The team had detected several fluctuating EM signals in upper radio frequencies, and Marcus toyed with the idea of electromagnetic communication. That was momentarily interesting until he imagined the natives as bipedal platypi, electro-sensitive duck-bills and all, and he cast the idea aside. Besides which, the signal could just as easily have been some kind of electrical equipment, and his team hadn’t discovered any meaningful pattern in them.
For just a moment, he wondered if the natives were telepathic, and Zebra-One had been trying to communicate with him since he arrived. Maybe, he said to himself, he’d stumbled into the land of acid-trip kaleidoscopes and crystal balls, with a totally blind third eye. Perhaps he’d brought the wrong kind of gypsies along. The thought made him burst into a fit of hysterical laughter, which attracted unwanted attention, and prompted one of Juliette St. Martin’s check-ups.
While she inspected him, Faulkland and the others took a closer look at the glowing walls. The light followed them as they traveled along, so that they were continually in a lit section of corridor about ten meters long that faded to reddened darkness at either end.
“Is it just me, or does it feel like we’re walking in place?” Faulkland asked as he moved his hand along the wall. An electrical pattern traced the motion of his fingers, exactly as had happened outside, but the effect was less striking here.
The miners were unconcerned with the lack of progress, but that wasn’t surprising; they’d spent most of their professional years walking through nondescript tunnels. Ignoring the alien architecture, this was all just a day’s work for them, Marcus figured. Not that he knew much about any of them. They kept to themselves, and every attempt to find common ground had been rebuffed.
“I won’t lie. I’m feeling kinda frustrated,” Marcus said. “Walking a straight hallway with no turns isn’t exactly my idea of high adventure.”
“Maybe this is a service duct. We could turn back and try another iris,” Juliette said.
Marcus never liked turning back. “Not yet,” he said. “I’ve got a feeling we’re missing something here.”
He started to chew on his lower lip. The problem felt familiar, or at least the frustration did. It felt like trying to solve a riddle.
He hated riddles. They weren’t real problems, as far as he was concerned. Real world problems had multiple solutions, each with its own strengths and drawbacks. They could always be solved through some combination of persistence and creativity, or failing that, they could be circumnavigated. Riddles, on the other hand, were contrivances. They were tricks with only one answer that was intentionally hidden behind misleading words and false imagery.
To solve a riddle, it was necessary to throw away one’s preconceived notions. Either that, or hit the person with the answer. Marcus weighed the two options and considered the cutting torch on his belt, but he wasn’t ready to cut the Gordian knot just yet. That only left re-examining his preconceptions.
“Someone tell me what a tunnel is.” Marcus was thinking out loud, and realized he sounded like a perfect idiot.
One of the miners answered, “A passageway through solid material, connecting two or more places, sir.”
“It takes you some place you want to go, right?”
“I guess,” another miner replied. “Not much point in building a tunnel to somewhere you don’t want to go, is there?”
“Yeah, you’d think. Except that so far, this tunnel hasn’t gone anywhere at all. Maybe the problem isn’t the tunnel, but where we want to go.”
The words came out of his mouth, but didn’t seem to make sense. Not yet. He was still putting the pieces together. Judging by the sour look on Faulkland’s face, Marcus wasn’t only confusing himself. “Are you on the right pills, Doc?”
“Just trying to get outside of the box. I’m not even sure what I’m saying.”
Juliette picked up the slack. “No, you might be on to something. We’ve been working under the assumption that there are hundreds of kilometers of tunnels, criss-crossing the interior and connecting everything together. So we picked a direction and marched off, ready to go wherever the tunnel led, right?”
“Sounds about right,” Faulkland said.
“What if we’ve got it all wrong. What if the entire vessel is made up of bundles of these things. Not hundreds of kilometers, but thousands. With that much complexity, no one could be expected to find their way. One solution would be to open only the tunnels that lead to your destination.”
Faulkland had his arms crossed again. “So you’re suggesting that we’ve been headed nowhere in particular, and the tunnel’s been just pleased as punch to take us there.”
“Essentially. Not that it helps.”
There was quiet while everyone considered that, until one of the miners stepped forward. “Something else is bothering me. There are no trams or carts anywhere. Who would force their work crews to walk this far, present company excluded?”
Marcus grinned at that. “Maybe the natives could get around faster than us,” he offered, but that didn’t seem sufficient.
“I have a different idea,” a miner with a young voice said. “I keep looking at this weird corridor, and I’m listening to that thump-thump-thump, and… I know this sounds crazy but… I can’t help thinking we’re in a great big vein. Like maybe it’s designed to pump us around to wherever the ship wants us.”
“That’s not bad,” Juliette said. “Not bad at all. So how do we convince her to take us somewhere?”
“I don’t know, ma’am.” The miner sounded dejected, as if he’d just failed a pop quiz.
Marcus smiled and patted him on the shoulder. “No worries. If you came up with all the answers, I’d be out of work.”
Not that he would have minded a couple more answers just then. A lot of good ideas had come out of the discussion, but there wasn’t anything actionable. There was nothing Marcus could work with, yet he knew there had to be some answer. He refused to believe the tunnel went nowhere and connected nothing.
He started thinking back to Iris Charlie, which they’d passed through only an hour before. Was it really his proximity that opened the door, or was it something else? He played back the event, trying to recall every small detail. In the memory, he floated closer and reached out his hand, then the iris melted away from his touch.
A fraction of a second after the memory ran through his mind’s eye, he heard a strange noise. At first, he didn’t pay it any attention.
“Doctor Donovan,” Faulkland said. “Tell me you did that.”
Marcus looked up and realized that one of the walls had vanished, revealing a branching tunnel identical to the one they were in. “I don’t… think I did.”
There was an idea running through his head, but it sounded too ridiculous to be true. It wouldn’t be silenced, though, and there was only one way to test it. He tried to imagine the opening of the iris in reverse, the fluid material of it sliding back into place. As he did so, the wall closed almost exactly as he imagined. He repeated the process several more times, now imagining the wall itself opening and closing, and each time it did just as he imagined. It was even growing more responsive.
“I did that,” Marcus said quietly to himself. “Acid-trip kaleidoscopes and crystal balls. Son of a bitch.”
“How?” Juliette asked.
He needed a moment to think, and held up his finger to pause the team’s questions. How far did this go? He imagined the wall closing only half-way, and sure enough, it moved to match, leaving a round hole in its center. How about words? He ran the word “open” through his mind as clearly as he could, but there was no response.
“Doctor St. Martin, do me a favor and imagine the wall opening, just the way it has been.”
“You’re joking, right?”
“Do I look like I’m joking?”
She closed her eyes and a moment later, the wall slid open. When she opened her eyes, she looked like a child who just unwrapped a bicycle on Christmas morning. “Did I do that?” she
asked.
“You did.”
Without a pause, Juliette started performing the same tests Marcus had a moment before, until she was thoroughly convinced that she was in control of the wall. She finished her tests with a flourish, twisting the surface of the wall into a spiral before finally closing it.
“My God…” she said breathlessly. “The ship can read minds. Do you understand what this could mean? Not only does it support the existence of psychic phenomena, but there are bigger implications. Stranger ones. The ship can understand us even though we’re not the original inhabitants. That could mean sentient thought constitutes a universal language.”
While Juliette flew off into the theoretical, Marcus was starting to dig into the practical. What other images would the ship respond to, and how would she respond? He had an idea how to tell her where he wanted to go, and there was no time like the present to try it out.
Marcus closed his eyes and focused on their camp site near Iris Charlie. No response yet. He ran through every detail, calling to mind images of their equipment on the floor and the mission transponder. Nothing. He decided to go global, imagining the entire ship, and then zoomed in on Iris Charlie itself.
Then it began.
“Marcus?” Juliette asked in a worried voice.
He opened his eyes, and realized he was floating in mid-air. He had been concentrating so hard that he completely missed the feeling of being lifted off the ground, and now he was suspended perfectly in the middle of the passage. The lighted walls started to pulse, beating a pattern back toward where they came from. The heart-beat thump of the tunnel grew louder and more fierce.
“What’s going on, Doctor?” Faulkland shouted.
“I don’t know, but I think I’m about to find out,” Marcus said.
As the last word came out of his mouth, he was away and falling down the tunnel at unimaginable speed. It took every ounce of his will-power not to scream as he plummeted down the passageway, only to come to a halt seconds later. He was back at the camp site.
“Jesus Christ! Marc? Are you there? Marcus, respond damn you!”
The tunnel lowered him back down, and he allowed himself to collapse. Lying on the floor with his arms outstretched and his heart racing so fast and hard that it rocked his whole body, Marcus Donovan began to laugh. He laughed until tears ran down his cheeks, and he didn’t stop until he was exhausted.
“I’m fine,” he finally managed to say. “I’m great. All the way back at Iris Charlie.”
This changed everything. Their original plan to map out the interior wouldn’t work. In fact, it didn’t make sense anymore. They would need to conceive a whole new style of exploration, where the destinations came first. The survey information was a pretty good place to start, along with the original scans from the observatories. With any luck, they’d be able to communicate pieces of her anatomy in images she could understand.
“Donovan to all teams. I’ve made a discovery you might find interesting.”
Chapter 12:
Exterminators
As Jack and his team pressed on through the raging dust storm, he continually had to remind himself they were still on Earth. Hour after hour revealed nothing but devastation, and the once blue skies were hidden from view. All they could see was the cracked and withered land beneath their feet, while a brown fog, thick with debris, blotted out everything beyond.
The world was unrecognizable except for the fallen trees that littered the ground. It might as well have been Mars, or the ninth ring of Hell for that matter.
They followed the twisting ravine, breaking every hour for a rest that Jack kept short. He knew they had to keep up their momentum as long as they could, and cover as much ground as possible before night fell and reduced them to total blindness.
Each one was carrying dry rations and two liters of water in their service-pack, which meant food for a week and water for a day. Considering the kind of strain they were under, he didn’t want to estimate how long they’d last without a fresh source of water. In normal circumstances, their supplies would have been more than enough, but no one had ever imagined a situation like this. It was a grave oversight which Jack was paying for, and their only hope for survival lay in Nikitin’s hunch.
As they went, the cycling sound of the alien cuttlefish never ceased. Jack could always hear at least one of them nearby, moving in circular patterns. He knew from experience they were search patterns, and he did his best not to imagine what was happening every time they stopped. Each time, it was just long enough to unleash a volley of their screaming weapons before continuing on.
The ravine provided enough cover to keep them out of sight, and Jack suspected the aliens’ scanning technology wasn’t very thorough. Less sensitive than a leviathan’s by a wide margin, at least. Several times during their journey, the silhouette of one of the cuttlefish passed overhead, and each time, Jack expected it to swoop down and incinerate them, but it never happened.
After more than three hours and fifteen kilometers over broken terrain, Nikitin’s hunch panned out. The dry ravine met a live river, knee deep with fresh water. Another hundred meters on, they could just barely make out the shadow of a settlement. They’d made it.
Jack motioned for a huddle. “Me and Nicotine are gonna scout ahead. The rest of you, break out purification kits and refill your packs, then find somewhere to setup camp. Gather brush for camouflage while you’re at it. If the village is a bust, we’ll overnight here. Got it?”
“Roger,” they said and broke from the huddle. Everyone sounded exhausted.
Albright patted Jack on the shoulder, then held out the flare gun and two shells for him to take. The gun was made of brightly colored plastic and looked like a toy, but never-the-less filled him with unease. He’d cleaned and bandaged so many wounds that the thought of any gun made him angry.
“For emergency use only. Load cartridge, cock hammer, aim at sky and pull trigger,” Albright said. “I’m not sure if we’ll come running or get the hell out of dodge, but either way, I’d feel better if you had it.”
“Fair enough,” Jack said. “If you see the flare, just leave. If we’re not back in two hours, do the same.” He took the gun, popped the breach and looked inside to make sure the chamber was empty, then tucked it into the strap of his service-pack and dropped the shells into his pocket.
She didn’t say a word, just nodded her head and joined the others busy at the waterline.
Nikitin appeared beside him, raring and ready to go. “Makes ya feel like a big man, don’t it?”
Nikitin didn’t have any aversion to firearms, and never failed to give Jack crap about his. He had a small collection of rifles back home that he treated like children, and he usually spent his vacation time alone in the wilderness, hunting big-eyed creatures that never saw it coming. Jack never could figure out how Nikitin dealt with the cognitive dissonance.
“I don’t want the damned thing. You want it?”
“Naw. Might confuse it for a real gun and try to play hero. Better leave it with someone level headed like yourself. Come one. We should get a move on before it turns dark.”
The two of them climbed up the side of the ravine and back into the battering winds of the dust storm. They kept their heads down and scurried from one pile of debris to the next, creeping up on the village in ten meter bursts. They could make out more details at each stop, and it wasn’t a pretty picture. Broken walls and shattered wooden beams came into view, against a hillside in the background which had long ago been cut into scalloped and irrigated terraces, now pockmarked with jagged craters.
They stopped at a pile of masonry and waited, on the look-out for any kind of movement, but there was too much dust in the air to see anything clearly. For a moment, Jack was tempted to grab Nikitin’s binoculars, but he only would’ve seen dust and more dust beyond it.
They crossed the last stretch of land and immediately pinned themselves to a brick wall. It was connected to two others which were still stand
ing, the third having fallen in towards the center of the building along with the roof. Every other building in sight was much the same: barely held together, with hand-painted Chinese signs on whatever walls remained upright.
From there, Jack and Nikitin skirted the edges of the village and listened for voices—for any signs of people—but there were none. They silently passed one shattered building after the next, some still smoking from recent attacks. Jack imagined that Nikitin was feeling just as hopeless as he was.
Then they caught sight of movement. Both men reacted the same way, instinctively ducking for cover in a darkened doorway. The building’s roof was in pieces, and the rubble inside left only as much space as a closet. It was a wonder both of them fit inside.
They tried to breathe as quietly as they could while they watched the road and awaited the silhouette’s approach. It was moving slowly and coming straight down the center of the pavement, and as it drew closer, Jack thought for a second that it was wildlife. Another moment later, he changed his mind completely.
It wasn’t large, maybe as big as a teenager, and it walked slowly on all fours while calmly surveying the area. Its body looked oddly shaped for that kind of movement, though, with proportions that were altogether too human. Front and rear legs were the same length but shaped differently, the front pair being more spindly and ending in fully formed hands.
As the creature passed by, Jack could see that it was wearing a mechanical mask not unlike his own, from which two long, pointy ears protruded outward and upward. It was also carrying some sort of ornately decorated rifle on its back. Although distinctly exotic in design, an embossed branch-and-leaf design made the weapon look like some kind of Victorian relic.
A noise sounded in the distance, like a horn or an animal howling, and the creature stopped in its tracks. It stood up on its hind legs, took a last glance around the area and thankfully missed Jack and his partner in their hiding spot. Then it turned toward the source of the noise and leapt off, returning to all fours and sprinting as a jackrabbit would.
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