Bria’s suit chimed warnings: blood was pooling in her left boot. Medical diagnostics, blinking urgently, pressed the suit’s integrity warnings out of the way: the shrapnel had pierced an artery.
“Heal it,” she growled at the suit. The diagnostic software tried to give Bria a range of questions, but she pushed the menus away. Let the suit figure it out.
“Commander?” a voice called. Tarkos, over the radio. “Commander, you’re injured! What’s happening?”
Bria climbed to her feet. She stumbled as her left leg gave out. It felt numb and nearly useless. She found her balance with her weight mostly on her right foot. She stood still a moment, wobbling, till she felt steady. Then she limped forward to the hall entrance. Rubble blocked the way. She climbed up on sharp-edged stones, working on three limbs and favoring her cut leg, as she searched for a path through.
“Gowgoroup killed Ki’Ki’Tilish,” she radioed to Tarkos. There did not seem to be any path large enough for any of them to get through the heaped stones. “Collapsed exit tunnel. Escaped. Left door open to sea waves.”
“I checked that encounter vehicle for weapons,” Tarkos said.
“Used encounter vehicle as weapon. Stamped on Ki’Ki’Tilish. Then destructed power core.”
Tarkos made a sharp exhaling noise. Disappointment? Bria wondered. Or anger? Maybe both. But the human said, in his soft voice, “There are armed Kriani outside, on the steps. They looked prepared. Could Gowgoroup have called them here?”
Bria grunted. “Possible.”
“I’m on my way, Commander,” Tarkos called. “Tiklik is injured, so I’m slowed, but I should be coming near.”
_____
Tarkos reached down to Tiklik. “If I support your side, can you walk? I mean, could we walk together?”
“It is probable,” the robot said.
Tarkos looked warily toward the entrance. A heavy, slanting rain had started. He walked back to the entrance once more, but he could barely see across the canyon to the steps in the cliff side. He did not see any Kriani on the infrared, but beams cut through the rain, nearly harmless now as they dissipated through the endless droplets of water. They were aimed not at him, but at the cliff head above.
He went back and gripped Tiklik’s thin body, on the side where two of its legs had been severed. He lifted, and Tiklik pushed back with its two legs on the opposite side. Together they managed to stand.
“I’m sorry,” Tarkos told Tiklik, as they slowly hobbled forward. Bria had not been using scrambled transmissions; Tiklik would have heard all that Bria said. “I’m sorry for your loss. Ki’Ki’Tilish seemed an admirable Kirt.” He’d barely known her, of course, but he’d liked her, in the way that he found himself inclined to like all Kirt. They were strangely open, with their dreary cynicism about themselves, combined with their generous assessment of others. And it stung, that he’d promised the Kirt that he’d get her out alive, and failed. He felt now the unreality that always surrounded death, when the world had changed irrevocably but you could not yet see or experience that change, you could only expect it.
The broken robot’s three remaining limbs twitched forlornly, scraping at the floor and stopping their motion for a moment. Its eye lenses shifted, as if unable to find focus.
“She was the fourth-most widely cited living astronomer on Kirt,” the robot said finally. “Homeworld H factor 112.”
“What? What the hell is she doing here then?” Tarkos said. “I mean, an important scholar could have stayed home, sent another in her place, no?”
“She hoped to earn recognition for service, sufficient to be permitted to have her own brood of young.”
“Being an astronomer is not sufficient recognition?”
“She wanted a large brood,” Tiklik said.
Tarkos frowned. Kirt fertility laws were mysterious to him. Anyone could breed, but to have many offspring, one needed certain kinds of social accomplishment. Ki’Ki’Tilish must have longed for many children. The mild mannered scientist had been ambitious.
“Why did she come,” he asked Tiklik, “if she wanted children, but expected to die?”
“She has eggs stored on Kirtpau. They will be fertilized now, and let loose in the kindertides.”
Still, Tarkos thought. It would be better to have children and to have lived to raise them.
“What… what would be done with the body, usually?”
“It should be dropped into the very deepest seas of Kirtpau, where it might feed the dwellers of the dark depths.”
“I’m sorry,” Tarkos whispered. “But that’s not going to happen. I’m sorry I failed you.” There would be no way to take the Kirt’s body with them. They would have to leave the body here and hurry to complete their mission.
The robot did not answer.
_____
One day, on their weeks traveling to this planet, Tarkos had come upon Tiklik moving down the hall from its shared room with the Kirt astronomer, making eerily slow movements—movements so very slow that Tarkos had to stare a long moment to recognize that it did in fact move. It had been the first time he’d seen Tiklik in slow time, and Tarkos froze, surprised not only by the strange sight, but also by the quickening of his own heart. The mantis-shaped black robot’s insidiously slow movements seemed so alien, so inhuman, that it gave Tarkos a shiver. It was as if the robot belonged to an entirely different order of time and existence. Or as if it were a predator with infinite patience, sneaking up on its prey.
He stared at Tiklik a long while, transfixed. Then he turned and walked to the Kirt’s quarters and rang. After a moment the door slid aside. The Kirt made clicking noises within. Tarkos realized he’d let his translation implants turn off. He turned them back on.
“Excuse me?” he said.
“Please enter human Harmonizer Tarkos.”
Tarkos stepped inside. The Kirt sat on a kind of chair, a round platform that it settled down open. Around it, a hologram of star systems whirled.
“I wanted to ask you about the… about Tiklik.”
“Tilik’al’Takas?” the Kirt said.
Tarkos wondered how she heard his Galactic. No doubt as a slow, mumbled mess. “Yes, it, uh, is moving very slowly, in the corridor. Is it in some difficulty?”
“It spent most of its existence traveling space, moving in slow time, thinking a thought a year. It appears to enjoy returning to this state, on some occasions. Though our situation is hopeless, do not worry about Tiklik’al’Takas. It is… adjusting to its new body, and new conditions.”
Tarkos nodded, then remembered himself—most species would not understand a human head nod—and said, “Yes. Thank you, citizen.” He hesitated a moment, wondering whether he should query the Kirt astronomer some more about the AI. Might it know something that would shed light on Preeajitala’s warning?
But while he hesitated, the Kirt clicked at him, “It is a pleasure for this one to meet a human being.”
Tarkos bowed, not knowing how else to recognize the compliment. “It is an honor for me to be of any service to the Kirt.” The Kirt had been the first contact species for humanity. They had broken the Galactic Alliance’s quarantine, after Earth developed AIs. They were still the race with which humanity had the closest relations. “I had the honor to visit your world Kirtpau one time. Yours is a beautiful planet, with its million green islands rising out of the world-covering sea.” Kirtpau, Tarkos knew, actually meant Sea of the Kirt in their language.
The Kirt tapped two legs together in approval. “And though I have not visited the shining blue and white Earth, humanity is a special interest of this one’s.”
“Along with astronomy?” Tarkos asked.
“Astronomy is this one’s profession. But humanity is this one’s interest.”
“May I ask why?”
“As a young race, you have great optimism,” she said. “It is refreshing. You make this one doubt our ways. This is good.”
Tarkos smiled. “I am surprised that you praise our op
timism. You seem not to care for optimism.”
“Oh, this one is too aware of how dismal all our prospects are. The Ulltrians will destroy our worlds and murder our children. But it would be a pleasant surprise if there were more cause for hope than we Kirt allow.”
Tarkos nodded again, and this time he did not bother to explain the gesture. He knew and liked the Kirt. Ki’Ki’Tilish was unusual but not greatly so. Many Kirt tended to talk always in terms of bleak despair. He once stood between two Kirt engineers talking about a ship’s engines, and he’d enjoyed the conversation more at funerals. All they’d discussed was the endless things that could go wrong with their repair efforts, and how they could die horrible deaths as a result. But then they fixed the engines. That was their way: the Kirt he’d known always did the right thing, in the end. For the Kirt, it seemed that pessimism did not result in paralysis.
“I thank you, Ki’Ki’Tilish,” he said. “And I will make it my first priority to earn your trust and ensure your safety on this mission.”
“Oh, don’t do that,” she clicked. “You’ll end up dead that much sooner. And when I do die, please understand that I would not have blamed you.”
Tarkos had smiled, naively confident that he would surprise the Ki’Ki’Tilish by bringing her home alive, and had backed out of the room.
_____
“Are you still in pain?” Tarkos asked Tiklik, after they took a few more steps.
“I have managed to control for the experience of dysfunction.”
“Not easy to lose a limb,” he said. He took a step forward, and Tiklik matched it with a scratching step of two of its legs. “I lost my left arm on a mission once. This is a new vat-grown arm.”
“I noticed that its composition was significantly distinct from your other limbs,” Tiklik said. “The carbon is younger.”
“Really? Well, it’s weird. Sometimes, I think I have phantom limb. I feel my old arm do something, while this arm does something else.”
“These limbs are new to me,” the robot said, now better matching his gate.
“That’s right,” Tarkos said. “You used to have… what, engines?”
“And much more effective perceptual apparatus.”
Tarkos turned his head and looked at Tiklik’s gleaming eye lenses. “Why did you come here, Tiklik? On this mission, I mean. You are a primary citizen. So you could find some other work.”
“If I succeed on this mission,” the robot transmitted. “Ki’Ki’Tilish was going to ensure that I was given another mission exploring deep space. That is my purpose.”
“What will happen to you now?” he asked.
“I do not know,” the robot said.
They shuffled to the end of the tunnel. The tunnel floor gave way before the ceiling stopped: it dropped down into another tunnel, this one sloping up before them. “This must be the other vent passage,” Tarkos said.
“The angle is correct,” Tiklik said.
Tarkos climbed down to the other surface, and then helped the robot down. They walked up to where the vents exited through the side of a rising dome of black stone. Before them, four ancient Ulltrian ships dangled by pale metal cables. And below, stacks of books formed a ring around a sunken floor. Tarkos could make out a Kriani there. And beside it, the crushed corpse of one of Kirtpau’s greatest astronomers.
He was about to radio down again to Bria, when a blinking icon appeared in his helmet, indicating a transmission on a non-standard frequency had been picked up by his suit. He piped the message from radio over to audio. Clicks and whirs sounded. The Kriani were trying to call him.
He patched into the view from his drone, still clinging to the cliff outside. The storm had begun to hit land. Rain and fog obscured the stairs, but still lasers shot up through the mist, leaving green and blue trails of boiling air. The drone shifted its view, looking up the cliff face.
A horde of black robots climbed methodically down the stone wall. Tarkos frowned. They seemed to be some kind of general purpose robot, low and squat. Not made for climbing vertically: each was planting one of its four limbs forward, drilling it into the cliff face, and securing the limb before pulling another limb a step farther. Very slow progress. But it was progress. They would make it to the vent tunnel eventually. Their square tops bristled with equipment, including what looked like a cutting laser. They would be formidable opponents in close quarters, where he would have to hold back his most powerful weapons.
He watched their short, heavy limbs cracked into the stone and send crumbled rock tumbling in the wind.
CHAPTER 9
After the explosion, Eydis stumbled to Bria, over the rubble pile clogging the mouth of the exit tunnel. She had found her oxygen mask and pulled it back on. Her eyes were wide, showing fearful whites, their expression exaggerated by the dark dirt now smeared all over her face. “You saved my life,” she said to the Sussurat.
Bria did not reply. Instead, she tuned her suit radio to a common communication band.
“Gowgoroup,” Bria called. But only a hiss of static followed. Bria reached down to her thigh. Her suit extruded a large pistol. She pulled it free, and threw it into the largest crack she could see in the rubble. The gun sprouted thin legs from its handle, and scurried forward into the dark.
“I’ll be damned,” Eydis whispered. “It’s true, what they say. You have sentient weaponry.”
“Will boost transmission,” Bria explained. She tracked the gun as it scurried through narrow cracks, turning back several times before finding a passage through to the other side of the rubble. It crawled toward the door, which the OnUnAn had left open. Shards of shrapnel stuck in the door and its frame. It would not be able to close again, without significant repairs. The gun walked to the edge of the water that poured through.
“Gowgoroup!” Bria shouted, letting the gun bounce the transmission on.
“Sussurat,” a gurgling reply came. Wind howled in the background, so Bria assumed the naked slug did not have implants, but had brought a transmitter with it. It may well have planted such a transmitter on the steps, calling Kriani here.
“Why betray us?” Bria said. “Homeworld Onus will suffer. Surrender now. Tell us what know. Then we can save Onus.”
The slugs made wet, slapping sounds. Bria wondered whether it were derision. Or laughter. “You see so little, with your eyes buried in your head, unable to stretch your gazes and see around you,” the leader slug gurgled. “You have only a single brain, trapped in a skull bone. It cannot grow. You cannot learn new truths. I tell you: I huddle with the victors. As do many. There are followers of the Ulltrians in every race now.”
“Not among Sussurats.”
“No. Not among Sussurats. Stupid Sussurats never lift up their eyes. Stupid Sussurats do not understand that all species, all life trees must destroy or be destroyed.”
“Last chance,” Bria said. “Return, confess, we help Onus.”
“Sussurat!” the OnUnAn spat. “Stupid carnivore! You look at Galactics and wish we were all meat!”
“OnUnAn,” Bria said. “Detritovore. You look at Galaxy and wish it were all shit.”
Bria turned off the radio. She considered sending the weapon after the OnUnAn, but the pistol would not do well moving through water. And besides, she would be unable to communicate with the weapon once it moved through the doors. The most she could do is send it to kill the slugs. That would be inelegant. She called it back.
Ruinreader clopped over to stand beside Eydis. Behind it, the table-like robot bowed by the dropped book. Arms slipped from its boxy body and began to lift the tome onto its back.
“Cavern-cracking confusion clots the way,” the Thrumpit said, “catching us here while the tides steal through stubborn stones.”
Bria nodded. Water seeped around the Thrumpit’s flat feet, forming a dark, spreading pool on the pale dust. “Thrumpit speaks truth. Tides come.”
“You brought that OnUnAn with you,” Eydis said.
“Treaty required,” Bria
said, descending the rocks. “Not a citizen.”
“But you planted a bomb on its vehicle’s leg,” Eydis said. “You trapped the vehicle here. How did you know Gowgoroup was a danger?”
“Traveler said ‘us.’”
“What?” But then Eydis nodded. “Ah. Subtle, Commander. One of its parts didn’t say ‘me,’ it said ‘us.’ So you knew the parts were in disharmony. They were fighting over something. Something important.”
“Not fast enough,” Bria said, her tone bitter. She’d stopped the OnUnAn from escaping with the book, but she’d not saved the Kirt astronomer. A failure, by any measure. She would ask for a reprimand when they returned.
Bria wobbled, a wave of dizziness coming over her. She looked at the suit’s medical diagnostics. The in-suit microrobots worked at her wound, but the shard had cut deep, nearly severing a primary artery, and the blood flowed quickly. The microrobots could not stop the bleeding entirely. They were, in fact, drowning in her blood, their small parts gummed up with her platelets. She would bleed to death, eventually, if she did not get to the ship.
She pushed past Eydis and the Thrumpit. The smoke was thinning, settling all around them as a pale dust. She hobbled through the stacks of books, the others following, the robot coming last with the cursed tome. Bria leaned toward the Kriani librarian, not daring to bend her legs to crouch down. She de-opaqued her visor against the protest of her suit. “Other exit?” she asked.
“No other,” the Kriani croaked.
“Other exit?” Bria asked again.
The Kriani waved its antennae languidly. After a long while, it said, “Up.”
All of them looked up, the Thrumpit leaning far aside to point one eye at the dark cavern roof. The hurricane ship swayed above them. Faint light shone on it from the hexagonal hole in the side of the domed ceiling, where the vent tunnel opened.
“Tarkos,” Bria said.
“I’m right above you, Commander. I can see you.”
“Exit hall collapse not penetrable. Tides come. Flood museum. We go.”
Well of Furies Page 12