Godeena: SF Novel

by Stjepan Cobets

  Colburn bowed towards him, and he whispered, “There’s no chance that I will stay alive.” The hissing was audible from his lungs when he stopped to catch some air. “Please… hear me… in my things, you will find a small… packet.” He squeezed his forearm. “May I… ask you… for a favor?”

  When the Sergeant nodded, he continued. “Take care… that the person in the address… gets that small packet.”

  “You can count on me.”

  John gazed into his eyes, and a tear glided down his face. “Thank you… Take care of…” He didn’t finish his sentence, and his hand glided to the ground.

  Colburn closed his widely opened eyes and sighed. “You needn’t worry. I’ll send that packet even if I have to fly all over space.”At that moment Berry shouted, “Sergeant! They are coming again!”

  Colburn jumped to his feet and shouted, “I want every last one of that scum on the ground!” He was so angry, and it was the right time to vent his fury. He swiftly climbed up onto a transporter, aimed at the closest robot, which had jumped two meters into the air, and pulled the trigger.

  In the Den

  XIII

  The narrow passage through which they were descending was in pitch darkness. There were no colors on the floor, and no light illuminated the passage. It seemed spectral to Henry. The dust, which hadn’t been cleaned away for many years, was still whirling after the explosion at the door, and the light from the rifle chopped it like a saber. The robots which cleaned the town didn’t come down here; otherwise it would have been tidied and cleaned like the other rooms. Some layers of dense dust were swaying around his feet, which him every step would unsettle.

  They were descending slowly, expecting attackers or raiders, but there were none. Still, the silence sent shudders up and down Henry’s spine. It alarmed him; Henry felt as if he were in the middle of a storm.

  The corridor split into two, left and right. He stopped and cast a swift eye down the left-hand corridor, which turned off at a right angle. It was desolate, ten meters long, and at its end, he spotted another door. Henry indicated to Vandor with his hand to take a position and protect the right side while he went to the left. About halfway down the corridor, the indicator on his helmet began to flicker a red light, indicating that there was radiation here. Henry shouted to the others, “Check if your indicators are working!”

  After he had heard their positive responses, Henry set off for the door. To his intense surprise, the door opened when he came closer. Behind it was a large room illuminated by dim yellowish light, and he didn’t notice any movement. A long time ago this had been a dining room, but now he could only feel the breath of death.

  The remnants of the former citizens were lying everywhere. They had been taken by death in a moment. Some of the skeletons were leaning in their elegant plastic armchairs, holding their breasts spasmodically, while the dishes lay on the floor where they had fallen out of the hands of the dying people.

  Henry approached the nearest table, where he saw a bent figure squeezing some thin object. He slowly moved its bony fingers, took the object out and dusted it off. It had a screen like the plates they used, when he touched with his fingers he comes alive and on the screen he noticed the face of a smiling young humanoid woman. As the recording played the cameraman followed a child, who was playing with some other kids using a fluorescent tabletop toy which changed color at his touch. In the background, Henry heard their speech, which wasn’t like any he knew. The cameraman again zoomed towards the woman and said something to a younger child, and all of them started to laugh. At that moment the picture disappeared and then it all started again from the beginning.

  Henry handed the plate to Kir, who has followed him and standing at his side. “What is wrong with that Being? Why did he kill all these people?”

  Kir only cursorily looked at the pictures before she handed them to Diana, who took the artifact, wide-eyed. Kir concluded with a cold voice, “One lunatic can destroy entire nations and civilizations. Our past is full of them, and the Being is one of those. Worst of all, he’s a product of this civilization, a mistake in its development which cost them dearly.”

  “What mistake could he have been? You speak about a robot or something else?” Diana asked worriedly before she put the plate with the short film into her pocket.

  “That is an interesting question. I know that it has something to do with the robots, but the Being possesses feelings the robots don’t have. Unfortunately, he has only negative feelings, like hatred, fury, anger and a desire for death. Why does he have only them? I don’t know.”

  “He is such a wonderful creature. So much understanding for others,” Henry said, raising his rifle and asked Diana, “Where should we go now?”

  Diana looked at the table with sadness in her eyes; she wasn’t listening to him. As a scientist, she had to discover what else there was in the room. “Commander, do you know that there are a large number of artifacts here and that this is the greatest discovery in the last fifty years?”

  “I’m not interested in that. Research and study of this civilization we’ll leave for some further time. Now I’m only interested in where I have to go to kill the Being which committed this massacre.”

  Diana once more passed a look over the table and looked at the dead remnants of the former citizens. She remembered all her friends who had been killed by the Being and a tear glided down her cheek. “I… I’m sorry I got a little carried away. All this is fascinating, and I’m a scientist. This draws me like a magnet.”

  “Everything is OK. But I’d like to think not about the artifacts but the fastest route to his quarters.”

  With a hand, she pointed to the door in the left corner of the dining room. It didn’t open on they approach, so Henry waved to Vandor. “Open this door!”

  “I do it with pleasure.”

  The Khak wildly vomited its fire from all six barrels, tearing to pieces all that was in the way. Stepping over the torn up pieces of the door, they entered a narrow corridor and then a laboratory equipped with unique glass instruments and test tubes in abnormal forms. While Henry was going around the desks a small robot jumped towards him; it had been hidden in a heap of scientific instruments. It surprised him, but Mark reacted in time and blew the creature to the opposite wall. The wave of the ultrasonic cannon brunt broke all the tubes in its skeleton, spraying the wall with its stinking green liquid.

  Vandor tapped him on his shoulder. “You’ve got quick reflexes.”

  “It’s just practiced.”

  Henry was angry with himself for not noticing the robot in time, but Mark had managed to save him from a dangerous situation, and so he nodded to him. “Continue like that. It wouldn’t be safe for these creatures to get at us with their radioactive claws.”

  “I’ll do my best to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

  “That’s the spirit, but we have to go further. Vandor clear the next passage!”

  In the next room there was another tiny laboratory, but, besides several chopped up skeletons on the floor, there was nothing else. The next room was extraordinary: a good fifteen meters high and as large as a football field and inside there were huge machines arranged linearly on both sides. And these machines were humming quietly! It surprised Henry that they were in perfect shape. Their parts were clean and polished. He knew that the robot cleaners must be taking care of them, so Henry shouted, raising his hand, “There are cleaners here! Be ready to open fire!”

  At that moment the blue head of a humanoid robot appeared behind the first machine, but it disappeared before they managed to hit it. Soon a red head appeared on the other side of the machine.

  “Wait, do not shoot!” Henry shouted.

  Everybody looked at him in surprise, impatiently expecting his new command. Kir, who was the closest to me, asked, “Why have you stopped us?”

  “I think these robots aren’t dangerous. They aren’t attacking us.”

  She looked a
t the uniquely colored robots which peeped, scared, from behind the machines, and then she smiled and lowered her rifle. “That’s true. If they were a risk, they would surely attack us.”

  “Everything is clean and neat here,” Henry concluded after a brief look around.

  “I don’t feel him here, though we’re close to him.”

  A dozen of the robots who were hiding behind the machines approached slowly to them. Henry raised his rifle and aimed at them, commanded, “Be ready to open fire on my signal!”

  They stopped some ten meters before them. One of them separated from the others and moved forward. His body wasn’t like that of the ones who had attacked them; soft red tin bedecked it, perfectly covering his skeleton. Somebody had done their best with the construction, and all these robots’ appearance and movements were perfectly designed to be almost human. All the other robots were different colors. Maybe on this planet that was how they told them apart.

  The red robot stopped in front of Henry and asked him something in the language of the planet’s prior inhabitants. He watched him carefully and shrugged his shoulders; he didn’t understand a word. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  The robot closed its round eyes for a moment and asked him again, this time in them Earthen language. “Good day, I’m Halaman I. Are you friends?”

  Henry stopped for a moment since he hadn’t expected such a question. “If you don’t attack us, we’re your friends.”

  Halaman I. indicated the other robots with his hand. “We humbly repair these things. We don’t fight each other, and we don’t attack anybody.”

  Henry slowly lowered his rifle and asked him, “Halaman I, how do you know our language?”

  “Neekulba knows your language; he copied it from the database which he found in one of the transporters on the ground. Our Creator showed us how to pick up the data from Neekulba’s memory without being noticed by him. There we found the data about your language to be able to communicate with you if you appeared in our abode.” Then he raised his hands with his palms at the level of his breast and continued in a voice full of respect. “I know dozens of foreign languages. Numerous foreigners came to our planet, but nobody got here for us to be able to communicate with them. You’re the first ones who have succeeded in getting this far. Neekulba destroyed all the others.”

  “So Neekulba is the Being which attacked us?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is he ruling over you?”

  “No! We’ve been forgotten by him. He doesn’t know about our existence, our Creator saw to that. He didn’t allow Neekulba to master our minds like he mastered all the other robots on the planet.”

  Henry looked at dozens of robots behind Halaman I. and with interested asked him, “If he doesn’t know about you, how you have been able to stay unnoticed?”

  “We don’t leave any data about our existence. Our Creator forbade us to go out of this workroom, forever. Are you our saviors? He told us that only when first rescuers arrived, we might go out on the ground again.”

  “Yes, we’ve come to destroy the Being. Who is your creator and where is he located?”

  The robot raised his head and sadly asserted, “He’s sleeping now.”

  “Can you show me where?”

  “Follow me, please.”

  As if on a command, all the robots turned towards the opposite side of the room. Henry waved to the others to follow him and showing them to carefully observe the surrounding machines. Hi signaled to Mark and Vandor to stand opposite him and open their eyes. Then he continued to follow Halaman I, who had already advanced ten meters. Presently they stopped in front of a big machine in the center of the room, and Halaman I. turned towards him and showed Henry a passage between the machines. “The Creator is lying here.”

  Henry carefully looked at the surrounding room and then approached the place that he had shown him. In the meantime Halaman I, with the rest of the robots, had entered into the wide passage. When Henry followed them, they stepped aside, and he saw a large metal desk, on which was lying a humanoid skeleton in some kind of elastic suit. Halaman I. approached the skeleton and gently touched it with his fingers. “This is our Creator, Halaman Kunadian. He told us that somebody would come to us, and he gave us this.” He handed me a large plate like the one that we had found in the dining room. “Using the translator, I clicked your language, so you’ll be able to understand everything.”

  Henry touched the upper side of the plate with his fingers, and the picture sprung to life. The sad face of Halaman Kunadian appeared. He was bald, and in his thin, oblong face stood out big yellow eyes, a tiny wrinkled nose, and a small mouth. It was not possible to tell how old he was because he had no wrinkles and no eyebrows. His face was as smooth as a porcelain doll. After a short pause, he spoke in a voice full of bitterness. “Aranam Guartinas, my best friend, and colleague! He’s killed them all! Nobody listened to me. Maybe it’s my fault? Maybe I was able to prevent something? I should have reacted earlier… But it’s too late now… All will be…” His voice trembled. He cleared his throat and drank some greenish liquid from a transparent glass. “It all began a long time ago, while we were studying the transport of objects over distances using thought. We were young and naive. We still didn’t know what consequences it would bring. Aranam told me about the idea of a super brain. Frankly, it attracted me. We tried to develop a matrix which should be strong enough to collect enormous quantities of data and to forward it to the whole system of the city of Absolute. With that approach we created Neekulba. It was a flawless, conscious machine. Nevertheless, Aranam wasn’t satisfied. He wanted to strengthen its power. He wanted, for the first time in our history, to unite the telekinetic powers of everyone on the planet with our artificial creation. The idea was fascinating, and it might have had multiple uses, so I accepted it with both hands. The government supported our project, so we had freedom to work and a large research laboratory in the central complex. Two years we worked on the project of creating a chamber which we could connect to Neekulba’s memory system. When it was time to activate it we drew straws, as always. I was the first one to test the chamber. The feeling was great, and my telekinetic powers strengthened a thousand times over. I was able to move a half-ton stone block. It was an incredible feeling.” He paused for a moment and loudly cleared his throat, “As time passed we improved it so that we were able to move whole buildings from one place to another. On one occasion, when doing an experiment, Aranam thought about his wife by accident and so discovered another usage for the chamber: Neekulba materialized Aranam in his house. Shortly after that we all tried it and transported ourselves everywhere on the planet. Neekulba was approved by the ruling structures, and we linked him up with the main system in Absolute. It all worked perfectly. I left Aranam to supervise and control Neekulba, and I undertook the job of redesigning the Helari-class working robots.” For a moment he looked at the camera and sighed loudly, “Unfortunately, a few months later tragedy struck Aranam, and that triggered the avalanche of death and destruction. His family was killed in an accident. As she drove their son to school, his wife lost control of the vehicle and crashed into a transporting aircraft coming from the opposite direction. Aranam lost his connection with the outside world and closed himself off in the laboratory. In my frequent contact with him, I noticed that he had become dependent on Neekulba, but I also realized that Neekulba was likewise absorbing Aranam’s feelings, his fury, and anger. Manipulating him, Neekulba wanted to enter into his mind and disinter his darkest secrets and thoughts. He extracted all the information which Aranam had deep in his subconscious and this feeling of fear charmed him. He penetrated into Aranam’s nightmares, and, when he had sucked out all that Aranam could have offered him, he captured his body and made a symbiosis with his brain, like a parasite.”

  Halaman Kunadian stopped for a moment, leaned a pale hand on his forehead and sighed painfully. “I was wrong, very wrong, about everything. Aranam
died, along with everybody on the planet, with my family, my friends. I was extremely absorbed with completing the Helaris, and I couldn’t see what was happening until it was too late. Neekulba forbade my approach to the chamber and isolated me from Aranam completely, lest anybody should forestall his plan. I had to protect the Helaris from his influence. Neekulba didn’t know about one thing, and with that, I was able to go into his main memory imperceptibly. Even Aranam wasn’t aware of that I was making a protective shield around the Helaris, which I intended to use if anything went wrong. But unfortunately I didn’t finish that work, and so I couldn’t ruin Neekulba’s brain in order to save my planet.”

  Tears ran down his cheeks; his yellow eyes glazed and blurred. He bowed his head and sighed. “I was only able to utilize the Isitronic blockade so that the Helaris might enter into his memory to transfer his most secret ideas to me. The Helaris were independent, and Neekulba couldn’t exercise his power over them; I had deleted all the data about them and this machinery at the edge of the underground complex, lest he tries to find them in the future. Unfortunately, this place became my prison and a deadly trap for the radiation, which Neekulba spread over the deepest three levels. It will kill me soon…”

  He stopped again for a moment, sighed painfully and continued his confession. “Neekulba took over Aranam totally; having united with his body they became a crazy bioelectrical organism. He gained mastery over all the systems in the research center and began his deadly plan. He released his biological poison into the whole system, which killed most of the scientists and workers on the spot. The survivors were killed by his robots of the Hulari class, the first design of which had been used to help the scientists. Neekulba made killers out of them. The Helaris closed the ventilation openings and saved me from the first poison attack, but when Neekulba took the protective plates off the reactors and spread the radiation they weren’t able to help me anymore. He killed all the scientists in the complex and totally enjoyed every single death.”