Godlike Machines

by Johnathan Strahan

  I had other threads to follow. Restless and chilled, I began to pace around the control room as Kindred had done.

  “Tell me about Terminus,” I said.

  She looked up with red eyes, caught momentarily off-guard. “About what?”

  “You know what, Cotton. You mentioned it moments before we were almost shot, and your friend brought it up twice. He asked me if I was with Terminus. Should I feel left out of something?”

  “No,” she said, leaning her hip against one of the control panels, folding her arms and crossing her legs. She couldn’t have looked more defensive if she tried. “Terminus is an organization—an affiliation might be better—that stretches right across the mines. People don’t join so much as become absorbed into it. If you ask enough questions, maybe even answer a few, and if you survive long enough, you’ll eventually find yourself hooked up to it.”

  “So Kindred is part of Terminus,” I said, “and so are you.”

  “Yes-but don’t look at me like that. I’m not a spy, skulking and thieving from your friends back home. I was just passing through, looking for answers. Trelayne’s trail had gone cold. It helps, sometimes, to flail about at random.”

  “Who do you report to?”

  “No one. That is, no boss or anyone like that. I talk to other agents when the opportunity arises; there are channels for passing information back and forth; sometimes, although very rarely, we’ll leak something to the public, if we think it’s in their best interest.”

  “So if you knew what the Director was, you wouldn’t keep it a secret.”

  “I don’t see why we would. Terminus exists to find out who built the mines and how they managed it—a living architect would be the Holy Grail for most of us—but making the mines safer for everyone is the most important thing of all. I’d trade a proper map for that, at the moment.”

  “Are you suggesting that the mines haven’t been completely charted yet?”

  “It’s a big job.”

  “But you’ve been at it for hundreds of years. Gevira must be riddled through like Emmental cheese!”

  She laughed. “Donaldan Lough, you are such a newb. Where do you think we are right now? Not Gevira, surely.”

  “Where else would we be?”

  “You heard Huw. We’re on Samagrinig, and that could be halfway across the universe from where we started.”

  “Very funny.”

  “I’m serious. What do you think that is outside the windows?”

  I ceased my pacing, a familiar sense of anger and humiliation swelling like cancer in my breast. This new mockery revealed her to be no better than Officer Gluis, a fact made all the worse by our joint endurance of the previous day’s crises. The very moment one of her compatriots joined us, thus forming a bloc—if a fractious one—against my minority of one, she expelled me from her confidence and would throw my lot, no doubt, among the mine’s other newbies.

  Is that how she saw me, I wondered—as fodder for the Geviran mines, as mere sport for the Director?

  “Don’t play me for a fool, Cotton. I’m not the naif you take me to be.”

  “I’m not taking you for anything. I’m just telling you the way it is.”

  “That we’ve traveled from one world to another by—by elevator? Next you’ll propose that the Director is an invisible white rabbit or that we should ask directions from the Queen of Hearts!”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Her anger was rapidly becoming the equal of mine. “You said no one was asking the questions that need to be answered. Well, maybe it’s because, like you, they don’t like answers. The first thing everyone in Terminus does is the math. It tells you that the mine contains enough people to fill a dozen planets. The mine exports sufficient energy to light up a solar system. The mass of every mineral extracted comes to several Jovian worlds. Where do you think all that comes from? From a tiny backwater world like Gevira? You can say that the numbers are lying, but deep down you’ll know that it’s really you, lying to yourself, and the sooner you accept it, the happier and crazier you’ll be.”

  “Like you?”

  “Damn straight like me. Do you have a better solution?”

  We stood nose to nose, yelling at each other. My fury was so great that the cover I had carefully maintained seemed an irrelevant thing beside the impulse to prove to this woman that there was more to the world than the mines and her obsession. Far across the gulfs of space glittering civilizations reached, connected by the Great Ship Fleets and the Guild to which I myself belonged. It has taken millennia to establish and unimaginable efforts to maintain. My ache to impress upon her the impossibility of a network such as the one she described-in which those empty gulfs could be crossed in a matter of moments, with no more effort than the pushing of a button-could not be measured.

  Somehow I subsumed that impulse. I thought of you, Master Catterson, and the ranks of Guildsmen depending on my steadfastness. I would not betray my vows solely to impress a madwoman, no matter what revelations she promised. Such a promise was tainted, anyway, if this proposition was a taste of that to come.

  “The only solution I have,” I said in level tones, “is to retrace our steps and return to the surface. Once we’re out of the mines, we and the people around us will be safe from the Director. We’ll have time to examine your theory with clinical dispassion and see where it leads us. We won’t need to cower like criminals in the dark, lending credence to propositions we would never entertain in the clear daylight. What do you say?”

  “I can’t leave here until I find Trelayne,” she said firmly. “He has all the answers I need.”

  “What if he turns out to be nothing but a rumour? You’ll have wasted your final hours chasing the ghost of hope.”

  “It’s no more a ghost than I am. Look at me. You’ve seen my corpse. I’ve told you what it means. How much more proof do I need?”

  “That aliens learned how to connect worlds by tissue paper and a bit of pluck? A lot more proof than your word on it, I’m afraid.”

  “What about Huw and all of Terminus? What about the evidence of your senses?” She turned away with palms pressed to her forehead as though containing a migraine. “Oh, Don, you can’t possibly be so ignorant about everything.”

  “Indeed he can’t, Emma,” said Huw Kindred from behind me. “Don’t say any more. I think he’s heard quite enough.”

  I turned to find Kindred standing in the entrance we had come through with a compact firearm in his hand. He must have looped around through the empty level and returned to the elevator cluster via a corridor we had not noticed. That, however, was the least of my present concerns. The firearm was pointed directly at me. It looked tiny, like a toy, but I was convinced of its lethality.

  “What is the meaning of this?” I spluttered.

  “Just step away from her, flyboy, and don’t make any sudden moves. That’s it. Put your hands above your head. Now, do you want to tell her where you’re from or shall I?”

  It’s no exaggeration to say that every muscle in my body went rigid.

  “Have you gone completely insane, Huw?” Cotton went to put herself between us, but Kindred’s hefty forearm pushed her back.

  “I was thinking, Emma,” he said, “about what you told me. Your corpse, the deal you made with yourself, the information you want from me. I had just about decided to give in to you, when it came to me. None of this is real. It’s a fake, like this guy suggested.” The gun shifted to indicate me, then returned once more to target the center of my chest. “Only he’s the one behind it. It’s a trick, Emma, and you fell for it.”

  My thoughts moved at lightning speed. I was ready for either fight or flight the very moment an opportunity presented itself.

  “It’s not a trick,” I said.

  “Shut up.”

  “Are you going to tell me to shut up too, Huw?” Cotton stared up at him with a pained look on her face. “I can tell the difference. He’s not lying. Why would he? What’s he got to gain?”<
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  “Everything,” said Kindred, eying me with intense animosity along the gun’s sights. “He’s a spacer.”

  Her gaze darted to me, then back to Kindred. “What?”

  “Ask yourself, Emma. Why does he seem so ignorant? He’s not just a newbie; he’s after everything we’ve learned about the mines for bosses elsewhere. That’s why he’s hitched up with you. He wants answers and he doesn’t care how he gets them. You and your obsession would have given him everything he wanted, if I hadn’t come along to stop you.”

  “No,” she said. The blue sky of her certainty was beginning to cloud over with doubt. “I’m not that gullible.”

  “Really? Remember that time you tunneled a mile into a volcano just because someone had told you Trelayne had left a memory dump there? You almost died, and for what?”

  “Nothing, but this is different.”

  “Sure it is. Not satisfied with all the stars, the spacers want what we’ve got too.” His lips tightened and I braced myself for the gun to fire. “What flag do you fly under, star man? Whose picture do you salute each morning?”

  I would never tell him. “You’ve made a mistake, Kindred. I’m not who you think I am.”

  “Don’t,” he snarled. “You’re all the same. You and your fucking empires. You can’t keep your noses out of the Structure. You’re vermin.”

  That struck a nerve. “And what are you? This place—whatever it is—it’s amazing, but you no more than occupy it. You’re squatters, that’s all. Humanity has become rats in the walls.”

  “The Director, Huw,” Cotton persisted, defending my lie without knowing it. “It chased us. How could he fake that?”

  “Coincidence. Or some spacer trick.”

  “Now you sound paranoid.”

  “Do I?”

  They were shouting at each other now. “It’s my decision, Huw. Put the gun down—”

  “You’re crazy to trust this astronaut!”

  “—put the gun down and tell me what I need to know.”

  “I’m not going to let you kill yourself!”

  They were as distracted as they were ever going to get. Turning sideways to present a smaller target, I moved suddenly to my left. Kindred’s gun arm went to follow me but collided with Cotton, putting his aim off. He fired anyway, and the discharge was deafeningly loud. I ducked automatically, unharmed, and ran.

  Ran through the door he had come through, heading not for the exit—the doors would take too long to open-but for the route I suspected he had followed. He had left the portal ajar, and I threw myself headlong into the darkness on the other side. Two shots followed me, but Kindred’s aim was poor. I was fast and desperate where he was big and conflicted. My lead was the only advantage I had. I was determined to keep it as long as I could.

  My eyes adjusted to the darkness, picking out faint edges in infrared and the flaming patches where Kindred had walked. I stuck to those footprints to throw him off even though it slowed me down. Two sharp turns put walls between me and the door, so when his voice boomed out at me at least I knew I wouldn’t be shot in the back.

  “Come here, sky boy. You can’t hide forever!”

  No, I answered to myself, but I can loop around to the control room and hope to get out the exit before either of you catch up.

  “Don’t run, Don.” Cotton’s voice from further away, and falling behind. “It looks bad if you won’t even try to explain.”

  “What’s to explain, Emma? He’s a rocket jockey, and he’s not getting his hands on the mines.”

  Kindred was hard on my heels. Switching back to visible light, I saw torchlight dancing at the periphery of my vision.

  I realised then that I had made a mistake. Kindred wasn’t relying on infra-red, so my heat-signature was irrelevant. Putting on a burst of speed, I managed to gain an extra second or two, dodging and weaving down corridors and rooms that had not seen human life for a decade or more. My internal compass—still working even if my gravity-sense was addled-told me that I had looped almost completely around and was already returning to the control room. I had to act soon or hand myself over to Kindred.

  A T-junction loomed out of the darkness. His footsteps went left, so I ducked right and pressed myself flat against the wall, suppressing every audible breath. My heart pounded in time with his approach. The thudding of his feet sounded as loud as thunder.

  My slavish pursuit of his path had lulled him into believing that I would turn left. Timing my move for the moment he reached the junction, I struck up and out with my left elbow. The blow carried my entire weight plus his considerable momentum, and struck him hard between the eyes. His head snapped back while the rest of his body kept moving. Loosened from his fingers, the torch continued forward into the wall. Darkness descended with a smash.

  All was momentarily a confusion of limbs and senses. The glare of the torch had blinded me to the entire spectrum of frequencies and the impact jarred my body, making me feel as though I’d been hit by a pile-driver. I staggered away, nursing my shoulder and blinking in confusion. Behind me, I could hear Kindred struggling to cling to consciousness, which in itself was amazing. His skull must have been made of rock! Then he fell silent, either giving up the fight or becoming alert enough to realize that the sound was giving away his location. I was still seeing stars, but I turned and readied myself to do battle with him in the way I had been trained.

  Something moved in the air. Something impossible to define and completely without sound, but I knew beyond certainty that it had come and gone. I blinked and tuned my ears to their highest sensitivity. Nothing apart from my heartbeat and shallow breathing. Kindred was making no noise at all. I felt forward with my left foot, seeking his inert body. Nothing. My left hand patted the wall on that side through a blur of musculoskeletal pain. There was the intersection. My feet crunched on broken glass: the torch. Here, then, was where Kindred must have fallen.

  He wasn’t there. He wasn’t anywhere. My eyes cleared and the glowing pool of warmth where he had briefly lain became visible, but no more than that. Kindred had vanished into thin air, as though he had never existed.

  A sequence of terrible logic unspooled in my mind.

  In the dark, for a moment, silent and unseen by my dazzled eyes, no one had been observing him.

  In that moment, the Director had struck.

  I took a deep, sobbing breath and backed away from the volume of space he had occupied, as though distance alone would spare me the same fate.

  A glowing shape appeared behind me—humanoid, burning hot. I spun, moaning in fear and raised my hands in an impotent gesture. All my training counted for naught in that moment. I am ashamed to say, Master Catterson, that I was completely unmanned.

  “Huw? Huw, is that you?”

  It was Cotton, of course. My horror had been so great that I didn’t hear the footsteps approaching and failed to recognize her silhouette. My fear had magnified that glowing shape until it seemed monstrously large.

  “He’s gone,” I forced out.

  She rushed forward, eyes seeing me standing over the pool of heat where Kindred had fallen. “No.” Her mind performed the kind of mathematics she had urged me to perform, earlier. “No!” Not realizing yet that I had only witnessed Kindred’s demise, not killed him myself, and seeing me reaching for her in turn, she assumed the worst and lashed out.

  I cannot say, Master Catterson, what my precise intentions were, in that dark hour. I can only say that I was taken by surprise, and so Cotton succeeded where Kindred had failed. The blow caught me in the left temple. Stars flared again, and I dropped to my knees. The last things I experienced before blackness engulfed me were Cotton’s glowing shape looming over me, and the raw, anguished sound of her scream.

  I woke an hour later on my right side in the control room with my wrists and ankles securely tied. I ached all over, and my mouth was desperately dry, but for the moment I was glad that Cotton had not slit my throat and left me for dead. She must have dragged me there h
erself, over some considerable time. I am small, like all my brothers in the Guild, but not light.

  Her voice came from somewhere behind me.

  “It’s true, isn’t it?”

  I wrenched myself to a sitting position and twisted on my buttocks to face her. She was crouched in a corner with Kindred’s pistol on her lap. Its size was a better match for her petite hands. That it wasn’t yet pointed at me I took to be another good sign.

  The question, though, was not.

  “Is what true?”

  She rolled her eyes. “That you’re a spacer-astronaut, sky boy, rocket jockey, whatever.”

  “We were all spacers once, Cotton.”

  “Just give me a straight answer.” Tears eased freely from eyes as though from a surfeit of grief. She wasn’t weeping, but I perceived that she had been. “Under the circumstances, I think you owe me that.”

  “If you’ll be straight with me in return,” I said, “regarding the mines.”

  “You must be kidding.”

  “Put yourself in my shoes. If you were about to be shot, wouldn’t you want to know the truth?”

  The muscles of her jaw clenched. Her mouth twisted into an ugly line.

  “All right,” she said. “You go first.”

  I took a moment to compose my thoughts. The reasoning behind my offer was simple. Whatever she told me, I could transmit that information to you, Master Catterson. The broadcast would only take a second and be undetectable to her, so at least my death at her hands would not be for nothing.

  But breaking my vows did not come easily. My heart quailed at the very thought of telling the truth, no matter the circumstances.

  “The Guild of the Great Ships,” I began, slowly at first. “That’s who I work for. And yes, I was sent here to investigate the mines. But if you think about it, I haven’t really lied to you. I just asked questions. You assumed on your own that I was a newbie, along with everyone else.”