by Neal Asher
"That's about right. I don't feel very easy about meeting the inhabitants, whatever they may be," Heineman said, shaking his head as he climbed out of the seat. They were weightless again, moving at a steady velocity.
"Why would we worry, I mean, besides the obvious reasons?" Farley asked.
"The obvious reason would be bad enough, but frankly, I'm not happy about coming along the singularity. It's just occurred to me whoever's down there might not like people traveling this way. Maybe here are other vehicles—authorized vehicles. Maybe there's something else. Whatever, if we were to come zipping along at eight or nine klicks a second, anything we hit would be in serious trouble. That's enough to get us a moving violation, wouldn't you say?"
"I hadn't thought of that," Lanier said, settling into the pilot's seat.
"Yes, well, now that your head is more clear..." Heineman glanced at him sternly and then patted him on the shoulder. "Girls, let's find out what all the fuss is."
They replaced various instruments in ports along the floor of the aircraft and installed new sensors in ports so far unoccupied. Lanier stared overhead at the corridor floor, fascinated by the procession of lights. Even with binoculars, he couldn't make the lights resolve into anything but bright spots, contrasting against the black of the lanes.
Something large and gray covered his field of view in the binoculars and he pulled them down. A disk at least half a kilometer wide floated slowly above the lanes, moving south. Another disk followed a similar course twenty or thirty degrees to the west.
"Absolutely no coherent radio signals," Heineman said. "Waste microwaves and heat and a little X- and gamma-ray activity and that's it. Radar—the repeater back here shows something substantial about a quarter of a million kilometers ahead—surface area of at least fifteen square kilometers, right on the axis dead center."
"I see it," Lanier said, looking at the primary display. "Objects moving around it, and all along the wall of the corridor."
"Don't ask me what they are," Heineman said, peering through the windscreen at the gray disks. He squinted in puzzled anxiety. "And don't ask me how long we're going to stay up here unmolested."
"At least we're small," Farley said. "Maybe they won't notice us."
"That big thing up ahead, whatever it is, will notice us," Heineman said. "Ten to one it's riding the singularity, too."
Five hundred kilometers past the wall, four large brick-red twisted pyramids rose above the tangle of lanes. From their
spacing—equidistant around the circumference, at the quadratic points—Lanier surmised they were built over wells. From this distance, they appeared the size of a commemorative postage stamp held at arm's length—which made them perhaps two kilometers on a side, and a kilometer high. Kilometer-wide clear lanes extended straight north from each structure, for as far as he could see.
"I think we're in over our head," Lanier murmured.
Farley put her hand on his shoulder and pulled herself into the copilot's seat. "We've been over our heads for years, haven't we?"
"I'd always assumed the corridor was empty—I don't know why. Perhaps because I couldn't have imagined this."
Heineman floated between them and gripped a bar on the instrument panel to steady himself while he programmed a flight plan. "We're going to accelerate to ten thousand klicks an hour, get as close as we can to that big object on the singularity—slowing down on the approach, so they won't think we're going to ram them then reverse and hightail for
home. That is, of course, if you approve." He raised an eyebrow in Lanier's direction.
Lanier weighed the risks and realized he had no idea what they were.
"If we reverse now, what can we tell the folks back home?" Heineman persisted. "It's obvious this place is important. But we have no idea what is it, or what it means to us once we're back on the Stone."
"You're stating the obvious, Larry," Lanier said. "Now tell me whether we'll survive or not."
"I don't know," Heineman said. "But I'm having the time of my life. What about the rest of you?"
Carrolson laughed. "You're crazy," she told him. "Crazy jock pilot engineer."
Heineman wagged his head back and forth and proudly lifted the breast pockets of his jumpsuit out with his thumbs. "Garry?"
"We have to find out somehow," he admitted. "Let's go, then." Heineman began the sequence on the computer pilot and the tuberider bore down on the singularity, once again putting a sense of direction into the V/STOL cabin.
When the acceleration stopped and the tuberider coasted at ten thousand kilometers an hour, Heineman distributed supper—sandwiches in foil packets and bulbs of hot tea. They ate in silence, Carrolson and Heineman strapped to the bulkhead behind the cockpit. The corridor's passage was steady and easily perceptible.
Another circuit of rectangular structures passed, and several minutes later, yet another—all connected by the four straight clear lanes and the crowded tangled lanes of lights.
Lanier vacated the seat to Carrolson and took a nap while Heineman trained the women in the fine points of tuberider control. He dropped in and out of a dream about flying a light plane over jungle and tangled rivers. Somehow, that segued into a track meet. He awoke with the aftertaste of tea in his mouth and undid the seatbelts, pulling himself forward. Farley was adjusting instruments in their ports and replacing memory blocks on the slates collecting and collating the data. She dropped full blocks into a plastic sorting tray and slipped it into a file box. Then she held up one of the auxiliary multimeters built by engineering before the Death, pointing out the display for Lanier's inspection.
"Yes?" he asked, looking down at the flickering numbers.
"It's kaput," she said. "Putting out nonsense. So are most of our instruments. We'll be lucky to interpret half the data we've gathered."
"Reasons?"
She shook her head. "Wild guesses, and that's the best I can do. Other electrical systems seem to be working—it's probable we're passing through control fields like those that electively damp inertia on the Stone. These fields damp other effects ... distorted geometry's effect on activity in the nucleus, changes in slash aitch ... Or the equipment may be crapping out all at once. Warranty expires today—surprise!"
"The equipment's fine," Heineman called out from the copilot's seat. "Don't blame my machines."
"The man's so proprietary," Farley marveled. "He gumbles everytime I question quality control."
"Grumbles, not 'gumbles,' " Lanier said.
"Whatever."
"Your turn," Lanier told Heineman, indicating the rear of the plane with his thumb. "Naptime. We'll all need to be bright and cheerful."
Heineman adjusted the tuberider's roll and floated past Lanier. "Wait," Carolson said. "What's that?"
The singularity ahead of the tuberider was no longer a shiny cylindrical surface. In intermittent pulses, it glowed orange and then white, like a hot steel wire.
"No rest for the wicked," Heineman said, replacing Lanier in the pilot's seat. He applied the tuberider clamps to the singularity to brake. The craft suddenly bucked and rolled violently, tossing Lanier and Farley against the storage rack and pinning them there until Heineman released the clamps.
"We're accelerating," Heineman shouted over the roaring shudder of the tuberider and airplane. "I'm not in control anymore."
Lanier slid toward the rear of the cabin, banging into seats with his arms and legs as he tried to grab hold of something. Farley clung to a seat tenaciously and struggled to swing around and sit in it.
The singularity now drew a long, steady red line down the middle of the plasma tube. Lanier strapped himself into a seat and reached across to help Farley climb into hers. Equipment bounced and fell to the rear, striking storage racks, bulkheads and other equipment.
"Can you reverse us?" Lanier shouted over the tumult.
"No way," Heineman answered. "If I clamp down, we start bucking. Thirty thousand and still accelerating." The tuberider rolled again and Lanier and
Farley shielded themselves against another onslaught of rebounding memory block racks, test kits and coiled light cables.
"Forty," Heineman said a few moments later. "Fifty."
The radio crackled and chuffed and a genderless melodic voice began in mid-phrase:
"—violation of the Law of the Way. Your craft is in violation of the Law of the Way. Do not resist or your craft will be destroyed. You are under the direction of the Hexamon Nexus and will be removed from the flaw in six minutes. Do not attempt to either accelerate or decelerate."
The message ended with a soft burst of white noise.
*41*
Belozersky stood stiffly to the rear of Yazykov at the conference table, hands locked behind his back. Yazykov sat with his hands folded on the table. Hoffman looked over the demands and wrote out a quick translation on her slate for Gerhardt. Gerhardt read them quickly and shook his head.
"We reject your demands," Hoffman said flatly in Russian. She, too, had spent time in the third chamber library.
"These men are criminals," Yazykov said. "They have kidnapped one of our colleagues and hidden in one of the cities where we cannot find them."
"Whether that's true or not, we already agreed to separate governmental and judicial systems. We can't help you find these men without breaking our agreement."
"They are hiding in sections dominated by your people," Belozersky said. "You yourself may be hiding them."
"If that's the case, then I've been told nothing about it," Hoffman said. "I doubt it."
"Surely you support our attempt to form a civilian government," Yazykov said.
"We don't support it, and we don't oppose it," Hoffman said. "That's your concern. Our concern at this table is with our peaceful coexistence. Nothing more."
Yazykov rose quickly and nodded at Hoffman. They crossed the cafeteria and exited through the rear door.
"What do you make of that?" Hoffman asked Gerhardt. The general shook his head ruefully and grinned.
"Mirsky's stolen their main man," he said. "Looks like he anticipated them and made the first move."
"What's your opinion of Mirsky?"
"Hard-line Soviet military or not, I'd rather deal with him than with Yazykov or Belozersky."
"So do we help him?"
"Help Mirsky? Hell, no. First instincts are best. We stay out of it and let them settle it themselves. Besides, Mirsky won't ask for help. We just have to hope it doesn't come to a fight. We might not be able to stay out of that."
Mirsky and Pogodin removed Vielgorsky from the third chamber city in the truck, following a tortuous series of service roads until they found a main artery that crossed the remaining twenty kilometers in a straight line. The artery emerged through a number of open half-moon gates onto the ninety tunnel leading to the second chamber.
Mirsky examined several buildings along the second chamber thoroughfares before picking one that suited him. It was hidden between one of the giant chandelier-skyscrapers the Americans called megas, and a long row of hundred-meter-high asteroid-rock towers of no apparent utility.
The building was only four stories tall and seemed to have once been a kind of school. Long rows of connected seats filled the three rooms on each floor, facing slate-black walls rimmed with silvery glass.
In the easternmost room of the top floor, they spread their supplies, and Mirsky sat down with a much quieter and even more somber Vielgorsky. Pogodin went to hide the truck.
"I don't thank you," Vielgorsky said. He lay back on a bench and stared at the gold stars on the dark blue ceiling. "My father died in Afghanistan. I was told nothing about his death ... state secret. I still don't know. But that it was all a military exercise, to battle-test the army..." He shook his head wonderingly. "A ten-year exercise! To find—" he coughed into his fist, "to find that all one has believed has been an orchestrated lie—"
"Not all," Mirsky said. "Much, but not all."
"Having one's eyes opened doesn't make one grateful."
"We've always known bits and pieces, haven't we?" Mirsky asked. "About the corruption, the inefficient and incompetent and venal superiors ... The State preserving itself at the expense of revolutionary ideals."
"Every man must work with such things, if not accept them. But using our finest athletes and dancers as concubines—''
"Hypocrisy mixed with stupidity."
"How much worse for a government that says it is above scandal, and cannot do wrong! At least the Americans wallow in their scandal."
They talked for two hours. Pogodin returned. He listened attentively, his brow wrinkling when they discussed things that pained him. He interrupted only once, to ask, "Haven't the Americans discovered how corrupt they are?"
Mirsky nodded. "They have always known, or at least as often as their press could uncover the facts."
"Their press is not controlled?"
"Manipulated, yes," Mirsky said. "Never completely controlled. They had thousands of historians, each with his own perspective. Their history was confused, but deliberate distortions were usually found out."
Pogodin looked between Vielgorsky and Mirsky and then turned away to walk to the entrance of the room.
"What we've been told about Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezh-nev, Gorbachev—" Vielgorsky let his words trail off with a shake of his head.
"Is different from what our fathers were told," Mirsky finished for him, "and their fathers before them."
And they talked for another hour, this time about life in the army. Mirsky described how he had nearly become a political officer. Vielgorsky outlined the accelerated training courses he and the other Zampolit had been given before being launched with the Space Shock Troops from the Indian Ocean.
"We are not so far apart after all," Vielgorsky said as Mirsky poured him water from a thermos. Mirsky shrugged again and handed him the cup. "You know the responsibilities of a political officer ... the duty to party, to the revolution..."
"What revolution?" Mirsky asked softly.
Vielgorsky's face reddened. "We must still be loyal to the revolution. Our lives, our sanity depends on it."
"The revolution begins here, now," Mirsky said. "We are unloaded of the past."
They regarded each other for an uncomfortably long time. Pogodin returned to find them silent, and sat to one side, gripping the index finger of one hand with thumb and forefinger of the other and tugging it uneasily.
"The power must be shared," Vielgorsky said. "The party must be reestablished."
"Not by murderers and louts," Mirsky said sharply, jaw muscles tensing. "We have had enough of them. Russia has been raped by murderers and louts too long in the name of revolution and the party. No more. I will end it all here rather than bring this back to our children on Earth."
Vielgorsky fumbled at his pocket, pulling out an antique gold watch. "Belozersky and Yazykov will be frantic by now.
There's no telling what they will do if they don't hear from me."
"That weakens them," Mirsky said. "Let them sit for a while, or hang themselves."
Vielgorsky grinned wolfishly and shook his finger at Mirsky. "You bastard. I know what you are. You're a visionary. A
deviationist visionary."
"And I'm the only one you can be comfortable with, sharing the power," Mirsky said. "You know they will come after you eventuaily. You can no more trust them than you can trust a mad dog."
Vielgorsky did not look convinced.
"Maybe now we understand each other."
Vielgorsky shrugged and turned down the corners of his mouth.
At 1200 hours the next day, Pogodin aimed the track's antenna toward the southern bore hole, and Vielgorsky sent a message to Yazykov and Belozersky:
"Our fourth chamber troops have captured Mirsky and henchmen in third chamber library. Join us there. Trial will be held in library."
*42*
They watched in silence as the red line of the singularity guided them toward the black shield. Lanier joined Farley and Carrols
on in the rear, trying to make sense out of the instruments. They periodically registered meaningful data, but not often enough to be of much use.
"Something approaching along the singularity—It's a machine, big and black," Heineman said. "Coming up fast..." Lanier pushed himself forward.
Straddling the glowing red line, a machine twice as thick as the tuberider, round in cross section, bore down on them, its surface a glossy black. Bright purple lines on the machine's surface outlined squares and rectangles in symmetric arrays. Lanier watched in facination as the squares and rectangles opened to extrude grapplers and a variety of jointed arms. It now resembled a deep-sea submersible—or a madman's Swiss Army knife. "What's it going to do?"