by Chris Walley
The machine—Merral had not the slightest doubt that it was a machine rather than a living thing—moved closer to him with smooth, impeccably coordinated leg movements.
Merral stared at it, trying, through his fear, to make sense of something so totally unfamiliar. As he looked at it, he saw that high on a front facet were two small, glassy black circles that stared at him. The machine bobbed and swayed as if trying to get a thorough look at his face.
As it did, Merral realized, with a further strange assurance, that what he faced was not simply a remote surveillance machine but something with an intelligence of its own. He stared back at it, now able to make out details on the body panels. There was an array of small green lights on one surface, a series of sockets along another, and fine lettering on a third.
The machine spoke, but Merral could make no sense of the jagged syllables. He knew, though, that they were words rather than noise.
“The machine says it doesn’t recognize you. It wants your identity.” The envoy’s steady voice seemed to come from just over his shoulder.
“What do I do?” Merral whispered back, wondering how you dealt with an intelligent and probably hostile machine, barely an arm’s length away from your face. We should have predicted this, he told himself with a spasm of recrimination. We knew the intruders had worked without restrictions. We should have guessed that they would have ignored the notoriously complex Technology Protocol Two about creating autonomous sentient machines.
“Man, show it the identity disc you bear,” said the envoy.
“But the disc isn’t mine. We don’t have them.”
The machine swung its head as if it was trying to find out who he was talking to.
“Do it!”
Merral found the chain around his neck and, jerking it out, held the disc firmly up in front of the machine.
A panel flicked down on the underside of the body, and a tendril, as fine as a man’s little finger, uncoiled smoothly out and extended to just in front of Merral’s chest. Four delicate digits flowered on its end and grasped the disc with a gentle firmness.
The machine seemed to stare at what it held. “Lucas Hannun Ringell,” it pronounced in slow tones. Then, after a moment’s hesitation, it carefully enunciated the date of birth, “Three dash three dash twenty eighty-two.”
There was a pause, as if it was thinking or consulting with something.
Suddenly the digits released the disc. The limb whisked back inside the body and the machine stepped back sharply with a simultaneous movement of all four legs.
“Captain Lucas Hannun Ringell?” it said, and there was no mistaking the note of questioning in the voice.
Along the length of the corridor, bright red lights began to pulse and a wailing siren sounded.
“Now shoot it,” said the envoy.
Merral aimed at the body and squeezed the trigger. There was a brief cherry red glow on an underside plate, and a puff of smoke belched out. A flurry of thin, pale gray shards whistled outwards, clattering against the walls and floor. Fragments of metallic and plastic circuitry popped out. Amid thrashing limbs, the creature banged against the wall and crashed to the ground.
“Sorry,” Merral muttered, wondering if he should apologize to intelligent machines. Then, stepping carefully over a still-flicking leg, he moved on down the corridor. He began to stride quickly forward. There was no point in stealth now; the alarm had been triggered, and the next machines or creatures he met would know that he was hostile.
“I should have shot it first,” he protested. “The alarms have been sounded.”
“No. The ship’s defense systems think that Lucas Ringell is loose on the ship. They will divert forces to deal with this most serious threat.”
“You mean,” Merral spluttered, “you want them to come after me?”
“It is necessary. Your men cannot handle the Krallen pack they now face.”
“The what?” asked Merral, struck by the menacing sound of the term Krallen pack.
“You will find out.”
“Thanks,” Merral said, recognizing in some distant and neutral part of his mind that he was being sarcastic. “I hope you can handle them. But—another thing—how can they imagine Lucas Ringell to be here? They must know that he died millennia ago.”
“They think you are like them,” the voice said but did not elaborate.
Suddenly the lights flickered, and Merral heard a faint click from his gun. He glanced down to see that there was no status light of any sort on. He stopped, tapping the various switches. But no light turned on. It was as if all the power had vanished from the machine; his weapon was dead.
“My gun’s malfunction—,” Merral began and stopped, jarred by the realization that the status light on his diary had gone off as well.
The indefinable shadow spoke. “The being at the heart of this ship has power over such things. Shoulder your gun; you may need it later. Move on.”
Despite feeling a need to protest, Merral did as he was told. He found his knife, grasped the handle firmly, pointed it away from him, and pressed the release button. With a smooth click, the meter-long, dull gray blade extended. He pressed the retract button, and the blade hissed back into the handle. At least my knife works. The idea gave him little reassurance.
He strode on down the corridor. Suddenly he heard distant noises from ahead of him. A cold chill swept over him as he realized that the sounds were getting louder and nearer. The growing noises were matched by the rising vibrations he could feel in the floor. In an instant, Merral had a terrifying vision of something—no, many things—bounding up stairs and along corridors as they raced toward him. He looked around for somewhere to hide.
In seconds, the noise was clear enough for him to make out that it was made up of a collection of strange whistles, hoots, and the clattering of many feet. The Krallen pack, he thought, and considered turning and running back the way he had come.
“W-what do I do?” he said.
“Stand still against the wall and say nothing,” said the voice close behind him.
Merral turned around to try and see the envoy, but all he could see was a tall, oddly vague blackness behind him. It was as if the envoy existed on some plane that was either too close or too far away for his eyes to focus on.
The noises became louder and the floor rang. Trembling with fright, Merral pressed himself behind a protruding girder on the inner side of the corridor. Resisting the temptation to close his eyes, he peered forward down the corridor.
The lights at the far end were suddenly obscured, and in a second, the passageway was filled with strange gray, athletic creatures racing toward him, some bounding along the floor, others—no less fast—swinging along the roof, whistling and hooting to each other.
Merral’s first terrified impressions were of four-legged creatures the size of the very largest dogs but with very un-doglike legs. A pack indeed, he thought, like hounds or wolves. Suddenly, just as the leading creatures were barely a few meters away, Merral sensed the shadow on the edge of his vision moving, and he had the impression of an arm being thrown up above and in front of him. He blinked; he could still see, but everything before him was hazy, as if some gauze sheet now hung in front of his eyes.
“I will hide you,” the envoy said. “You are not ready to face these things.”
Merral had a sudden vision of himself standing pale faced and wide-eyed behind a wing of the envoy’s cloak.
With astonishing speed, the pack came to an abrupt halt just in front of Merral. Conscious of his frantically pounding heart, Merral stared at the things that confronted him. There were ten—no, more—a dozen of them. The overriding impression he had was of an overwhelming, intelligent, and disciplined hostility. These Krallen are not dogs, he told himself, they are way beyond that: there is intelligence here—coordination and language.
Indeed, they didn’t really look like dogs. They were too big—they stood chest high to Merral—and their tails were short, muscular, and p
assed smoothly into their bodies. The limbs were striking, apparently having something of an apelike flexibility, so that the three creatures hanging from the ceiling seemed no less at ease than those standing on the ground. In fact, as Merral stared at them, he decided he wasn’t even sure that they were mammals. There was a cold, almost reptilian air to their actions, and their gray skin was hairless and thick. Their heads were roughly triangular, both in cross section and profile, widening to the rear and the bottom. Two small, dark eyes were inset in the upper part of the face and were protected by prominent ridges above and below them. The lower part of the head was dominated by a strong-jawed mouth.
As Merral watched, he saw their heads moving this way and that as if scanning every square centimeter of the corridor for the slightest trace of him. The whistling and hooting they made through half-open mouths kept changing pitch and tone, and Merral sensed that they were sharing puzzlement. His eye was caught by one, which had a wide black depression along its flank as if some flaming object had struck it. He found himself puzzling over why there was no blood and why the creature seemed to be unaffected by such a major wound.
At he stared at it, the nearest Krallen moved closer. It stopped and extended a forelimb, waving it slowly this way and that as if cautiously checking to see if there was something invisible before it. As it did so, Merral was suddenly struck by the feet—or were they hands? They had five big, fingerlike digits, three facing forward and two facing back, and as he watched, Merral saw sharp silvery blades extend from the fingers. Like a cat, he thought but checked himself when he realized that not even a lion had claws this long or this sharp. It was strange too how metallic they looked. It opened its jaws and Merral saw, with a strange lack of surprise, that its mouth was filled with sharp, knifelike silver teeth. Hadn’t Anya warned of the possibility of designed predators? Surely, Merral decided, these were they.
Seemingly baffled by Merral’s disappearance, the creature stopped still and seemed to stare at or through him. Then it spoke—and Merral was in no doubt that the whistles were words—and suddenly two Krallen sprang forward—they were surprisingly light on their feet—and bounded down the corridor in an oddly regimented action. Perhaps ten meters away, they spun round in a perfectly coordinated maneuver and, with their noses to the ground, began to sniff their way toward him.
As Merral watched, horror-struck, peculiarities registered. There was a precise smoothness to the way the Krallen moved that puzzled him. There were curiously regular features on the skin at the shoulders and wrists that almost looked like sockets or mounting brackets. And Merral was certain that there was something else about them that was odd, something that was very obvious. But he couldn’t identify what it was.
What are these things? he wondered in a mixture of terror and perplexity as the two creatures came to within a handbreadth of his feet and began to look up at him with their cold eyes.
Yet as they moved their heads toward him, Merral became aware of the envoy reaching out his hand—he felt he could make out faint fingers—and gently touching the nearest creature on the back of the head.
“Az izara hamalaraka,” the envoy said in a soothing tone, and the strange words seem to vibrate quietly in the air. Merral sensed that it was an order.
The Krallen that he was touching gave a slight shudder and uttered a long, descending whistling note. As if it was a mechanical device, it smoothly bent its knees and lowered its head so that it crouched low on the floor. As if some sort of contagion was spreading through the pack, one by one the others followed suit. The three creatures hanging from the roof sprung lightly down to the floor and did the same. Then, as if it was part of a carefully choreographed routine, the strange eyelids on the beasts simultaneously closed shut.
With an astonishing sense of relief, Merral stared at the twelve identical forms lying still on the floor in total silence.
“What did you say?” Merral asked.
“You could translate it as ‘go into system shutdown mode.’ ”
“Oh.”
“Forward,” said the envoy and seemed to drop his hand. The haze that had been in front of Merral suddenly cleared.
Merral remembered something. “Daniel . . . , ” he said. “Didn’t God send his angel and shut the mouths of the lions for Daniel?”
“There are precedents. But lions are easier.”
Merral stepped forward, gingerly tiptoeing between the still forms. He glanced down, noticing for the first time that the gray skin of the creatures was finely scored so it looked as if was made up of numerous straight-edged patches. Like tiles. He noticed another one that had a marked but bloodless gash on it.
“Are they dead?”
“They were never alive.”
“What do you mean?” Struck by a thought, Merral glanced back at the others. Yes, how very odd; they’re all identical.
“They are not animals,” the envoy said.
“They aren’t?”
“They are made beings. Synthetic creatures. Made of artificial bone and tissue.”
Of course, Merral thought with a flood of realization, that’s what was odd about them: they weren’t breathing. They had been running and weren’t panting.
“But why?”
“Why make them, you mean? Their makers wanted things that had none of the weaknesses of flesh and blood. The Krallen are stronger than any animal, they are hard to destroy, and they never sleep or tire. A Krallen pack would run across Menaya before it even slowed down.”
Merral saw that they had come to some stairs.
“Are there more—”
“Enough! Now ascend, up to the next level. There is much to do.”
Merral looked up and down the stairway, realizing that it must go up vertically through most of the ship. The siren was still blaring, and he could hear far-off, angry noises, but there were no noises from nearby.
“Very well,” Merral answered, and he began climbing the stairs, keeping close to the wall, aware that close behind him something followed him. Somehow he found the envoy less alarming now. There was still something disconcerting about him, but in this hostile ship he seemed to be almost a friend.
Near the top of the next flight of stairs, Merral stopped and peered carefully over the top of the final step. Another lateral corridor stretched out before him. It was empty. He moved forward along it, hoping that if he was going to meet any opponents, the envoy would protect him again. Against the likes of things such as these Krallen, Merral felt his bush knife would be of little use.
Nearly midway along the corridor, he passed a wide doorway to his right. From the presence of a button pad at its side, he decided that it was an elevator. Next to it and aligned, as far as Merral could determine, with the central axis of the ship, was a large and strangely ornate alcove. He looked at it and saw that it had been blackened, as if a fire had been lit in it. In it was a strange statue made out of a dark gleaming metal.
Merral stepped toward it, realizing as he looked at it that it was a large cast of a human head. Or rather, it had been. Something had happened to make it melt, flow, and drip so that the original features of the face were now impossible to determine. Yet as he looked at the marred sculpture, Merral felt certain that it had been intended to portray strength, power, and authority. For a second, he wondered how such a mishap had happened, before he realized with a shock of identification that the damage might not have been accidental. Indeed, as he gazed at the sculpture, he felt suddenly certain that someone had willfully blasted the bust with some sort of weapon.
Puzzled, Merral stood back and saw, below the recess, an engraved label. The top line of writing was in the unattractive cursive script that he had seen earlier. Here it had been defaced, scored through several times by a knife so that even if he could have understood the letters, he would have struggled to read it. They have tried to disfigure it, he thought, puzzling over the oddness of the concept. Then his eye was caught by a second line of text below it, which had escaped damage. It
was in a different, more familiar script, and Merral gasped as he realized that it was written in Communal.
“Zhalatoc, Great Prince of the Lord-Emperor Nezhuala’s Dominion.” He spoke the words aloud, feeling as he did that the strangely discordant names seemed to linger in the air.
He turned, trying—and failing yet again—to focus on the envoy. “What does this mean?” he asked.
“Everything. And, for the moment, nothing. Your business lies within the chamber.”
Merral turned and looked at the entrance doorway on the other side of the corridor. What new horrors lay beyond? He walked over to it, noticing an odd-shaped handle and a notice to the right of the door. The first three lines of the notice were in the ugly, wiry red font that he had seen before. Yet below it was a three-line inscription written with a neat electric blue script in Communal. Merral read the words.
Warning!
STEERSMAN CHAMBER
Out of Bounds!
Merral frowned. Although the individual words made sense, the overall meaning eluded him completely. Warning, he understood, but what was a Steersman? Chamber was plain, reminding him of Jorgio’s ominous caution, but what the last three-word phrase meant was utterly beyond him. As Merral stared at the writing, he felt certain that the odd way the letters were shaped and spaced was one that he associated with the earliest period of the Assembly.
“And what does this mean?” he asked aloud.
“You will learn. But you must go on. Open the door.”
Merral turned to the door and grabbed the handle. He hesitated for a second and then tugged at it.
As the handle rotated down, the door beside it slid quietly sideways to reveal a small but high compartment illuminated with a dull green light. Apart from another door on the opposite side, it was empty and featureless. It’s an airlock, Merral thought.
“Leave your gun here. It will only hinder you.”
Merral hesitated for a second and then slipped the useless gun off his shoulder and placed it against the wall as, with a hiss, the door slid closed behind him. His fingers moved toward the bush knife on his belt as he tried to hold back a feeling of panic and oppression.