The URANUS Code (Citadel World Book #1)

by Kir Lukovkin

  “Well, I'm able, so let's continue our studies.”

  “All right.”

  Still, he never expected a reaction like that from Maya. His abilities in everything that was related to knowledge and science obviously made a serious impression of her. Maybe she believed in him at last? Believed that he was both able to fight and protect people and understand complex sciences?

  Tommo never particularly expressed himself during their breaks, he just waited while his companions talked and rested. Rick also realized that the prole could see in the dark, because Tommo would sometimes go to reconnoiter side passages impenetrable to the eye leaving the special goggles and torches with his companions, but always returned without any issues. One time, he came back with a human skull that had a clump of slime colored long hair attached to it.

  “We should be more careful,” Rick said. “Night crawlers might be around here somewhere. They fear the light as if it was fire, but they are very quick and they always attack in packs, especially if the victim is surrounded by darkness.”

  After being told this, Maya spent a long time moving in silence with her torch switched on to her power. It seems that this was how strong an impression Tommo's find and Rick's tale made on her.

  They climbed higher and higher. The structure of the well did not change in any way, but they increasingly kept coming across streaks of slime, that shook in the wind and stuck to their clothing in watery lumps. It also had a caustic, sweet and sour smell that caused dizziness.

  “Five hundred and sixty...”

  The rhythmic knocking of their boots on the ribbed protrusions and the clicks of the carabiner clips never stopped.

  “Five hundred and seventy,” Maya kept counting.

  Their hands grabbed at rungs that we covered in slime, their feet kept sliding off to the side, but the companions stubbornly advanced leaving floors behind them.

  “Five hundred and eighty...”

  “We have almost passed the sector!” Rick noted. “Is it inhabited?”

  “Probably in part,” Maya supposed. “Judging by the sounds coming from the pipes some sort of psychotic barbarians are living in the rooms. The sector has probably been long abandoned by intelligent people.”

  “I see.” Rick nodded. “Floor five hundred and ninety is coming soon. Let's get there and have a break. Then floor six hundred will be just around the corner.”

  “Yes...”

  However, they did soon need to stop for a while, hanging on the cables in the well so that they could put on their breathing masks—the stink of the slime became unbearable and made their eyes sting. Once they reached another milestone, Maya moved the mask onto her forehead and coughed. Then, she said, “We could suffocate here...”

  “Just a little longer,” Rick decided against taking off his mask, so his voice sounded muffled. “There's only a little left.”

  “I'm getting double vision. We need some rest and sleep.”

  Maya lay day on her side in the air duct. Rick glanced over at her, and almost cried out. Forgetting his fatigue, he firmly asked her, trying to be as calm as possible, “Maya, please don't move.”

  “What's the matter?” She yawned and drew her legs up to her stomach, getting herself more comfortable.

  Tommo noticed what was worrying Rick and whistled quietly.

  “I'm a bit uncomfortable...” Maya tried to hesitantly move to touch her neck, but her hand stopped half-way and fell to the floor.

  Rick was watching the creature that had latched on to the girl's neck and tried to work out what to do. A large, greenish white polyp the size of a fist was slowly swelling from the blood that it was sucking from an artery. It could not be torn off, as it would then leave a proboscis with drops of deadly poison in the neck. Tommo brought a lighter close to its pulsating body and lit a fire. The polyp immediately fell off. Rick resisted his desire to turn the creature into a fine paste on the ground. If he did so, he would spatter everything with blood and the smell would attract far scarier creatures. He threw the polyp down the shaft and examined Maya looking for other parasites. Nothing. He asked Tommo to examine him. Clean. Then, he had a careful look at the walls of the well, slowly moving his torch, and noticed polyp nests just over their camping place—pulsing garlands of pimpled balls with hungrily questing sucker trunks.

  Rick shuddered.

  “Let's climb further up,” he told Tommo.

  They somehow managed to wake Maya up, having to splash some water from the flask into her face, but that was fine. A sleepy Maya, who was weak from blood loss obeyed them and started to climb up. Tommo watched out for her from below and Rick from above, not forgetting to pierce the parasite nests with his knife along the way. Every time they passed a side air duct, they could hear a loud reverberating sound—whatever it was, Rick had no intention for looking for its source.

  Finally, they reached another technical floor between levels. Nu sector was located above. They had overcome the milestone of six hundred floors. Falling out of the shaft into the air duct, Rick and Maya removed their masks and lay there motionless for a long while, inhaling air without the smell of slime. Tommo just waited, sitting on the edge.

  Rick wanted to drink, but decided that he would ignore it. He got out his flask and forced Maya to open her mouth, pouring a double dose into her. Then, he somehow wiped the slime stuck to her neck and shoulders and looked over at Tommo, but he was gone. He probably wanted to do some reconnaissance as usual.

  There was a lot less dust and rubbish here than in the air ducts on the lower floors. Rick slowly massaged the muscles of his legs that had gone numb from the climb, and noticed some details that he had not seen before with an increasing sense of alarm. There were crude symbols scrawled on the walls with faded paint, balls constructed out of garbage hanging on strings from the ceiling, uneven circles laid out on the floor out of dead insects, small bones and stones. And the main thing was the tracks. Lots of tracks.

  The absence of the prole was already starting to be worrying. Rick got up on his feet and started to shine his torch into the surrounding darkness. He wanted to call Tommo, but then, someone's hand clamped his mouth shut. Rick spun around, about to draw his knife—the prole stood nearby, holding a finger to where his mouth would have been on his mask. Then he pointed at the torch.

  “What do you want to say?”

  Tommo abruptly gestured with his hands and suddenly grabbed Rick's torch and put it out, and then did the same to Maya's torch. They were in total darkness. Rick understood that it was best to keep his mouth shut and keep quiet. An invisible Tommo put the goggles with the special filters on his head and did the same to Maya.

  “Tommo, what are you do...” she began.

  “Shhh!” Rick whispered. “Quiet!”

  He felt the danger. The smell also soon reached his nostrils. An animalistic, thick smell of filthy diseased flesh. The world turned into a collection of gray-green shadows.

  Tommo approached one of the drawings on the walls, rubbed it with his hand, covering it in paint and returned. Rick did not resist when the prole daubed this thick and foul smelling goo on his cheeks and forehead and then did the same to Maya. The time for talking was over. The girl had sensed that there was something wrong had also stood up straight and was looking around with concern.

  And then they heard a rustle.

  Someone was slowly sneaking up on them, and small pieces of rubbish quietly rustled under their palms and feet. The creatures stepped out of the greenish darkness like ghosts—white, scrawny and crooked. Even though they were obviously similar to humans in their body shape, they had lost any reasonable behavioral reactions. They approached slowly, as if they were sliding along the surface, sometimes going on all fours, bent over and tense. Their faces were cut up with wrinkles and cuts, looking like fearsome masks of hungry death, with hollow cheeks, moist jagged slits for mouths and shining eyes. Clumps of hair hung down from the skin that was stretched taut over their skulls, but their bodies were hairless
and naked, with extremities that were longer than those of normal humans, some of them even having joints that bent in the opposite direction. The creatures moved with unusual grace and flexibility, like caterpillars, while still managing to stay quiet, even though many of their fingers ended in long claws. Rick noticed primitive bone daggers in some of their hands and slowly reached for the handle of the knife in his belt.

  There were many of the creatures—around a dozen. And they obviously knew how to act as a well coordinated group, so there was not chance for only three people to fight back.

  As they approached, a thick smell of unwashed bodies started to be felt. Rick, Maya and Tommo froze in the middle of the air duct and watched the approach of the pack of night crawlers. Here they were, but a few paces away, sniffing at the air. Some of them made gurgling noises in their throats, but the pack continued moving on.

  Rick could barely stop himself from stabbing out with the knife in his hand when the face of one of the night crawlers was close enough to almost touch him. The creature glanced him over carefully and then stared back into the darkness. The rest did the same as they slid past. One of them sniffed Maya's cheek and even licked the place that Tommo had marked with the paint. Another touched the wall, turned around, looked at Tommo and hurried after his packmates.

  An incredibly long minute passed before Rick could breathe out and let go of his grip on the knife on his belt. Maya wordlessly sank to the floor, shaking. Tommo made a calming gesture, implying that the crawlers had gone and that they needed to be on their way.

  “You're right, my friend,” Rick whispered and made a hungry gulp from the flask. “We were definitely lucky. We must get out of here.”

  He passed the flask to Maya and asked her to gather the strength they would need for the ascent.

  “These beasts have excellent hearing,” Rick whispered in her ear. “But I hope that by the time they return, we will already be high up.”

  “Ask your Machine God for that,” Maya said seriously.

  “Are you all right?” Rick prepared the carabiners and the cable.

  “Couldn't be worse.”

  “I wouldn't say things like that. You understand that...”

  “I only understand that we need to get out of this well!”

  “At the next junction,” Rick assured her.

  After a while, they crossed ten sector floors and crawled through a side air duct to the nearest ventilation grille. Rick spent a while carefully examining the corridor through the bars while wearing his special goggles and reported that he saw nothing suspicious. Maya immediately ordered Tommo to break the grille open.

  In a moment, all three of them jumped down onto the floor.

  14

  IT TURNED OUT that they did not arrive in a corridor but in a very long and spacious room, which was also rather unusual. Rick had never seen anything like it. A standard residential room looked different. It also did not meet the description of a room full of “wonders” as Patrol Commander Ivon called them. There was nothing to compare it to.

  First, the companions made sure that they were not under threat. Then, they tried to switch on the lights and were successful—Maya touched a little actuator by the entry door and oval lamps started to slowly light up under the ceiling.

  “The power is on!” Maya exclaimed in a quiet whisper.

  The room looked abandoned. Most of the space was taken up with rows of chairs turned towards the wall, which featured a large and very dusty light rectangle. Rick sank down into a chair and understood that he had not felt this tired for a long time. The incredibly soft back and seat of the chair embraced him and his hands lay on the armrests by themselves. Rick spent another second distractedly observing Tommo replace the ventilation grille and then his consciousness abandoned him to sleep.

  His dream was short and confusing. He dreamed of his home, but spring still had not come. Rick had to deliver an important message, which was apparently destined for another friendly sector that had made its presence known and called for help. So Rick went on a distant journey through the cold and dark, but the most unusual thing about it was his route. The destination of the journey was beyond the Expanse. Rick stood by the Omicron barrier and the whole Commune was watching. The last source of light was in the hands of Aurora, who was seeing him off—an oil lamp. And then, Rick stepped beyond the confines of the sector and an inhuman cold immediately gripped his body. But there were still days of travel ahead, full of nights without a roof over his head, monsters and obstacles... Rick turned for the last time so that he would remember his sister's face as well as possible, and suddenly understood that the face was Maya's.

  “Wake up,” she said.

  “What happened?” Rick was blinking, unable to think clearly.

  “We have worked out the situation a bit,” Maya looked calm and satisfied. “Do you know what this place is?”

  “How would I know?” he grumbled, suddenly working out where he was and that he had just been woken up.

  “Hey, stop being grouchy,” Maya looked at him with reproach. “I have suffered no less than you and I want a rest too, but first I must tell you this. Do you know what that white thing is?”

  She pointed at the wall with the rectangle and Rick shook his head.

  “Living pictures appear on it,” Maya grandly announced.

  “I want to eat something,” Rick was not impressed with the information about the pictures. He stretched languorously, getting rid of the remains of his sleep.

  Maya gave him a flask of water and a briquette made up of a yellow mass in clear packaging. Rick did not bother finding out where the briquette came from, tore away the packaging and tried the concentrate—it turned out to be tasty. He started chewing, without even asking what it was, while Maya hurriedly explained things to him. It turned out that the ancients used to watch living pictures on the white rectangle. Special projection equipment was in the neighboring room as well as shelves full of disks with these sorts of pictures. Any disk could be selected, put into a special device and watched. She showed Rick one of the cases. Rick carefully read the name, letter by letter: “Indians of the Amazon”. Maya gave him another pair of cases. He read: “The Sahara Desert” and “A Year in the Alps” and looked at the girl questioningly.

  Maya, happy as a little kid, shrugged her shoulders.

  “I have no idea what's on them!”

  Tommo calmly sat in a chair nearby and ignored them as usual. Once he finished the briquette, Rick followed Maya into the disk storeroom and started to read names which said nothing to him. The meaning only seemed somewhat clear to him once—the case was labeled “History of the Olympic Games”. He thought it was about some sort of competition.

  “Why don't we check this one out?” he offered.

  Maya nodded, took the disk out of the case and put it inside an oblong machine. They went back into the hall. The dusty rectangle lit up and some writing appeared on it.

  And then the rectangle came alive!

  Rick could not help but flinch—it was as if a large window opened in front of them, so clear was the image and the sounds coming from all directions. They saw a huge space, something like an oval hall that was surrounded by rows of benches covered with a huge number of people making a great amount of noise. Half-naked competitors ran one after another along tracks on the floor of the hall.

  Suddenly, a pleasant male voice spoke over the noise, “The history of the Olympic Games starts with the Ancient Greek myth of Olympus and the competitions that the citizens of Athens organized in honor of the gods in their pantheon...”

  Rick and Maya watched, completely frozen in place, until the rectangle on the wall went dark and a message saying “The End” appeared. When that happened, Tommo loudly clapped his hands a few times.

  “Did you understand anything?” Rick uttered slowly.

  Maya, who had been leaning back hard into her seat turned to look at him with difficulty. Her eyes were full of delight and admiration.

/>   “This is an incredibly valuable find,” she finally found the words. “This is a treasure. We have found a treasure trove!”

  “I am talking about this picture in particular.”

  “I think so. It looks like some sort of ritual or trial. Testing human ability.”

  “Did you see their faces?” Rick asked. “It was as if they were alive... They were alive! True techno-magic.”

  They watched another pair of pictures—one was about a gigantic aquarium which was called an “ocean” and the journeys people had through an unbelievable mass of water, and another about a big farm and jungles that had trees as high as ten, or fifteen or even more levels. Rick especially came closer to the screen to watch the moving picture, touched the surface, ran around the hall trying to change his perspective, felt the walls but did not manage to be particularly successful in his research.

  “You can't see the ceiling in any of these pictures. Where is the ceiling?” he said, completely perplexed, when Maya switched off the projection machine. “Where were the walls? Now, that's a mystery.”

  “Well, they had that really large and very bright lamp there,” Maya suggested. “That means there must have been a ceiling.”

  “That's right,” Rick agreed. “Now what? Shall we go further up?”

  “I think we should take a few cases with us.”

  “I knew you wouldn't be able to leave this place empty handed,” he smiled.

  All three of them went out into the corridor and started to examine the surrounding sector space. This place had high ceilings and mainly transparent walls. The space was like one large, complex gallery, with balconies, stairways, connecting corridors and many auxiliary rooms. Columns and arches decorated with protruding drawings were everywhere. There was a mosaic on the floor. Everything bore the mark of chaos and abandonment, and there were pieces of broken furniture and unknown machines strewn around in different places around the corridor. Some of the structures in some of the rooms were twisted or melted by fire.