The Colony Ship Conestoga : The Complete Series: All Eight Books

by John Thornton

  “Ghastly thought, that primitive medicine,” Cammarry shuddered. “What were you reaching for in that pipe anyway? Rat in a tunnel?”

  Jerome grinned. “I wondered what ran through that pipe. What did it carry? From what I could see of the needle ship’s design, they used quadrilateral shaped ducts to run air, but that Captain Lechner cross connected and spliced tubular water pipes into those and his scheme worked. I wondered if all the water pipes on the Conestoga were tubular, or at least that was a standard. I know other fluids could flow through pipes like that, a myriad of different kinds of fluids, but the woman spoke about not having enough water, and water is essential for a biological habitat, and for us for that matter.”

  “This place is dry, drier than any place we have seen yet,” Cammarry said as she looked down the pipe, by shining the light into it. “This goes off into the wall and turns. Crumpled in some spots, but no sign of what it carried.”

  Jerome looked around more. “The rubble over there looks like the ceiling collapsed, see the permalloy and steel on the floor. What is up there now?” He pointed at the irregular ceiling.

  “Dirt, I think. Some kind of soil or ground,” Cammarry said. “Reminds me of the orchard I ran through, sort of. Not quite dried out dust. Do you see an exit?”

  “Under the rubble over there? Or perhaps it is a powered exit like an elevator?” Jerome asked as he thought about their predicament. “I am going to plug in a fusion pack and see what we can get empowered. The vehicle we came in has little to spare by way of power, and I see nothing inside here to indicate these walls or ceiling have any ship’s power connected to them.”

  “The air is fairly good,” Cammarry said. “So some kind of ventilation must be working to some extent.”

  “Dusty air. Not as bad as outside the Dome, thankfully. I wonder how permeable that soil stuff is? Could air filter through that?” He pulled the cord from the fusion pack and looked for a place to make a connection.

  The remaining wall, the one without the graffiti, consisted of meter long vertical sections, each set at right angles to the others, making for a diagonal looking effect stretching across the room. There were dozens of small circular engravings in a pattern all along that unusual wall.

  “Was that a movable wall?” Cammarry asked. “Could those sections fold back onto each other somehow?”

  “I am not sure. Well, that could to be the case, maybe.” Jerome walked over and smacked one of those sections. “They are certainly solid now, and it might just have been built that way.”

  “But why?”

  “To look pretty?” Jerome grinned. “What have I read? Oh yes, something like let architects play-up their aesthetics to bring paying clients in hordes. I prefer literary imagination. It is an aesthetic offering by a writer to the lover of books. Beauty is in the beholder’s eye, but design does designate function.” He ran his hands across one of the corners in the wall. “Some engineers will design and create, and build the most wonderful place in the world, but without people to see it there is no reality. Design and aesthetics is not just what something looks like and feels like. Design is in how it operates.”

  “Jerome, I have no idea what you just said,” Cammarry chided. “It is a weird wall, and we do not know what it was for, or how it operates.”

  “But I have found an access port under all this crust!” Jerome said as he brushed dust, grime, and dirt off the wall. “And I was trying to recall what I read about how at one time the looks of buildings were as important, if not more important, than their function.” He plugged in the fusion pack.

  “That had to be before the Great Event,” Cammarry said. “Those ancient people were really deluded and strange in so many way.”

  Jerome had to plug in and remove the cord several times before it made a solid connection. When it did, it clicked into place. There was a deep groan, and a whirling machine-sound sputtered as some motor started up. A few amber colored lights came on along each of the corners on the strange diagonal wall. With a shake and grumble two sections of the wall parted.

  Dirt, rocks, and dust came pouring in as the wall opened.

  “Oh no!” Jerome called out as he and Cammarry jumped back away from the shower of dirt. The sides of the wall erratically parted. A space about a half meter wide was revealed. Then a negative function sound toned several times, and the motor stopped. The wall lights extinguished. The mechanical groaning ceased. The dirt kept pouring in.

  “More dirt! So we are under the biological habitat?” Jerome waved his hands in front of his face. Dust swirled around and did seem to move away on air currents from somewhere. “Do you think this is an exit?”

  “It looks like it is slowing down,” Cammarry said. “Sort of reminds me of the dust piles around the dome. They would shift in the winds, but were much less dense than this stuff. Let me shine the light up there and see. The wall was designed to open for some reason.”

  She adjusted the light to be more of a spotlight and shone it into the space where the dirt and rocks were still rolling down into the room. The biggest rocks were about fist sized, and the dirt came in clods, and chunks as well. They had spilled out into a delta shape. “I will have to climb up to see more. There is some opening above, but I cannot see it well.”

  Jerome looked around. “Wait for a moment! I am coming with you. No walls to separate us again. I doubt that wall will just shut if I remove the fusion pack, especially with all that material spilled in here, but be careful, as I am not sure what will happen. We both stay on the same side of things. Agreed?”

  Cammarry smiled at him and nodded. He pulled the cable from the access port and placed the fusion pack into his backpack.

  The wall remained as it was, with the spilled dirt keeping it open.

  Cammarry clambered up the loose pile of dirt and rocks, and reached the top near the ceiling. “I can see some cave or tunnel, but it is dark. Looks like all rock or dirt.” She held up her hand. “I can feel air flowing into here, so there must be a larger chamber or something beyond here.”

  Climbing up the crumbly dirt and rocks was not easy, but Cammarry pressed herself into the opening. The cool air was on her face as she slid the fusion pack ahead of here, its light shining and showing the irregular walls of the tunnel.

  “How far does it go?” Jerome asked as he followed behind her. “At least this is larger than a sewage drain.”

  “Indeed. But it is not nearly as clean,” Cammarry chuckled a bit. “A lot less noise too. It looks like it slants upward fairly steadily, about 60 degrees off vertical. “Maybe ten meters up it looks a little different.”

  The dirt and rocks slid down next to them as they crawled along. There were some stringy, or ropelike, things in the dirt as they got higher in the tunnel. Those strands were a pale beige color, as compared to the deep browns, and grays. Some of the cords were reddish. Cammarry grabbed some of them as she slipped.

  “These feel organic,” She said as she tugged herself upward.

  “They are,” Jerome answered. “Roots on the foliage above, I imagine. John used to say that the roots of some trees could be many meters long, and that they would sink a tap root down looking for water.”

  “Yes, I recall thinking I would never need to know anything like that. I thought you might have some old quote about ancestral linage and roots,” Cammarry said. “I do wonder what John would say if he was here.”

  “I did read one author who said something about two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One was roots, the other was wings. I guess he was speaking metaphorically, but when I first read that as a child, I wondered if people before the Great Event had real wings,” Jerome replied.

  “That would be a genetic absurdity, giving humans wings.”

  “Yes, but I read much about mythological beast and folklore. Flying people were not uncommon.”

  “Khin would love those ancient stories of flying people.”

  “Indeed.” He wiped some of the dirt off his fa
ce. “Hopefully John is enjoying some nice place where he can study his beloved biology in safety and peace.”

  “I hope that for all of the Dome 17 survivors.” Cammarry tapped the earpiece of the com-link. “Sandie? Sandie? Please can you hear me?”

  There was no reply.

  “Mine does not work now either. I got jostled about in the vehicle, and I guess that could have broken mine, but why does yours not work?”

  “I am not sure, but the ride was rough. I am almost at the end of this tunnel. I can hear something, and the air is different. The tunnel just ends, and there is grayness beyond. I am turning off the light for a moment.”

  The tunnel became black, with just a gray disk shaped opening over their heads. The pale, and silvery light from above barely lit anything in the tunnel. They blinked their eyes, and waited for them to adjust. While they did that, they both stopped to listen.

  There was some kind of clicking noise, but it was not like the mechanical clicking of a switch or lever. Nor was it like a metallic tapping of some kind. It was a repetitive and hollow sound. With a hint of an echoing snapping. At the end of each click they heard a rising pitch.

  “That chirrup sound reminds me of the birds in Habitat Alpha, but this is different.”

  “Dangerous?” Jerome asked. He checked his belt and the weapon was still securely there. “Some kind of animal life?”

  “It does sound alive, not quite precisely and uniformly regular. I will crawl up and look out.”

  “Toss something out first,” Jerome suggested. “To see if it gets attacked. I do not want you to be attacked by whatever is making that clicking noise.”

  “We have no choice but to go forward,” Cammarry said. “But I agree we need to be cautious. I will keep my eyes open. I can see that where we are is very large.”

  She drew out her Willie blaster pistol, then pushed herself up and out of the hole. She felt plants all around the edge of where she was going. They felt different from the plants which grew in the growth medium on the needle ship. They were small, straight and slightly wiry, set in clumps of dozens of strands.

  “Jerome, nothing is right close by. In fact, we are emerging in the bottom of some depression of sorts. Maybe ten meters around, a crater shape. I can see the rim all around us, and nothing is in this earthen bowl, except for some plants. Well, nothing I can see anyway.”

  Jerome followed her up and he too squatted in the depression. As he squat walked, something slithered away quickly.

  Cammarry pointed her weapon at the place where the thing had moved, but could see nothing there. “An animal of some kind.”

  “I think so. I could not see it.” He looked around more, but nothing else was there. He turned his attention up and far overhead was a silvery gray bar that stretched as far as he could see across the middle of the ceiling. Although ceiling was the wrong word for something so great a distance away. “The biological habitat!”

  “But a black one,” Cammarry said. “Is that grayish glowing bar up there a burned out sky tube?”

  “Or a nocturnal one?”

  “Day-night circadian cycles! Of course. I was so used to the needle ship’s constant dim light, I almost forgot that the biological habitat would have a rhythmic cycle. That is essential to natural environments.” Cammarry holstered the pistol.

  “I love reading at nighttime. I think books that are meant to be read in the dark so we can confront the very fears that darkness brings to the human mind.”

  “How did you read in the dark?” Cammarry pushed Jerome’s shoulder playfully. “Khin could maybe see in the dark, but you and I both need some kind of illumination.”

  “I had my AI Faraday project the text in illuminated font. Oh, I wonder what happened to Faraday.” Jerome pulled over close to Cammarry and held her. “Like the others of Dome 17, they are truly gone from us.”

  Cammarry held onto Jerome. She almost spoke about how Jubal had already violated their AIs, Winchell and Faraday, before they had left, but held her words in. She too had a few tears run down her face. As she held him, they rocked together and looked up into the sky so vast and far overhead.

  Something flew by not a meter or two over them. All they saw was a blur of brownness and a flutter of wings.

  They both fell flat and lay in the depression. Hearts beating wildly, breathing coming in gasps. Neither spoke for a moment. The chirping sounds had also disappeared.

  “What was that?” Jerome mouthed silently. “The same thing that crawled away?”

  Cammarry shrugged her shoulders, but kept shifted her eyes back to watch overhead. The pistol was in her hand again, aimed upward. After what seemed like an eternity, the chirping, clicking sounds came back. Cammarry and Jerome stealthily crawled up the side of the depression and gazed out. Their eyes had adjusted fairly well, but the landscape before them was still composed mostly of shadows of grays. There were plants growing in thickets, about a half meter high, and those mounds were scattered about. In the far distance, there was a line of something which was darker than the area leading up it.

  “There are some buildings over that way,” Cammarry pointed across the depression. “No lights, but those angular shapes look built, manufactured, and not grown.”

  “So do we head for them? We may encounter people there, or do we strive for somewhere else?” Jerome pondered out-loud.

  “Without Sandie to give us guidance, I am not sure which way is the stern and which is the bow, or if that even matters now. I think it safe to assume the nighttime sky tube runs the same direction, lengthways, of this habitat as did the one in Habitat Alpha.” Cammarry pointed up. “But which end has the Reproduction and Fabrication facility?”

  “And how will we ever find Khin?” Jerome reminded her. “Will he even know to head for that place? This is as foreign to him as it is to us. Nowhere, no space, on the needle ship is as big and wide open as this biome.”

  “None that we saw anyway, but Khin will see better than we do. He is more resourceful than I first thought.”

  “And we can listen for his laugh. That will lead us right to him,” Jerome said.

  “I say we quietly check out those buildings. If the indigenous people are sleeping, we can probably scout the buildings without being seen. Perhaps there will be signs, or maps, or some designation of where we are in this habitat.” Cammarry stood up and stretched out her legs. “That flying animal may come back, but as quietly as it was, I do not think we would hear it.” She again holstered her weapon.

  “I wonder what threat there is from a flying animal? I read about flying monkeys which were said to steal children and small domestic animals. But others wrote about being lifted up on eagle’s wings, and being carried to the breath of dawn. The old writings are hard to understand regarding animals. The interpretation is different if they were literal, metaphor, or symbolic. I asked John once, long ago and he told me that for him, he felt like there was a hawk in him that wanted to soar, and there was also a pig in him that wanted to wallow in the mud.”

  Cammarry smiled as she recalled John saying things like that. “Maybe it was one of the flying people with wings you spoke about. Maybe if you speak about something here it will become reality? Like in one of those old fairy stories you read so much?” She kissed him on the cheek. “So we head to the buildings. They are not far, and there looks to be some kind of walkway that leads there.”

  “I think we are coming up out of a hole, rather than going down a hole like Alice did.” Jerome returned the kiss. “Lead me on. Things can only get curiouser and curiouser.”

  They carefully made their way around the depression and realized it was more of a gently built up mound with the depression at the top. As they walked, the clicking noise seemed to remain the same distance away all the time, as if something was keeping its distance, yet following them as well.

  “This is a stone walkway,” Jerome said as more of the path they found was revealed. He kept his voice low, for sounds carried in unusual ways in the
huge dark biome.

  The first building them came to did have an inscription over its main door. ‘Crondel’ was impressed into the permalloy of the wall over the door. The building was about twenty meters long, and a single story. There were rows of windows, but no lights in any of them. The door was askew and the dark interior looked quiet and forlorn.

  “I see no signs of anyone here at all. This ground is drier than Habitat Alpha.” Cammarry said as she huddled next to Jerome to permit a quiet exchange. “They may sleep with doors open, but this building might also be abandoned.”

  “We should circle around it. In the dark it is hard to see much.”

  As they walked around the building, they realized there was no other side, at least not anymore. The building’s front was intact, but the sides ended about an eighth of the way back. The floor and foundation was still visible in the silvery light, and it could been seen where it ran evenly along the ground and completed the old perimeter of the building. The smoothly severed foundation glistened in the low light, but what had once been connected to it was missing. No rubble. No debris. No piles of pieces. It was just gone.