/// I think I would agree.
I hope you find some comfort in that. ///
/Small comfort,/ he answered. But he had to admit, small comfort was better than none at all.
*
After a time, Ik did begin to explain, haltingly, a bit about his own world and his journey to this place. His last memory of his home was an image of his sun flaring in a dazzling explosion, an explosion that could only have meant the death of everything he knew. He had been diving straight into the sun at the time, and was carried to safety and exile by some technology (he touched his translator-stones) that he did not understand. Before that, he had been busy following the urging of the stones, persuading some of his fellows to flee Hraachee'a in spaceships bearing other daughter-stones. He had watched in shock as those ships plunged into the unstable sun in apparent self-immolation. Then his own ship followed, and sometime later, he found himself here. But what had become of his fellows who had fallen into the sun before him, he didn't know.
"You don't even know if they lived or died?" Bandicut asked.
"I do not," Ik said, before falling silent again.
Bandicut told Ik how he had come here, after saving his planet from collision with a comet in a similarly bewildering flight. The resonance of his story with Ik's was profoundly unnerving to him. Ik made no comment, but seemed less surprised than Bandicut. There was, of course, one crucial difference: Bandicut had been able to save his world, while Ik had not. He shuddered a little as he reflected upon that fact.
/// I feel
strong echoes from my own past
as I listen, John Bandicut. ///
/Did your world die?/ he asked silently.
The quarx didn't answer, didn't seem to know the answer.
The sun climbed overhead as they walked, and grew stiflingly warm. Behind them, the little cliff and copse had long since disappeared in a hazy line of hills. On either side, the escarpments were drawing inward, flanking them at a range of perhaps half a kilometer. Ahead, the plain narrowed into something more like a canyon.
Ik picked up the pace again, keeping them equidistant from the scarps. When Bandicut asked why, Ik peered from side to side, rubbing his chest with one hand. "I wish to move without surprises," he answered, striding even faster.
Bandicut glanced right and left, uneasily. /I wonder if he's worried about getting ambushed in that canyon./
/// Ambushed? ///
/Something we used to see in old movies—westerns, especially. Charlie-One was a big fan of them./
/// Should I study those memories, too? ///
/Sure./ Bandicut was breathing hard. He wished he'd stayed in better shape.
/// You used to exercise in a big
circular room. ///
Indeed: the centrifuge room on Triton, where he'd, all too infrequently, worked out under increased gravity. He'd gotten soft in the one-thirteenth gee of Triton. He shifted his backpack wearily, keeping his legs moving.
Ik spoke. "You must tell me if you need to rest. I am more accustomed to this, perhaps."
Bandicut pressed on for about five minutes more, then panted, "Okay! I need to rest."
Ik came to a halt at once. Bandicut dropped his pack and fell into the grass, gasping. He semaphored to the robots as they caught up, to make sure they didn't run him over.
"This might be a good time to take food," said Ik. He reached into a leathery pocket and placed a small, dark stick in his mouth. It looked like a cigar. He worried it about between his hard lips, then bit off a small piece.
Bandicut found his bottle and gratefully sipped some water. He regretted not looking for a place to refill it prior to setting out. He shrugged and lay back for a few moments, then sat up and asked the robots their power levels. They were down only a couple of percentage points. He grunted. Whatever had been done to them, someone seemed to want them to last. Maybe he should quit worrying about it. "Ik," he asked, "are we going through that canyon ahead?
"Probably."
"Because you think—what's your friend's name?"
"Li-Jared."
"Because you think Li-Jared came this way?"
"I have seen his tracks in the grass. At least, I believe so."
"Tracks?" Bandicut echoed. He'd seen nothing. "Huh." He lay back, luxuriating in the grass. He heard a tiny rustle and turned his head, squinting. Something was moving, low to the ground. He suppressed a reflex to sit up abruptly. "Ik?"
"Urrr?"
"There's something watching us."
"Urrrrr?"
"In the grass. An animal."
A creature the size of a puppy was just visible now through the blades of grass, sitting up like a prairie dog. It cocked its head one way, then another, while gazing intently at Bandicut. It had a wide face, with tufted ears. Its eyes were bright, as though with intelligence.
Bandicut remained still. He didn't want to scare it away—or worse, provoke an attack. But after a minute, he called softly, "Hello! Can you hear me?" The creature's ears twitched. "I won't hurt you."
The creature's eyes blinked. It gave a short, high-pitched whistle, then vanished.
/// Did you frighten it? ///
/I must have. You know, it sure looked an awful lot like a . . . not a prairie dog, exactly, but something close./
/// Yes.
I caught a memory-flash when you first saw it.
It reminded you of . . . a meerkat. ///
Something flickered in Bandicut's mind, and he suddenly recalled TV pictures he'd seen years ago. Meerkats: tameable African mammals, about the size of prairie dogs, with bodies shaped like bowling pins and gawky but alert faces. Charlie was right.
"Is your . . . observer still there?" Ik asked.
Bandicut sat up with a grunt. "I seem to have scared it away." He peered where the creature had been, but if there was a hole in the ground, he couldn't see it. "I wonder what it was."
Ik clicked his mouth. "I cannot guess. I have been this way only once before. I do not know those who live here." The Hraachee'an rose. "John Bandicut, we must move on.
Bandicut lumbered to his feet. "Whatever you say. We don't want to miss your friend."
"Rakhh. No, we do not," Ik said vehemently, and set off at a fast walk.
Bandicut waved the robots into motion.
*
"Your friend—what sort of danger is he in?" Bandicut asked as they walked.
"I cannot say. He did not appear at our—" rasp "—rendezvous. I am quite concerned." Ik strode tirelessly, his eyes focused ahead. "Because of the contamination I spoke of."
"Contamination? It sounds like a disease."
Ik seemed to consider the question. "Perhaps," he allowed. "But more like a—" rasp "—enemy."
"Enemy?" Bandicut echoed uneasily.
"Yes. Not our personal enemy, so much as the world's."
Bandicut nearly stumbled. "That sounds ominous."
"Hah. Yes. I do not wish to speak much of it, just now. One never knows, in a strange place, whether another might somehow be listening."
Bandicut grunted, hooking his thumbs in his pack straps as he tried to sort that out. "How did you and Li-Jared get separated?"
"Rakh. We entered a portal too many—" rasp "—seconds apart. It changed destinations between us. I had to work my way back to this place."
"Um." Bandicut had passed through portals twice now, both times blindly. It was sobering to realize that even if you thought you knew where you were going, you could end up somewhere else entirely. He cleared his throat. "Where, if I may ask, were you going?"
"Ah, a place of—" rasp "—machines and consoles and communications stones. We had been searching for information." Ik's stride seemed to become heavier, more determined.
"What sort of information?" Bandicut was beginning to breathe hard, but didn't want to break his stride.
"Hah." Ik made a rumbling sound, peering left and right, as though scanning for enemies along the escarpments. "Information about, rrrrmm . . ." Band
icut tried to read Ik's expression, and couldn't. The Hraachee'an's eyes were alight. "About who is responsible for—" and he swept his hand in a bobbing curve, taking in the landscape, then turned his fingers in toward himself and flicked them out toward Bandicut.
"You mean, who built this place? And brought us here?"
"Haahh! Yes." Ik shut his mouth decisively, then added, "And, perhaps, if we are very fortunate, information about how to leave it."
Bandicut's heart skipped a beat.
/// You may have more in common with Ik
than you thought. ///
/Yah./ Bandicut strode on with renewed energy. As if in response, Ik picked up his pace.
Bandicut heard a click from the robots, trailing about six meters behind. "John Bandicut," Napoleon called. "I am detecting motion to the left."
"Motion? What kind?" Bandicut glanced back. "Can you guys move up?"
With a whine of acceleration, Napoleon loped alongside. "Coppy is at top speed already."
"Okay, keep an eye on him for me. What are you seeing?"
"Localized movements in the grass. And on the higher formations, small profiles appearing and disappearing. The grouping is moving longitudinally."
"What direction?"
"Parallel to our course, Captain."
"What's this Captain bit?" Bandicut asked distractedly. "Coppy calls me Captain, not you." He shaded his eyes, but couldn't see any movement. "Do you still see them?"
"Contact at your nine o'clock, twenty meters distant, in the grass."
"Ik, can you hold up a second?" Bandicut slowed and peered to his left. "Where? I don't—oh, wait—there!" It was a meerkat-creature, bounding through the grass.
"I see it," said Ik. "But I believe we should keep moving."
"Two more, at four o'clock and ten o'clock," said Napoleon.
"I wonder why they're following us. Curiosity?"
Copernicus rolled up alongside. "Cap'n, I have eleven sightings altogether. Shall I provide bearings?"
"I don't think—"
"John—Bandie—I do not know if they will be troublesome. But I feel a need to move quickly. I have a strong . . . intuition." Ik's face contorted slightly. "If you wish, you may follow behind me."
Bandicut shivered. "No way. We'll keep up."
They began walking again. After a little while, Ik said, "I did not finish explaining. Li-Jared and I have been seeking a place of control."
"Control? Control of what? You mean, this whole region?" Bandicut gestured, without breaking stride, at the hills around them.
"Yes. No! Not the region only. For the—" rasp rasp "meta . . . world."
Bandicut peered at him. "The what?"
"Metaworld," Ik repeated.
/// I think he means, this entire place.
All of the environments.
The metaworld.
I believe I recall other names, as well.
Metaship . . . Shipworld . . . ///
Bandicut blinked. /You have been here before, then./
"John Bandie? You understand?"
Dizzily, he answered, "No, not really. Do you mean the whole—what did you call it? Shipworld? I don't understand it, Ik."
The alien hrrrm'd softly. "Nor I, John. Nor I."
"But—" he struggled to put it all together "—if it's not a planet, it's still very large, isn't it?"
"Haww, indeed. Very very large. Much larger than a planet."
Bandicut swallowed. Larger than a planet? What could be self-contained, and larger than a planet? He'd heard of Dyson spheres and ring-shaped constructs; but from what he'd glimpsed on the outside, he didn't think it fit the description of any of those. He remained silent, listening to the robots drone rhythmically behind them.
"We seek greater knowledge of it," Ik continued. "That is why we seek the control area."
Bandicut recalled the chamber just down the corridor from his spaceship. "Ik, when we arrived here, we saw a place with all sorts of consoles and displays—for information, I assume. Or for . . . control." He shook his head. It seemed weeks ago, but was actually just yesterday.
"Yes? What did you learn from them?"
"Nothing. I couldn't get close to them."
"Gaaii—a pity. Do you know how to return there?"
Bandicut sighed. "No. I wish we could have made some contact there." As he said it, he remembered that he had made a kind of contact, during "normalization." But the contact had all been one way, a powerful intelligence studying and evaluating him. He wondered what its conclusions had been.
"Do not despair. Such places differ greatly from region to region. We have learned much, Li-Jared and I, though much less than we would like." Ik peered left and right. "We have learned, at least rumor—that there is a—" Rasp.
Bandicut felt the translator-stones tickling, searching for the words it needed.
"—convergence—" rasp "—branching—" rasp "—tree of information. A place where information branches and flows, like a powerful stream." Ik's eyes sparkled. "Not a single flow, but a place where one can—" rasp rasp "—walk—swim—float—in a sea of knowledge."
Bandicut's stones were buzzing, but the message came through clearly enough. A datanet. A mokin' datanet. For the first time in a long while, he felt a sensation he had almost forgotten: his thoughts crowding together in a euphoric glow, then dancing away in drunken pirouettes.
"I have heard it called the Tree of Ice—" Ik continued.
His focus was slipping away, into the beginning of silence-fugue. Not again! a part of his mind cried. He was not done with it, after all . . .
/// Is something wrong? ///
The quarx's voice sounded more curious than concerned.
Bandicut muttered distractedly, /I hope you remember how to help me with this, Charlie! Would you look at that./
/// What? ///
/Datanet structures. Holy mokin'—/ Words failed as he peered sideways, at stacked layers of flickering jewellike connections that had appeared, high on the clifftops flanking them. The mere sight of those connections, those pathways, made him dizzy, made him want to reach for the neurolink . . .
/// John, I'm not sure— ///
He could barely speak, except with one small corner of his mind. /Silence . . . fugue. I used to link into something . . . just like this . . ./ He felt faint, as connections winked open around him, rays of light coruscating from distant sapphires and rubies, encrusting the scarps. /And I had an accident—/ Which had put him into a near-coma, and left his neuros dead, except for the intermittent silence-fugue that had haunted him ever since . . . the hallucinations, which the earlier Charlie had found a way to stop.
"John . . . Bandicut?"
/Help me, Charlie!/ he whispered. /Before I go over the edge!/
/// How? ///
/Find the memories!/ He blinked, trying to remain sober and clear enough to maintain his course with Ik. Don't alarm him . . .
The Hraachee'an was peering sideways at him, sensing something wrong.
Sparks erupted from the hallucinatory connections, spiraling out like corkscrews. He felt little spikes of pain between his eyes. He staggered, struggled to keep his feet moving in a straight line.
"John, are you—"
"Just having a little . . . flashback," he wheezed. "Ik?"
"Hrrm?"
He fought to keep the clear corner of his mind in focus. "I've had—experience—with the type of place you described. The information exchange. But I had an accident—"
Ik stopped and stared at him.
"And I—" And suddenly his thoughts regathered and clarified, like a chemical reaction abruptly changing color. The datanet gems vanished from the clifftops; the fog evaporated from around his head. "Yes," he murmured. /Thank you, Charlie./
"Hrrm?"
"And sometimes it . . . causes me trouble." He let out a long breath. "I think it's passed now. I feel better."
Ik's eyes flickered. "Good. Perhaps you can tell me later. Right now I believe I sense dan
ger ahead." He began moving quickly again. Toward the danger.
Bandicut was startled to realize that the scarps had closed in on both sides now; they were walking down a grass-carpeted canyon, walled by cliffs. He glimpsed movement in the grass. Meerkats?
He looked back. "Nappy? Ik, wait!" The robots had dropped behind. "Nappy!" His yell echoed back from the cliff walls. He could see Napoleon's sensor-array swiveling. The robot sprang forward, and Copernicus kicked up a cloud of dust, speeding to follow. "What the hell are you two—?"
"John Bandicut, we are picking up low frequency sounds, of increasing intensity!" Napoleon called, loping toward him like a mutant silver grasshopper.
"Sounds? What sort of sounds?"
Napoleon halted and stared with black sensor-eyes. "Droom-da-da-da-droom-da-droom-da-da-da-droom . . ." The robot sounded like a badly amplified kettle drum.
"It was submodulated and may have been carrying information," said Copernicus, rolling up. "The wavefront began behind us and passed us about one minute ago. We stopped to take readings."
"This is troubling," Ik said, surveying the cliffs. Bandicut noticed for the first time some angry-looking storm clouds overhead. In the silence, he imagined he heard a faint, low rumbling in the ground. "John Bandicut, I must speed ahead quickly. You must catch up."
Bandicut's voice caught. "I hate to get separated."
"I will wait at the end of the canyon. Not much farther."
"But—"
Before Bandicut could finish his protest, Ik bounded away at an amazing speed.
Bandicut swallowed hard. "Let's go, boys. And no stopping!" He set off at the fastest pace he thought he could maintain.
/// What's Ik worried about? ///
Bandicut had no answer, as he glanced up into the darkening sky.
*
Ik was far ahead. Bandicut tried to pace himself, while still keeping his friend in sight. The cliffs, sharply broken and striated, as if they had been formed by the land jerking itself apart, loomed on either side of him. The grass grew thin and the ground hard under his feet. His steps began to seem like a beating drum, and the motors of the robots like the thrum of alien machinery.
After five or ten minutes, he had to pause, waving the robots on ahead. As he caught his breath, he peered up at the cliffs, torn between fear and awe at their carved beauty, glowing red in a patch of late afternoon sunlight that shone through a break in the dark clouds.
The Chaos Chronicles Page 39