The Chaos Chronicles

by Jeffrey A. Carver

  >> What do you wish to know? >>

  /I want to know who is in charge here—/

  >> In the icecore? >>

  /In Shipworld. Everywhere—/

  >> Who is in charge? >>

  /Yes! Who brought us here! Who is responsible for all this! Why are we here? We want to know if we can go home—/

  >> If you can go home? >>

  /Yes! We long for our homeworlds! We want to go home! We want to meet the people who brought us here!/

  >> You must release all of these thoughts . . . let us see them clearly. Yes, that is better. We see your homeworld. You are far indeed from your home. You were brought here by certain Masters of Shipworld. And your friends? We cannot see their thoughts quite so clearly. >>

  /They are far from home, too,/ Bandicut whispered. /We want to communicate with those who are in charge, the Masters of Shipworld—/

  >> Those who send you into danger . . . ? >>

  There was a subtle change in the tone of the voice that was addressing him. It seemed . . . stronger, he thought, more wiry and unyielding. Not threatening, exactly; but he felt a prickle of fear, nonetheless. He sensed from the voice a ripple of . . . he could not tell what . . . something that was like an emotion, and yet was nothing human, nothing identifiable.

  >> We can demonstrate ways to leave Shipworld; but we first require additional levels of access . . . >>

  /What?/ he whispered.

  >> . . . without which you will never find the answers you seek . . . never return home . . . >>

  As the words washed over him, he felt a wave of disorientation. Never return home . . . never find the answers . . . He felt a sudden urgent, compelling desire to do what this voice asked. Was it an aspect of the icecore itself, he wondered, a sentience linked to the deepest inner levels of the Tree of Ice?

  >> Open all your thoughts now to descend to the level you desire. >>

  The nearest ice crystal splintered open, flickeringly revealing a glimpse of transportation portals, and whispering star-spanners, and shimmering n-space translators . . .

  Escape from bondage.

  As he gazed, stunned, into the images, he sensed a ripple of a darker color flickering up through the branching crystals. Something was changing around him; he felt like a diver in clear water, descending through a thermocline. It was like a physical shock of deep cold, but more than that. It was not just a new level of access, but something penetrating him from within; he glimpsed his own image, like a dark shadow, stretching out before him, against the flickering light.

  He reeled breathlessly. He felt his mind, his thoughts and feelings, his soul, being stretched out, away from his body, into a bottomless sea of knowledge. He thought of Charlie stretching out from his translator into the mind of an alien, a human; and he shuddered, realizing that the icecore was drawing him into as profound a contact . . . and not just contact, but separation from his own mind and body . . .

  /Wait—!/

  It was out of his control now. The shadowy image of himself stretched out longer and longer, distorting. He felt dizzily faint, as a wave of alternating dark and light rippled up through the connection around him, then caught him and drew him down into itself like an undertow. He desperately wanted to stop that wave, but whatever he had set in motion, it was impossible to stop now.

  >> Your knowledge and thoughts are now ours, >> said the voice, much darker and harder than before.

  *

  Antares' empathic senses were afire. The Maksu were buzzing bewilderingly; they were distressed about something. She was far enough into the icelink that she could dimly discern the emotions of the distant John Bandicut. And he was clearly in trouble.

  But what kind of trouble?

  She sensed through the connection the Maksu swarming up and out of the link, and boiling around her in the physical reality. Their groaning insect-roar seemed to convey . . . what? Alarm? Anger? Recrimination? She could not quite tell, but even through the welter of alien emotions, she could identify the acid tang of fear.

  "We didn't know, couldn't know!" she heard at last. "We should not have come!" they buzzed, their words reaching into the connection through the few that were still linked.

  "Didn't know what?" she demanded, struggling to focus on their words and still follow what was happening to Bandicut.

  "Danger! Danger!"

  "What danger?" she snapped, her own fear crackling in her voice.

  "We couldn't have known! We must flee!"

  The Maksu were terrified. "Why?" she whispered. "What about the others?" Her words came out in a jumble. "Can you do something to help the others—?" She was half in and half out of the icelink now, and suddenly thought she knew why John Bandicut was in trouble.

  The Maksu boiled furiously. "Were not hired to defend—cannot—"

  "What?" she demanded, stung by their retreat.

  "We have no power—only information—must protect the information—!" The Maksu were swirling behind her now, preparing to flee.

  "You can't just leave!"

  "Will take you—lead you out—must go now—before we are destroyed—"

  Before they were all destroyed? Then she should . . . but no. She had come this far with the norg, to join the others. She couldn't just flee, not without at least trying to help them get out, too. She craned her neck to look back at Copernicus, on the higher ledge. "Can you lead me out of here, if we have to move fast?" she called.

  As if he'd understood her mind rather than her words, the norg tapped wildly. "We must find a way to help John Bandicut! I have located Napoleon, on a far ledge! We must stand ready to help!"

  "We must flee now!" cried the Maksu.

  "Can you at least—send—the shadow-people?" she gasped.

  Their groan rose to a shriek. "This we will do!" And they whirled, flashing, out of the cavern.

  Antares watched them vanish, and with a shiver let her thoughts sink back down into the surface layers of the icelink. She could see the shadow of Bandicut stretching out, becoming elongated and distorted almost beyond recognition. And something else, deeper in the maze of ice, was rippling around him. That was what had so frightened the Maksu.

  She felt Bandicut's fear, but more than that, his confusion. She had to warn him somehow, help him. She drew an inner breath, and focused her thoughts. /JOHN BANDICUT! JOHN BANDICUT! CAN YOU HEAR ME, JOHN BANDICUT-UT-UT?/

  Her voice echoed as if down a long, perfectly polished tunnel. There were no words in answer, but she felt a quiver of awareness. /JOHN BANDICUT, BEWARE DANGER-R-R! PROTECT YOURSEL-L-L-F!/

  And as her words reverberated, the darkened figure of Bandicut stretched closer and closer to the rising shadow of the boojum.

  *

  Bandicut struggled to turn from the wave of darkness. There was a terrible ringing in his ears, and he felt something shift around him, like a momentary loosening of a band around his chest. He took a sharp breath—felt a moment of clarity—and heard a distant voice. He could hear only a fragment of what it was saying . . .

  /—protect yourself!/

  And then he caught the familiar scent—and wondered if it had been hiding there all along—the smell of madness. And he realized in horror what he had done. The wave of dark strength, the boojum, was wrapping itself around him, pulling him deep into the heart of the icecore. It was not here to help him, or even to kill him; it was here to suck him dry, to steal his life and soul and knowledge, to pull him into the core of its being . . . to make him a part of itself.

  He reeled with anguish, trying to turn away. But the matrix of ice had darkened around him. And now it abruptly caved in, like a collapsing hollow mound of earth, carrying him down under its own weight.

  He could see the boojum's trap everywhere around him now, as he fell through the splintering icelink. And he screamed, as he felt the sinews of the boojum's power closing to cut him loose from his body, to carry him away forever.

  Chapter 25

  Confrontation

  IK HE
ARD THE scream and tried to respond. But he was trapped in a thick matrix of incomprehensible datastreams, in a form he could not control at all. He'd understood only some of what he'd seen: John Bandicut moving deep in the icecore, threading in and out through bewildering strands of data, with a facility Ik could only marvel at. He saw other beings approaching Bandicut, the Maksu he thought, and still other discrete forces operating from within the icecore. At first Bandicut's progress had seemed promising—but then somehow it had all gone wrong, and Ik was helpless to intervene. Bandicut was caught, his icelink-presence stretched out in the icecore like a long, twisted shadow.

  Ik heard a new voice cry out, and its words drove an icy chill into his heart: "—protect yourself from the boojum!"

  Ik strained to move, to reach out to his friend. But he could not help. Li-Jared was equally immobilized. The boojum! They had been so sure that it was not here! It must have reached the ice caverns before them, and lain in wait. If it had penetrated the icecore, they had no hope. Even if they escaped alive, everything they'd hoped to find here would be prey to the boojum. And if it held the ice caverns, what part of Shipworld would be safe?

  Had they saved the tank farms only to lose a deadlier battle?

  John Bandicut! he tried to cry. But he could not do even that. He shuddered and whispered to his voice-stones, /Is there nothing we can do?/

  From his stones there was no answer. But from elsewhere, he felt a quaking in the dataspace, distant at first and then growing to a terrible roar. He watched in horror as John Bandicut's shadowy presence stretched impossibly thin, then unraveled like a breaking rope, and vanished into the depths of the churning icecore.

  *

  Bandicut fell, and it was like falling into a ring of fire, chased by a rippling darkness.

  He was trapped, but he was not powerless, not yet. He used what strength he had to maneuver through the splintering shards of the datastructure. The boojum had somehow altered the virtual space in which it was all held; the translator-stones were buzzing about a "phase-space" shift, and everything was changing: ice crystals fragmenting and spinning by, and connections turning inside out. Still, he was falling and could not stop himself.

  But one thing was now obvious: the boojum had been here before him, long before him, maybe from the beginning. Its trap was not new, but was well laid and long ready.

  He now understood: the icecore was the boojum's lair.

  It was nearly impossible to believe, but even as he fell through the twisting changes in virtual phase-space, he saw the truth. It was the complexity of the ice caverns that made it possible for the boojum to hide, entwined around the very nerves of the icecore and the iceline threads that converged here. Like a virus in an organic body, it had burrowed into the nerve cells of its victim, unseen and unfelt, and so close to the pulse of life that the inner defenses could not root it out without destroying the body itself. Hiding in safety, it had watched and plotted and gathered its strength to strike—here, there, like a cobra—before withdrawing back into the very fiber of its enemy.

  But there was no time to reflect. Bandicut darted sideways and down through the virtual connections, pursued by the shadow-fire of the boojum. Down, down: he fled deeper into the shadow's lair. A place of death, but it was the only avenue open to him.

  In the fragments spinning away from him, he could see shimmering windows into dataspace, and he knew that the answers he'd come seeking were in there somewhere; and he knew that he would never find them as long as the boojum lived.

  The ring of fire billowed inward toward him. He could hardly tell now: was it trying to capture him or kill him?

  He cried out with a flinty rage, /You got Charlie, you bastard, but you won't get me!/ And he shot faster down into the icecore.

  The fire, rippling with darkness, roared after him.

  *

  Antares saw Bandicut vanish, but not before reacting to her cry. She had done some good, perhaps. He appeared to be moving to evade the shadow before he vanished. She could make little sense of what was happening. The visible landscape here was churning with metamorphosis, and the only thing she understood with certainty was the smell of danger and fear. Was Bandicut fighting for his life against the boojum, trapped in a pocket somewhere in this murky inner world?

  She wished she could do more. She shouted again, with no idea if he could hear her: /JOHN BANDICUT, DON'T SURRENDER TO IT! YOU MUST NOT GIVE IN!/ There was no return echo, just the reverberating throb of danger. But at least she could be a beacon to the fleeing Bandicut; maybe she could show him the way to safety.

  As she began to cry out once more, she was startled by a movement of dark, flitting shapes, from somewhere behind her—flying past like dusk-hornets, and on down into the ever-changing confusion. She caught her breath, focused her thoughts, and shouted, /IT'S ANTARES, BANDIE! I'M ON THE OUTSIDE! HOLD ONTO MY PRESENCE! FOLLOW MY VOICE OUT!/ And she let down her own defenses just a little, and strained to make an empathic connection.

  *

  As he skidded away from the ring of fire, he heard that cry again, as if from another world, leaking through the phase-space boundary. /Follow my voice—!/ he thought he heard. But before he could get a fix on it, he heard another voice—a closer one, it seemed, a familiar one. He shivered involuntarily. Was that Charlie's voice, rippling through the continuum? He could make out no words, just reverberating echoes. /Charlie!/ he shouted. /Charlie!/ In answer, there were only more echoes, fragments of the quarx's voice like bits of glass flying through the maelstrom. Could Charlie be in here somewhere? Had the boojum stolen him, instead of snuffing his life? Or was it parading pieces of him, like a barbarian parading its enemies' heads on pikes?

  /Don't surrender!/ cried that first voice, very small and far away. /It's Antares!/

  The ring of fire was in pursuit like a rocket. He changed direction, fleeing wherever he could find a path. Antares? Impossible! It was a trick of the boojum, or his imagination. But there it was again: /—must not give in!/

  Nor was it just the words; he felt something stronger, an actual breath of encouragement somehow flowing through the fragmented icelink. The ring of fire hesitated for a heartbeat, and that was when he knew the voice was real. In that heartbeat, he managed to put some distance between himself and the boojum.

  The connection grew momentarily stronger. /I am on the outside, with your robot. Your friends—/ And then the connection was burned away by the shadow-fire.

  But it had cost the boojum something to do that. It wasn't invulnerable, even in its own lair. It was powerful, but not omnipotent.

  But he needed allies here! Where were Ik and Li-Jared? Bandicut careened wildly along the icelink, jumping from splinter to splinter, ice spine to ice spine, dizzily aware of data spinning by that he had no time for. /ANTARES!/ he cried at last, desperate to regain that outside connection.

  A spine in front of him flashed from white to black, and a shadow leaped toward him. He shot sideways, away. /ANTARES! IK! LI-JARED! CHARLIE! ANYBODY!/

  Where was Antares' voice?

  Another voice answered, darker and deadlier and much closer.

  >> All you see is under our control. You too will soon be a part of us . . . >>

  The voice sounded strained . . . distorted. Mad, he thought.

  He felt a twisting sensation around him—a new change in the phase-space pocket. Its source seemed to be on the outside. The boojum's fire shifted quickly through changes of frequency and intensity, and for an instant it seemed to flower open and become transparent as it changed form. Bandicut was stunned to glimpse the incredible fluidity of the boojum's inner workings, the intricate structures of self-awareness, and the shockingly dark intensity of its inner being. Malice seemed to pour from it, a madness born of chaos, of intelligence gone dreadfully wrong. It was viper-quick and shrewd, and its intentions were to destroy, to control and destroy. As he glimpsed its soul, if that was what it was, the boojum glimpsed his, and recognized his terror.

  And
with an abruptness that wrenched at the fabric of the phase-space, it lunged after him.

  A curtain of shadow rippled between them. Not the boojum, but something else. Bandicut spun away in fear, but that rippling curtain gave him an instant's interference, and he took it to flee in a new direction. A circlet of fire pursued him, but he dove down yet another sliver of icelink connection.

  /Whrreeeeeeekkk! Whrreeeeeeekkk! Whrreeeeeeekkk!/

  In astonishment, he saw, erupting out of the icelink like boiling-mad hornets, a swarm of fluttering, angrily shrieking shadows of another kind. And he heard a familiar sound.

  /Hrroooooomm-mm-mm-mm! Whreeeek-whreeeek! Wh'rooom'm'm./

  A fluttering thing of darkness shot past him, cutting off the boojum's attack. In the shadow-person's wake, a wall of ice-connections crumbled, creating a moat between the shadow-fire and Bandicut. His heart leaped, and he cried, /HROOM! IS THAT YOU?/

  He heard a voice distorted and altered by the virtual space, but recognizable. /Whreeek! Huuu-reeeek! . . . John Bandicut . . . opening a phase-space channel . . . prepare to flee . . ./

  Prepare to flee?

  /Hrreeek! . . . now! . . ./

  He was completely disoriented, surrounded by sparkling, fragmented connections. But as Hroom shouted, an erupting flower of darkness rippled open around him. In its center he could see a tiny window back to the maze of the outer icecore.

  The hoop of fire darted that way, bellowing:

  >> That way lies death . . . death . . . death. You will not survive . . . not survive . . . >>

  That was all he needed to hear from the boojum. He shot through the window, mingled shrieks reverberating around him.

  *

  The shadow-people had flashed by Antares so fast she'd hardly been sure what they were. She had sent the Maksu only minutes before! But the Maksu were a group consciousness, stretched far through the shipworld. They must have gotten word to the shadow-people almost instantly.

  She felt a physical disturbance of space shifting around her, and knew that the shadow-people hadn't waited for the streaktrains. They were deep in the ice caverns, and in the virtual link itself, changing parameters with reckless speed. Down in the glittering virtual center of the icecore, a jagged patch of blackness was yawning open.