/// If there's sea-pressure against the hatch,
you probably won't be able to open it. ///
He wiped sweat from his eyes. /True./ And it was also true that if the bubble didn't have a remarkable ability to withstand pressure on one side, and allow penetration on the other, he wouldn't be able to open the hatch. He pushed upward. There was resistance for a moment, then a slight give. The stone in his left wrist flickered, and the hatch swung open. A cupful of trapped water splashed down. He poked his head up through the Neri membrane, and the star-spanner membrane, and caught a breath of air that smelled . . . different . . . almost with a hint of ozone to it. But it was air, blessed air.
He climbed up out of the airlock into a dark, dry space. Dark, that is, except for the glow of the sub's headlights and sternlights shining into the abyssal gloom. For a moment, he was nearly overcome with vertigo, and claustrophobia, and sheer quaking terror, as he absorbed the fact that he was sitting in a bubble made of nothing, energy maybe, at the bottom of the ocean.
/// It's pretty strong, I think. ///
/Yah./ He climbed the rest of the way into the bubble.
It was eerily quiet. He could hear his heartbeat, and his breath, and some mutters and groans coming from the sub right below him. But there was an overpowering sense of stillness. It reminded him of the other-dimensional realm of the magellan-fish, back on Shipworld; that experience felt as if it had been a training ground for what he was doing now.
/// Perhaps it would be best for now
to focus— ///
/Right. Yes. Jesus./ He drew a sharp breath and secured the hatch on the sub, then crept forward to where he might become visible to L'Kell and the others, through the sub's nose window.
He heard a click and hiss, and suddenly the words, quite loudly, "Can you hear me, John Bandicut?" It was jarring, and seemed to come from everywhere at once; but he knew it was L'Kell.
"Loud and clear! Can you pull the bubble forward?"
With a whine from the winches, the bubble began to move. He glanced back and saw it separate from the hatch, and his heart began to pound again. The front of the sub was coming under the bubble now, and he crouched down to wave to his friends as they peered up through the nose window. He pointed forward. "Let's dock." With the star-spanner bubble resting on the sub's nose, L'Kell began to move them with great care toward the entry membrane of the factory. As the light grew stronger upon the membrane, it turned from grey to shimmering silver. Bandicut guided L'Kell with hand gestures, until the bubble drew very close, then touched the membrane with a quicksilver ripple—and a soft boom, like a kettle drum.
He heard the voice of Copernicus, hollow but clear: "Cap'n, is that you? Are you at the entry point?"
"I'm here. I'm in the bubble." With the bubble pressed against the membrane, both surfaces had flattened and formed a quivering mirror. "What now?"
"Can you reach through?" asked the robot.
"We'll find out." The pressure differential was enormous here: the robots at the ambient pressure of maybe four hundred atmospheres, the bubble at maybe forty or fifty atmospheres. How much could this star-spanner technology handle? Could it protect him? He drew a breath, reached out a hand, and pushed against the bubble. It felt like the resilient, but resistant, nothingness of a forcefield. He pushed harder. The interface dimpled suddenly, and his hand passed slowly though the factory membrane.
He wiggled his fingers. It felt like air on the other side, not liquid. How could that be?
"Captain, we can see your hand. Are you all right?" called Copernicus through the membrane.
"Yes, I'm fine."
At that moment, something cold touched his hand, and he nearly jumped out of his skin. "Jesus! What's that?" He jerked his hand back.
"It's just me," said Copernicus.
His heart pounded frantically. He gasped for breath. "Don't do that without warning me!"
"I apologize. Cap'n—are you okay? Did I hurt you?"
He gasped, collecting himself. He looked at his hand, which he had reflexively pulled all the way out. With a little shiver, he reached back through the membrane. "No, you just scared me, that's all. Okay, where are you? You can touch my hand again."
This time, the metal touch felt reassuring. He took a deep breath, squeezing the robot's hand. "Should I try . . . pushing my face through?"
"If it seems safe to you," said the robot.
Safe? he thought, and almost laughed.
"Are you all right?" boomed another voice. L'Kell, in the sub. Or was it Ik? It was so distorted, it was hard to tell.
Without removing his hand, Bandicut turned his head to look down, over his shoulder. Ik, Antares, and L'Kell were peering out the nose window at him. "I'm fine!" he called. "I'm holding Copernicus's hand." Which raised another question: what was Copernicus doing outside the sub, anyway? "I'm going to try sticking my head through." Then, before he could have second thoughts, he leaned his forehead into the membrane. He felt only a slight resistance, then popped through.
It was like peering into a tent through a fish-eye lens. The first thing he saw was Copernicus, staring at him with dark camera eyes. And behind the robot, the Neri submarine and Napoleon. It was an incongruous sight. He wasn't sure what he'd expected: some very strange alien vista, a seafloor factory, maybe something like the star-spanner factory run by the shadow-people of Shipworld, but of course different because of where it was. Instead, what he saw was the inside of a huge bladder, translucent and glowing just enough to provide illumination, and containing nothing but those three objects: the sub and the two robots. He wondered what he looked like, with his hands and head extruded through the silvery membrane.
"Coppy," he said, his voice resonating into the space with a twang. He tried to draw a breath, and felt resistance. He suddenly realized that with his face pressed directly into the membrane, it was going to be very hard to breathe here.
/// Wait. ///
He waited, holding his breath, and sensed that the stones were in contact with the bubble or whatever controlled it, and were doing something to the permeability of the membrane.
"Cap'n," said Copernicus, "the factory has injected approximately one-tenth of one percent of oxygen into the atmosphere here. If the spanner bubble can accommodate selective movement of gases through the membrane, you should be able to breathe. At least I hope so."
/// Try it now.
We've adjusted the star-spanner bubble,
but have no control over the factory membrane. ///
He tried again to draw a breath, and to his surprise, was able to inhale slowly through the membrane. It was like breathing from a scuba cylinder that was nearly empty. He exhaled slowly, inhaled slowly. He didn't keel over. But he was going to become short of breath if this went on for very long.
/// We're going to adjust a few things
in your metabolism to let you stretch
your CO2 tolerance and oxygen demand. ///
The difference was perceptible within seconds. He took a closer look at the smoothly curved walls that enclosed the Neri sub and the robots. There was perhaps a meter's width of clearance around the sub, just enough room for the robots to move. But within the surface of the bladder walls he saw sparkling flecks of something: maybe just refractions of light through the shimmer of the membrane interface, or maybe something else—say, tiny emitters or control points for nanoassemblers. Bandicut noticed that Napoleon, standing near the nose of the sub at the far end of the chamber, seemed to have several probes embedded in the wall of the chamber. He didn't recall Napoleon's having had those probes before.
"Is the breathing arrangement satisfactory?" Copernicus asked.
"Okay so far," Bandicut said. Raising his voice, he called, "Can you still hear me out there?"
He was startled to hear two different voices answer. "Quite well." "Yes, but faintly."
It took him a moment to realize that the first voice had been that of Nabeck, the robot's Neri companion in the sub in fr
ont of him. "Nabeck," he said, "are you well?"
"I am quite well, but weary of the confinement," the Neri answered. "Greetings to you and to L'Kell."
"Thank you. I hope we can give you reason to leave soon," Bandicut said. "And Copernicus, just out of curiosity, what are you and Napoleon doing outside the sub?"
"We locked out after the factory established a dry atmosphere in anticipation of your arrival," Copernicus said. "We thought we could be more useful to you here, on the outside, where you were going to be."
"Oh. Then thank you. I assume Nappy is tied up in conversation with the factory?"
"Yes, Cap'n. I am in close contact with him, however. I am pleased to report that the factory head functions on a considerably higher cogitative level than we had originally thought. The connection is in some respects difficult—"
Difficult. Yes, it would be, Bandicut thought—two AI mechanisms from entirely different worlds, meeting on an abyssal ledge kilometers deep in the ocean.
"—but we seem to have worked through the major communications issues. There are still some areas of uncertainty regarding operations and intentionality."
"I see. Well, is it ready to resume production? That's what the Neri want to know."
"Many of the internal repairs are far enough along for the most urgent tasks to be undertaken. Cap'n, the factory head is extremely eager to speak with you directly."
"That's what I'm here for." Bandicut gestured. He felt, peering through the shimmer of the interface, as if he were operating hand puppets. He glanced down; his hands appeared to be made of watery silver.
Copernicus tapped quietly, probably conferring with Napoleon. Copernicus's upper sensor swiveled away from Bandicut. The robot pointed with a mechanical hand toward the far end of the chamber, over Napoleon's head. "In that case, Cap'n, if you would fix your gaze in that direction, and be ready to receive the laser image—"
Laser image?
He blinked that way, and before he could even draw a breath, there was a light dancing in his eyes. A reflex to shut his eyes was suppressed, somewhere along the neural pathway.
/// It's okay, John.
We're watching for tissue damage,
but it's within safe limits so far. ///
Within safe limits . . . he supposed that was better than having his eyes fried straightaway. But was this how the thing was going to make contact—?
The play of light blossomed into something like a holo, but a holo playing directly inside his skull. The first image was a slow-motion fireworks burst, which turned from sparks of fire into raindrops of crimson and gold and emerald and silver. From out of that rain there emerged a face—a sculpture in chrome-silver, turning in space. It was a Neri face, or something like a Neri face. It was hard to see exactly, because it was strobe-lighted, with pulses of light here, there, filling Bandicut's skull. After a few moments the face was gone, and there was a sudden flickering of textured space that reminded him of human neurolink, with twisted topographies shot through with sparks of light. It produced a jittery sensation, like being overwrought and sleepless in the dark of night, with synapses firing at random. He had the sense that some kind of translation and analysis was taking place, perhaps involving the stones or perhaps just the factory head. The near-Neri face came back, rotating as if weightless; but now it was olive-green, and he could see that the eyes were smaller than a Neri's, and the neck was smooth, with no gills. It seemed to make eye contact, but only a fleeting, empty contact.
/// I have a feeling about that face— ///
/One of the Neri's creators?/
/// Yeah. ///
And then it was gone, leaving only a feeling of strobing images out of memory, and a voice:
You are John Bandicut? Species Human?
The answer—Yes!—seemed to come from somewhere within, and not through his conscious mind. Out of the strobing flashes, he thought he glimpsed an image that looked like Napoleon, spinning in and out of the frame of view. Would Napoleon speak? Not yet, apparently; the next voice was the same as the last:
Do you speak on behalf of the Neri?
/I do. And you are?/
Factory head. Iteration sssssshh— There was an instant of static as the translation through the stones broke down. Then: —late revision. Communication restored after . . . sssssshh . . . interruption. Much demands attention. Repairs. A sudden, flickering image of intricate patterns being changed blindingly fast; circuits maybe, or programming. Production. Strobelike images of subs, bubbles, membranes, diving equipment, electronics being spun into existence as though sketched by an invisible pen: nanoassembly. Threats to the well-being of the Neri.
Instead of images, there was sudden stillness, and Bandicut thought he heard Napoleon's voice, very distant, addressing the factory head. Abruptly there was darkness all around, with bursts of urgent blood-red heat lightning flashing in a moving pattern around him. There is need. Urgent need. And now an image, pulsing: a ghostly light burning out of the darkness of the abyssal valley, and quakes shaking loose rocks and ledges and habitats. After a few heartbeats, the image darkened back into the chaos of the crimson heat lightning.
Bandicut reeled at the intensity of the display. /Very urgent need,/ he agreed in a whisper, trying not to succumb to vertigo.
You wish assistance?
/In stopping that thing?/ He hardly dared hope. /By making contact?/
By making contact. Even now it trembles.
A new image, like a weird fish-eye shot from the back of Bandicut's head, with an overlay of semimirror rippling: the star-spanner bubble, and behind and under it, the sub, and behind that the spectral glow of the Devourer, awakening from its nap in the abyss over which the sub's stern hung like a rock climber's tailbone.
And again: the face of the near-Neri, or pre-Neri, surrounded by billowing concentric haloes of light. And about it, the voice of the factory saying . . .
Those who made us. Formed us. Instructed us.
Bandicut hardly breathed. /Yes?/
They are no more.
He exhaled. /No./
They were my authority. They are no more.
Pulse pounded in his head. /No more,/ he agreed.
Sparks, in a blizzard. A flash of consuming fire, like a great cosmic event, taking all in its wake. And darkness. And . . .
The Neri are therefore my authority. Or their—ssssshh— surrogate.
Bandicut drew a difficult breath. /Yes—/
They cannot join in communication this way?
Bandicut hesitated. /Perhaps in time they can learn. They have no experience./
And you do.
/Yes./
And they have asked you to represent them?
/Yes./
Then I must show you my thoughts concerning the thing you call the Devourer, the Demon, the Maw of the Abyss. There are things I can do, but I must be released from my strictures of action.
/Show me, then./
*
It was a dizzying stream of information.
For so many years the factory head had lain broken and unable to repair itself; and yet it was not wholly broken, not unconscious in all of its capacities. It was directly aware of certain devastations caused by the arrival of the abyss-thing, including damage to itself, and indirectly aware of others. Many comm-links with the pre-Neri on the land, and the Neri in their undersea habitats, were severed—but not before it had perceived indications of serious emergency conditions ashore. And after that . . . nothing, except the occasional visit from Neri of the undersea city, with broken communications which it could not properly integrate and answer.
But elsewhere in its processing stacks, an analysis was undertaken, and grew over the years, and came to occupy a larger part of the working subsections of the intelligence. Though unable to repair its own broken inner pathways, and suffering from the scattering of critical knowledge-bases, it nonetheless had the capacity for extensive use of background processors. (Was it like a person in a coma, Bandicut wondere
d—one whose unconscious processes continue apace even in the absence of outward awareness?)
And in those silent ruminations, the factory head paid close attention to what its remaining sensors told it about the abyss-thing that had caused so much damage. And it began to assemble patterns of perception that, in synthesis, could have been said to constitute understanding. Understanding of what the thing was, and was capable of, and what it might be trying to do.
The biggest clue came later, when the abyss-thing brought a ship from the sky crashing into the sea—its motive system hopelessly ensnared by the gravity/density/EM-spectrum/time-altering effects generated by the thing of the abyss. The specifics were unclear, but the factory head recognized similarities between the abyss-thing and the motive system of the wrecked ship. A connection remained between them, even after the crash; and the factory head discovered that certain of its comm-circuits resonated inexplicably whenever the two interacted.
Were they communicating? It seemed so, though only a small fraction of the signal was decipherable. But interaction between the two often preceded traumatic eruptions in the local area— which threatened not just the factory but the Neri, and even the crash-survivors on their perilous perch at the edge of the sea. But why?
/It seems to be a space-time-altering device, almost like a stardrive,/ Bandicut offered, following which the factory paused for several microseconds of thought.
It had not understood it in quite that way before, and did not quite know what Bandicut meant. But there were areas of knowledge previously inaccessible to it, now being made available through the help of the robots, or from the robots' own datastores. Many things were becoming clearer. And one of them was that the Neri's survival utterly depended upon making contact with the Maw of the Abyss.
And another was that the Maw itself might be silently desperate for such contact . . .
*
/Why do you say desperate? Does it think? Feel?/
His question was answered by cascading raindrops of light. Uncertainty. Affirmation. It was the robots who had first noticed that such cognitive patterns might be present. The robots seemed to understand confusion and other emotion better than the factory. Communications indicate the presence of confusion in the Maw. Confusion of purpose—and need for clarification.
The Chaos Chronicles Page 101