by Barry Kirwan
"Captain?"
Blake’s voice clicked on through the intercom. "Yes, Kat?"
"Can we go any faster?"
There was a pause, and then Kat felt a surge as they accelerated toward the top speed of 200kph.
With the helmet mike off, Kat said in a low voice. "I’m coming, whoever you are." As she watched the endless dunes and scattered, solitary boulders flash past against a deepening purple sky, she realized that right now she would have no way of knowing if she was dreaming or not.
Chapter 19
Debrief
Micah checked his wristcom: he’d been waiting two hours in the Optron Lab to be de-briefed by Vince, and to make matters worse, his computer privileges had been withdrawn. His computer and the gleaming Optron lay dormant. He knew the answers – and maybe the right questions, lay hidden inside the landscape somewhere. The Eden astronauts were in trouble, he could feel it in his stomach, but here he was killing time waiting for Vince, who was probably going to try and send him home now the assassin had been killed. Micah needed something to bargain with, but had no idea what. His foot swung underneath the chair, idly nudging a table leg.
He cast a glance over to Rudi’s desk. They hadn’t exactly been close, but he remembered when they’d joined the Eden Mission Project four years ago – the champagne, the speeches, the feeling of being part of something. Rudi’s empty desk resembled a marble grave.
He imagined the furnace, how close he’d come to ending up there, mingled with Rudi’s ashes. No one deserves that. Rudi’s chair was pulled out from his desk, as if he might return any minute. He walked over and pushed it underneath the desktop. It felt like sliding closed the lid of a coffin. He sat back down at his own desk.
The lab doors burst open. Vince marched in, yanked out Rudi’s chair unceremoniously, skidding it across the floor close to Micah, and sat with the back of the chair in front of him. Like the first cut of a surgeon, his voice sliced through the air. "When did you first suspect Rudi was a traitor?"
"Traitor? I never thought of him as –"
"Then catch up fast."
"I… I began to notice small things over the past few weeks, maybe a couple of months."
Vince rested his elbows atop the back of the chair, fingers interlaced. He stared, eyes burning across the silence between them.
Micah shifted position. "Well, he was a bit secretive, would stay late, said he had to work on something, but was pretty evasive. Sometimes I’d come in early and he’d been here two hours already."
Vince did a good impression of a waxwork statue.
Micah coughed. "About four weeks ago, I came in real early. Couldn’t sleep. Rudi was around, but not in the lab, I guess he’d gone for a coffee or something." He wished Vince would make a wisecrack, or shout, or something. "So, anyway, there was some print-out on his desk. Only it wasn’t ours."
"How so?"
"It just looked… different. It had a logo on it which wasn’t ours."
"Indus Valley Systems," Vince said. It didn’t sound like a question.
Micah coughed again. Vince strode over to the recycled water-cooler in the corner of the lab, and brought back a half-filled plastic cup.
"Thanks." Micah took several swigs.
"Who did you report it to?"
He shifted in his seat again. "I opened it. I supposed he’d borrowed it from another analyst, looking for new methods. It happens – there are only a hundred analysts like Rudi and me around, and sometimes we communicate, looking for new ideas.
"But this concerned Ulysses."
"Yes, at least our methods. I was a bit shocked, since it potentially compromised security. I noticed the Optron was set to my frequency, not his. I went looking for him, but didn’t find him till I got back. Rudi had logged into his own landscape and the document was gone." He gulped down the last sip of water.
"So you didn’t tell anyone."
He shook his head, and studied the bottom of his empty cup. "I figured he was fed up, had been talking out of line to an IVS analyst, that’s all. I mean we have all sorts of firewalls, there’s nothing serious he could have done alone..." You were way ahead of me, Rudi, let me believe I was the smarter analyst, got my guard down.
Vince stood. "We checked the furnace, but ash is ash. We assume two corpses were dumped in there in the last six hours."
"Ben… the janitor?"
"Cleansers don’t leave loose ends. You were lucky, Micah. If Louise hadn’t bumped into that girl, you and Sandy would be dead."
"And the other jan… I mean the Cleanser?"
"Cyanide pill. Dead, unfortunately."
It didn’t sound unfortunate.
"Louise is trying to find out his real identity, and which Alician Chapel he was operating from."
Micah glanced sideways.
Vince cocked his head. "Are you and Louise getting along okay?"
"Sure."
Vince sighed. "A word of warning, Micah. She’s dangerous. Very. Rough ride in the War, left her pretty jagged. You’re smart enough to have worked that out. Just remember what black widow spiders do with their mates."
Micah nodded, faking a worldly nonchalance.
Vince paused to let it sink in, then continued. "As of 09.00 today, a new link has been set up, using back-up optronics, two new boys, mil-tech. Probably don’t have your flair, certainly not Rudi’s, –"
Micah winced.
"– but they’ll get the basics done and keep out the hackers. They’re trying to establish contact now."
He was amazed how quickly a back-up crew had been brought in. But there was still no contact with the ship. "Ulysses – it’s past the nebula, where the Heracles disappeared."
"Correct. Hubble IV picked up a tracer two hours ago, two days old. That’s all we have for now. They should be on Eden." He brushed down his tunic, ready to leave.
He felt cast aside. Despite the danger of the past couple of days, he’d been more alive than since he could remember; since the War. He didn’t want to be dropped from the picture.
"What about me? What do I do now?"
Vince looked surprised. "Do? You go home, and you stay there. Haven’t you had enough adventure for a while? You’re not an agent, Micah – you’d just get in the way."
He sat up. Now or never. "There were simulacra in our landscapes."
Vince gave him a sideways look, and deposited a foot on the chair. "I’m listening."
He told Vince of the two figures, explained what they meant, or might mean. He didn’t mention the other one looked like Antonia – “just a girl, couldn’t see her too clearly”. Vince wanted to hand it over to the mil guys, but Micah said it wouldn’t work, each setting was tailored to a human reader – Micah and Rudi were two of the few who’d worked together enough to be able to read each others' environments, but to newcomers it would be a jumble of colors and shapes – they’d never find the simulacra."
Vince chewed his lip. "Alright, forty-eight hours, Micah, I’ll reinstate your privileges. Find anything, you call me first, understood?" He handed Micah a slip with a number on it.
Micah recalled a question that had been in the back of his mind. "What about IVS? Are they being investigated?"
Vince turned to him. "You haven’t seen the news?"
"Er… no."
"Biggest archaeological find since the pyramids?" Vince flexed his eyebrows. "Check the nets when you get home. We’re trying to investigate IVS, but this ship they’ve found in the Mariana Trench is over-shadowing everything, even Ulysses. IVS security’s closed up sphincter-tight. As for here, a new Eden Mission Management team came in at lunchtime, they’ve all passed screening, and we have thirty agents permanently in the building, which is pretty much in lockdown status, so Rudi’s route out to IVS or whoever it was is closed off." Vince glanced at his wristcom. "Go home, Micah." He turned to leave.
Micah shot to his feet. "If you find something – the missing data – Rudi will have encoded it – I could decode it for you."
Micah leaned backwards against the desk.
"You got fucked up by your father, Micah. You’re in his shadow. Daddy hero syndrome. We know all about him, what a prick he was to you and your family – heroes, always a black side, eh?"
Micah had thought it a million times, but never heard it from someone else.
"So you want to be a hero, too, maybe a different kind. Am I right?"
His throat locked tight.
"Well, let me save you the bother. He’s dead. You need him to recognize you, accept you, whatever, and it won’t happen, Micah, because… the sonofabitch is dead. So, step out of the shadow. He screwed up your life while he was alive, now you’re doing it for him." Vince spun around and headed out. "Get a life, Micah, your own."
Micah breathed hard. Dozens of buried memories resurrected themselves. All were between him and his father, all were unpleasant: the put-downs, the patronizing lectures, and the ever-present disappointment in his father’s tone. Micah’s fists squeezed hard. Uncorked anger rose inside him like bile.
Nobody, in all these years, even his sister, had ever validated him – not once – about his father. All the press, the vids, had nothing else to say but that he was the Great War hero who sacrificed everything for God and country, Colonel Victor Sanderson, the Gray Colonel… Micah remembered the storm shelter, his father labeling him a coward after the nuclear attack. He realized he was still trapped in that one, terrified, fifteen year old boy’s humiliating moment.
Without thinking, he grabbed the arms of his chair, raised it above his head, and with an anguished cry brought it crashing down on his computer. He raised it again, slamming it down even harder, denting the metal. He swept everything off the desk, sending tortured fragments clattering across the floor. Two guards rushed in, then grounded to a halt.
"Calm down, Son," one of them said.
Micah didn’t know what his face looked like, but they didn’t approach any closer. He cast aside the twisted chair and glared at them. "I’m nobody’s fucking son."
Vince re-entered, glaring at the mess around Micah’s feet. "Christ, do I have to get you escorted off the premises, or call a shrink? Forget the privileges, I’m bringing the mil in now."
"Wait." It had the ring of an order.
Vince threw him a sideways look. "Excuse me?"
"Just you and me, Vince."
Vince stood, legs splayed, folded his arms. "You’re shitting me, right?" He shook his head then gave a crisp command in Chorazin. The guards left.
Micah glared, not caring that his hands were shaking or that his chest heaved. "This isn’t about you, me or my father, right?" He didn’t wait for an answer. "It’s about them, right?" He pointed without looking at the astronaut poster.
Vince sighed. "Yes, Micah. But my patience is running low."
"We don’t have a clue what’s going on, do we?"
Vince said nothing.
"Well, I can maybe solve that, but you have to tell me what you know."
Vince frowned. "I don’t know what that doctor put in your booster, but I need to have a word with him. Look, Micah, if you have information, just give it to me."
Micah grabbed a handle on his desk and in one smooth movement dragged the top drawer out, placed it upside down on the table-top. He detached the small syringe filled with a gelatinous brown fluid taped at the back of the drawer. "I don’t have information, but I have a talent. You're the one with the information."
Vince glared at the syringe. "What is that?"
"How do you think we set up those landscapes in the first place? Lucidium; given to every certified analyst, but in short supply. We keep a spare for emergencies: inadvertent landscape erasure, accidents like that. Hallucinogenic, but mainly a mind enhancer. Our equivalent of a booster." He tore off the protective cap, pressed it to the side of his neck. It hissed. "Auto-sterilizing. Won’t take long."
His eyes rolled closed. He emptied his mind, the way he did before an Optronic landscape creation, imagining space, empty, dark, silent. He’d had to study with a Zen master in Palo Alto for six months to learn this trick of returning to what was called "Beginner’s Mind", necessary for optimization of the pattern-building talent he’d possessed since a child. As he captured the fleeting essence of silence, he pushed it out in all directions, like the wave front of a bubble, accelerating, leaving nothing at its centre as it travelled out into sheer black void. The anger, too, dissipated. He wasn’t sorry to see it go.
An image of Ulysses arose, first in orbit, then settled on the fertile planet. Immense silver ships on Earth floated up from the depths after centuries, breaking the surface of the oceans. Crystal threads entwined: the Alicians, the Chorazin, IVS, the last War, the discoveries since the war, all converged towards a distant blacker-than-black sun; whereas other strands – nuclear and nano-tech, solar system colonization efforts, and sub-sea habitation – hung in empty space like shredded wraiths. He tried to focus on the distant black sun, but as he approached, it moved away.
Something was missing. There weren’t enough pieces to this puzzle. Micah half-opened drug-heavy eyes. He spoke quietly, so as not to disturb his altered state.
"Something else… tell me."
Vince sounded far away, as if they both stood on two separate cliff-tops, a deep gorge between them. "Alright," Vince said, "I’ll humor you, Micah, as you seem to be over the edge anyway. But you repeat it to anyone, even Louise, and I’ll have you locked up for good. There was something else down there with the ship, protecting it. An unknown sea-creature. Nasty piece of work. It was recorded briefly before it destroyed the sub that first found the ship. It hasn’t been seen since. One of the scans of the creature included a flash spectrograph – showed a new element in its hide, metallic, not of Earth origin. If the graph isn’t fake, it means it could be alien."
"More…"
Vince sighed. "Shit. Okay. The ship is hard to date. But some bio-matter, probably decayed algae, must have gotten trapped inside when the ship arrived – a thousand years ago. And if this last piece gets repeated, Micah, I'll finish the Cleaner's job for him." He lowered his voice, "We may have found an identical ship in Qahuru, Central Australia, buried in the desert."
Micah sealed his eyes again, bringing down the shutters on the external world, and absorbed the new information. Images unfolded inside the bubble, and he watched, dispassionately. It wasn’t a sun after all; it was a writhing sphere of black larval insects, squirming, hungry, glinting in the backlight of Earth’s reflection, getting closer. A shining darkness.
He creaked open bloodshot eyes. His hands were puffy and stung – he assumed due to an interaction effect between the booster and the Lucidium. He felt weak in his legs. He realized he was shivering. But the Chorazin booster was making him come round much faster than last time he’d taken the drug.
Vince fetched him more water, which Micah downed in short, furtive sips.
"Your trip report, Micah?"
"First, you have to understand it’s conjecture – a projection. The drug-induced state helps to identify patterns, inter-relationships, increasingly implausible but limited by improbability mathematics. It’s… complicated."
"Indulge me."
"The human mind tends to think in single threads – and usually not in a straight line, at that. But we can also think laterally and, more important for understanding complex phenomena, in networks, in multiple dimensions. However, it’s hard for the unenhanced human brain. Some people have a natural ability for it. Good detectives have it, for example," he glanced at Vince. "But the drug can push us way beyond normal abilities. If used more than about once every six months it can fragment reality – you end up schizophrenic."
"What did you see?"
"It’s not just visual, not with me at least. I mean I see things, but the connections are felt more than seen. Like reading tarot cards – it’s the interpretation that matters. It doesn’t always make sense at the time. Like déjà vu, you know, you finally realize what some dream meant just after the real thing has happened. Not always helpful." Micah knew he was rambling, but he was avoiding what he was slowly becoming convinced of, that humanity was in terrible danger. The drug-induced intuitions in his mind began to take on the solidity of truth. God, I hope I’m wrong.
"Give me something, Micah."
Micah stood. "First, if we do make contact, and if there’s still time, we should tell them not to land on Eden; more of those creatures will be there."
As Micah continued to talk, he noticed Vince’s blue eyes take on a grey, leaden quality. Micah talked only for a couple of minutes; it was fading rapidly.
Vince rose. "But if you think there are a lot more of these ships and they come from Eden, and these creatures own the ships, what do they want, and why did they leave them here over a millennium ago? Need I remind you the Alicians seem intent on us not going to Eden, most likely sabotaging our ships en route. So if the ships are to take people to Eden, and the Alicians are somehow connected to them, why have the Alicians been blowing up our own ships trying to get there?"
Micah’s head throbbed, his eyesight a grainy black and white, a short-term after-effect. It was getting hard to think. "Don’t know. You’re right, it doesn’t hang together yet, but... we should act, somehow, warn the Ulysses crew, and maybe tell IVS and the Australians to be very careful."
"On what evidence? A drugged analyst’s speculation?" Vince shook his head. "Okay, wait here, I’ll make some calls."
While Vince was gone, Micah tried to regain the clarity he’d had when "under", but it was gone; the fragments didn’t connect. He picked up a holopad out of the debris of his desk and sketched a mind map, connecting the ships and the creatures to the Alicians and Eden. He joined the ships and the Alicians to Earth. He tried to figure it out: aliens bring ships to Earth a thousand years ago, meet Alicians, make some kind of deal, leave ships, go to Eden, wait there. Alicians try to stop us getting there. Ship found by IVS… He stared at it for five minutes, pen poised, then pushed the pad away.