/Oh./ She absorbed that for a moment, then made her way to the top of the ramp where it cut into the surface. Nudging a few of the spacesuited gawkers out of the way, she started walking down the long ramp toward the translator. As the comm-chatter died down, she could hear the excavation supervisor hollering, “Julie Stone! Where’s Stone?”
She waved a space-gloved hand, but kept walking. “On my way down, Paul.”
“Find out if the translator did this, will you?”
Julie waved again, without answering.
At the bottom, she found most of the floodlights that Kim’s team had set up still working. It was an eerie sight, like approaching a sunken stage, with the translator standing alone at its center. It was poised like a top, as always. But it seemed to her that the churning inner movement of the spheres had slowed. “Are you all right?” she asked. “This—” and she paused to gesture back toward the ramp she’d just descended “—was pretty impressive.”
*It was a simple shifting of molecules. You may bring your equipment down now.*
For a moment, Julie just stared at the translator through the reflections on her faceplate, and listened to the rasp of her own breathing. Then she said, “Okay. They are intending to install a protective crate around you first, then move you from this location. You will be placed aboard a spacecraft.”
*Yes.*
“We may go ahead and do that?”
*Yes.*
Julie turned around and peered up the long incline, where several spacesuited figures were trudging after her. “Gentlemen,” she said, raising her voice as if she needed to shout up to the others, “your hole has been bored. You may begin crating the translator.”
*
Once the necessary equipment was in place at the bottom of the incline, the foreman turned to Julie for advice. It took her a moment to understand the problem. The men were unloading the pieces of a large shipping crate from one of the tine-lifts. But how were they going to get the bottom panel of the crate under the translator? Two other men were stretching out cables and hooks, with the apparent intent of grappling the translator and lifting it with a hoist. She had a feeling those would not be welcomed by the translator. /Do you have any suggestions?/ she asked the stones, or the translator, whichever was listening.
*Allow the translator to handle it,* the stones replied.
Julie frowned. /How—?/ she began, then caught herself. The translator had begun to glow more brightly. Now it was floating, with a space of about ten centimeters visible between it and the cavern floor. Julie cleared her throat and said aloud, “Is anyone else seeing what I’m seeing?”
“What’s that?” the foreman asked. He had turned his back, watching the crew set out the pieces. No one except Julie was actually looking at the translator.
“Would everyone please turn around and look?” she asked quietly.
The work crew all shuffled to turn in their spacesuits, helmet lights flashing in every direction. For a moment, no one spoke. Then the foreman said, “Was it like that before?”
Julie chuckled. “No, it was not.”
“Then what—?”
“How is it doing that?”
“Does someone have a magnetometer—”
Julie broke in. “Hey, guys? It’s waiting nicely for you to slide the bottom of the crate under it. Are you going to keep it waiting?”
The foreman stirred himself to action. “Let’s bring it under with the lift. Tommy?”
“Ready, boss,” answered the driver. Tommy edged the lift forward, with the bottom of the crate balanced on the tines. Julie could see the concentration in his eyes, even through his helmet visor. He was no doubt remembering melted equipment.
As Tommy slid the piece under, the churning spheres of the translator looked as if they might at any moment come crashing apart like a hundred bowling balls. The front of the tine-lift reflected the weird glow; it looked as if it were on fire.
“Stop,” Julie said. “You’ve got it.” The translator was floating about one centimeter above the bottom of the crate. /Is that okay?/
*Affirmative.*
“All right,” she said, “you can put the rest of it together.”
The men worked with deliberate speed. When they were finished, the translator pulsed and glowed from within what looked like an enormous archival display case, held securely with impressively large bolts and fittings. Julie checked it over and gave it her approval, though she secretly wondered if the translator actually needed the protection. “That’s it,” she announced. “Let’s load it up.”
The box was lifted onto the back of a flat carrier, and the transport started the long, slow crawl up the ice ramp. Julie rode on the back with the translator, hanging on to the grill that separated the cab from the cargo bed. She tried to beam thoughts at it, such as /Are you okay?/, but the translator had fallen silent. It floated impassively in the case, its spheres moving like soap bubbles. It remained silent all the way up the ramp, and for the entire trip back over the Triton landscape to the station.
*
Inside the hangar, Julie hopped down and looked around for Kim. She found him stepping out of one of the buggies. “Where are we taking it?” she asked. She’d been so focused on getting the translator out of its underground cavern that it was only on the ride back that she’d started to think about where they were going to put it.
“Into the secure-lab for the night,” Kim said. “First thing tomorrow morning it’s going onto the shuttle for Triton Orbital. That gives us the night to take every kind of measurement we can get.”
“Just don’t annoy it,” Julie said, though what would constitute annoyance, she could not have told him.
“We’ll try not to.” Kim smiled inside his space helmet. “But I suspect a lot of people are going to find reasons to come to the lab tonight, to get a firsthand look. That’ll probably be more annoying to it than anything.”
Julie pictured the parade. “You want me there?” she asked, not sure whether she even wanted to be part of it.
Kim put a thick-gloved hand on her arm. “You’ve been out there all day, and you’re leaving for Earth first thing in the morning. Your assignment is to have a good meal, get some rest, and pack.” He paused. “But stay on call for us, okay?”
“Okay,” she agreed, realizing suddenly just how tired she was. She looked up at the translator, on top of the carrier. /You going to be okay there?/ she asked silently.
There was no reply.
*
Over one last dinner with Georgia, Julie tried not to dwell on the fact that she was about to uproot herself to fly across the solar system to an entirely new life. Once they had the translator stowed aboard the Park Avenue, they would light the fusion rockets and head inbound toward the sun, and Earth. She found herself not wanting to think about that, nor did she want to think about the translator being treated like a specimen and a curiosity for everyone who felt important enough to invite himself down to the lab.
“Jules,” Georgia said, leaning across the table to grab her forearm. “Have you heard a word I’ve been saying to you?”
“Hmm?” She blinked. “That depends. What did you say?”
Georgia rolled her eyes. “That’s what I thought. Look, they’re not down there torturing your friend. Kim is in charge, and you trust Kim, don’t you?”
“What—Kim? Yes,” Julie said, her head swimming.
“All right, then. Have a drink with me, and let’s celebrate, okay?” Georgia hoisted a glass of ersatz merlot for a toast. “Here’s to your return home, with the goods.”
“Fair enough!” she said, raising her beer stein with as much enthusiasm as she could. She took a deep draught, then said, “Maybe it is okay, after all. I’ll have three months on the ship to get to know it. Three months to create my empire!”
“There you go, girl!” Georgia said cheerfully. “Don’t forget your friends when you’re on top of the world, okay?”
Julie half laughed, and then broke into
her first full smile of the day. “I promise. When I am emperor, I will remember you all...”
Chapter 11
Dreams Awaken
Bandicut’s dreams seemed to be growing in intensity. He was in the field again—so real, he could smell the earth and feel the stubble poking into the soles of his sneakers. Wheat stalks rustled against his legs, and the ripe heads brushed his upper arms as he trotted along the wheat rows, trying to keep up with his dog Blackie. He was a small boy.
The storm clouds on the western horizon were glowering. So were the farm’s automated combines bearing down from the far end of the field, cutting and threshing the wheat in wide swaths. The combines were running at top speed, his grandfather trying to get the wheat in before the storm arrived. The young John Bandicut halted, watching the machines churn toward him, great clouds of dust rising in their wake. Something was nagging at him; something felt wrong. He felt a cold, sweating apprehension. “Blackie?” he called. “Blackie, where are you? Come here, boy.”
And then he remembered why he was scared. His grandfather Anthony had been having trouble with the ranging pilots on those combines, and hadn’t been able to get them fixed before the harvest. That was why he, John, had been severely admonished to stay out of the fields until the harvest was done—because the combines’ autopilots might or might not sense a young boy in the field in front of them, or a dog.
His heart was pounding as he called out again to Blackie. The sky was darkening rapidly, the roar of the combines building in his ears. The great machines loomed...he heard a piercing howl...
“BLACKIE!” he screamed, and with that, silence-fugue swept over him. The terror of the dream rose up like a gargoyle face, leering at him, eyes grinning with hideous laughter, mouth agape echoing his scream and amplifying it until the sound reverberated around him.
He was no longer asleep, but he was as helpless before the silence-fugue as he’d been before the dream. Blackie! Blackie! Don’t let yourself be run over by the machines! You did, didn’t you? You’re gone now! He was trying to scream out loud, but if anything escaped his lips, it was tortured and incomprehensible. He was being swept away on the winds of silence-fugue...
*
Antares awoke with a riveting stab of night terror. She rocked up to a sitting position in bed, breathing hard, peering around in the gloom. She heard a muffled, distorted moan from John Bandicut, and only then did she realize that the stab of fear was his. “John!” she cried, reaching out.
His eyes were wide open, and he was turning left and right, not quite thrashing. He was trying to speak—but he seemed unable to get words out. He needed help, and quickly. She shook him; then, gripping his arm tightly, she bowed her head and closed her eyes. (John? John? Can you feel me here?)
She felt wave after wave of pain and fear. Churning beneath it all was grief over Charlene. What was happening to him? Was this one of his hallucinatory silence-fugue episodes? Please no. The fugues had something to do with the loss of his neurolink connectors in an accident long before she knew him. As a pilot, he had flown by direct mind-computer link, until a malfunction destroyed his connections, leaving him vulnerable to a strange kind of mental dissociation. Silence-fugue, he called it. It still came over him at times—especially during periods of emotional stress. Charlie’s death must have triggered it this time.
Once before, in a crisis, she had managed to help him; she would have to do it again. (You aren’t alone. I am with you. I am here with you.) She didn’t expect him to understand her words, but hoped the emotions would get through.
It wasn’t enough; it wasn’t working. She had to dampen the emotional waves somehow. Step into them and deflect them. It was going to be like stepping into an ocean breaker and trying to change its course.
You can do it. You have to.
*
Bandicut was dimly aware of Antares trying to help. No use, no use! Blackie has gotten himself run over, and I can’t do anything to stop the machines! He’s gone, he’s gone! Bandicut fought to cast off the terrors, but he couldn’t. He felt someone shaking him.
No use.
He was alone against the terror, alone. Alone on a sea of fear, drowning. He had to claw...fight...stay on the surface.
A wave of fear rose and washed over him, choking him, pulling him down. Then another. But something seemed to catch this last wave and turn it a little, deflecting its power. He gasped and caught half a breath, enough to carry him a few more seconds. He was sinking, but he’d snatched a gasp of hope. He clung to it, clung for his life.
The next wave came, not quite as large, not quite as terrible. He caught another breath, a bigger one this time. He felt something touching him, buoying him up in the waves. What was it? When the next wave hit, he managed to rise up over it, still choking but breathing. He felt her touch now, Antares’s presence. There was an opening in the madness. He felt Antares touch him in places he had forgotten; and some of the waves passed him by, and overhead in the sky, the black clouds began to disperse.
He caught a deeper breath, slower. He no longer quite needed to scream. (John,) he heard somewhere.
But he heard something else, too, another voice altogether, struggling to be heard. What was this?
“Hell-lo...hear-r m-me?”
Still panting, not fully out of the fugue yet, he swung around, trying to locate the source. A familiar voice. Charlie? No—no Charlie. Then who?
Something was moving on the wall, something shadowy. It reminded him of the hyperdimensional creature they’d met back on the waystation. “Ed?” he whispered. “Is that you?”
“Can-n you...?”
He saw a glimmer of light. “Ed? Is that you?” His head was buzzing, trying to sort out real from the imagined.
He felt a movement beside him and turned his head. Antares was gripping his arm, her thoughts somehow intertwining with his, interceding in the fugue. He felt the bands of fear loosen, and finally fall away.
He drew a deep breath and collected himself. He was sitting on the bed with Antares. His chest was thumping. He thought...I can think and reason. I am no longer in silence-fugue. But his mind was flooded with memories. A dream, a terrifying onslaught of machines. Was it a dream—or a real memory?
He gazed at Antares and remembered their urgent lovemaking. It had been intense, driven by profound grief for Charlene, and a need to connect with Antares. The memory dizzied him, the feel of her body against his, her open rushing emotions flowing over him.
But it was not just Antares with him now. “Ed!” he whispered. “Ed was here!”
“He’s here now. I can feel him.” Antares closed her eyes and pointed. “There.”
“I don’t—wait, yes I do.” Bandicut rose unsteadily and approached the wall. He felt vulnerable without clothes on, but dared not take his eyes off the spot. “A little shimmer, right here. Ed?”
The shimmer turned into a lozenge-shaped outline of watery light. “T-trying-ng...” The light suddenly gave way to a three-dimensional distortion of the wall itself, a sharply layered bas-relief. It was hard to look at; the individual layers seemed to curl away into eye-twisting dimensions. He blinked and looked away.
“Bet-t-ter,” Ed managed. “It has been hard-d to reach you...since you s-sealed yourselves into—rasp—bubbles of—rasp—multispace.”
“We need this bubble to live,” Antares said.
“Yes-sssss. But hard to reach through. Just-t now it-t was easier-r.”
Easier? Because of the silence-fugue?
Ed’s voice grew a little stronger. “I came to warn-n you...adversaries-ss ahead-d.”
Bandicut felt a chill run down his bare back. “Jeaves!” he hollered. “Are you listening to this?” He glanced at Antares, who was wrapping herself in a blanket, then back at Ed. “Do you mean, like that thing we just encountered, Ed? You don’t mean Deep, do you?”
“No, n-no. Not-t the strange, quavering-ng one. But the other-r, the one it destroyed-d. Know its kind-d, be war-r-ry. There
are others-ss.”
Bandicut pressed his lips together. “We really...don’t know what we’re facing, you know. If there’s anything you can tell us—”
“Ssss, you must find...a great fire...sss-sun-n. Must find it...speak-k with it...learn from it.”
“A sun? You mean your sun? Speak with your sun? Or one of the other stars?”
“Man-ny ss-suns. S-sun called N-n-ck-k-k-k...in grave peril...mussst save N-n-ck-k-k-k...”
“But we don’t—how can we—?”
“All connected-d. The worldssss, breaking up-p-p...” As Ed spoke, the bas-relief protrusion on the wall slowly changed shape, as though he were struggling physically with the walls to get the words out. “There is a-nother...ss-sun...who knowsss. *Brightburn-n*. Speak to *Brightburn*.”
Bandicut leaned forward, trying to follow Ed’s words. “How do we speak...to a star?”
“Must...listen-n...carefully. May need help-p.”
May need help? There was an understatement. Bandicut glanced around, feeling eyes behind him. Ik and Li-Jared were standing in the doorway, staring at the Ed manifestation. Bandicut suddenly felt a lot more naked. He grabbed his shorts and pulled them on. “Jeaves called us,” Ik said.
Bandicut nodded and turned back to the hypercone. “Ed—your world. Is it getting worse?”
“Sss...yes...breaking up-p...may be too late.”
“We’ll do what we can,” Bandicut said. But his words felt hollow.
Antares spoke. “Ed? The one John spoke of, the one called Deep, the, uhhll, cloud?” She hesitated. “Can you speak to it? It helped us, we think.”
Ed squirmed, seemed to be struggling. “Ssss...very difficult-t for me...”
“We may need to work with Deep. Can you help us communicate?”
The bas-relief Ed suddenly collapsed into the wall, and turned into a series of glowing concentric ellipses, extending out into space in an infinite regression. “Ssss...difficult...out of phase...”
“Please try.”
“Trying, but...I doubt-t...” The regression of ellipses irised down to a point, then vanished.
“Uhhll,” said Antares, “he is gone.”
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