“You mean it’s about to wake up?”
“I believe so.”
Quinn dived into his pack, grabbed the horn-shaped weapon, and pointed it at the oval. He felt Zothan’s questioning gaze. “Don’t worry. It’s just a precaution.”
“The creature is extremely weak,” Zothan pointed out. “I do not believe it can harm us.”
“Fool me once, shame on you.” Quinn muttered. “Fool me twice, shame on me.”
“Quinn?”
“It invited us in and then tried to blow my head off. I’m not going to give it a second bite of the cherry.”
The top of the oval cracked open in a burst of light. Quinn’s hand trembled. He gripped his wrist and held it steady. The lid rose, and he squinted into the glare.
The entity within looked exactly the same as the hairless creatures lining the corridors. Its proboscis was bent, and its long ears were plastered to its scalp. Again, he was struck by the resemblance to a child. Thrusting the thought aside, he pointed the weapon at the creature’s head.
Bulbous eyes snapped open, making Quinn jump. The creature gazed up at him, smiled faintly, and croaked, “Quinn. It’s good to see you.”
~
Quinn stumbled backwards and nearly dropped the horn-shaped device.
“How do you know my name?”
The creature opened its mouth, but no further sound came out.
“Who are you?” Quinn yelled. “How do you know me?”
The creature’s eyes closed, and its face sagged. Its skin took on a deathly pallor. Quinn cursed under his breath.
“Quinn,” Zothan said.
“What is it?”
“Power is shutting down in the outer sections of this structure. It appears to be some form of cascade failure. I know of no way to reverse it.”
“It’s the entity,” Quinn said with a sudden flash of insight. “It controlled this facility. Now that it’s gone—”
“It still lives,” Zothan said. “But its vital signs are barely registering.”
“Can you do anything?”
“I am not sure.”
“Dad!”
Quinn spun round just as Conor trotted up to him, breathless.
“I thought I told you to wait inside the dolin,” Quinn said.
“We’re under attack!”
“We’re what?”
“The dolin says it’s detected waves of creatures pouring into this place.”
“All right, time to leave,” Quinn said.
“What of the entity?” Zothan asked.
Quinn stared at it. “Is there any chance we could move it or disconnect it from this equipment?”
“If we tried, it would certainly expire,” Zothan replied.
Quinn sighed. “I was afraid of that.”
Maybe the entity was a mass murderer who sucked the lives from others, or maybe it was a helpless victim just trying to survive. Either way, it claimed to know him. He felt obligated to try to keep it alive. Yet, if the dolin was right, then this entire structure was about to be overrun. How could they save both the entity and themselves?
“Conor, I want you to get back inside the dolin and head for the outside. Get as far away from here as you can. Zothan, go with him.”
“What are you going to do?” Conor asked.
“I’m going to encompass the creature in a bubble and wait it out.”
“No, Dad!”
Quinn forced a smile. “I’ll be fine. I’ll be outside normal reality, so nothing can touch me.”
“Allow me to remain,” Zothan said. “My skills are better honed than yours. I can sustain the bubble for longer, providing a better chance for survival.”
“No. It’s my decision and my responsibility. Besides, I’m relying on you to protect Conor and get him safely back to the upper level. Now, get going, both of you.”
“I’m not going without you.” Conor’s pinched expression reminded Quinn of the face he used to pull in his high chair when presented with some vegetable-based concoction. He nodded to Zothan, who picked Conor up with one arm and headed for the exit. The boy kicked, flailed, and protested, all to no avail.
When they were gone, Quinn turned back to the entity. It lay perfectly still in the oval receptacle, eyes closed, lips parted slightly. If it was still alive, it showed no obvious signs. Who are you? How do you know my name? He enclosed them both in a four-space bubble and waited, hoping for answers.
~
Crawling over one another, the lithe swarm flooded into the control area. Their skin was the muddy green of a stagnant pool. Long tails armoured with overlapping scales whipped back and forth. Their feet were like babies’ hands, but the lidless eyes were as blank as a rubber duck’s, suggesting a pack mentality rather than sentience.
Their forms smeared across the sphere’s surface as they passed by in silence. Quinn reminded himself that sound didn’t reach inside the bubble. He glanced down at the creature in the oval casket, feeling as if he were at the funeral of someone he was barely acquainted with.
The glowing tesseract shimmered. Recognising the warning sign, he focussed on the folded shape. It was like trying to keep a dozen or more plates spinning. By the time you reached the last one, the first would be starting to wobble. If the shape’s sides wavered too much, then the tesseract would unfold and the bubble would disappear, dumping them back into three-dimensional space, where they would be at the mercy of the pack.
Pressure built against his temples. The headaches weren't nearly as bad as when he had attempted transference using the four-space tunnels. The adamantine growths on his arms and wrists also seemed to have slowed their progress. At least sending Conor off with the others meant he could postpone having to break the news of his condition to his son.
The tesseract rotated slowly. Its edges pulsed and then settled down once more. Quinn’s brows knotted as he concentrated on keeping the four-dimensional cube intact. Zothan was right. He was far better at maintaining subuniverses than Quinn. But Conor’s survival was paramount, and the Nemazi was the only individual Quinn trusted with that responsibility.
The pack undulated across the floor and over banks of machinery. Their numbers had thinned, but Quinn could feel his control faltering. The tesseract pulsed again, as if flexing its muscles. As he forced it back into shape, it shone in a dazzling display of defiance and then burst like a dam, overwhelming his defences.
The sphere vanished, admitting a breath of cold air. Heads turned and flat eyes shone in the light from the receptacle. Quinn tried to invoke the tesseract once more, but his mind felt like a wrestler pinned to the canvas. He fumbled for the horn-shaped weapon. The creatures slithered towards him, squealing to one another. He levelled the device. Can’t fight them all.
As his finger moved towards the firing control, the air in front of him glowed. He blinked as a new, unfolded tesseract appeared. How—
The tesseract collapsed into a perfect four-space cube, and the sphere re-formed around them. Creatures flowed around it like surf. The entity nestling within the oval appeared just as lifeless as before.
A second tesseract appeared, and then a third and a fourth. They folded into four-dimensional cubes and merged with the first. The new cube expanded. The sphere’s edge receded. Quinn’s jaw dropped as more tesseracts appeared—hundreds, thousands, like a swarm of fiery bees. The construction flew together in a helix of cubes that corkscrewed up and up until its top was lost in haze.
~
Quinn gazed at the towering helix in disbelief. He had not caused the phenomenon, and he was reasonably certain it was beyond the abilities of even a natural Shade such as Zothan. The crawling life-forms massing within the Control area seemed intent on mindless destruction rather than preservation. That left the nearly dead entity lying in the oval receptacle—a being that did not appear capable of lifting a fork.
He could no longer see the edge of the sphere. He stood alone on a flat, white plain with the helix in front of him and the oval behind.
The blocky construction shone, though he could feel no heat coming from it. A cube at the bottom darkened, and the side facing him disappeared. Someone or something was inviting him inside. He glanced around. Maybe he would find an explanation for what was happening. Besides, he had nowhere else to go.
Cautiously, he crossed the threshold. The cube’s side re-formed behind him, and the one in front vanished. His mouth quirked. Follow the yellow brick road. He stepped into the next cube, and the right side opened. As he moved through, the floor disappeared. Spreading his arms, he tried to steady himself as he floated to the floor of the cube beneath. The next three cubes followed the same sequence—ahead, then right, then down.
Quinn frowned. Was the helix returning him to Pann’s second level? No. He was moving through four spatial dimensions, not three. In a folded tesseract, the bottom connected to the top without folding any of the sides. So if his route led downwards, then he was probably heading for the top of the structure.
As if to reward him for his brilliant deduction, the floor opened once more and deposited him in a cube whose dimensions were four times those of the others. Quinn gasped as the sides and floor grew transparent, revealing a view of the helix as it wound its way towards the featureless ground, impossibly far below. At the centre of the floor was the oval receptacle. Had the helix somehow transported it way up here?
The clear floor was firm to the tread. He crossed to the oval and stared at the lifeless entity within, and then started as the eyes opened wide and the thin lips broke into a smile.
“Quinn, you are here.” The entity sat up, and the oval’s sides opened like petals. The entity swung its spindly legs over the side and hopped to the ground.
Quinn uttered the first words that popped into his head. “You seem to have made a remarkable recovery.”
“Ah, no,” it said, rubbing its long nose. “What you see before you is only a representation. I’m still where you left me. The avatron is sustaining my life processes. I am Vil-gar. I and my people are in your debt.”
“Your people… would they be the dead specimens we found lining the walls?” The creature’s upper and lower eyelids closed, and its lips parted as if Quinn had slapped it in the face. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
Vil-gar opened his eyes. “Tell me, Quinn. What is the purpose of every intelligent species?”
Quinn felt as if he were taking part in a high school pop quiz. He had always hated those. “I don’t know, exactly.”
“You don’t know the reason for your race’s existence?”
“Uh… survival, I guess. To thrive and expand across the universe.”
“So you’re saying your primary purpose is no different than that of a single-celled organism.”
Quinn blinked.
“Why did you stay behind?”
“I’m sorry?”
“When the Mogrey forced their way into the Preserver Complex, you knew your life was in danger. If your primary purpose is survival, why didn’t you flee with the others?”
“We had no way of separating you from the device. You would have died.”
“What of ‘the dead specimens lining the walls’,” Vil-gar said. “The Nemazi told you I sucked the life from them.”
How could he know that? Had he been watching them? “It’s not my place to judge.”
“Of course it is. One plus one equals two. When life is taken, life of equal value is forfeit. It’s the very foundation of Consensus law.”
“Humans are not members of the Consensus.”
“Ah,” Vil-gar said, rubbing his nose. “That would explain it.”
“Explain what?”
“Self-sacrifice runs counter to the principle of one plus one equals two. It is all but unknown among the races of the Consensus. It’s also contrary to the law of survival. So I ask you again: what is the purpose of every intelligent species?”
In all of his dealings with the races that made up the Consensus, Quinn had been acutely aware that he was mankind’s sole representative. His responses and actions would likely colour all of their future dealings with humans. Not since his dealings with Ga’zaan and the release of the biotoxin that decimated the Kimn had he felt so… useless. “To… to know.”
“Know what?”
“Everything. How the universe works. The nature of existence.”
“You are correct. When my people, the Farish, realised that the Nedari were building over them, they knew their time was coming to an end. Yet they had barely taken the first step in their understanding. The answers lay in mathematics, but their most sophisticated machines were inadequate to the task. Only one computer was sufficiently powerful.”
“The brain,” Quinn said.
“Exactly. The brain’s capacity is vast, but it lives for only a few cycles. They had to find a way of keeping an individual brain alive long enough to achieve its full potential.”
“Are you saying you sacrificed your people just to lengthen your own life?”
Vil-gar gazed up at him with misty eyes. “I did not sacrifice them. They sacrificed themselves.”
Quinn no longer saw the chubby-faced creature in his silver robe. He saw row upon row of bodies in fluid-filled compartments. “I can’t believe that.”
Vil-gar blinked away tears. “My people kept the project’s true purpose secret. The Consensus does not recognise altruism. By the rule of one plus one equals two, my life is forfeit. But humans understand self-sacrifice. Clearly I made the right choice by summoning you.”
Vil-gar bowed and spread his arms wide. “On behalf of my people, who gave their lives to preserve me, I claim sanctuary.”
~
Quinn stared at the childlike creature that might very well have lived since the Pharaohs ruled Egypt.
According to Vil-gar, thousands of his people had sacrificed themselves to preserve him, all for the advancement of knowledge. Were they utterly noble or utterly foolish? Perhaps they were a little of both.
In any event, he had no way of predicting the consequences if humanity were to grant asylum to the last surviving member of a Consensus race. He could point out that he had no authority to grant such a request, but he didn’t want to slam a door in Vil-gar’s face. He settled on a neutral response. “Why don’t we just concentrate on staying alive for now?”
Vil-gar nodded like a small child accepting correction.
Quinn turned slowly. “What is this place?”
“It’s the subuniverse you created. I just expanded it slightly.”
The ugly little creature was a master of understatement.
“So we’re still in the central area of your complex?”
“This subuniverse connects to the same point in three-space.”
Quinn took that to be a yes. “And your mind is maintaining this little hidey-hole?”
Vil-gar puffed out his chest. “Indeed.”
“So if you were to become too weak…”
“The subuniverse would collapse.”
“In that case, I suggest we concentrate our efforts on keeping you healthy—the real you, that is. Do you have any medical expertise?”
“No,” Vil-gar replied. “But I have complete access to the avatron’s database, and I am in all probability the most intelligent being in the Consensus, perhaps the entire galaxy.”
And modest to boot. Quinn let the thought pass. “All right, let’s get down there and see what we can do to sustain you.”
Of course, “down” was a relative concept in this manufactured universe. Vil-gar closed his eyes, and they both drifted up through the ceiling. It solidified beneath their feet, and Quinn began to retrace his route through the cubes.
Vil-gar toddled beside him like a small child. “Don’t you want to ask me what I know?”
“About what?”
“About the nature of existence. I have been working continuously on the problem. I can advance your race’s understanding by millennia.”
Quinn sighed. “Look, I’m sure it’s all
quite fascinating, and I know of people back on Eire Colony as well as Earth who’d chop off their right arm for that kind of theoretical hoopla. Right now, though, my priority is survival—yours and mine. I’m sorry if that places me on the level of a single-celled organism.”
“I understand. There’s no need to apologise.”
Quinn tried to decide whether the creature was patronising him.
“I watched the dolin descend towards ground level and then return,” Vil-gar chirped as they rose through another ceiling. “Other than the Mogrey, none have passed this way in many centuries.
“When I transmitted the signal, you and the Nemazi appeared. I assumed you were concealed in four-space and that the Shades and the Fixed Races had finally put aside their differences and were now working together.”
“Ours is a… a special arrangement,” Quinn said. “The Shades are currently at war with the Fixed Races.”
“That is a great pity.”
They stepped out of the final cube and onto the flat plain at the base of the helix. The oval life-support machine was where he left it. Within lay the unconscious form of the real Vil-gar. Quinn glanced at the vital creature standing before him and shook his head. “What’s your condition?”
“Resuscitation was aborted due to arterial occlusion. The avatron induced a partially comatose state to prevent any further damage. Repairs to my circulatory system are now underway. My life signs are stable, but weak.”
“You could die.”
“There is that possibility. I am attempting to restore power to the outer sections of the complex.”
“Why?” Quinn asked.
“To prevent the Mogrey from gaining further access.”
“Wouldn’t that simply trap those already inside?”
“In time they will expire, just as those who found a way in before.”
Quinn recalled the smashed, empty receptacles. Apparently, the Mogrey had managed to vent their frustration before they expired. In any event, they would no doubt take time to die from natural causes—perhaps more time than Vil-gar had. And Quinn couldn’t afford to be stuck here for days on end while Ximun plotted the overthrow of humanity. “Why are the Mogrey so desperate to enter this facility? What are they after?”
The Arc of the Universe Page 3