The Chaos Chronicles

by Jeffrey A. Carver

  /// Apparently so. ///

  Ik propped his spacesuit shell against the counter and waved a bony hand in the air. "Where might we register?"

  The whiplike creature straightened up, holding a small object which it pointed at the four companions. A fan of necrotic blue light erupted from the object and swept over them, then winked out. "You are registered," the creature said, with apparent distaste. "And here are your tokens." With a slender hand, it held out four dull, coinlike disks.

  Bandicut peered suspiciously, but Ik reached out without hesitation. A wink of light greeted his fingertips, and seemed to illuminate him from within for an instant. The whip-creature tossed the other disks into the air, and three twinkles of light flickered into Li-Jared, Napoleon, and Bandicut. He felt no discomfort, but had a curious, momentary sense of connection, as though to a datanet. Then it was gone.

  The whip-creature said, "That is your preliminary allowance. You may go now. Leave the spacesuits here. But I assure you maintenance will not be happy."

  "Please convey our appreciation to maintenance," said Ik. "Can you tell us where we might gain access to a map?"

  The creature waved to a door on the far side of the room. "Outside, to your left. And now, I really must ask you—"

  "We're going!" Li-Jared interrupted, as he led the way to the door.

  *

  They found the map-console easily enough, but that was dull compared to the rest of the view. They had stepped out of the office onto a high overlook—a towering atrium balcony, at least a hundred stories high, judging by the myriad levels visible on the opposite side. While Ik hunched over the console, trying to make sense of their location, Bandicut wandered over to take a dizzying look. He leaned cautiously over a too-low railing and gazed down upon an astounding promenade, which could have been the largest shopping mall in the galaxy. It appeared full of living beings of one sort or another, most of them the size of fleas from where he stood. People! Not human, no—but for the first time since he'd arrived on Shipworld, he felt a real breath of hope. He might actually be in a place where he could meet citizens in ordinary life and discover what this place was all about—not in flight or conflict, but just in daily existence. Was it possible that there could be humans here, or at least a place for him, after all that had gone before?

  /// Perhaps, perhaps, ///

  whispered Charlie, responding it seemed not so much to Bandicut's thoughts as to some deep wistfulness within himself.

  Li-Jared peered over the railing, beside him. "Does your 'home' have anything like this?"

  Bandicut blinked, feeling a moment of vertigo. He drew a slow breath. "Sort of. But a lot smaller." He was thinking, not of Earth proper, but of an extended mall that ringed L5 City—or used to, a thousand or a million years ago, before he left.

  /// Don't draw conclusions without facts. ///

  Bandicut frowned.

  "A bit ostentatious, I think," Li-Jared said. "I find these—" b'wang "—carbuncles of civilization to be rather overdone. Still, that's no reason to see it destroyed." The chimplike being craned his neck to peer up toward the ceiling. There was something like a sun up there, but refracted or reflected through some very odd geometric effects.

  "Destroyed?" Bandicut said puzzled. "Why should it be destroyed?"

  Li-Jared lowered his gaze. "I do not say that it should be. But why should a star-spanner factory be destroyed? Why does the boojum do what it does?"

  "I don't know," Bandicut answered.

  Li-Jared flicked his fingers—a shrug?—and turned away to rejoin Ik.

  Bandicut sighed and craned his neck up and down, and judged that—even at this dizzying height—they were less than halfway up from floor to ceiling. The atrium balconies were interconnected here and there by graceful, asymmetric arches—single spans connecting opposite sides, though not necessarily joining floors of equal height. Sargasso-like plants drifted through the open air like balloons riding air currents.

  Bandicut caught himself swaying, and backed hastily away from the railing. He nearly stumbled into a being that was walking behind him, a slouching quadruped built like a tiger, but with an anteater's face. Napoleon whirred and caught him with an extended arm. "Sorry," Bandicut grunted. The alien grumbled something that the translator ignored, and continued on its way. Bandicut shrugged, watching it disappear around a corner. A moment later, he felt something like a sharp mosquito bite on the back of his neck, and smacked himself with his open hand. He felt a momentary full-body tingle like a mild electric shock. He looked at his hand in alarm. But if he had killed an insect, there was no trace of it on his palm.

  Li-Jared was watching him, his pupils narrowed to thin slits. "It may have been nothing," he said.

  Bandicut felt his own eyes narrow. "What do you mean?"

  Li-Jared flicked his fingers absently. "There are small pests to be found most anywhere in this world. Some are living, some not. Some are n-spatial, and merely seek to drain a tiny bit of . . . quantum stability." Li-Jared blinked in that jarring way, then added, "That may have been all it was." He turned back to Ik, leaving Bandicut feeling most unsettled.

  /// May have been all it was.

  I thought I felt something go out of you

  with that bite. ///

  Bandicut focused inward. /Something like . . . "quantum stability"?/ Whatever the hell that was.

  Charlie hesitated a moment.

  /// Something like . . . information, ///

  he said at last.

  Bandicut stared into space, only half aware of his mouth slightly open in an expression of stupidity. He closed it. /Mokin' foke,/ he thought.

  *

  Li-Jared bwanged as Ik left the map-console.

  "I believe I have found what we need."

  "Lead on," said Li-Jared.

  Bandicut set his jaw. "Lead on where? To find food, or a place to stay? I have to tell you, I'm getting tired of all this running around." He waved his hands. "And what about Coppy? Are we going to look for him, and try to find out what's wrong?" Bandicut's breath caught. He was surprised by his own outburst.

  Ik's small black eyes sparkled with inner light. "Coppy, no. Not directly. I would not know where to look, I fear. But, John Bandicut, it may cheer you to know that Li-Jared and I have been in this atrium city before, and we do know our way around it somewhat. I have requested a tracking call on Copernicus. We should be notified if he makes contact with the system. It is the best I know how to do just now."

  Bandicut flushed with frustration. "Then might I ask, what have you found?"

  "A—" rasp "—watering hole," said Ik.

  *

  They located a transport mechanism, recessed in an alcove. It could easily have been mistaken for an elevator. For several seconds, they stood among oddly angled mirrors, with Bandicut trying to look around to get his bearings. The next moment, they were standing in a place of gloomy darkness.

  He coughed involuntarily. The air was full of incense. As his eyes adapted, he saw lights in the darkness—shaded, like Chinese lanterns. "What this?" he croaked, trying to breathe the incense without choking. He saw tables, arranged in a large, seemingly random pattern, not just on the floor, but in the air in a three dimensional array. It was too dark to see what was holding the tables in the air. Each table held a small, luminous globe, and that appeared to be the sole source of illumination in the room. "What are we going to—?" As he began the question, he realized that he was floating, and his words came out as a squawk.

  "Can you see well enough?" Ik asked, close by. "The light here is mostly ultraviolet."

  Wonderful, Bandicut thought. And me with no sunblock. He looked down and realized that some of the fibers in his jumpsuit were glowing brightly in the black light. He squinted instinctively, which did little to improve his vision.

  /// I believe your "normalization"

  will protect you from the ultraviolet. ///

  /That's a relief. Can it let me see, while it's at it?/

&nb
sp; /// Hm. Let me work on that. ///

  "This way," said Ik, pointing to an unoccupied table. Bandicut squinted harder, startled to realize that most of the tables were in fact occupied, by shadowy shapes of light and darkness. He couldn't make out what any of the occupants looked like.

  /// It's not your vision.

  It's supposed to work that way. ///

  Bandicut felt himself gliding into a seat, around a small circular table from Ik and Li-Jared, and Napoleon. /Charlie, is this a fr'deekin' bar?/ He shook his head, thinking, watering hole. Of course.

  He drew a deep breath and looked around. He was suddenly conscious of a very low-frequency thrumming sound, pulsing in and out of his hearing range. Music?

  /// John, I have not heard that song in . . .

  well, I cannot imagine how long! ///

  Charlie sounded amazed, and delighted.

  /Ah,/ Bandicut said, disconcerted. Their table, he realized, was not stationary, but was floating slowly through the darkness. So were all the rest of the tables in the room, drifting in a peculiar minuet, rising as if on air currents, and falling and gliding in slow, curving paths that had no apparent pattern. No wonder he hadn't been able to see what was supporting the tables; nothing was.

  Shaking off a wave of dizziness, he peered at Ik, who had leaned forward over their table lamp and was gazing into it with fierce concentration. Another system interface? Bandicut glanced at Li-Jared and was startled to see him engaged in a handwaving conversation with a shimmering, ghostlike being hovering beside him. A moment later, a fist-sized bubble of a fuming green liquid appeared in front of Li-Jared. A similar bubble appeared before Bandicut.

  "May this . . . be to your liking," said Li-Jared, in a halting translation of what Bandicut decided was probably a toast. He bowed in acknowledgment, and lifted the vaporous green bubble to the light. Li-Jared brought his own drink to his mouth and appeared to sip directly through the clear bubble.

  Bandicut hesitated. The stuff looked corrosive as hell. But maybe the normalization would take care of this, too. /Should I?/ he asked. /It looks radioactive./

  /// Sure, what the hell. ///

  /Watch it, you're starting to sound like Charlie-One./ He took a deep breath. /I hope you know what you're talking about./ He brought the bubble to his puckered lips. A cool flame passed between his lips, down his throat, into his stomach. The sensation was bracing, but not unpleasant. He felt a glow in his fingertips, and relaxed a little. It would probably do him good to relax. Quit worrying. He'd had too many worries.

  Ik looked up from the lamp. "I have made contact. A representative of the Maksu will meet with us shortly. Let us hope we can supply suitable information in exchange."

  Maksu? Information? Bandicut wondered, rather lazily, what Ik was talking about. He also wondered, vaguely, if his mental edge was beginning to slip away.

  /// John, before you drink any more of that— ///

  /Eh?/ He turned the bubble in his hand.

  /// You are definitely losing your edge.

  Before you do, shall we check out Napoleon? ///

  /Mm./ Bandicut stared off into the darkness. He thought he saw something like fish moving through the deepsea gloom. /Sure. Is there a robot repair shop around here somewhere?/ He wasn't imagining things; there were fish moving out there, ripples of blue and silver moving through a haze of smoke, like murky water. He looked away, blinking. He felt as if he were on a raft at sea. He felt a flurry of seasickness.

  /// John, that drink is affecting you. ///

  /How? You mean there are no fish?/ He glanced out of the corner of his eye where the fish had been.

  /// No, I mean the seasickness. ///

  He felt a powerful rush of dizziness.

  /// I'm trying to stabilize it.

  Is that better? ///

  /Awk. Other way./ The dizziness faded abruptly, and he gasped with relief.

  /// Good. Let's do this while we can.

  Could you reach out and

  put your hand on Napoleon's head? ///

  /Yah./ Bandicut gulped. He felt his mind clear a little, and he frowned and did as Charlie had requested. Napoleon peered at him, but remained silent. Bandicut's hand tingled with the familiar sensation of Charlie reaching out; and what he felt was the presence of something not quarx, something reminiscent of the quickness and complexity of the datanet, and yet not quite like that, either. It was something almost living. Almost.

  /Nappy?/ he thought in wonderment.

  The answer was a twitchy hash of confusing input, and he sensed that Charlie was busy trying to interpret it; but if it made any sense to the quarx, it didn't to him. /Charlie—?/

  He sensed a reaction of not now, and a concerted effort on Charlie's part to penetrate some particular haze of confusing patterns. It was like watching a probe in murky water, trying to map an obscured terrain. He felt at once helpless and intimately connected, as tendrils of awareness and uncertainty flickered back and forth. Was Charlie trying to reprogram the robot, or just to understand what had happened to it?

  The boojum? Had the boojum touched Napoleon?

  Would it touch him?

  Bandicut shivered with sudden fear, felt sweat trickling down his neck. He felt a contact with something deeper. Something he couldn't name. There was a sudden electric rush, and a feeling of control slipping away.

  He shuddered with a wave of fear . . . no no no no no . . . and not just fear but revulsion, and bewilderment . . . and he reeled inwardly, tensing and struggling to guard himself, to protect that which was him.

  He had no idea how long he sat that way, rocking slightly forward and backward until the wave passed; but when he unclenched his fists, his palms ached from the bite of his fingernails. He drew short breaths, trying to focus on the others around him. Napoleon was crouched motionless; Li-Jared was sipping from his pink bubble, apparently unaware of anything wrong; Ik was staring into the yellow globe.

  /// John, are you all right? ///

  Charlie called huskily, and he realized that it was not the first time, but the fourth or fifth time that the quarx had asked.

  /I'm not sure,/ he whispered. /What was that? The boojum?/

  The quarx's voice was a soothing presence.

  /// Not the boojum, no.

  It was Napoleon. ///

  /Napoleon?/ he asked dully.

  /// He was scared. Is scared. ///

  Bandicut swallowed. /But of what? The boojum? Copernicus?/

  Charlie didn't answer at once. Then he spoke slowly, with uncertainty.

  /// Maybe, John. Maybe.

  But mostly, I think he's scared

  of being alive. ///

  Bandicut absorbed that in silence. /Alive?/ he said finally. /Do you really mean—?/

  /// I think he's hovering on the brink, John.

  He's changed. ///

  /Yes, I know, but—/

  "Hraaah," said Ik, leaning across the table, his bony face sculpted into a skull-like countenance by the globelight. "I believe the Maksu are approaching." His eyes flickered at Bandicut. "Are you and your robot well?"

  Am I well? Bandicut thought. What a question.

  /// John, I think Napoleon is scared.

  But I have no sense that he is

  wrong, if you understand my meaning.

  I sense no malice or concealed motives. ///

  /Good./ Bandicut nodded slightly. "Yeah, Ik. I'm just a little . . . disoriented."

  "And Napoleon?"

  "He's still recovering from his repairs, I think. But he seems okay, as nearly as I can tell."

  "Then would you mind remaining here, while I go introduce myself to the Maksu?" Ik inclined his head to Bandicut's left. Bandicut was startled to see another table floating close to theirs, without privacy barriers. He could see the table and its lightglobe clearly, and the patrons floating at the table. Was it one, or many? It looked almost exactly like a swarm of fireflies, with the same greenish yellow light—except that the light was not blinki
ng, but pulsing with nervous intensity, as the . . . beings . . . swarmed in slow orbits around one another.

  "Um, is that—?"

  "Indeed," Ik said, rising. "They seemed rather . . . reserved . . . when I made contact. I believe it might be better if I spoke with them alone, to start with. Li-Jared, will you stay with John Bandicut?"

  Li-Jared's eyes blinked dazzlingly.

  Ik rose and floated across the gap between the tables. As he settled across the table from the swarm of fireflies, a sparkling shroud rippled into existence, concealing them. Bandicut looked uncertainly at Li-Jared. With a twanging sound that Bandicut guessed was a laugh, Li-Jared took another sip from his bubble. "John Bandicut, human man from Earth, do you have a shorter name?" Li-Jared asked at last.

  Bandicut chuckled with relief. "Call me Bandie. Or John. And do they serve anything here that won't take the top of my head off?" He held up his green-glowing drink with a grimace. He recalled how the shadow-people's lounge had read his mind as to his tastes. "Like beer, maybe?"

  Li-Jared twanged another laugh and spoke to the glimmering ghost which at that instant appeared over his shoulder.

  *

  "So would it be all right if I called you a Karellian?" Bandicut asked, holding his half-meter-high pilsner glass up to the light. He studied the amber bubbles in the beer while watching Li-Jared out of the corner of his eye. "And you could call me human or Earthman? For the sake of simplicity?"

  "For simplicity," Li-Jared agreed. His eyes seemed to be glowing more diffusely as he drank, though possibly it was Bandicut's vision getting foggy. He had found himself with a remarkable thirst for the beer, even though he knew he would be wise to limit his intake. Li-Jared was becoming more voluble as he drank. He seemed to be growing more comfortable with Bandicut's presence, though he still cast an occasional pointed glance at Napoleon, who thus far had not moved, except for a periodic sensor sweep. The robot had spoken only once, and then to say, "None for me," in apparent reference to the drinks order, though the waiter-ghost had at that point already disappeared.

  "Bandie, then," Li-Jared said, hunching over the table. In that moment, he looked more simian than ever; an instant later, the effect was shattered as he turned his face up, gold and sapphire eyes blazing at Bandicut. "I have traveled far with Ik. We have experienced many hazards together, in search of information that we hope may, at the very least, tell us who is meddling in our lives!"