by Ben Weaver
“I’m surprised we didn’t get picked up already. We’ll probably get arrested inside.”
“Maybe you’re right. But we have to try.” She closed her eyes. “I wonder how Paul’s doing. I’m worried about him.”
I turned away and rifled through my pack.
“You know, they could have taken him away,” she said, her voice cracking. “Imagine that?”
“He isn’t ready. Neither are we.”
“If a war really does break out, then I don’t know if I can spend four years knowing that I’ll be shipped off to die.”
“That’s our job. You didn’t come here to be a soldier?”
“I’m not sure.”
“No wonder you get along with my brother. If you don’t know for sure, then you don’t belong here.”
Dina huffed. “How can you be so certain?”
“I just am.”
“That’s no answer.”
“I wish I could explain it.”
“But you can’t because you’re just like me—you’re not sure.”
I shrugged and crossed to the edge.
The canyon wall posed no more of a challenge than old Whore Face did. Sans the nerve-rattling presence of Gorbatova, Pope, and Rodriguez, we lowered ourselves toward the mouth of stone without a slip. I knew I could thank Halitov’s “coaching” for my success. The only real challenge came as we neared the entrance and had to build up enough momentum to swing ourselves onto the ledge. Jarrett made the first landing, anchored himself to the wall, then caught each of us as we pendulumed inside.
“Caves of solution,” Clarion said, as she unfastened her sit-harness, then gazed up at the entrance’s towering ceiling. “Remember that on the first exam?”
“How ’bout this one,” Dina challenged. “Minsalo and his team discovered this place. What was his first name and his occupation?”
I knew the answers, but I looked to Clarion, who smiled through her ignorance.
“Who cares about that shit?” groaned Jarrett. “Let’s move out and see what we can find. And what about the rumor?”
“His first name was Roger,” I said to Dina. “He was a speleologist with the Seventeen’s corps of engineers. And Jarrett? There’s nothing left down there. The rumors are, well, who knows about them.”
“We’ll know—if I have anything to say about it.”
Wishing we could skin and use infrared to navigate through the cave system, we thumbed on our searchlights, which, if nothing else, allowed us to better enjoy the red, brown, and alabaster-white walls, as well as the dozens of textures of dissolved lime carbonate. Somewhere far below us came an eerie dripping sound, and as the entrance funneled into a narrow gallery that lazily curved down about thirty-five degrees, the temperature began to drop and a whistling wind resounded from above. We spotted several markers that had been affixed to the walls by the various speleological teams. You could cover the metallic hemispheres with your palm, and they pulsed with light as we neared them. I had read that they could be removed from the wall without causing damage. Their presence made me feel a bit more comfortable about descending a kilometer into the ground. We couldn’t pinpoint our location through our tacs without alerting the academy guards, so without the markers, we could easily get lost. Sure, we had all studied several 3-D maps of the caves because they held historical significance: within them explorers had discovered the first signs of Racinian technology on Exeter, but I assumed most of us had forgotten those lessons.
The tunnel continued to drop, the bumpy ceiling just a few meters above us. Jarrett walked point, with Clarion just behind to admire his ass. That dripping sound droned on, and the whistling wind grew fainter. A damp, sweet smell wafted toward us as we slowly emerged into an extraordinary hall with vaulted ceilings and enough dripstone to make us feel like we stared up a hundred meters at the teeth of the thing that had swallowed us. Those teeth—or, more precisely, stalactites—arrowed down from the roof and tapered off into sharp points, while others met up with the stalagmites to our right that rose from the floor to form a score of pillars with diameters of fifty meters or more. Just beyond them hung a cluster of helicitie—twisted, flowerlike varieties of stalactite that were much more common in the Minsalo Caves than in any others in colonized territory. Humbled by the sight, we shuffled slowly across the damp floor, the hall extending well beyond our lights.
“They called this one the Great Hall,” said Jarrett, his voice echoing off with such clarity that it startled me. And lo and behold, he remembered something from class. “Boring name for such an impressive formation. I think we’re getting close to the first hangar. Anybody feel anything?” He waved his light back at us.
Clarion and Dina shook their heads.
“Maybe it just takes time,” I guessed.
“Or it’s bullshit,” said Clarion. “The kind of superstition that helps entertain scientists with boring lives. Caves with healing properties? Oh, yes, they’re over there, next to the Fountain of Youth and the picture of the Virgin Mary that cries. For a small donation, we’ll show ’em to you.”
Jarrett unsheathed his K-bar, nicked his middle finger, then squeezed out a little blood. “Let’s see if this place heals me without paying the donation. Hey, what was that?” The beam of his searchlight focused on the back of a figure in the distance, a figure with long, white hair and dressed in academy utilities. The person flitted off.
Jarrett hollered again, and I shouted for him to wait, but he’d already charged off in pursuit, towing Dina and Clarion.
Aiming my light for the rock-strewn path ahead, I reluctantly jogged toward reverberating footfalls and flickering beams that made the whole course about as surreal as a Callistan nightclub.
We chased the figure through the entire Great Hall and into a tunnel shaped like a ragged triangle barely two meters wide at the base, three high. I figured that once we reached the Racinian hangar on the other side, a contingent of fourth years would be waiting for us.
“Where’d he go?” Clarion cried as we came into a hexagonal room so wide and so tall that I could not see the opposite metallic walls nor pick out the domed ceiling which I guessed was there.
Jarrett, Dina, and Clarion spread out, their lights playing over shiny walls and a stone floor buffed so smooth that I swore I double-timed over marble. My little tablet had barely hinted at the immensity of the hangar, nor had it fully revealed the seamless congruity of where metal met metal or where metal met stone. Despite being in near-darkness in a vast, empty chamber, I still appreciated the fact that I’d never been so close to anything Racinian, even if it were just a room. I wanted to touch the wall, but I had fallen too far behind to stop.
“Halt!” Jarrett shouted as the figure darted through his light.
I shivered and saw my breath as we ran on and on, the darkness barely yielding to our lights. Perhaps fifteen minutes later, we reached the other side of the hangar, where the metal walls poured into a perfectly circular conduit of stone. We bent down and rushed into the tube as a quavering, feminine voice ahead repeatedly shouted, “No.”
For another ten long minutes we followed the tube as it curved right, left, then angled ninety degrees to our left or right, I wasn’t sure. Our pace coupled with the poor light left me utterly disoriented. Twice I banged my head on the damp ceiling and swore.
“If there are people down here,” Dina called back. “They’re baiting us right into their trap.”
“Which won’t surprise me one bit,” I muttered, seeing my career flash before my eyes.
“Whoa,” Jarrett said. “I don’t remember anything about this…”
The tunnel opened up on a cavity about five hundred meters across and ringed by a natural catwalk about three meters wide. I directed my beam at the ceiling, and once more it was not powerful enough to pick out the distant overhead; however, I did spot something down in the pit, a curving metallic surface like the nose cone of a missile. In the meantime, the others had already hustled onto the walk, still i
n pursuit of the woman, who now shadowhugged the wall and somehow navigated without a light. I squinted at her but spotted no evidence of a skin’s telltale fluctuation.
Even as I shifted my attention to the catwalk, the woman screamed, and the others captured her in their beams. She had collapsed at the entrance of another gallery curving off from the cavity and slowly rolled onto her back, her chest rising and falling so rapidly that she had to be hyperventilating. Jarrett got to her first, and she crawled a little away from him before surrendering.
I came up beside Dina. The woman’s skin appeared so sallow and wrinkled that it seemed more like tissue paper than flesh. Her eyes widened, the irises a weird, deep shade of red, her head haloed by that mop of coarse, white hair. She shifted her gaze a little, inspected us, then spoke in a rapid fire that we could barely follow. “Toroidal Curvature of the containment field allows the formation of the mediators and the establishment of a stable family of Primal Space Time Matter particles. The main TAWT drive computers, networked in a Quantum Communication Array allow the so-called faster-than-light computations to be made, which in turn collapse the wave function of any and all present conditions. As the ship’s computer observes the conditions, it in effect can answer questions before they are posed.”
Jarrett frowned at me.
“Why is she reciting a page from colonial history?” asked Dina.
“And why is she wearing our utilities?” Clarion added. “Unless—”
“You’re not them?” the woman cried, then grabbed Jarrett’s wrist with a bony hand. “You haven’t come to take me back?”
Jarrett tugged himself free. “Take you back where?”
“Better yet, who’re you talking about?” I asked.
“Twenty-two-sixty-six. Mining of bauxite begins on fifth planet in Ross Two-forty-eight solar system,” the woman replied, her ruby eyes going vacant. “Inte-Micro Corporation CEO Tamer Yatanaya names planet Allah-Trope and declares it retreat for Muslims being persecuted by Eastern Alliance powers. Allah-Trope becomes first offworld colony with predominately one religion. By year’s end, floating research operations are dropped onto planet Epsilon Eri Three—a world entirely covered by warm oceans whose salt content is only slightly higher than Terra’s. Thousands of new microorganisms discovered. Aquacultural experiments yield new food sources for a human population that now numbers twenty billion, with six billion living in Sol system colonies and nearly five billion in extrasolar settlements.”
“What’s the matter with you?” Jarrett asked.
“I…it won’t…I can’t…”
“Are you a cadet?” Clarion demanded.
Dina crouched down and took the woman’s hand in her own. “Are you a third year? A fourth year?”
The woman’s eyes glossed with tears, and as she tried to answer, Jarrett checked her pockets for anything that might reveal her identity.
I slid back her sleeve. “No tac,” I announced. If she was a cadet, she had managed to get the thing off. I had been told that only the brass could remove your tac. So why had they taken hers?
“You’re first years, aren’t you,” she finally said. “How did you get down here? Did they ask you to help them?”
“So you’re a cadet,” Clarion said, apparently too amazed to realize she had been asked a question. “What happened to you? Did you get the Racinian conditioning? Is this what it does?”
“I don’t know,” the woman answered. “I remember that I escaped. And I came here because I thought the caves would help. You know? The rumors?” She touched her cheek. “But they haven’t.”
“They took you off for the conditioning, then?” I asked.
She began to nod but flinched in severe pain. “I’m…I’m…”
“You’re what?” demanded Jarrett.
“I’m twenty-two years old.”
No one gasped. I think we felt more pity than anything else.
“If she got the conditioning, then something obviously went wrong,” I said. There had always been talk about the dangers of alien technology. Most of that talk had come from the alliances’ armies, and we’d all dismissed it as due to jealousy. Their soldiers could not be conditioned because of their cerebroed educations, and we could. Of course they would try to make us colos feel bad about getting something good.
“What’s your name?” Dina asked.
“I don’t know,” the woman responded with a shiver. “I try to remember, but I can’t.” She took a deep breath. “Twenty-eighty-five. Oberon Mountain mines yield five hundred trillion dollars in resources during first six months of operation. Profits dubbed by media as ‘Shakespeare’s Blessing,’ since moon was named after character in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Need for skilled workers creates job rush among lower and middle classes, who leave Terra in droves. Physically challenged persons seek freedom of zero-G living environments.”
“She’s like a living, breathing cerebro gone haywire,” Jarrett said. “What the hell did they do to her?”
“Don’t worry, you’ll be okay now,” Dina said. “We’ll help you. And we won’t turn you over to them.”
“I’m going to skin up,” I said. “I’ll use my med unit on her. That should stabilize her vitals and get some fluids in her.”
“You do that, you’ll bring ’em all here,” said Jarrett.
I leveled my gaze on him and spoke slowly, evenly. “I don’t care. Let ’em pick us up for trying to help someone.” I reached for my tac—
He grabbed my wrist. “Do not fuck with me, Scott.”
“Let go.”
He grinned. “Now you’re the tough guy? I’ve spent most of my life kicking your ass. You’re going to kick mine now?”
“Let go.”
“You hit that tac and I’m going to make you pay right here, right now, for all the bullshit you’ve put me through. Are you listening to me?”
Without warning, the woman sprang to her feet and retreated to the wall, where she stood, back firmly pressed on the ocher rock, palms down, fingers extended. She glanced at us with fear and without recognition. “Twenty-three hundred. The Twelve System Guard Corps renamed the Seventeen System Guard Corps. Representatives from all offworld systems make formal announcement of formation of new Colonial Alliance. East and West Alliances fail to recognize new government. Colonial expansion halts. Following year, I die.”
“No, don’t—”
Dina’s cry came too late.
The woman kicked off from the wall, and with a few inhumanly powerful strides, she vaulted into the cavity, even as I broke free from Jarrett and reached for her.
“Oh, my god,” Clarion gasped.
Without a fading scream—or any other sound, for that matter—the woman vanished. I waited for the distant thud of her impact. None came.
“Oh, my god,” Clarion repeated.
I don’t remember how long we stood there, but eventually Jarrett suggested that we move on.
“We could have helped her,” I told him. “You think about that.”
“Forget it, Scott. If you think that makes me feel guilty, it doesn’t. Who knows what she was. And if she died, that would’ve happened anyway.”
“This was a mistake,” Clarion said. “I want to go back.”
“You know we can’t,” Jarrett told her. “You know that.”
She thought about it, finally nodded. “Maybe they wanted us to meet her. Maybe the fourth years knew we were coming and staged this whole thing to scare us. Maybe Pope was in on it, too. That woman wasn’t really old or messed up. Right now they’re watching us and laughing their asses off.”
“I hope you’re right,” Dina said. “Otherwise, I’m not feeling real happy about Racinian conditioning. Maybe I’m VDO right behind you, Jarrett.”
He sighed. “Good luck.”
“For once and for all tell us: can we VDO?” she asked. “It’s our right. It’s in the contract.”
“I’m still here. What does that tell you? Let’s go.” He spun and started along the
catwalk, one hand dragging along the wall.
We threaded our way through a half-dozen more tunnels joined by modest-sized chambers with modest collections of flow-and dripstone. Dina kept prying Jarrett for more information, but he ignored her. About two hours later, we entered another hexagonal chamber identical to the earlier one, it too devoid of any Racinian tech.
“Did they store aircraft down here?” I thought aloud. “And if so, how’d they get ’em out? Does this chamber extend all the way to the surface? I still can’t see the roof.”
“Look at this,” Jarrett beckoned, his light shining on a trio of tunnel entrances. “I remember the instructor telling us about this fork in the tunnel, but I don’t remember that third one on the far right. I don’t see any markers inside.”
“This is some R&R,” Clarion moaned. “I’m getting cold. I’m hungry. And what do you think we’ll find that’ll help you, Jarrett?” She turned to Dina. “You saw some lights. So what. Anything Racinian has obviously been moved out, and if there’s anything here that the brass doesn’t want us to see, you think they’ll leave it lying around?”
“Maybe,” argued Dina. “The same way we walked right up to that woman. I don’t think the fourth years staged that. They conditioned her. Something went wrong. I believe what she said.”
Jarrett held up his middle finger as though he were flipping us the bird. “This cave exploring is getting pretty interesting.”
“Whoa.” I rushed up and examined the cut—or, rather, the absence of a cut.
He pulled back. “All right, fuck it. They catch us, they catch us. Everyone skin up. Full scan. All emissions. There’s gotta be something down here.”
We complied, and I skimmed a data strip in my HUV, reading nothing out of the ordinary.
“What are we looking for?” asked Dina.
“Weird stuff,” Jarrett answered. “Must be emissions or something that healed my finger.”
“Maybe this is a holy place,” Clarion suggested. “Maybe we’re in the presence of a powerful being.”
“Then why didn’t this powerful being save that woman?” I asked. “It healed my brother’s finger but wouldn’t help her?”