of the entire incident and negotiation," she added, holding up her holotab, "which I will provide to you under seal, in my capacity as Major General and Commandant of Space Force Base Terra Meridiani on Mars."

  "Very well. Gorsh'kii, what can we do for you immediately? Your thoughts?"

  "Can do nothing right away," admitted Gorsh'kii, "have food, water, other things. Help with eyes? Help with skin. Sun too bright, burn us, hurt eyes."

  Ariela nodded. "We can help with that. We might be able to fix those problems. Anything else?"

  "Have," said Gorsh'kii carefully, "a thing to show you. Beyond Eskaasali'i knowledge, not nature to Eskaasal."

  "Not native to the planet?"

  "Native, yes, not native. Buried deep. Found many hands of years ago when extending caves. Will you come? Has frightened us from long time. Tell us what is?"

  "We will come, but we must properly equip ourselves. Tomorrow?"

  Gorsh'kii bobbed its head. "Is well. Will meet here when sun high?"

  "Yes. We say, 'noon'. Fred, Harb, we'll need to handle the logistics to be ready by tomorrow solar noon."

  "Aye, aye, ma'am," replied Harbinger, after exchanging glances with Fox.

  "Meeting in ten minutes back at the security post. Dismissed."

  "Aye, aye, General!"

  Ariela looked at Gorsh'kii again. "Meet here, tomorrow, when the sun is high," she repeated, pointing skyward.

  "Is well." Gorsh'kii bowed, at which point all of its people bowed, and they all retreated back into the treeline.

  ◆

  "What do you think it is?" asked Delaney, back at the security post.

  Ariela shrugged. "Another present from the Darkness? That would be my guess, if it terrifies them enough to ask us to look at it."

  Harbinger mused, "I wonder how deeply in the caves. It probably wouldn't have been useful for them to tell us; it would be hands of hands of hands of some measurement that means something to them, and absolutely nothing to us."

  "We'll pack for a day trip, I suppose," said Delaney.

  "You're talking like I'm not coming along," interjected Ariela, with a look askance at her daughter.

  "Why should you come along?" asked said daughter.

  "Why should you go along?" riposted Ariela. "You're not the officer in charge of FTSA1 One."

  "Oh, touché," murmured Harbinger, his face neutral, but a glimmer of laughter in his eye.

  "Colonel," said Fox, formally, "they seemed fairly intent on dealing with the General, or shall I say, more to the point, the Lion of God."

  "The problem with this group," groused Delaney, "is it's got too much family in it. Mom, really, why do you need to expose yourself to that sort of danger? Who knows what's really behind this trip to the caves?"

  Ariela shrugged. "They came to talk to me, they want me to go look at this thing, whatever it is. I think I need to do that. If they had addressed me as anything but the Lion, I'm not sure I'd feel personally obligated. Clearly they have a spiritual need, if only to be reassured that this thing is nothing, or to be made aware that it really is a danger."

  She looked at the group. "Either way, I'm going, and FTSA1 can tag along as my security. Smaj?"

  Fox nodded. "Make sure we all have NODs and fresh batteries. Comms probably won't work that far underground, so we'll trail a wire if we have one long enough."

  "Can do, Smaj," acknowledged Sergeant Smith.

  "Thought you were the team's driver."

  "Yes, Smaj, I also have heavy weapons and electronics qualifications."

  "My team members are multi-talented," pointed out Delaney.

  Fox laughed. "True enough. We'll go in armor, with helmets. Weapons, full loadout for patrol: M11s and Harbingers with reloads; make 'em frangibles, so we can avoid ricochets in the caves."

  Ariela added, "But skip the flash-bangs, I don't want to kill any of the Eskaasali'i by accident. Bring sufficient rations for the day, as already noted. Delaney? Harb? Anything else?"

  "Gunny," said Harbinger.

  "We'll use a standard patrol formation," said Gunnery Sergeant Stirling. "Keep watch front and rear, and sides if we enter larger cave sections. Rotate positions so someone isn't walking backwards the whole way. Unless they become a clear threat, the Eskaasali'i are to be considered friendlies. Adjust your night vision bandwidth so they're plainly visible. And I shouldn't need to say it, but I will anyway: Keep your damn booger hooks off the bang switches. Let me get an oorah on that last, Space Force Marines!"

  "OORAH, Gunny!"

  "Very good. Unless Colonel Fox or Lieutenant Colonel Harbinger has anything else? No? Then, meet here at 1130 tomorrow morning, ready to take a hike. Dismissed!"

  When they had all departed, her husband looked at Ariela. "I thought," he said, carefully, "we and the Shizzle were the only two species Beam brought out of the Simulation."

  Ariela nodded, a grim look on her face. "That's what I thought, too. I'd sure like to know what his explanation for this is going to be."

  The Tomb

  "Inertial guidance says we've come about six miles, Colonel," grunted Smith.

  "Very well," acknowledged Delaney. "General?"

  Ariela waved a hand. Nodding in NODs could be troublesome with the extra weight on the helmet, she thought. And she wasn't fond of the things to begin with; even after 300+ years of continuous military night vision R&D, she could see better with her Mesh sense alone than with the issue goggles. Depth of field still left a lot to be desired, and green and white had never been a popular choice. She'd tried to mix Mesh with NODs, years before, and had come away with a splitting headache. And the problem with Mesh alone was it took too much concentration to work – concentration that could distract her from things that could kill her.

  "How much farther?" she asked Gorsh'kii, who was one of the seven Eskaasali'i who'd accompanied them.

  "Not far. Hand of kk'shi." In the green light, it looked apologetic. "Not know in your measure. Time to walk, perhaps, how would you say, day-hundredth?"

  That, she could figure, the day on al-Saḥra' being nearly the same as Earth's. "Fifteen minutes."

  "Still have good contact with the surface," reported Smith, "and we'll have plenty of wire if that's all the farther we're going." The wire in question was, of course, a monomolecular room-temperature superconductor, acting as an RF conductor in this case and plugged into Smith's military-issue comm. On the surface, it was plugged into a booster repeater with a connection to the base at Jadida. It came in ten-mile spools and Smith had brought two, just in case.

  They walked for another uneventful ten minutes, then:

  "There's a glow ahead," reported Foster, on point.

  "Radioactivity?" barked Harbinger.

  "Just general background, standard for al-Saḥra', plus maybe a little boost from radon, but nothing our nanos can't handle," said Brown, handling the sc
anning equipment.

  "Does give off some light," agreed Gorsh'kii. "Very faint to us."

  "Probably too high in the spectrum," mused Delaney. "We're seeing in in our NODs, I wonder if it's visible to humans?" She slipped her NODs up and looked ahead. "Nope. I don't see a thing."

  Ariela stepped up close to Delaney, and whispered, "The odd thing is, I can't see anything ahead of us in the Mesh."

  "I can't either," Delaney whispered back, "and that bothers me; like Beam couldn't 'see' the Darkness transport in Iraq, years ago, until Yehudit brought it to the surface."

  "But how could it be a Darkness artifact? We were still in the Simulation when this planet got wrecked; and I have to believe this artifact, or whatever it is, had something to do with that."

  "Unless it didn't," replied Delaney. "Maybe what they meant by 'many hands of years' has been only in the last century or so. I mean, it's been over seventy years since the trouble we had back on Earth. And nearly three centuries since Beam moved us into the True Universe. Perhaps the planet wrecking thousands of years ago is completely separate from this thing we're going to look at, but still long enough ago it's considered an historic event by the Eskaasali'i."

  "Well, isn't that troublesome, if so," her mother said. "But look, now there's a very tight Mesh knot right ahead of us."

  "I think that might be it, but I can't see into it. It's too tightly wrapped."

  "I'm beginning to get a bad feeling about this."

  "Mom! You know we're not supposed to say that."

  "I'm not superstitious like the average Space Force Marine. But I do not like what this is beginning to look like," declared Ariela. "FTSA1, halt! Delaney and I are going forward, alone."

  "Ma'am, I have to advise against that," murmured Harbinger.

  "Same here," agreed Fox, with a scowl. "I don't like it."

  "Delaney and I are the only ones who can see what it is," pointed out Ariela. "Whatever it is, it's stuck in a Mesh knot. We may have to unwind it to get a look. I don't want any of you anywhere near when we do that."

  "As if you'll be safer that us?" asked Fox, exasperated.

  "Actually we will," responded Delaney, "because we can see the Mesh and can protect ourselves from anything that happens when we do the unrolling. If you can see the Mesh, feel free to come with us." She looked around at the frowning faces of FTSA1, her husband, and her father. "No? Well. Come on, Mom."

  "I will go," said Gorsh'kii. "Not afraid."

  "Can you see it?" asked Ariela.

  The Eskaasali'i shook its head. "Only the glow."

  Ariela put a hand on its shoulder. "Stay. You can't see the Mesh and you can't protect yourself. We do not think less of you because of this. We do not want you hurt."

  Gorsh'kii bowed. "As you command, O Lion."

  The two women glanced at each other, and set off down the passage.

  When they reached the place from which the glow emanated, that was all they saw; just a soft glow, to one side of the passage.

  "Still no radioactivity?" asked Ariela.

  "Nope," confirmed Delaney, looking at her wrist scanner. "Like Brownie said, just background and maybe some radon. Levels no higher here than they were back there." She looked at the passage wall. "Does it look to you like the glow is spherical, but we're only seeing part of it?"

  "Yes," agreed Ariela. "See the Mesh lines? They're very faint because the glow is insubstantial, but they're there."

  "Then it's inside the wall."

  "As we figured it probably was."

  "Yes. A Mesh knot like we're seeing has to be inside something substantial."

  Ariela bit her lip. "I wonder if we should call Beam."

  "If he can't see it, like he couldn't see the one Yehudit found in Iraq, what difference would it make?" shrugged Delaney. "We can open this up safely, I think."

  "And if it's one of those Darkness monsters?"

  "Mom, it's probably dead. Those bowling ball transports can't possibly operate forever. This is just another Darkness gutter ball, if you ask me, and hundreds if not thousands of years old, from what Gorsh'kii says."

  "Yes," said Beam, behind them. "It very likely is dead."

  They both started, and whirled around.

  "Beam," hissed Ariela, "we've discussed this. You should never sneak up on a lady like that."

  He looked askance. "You were just debating whether you should call me. So I came, just in case."

  "Okay," said Delaney, "since you're here, how did a Darkness transport get to al-Saḥra', hundreds if not thousands of years before our timeline was brought into the True Universe?"

  "That's easy," replied Beam. "This star and planet were already here, and part of the probabilities calculated when your time trunk was first created. When I brought it out, your timeline's version simply mapped over it. Or it mapped over your timeline's version. Probably the former and not the latter, but either way, in both the True Universe and in your simulated timeline, and as paradoxical as it may sound, this planet was struck by a mis-aimed Darkness transport. That was not, however, what created the Great Rift and dropped all the water down into the bowels of the planet. That was caused by the big hunk of the planet's moon the transport broke off when it materialized inside it . . . which is why the transport is nowhere near the Great Rift, of course."

  "Then how did the transport get here?" asked Ariela, still skeptical.

  Beam chuckled. "It fell, of course. It was going so fast when it came out of rotation, there was no way it was going to be diverted or even slowed down very much. So it hit the planet at a significant fraction of light speed, which is why it's buried down here now. And much like the one Yehudit found in Iraq, it took a deep divot, what you're calling a Mesh knot, and has been buried here ever since. The difference, of course, being humans' ability to get to the Iraqi one very quickly, before the creature asphyxiated."

  "Were they trying to land it here?"

  "I doubt it. I think they were shooting at Earth even then, getting the range and azimuth, if you will, and al-Saḥra' and its ill-fated moon were simply in the way. But it's hard to say, since they very well could have been shooting at al-Saḥra'; there were, of course, sentient beings here."

  "Which you didn't tell us about," accused Delaney, hotly. "Why not? We could have helped them long ago, had we known."

  Beam shook his head. "No, you could not have done," he replied, evenly, "because in your timeline, they did not exist. They always existed in the True Universe. Which is why I'm unsure which version of the planet mapped over the other; or, if in fact, they simply merged wherever equivalent. I'm inclined to believe the latter, but the 11-dimensional math is extremely complicated and I'm still crunching the numbers."

  "BUT YOU BROUGHT US OUT ON TOP OF THEM!" shouted Delaney. "What if we'd simply 'mapped' them out of existence?"

  "Not possible," averred Beam. "For one thing, do you really think this has never happened in the forty-two times I've brought out a Guardian race?"

  "You two," declared Ariela, "are as bad as my father and my uncle. Shut up, both of you; you should be ashamed of yourselves. Beam. What is the likelihood this thing is still alive in there?"

  "Probability analysis indicates a very low likelihood, Ari. On the order of 10 to the minus 5 billion. And I apologize."

  Ariela smiled. "Well, that's a first."

  "I'm sorry, too," grumbled Delaney. "I shouldn't have yelled at Beam."

  "True enough. Apologies accepted. Del, let's see if we can roll open this knot."

  The two women stepped up to the wall, and both placed their hands on it.

  "It's rolled extremely tight," observed Delaney.

  "Yes, much more so than what Yehudit described, years ago," agreed her mother. "I would imagine because it came straight in rather than at an angle?"

  "That could be," said Beam. "Also, I believe the ones they aimed at Earth 78 years ago were not traveling as fast when they rotated out. They seem to have learned something from earlier attempts. Thi
s one seems to have not simply burrowed in, but literally melted its way into the rock. I can see the path it took, filled in now, of course, but originally it was as hot as a lava tube and the melted rock is clearly visible in that path."

  "Okay. Delaney, very carefully . . . see the spot at the top where all the Mesh lines come together?"

  "Yes. You pull one way, I pull the other?"

  "Like an onion, but peel it slowly and maybe we won't have an earthquake. Ready? Pull!"

  The ground trembled a bit, but otherwise nothing happened. Delaney and Ariela relaxed. "Can you see it now, Beam?" asked Ariela.

  "As before, I can't see it directly, but I can perceive that something is there," replied Beam. "Can you now pull it out?"

  "Del? Look into it, see if anything is moving."

  "I don't see anything moving, Mom. It's quiet as the grave in there."

  "Okay, let me pull it out; you keep an eye on it, and help me part the Mesh."

  Ariela concentrated, and in a moment, the transport ball started to appear, emerging out of the passage wall.

  "Delaney," cautioned Beam, "you will want to help her lower it to the ground. It is very heavy, even for your Mesh abilities."

  "Oof! You ain't whistlin' Dixie, Beam," grunted Ariela. "Del, help!"

  The two women worked together and lowered the transport gently to the ground.

  "It's still glowing, but it's significantly dimmer than it was," reported Delaney.

  "I believe," said Beam, "it is actually heat. Because of the tightness of the Mesh around it, it never cooled off until now, and once you loosened the Mesh, most of the heat drained off into the surrounding rock. Which likely means the creature is not only dead, but probably cooked to ashes, if any of that got through the dark matter shell."

  Delaney pulled off a glove, and waved a hand over the transport. "It's not hot now. Maybe a little warmer than ambient."

  "Can you probe inside of it?"

  She looked at the ball and concentrated. "Oh. I see what you mean. It's still several hundred degrees inside. Dark matter must be a hell of an insulator."

  "The outside was likely as hot, but dark matter conducts heat oddly. If we don't open the transport, it will be several millennia before the interior cools off."