The URANUS Code (Citadel World Book #1)

by Kir Lukovkin

  “Wait,” Maya interrupted, “You talked to them?”

  “I regularly reported to them about what was happening in the Commune.”

  “What did they look like?” Rick asked.

  “Like normal people. They were always surrounded by light.”

  Rick and Maya looked at each other.

  “There was always a priest by my side, watching me,” Drachus continued. “At first I nearly lost my mind, but I then I got used to it and went along with it.” He was quiet for a moment, as if thinking is he should share something important, but then made up his mind. “The most unpleasant part was managing the population of the Commune. The sector had limited resources, so they had to be distributed evenly. The number of people had to stay stable. If too many children were born, more old people had to be removed, so that there was enough food and water for everyone, otherwise starvation would set in.”

  Maya jumped up from the chair, consumed with rage.

  “And then you talk about love and care? I just can't believe it!”

  “I understand you, but we had no other choice.”

  “That's rich!” Rick was surprised. “There is so much free space around, and you had no choice!”

  “We didn't!” Drachus slammed his fist on the table. “They forbid it. They said that if a new generation of the Commune grows and starts to take over neighboring sectors, it will cause chaos and endless wars that will ruin the architecture of the Expanse and all of Thermopolis will be threatened. This is what they said and I believed them. Sometimes, they allowed us to send out small units and attack the disunited tribes outside, but it was more as a way of letting off steam, as opposed to real need.”

  “I think I understand why they organize all these games to reach a new level now,” Rick said.

  “Yes. And then, my time had come. I could not step into the chasm, I was too afraid. I chose banishment instead, where I should have died from the poisonous beasts or starvation, but fate decreed otherwise. Then, I went up here and have been living on this level since those times.”

  Drachus went silent and greedily drank some water from a large bottle. Tommo whistled quietly.

  “The communication system works,” Maya pointed out the main thing.

  “And the one who controls it knows the whole truth,” Rick summarized

  “Could you set up a new conversation using the local terminal?” Maya asked with interest.

  Drachus laughed sadly in reply.

  “Everything was controlled by those damn priests!” he said. “I never touched a single button over those years.”

  “But surely you must have remembered the combinations and other details?”

  “Of course I did! I even tried to start up the terminal by myself when I was Warden and had the opportunity. But a priest suddenly appeared by my side and warned me not to do that under pain of death. They were somehow always one step ahead of me. It was almost like they were reading my mind, the demons.”

  “All right, but they are not nearby now,” Maya smiled.

  Drachus froze—his face twisted and an unhealthy glint appeared in his eyes.

  “Are you entirely sure of that?” he asked. “I'm not.”

  Rick felt uneasy. His feeling were being confirmed and his fears became flesh and blood. It looked like the old Warden was gradually losing his mind after being imprisoned by loneliness for many years. But maybe there was some truth in his words? He also sometimes felt that there was someone watching them all the time.

  “That sounds like...” Rick began.

  “Like what?” Drachus exclaimed, and then continued, “You must understand, boy, anything is possible in this world and in these walls. I understood this a long time ago when I realized that I don't know even a hundredth part of all the wonders that fill this giant labyrinth of floors and stairways. There are safe places like my lair, but the rest is a hungry abyss, ready to consume you at any moment.”

  A depressing silence hung over the room. The Warden suddenly stood up.

  “Let's go,” he picked up his weapon from the chair by his side, “I will show you something interesting.”

  The followed him through the zigzagging passageways and stairways and finally came out in a spacious corridor. This sector was not particularly symmetrical or similar to the ones below—the whole sector was like a jumble of glass balls and tubes randomly connected together. Rick quickly lost his bearings. The rats ran from the Warden, squeaking loudly. It looked like they knew who was coming, Drachus probably killed many of their kin.

  Then, they passed through a chain of upward and downward slopes, galleries and rooms of all sorts of shapes and sizes. Unremarkable halls alternated with multicolored rooms chock full of brightly colored machines, tables covered with green cloth, long tables connected together, tables with holes, balls and other figures in the middle as well as tables divided into squares with numbers. They passed cabins separated from the world outside by curtains with pictures of laughing men and women, as well as some sort of multicolored creatures. They passed miniature buildings and figures of people that were put together in one large horizontal space—such models filled one of the large halls. They passed halls with long paths that had large balls with holes in them nearby, with bottle-shaped statuettes lying around.

  When Drachus led them into yet another hall, Rick and Maya stopped, almost unable to breathe—the hall was full of people. But after they took a closer look, they understood that these were simplified copies of human figures that were draped in desiccated rags. The companions passed by display windows with jewelry, ancient footwear and bags, clothing and headwear behind them, whole squadrons of bottles and flasks, little boxes and tins, with contents that had long spoiled or dried out.

  They negotiated rows of tables, pools, sculptures and signs that seemed to go on forever and in every kind of combination. Rick's head was completely mixed up because of the plethora of items in this sector. He saw pictures, figurines and even skeletons of unknown beasts that had once live in the Expanse. He saw whole plots of land and rock surrounded by low fences that seemed to present some sort of arrangements—dips and hills, gray rocks, red rocks, black pieces of slate, whole piles of little stones and pieces of something that looked like red syrup with white veins.

  Once, they saw an effigy behind glass—it was a man, bearing a spear and dressed in the furs of some unknown beast, all tanned and half-naked, with a large jaw and a slanting forehead. His eyes were the most striking feature, as his unknown creator managed to make them show both an animal and a sentient nature. There were more figures like this further along the corridor—most of them had partially decayed and fallen apart, but sometimes there were very well preserved works of stone that portrayed humans, animals and their hybrids in horrific combinations against incredible backgrounds, which invited a closer and more careful look at all the details. There were figures of humans in metallic clothing or in fish scales, those holding enormous, long knifes, figures bearing ancient versions of the blaster, wearing wide brimmed hats, conical and round helmets, figures with banners, in four wheeled machines, astride four legged animals with tails, those wearing long-skirted clothing, men bearing canes and wearing pieces of glass on their eyes and people with mysterious little boxes in their hands. There were women wearing clothing of every kind of length and style and there were children and their pet animals.

  Then they entered rows of ancient technology, moving from simple tools to complex mechanisms of unknown origin that had strange shapes.

  For instance, there was a double tube with glass on the end. Or a ball on a stand. There was a whole box full of little objects, like windows, signs and arrows. There were small items that looked like needles and large ones that looked like clock faces, short and long, the use of some being obvious from their appearance and others that were complex and composed of many parts. Rick was amazed by a small machine that looked like a box, but which was composed of a hundred small parts that were visible outside and ended in
a small pad, probably so that it could be touched with fingers. The insides of this device were like the skeleton of the boniest fish in the world: rods, springs, cogs and wheels were connected inside like an arcane puzzle. Another device was just a ball hanging on a string above a circle. The ball was still.

  “We are walking through the museum zone,” Drachus explained. “Museums are something like a storeroom for objects from the past.”

  “What's the point of storing them?”

  “To remember,” Maya said. “It is very important.”

  “That's correct,” the Warden said and gave the girl an approving glass. The ancients came to the museums and remembered how their even more ancient ancestors looked.

  “It never crossed my mind that someone could have existed before them,” Rick admitted.

  “Us humans have a long history.”

  Their journey came to an end at last. Drachus brought them to yet another platform that had a door with a familiar sigil nearby.

  “A terminal,” Maya guessed. “There's one of these in every sector.”

  “Yes, but that is not what I wanted to show you.” The Warden made a sharp turn on his heels and took around ten steps to the side, so she stood by a bulge in the wall that looked like wider version of a ventilation shaft.

  “While those scumbags were watching me, I unobtrusively watched them too. And you know what I found out? Every time that a priest entered a room like this, they disappeared without a trace. This is how I concluded that they somehow get to the place where the people on the machine screens are. Have a look. Maybe you know something about this?

  “It's an elevator, Warden,” Maya says. “It takes things up.”

  Drachus understood, just not immediately.

  “Oh, a machine that moves up and down?”

  “That very thing.” Rick confirmed. “The priests used the elevator and there is nothing amazing about that. There is a different question here. If the elevators in the Omicron sector had been blocked long ago, how did their elevator work?”

  “The same way as the communicator,” Maya replied. “They handle technology as easily as you handle a knife.”

  “Yes.” The Warden licked his lips. “This is what I thought about when you told me about the genetic code. Maybe it will work? Try it.”

  “No problem,” Rick answered. “But first, I want to know why this will work with me and not with you. You're the Warden.”

  “I am a person from Omicron, and you're not!” the Warden breathed out.

  “What does that mean? I was born and I grew up in the Commune...” Rick began, but then remembered Kyoto's words.

  Drachus guessed what he was thinking.

  “Whatever you though right now, you already understood that you're wrong.”

  “What do you know? Tell me.” Rick stepped towards Drachus, piercing him with a demanding glare. “Come on!”

  “Relax.” Drachus frowned. “It is related to your mother.”

  “She was born outside the sector. And what does that mean?”

  “That she was biologically different to the people of Omicron. She was an outsider, and she was already pregnant when they brought her here. Pregnant with you!”

  “Which sector was she taken from?”

  “Only Croesus knows. He was leading the retaliation force. He said that he personally chose her among the other barbarian women and...” Drachus faltered.

  “Speak!” Rick grabbed him by the collar.

  “Let me go, boy! Calm down!”

  “Tell me what you wanted to say! Come on! Tell me, or I will gut you right here!” Rick put a blade to the stomach of the old man with a quick movement.

  “She was Croesus' concubine!” Drachus exclaimed.

  Rick stepped back. His face paled. He turned away and walked over to the edge of the platform. Maya started to talk to the old man about genetics, trying to defuse the situation. Tommo calmly stood nearby and looked around without a care. Rick gathered his thoughts and came back to the elevator. He approached, as Drachus was trying to explain his ideas to Maya.

  “From the conversations of the priests, I generally managed to establish that humans have different types of this code. Simple technology requires standard passwords or combinations that even a child could enter. Machines that are too complicated or dangerous work by reading the code from the hand. I saw the priests lay their hands upon panels and the machine only obeyed them because they had that code. If the machine obeyed him,” the patriarch nodded at Rick, “it means that his mother was born in one of the upper sectors. Maybe they are people of a higher caste that are the direct descendants of the ancients? Who knows.”

  “Enough talk,” Rick interrupted and approached the elevator panel.

  The black square looked like it was drawn on the wall. Rick pressed his head on the panel. There was no effect.

  “That's that,” he said. We can go back now.

  “Wait,” Maya pulled on his sleeve. “You are always too hasty.”

  “What is there to wait for? The machine does not react.”

  “Because it needs to be turned on.”

  She flicked the switch on the elevator control panel from the bottom to the top position.

  A second later, the panel hummed quietly. Rick repeated the attempt. This time, a green light started to blink against the black background. They waited with bated breath. Numbers appeared, counting down from floor seven hundred and forty.

  “Our floor is six hundred and forty,” Maya reminded, and they started to watch the countdown on the panel. To their surprise, the elevator arrived very quickly.

  “We can run away before it's too late,” Maya said.

  “Never,” Rick cut her off. “Prepare to shoot.”

  But there was no need for shooting. The elevator opened and the brightly lit and clean cabin was empty. A pleasant breath of fresh air came out of it. It was a new and unfamiliar smell.

  “It seems that this is where we part our ways,” Drachus said, as he handed Rick his heavy and cumbersome weapon. “Be careful with this thing, it's quite powerful. It has enough charge for a couple of hundred shots.”

  “Thank you, Warden. And what about you?”

  “I can do without. There are rooms full of this stuff around here.”

  Maya and Tommo stepped into the cabin. Rick stopped for a second to talk to Drachus.

  “I am sorry for being so hot tempered and... my suspicions about you.”

  “You shouldn't be. I would be the same if I was in your place. You didn't just grow up without a father, you also had this happen to your mother. Be careful. Good luck!”

  A moment later, the panels of the elevator slid shut, cutting the three of them off from the old man, and the cabin headed upwards so quickly that they had to grab onto the railings on the walls.

  “We are coming up to floor seven hundred and forty!” Maya exclaimed.

  “Why not higher?” Rick enquired.

  “It's simply not possible. This elevator is made for one aeon. It's written right here,” she pointed to a sign under the buttons.

  The walls were translucent and they could see the lamp lights rush downwards through a matte-gray haze. After a few seconds, they heard a melodic peal. The display on the side lit up with a message—“Floor 740”. The elevator reached its destination and the panels slid open. They entered a corridor, holding their weapons at the ready.

  Rick had already learned to orient himself using the signs on the walls and said, “Lambda sector.”

  Maya, who had spent many hours studying the diagram, added as she walked along, “It's a residential sector. The whole aeon is residential. This is the core of Thermopolis.”

  “An empty core,” Rick added, as he looked around.

  Everything was just as abandoned and ruined as below. The only difference was probably the chain of emergency lamps flickering under the ceiling, as well as relative cleanliness. There was almost no mold to be seen and the dark streaks were only in the places
where the air ducts had been pierced. Tommo smelled the air and moved as if he wanted to touch it. His black fingers slowly moved in the air. And then he put them together into the “Quiet!” sign.

  They had already learned to understand the prole and obediently quietened down. Tommo moved on ahead, completely soundlessly—a ghost in an orange jumpsuit. They approached a junction with a large circular corridor and glanced around the corner. A stranger in a white jumpsuit and a helmet with a dark glass visor was standing on a small platform that led to an incline, a place where there was usually a view of the gap between segments. He was holding a lit datapad in his hands, which he was obviously consulting as he bent towards an electronic panel which was built into the wall and read the messages which appeared on it. The stranger was quietly and singing something incomprehensible to himself. Having finished with the datapad, he pressed a button on the panel and the doors of an elevator opened in the wall. One step, and the stranger was gone.

  Tommo signed that everything was fine. The companions left their hiding place. It turned out that there were entrances to several different elevators on the platform. Rick walked up to the panel to examine it more closely. Maya was reading the signs by every elevator. Suddenly, the panel in front of Rick lit up and an unfamiliar face appeared on the screen.

  “Johnson?” a slightly distorted voice came right out of the panel.

  Rick threw himself to the floor and crawled over to the wall.

  “Hey Johnson, stop messing around!” the panel spoke again.

  Maya and Tommo also crouched down and flattened themselves against the wall by his side.

  “Rushdie? Romanov? Damn you!”

  And the screen went black.

  Rick breathed out loudly.

  “It's getting more and more fun,” Maya piped up.

  “What're we going to do?”

  “If Ahmed was here, he would have helped us make sense of all these communications.”