The trip by shuttle to the north end took an hour and twenty minutes. Once at the resort the Inn keeper said, “Watch out for the Stow… there up there you know.”
Adamarus laughed it off.
Dora asked, “What is a Stow?”
“Evolved bees, but we thought at first that they were stowaways and the name stuck. There all dead… don’t worry.”
Once they hit the slopes, time flew.
Adamarus went over the side and hunched down as he shot downhill. He felt and sometimes heard Evelyn and Dora behind him. They had been skiing the slopes of North Peak all morning and Adamarus wanted some water and a stop. He saw the slope level out below and signaled a halt.
After they stopped, Dora said, “Wimp.”
Adamarus laughed as he took a drink of water.
Evelyn said, “Look, is that a cave.” Looking back the way they’d come it was clearly visible. However, if they hadn’t stopped, they would have missed it.
They all went to look. They took off their skis, got out their flashlights and went in. They’d only walked in a few feet when the paintings became visible. Definitely evolved bees or Stows, the red cross on the stinger was clear.
“How’d they get up here?” Evelyn asked.
“We need a science team up here,” Adamarus said. But they moved further in. The paintings were everywhere.
Dora heard it first, “Stop,” she whispered, “Listen.”
They did, up ahead there was a sporadic buzzing sound. They advanced slowly inward shining their lights.
---
d-ada saw them enter and was stunned. She recognized them immediately, it was the Gods. Terrified she backed into the shadows. Somehow, they carried false suns with them that shot beams of light out. The beams hurt her eyes. She was so scared. A beam of light lit her up and paused right on her. They’d seen her.
The light moved off her but the Gods stopped moving. After a second, they backed up.
---
“It’s terrified,” Evelyn said.
“Oh shit, I’m terrified,” Dora whispered back.
Adamarus, said, “Keep our lights directly off it and back up.”
Dora had lost the flower in her hair to the wind but Evelyn had put her’s in her pocket. She reached in and pulled it out but hid it behind her back.
They backed up.
It was about three-feet in length. Its wings looked far too small to fly. Its overly large head had compound eyes. It was almost all white but still had the orange coloring of a honeybee here and there. Its stinger had to be five-inches long and the bright red cross with flayed ends was plainly visible. It was terrifying.
Evelyn tried talking to it. She made her voice soothing and light, “It’s okay. It’s okay.” It looked up at her. She moved forward slowly, bent and placed the flower on the ground then backed up.
The flower seemed to stun the creature. The Stow stopped shaking and started making cooing sounds and scratching the floor with its front legs clearly looking from the flower to Evelyn and back with its white compound eyes.
“Now we back out,” Adamarus said.
“But…” Evelyn started to object.
“No. We do not want to fuck up this encounter. We need experts. That way we blame them when they fuck it up.”
They left, but a science team was packing the next day.
Six months later the report came in. Some of the Red Stinger bees aka Stows had escaped Bug’s plague by going into the lava tunnels of North Peak 151,440 ship-years ago. Inside the lava tunnels lived about two million of them. They had cities and agriculture of sorts but were pre-industrial.
They had some kind of population control, or there’d be more of them. Also, they seemed very serious about hiding themselves.
There seemed no way to talk to them.
Adamarus spoke to Bugs making sure Bugs would leave the bees alone.
---
It was winter in the Atrium and a cold wind blew up North Peak. Small flakes of snow flew horizontally through the air and the normally fantastic view was whited out.
In the distance, Mount Burnwall rumbled and smoked and all the world seemed barren, white and cold as a broken stinger. North Peak was an old tributary vent of the volcano that been dormant for a millennium. However, the lower lava tubes were too hot to inhabit.
d-clo looked forlornly out the entrance at the cold. She was always melancholy and bored wishing for things she didn’t have. Like being famous and having your own dream dance. She wanted to invent things like d-bet, or paint and carve things like d-nya. But d-clo had no talents in those areas. d-cyn had led their species to safety during the plague. There was no plague or reason to lead anyone anywhere now.
She sighed. Well if she couldn’t have her own dream dance then at least she could have some kind of break from her boring life.
She stood in the entryway for a long time. She realized she was dangerously cold and struggled back into the relative warmth of the lava tubes but she couldn’t seem to shake the cold. She decided to get as warm as she could and headed downward where the tubes got hot.
She went down until the heat was very nice and then stopped. The sulfur smell didn’t bother her. As she stood there the cold finally left her. She stared down the lava tube letting her mind wonder.
When they’d set up the thermo energy system, sisters had gone down… way down wearing special suits to protect them from the heat. But still, they didn’t go as deep as they could.
d-clo thought, somewhere no one has gone before, and an idea came to her.
She returned to the hive.
The next day she talked to her mate d-enn. d-clo was a communications engineer and d-enn a locksmith. So, d-clo’s idea coming out of nowhere went over like a loose honey sucker at first but d-clo kept working on her.
d-clo next tracked down the old heat suits used for the thermo-energy project. Out of eight, she found five working ones. She took two.
“You’re serious about this aren’t you?” d-enn her mate asked when d-clo dragged the heat suits in.
“It’ll be an adventure! Something no one’s ever done before!”
d-enn knew she was going whether she liked it or not. She resigned herself.
The next day, heat suits on and with lights, they entered the lower lava tubes. They went down further than either of them had ever been. They went down below the thermo-energy unit and its foundations. They went down and down and down. Everything was the same except it got hotter and hotter.
Finally, there was a red glow up ahead. They approached it cautiously. The lava tube ended abruptly in a huge cavern filled with lava. The heat was almost too much for the suits. d-clo and d-enn looked at the fiery expanse in awe.
“Looks like the end of the road,” d-enn said.
However, d-clo had spotted a ledge leading to another shelf and decided to explore. d-enn followed.
They crossed the ledge, the heat pushing them back against the wall. On the other shelf, they found another tunnel leading down further. A cool wind was rushing from it. Down they went.
The tube got cooler as they went down it, and the wind got stronger. It ended in a large chamber but in the large chamber was a God door! They looked at it astounded. They knew the humans were not gods but old habits stuck and any door shaped like a perfect rectangle or circle was a God door. However, this God door had no lighted squares to press to open it. There was a bar and both Stows pressed against it and the God door opened.
Beyond it was a hall and beyond this were stairs and doors and chambers with unfathomable machines in them. They removed their suits and explored the seemingly unending world for two days. On the third day, their food was running low. They didn’t have enough to get back. However, that was the day they found the God door with the square lights.
This was d-enn’s, the lock smith’s specialty. She got to work.
Both were half dead of starvation when she got the door to open. They found the Spore’s galley and where the suppl
ies were but were extremely careful not to disturbed anymore then they had to. They didn’t want the humans to know they’d been here.
After eating they rested then began exploring. The found a black teardrop shaped item with wires going into its top. This was d-clo’s specialty but it was beyond her. d-clo didn’t know why but she knew that this was something special. Now that they knew the way to it, it could be studied.
In the fullness of time, d-clo would definitely get her own dream dance.
---
The Stow had evolved for over a half-million ship years and their technological and scientific advancement was absolutely stunning to the humans.
Only one Stow was waiting outside the God door for the humans and… it spoke.
“Do you understand me?” the Stow asked.
---
“Say that again,” Adamarus said.
Adamarus and Radin were in a meeting with the scientists who had investigated the Stows.
The lead scientist, an anthropologist, repeated, “One hundred thousand years ago ship-time two brave Stow embarked on a mission to explore the… underworld.”
“Underworld?”
“Like a journey to the center of the planet, in their case, they found and were able to access the lower chambers.”
Adamarus dipped his head and squinted, “And…”
“According to them, and they are very sorry if they did anything wrong, these two found The Spore and broke the security code. The Stows then figured out how to access the Archive and, for the last thousand years, have been accessing our complete knowledge base. That’s all the knowledge of our species and much of the Loud technology they passed to us. This includes everything.”
“I need to meet with them,” Adamarus said.
---
Adamarus took the shuttle from South Forest, where the weather was crisp and cool to North Peak which was freezing and snow covered. He disembarked, slipped on a coat and looked around.
He saw a Stow standing alone at the top of the hill. He took the path and walked up to the Queen of Queen’s partner, d-eli. She was completely white except for the red cross on her stinger. She stood completely erect on her hind legs every bit four-foot tall. She didn’t seem cold. She looked boldly at him and said, “You are the Queen of Queens God.”
Adamarus blushed, “No, I am not a God.”
“Good,” she said. “But you created all of this?” She indicated all using her front legs.
“Yes. But we did not create the life here. We did not create you.”
“You are male,” d-eli stated.
“Yes.”
Use to the males of her species she said, “How long until you must return to resting?” She cocked her head in a very human like gesture.
Adamarus remembered what he’d learned about bees. The males didn’t do all that much. He decided she wanted to know how long he could meet for today. “Two hours,” he offered.
“Impressive,” she said.
Adamarus and d-eli hit it off well. Talks continued for several days and several broad agreements were made on sharing information and resources. d-eli was made the official ambassador to the humans.
---
Adamarus hibernated again and dreamed…
He watched the Blackship as it attacked Amular’s star Iceis. Its arms continued to bow outward, causing the beam’s width to increase. It was now thousands of miles in diameter. It was aimed right at Iceis.
The whole thing looked impossible. A beam thousands of miles across simply appeared out of nowhere in front of the black sphere. It no longer touched the ends of the Blackship’s arms, although it was clear that the ends of the arms were controlling its size. It was as if the force coming from the ends of the arms pulling the width of the beam outward were slipping and the width of the beam could no longer quite keep up.
Adamarus looked at the countdown…five minutes to go.
The Blackship’s arms kept separating, pulling the beam’s diameter outward. Finally, the arms stretched out straight from the Blackship. At first, the beam wavered. Then it jumped, its diameter expanding all the way to the ends of the arms but for just a second, then its diameter snapped back to its smaller size.
And the Blackship recoiled and started moving backwards.
The beam’s diameter jumped again to its full width. The Blackship jumped again and continued moving backwards. The beam remained, its diameter extending fully to the outstretched ends of the arms. The arms were over 3,350 miles long, so the beam was now an impossible 6,700 miles in diameter.
The incredible sight distracted Adamarus, but then realization hit. The Blackship had moved. Adamarus heart skipped a beat. He jumped to his feet, leaned forward and checked the targeting. The asteroids would now miss the Blackship completely—they would now pass into the Blackship’s fiery beam.
He collapsed into the seat dumbstruck. He got to work quickly, working out how long it would take to target another group of asteroids on the ship. He knew the beam had been trained on the Loud sun for about half an hour. By the time a new batch of asteroids could get there, it would be too late.
“No,” he whispered wildly, looking around for some way he could salvage the situation, but there was nothing. He’d failed. A tear ran down his cheek as he watched the fantastic spectacle before him.
A ding sounded indicating his asteroids striking only now they were just passing harmlessly into the Blackship’s huge beam. Then he saw something within the beam—a small series of explosions. The asteroids must be exploding as they hit the beam. Then, in shock, he realized that the asteroids were hitting one of the Blackship’s arms.
Five things happened in rapid succession:
The alien ship’s arm broke away, was caught by the beam and was hurtled away toward Iceis.
The beam, reduced in size by half, shot off at an angle, going harmlessly into space.
Then the beam, reduced in size again, shot off in the opposite direction, toward Amular.
The beam did not hit Amular because the Larger Moon was in the way and the beam hit the edge of the Larger Moon. The impact spun and pushed the Larger Moon as huge chunks of it broke away.
Then the beam blinked out.
The Blackship floated there, one of its long, thin arms broken, about half of it missing.
The Larger Moon slowly rotated and moved away from Amular.
Several large chunks had broken away from the moon and they tumbled away—however, one of them, as large as a mountain, was falling toward the planet.
“No, no, no…” Adamarus yelled as he detected a metallic smell. Then red lights appeared and blinded him…
Adamarus was brought out of hiber-sleep early again. He was allowed five-minutes to recover.
Radin handed him a coffee, “Sorry, d-eli wants to see you at North Peak, says it’s important.”
When Adamarus reached, the North Peak d-eli was waiting for him. “I wish to show and ask you something.”
“What’s this about?” Adamarus asked. He was having trouble focusing, the reliving of watching that mountain size piece of the larger moon hitting Amular was still in his brain. His actions had killed a billion people. It had also saved a billion. What he had to remember was that all two billion would have been lost if he hadn’t stopped the Blackship’s attack on their star Iceis.
“Someone is dying,” d-eli said.
Adamarus wasn’t sure how to respond. He said, “Really.”
“Really, Adamarus.”
“Okay,” Adamarus didn’t know what else to say.
Adamarus followed d-eli down into the cave system. They walked along well-lit corridors for twenty minutes. Finally, they came to a room with a large machine of some kind in the middle. Several other Stow were there at controls to the machine.
Adamarus looked at the apparatus and its controls and was again astounded by the Stow’s manufacturing capabilities.
“This chamber does its best to create an isolated environment. Nothing should enter
or leave. We can’t isolate it from the gravitational field or certain sub-atomic particles, but to everything else we know of, there should be no change. Inside this enclosed system is d-nug. She was injured and will die as soon as we discontinue life support.”
d-eli pointed to several analog plots tracking current states, “This shows the weight of everything in the chamber and this,” she pointed at another, “shows the total energy in the chamber. Finally, this shows the brain activity of d-gig.”
d-eli spoke into an intercom, “d-gig, are you ready?”
A yes came from the speaker.
“Have a good trip,” d-eli said.
After a moment d-eli said to Adamarus, “d-gig has disconnected her life support system and is dead.”
d-eli bent over the plots, “Now look at this. At the moment of death, energy levels rise for a split second then return to normal. But we lose 23 grams of weight. d-bet only knows what it means. Do you?”
“No,” Adamarus said. “However, I can put you in touch with someone who may though they may not get here in your lifetime.”
“We have perpetual youth now like you Adamarus. Understand, what you saw only happens with us and we assume you. It does not happen when other insects or animals die. The only difference between us and them that we can determine is self-awareness. Do you understand?”
“I see,” Adamarus said not really seeing.
“We don’t,” d-eli replied.
“Don’t what,” Adamarus said more confused than ever.
“We don’t know why we are in an artificial environment flying around faster than almost anything else in the universe.”
Adamarus swallowed. Then he explained everything to d-eli.
---
Nemesis entered the central black hole’s event horizon and as always two things happened. The ship’s event horizon popped and vanished. The two singularities that had provided a gravitational balance for the ship magically turned into one to balance the ship against the central black hole’s singularity.
“Keep us away from that 45-degree angle,” Adamarus said. “Distance to singularity?”
Navigation answered, “Thirty million miles to singer.”
“Singer?” Adamarus asked.
Odyssey (The Spiral Slayers Book 3) Page 15