The URANUS Code (Citadel World Book #1)

by Kir Lukovkin

  “Be patient!” Kyoto cut him short, “We have almost got to the point. Throughout our history, our Commune has always been headed by a Warden, a man who could speak to the Machine God through the priests.”

  “That’s right.”

  “The Warden leads the Committee, the members of which are those that are close to him. Each of them controls their own level of the sector. Only the members of the Committee can read the secret signs and glyphs left by the Machine God as guidance for the people. It is forbidden for anyone else.”

  “Such is the law.”

  “Yes. Only the Warden and his priests are allowed to enter the holy sanctum of Technology and speak to the great God.”

  “That’s right.”

  “But what if I told you that I also know how to read these signs?”

  “I don’t believe you,” Rick laughed.

  “Of course you don’t believe me. That’s why I’m going to show you something.”

  Rick looked at Kyoto warily.

  “Don’t be afraid,” said the old man, “it’s just a drawing.”

  He took a piece of paper from his inside pocket which had been folded many times over, so old and shabby that there were visible holes worn through the folds. Kyoto carefully laid it out on the table. The edge of the paper looked like it had been unevenly chewed on one side, as if a rat had tried to eat it, so only part of the picture was visible. Rick stared at the interlocking lines covered with tiny glyphs and signs.

  “What is this?”

  “Our sector.”

  They both bent down over the picture, trying to make out the details. The light of the lamp grew dimmer, which meant that evening was approaching. The lighting would be switched off soon. Rick lit the ghostlight by cranking the handle of the generator. They kept looking at the picture, until Rick finally whispered:

  “I don’t understand anything.”

  “I couldn’t for many years either,” the old man admitted, “until I started to understand the glyphs.”

  “Where did you get this?”

  “It was part of the spoils of the great war with the barbarians which was won by the Commune thirty years ago. I was a Committee member back then.”

  Rick stared at Kyoto, who smiled again and cackled dryly.

  “I was the advisor of the Warden of that time. A senior advisor at the highest level. Croesus was just a snot-nosed kid back then, there was enough food for every level and there were no problems with light or heating. The Commune went to war against a tribe of barbarians that lived near the Gallery. This all happened because the daughter of the chief of food production ran away to join a young man there. The Commune went on a campaign and won the war, gaining plenty of supplies, weapons and valuables, including packs of bound paper with glyphs and drawings. The Warden ordered for them to be burnt. There were many drawings in these packages, very many, and all of them looked like this one, as well as tables of glyphs and other signs which are called numbers. The Warden personally supervised their destruction, saying that the papers bore the mark of evil and that these were foul satanic spells that were an offense against god and a heresy. And that’s when I committed a crime.”

  “You hid one page,” Rick guessed.

  “Yes. And you know why? Look,” the old man pointed at a familiar glyph at the very edge of the torn side.

  “The Circle of Life!” exclaimed Rick.

  “The Omicron symbol.”

  When Rick looked at the drawing something suddenly changed in his perception of it and familiar shapes started to appear in the network of lines. He cranked the generator on the fading lamp and leaned closer to the drawing. A long minute passed.

  “Here,” he pointed his finger and drew a line from the left to the right, “this looks like the main thoroughfare.”

  “That’s exactly what it is.”

  “Here is the Edge of the World… That means that the Chorda, the spine of the Expanse, must be there.”

  “Good thinking,” Kyoto said approvingly.

  “That means that this is a map,” Rick continued, unconsciously lowering his voice to a whisper. “But everything is drawn here as if the sector only had one level. But it has fifty. This is a view from above.”

  They looked at one another.

  “It took me several years to understand that,” said Kyoto. “And it only took you a few minutes. You see? I knew that you had special abilities.”

  Flattered, Rick kept looking at the ancient world map that was taken from the depths of the Expanse, far better made than the drawings of the priests, and many questions started to occur to him in his head.

  “It must be taken to Croesus,” he muttered uncertainly. “Maybe he will be able to make sense of it?”

  “You know yourself what would happen then.”

  Yes, he knew. Croesus will get agitated, take the map away, interrogate Rick and apprehend Kyoto. No one was even permitted to look at the glyphs of the Machine God without special permission, let alone hold any writings in their hands. This was a serious crime, bordering on heresy for which the lightest punishment was exile beyond the barrier.

  Kyoto looked at the clock.

  “We don’t have much time and we might not get a second chance. Croesus already suspects something. The patrols on the levels have become more frequent. It’s time I went. Take another look at this map and remember it well.”

  “But it is so detailed…”

  “Memorize it,” hissed Kyoto, and kept hurriedly whispering while Rick was intently examining the map. “I studied this map for hours after work instead of sleeping, remembering every symbol and every turn. This is why I can draw an exact copy if it gets destroyed. I thought about it, trying to understand what is on this paper and correlate it with what the Wardens told us throughout our lives. You do know how they become Wardens, don’t you?”

  “Following the fifth life trial, the old Warden chooses a successor and leaves the Commune.”

  “Yes. The new Warden gives an oath of fealty to God in the temple of Technology. All my life, I carefully listened to the speeches of the Wardens and the sermons of the priests. And I saw that they were lying. I thought about their words and observed the world around me. For instance, they insist that there is no air beyond the Expanse and that we are surrounded by the darkness of primordial chaos, with the only things protecting our world from destruction being the external barrier of the Expanse and the internal barrier of the sector. The Expanse is shaped like a doughnut, and we are in the middle, while monsters and barbarians live around us, beyond the barrier. There is nothing beyond the external borders of the Expanse. There’s nothing above or below either.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You know that I live on the lowest level, among the sick and the very old. I have been suffering from insomnia for the last few years. As I lie there at night in the darkness I hear strange sounds. They sound like a distant rumble. And once, I heard… voices. Shouting. A man was shouting. I put my ear as close to the floor as I could and kept listening and listening. No one believes old men, and I would have been laughed at had I come to the Warden with this.”

  “You kept silent and waited.”

  “I thought this time would never come. Now, pay attention to these symbols and arrows at the edges of the drawing.”

  Rick obediently took a closer look. The number 14 was written on the paper where the arrow pointed forwards as well as two strange and unfamiliar symbols of some sort. Where the arrow pointed backwards, the number 16 could be made out as well as two other different symbols.

  “What does this mean?”

  “I don’t know for sure. But I think that this indicates other habitable worlds. Can you imagine it? What if there is someone out there beyond the edges of the Expanse as well?”

  Rick forgot to crank up the generator on the lamp and the room fell into darkness. When he got the light to work again, the map was no longer on the table.

  “I will walk with you,” he said. “Or
the Patrol might bother you.”

  They walked through the axial corridor of the level, holding their clothing tight against the cold. It became even colder at night, which is why no one went outside without need. The level was almost asleep. Occasionally, the residents moved between the rooms. Rick and Kyoto walked silently, warming their hands with their breaths. A Patrol marched by and Rick nodded at those he knew, continuing to descend to the children’s level where Aurora lived using the central stairs.

  “You don’t have to accompany me any further,” said Kyoto when they approached the stairway.

  There was an uncomfortable pause. Rick wanted to finish with this strange meeting as soon as possible, but something attracted him to the old man.

  “Do you still keep the talisman?”

  Rick touched something on his chest.

  “It is always with me.”

  “Take good care of it.”

  Kyoto descended a pair of steps.

  “By the way, do you remember the way that barbarian shouted before the execution? I know what he wanted to say.”

  Rick pretended that he was not interested.

  “You must turn on the gen-er-at-or,” Kyoto smiled. “Good night.”

  Rick walked along the corridor to Aurora’s room and made sure that everything was all right. The light still dimly flickered here, an indulgence of childhood. The girl was lying on the bed and she opened her eyes.

  “You’re not asleep? Go to sleep, right now.”

  “Tell me a fairy tale!” she demanded.

  Rick sighed, sitting down on the edge of the bed.

  “The one about Rob the Seeker again?”

  “Yes!” Aurora scrunched up her face with pleasure, pulling the edge of the blanket over her nose.

  “All right. Once upon a time, a man called Rob lived in the Commune. Then one day, children started to go missing from the Commune…”

  For the hundredth time, Rick told his little sister of the adventures of the amazing Rob, who was brave enough to go into the Expanse, wander around the Labyrinth, find all the missing children and defeat the monsters. Of course, he also walked along the edge of the chasm. He managed all this because he thought of tying one end of a ball of string to himself and the other to the entrance of the Labyrinth. This was a tale told to him by his mother and Rick had no idea where she had got it from. Rick also did not know who his father was or who Aurora’s father was. All that was left to him was the talisman that his father asked to be given to his son before Expanse swallowed him up forever. After making sure that his sister was fast asleep, Rick closed her room and returned home. He lay there in the dark and thought about Kyoto’s words, feeling his father’s talisman under his clothing—a cross-shaped piece of extremely hard black material.

  If insomnia was infectious, he had definitely caught the disease.

  4

  THE SQUAD walked through one of the side corridors. Five warriors. Five strong, strapping men. Rick was part of the rearguard, together with the patrolman walking behind him. He had been personally chosen by the grim and broad shouldered Ivon, who was completing the third circle of his life. Ivon now led the squad, carefully peering into the gloom ahead.

  This was the first time that Rick had gone on an external patrol. Going beyond the barrier was considered to be the most dangerous duty because the people of the Commune were absolutely terrified of the Expanse outside. However, he needed an improved, larger ration because of Aurora. There had been a hunger riot recently, the first one for this year. The winter supplies were running out, so Croesus ordered for workers’ rations to be cut by yet another quarter. One of the workers took something from another while the rations were being distributed. A fight started, which soon turned into a battle. By the time that the Patrol squads arrived, the level was as noisy as a hundred power conduits. Rick had never seen such anger on people’s faces. The men were beating each other with fists, legs, chairs and anything they could find. The women were tearing each other’s hair out, hissing, biting and trying to scratch out the eyes of those they fought. Even the teenagers were rolling around the floor in a jumble of mindless violence. Everyone had forgotten about the food—the anger that built up over the long winter had finally boiled over. The smarter ones grabbed the pieces of bread that had fallen on the floor, eating them right under the feet of the combatants. One man got his throat slashed, another had his arm broken.

  The patrolmen threw themselves into the fray, lashing out with their batons. Lightning started to crackle and the crowd turned to run. Rick was in the front row of the punishment squad. He mercilessly used his electric baton on anyone that got in his way, without caring if they were fully grown men or elders, male or female. Everything had gone blank, he was doing his job. The only things he could hear were the screams, moans and curses.

  “Bastard!” A gob of phlegm flew in his face.

  “Vermin! Stuffing your bellies on the upper levels!”

  “Chasm take you!”

  “Give us bread! Give it to us!”

  The patrolmen pushed the combatants back towards the walls. By this time, the unrest had settled down.

  “Halt!” Ivon commanded.

  Rick shuddered, trying to push the memory from his mind.

  The squad stood still. The five warriors listened to the fragile silence of the Expanse. Time passed. Nothing happened. The Expanse spoke with the sound of quiet creaking, with the distant drip of water and the howl of the wind. This corridor was well explored and mapped, but the Expanse was treacherous and always ready to catch the unwary. Night crawlers had attacked a similar patrol right by the barrier. They were vile, humanoid creatures that could somehow climb sheer walls and squeeze through the smallest openings with their scrawny bodies. Rick had only seen a crawler once, but it was already dead. A disgusting sight.

  “Everything looks quiet. Let’s move out,” Ivon stepped out ahead. The patrol followed him.

  They walked through a radial corridor which ran parallel to the barrier of the Commune sector. Markings left by previous patrolmen could be seen along the wall. There were also many glyphs and signs applied to every surface by forces unknown to man in ancient times. Even though no one knew how to read, Rick took care to memorize each symbol, count the number of times it would repeat and the frequency that is combined with other symbols, trying to find a logical order to them. He tried to hide his interest from the other patrolmen.

  Like every other worker, Rick used to think that the Commune took the shape of a sphere inside the Expanse, but that turned out to be untrue. The sector that the Commune was in was more like a piece of cake, with a thick edge on one side and a narrow one on the other. The Sector encompassed fifty levels which were connected by stairways and vertical shafts. The main corridor, which they called the Highway, was on level thirty. That was also the location of the central square, which occupied a large space that was five levels high and served as a location for the discussion of the most important issues in the life of the Commune. A curved corridor crossed the Highway behind the square, forming part of the great path of the Circle of Life, entering the Expanse at one end of the sector and coming back in on the other side. This was the path the people of the Commune used for the Spring Run.

  Another small circular corridor cut across the sector before the square. There were not one, but five highways and corridors of this kind, each covering ten levels of the sector, like ribs extending from the spine. As a result, the five circular corridors had ten exits at both ends. If the exits from the smaller circular corridors were counted, this number could be multiplied by two to reach a total of twenty exits. Another five central exits from the radial corridors were added to this. However, four of them were sealed long ago. But all of this was nothing compared to the great number of side corridors, auxiliary corridors and other passages that filled the levels of the sector, especially at the edge of the Circle of Life and by the Chorda.

  Even though most of these openings were sealed tight, guarding
the ones that were still open took a lot of effort. The corridors by the barrier also had to be watched to prepare for sudden attacks or disasters. All of this was the responsibility of the external Patrol.

  The squad reached a crossroads between the corridor and another, smaller pathway.

  “Break.”

  They quickly changed formation, putting their commander at the center, as the warriors circled him to form a perimeter, facing in each of the directions on the compass. Then, everyone lowered themselves to the floor. Their shift lasted for half a day, which was why the warriors took bread and water with them. While one would eat, the other four would carefully watch the Expanse.

  Ivon finished his meal and exchanged places with one of his subordinates. While he ate, the patrol started a quiet conversation.

  “Things are bad,” Ivon said, “The Committee has ordered the gathering of rats.”

  “Rats are real tough and stringy.”

  “When you're hungry enough, you’ll eat anything.”

  “They’re still tough. It’s not meat, it’s like chewing a rope.”

  “My father-in-law got a really big slug from the ceiling. He decided to fry it. He says it was all right.”

  “That’s something you can still do. But mushrooms, you can’t eat mushrooms, especially the green ones. It doesn’t matter how big and beautiful they look. Machine God save us, they truly are full of filth and unclean energies. My grandfather told me how his friend cut down some of those mushrooms from the wall beyond the barrier and then fried and ate them. He went all black and swelled like a balloon the day after. He had a pet cockroach that lived in his pocket, and this cockroach simply exploded as soon as it came near him.”

  “Hey, newbie, was the ivy on the hunt in the Circle of Life this year?”

  “Someone got dragged away by one right in front of my eyes,” Rick answered.

  “That means spring is bound to come. They’re lazy in winter.”

  While the patrolmen had their lunch, they continued conversing quietly. People were very timid beyond the boundary of the sector as they were guests here. Ivon finally ordered the patrol to move out. They were walking towards the Chorda. Lamps glimmered with dull orange light under the ceiling.