by Allen Steele
No wonder Tamara had given her illogical warning; even though Paul was in the tunnel only as an artificial presence, she had heard her lover die. How she could even stand to be in the monitor center was beyond his…
Something moved in the shadows of the tunnel, just beyond reach of his lamplight.
‘Contact!’ Kawakami snapped.
‘Spider, stop forward motion,’ Paul said. The probe halted. ‘All right, now,’ he said. ‘Come on, come on…’
For a moment, there was nothing; small vague shapes scurried just outside the range of his infrared searchlight. Around him, he could hear a stillness in the module as everyone held their breath.’ Come on,’ he whispered. ‘What are you waiting for…?’
All at once, they came: a dozen or more pseudo-Cooties, rushing as a copper-toned wave out of the darkness. They moved so quickly, there was no way he could count their number; first there was empty tunnel, then they were upon him, a swarm of identical metallic insects, skittering on their mechanical legs as they charged the probe.
Verduin’s point-of-view rocked violently as they flung themselves on the probe. He heard Kawakami yell something, then caught a glimpse of one of the spider’s forelegs as it was ripped out of its shoulder-socket. God, they were fast! Two scissor-like pincers swept directly in front of his eyes…
Verduin jerked back in his seat…then the universe vanished, replaced by static gray fuzz, rapidly fading to black.
‘Telemetry lost,’ Isralilova said. ‘Uplink severed at source.’
‘I’m dead,’ he sighed.
The inside of the helmet was now completely dark. He slowly pulled it off and dropped it in his lap with a deep sigh of relief, feeling cool sweat run down his forehead from his matted hair. Everyone in the module was just beginning to turn toward him, and Verduin realized that his ‘death’ in the tunnel had lasted only a very few seconds.
L’Enfant was the first to speak. ‘Well?’ he asked. ‘Did you see something?’
Verduin opened his mouth to speak, only to find that words failed him. He shrugged and held up his hands.
‘Yes,’ he said slowly. ‘What a garden spider sees when a mantis is about to devour it alive.’ He wiped the sweat off his forehead and took a long, deep breath. ‘Alien. So alien…’
‘Of course it was alien,’ L’Enfant said impatiently. ‘What else do you think we’re dealing with here? One of your Amsterdam window-girls?’
He bent closer to Paul, resting his right hand on the console as he grasped the back of Verduin’s chair with his left hand and swiveled it toward him. ‘I don’t want to hear subjective opinion,’ L’Enfant demanded, gazing straight into Verduin’s eyes. ‘I want to know what you saw.’
Verduin stared speechlessly at Terrance L’Enfant. During the past several months he had first learned to distrust the American; later he had come to dislike him. Only recently had he come to fear him. L’Enfant was obsessed with the Cooties. So were Kawakami and Isralilova…and he himself, for that matter, although he hated to admit it even to himself. Yet why else would they have remained on Mars for almost three years now?
L’Enfant’s obsession had assumed a darker side, though, manifesting itself as a capacity for sudden violence. He was capable of almost anything. After all, this was the man who had sunk the Takada Maru…
‘Answer him,’ Marks said from across the room. He was leaning against the closed hatch, his arms crossed above his chest. ‘He asked you a simple question, Dr. Verduin,’ he added as he leisurely reached up to scratch at his thick black beard. ‘Can’t you give him a simple answer?’
A simple answer. How absurd…
‘We lost telemetry with the probe less than three seconds after contact,’ Tamara said nervously. L’Enfant’s gaze turned toward her; Verduin was surprised by what she’d said. Three seconds…that was all? ‘If Paul managed to see anything at all,’ she continued, ‘it is nothing less than a miracle…’
‘It does seem to confirm, however slightly and by circumstance, the presence of a collective hive-mind.’ Kawakami was already downloading the data collected in the computer hard-drives into a CD-ROM; his back was turned toward L’Enfant as if he didn’t notice his presence, or didn’t care. ‘Our probe, however much it physically resembled one of the pseudo-Cooties, didn’t fool them for even a moment. Perhaps an advance tropism of some sort, although that does tend to suggest organic intelligence, hmmm?’
L’Enfant had turned toward the team’s senior scientist, but he said nothing. ‘In any event,’ Kawakami continued, ‘that may mean that they identify one another through senses which don’t depend on visual recognition. Therefore, they destroyed the intruder, just as red ants seek out and annihilate black ants which attempt to invade their hills.’
He slipped the little CD-ROM disk out of the slot, fitted it into a plastic jewel-box, and turned around in his chair to offer it to L’Enfant. ‘The record is all here, just as Paul experienced it,’ he said. ‘We have missed something of significance, though. When you examine the record, please tell us if you have a new interpretation. We will be interested to hear your own theories.’
L’Enfant glared coldly at Kawakami. The implied insult was clear: L’Enfant could not more interpret the new data than he could decipher ancient Babylonian tablets.
If he dares to strike Shin-ichi, Verduin thought, I swear I shall…
He glanced again at Marks and took another deep breath, this time to make himself relax. Of all the things L’Enfant had said and done so far, he had yet to threaten Kawakami personally. Indeed, Shin-ichi was the only person at Cydonia Base who seemed to intimidate their unwanted shepherd; maybe it was Kawakami’s stature as a Nobel laureate, or perhaps his implacable will countered L’Enfant’s unfathomable rage. Or, just perhaps, it was the fact that both men were equally obsessed, but from different directions, and therefore polarized each other.
L’Enfant did not immediately accept the disk. ‘And how much longer till you think you have dependable data?’ he asked, his voice deceptively soft.
Kawakami gazed back at him. ‘As I’ve told you before, Commander, we don’t know. We are working within entirely new territory here, and it is a very gradual and often tedious process.’ He slowly blinked his languid brown eyes. ‘Science so often is this way.’
‘Yes, you’ve said that before.’ There was a new edge to L’Enfant’s voice. ‘But I’m not a gradual or tedious person.’
‘If you have any specific recommendation for increasing the efficiency of our research,’ Kawakami replied patiently, ‘I would be only too happy to hear your thoughts.’
L’Enfant said nothing.
He reached out and took the plastic box from Kawakami’s gaunt hand. Since he had been at Cydonia Station, the science team had been required to give copies of all data collected to L’Enfant—for transmission to NASA’s Ames laboratory, he had said, although it was doubtless to prevent a recurrence of the ‘strike’ which had ended the initial investigation of the Labyrinth two years ago. L’Enfant stood up straight, tucking the box into his jumpsuit’s breast pocket, and stepped away from Verduin’s workstation.
‘I’ll let you know what I think,’ he said stiffly to Kawakami. He looked back at Verduin and slowly nodded his head…then, unexpectedly, a patronizing grin spread across his face.
‘Ants,’ he repeated with a dry chuckle. L’Enfant shook his head disbelievingly as he turned and began walking down the narrow aisle between the consoles. ‘You’re defeated by ants…’
His grin faded as he stopped and looked back at the scientists again. ‘I’m losing patience,’ he said softly. ‘Come up with something new. Another way of getting down there.’
L’Enfant then turned and continued walking out of the monitor center. Marks stepped aside and pulled upon the hatch, giving L’Enfant a brief salute as he stepped out into the habitat’s access corridor. L’Enfant didn’t deign to return the gesture, but this didn’t prevent Marks from favoring the science team with a smug smirk as
he followed his commander out into the corridor. No one said anything until the hatch clanged shut behind them.
‘Bastard,’ Tamara whispered.
Kawakami ignored her. He immediately swiveled his chair to face Verduin. He laced his long, bony fingers together and absently nuzzled his chin, then he suddenly turned back to his computer console and touched the REPLAY key.
‘For lack of anything better to do, let’s look at this again…’
Part Two
Journey to Cydonia
August 25–29, 2032
‘IF ASTRONOMY TEACHES ANYTHING, it teaches that man is but a detail in the evolution of the universe, and that resemblant though diverse details are inevitably to be expected in the host of orbs around him. He learns that, though he will probably never find his double anywhere, he is destined to discover any number of cousins scattered through space.’
Mars (1895)
Percival Lowell
8. The Percival Lowell
DIM RED LIGHT FROM SOMEWHERE overhead, seen through closed eyelids…cold air against his face…a soreness in the crook of his right arm…a vague sensation of constant movement…an antiseptic odor…the rhythmic digital beep of an electrocardiograph…
‘Pulse rate eighty-eight…blood pressure one-twenty over eighty…’
‘Respiration normal. He’s breathing all right.’
‘EKG activity normal…no sign of intraventricular defect…ditto for intra-arterial…’
‘How’s the EEG?’
‘Cool. We’ve got a winner.’
His mouth tasted as if it had been stuffed with cotton. His head felt numb, like a whiskey hangover, yet strangely without pain. He opened his eyes; a young man with a sparse beard and dirty-blond hair caught under a backward-worn baseball cap was standing to his left. To his right was a woman with a chestnut ponytail, a slight overbite and a sweatshirt which proclaimed that it, or she herself, was the Property of the Oakland Athletics.
He opened his dry mouth. ‘Water,’ he managed to rasp. ‘Can…you…gimme some water?’
‘Say what?’ the guy with the baseball cap asked. He bent over the edge of the zombie tank and grinned down at him. ‘You say you want some vinegar?’ His breath smelled like Juicy Fruit.
‘Cut it out.’ The woman reached behind her and brought forth a squeeze-bottle. He instinctively started to reach for it, but found that he could not raise his hands. There was mild pressure against his wrists; they were restrained by nylon straps. His face itched; he had grown a beard, and he would have sold his soul in hell for a chance to scratch at it. She bent the straw and gently tucked it between his parched lips. ‘Sip slowly,’ she said. ‘Just a little bit…easy, easy…’
Water never tasted so good. It took all his willpower not to gulp. The lighting in the hibernation module was red-tinted, subdued. He could feel a mild turning sensation: the rotation of the cycleship’s arms. The woman allowed him another sip from the bottle, then pulled it away. ‘How’re you feeling?’
He nodded a little. Damn, did his face itch. Juicy Fruit-breath leaned over the tank again. ‘Mr Donaldson, do you know where you are?’
For a moment, the question confused him. Then his memory returned; no one aboard knew him as August Nash. To them, he was…yes, that was it. Donaldson. Andrew Donaldson.
A glucose IV line was stuck into his right arm. Six leads from the EKG were attached to the left and right sides of his bare chest by tiny suction cups. A small tight band of pressure around the base of his penis, unseen beneath the sheet covering the tank’s waterbed, informed him that a catheter was in place.
‘Mars ship…’ he murmured. He thought about it for a second, then added, ‘The Lowell.’
‘That’s right.’ The woman nodded agreeably. ‘You’ve been in hibernation for the last nine months. Do you understand? So we’re going to have to take this a little bit at a time.’
‘Straps.’ He lifted his hands against the wrist-restraints; he was helpless as long as they were holding him down, and that bothered him even more than the hangover. He really wanted to scratch his face. ‘Could you please remove the straps…?’
She shook her head. ‘Not quite yet. We’ve got a little more to do first.’
‘If you think waking up was rough,’ Juicy Fruit added with a smirk, ‘you’re going to love what happens next.’
‘Hush.’ The Property of the Oakland A’s reached to the tray behind her and picked up a sedative-gun. ‘Now, Mr Donaldson, I’m going to inject you with a mild local sedative. You’re not going to sleep again. This is just to make the next part easier. Okay?’
As she spoke, she pulled down the sheet. Juicy Fruit glanced at her, than looked at Nash and winked at him. ‘Jodi loves this part. I mean, when it was her turn to come down here and give you physical therapy, she…’
‘Shut up, Lew. I’m warning you.’ Jodi’s face reddened as she placed the blunt nozzle of the gun against the shaved pubic area just above his testicles. He barely had time to feel humiliated before she squeezed the trigger.
There was a sharp pain as the needle jabbed into his skin. As his groin began to deaden, she took an open plastic bag and pushed its sleeve-like opening around his penis. Then she grasped the catheter with the thumb and forefingers of each of her soft hands. The medical officer looked up at him and smiled comfortingly.
‘Okay, now,’ she said, ‘can you tell me the names of the states? Starting in alphabetical order.’
‘Uhhh…sure.’ Knowing what was coming, he stared up at the low, curved ceiling of the hibernation bay. ‘Alabama…Alaska…Arkansas…’
‘Ngggt!’ Lew honked nasally. ‘I’m sorry, Contestant One, but you forgot Arizona. There goes your chance at the new Pontiac Sunfire and the trip to Rome, but as your door-prize you’ll receive…’
And then Jodi released the catheter. Despite the sedative, the agony was exquisite; it felt as if a white-hot needle had been thrust into his urinary tract. ‘Your first pee-break in nine months!’ Lew turned to an imaginary studio audience and began to clap his hands. ‘Let’s have a big hand for Mr Donaldson, folks! What a guy, huh…?’
As he painfully urinated into the plastic bag, Nash moved his eyes to meet those of the first officer of the USS Percival Lowell. ‘I’m…going to…kill you,’ he hissed between gasps.
Lew turned around and, as he saw the expression on Nash’s face, his grin faded. ‘Right,’ he said as he walked toward the hatch leading to the Arm Two access shaft. ‘I’m going to go check out the Sagan. You…ah, should be able to handle the other zombie by yourself, Jodi?’
‘No problem.’ The medical officer removed the urine bag and zipped it shut; she seemed relieved that the exec was leaving her domain. As she walked away to drain the bag into the recycling port and discard the plastic catheter, Nash was able to see for the first time the adjacent zombie tank in the deck. The plastic lid was open; inside lay a young Japanese woman, revived from biostasis but apparently still asleep.
Her name was written on a white strip of tape affixed to the outside of the tank. In the dim red light, Nash could barely make it out: Sasaki, Miho.
Nash recalled something from his mission briefing about a woman by that name. He fought to pull it from his fogged mind, but his memory was blocked. Instead, his eyes closed of their own accord; within a few moments he had fallen back asleep.
Five hours later, Nash climbed down the last few rungs of the long ladder leading into the Arm One access shaft.
He still felt a little weak from biostasis; clinging to the ladder just beyond the closed hatch marked 1A-Main Command, he paused to catch his breath and let his body readjust to the pull of one-third normal gravity. His own quarters were on Deck 3D in one of the two habitation modules on Arm Two; it wasn’t far from the hibernation bay but on the opposite side of the pinwheel-shaped cycleship from the command center. To get here, he had climbed all the way up Access Two out of Module Three, crossed the zero-gravity locus at the Percival Lowell’s axial center where the
three arms converged, then climbed down Access One to the end of Arm One where modules One and Two were joined.
A long climb, but cycleships weren’t designed to accommodate cripples, let alone the recently bedridden. It was good exercise even when one hadn’t been in a zombie tank for the last nine months; as it was, he was already worn out, from both the climb and from the changes in gravity-gradient.
Nash pushed his hand against the unlocked hatch and eased it open, then carefully swung his left foot off the ladder and, grabbing onto handholds within the hatchway for support, entered the command center. A tricky maneuver, even in lower gravity. A voice called out to him from the darkness: ‘Mr Donaldson…’
‘Here,’ he answered.
‘Back from the dead already, I see. Come in and have some coffee with us.’
It was the nicest thing anyone had said to him during this long trip…at least, since the medic at Freedom Station had said ‘Sweet dreams’ as he was injecting him with zombie dope, just prior to transferring aboard the Lowell nine months earlier. ‘Thanks.’ Nash pulled the hatch shut behind him and turned around. ‘Right now some coffee would be appreciated.’
He stopped to let his eyes adjust. The bridge was dark, illuminated mostly by the glow of console LEDs and the few light panels in the low ceiling which were switched on; green geometric patterns wavered and shifted on the computer flatscreens, and the red crescent of Mars hung in the center of a couple of TV monitors. Like every other compartment in the Lowell, the ship’s command center was circular and windowless, although this deck was even more cramped than the hibernation bay. But even in the dimness, he could vaguely see someone rising from a chair at the other side of the compartment. As she passed under a light, Nash realized that he wasn’t the first of the ship’s former zombies to be paying a visit to Main Command.
‘Don’t mind me,’ the slender young Japanese woman was saying. ‘I was just leaving.’