Pendulum: An Aes Sidhe Novel

by A. Omukai

  She activated her AI and connected to the Wisp’s system. The medical help program was easily accessible, and usage was simple enough to allow her to perform a check herself. She called the function, and a small slit opened in the opposite wall. A stretcher glided out of it, and the Wisp deployed a scanner which descended from the ceiling of the vehicle, until it formed the rough-and-ready diagnostic unit, the best the compact car could muster.

  She had no choice. If this was all she had, she’d better make full use of it, because whatever ravaged her lungs, she needed to get rid of it. She lay down on the stretcher and ran the scan routine.

  “Please wait. Scan in progress. This can take several minutes,” the robotic, but not unpleasant voice of the board system said.

  Deirdre closed her eyes. Staring up at the scanner wasn’t all that interesting, and she had been feeling something she couldn’t explain and hadn’t had the chance to focus on, ever since she had touched that monolith. Never since she had called out to the cloud chasers inside that grotto. Not quite a voice, but more than a mere presence. Something inside her tugged at her consciousness, as if asking for attention. Something just out of reach, although it had been further away when she had been right on top of the place of power. It had come closer. Not close enough yet to make sense of it, though.

  “Scan completed.”

  A report appeared inside a window that popped up in her field of vision without her having explicitly asked for it.

  “Unknown fungal infection, currently local to the right lung. Body temperature 38.4C. Analysing structure of invasive organism.”

  Fungal, as she had expected. This entire planet was one giant mushroom, and now it grew in her lung, with the Wisp’s equipment woefully inadequate to deal with the situation, and the Tuatha De Danann out of reach.

  “Proceed accordingly,” she said with a grim smile. She would proceed accordingly. Not sure yet how, but she’d come up with something, she was sure.

  21

  Mycelium Sample

  Adams’ lab used to be a storage room, but with so much destruction on board, all the goods that had been stored here, had been removed and either used or brought elsewhere. He had set up his equipment here, which was the second time that he had assembled a makeshift-lab out of pieces of gear. He had most of what he needed, so he was content. All his samples lined up on the various tables, inside containers for preservation, or in analytic equipment. Only the sizeable chunk of mycelium he had brought on board was inside an acrylic glass container reminiscent of an aquarium. Adams stood in front of the hermetically closed tank, watching, even though there wasn’t much to watch. The mycelium lay inside, covering the chunk of soil from Gliese 667 Cc. His tests had shown that there were no bacteria in the dirt, which was unusual, but it fit in the image he had of the strange ecosystem down there, if it was even a system.

  The structure of the mycelium had interesting properties. The way it had grown reminded him of neurons in a brain, and the energetic activity inside the tiny thread-like hyphae resembled information packets in ways that puzzled him. Hyphae on Earth secreted enzymes to break down polymers, they didn’t transport actual information. The physiology looked similar to what he was used to on Earth, but apart from the shape and form, nothing seemed to be what it looked like. If this fungal colony didn’t produce monomers to absorb, then maybe it didn’t have to. How did it take in nutrients? So many questions, and every answer he got from analysing the data produced a bunch of additional questions. While that was frustrating on one level, it was also exciting, and he felt like a small boy again, exploring the wonders of the universe. This was what he had signed up for, when he had chosen the path of the xenobiologist.

  The mycelium had grown a little in the time it had been on board the Tuatha De Danann. Was that just an illusion? If so, what was it consuming to grow? He picked up a scanner and performed another check. It had indeed gained mass, which was confusing. Where had it come from? Nothing came from nothing. The amount of soil inside the container hadn’t changed, but the mycelium had gained some mass and volume, and the nutrients in the ground hadn’t even been all that plenty. Maybe he should do another analysis of the soil, and of the mycelium itself. Interestingly, the big fungi had shared all of their DNA with the mycelium, as if they were one life form, just different parts of the same body. Either there had been an error in the measurements, or something had gone wrong with the analysis, or… the planet was indeed something completely different from anything they had seen so far. Of course, some fungi might well have been fruit bodies of the mycelium, but not one, but all the fungi he had sampled shared the same genetic information, and that was just crazy talk. He wouldn’t jump to conclusions yet. In fact, he would need more than the samples he had taken so far, to form a more complete picture of the biosphere down on the surface of Gliese 667 Cc. He must have had overlooked something, or just not been able to pick up all the parts needed to explain his findings, and with the latest in their series of disasters, he now couldn’t even go back and search for more clues. Regrettable.

  The light in his small laboratory flickered, then something materialized in the air above the acrylic glass tank. Adams squinted his eyes. He didn’t move at all, even though his lizard brain tried to make him step back. He clenched his fists instead. The hand holding the scanning unit was wet with sweat. What took on a shape before his eyes, in a painfully slow process, looked like a manta ray made of light - a cloud chaser! He groaned. How had a cloud chaser found its way… or wait? The creature was right now in the process of being born, or rather, of being shaped, and it didn’t float just anywhere. It had appeared right above the mycelium in the tank. Now its form was completed, and it hovered motionlessly where it had been — projected, maybe? He remembered his scanner and lifted his hand. It trembled, but he forced it to stop, exerting all the willpower he could muster. He did not know what had just happened, and this was his best chance to get data. There had been no way for him to take any measurements with the Wisp, and the hand scanner he carried wasn’t meant to give comprehensive data, but it would at least give him hints about the creature.

  He pressed the button to activate the scan and stared on the small display. Three words appeared: “Scan in progress”, followed by “Scan complete” just seconds later. Nothing had changed. The mycelium sat in its container, the cloud chaser hung over it in the air, and the rest of the samples were in place, where they belonged. Only seconds had passed, but time seemed to have slowed. Adams breathed heavily, then activated his AI. The interface of the scanner unit was simple and displayed the data in an uncomplicated list, and the cloud chaser was composed of — nothing at all. It didn’t have a molecular structure, and it contained no mass. The scanner’s data also showed no energetic values at all, as if the creature right in front of his eyes was nothing more than an illusion.

  Adams called the Tuatha De Danann’s board AI and requested video data. The system complied and streamed the current feed to him, showing him standing in the room, in front of the mycelium in its container, and above it… the cloud chaser. He double-checked. The scan data was unchanged, but his eyes didn’t lie. Whatever was going on here was not in the realm of possibilities, scientifically. Maybe this was altogether above his pay grade, and it was worth calling for Brilann. The old druid might find out what his instruments could not. He opened a comm channel to Brilann’s quarters.

  22

  Dreams

  Exhaustion had set in shortly after she had used the medical scanner of the Wisp. Whether it had been caused by the planet’s gravity, her body’s reaction to the fungal infection, or as a side-effect of the meds the med system had shot into her veins, she wasn’t sure, but Deirdre kept gliding in and out of short intervals of sleep. Short they might have been, she mused during one of her lucid moments, but her dreams had been all over the place. Even now, while she was thinking about it, she caught herself already drifting off again, and even while realizing it, she felt powerless to stop it. Everyt
hing felt so heavy, even here, inside the Wisp where gravity was Earth standard. Darkness engulfed her, then hypnagogic hallucinations set in. Fragments of sound, lights, patterns that formed and dissolved in one fluid continuation of motions. She felt warm, not hot, and her consciousness lingered at the fringes of the waking world, refusing to let go, but unable to stop the sleep from overwhelming her, again.

  Something cool touched her head. She opened her eyes and let out a long breath. How long had she kept it in? Ailbhe took the washcloth she had used to wipe sweat off her forehead away and smiled reassuringly, but Deirdre’s eyes closed automatically again already.

  What kind of dream had that been right now? She had moved through the sky, over endless steppes, gentle hills and Gliese 667 Cc’s fungal forests she was used to by now, slowly, and in formation with ‘the others’, whoever that might have been. Sometimes she gained height, sometimes she tumbled down towards the ground, but she always caught herself, regained balance, picked up speed… Nothing made sense, if she tried to think about it now, and her consciousness was already about to unravel again, so any attempt to interpret what she had just seen behind closed eyelids was doomed to fail. Again the imagery, the phantom sounds, and a subtle tingle in her extremities. Then she was gone again. First, in complete darkness, then in another dreamscape.

  Deirdre glided through the air, and this part of the planet felt familiar, even though she couldn’t tell why at first glance. ‘The others’ pulled her away, or rather, by the side, and she flew a detour around the fleck of land that lay in front of her, the blackened valley with its — wait, wasn’t this the place Cailean had led her to first? The place with the unexplainable lack of life force that had reached for her and leeched from her very essence? Sergeant Hill had died down there. A useless death, completely avoidable, a wasted life. Anger welled up and flew past without even touching her. Even now, those invisible fingers were reaching out for her, stretching out far to grab her and pull her out of the air. A sensation she had never felt before spread out inside her body. Cold, not numbing, but also not burning. Then it was over, as the group gained altitude and swept Deirdre with it. This wasn’t where she was supposed to be right now. No idea where she had this conviction from, it was right. Yeah, it was a definitive fact.

  They sailed through the orange sky with the burning red clouds. It was daytime now, but she didn’t bother thinking too much about it, with all the sensual impressions coming in one after the other. The fresh, but not cold air, the warming rays from the sun, the touch of the… what was it that was touching her? It felt familiar, as if it should be there and feeling for her, but she couldn’t tell, until something inside her called it “mother”. That ended her inquisitive thoughts right there, even though she still wasn’t any wiser. Like a dream where one accepted strange thoughts without questioning them — which this here was. It was a dream! Now that she was aware, what would she do? Lucid dreaming was something she had never mastered, but today was the day. She’d try out flying, if she wasn’t doing that already. She chuckled.

  Another patch of land she could identify came into her field of view, which, as she now realized, was a full 360 degrees. The small valley ahead with the brooklet, frozen in time, was the second spot they had examined. Cailean hadn’t set a foot inside, and she wished she had listened to him. This was the polar opposite of the first one, she realized, without knowing where she had this information from. But she knew the former one had been pure chaos, while this valley here was the product of the opposite force, order, for a lack of a better word. This, too, was an insight that came to her from outside. She hadn’t given birth to the thought herself. This, too, didn’t scare her at all. Maybe because this was a dream, and nothing could really touch her, anyway. She looked down on the valley and took in all the little details she had already seen the first time.

  Deirdre awoke hesitantly. She wasn’t quite willing to let the dream go, but here she was, back inside the good old Wisp, wondering what those dreams meant. They didn’t feel real at all, but those thoughts… Absorbed in thought. She scratched her head. Even now, her eyelids felt heavy. At least the pain was gone. Maybe the meds had worked. She’d rest her eyes for just one more minute.

  The transition was seamless, and she had lost little time. She was still in the air, together with all the others, exactly at her designated position within the pattern, and moving on at a high speed. The landscape flew past her as she stretched out. She still couldn’t see her body, but she noticed the yellowish shine that embraced her from the suns, the clouds, the others, and herself. The entire world glowed in a warm, gentle light that made her feel good. No longer a foreign body on Gliese 667 Cc, she now belonged here.

  They crossed the terminator without her even noticing — or maybe they hadn’t, and it had always been night. None of the three suns were visible now, but planet F sat right in the middle like the rightful ruler of the night sky. The rings were clearly visible. They raced across the cliff that emerged from nothing right in front of her, then dived into the deep. What sat in front of her now was easy to identify. It was the Wisp, the vehicle in which she had come a long way on this planet, and in which she was lying down right now, dreaming this very dream.

  Before she could question her own thoughts, they moved on, dragging her with them with irresistible force — but she didn’t mind. Moving together felt just right, and she knew this area. The lake, peaceful under the dark blue sky, the entrance she closed in on, and the grotto beyond.

  She had zero problems seeing inside the grotto. For once, the same old luminescent mushrooms were covering the wall and ceiling, giving off their soft light, and even though it would have normally been twilight for her, it did not differ from daytime lighting for her now. Deirdre got to see corners of this grotto she hadn’t noticed before.

  Something glowing orange ascended from the water, and from somewhere below the island. It looked like lava, but it wasn’t hot. Not sure it even had a temperature. What it had though, what it radiated was actual raw magic. This was the pool Brilann had mentioned, no doubt.

  The magical flow formed complex patterns, while moving towards the monolith, climbing up on it, then disappearing without a trace once it reached its pinnacle. Nothing came from nothing, and nothing vanished completely. Nothing ever got lost in a closed system. Magical energy from a core somewhere below her poured into the stone slab. Where did it go from there? She couldn’t make out an active spell that used it, but magic seemed to follow slightly different rules here.

  This mysterious form, this body of hers that she could not see, fascinated her. It didn’t change who she was, but it expanded her scope, added to her personality. Now that she had actually seen, with her own eyes, even though she doubted that the organ she was watching this event with was actually eyes, she knew without a doubt that this was what she had come for.

  But she also felt something else. Rising tension, eating at her, scaring her. Something was wrong, and not only here, inside this cave, but everywhere around this planet.

  The balance of nature was disturbed.

  What exactly was it that was unbalanced?

  A vision of the blackened valley appeared in front of her eyes and flew past, followed by the cold plain where time had slowed down to a crawl. This image, too, glided past her.

  And how had that happened?

  An image of the transport boat. Small spots in the sky, slowly getting bigger. One of them rushed past her eyes. Deirdre. It fell past her position in the sky, and a parachute unfolded. She looked around. One, two, three more black spots in the sky, one after the other turning into figures attached to parachutes.

  She had seen what happened whenever the balance got out of whack. Those two spots, the blackened valley and the frozen plain, showed her exactly what wounds this planet had to suffer whenever the magical flow was disturbed. And now, something was in motion, like a rising tide, threatening to hit the nature of Gliese 667 Cc. She didn’t exactly see it, but it built up like ten
sion. A storm on the horizon.

  She likely had no chance to stop it, but she had no choice but to do it, anyway. This was such a crazy thought, though.

  Whose thoughts were these anyway?

  Was someone trying to communicate with her?

  Nothing made sense, and she was slowly starting to sweat, as they all moved back in the opposite direction, out of the grotto.

  Again, the dark blue sky, with the majestic, ringed planet hanging in the centre, and they were slowly drifting towards the Wisp now. She could see an image of herself and the others, shining orange lights on the mirror-like surface of the vehicle. Just one heartbeat, then that impression was over. Somehow they had just penetrated the wall, and now she was inside, floating above the stretcher, on which her body waited for her, the marine standing next to her, now looking up to them with her eyes glowing in a bright white.