/By God,/ he said to Charli, and then shouted, “We’re going to make it! We’re going to make it!”
Ik and Antares began to answer, but Jeaves spoke first, urgently: “I’m making connections with several of these wrecked ships. Some of their intelligence systems are still active and full of information about the Mindaru. Can you keep us close to the ships just a little longer, while I download?”
Bandicut had no time to wonder at what Jeaves was saying. No, he couldn’t keep the ship close to the graveyard, for God’s sake! He was trying to get them away, and they were dropping like a stone now through the opening that Napoleon had found for them. At least he hoped it was the right opening to get them away from this web of power...
*
Li-Jared hurried through what he assumed was the power section. Clear walls flanked him on either side. Behind the walls, curtains of plasma glowed and moved in intermittent eruptions of turbulence. He shivered at the sensation of raw power surrounding him, and wondered what lethal radiations were pouring into him. But he had no time to worry about that.
“Copernicus!” he shouted at the top of his lungs.
“Yes, Li-Jared, yes—”
“Copernicus, you have to warn them! Something following!”
“Li-Jared, I can’t hear you very well, but I need you to throw a switch for me!”
“Copernicus, did you hear me? There’s—”
“Li-Jared, please run into the next section and look to your right for an opening.”
Li-Jared was practically jumping out of his skin as he ran. “What are you talking—?” The floor was pitching up and down beneath his feet. He was about to have two simultaneous heart attacks. “Copernicus?”
“Do you see a narrow opening on your right? Can you slip through it?”
Crouching, Li-Jared found an opening half his height. A white light flickered from inside it. “Hurry,” Copernicus said. Li-Jared squeezed through. He felt a tingle as he slid through the opening. He was now in a very low chamber, whose walls appeared lined with platinum inlays and thin, translucent filigreed strips flickering with the white light.
Copernicus’s voice now seemed to come from close by his ear. “Look for switches or breakers. I’m going to make the cables visible...”
The walls quivered, and suddenly opened to expose a cluster of fine silver and gold ribbons snaking along the walls above the platinum inlays. Li-Jared was stunned. Somehow, he hadn’t expected a ship like this to have something as straightforward as wiring.
“I’m trying to make several of them visible,” Copernicus said—and as he did so, three of them flickered. “I can’t shut them off remotely. The AI infection is controlling them. These are control circuits for changing the shape of the ship. Can you see if they lead to any sort of switches or junctions?”
Li-Jared peered, breathless. “Not that I can see. Copernicus, can you hear me?”
“Now I can, yes.”
“I don’t know what this is about, but you’ve got to tell them on the bridge—”
“I have already passed that on, but if we don’t cut these circuits, the ship will twist itself to pieces. Please look hard for switches. Anything.”
“Anything? If we break these circuits the ship will stop tearing itself apart?”
“I hope so. It’s the only—”
“Well, frickin’ moon and stars, why didn’t you say so?” Li-Jared leaped at the wall and grabbed the ribbons in his hands. He felt a pulsing throb, but not too much to bear. Bracing his feet against the wall, he yanked with all of his strength. The ribbons pulled loose from somewhere. With a burst of molten light, Li-Jared flew backward across the chamber, and a great shudder passed through the floor and walls. A quarter of the lights in the chamber went dark.
But the floor was no longer pitching.
*
“John Bandicut! Cap’n, pull up! Now!”
Bandicut blinked, twitched the joystick, and raised the nose of the ship just in time to keep from veering into another piece of space wreckage. After he was past it, he dropped the nose again. I thought we were past this stuff. And then he had time to react. “You’re back! What happened?”
“I was attacked,” said Napoleon. “If you hadn’t distracted it by diving through that opening, I might still be fighting.”
“That’s great. But you know something? I’m not sure we’ve actually escaped anywhere.” It seemed their dive through the gap in the web had only taken them in a detour around the largest cluster of ancient, disabled spacecraft. He could still see the ominous fire-glow of the Mindaru object away to the right. “Nappy, are we getting away from this thing or just circling around it?”
“Cap’n, I thought we were escaping. Now I’m not so sure. It seems this maze of dimensional shifts we’re in is just bringing us back around again.”
Bandicut hissed out a tight breath and veered past another piece of spaceship debris. Then he heard a sudden declaration from Charli:
/// I feel Delilah’s presence.
It’s very strong in this sector. ///
Bandicut knew he should be happy, but.../Charli, we can’t stop and look for her, you know. Even if we had any clue how to do that. Can you communicate with her?/
/// Not so far.
But John, I’m picking up sensations of pain,
great pain from her encounter
with the Mindaru. ///
Antares was suddenly back at Bandicut’s side. “John, what’s happening?”
“I’m trying to fly. But Charli says she can feel Delilah.”
“Yes! I can feel her, too! As if she’s crying out. John, can she still be alive? Is she in that thing out there?”
“How the hell would I know? I don’t know what kept her alive here. Napoleon, I have no idea where to go! Do you see a way out?”
“Working on it, Cap’n. I’m not really sure, either.”
Charli wasn’t finished talking about Delilah.
/// She feels alive right now.
But I’m getting all kinds of echoes:
sensations of being pulled in, colliding with something,
torn apart by an energy field, maybe.
Some of this happened a while ago.
I can’t separate the replays from the present. ///
/You and Antares need to talk. I need to fly./ Jerking his head around, he said to Antares, “Can you grab my arm and talk to Charli? Napoleon, did you say something?”
“Cap’n, Copernicus reports something following us. Something Li-Jared spotted.” As the robot spoke, a sudden jolt passed through the deck. “That would be Li-Jared, helping Copernicus regain control of the ship’s structure.”
Bandicut squinted up at the display that showed the ship’s exterior; it appeared to be holding together. “What about the thing following? Any sign of it on the display?”
“Not yet...”
As they spoke, Bandicut could feel Antares’s probing touch, and the quarx moving to speak to her. But then Jeaves suddenly spoke up, as though continuing a conversation with Napoleon. “Are you getting the download from the wrecked ships, Napoleon? This second one is responding very strongly, lots of information. Grab it fast, or we’re going to lose it...”
Information from wrecked ships?
Bandicut’s head was spinning. Napoleon seemed preoccupied with the information from dead ships, and Bandicut saw another gap, a place where he might slip through with the ship. He angled that way and snapped over...
*
Delilah, or what survived of her, somewhere in the matrix of the Mindbody’s outer circles, was trying to call out to the struggling spaceship. She could see or at least track the spacecraft, see that it was caught in a maze of interdimensional pathways that would only lead it back, over and over, to the waiting Mindaru mind-complex. She could see the shadowy thing that was pursuing her people, and knew that if the ship got caught, there would be no escape, ever. But Delilah also saw a way out for the ship—if only she could communicate it to
those on the ship.
But Delilah did not know how to make herself heard. The scout was shattered; and Delilah, broken and bruised, was no longer there in any case. She was now a part of the outer layers of the Mindaru, the Mindbody. A part of, but not a part of. Delilah did not fully grasp the situation; she felt confusing, overlapping perceptions, like two different kinds of music overlaid and clashing. The Mindbody was not in control of her, not yet. But it had her isolated. And that isolation was what she needed to break.
What else was moving out there? Wrecked ships of bygone eras. Debris and detritus. Deep and Dark. Deep and Dark...
The two were indeed out there, spiraling around, almost as though they, too, were trying to find their way out of the Mindaru maze. Could they convey information to the ship? Could she make contact with them?
*
Daarooaack felt repeatedly frustrated in her attempt to help the quick-ones through the maze. And now she couldn’t quite find her own way through. What was it about this place, about the disturbing thing at its center that seemed bent on drawing everything to itself? Since the small vessel had been destroyed, and the main vessel of the quick-ones had begun moving evasively, Daarooaack had stopped trying to stay too close. She was wary of interfering.
But she felt something odd—a presence she thought had disappeared with the destruction of the smaller vessel. Was it still alive? She thought the being might be attempting to communicate. She called to Deeaab, and asked him to reach out and sense what she was feeling. Maybe Deeaab could understand.
*
Bandicut felt a sudden tension from Charli. /What is it?/
/// I’m feeling something...
Delilah trying to communicate with Deep.
There’s some translation difficulty...
Deep doesn’t speak halo.
The stones are trying to help. ///
There was a sound like a rush of wind around Bandicut, and a tingling sensation in the wind, and in his wrists. He heard, (...follow...way out...) more rushing sounds (...nothing...no help...flee...flee...)
Bandicut was speechless for a few moments. And then, because Antares was looking at him questioningly, he blurted out what had just happened. “Delilah’s alive, and trying to show us a way out. But I can’t understand much of what she’s saying, and I have no idea if it’s genuine. Napoleon, are you picking up any of this?”
The robot clicked a few times. “Negative, Cap’n. If Delilah has instructions for you, I am unable to translate or evaluate them. I am sorry I cannot help. Recommend pitch up twenty degrees and left ten.”
Antares said suddenly, “I can help.” Bandicut blinked and looked at her. “I can feel Delilah trying to speak, to guide you. I may be able to sense what she’s trying to say.”
“Can you translate to flying directions?”
Antares stood close behind him, with a hand gripping his shoulder. Her breath sighed close to his ear: “I’m getting it—not in words, but a feeling—a tactile image. Down, and a little more to the left. More...” As Bandicut moved the stick cautiously, he could feel her body language. “Now ease to the right, and down a little more...”
Napoleon maintained silence for a few minutes, and then interrupted only to say in a strained voice, “Cap’n, we’ve picked up the pursuer now.” A new display window opened at the bottom of the viewspace. A coil of light was spiraling out of the darkness. It was following them, and it was growing in size and brightness as they watched.
“Damn. What is it, Napoleon, can you tell?”
“Unknown, Cap’n. It seems very energetic. Probably dangerous.”
“How long till it catches us?”
“At present speeds, three to four minutes.”
Bandicut tightened his grip on the stick. Three minutes...
Antares’s grip on his shoulder tightened, too. “Delilah thinks if we don’t make any mistakes, we might be able to evade it. Ready to pitch up, and a hard right, not yet...now.”
Hard over. Following her pressure, Bandicut took the ship tightly through its turns, sweeping through an invisible course under the sullen glow of the distant Mindaru object, as the coiling snake of light pursued.
*
Li-Jared bounded through the twisted corridors, trying to make his way back to the bridge. He had picked himself up off the floor and gotten out of the little service chamber in time to see the squirming corridors stabilize. But though they’d stopped tearing themselves apart, they remained a twisted mess. He was running through a funhouse maze, with the occasional direction called to him by Copernicus, who otherwise seemed very busy.
At last, he turned a corner and realized he had found the arc that held their quarters and the commons. And down at the end of it should be...
He burst onto the bridge with a shout, and found his companions almost funereally quiet. Bandicut was hunched over the controls; Antares was hunched over Bandicut’s shoulder; Ik was crouched, staring at the images of glowing adversaries in the viewspace. Ik’s hands were trembling, and going repeatedly to the stones in his temples. “I’m back,” Li-Jared said. And then he saw the fiery pursuer growing in the display window, and recognized it at once as the thing he had seen earlier, only closer now. A lot closer.
Falling into place between Ik and Napoleon, Li-Jared watched Bandicut’s precise flying maneuvers and thanked the moon and stars that he was not the one flying.
*
Bandicut was having trouble breathing—not because of the difficulty of the flying, but because through Antares he was feeling the distant presence of the doomed Delilah. He felt the sadness, and the loss, and the determination to see the ship safely away. And the fear that the Mindaru thing would get to them first.
He could almost visualize what they were trying to do now, threading the labyrinthine path through the Mindaru web. If they made each turn just so, through the twists of the dimensional layers of n-space, they might just make it out ahead of the pursuer. A roller-coasterlike turn was coming up, and at Antares’s nudge, he dipped and climbed and banked over, flying almost wholly by images Antares channeled into his mind.
“Cap’n, I’m detecting Deep and Dark, at eleven o’clock high and low!” Napoleon called.
Bandicut glanced—and saw Deep at the lower position, streaking along something that looked like a dull red river. Bandicut was tempted to follow. But that was Deep’s path, not theirs, and when the impulse came from Delilah and Antares, he swung away to the right. A glance backward showed the spiraling light still gaining on them.
“Cap’n, I’m reading a major power spike in the core section. We may be in danger of—”
In the middle of Napoleon’s words, the viewspace went blank. The bridge lights dimmed. Bandicut felt the response in the joystick stiffen, then go dead. “Mokin’ A. Nappy!”
For a heart-stopping moment, the only sound was the soft intake of Antares’s breath, and Napoleon’s ticking. At last the robot answered, “Cap’n.”
“Yes!”
Tick tick. “Copernicus has shut down the AI.”
*
Time stood still while Bandicut’s heart hammered out of control. Finally he shouted, “What do you mean, he shut down the AI?”
A blue-green LED flickered on Napoleon’s face in the near-darkness. “I’m sorry, Cap’n, but it was necessary to prevent the AI from destroying the ship. The AI was initiating a power overload.”
Bandicut opened his mouth to speak, but a great vise around his chest kept him from saying anything. He looked down in the dim light, broken only by the emergency strips, and stared at his hand, still gripping the dead joystick.
“He stopped the overload, and...zeroed out the AI. Cap’n.”
“We have no AI? No control?”
“He’s hopeful he wiped out the infection,” Napoleon said, in a rapid-fire voice. “He is working on reestablishing controls. Which do you require first—viewing, maneuvering, or life support?”
“View—no! Maneuvering! Then life support!” Bandicut
forced himself to focus. “Antares, don’t stop. We have to do this blind.”
Antares had never let go of his shoulder or moved from her trancelike concentration. “Turn coming up,” she whispered.
“Quickly, Napoleon, I need this control stick working...”
In about one second, Antares whispered in his thoughts.
“Hold...yes, Cap’n...now.”
Following the image in Antares’s thoughts, he angled and twisted the joystick ever so slightly. Though the viewspace remained dark, he could see in his mind’s eye the coiling serpent of the adversary, almost upon them—and then, directly before them, a steep drop like the universe’s tallest roller coaster, into the narrow funnel of an n-spatial gravity well. He snapped the joystick forward and they pitched over and shot down the long raceway.
Though he could see it only through Antares’s eyes, or perhaps Delilah’s, he felt the spiraling arm of the enemy reach out for them—and miss, as the ship rocketed through the tiny opening in the Mindaru web. With an almost tangible whoosh, they shot through the funnel, and down a river of space and time. He had no idea where they were going, but he felt the Mindaru web vanish in the distance behind them, and he felt the connection with Delilah vanish, as well.
The last thing Bandicut heard before a dizzying twist of n-space fogged his awareness was Napoleon’s voice, muttering, “Oh shit...”
Chapter 23
The Translator Speaks
Julie Stone listened with tangled emotions as the translator spoke. The four who gathered close to the artifact in Park Avenue’s cargo bay mostly just listened. The two crewmen in back stood like statues. Lamarr had tried once or twice to interrupt. Julie felt a certain sympathy for his lack of success; she had questions to ask, too. But the director was now listening politely, though with an expression of skepticism.
The translator had been explaining John Bandicut’s efforts to save the Earth.
“...His claims might have seemed extraordinary. But John Bandicut intercepted a massive object on a collision course with Earth, and he saved your world from near-certain disaster. He gave up his life as he knew it to rescue your planet.”
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