"What about the scientists at the Base?"
"They spend most of their time trying to get themselves transferred somewhere else, and I don't blame them one bit. This place gives me the creeps."
Silence kept his features under control, but it was a near thing. He couldn't have been more surprised if the Investigator had admitted to secret pacifist leanings. For Frost to admit that the place made her feel uncomfortable, it must really be getting to her. And that wasn't like Frost at all. He decided to do them both a favor and change the subject.
"Did you know the chemicals we supply these insects with are addictive?"
"No," said Frost, "but it makes sense. If the insects are a single hive mind, they're scattered far too widely for us to be able to hurt or control them. But withholding chemicals to which they've developed a dependency should do the trick nicely. A junkie will do anything for his next fix."
"Very efficient," said Silence. "But then, the Empire's always been a great believer in efficiency. And if it can work a little cruelty into the deal, too, so much the better." He looked around him at the thousands of small scuttling forms, working blindly and obediently in the blistering heat to meet the Empire's needs. If he saw any connection between them and him, he kept it to himself.
Chroma XIII was a singular planet, in more ways than one. The original survey ship almost missed it completely, as technically it should have been impossible for any form of life to survive in a planet so far from its burned-out, dying sun. But something about Chroma XIII caught the Captain's eye, and he sent down drones to gather information. And what they sent back was enough to make even a seasoned survey officer's jaw drop. Within the giant gas ball that was Chroma XIII, there was life without form or substance. Intelligence separated from physical existence. A planet of inherent contradictions, whose very existence was theoretically impossible.
Silence kept the Dauntless in as high an orbit as he could get away with, and he and Frost watched the main viewscreen as the ship's drones dropped toward the impossible planet. Strange images came and went on the viewscreen as the scene switched from one drone's instruments to another, and all the time the comm channels threatened to overload on the sheer intensity of what they were relaying.
There was no planetary surface, no solid area at all, and the drones dropped endlessly through shades of color and fields of light, blindingly bright, in which strange hues shifted and stirred without any purpose or meaning that could be fathomed by human eyes. There were planes of dazzling color, separate and distinct and thousands of miles long, and whirlpools the size of moons, blending slowly from one color to another, and oceans of blue mists as dark as the color you see when you close your eyes at night. And everywhere, the colors and the shapes and the shades were shot through with sudden blasts of lightning that came and went almost too fast for the human eye to follow.
"And these flashes of lightning are the aliens?" Silence said finally.
"We think so," said Frost. "It's hard to be sure of anything here. Certainly the lightning bolts share some of the attributes we associate with life. They react to outside influences, they consume light on some wavelengths and release it in others, and they appear to communicate with each other, though our translation computers have had nervous breakdowns trying to make sense of it. They reproduce constantly, and they also disappear suddenly, for no discernible reason."
"All right," said Silence, determined not to be completely thrown. "How do we communicate with them?"
"We don't," said Frost. "We're not even sure they know we're here, which might just be for the best. Why give them ideas?"
Silence looked at her and raised an eyebrow. "And the Empire's content to just leave them be?"
"Pretty much. They don't have anything we want, let alone need."
"So what the hell are we doing here?" said Silence.
"Keeping an eye on them. We have no way of knowing what they're capable of. They're life without form, which could also be life without limits, as we understand them. Who knows what they might do if they became aware of us? If they decided to leave this planet and journey to some populated world, we could be in deep trouble. Those flashes of lightning contain billions of volts, theoretically, and we're pretty sure there are other forces at work down there, too. The bottom line is, we don't have anything that could stop them if they decided they were mad at us. What use is a weapon against something that has no physical existence?"
"Great," said Silence. "Just wonderful. Something else to worry about. So we can't talk to them, let alone threaten them, and we're not even sure they know we're here."
"Got it in one," said Frost. "All we can do is drop a hundred or so security drones to keep an eye on things, and then get the hell out of here."
" 'Join the Imperial Navy and see the universe,' " said Silence heavily. "Meet strange and interesting new forms of life, and run away from them. Navigator, get us the hell out of here. My head hurts."
* * *
The last planet they visited was Epsilon IX, and that meant hard suits. The gravity was five times standard, the air was a mixture of extremely noxious gases, any one of which would have been fatal on its own, and the air density was uncannily like the pressure of water you find at the bottom of a deep ocean trench. On top of all that, the entire world was a mass of goo; thick, slimy mud that covered the planet's surface from pole to pole. In some places it was only a couple of feet deep, and that was called land. Either way, it was messy as hell. There were hills that rose up suddenly overnight and then spent the rest of the day collapsing and sliding away.
There were huge artificial constructs here and there that might have been buildings or machines—or both or neither. The native intelligent species created them when they felt like it, though they declined to explain out of what or what their purpose might be. The muck itself contained a handful of extremely rare and useful trace elements, and these were refined from the goo by specially designed automated mining machinery from the Empire. People couldn't live on Epsilon IX, even inside a fully Screened Base; human-built structures inevitably sank, and had to be constantly retrieved, which cost money.
The mining equipment worked only because the natives looked after it. No one knew much about the native species. They appeared to be the only living things on Epsilon IX, which raised some interesting and rather unpleasant questions about what they ate. They had a mysterious link to their mucky environment that allowed them to thrive and prosper, but they weren't big on explaining that, or, indeed, anything else. They kept to themselves and did really nasty and inventive things to trespassers.
Silence and Frost journeyed down to what passed for the planet's surface in a pinnace, which ended up hovering in midair while Silence and Frost dropped awkwardly out of the air lock in their hard suits. They landed knee-deep in the sludge, and slogged slowly through the thick mud, slipping and sliding and holding onto each other for support. There was something vaguely solid under their heavy boots, but it rose and fell unpredictably beneath the covering goo. The slime came in varying shades of gray, much like the sky above, which was disorienting, to say the least. Sky blended into surface almost imperceptibly, which did strange things so Silence's sense of orientation. Things like up and down, left and right, forward and backward ceased being absolutes, and became more like matters of opinion. The last time Silence had felt like this he'd been drunk for a week.
He slogged along beside Frost, the hard suit's servomechanisms whining loudly as they struggled to overcome the planet's heavy gravity. Silence took a quiet satisfaction from the obvious difficulties Frost was having in plowing through the thick mud. It was good to know that even Investigators had their limits. They waded on for some time, while their surroundings rose and fell without any obvious meaning or purpose. Frost led the way with dogged determination. Silence supposed she knew where she was going, but didn't ask, just in case she didn't. He liked to think that at least one of them knew what they were doing.
The pinnace hove
red high overhead, far enough away not to intimidate any of the locals, but still close enough to come charging in for an emergency rescue if necessary. Silence was getting tired fast. Even with the hard suit's servo-mechanisms to help, the constant struggle to stay upright while pressing on was exhausting. According to his suit's instruments, the local temperature was high enough to melt some metals. He was sweating like a pig despite everything the hard suit's temperature controls could do, and the lack of a proper horizon made his head hurt. He was so taken up with his own inner world of hurts and confusions that he only just noticed in time that Frost had come to a halt. He avoided crashing into her through a heroic last-minute effort, and then had to fight to keep his feet under him. He took a few deep breaths to settle himself and then looked around. The place they'd arrived at didn't seem noticeably any different from any of the others they'd plowed through to get here. There was no sign of any of the alien constructs, just a large hill to their left, slumping over like a melting ice cream.
"Is this it?" he said finally.
"In so far as there is an it, yes," said Frost. "These are the right coordinates, anyway. You know, this place is really disgusting. It looks like someone sneezed it into being."
Silence winced. "You've always had a way with words, Investigator. Now what do we do?"
"Now we wait for someone to put in an appearance. Which, knowing this place, will undoubtedly take some time. Maybe we should have brought a bucket and spade."
And then she broke off as the mud before them bubbled up into a thick dribbling pillar, like a slow-motion fountain. Silence and Frost both trained their suits' disrupters on the pillar as it bulged and contracted here and there, finally forming into a human shape, complete in every detail, including clothes. Though the clothes were made of the same mud as the body. The figure actually looked quite snappy in formal evening wear, and for a moment Silence felt almost overdressed in his hard suit. He made himself concentrate on the figure's face. It was gray and sweated driblets of mud, but the features were indisputably human. The eyes focused on Silence and then on Frost, and the mouth twitched in a smile.
"Before you ask," the figure said briskly, "no, I don't really look like this. You are looking at a mental projection, formed from handy nearby materials. Trust me, you don't want to see what I really look like. Not unless you're into projectile vomiting, which I would assume could get really messy inside one of those suits. Human senses are too limited to appreciate my true beauty." He folded his dripping arms across his sliding chest and gave them a moment to think about that. "Now, what do you people want this time? I'm busy. And don't ask me what at; you couldn't possibly hope to understand."
"If you're this planet's idea of a diplomat, I'd hate to meet your politicians," said Silence. "How is it you speak our language so well?"
"I don't. I'm communicating directly with your mind, which is slumming for me, but we all have to make sacrifices if we're to keep the gods happy. Little joke there, to put you at your ease."
"You're telepathic?" said Frost. "That wasn't in the files."
"Nothing so primitive. We are communicating directly, though your human minds are too limited to pick up most of what I'm transmitting." The figure stopped and frowned. "Though I have to say, you seem much more receptive than most."
"Save the compliments," said Frost. "We're here on business."
"Well, I didn't think you were tourists," snapped the man made out of mud. "What does the Empire want this time?"
"Rebels and aliens; don't talk to them," said Frost briskly. "If anyone tries, contact your nearest Imperial spy satellite. Any alliances with unauthorized forces will result in severe punitive measures."
"And what might those be?" said the mud man. "Going to arrest us, perhaps? Not unless you can build prisons in five dimensions. Or perhaps you'll take away some of our lovely mud? Help yourselves; we've got tons of the bloody stuff."
Frost raised her right hand and triggered the disrupter built into her glove. The energy beam flashed out and vaporized the mud man's head. Silence started to object and then stopped himself. He didn't approve of unnecessary killing, but this was the Investigator's show. She was best qualified to decide what was necessary to get her point across. The mud man should have been more respectful, damn it. An insult to them was an insult to the Empress. And then he realized the headless body hadn't slumped to the ground. It stood just where it had, as though nothing had happened. Liquid mud bubbled in the stump of the neck, and then rose up suddenly to form itself into a new head. The same face quickly appeared, and the mud man glared at Frost.
"I see Imperial diplomacy hasn't changed much since its last visit. Plus seven points for brutality, minus several thousand for severe lack of cool. Never mind barbarians at the gate, they've already taken over. Just once, I wish they'd send us a representative slightly higher up the food chain. I've had more interesting conversations with a piece of moss. You humans should be bloody grateful my species is physically linked to the planet's ecosystem. If we could leave this world, we'd be running the Empire inside a week."
"But you can't, and you don't," said Frost. "So remember what I told you. No talking to any strange men or aliens, or we'll work out some way to give you all a good spanking. Right. That's it, we're going. Have fun playing with your mud."
"I don't see any need for sexual slanders," said the mud man. "Please feel free to leave our world anytime. Goodbye."
Silence started to turn to leave, and then stopped as he realized Frost hadn't moved. He couldn't see her face inside her helmet, but he knew she was staring thoughtfully at the figure made out of mud. He could feel it. The link between them seemed suddenly very strong, and he knew without having to be told what was running through her mind. She wanted to see the real alien; the real shape and being that lay behind the image of the mud man. The reality behind the mask.
"Cut it out, Frost," he said quietly. "We don't need to know."
"He doesn't respect us," said the Investigator. "He doesn't fear us. I want to know why."
"Listen to your partner," said the mud man. "You really don't want to do this. This image is all you're capable of understanding. The reality of what I and my kind are would destroy your limited minds." He stopped abruptly and frowned at Frost. "What are you doing? Your mind is… uncoiling. There's more to you than there was before. You're not human. What are you?"
Frost stared back at him, her brows furrowed as she concentrated, reaching inside herself for a strength and vision she hadn't realized she possessed. There was something more beyond the mud man, something bigger, vaster… The sheer size of it made her head ache, but she wouldn't look away. It was deep down in the mud, under the surface of the world, and it was rising slowly out of the depths toward her. It had length and width and breadth and other dimensions, too. And perhaps just to look on it with merely human eyes would be enough to turn her to stone, like a butterfly caught in Medusa's gaze, but she couldn't, wouldn't, look away. She had to see, had to know… Silence grabbed her by the shoulders of her hard suit, spun her around, and shook her as hard as he could.
"Don't look at it! I can see what you're seeing, and it's dangerous. We're not ready to look at something like this. Just the sight of it would burn the eyes out of our heads and blast our reason. Look away, Investigator! That's an order!"
He reached out with his mind, not quite knowing how he was doing what he was doing, and slowly forced Frost's inner eye shut. The image of what lay beyond and below the mud man was suddenly gone, and the heightened link between Silence and Frost shrank back to its normal background murmur. They were both back in their own heads again and saw only what was in front of them. Frost shuddered suddenly.
"Thank you, Captain. I got… lost for a while there."
"Let's get out of here, Frost. We've given them their instructions. Anything else is none of our business."
"We can't let them run us off. They have to know who's in charge here."
"I have an uneasy feeling th
ey already know," said Silence. "Let's go."
Back on the bridge of the Dauntless, Silence was jerked out of his memories by the quiet but insistent voice of his Communications Officer, Eden Cross. He'd turned around at his workstation to look at Silence, who blinked at him a couple of times, and then tried to look alert and awake, as though he'd been listening to Cross all along. It only took him a moment to realize he wasn't fooling anyone, and he relaxed with a smile. He was lucky it was Cross. Cross was a good man.
"Sorry," said Silence. "I was light-years away. Run that past me again."
"There appears to be a situation belowdecks, Captain,"'said Cross. There was no trace of a smile on his dark face, but his eyes were understanding. "Not long ago, strange noises were heard coming from inside Security Officer Stelmach's private quarters. Some of his people went to investigate and discovered Stelmach systematically wrecking his quarters. They inquired diplomatically as to what the problem might be, and he threw things at them. They have currently retreated just out of range, and are awaiting further instructions. He is their boss, after all. And technically speaking, only yourself as Captain and Investigator Frost are senior enough to restrain a Security Officer."
Silence looked at Frost beside him, and she raised an eyebrow. Stelmach had a tendency to get excited in emergencies, but usually on board ship he was cool and calm, and followed every regulation to the letter. There were those who said he didn't authorize his own bowel movements without checking the regulations first. Something serious must have happened to destroy Stelmach's composure.
"We'd better go and take a look, Investigator," said Silence. "He is in charge of the ship's security, after all. If he's discovered something that upsetting, I think I want to know about it, too."
Frost nodded calmly. "We have been out on the Rim a long time. People have been known to crack, so far from light and life and civilization."
"Not Stelmach," said Silence. "It'd take more than a case of cabin fever to crack him." Silence got to his feet. "Second in Command, you have the bridge. Investigator, follow me. But keep your hands away from your weapons. I want Stelmach conscious and able to answer questions."
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