Karic left the hill and scouted around the camp, identifying two small streams that ran with clear, icy water. He collected water samples in two small vials and packed them away carefully. He would check these for bacterial count and heavy metals. Game proved harder to catch, however, and nothing vaguely resembling a fruit or a berry grew in the dark valley. His gnawing hunger now made him regret every morsel he had refused to eat while imprisoned by the Imbirri for fear of poisoning or alien infection.
Karic returned to the campsite. Twin beams of white light cut through the gloom, casting the funereal stillness of Utar’s resting place into weird relief. The metal of the alien structure glistened as though wet, shimmering and catching the light like a cut diamond, a teasing will-o-wisp luring them down to the unusable artifacts stored below, as though daring them to enter that alien labyrinth of false hope. The pod itself dominated the space, glowing with artificial light. Through the door, he glimpsed Mara and Andrai at work, the colored lights of the console playing across their intent faces.
As he broke from the shadowed cover of the twilight forest into the clearing, Karic forced himself on with a grim resolve. He prepared, then discarded encouraging words — incentives to carry on searching for anything in the remains of the lander. He was determined to help these people, to bring them all safely to some haven where they could at least live unhindered by the vengeful Awakener.
As he approached, he noted Andrai and Mara had set up an antenna in order to communicate with the mother-ship keeping station above the dark side of the planet.
Mara emerged from the cabin. She leapt through the small doorway and raced toward him. “We have made contact with the mother-ship. The Starburst has been in communication with the lander! It survived!”
Karic was astounded. “The lander’s core survived?”
“Yes.” Mara’s smile was dazzling.
It all fell into place. “Of course! The lander’s core section was ejected skyward by the concussion of the main fuel tanks and fell back to the ground before the explosions died. It was designed to survive a planetary impact.” Karic took Mara by the shoulders, wanting to hug her.
“The computer on the lander cannot give us any details on the location, but we think we can locate it using the Starburst’s radar array. Andrai is coordinating it now,” said Mara.
“Janzen?”
“I’m not sure. We have not been able to raise any response. But one of the suspension sets is in use.”
“In use?” That meant not only had Janzen survived, but that the sets were intact. He felt dizzy with relief. “Thank God!”
“The computer indicates some loss of function, but we will not know what systems have failed until we can check them out by hand.” Mara turned out of Karic’s grip and raced back to the pod.
He stood in the pod doorway, watching the furious activity of the two scientists. His mind sang with the news. The suspension equipment was intact! Plans and schemes filled his head in an excited rush. Now we have a chance!
So Janzen had survived. Good. He was going all the way back to Earth to pay for all the blood on his hands. He could not wait to see the look on his face when he came out of stasis to see Karic standing over him. No doubt he would be expecting a rescue team.
“We have to reach the lander’s core section, redeploy the screen around the core, and this time ensure the camp is fully enclosed. Not even the energy weapon of these aliens could touch us then. With enough power we could wait a thousand years for help to arrive,” said Karic.
Andrai looked up through the pod door and smiled, his face etched in yellow and red by the shifting lights of the console.
“The mother-ship is conducting a scan of the local area now. With the decreased grid size, we should get fairly good resolution. We’ll have the location pinpointed in minutes.”
“We will head there as soon as we have the location. That is where we have to locate our base camp,” said Karic.
“What about the body of Utar?” said Mara. “We still haven’t discovered his purpose for leading us here.”
Karic looked around the dark clearing, full of shades and swelling shadows. Despite the tantalizing presence of the vast alien chamber beneath them, he would be glad to leave it. “We will return. First we have to get to the lander core and set up the screen. Only then will we really be safe.”
***
Asthel flew across the surface of the bright side, drinking in the golden light. The warmth, the heat, was delicious, and so right. She soared between the bright sky and the thin yellow clouds, suspended in amber.
The sun rose from the horizon toward the center of the sky as she flew onwards, the heat growing to a luscious warmth. Great jeweled cities fled past beneath her, the towers and buildings, arching bridges and slender walkways shimmering through the powerful haze of stasis fields. The cities were enticing, but she sped on. She knew her goal lay ahead.
At last the sun stood in the exact center of the sky. Below lay the greatest of the cities, beautiful in its austere complexity, yet as still as a sculpture. Nothing moved in the city. Asthel felt herself relax in the intense heat. Streamers of radiation glowed like rainbows in her vision. Higher she floated, riding on the powerful thermals rising from the vitrified surface of the planet. For a time she drifted, content, then slowly a desire rose within her.
Asthel sang.
The sensuous tones formed a melody that was ancient when the Earth was nothing more than spinning gas. Again and again she voiced the song. The intensity grew with each breath.
Beneath her, a sleeper woke.
The Fountain had dreamt for an age, waiting for the notes of this song to wake him and the children of his race to come. He rested in the gable of the highest tower, which extended beyond the reach of the immense stasis field that enclosed the empty city. He rose from a slumber akin to death. His brittle, ancient body stirred to life as devices injected precious fluids into his skeletal frame.
As vast as the other cities were, they were empty of his race and now remained in stasis from cycle to cycle — a sign of the decay of his ancient race, the Fintil. Only this city, Zenith, was now used.
The Fountain was the only Fintil who remained of the prior generation. He lived on here in a deathlike slumber for the next generation of Fintil to emerge from Cru’s dark side. Once there would have been many Old Ones to greet the newborn, yet now he alone remained as guardian and keeper of the Fintil race — the fountain of their knowledge and history. He had abandoned his own name, his own identity for the privilege of carrying their culture into the future. Not that there had been any choice. Of the Fintil Old Ones of his generation, he alone had possessed the strength and power for the task. The other three had long faded to dust, their ability to rebirth finally exhausted.
He rose from the stone altar that had been his resting place, overcome with a heavy fatigue. The muscles in his legs and arms protested at the movement. Despite the weakness, he flexed his wings and leapt from the tower, rising high on thermals, casting his eye across the golden space, searching for his children. The Fountain’s narrow, tapered abdomen and rear legs folded together forming a sleek, aerodynamic surface. He beat slowly, maintaining height, and the powerful wing muscles on his thorax — almost a third of his bodyweight — soon warmed with the effort. He turned in wide circles, confused at the emptiness, seeking the single song that rose where thousands should have echoed. He scanned the skies with superbly adapted eyes that could see in the merest light — and even in the infrared spectrum — but now effortlessly filtered out the harsh glare of Tau Ceti.
He saw the young female and called to her. She sang her name in response. Asthel. Overwhelmed with joy, she flew to him, and together they descended to the platform atop the tower. Asthel was beautiful: full of strength and brimming with energy and fertility — yet she was alone. Swarms of the young Fintil, newly hatched, should have reached the bright side together. Why had the other newborn not reached the bright side?
; Asthel skipped across the platform, alighting briefly to land before the machines that had monitored his ancient body during his hibernating sleep. She touched each with newly-hatched curiosity, her nascent mind humming with suppressed power. Already she was reaching out to bridge to them, and their artificial interfaces. The green flaring along the sides of her graceful thorax, and the leading edges of her gossamer wings was vibrant and vivid, signaling her fertility. Asthel could not be the last of the Fintil. She was too vital. Too alive. Too beautiful.
Marshalling his energies, the Fountain formed a mental bond with the system that controlled the city of Zenith, a coherent array of fields that operated in a dimension outside normal space. With vast processing power and almost limitless memory, it was sustained by a steady influx of energy from the fusion generators below the city. Its sensory fields left normal space at thousands of locations across Zenith, streaming data to its core, while discreet electromagnetic signals were returned at others, controlling vital equipment and automatons.
His mind was sluggish as he entered the control landscape. He flew through the virtual space with effort, searching his memory for the key thought sequence that would open the portals of its innermost workings. Hovering above the kaleidoscopic interface, he summoned the history of his sleep. The colors swirled around him, rising and rising. In a moment of sickening disorientation, he thought his mind had slowed beyond saving, but then realized the system simply required more time than usual to compile the record. Much more time.
High in the Zenith tower, his wings quivered with tension.
He heard Asthel singing sweetly, softly, blissfully unaware of the crisis he faced.
Within the virtual landscape of the system interface, the record opened around him. He cast his mind through it with ever more frantic mental commands. The cycle of the Fintil took barely a century. He had lain asleep for almost ten thousand years! Fear began to overwhelm him. Was this young female to be the last of them? Had the weakening seed of the Fintil finally failed them at last?
The Fountain’s mind withdrew from the system. He refocused on the bright interior of the tower room, the empty altar and its attendant array of machinery.
And Asthel.
If she was truly the last, there was no future for the Fintil. The Old Ones — those Fintil like himself who had the rare ability to rebirth themselves as newborn Fintil, with their memories intact, and so extend their lifetimes — were infertile after their second rebirth, and he had lived through dozens.
Fintil were born as adults, their minds fully formed. Although they possessed formidable capabilities, the typical Fintil adult lived only a few decades. While the feeding stage of their hatched eggs, the mindless quadrupedal Fin, took almost a century before they matured and entered their chrysalis. Because of the Fintil’s unique physiology, no stasis field could be used to preserve them between generations — the stasis was interpreted on a cellular level as death and triggered a regenerative transformation that in most cases was abortive, killing the Fintil. Some of their more radical scientists persisted in trying to solve the problem, yet there was little support. The drive to follow their ancient ways was deep in their genetic coding. So, despite all their advanced technology, the cycle of rebirth had remained virtually unchanged for all their history. That was why the Old Ones were so vital. They were the only living link to the last generation.
Casting aside his fear, the Fountain turned to Asthel, and despite himself felt new hope. She sang to him and the years fell away.
“Asthel. I am the Fountain.” He spoke in the language of the Fintil, yet also touched her mind with the thoughts. This was the way the newborns learned the Fintil speech, and the proper mode of thought. Formally, he gently touched his wingtips to hers.
“Fountain. I am Asthel.” He hummed with delight. Her recall was perfect.
The Fountain remembered his own birth-flight so vividly. He had also been the first to reach Zenith, racing from the dark side, full of passion and desire. Many young Fintil had followed him, yet most were weak and sterile, others had lingered on the dark side, disoriented and malformed. There had been so few like him — then a fertile male. So few.
The Fountain turned toward the dark side. His ancient eyes betraying no emotion as they glittered in the intense heat.
The answers would lay there.
***
The Awakener checked the position of his followers, which were concealed in the jungle nearby, then settled himself to wait. He could see the blackened form of the alien craft clearly from his vantage. The bait in the trap.
He chewed on a succulent fern, thoughtful. The scepter lay on the ground, close at hand. The First surrounded him, yet increasingly kept their distance. He could no longer deny what he heard in their voices, read in the empty darkness of their eyes. Fear. He had become something strange and fearsome in their eyes. That saddened him, but there was no swerving from this course. He was sick with grief, and poisoned by the destruction, yet running faster and faster on the path to his final solution. There had to be an end to this. He had to make an end to it.
He ate the last of the fern, jaw working idly as he ground it to a tasty pulp. Then he reached for the scepter. His big hand stopped short of touching the cool, familiar metal. His stomach churned with nausea as memories of all those he had destroyed flooded his inner vision — so many, destroyed before the Changes could take them too far …
The Awakener felt a sudden urge to throw the scepter away, to run alone into the jungle and leave all the pain and grief behind, to return to the mindless existence he had known before his awakening, almost ten thousand years ago. His deepest heart cried out for an end to this. For an ending of it all.
The Awakener swallowed and forced himself to grip the scepter. There was no swerving now. He had to finish this. He had to destroy the last of these humans. He had to be strong for all the Imbirri and do what they could not.
He fixed his gaze on the human artifact with renewed determination. All he had to do was wait. And if there was one thing any Imbirri could do, it was to bide their time.
CHAPTER 15
Karic flew low over the sparse canopy. Inside the pod’s cabin, he reached past Mara to adjust the forward thrust, anxiously watching the pod’s dwindling fuel supply on the viewscreen display. She leant away from him as far as the cramped cabin and harness restraints would allow. He gritted his teeth and focused on the problem. The tiny craft was burning through the remaining onboard fuel at a prodigious rate, struggling to keep all of them in the air against Cru’s heavy gravity. He had used an array of tricks to conserve fuel, but none were working as well as he had hoped. As he calculated the remaining flight distance, he realized he had grossly underestimated how far the pod could travel.
Below, the dull gray of the forest slowly changed to green as the pod rose from the shadows into the light of the crystal mountains. Andrai and Mara worked at the console beside him, using the distant computers of the mother-ship to navigate to the lander. So far, the signal strength of the uplink — relayed through the ground-based transmitter and antenna they had set up in the darkened clearing — was holding.
Andrai and Mara both reached across for the same switch, their hands colliding with a thud.
“Ow!” said Mara, rubbing her fingers.
The corners of Andrai’s mouth twitched up into an amused smile. “You go,” he said, waving her forward.
“OK.” Mara gave Andrai a quick, almost shy smile, then reached forward to adjust the gain on the signal from the Starburst, leaning her body across him with a familiarity that only emphasized their increasing intimacy. Karic managed to shunt aside the sharp twinge of jealousy, but could not suppress the resentment that followed on its heels so easily.
The pod entered a thick wall of mist. Karic slowed the craft, edging forward under instruments.
“How far to the lander, Andrai?” Karic banked the pod around a tall palm that appeared ghost-like from the mist.
“Just ov
er twelve kilometers,” said Andrai, rubbing his hands together in excitement. “I wonder what condition the core section is in.”
“The fact that the lander’s computer survived at all is a pretty good sign,” said Mara.
Twelve kilometers — damn, we’re not going to make it. “Bad news, guys. I’ll have to put the pod down here.”
Andrai’s smile fled. Mara gripped the edge of her seat, as though willing the pod to stay in the air. Karic understood their reaction. None of them was eager to leave the cabin. For hours it had been their haven, a place of safety on a hostile world.
“Andrai, take a bearing on the position of the barrier fence and the lander’s core section.” Karic powered down the pod. It sank swiftly through the tangled green canopy, settling toward the thick organic skin of the planet. The craft settled with a thud and Karic switched off the small rockets.
Mara flicked through the fuel display, and Karic knew she was checking his calculations.
“We have to conserve enough fuel to retrieve the uplink equipment from the valley,” said Karic, preempting her question. “We’ll have to make it the rest of the way on foot.”
“What about the salvage operations at the lander site?” asked Andrai, his forehead creasing with tension.
Karic nodded. “It will make it difficult, but the screen will have to be carried to the core section. Any equipment we can’t move by hand will have to wait until we have more fuel or another pod.”
Mara’s eyes lit with comprehension. “A robotic drop.”
The Tau Ceti Diversion Page 23