Antares Crucible

by Warwick Gibson

  “Are you sure it’s working?” said Cordez, looking at the flat, colorless screen.

  Geelong ran some tests. “Everything checks out,” he said eventually. “There’s even a background reading of around three degrees Kelvin – residual energy from the Big Bang.”

  Cordez froze as he realized what must be happening. “Throw the rear view up on the screen,” he said softly.

  The screen was instantly full of stars. The thickest part of the galaxy, visible as The Milky Way from Earth, had vanished – receded into immeasurable distance – and it was clear they were outside the galaxy itself.

  “How far have we come,” breathed Geelong, unable to take it all in.

  “A very, very long way,” said Cordez softly, “and we had better hope the Druanii intend to send us back the same way. It would take forever otherwise.”

  “We’re moving,” said Geelong, and the stars began to wheel to one side. He rushed back to the navs console, and tried to get a reference system established using the stars as a starting point.

  “Localized movement only, maybe one-tenth the speed of light, heading for . . . here,” he said, and threw the coordinates up on the overhead screen, magnifying them as he went.

  “Can you believe that,” said Cordez as a massive structure, hanging in space, grew until it filled the center of the screen.

  “I thought the Druanii were solitary creatures,” said Geelong, and Cordez nodded slowly.

  “So that’s all . . ,” began Geelong, “. . . for just one being,” finished Cordez.

  They looked at each other.

  “Remember how big they are,” said Cordez, recalling Andre’s diagrams with a tiny Human figure underneath a picture of a huge, dragon-like creature Andre had found in the Rothii archive.

  “Even so,” said Geelong.

  The vast structure spread across the screen as the Javelin approached it. Geelong cut back the magnification several times. Then, at last, the alien colossus filled the screen, and they were right alongside it.

  “We’re being scanned,” said Geelong. He paused. “That’s odd, the frequency is similar to very fast thought waves. Super Alpha, around 300 cycles a second.”

  Cordez winced. “Whatever it is, it’s not doing my head any good. Can you feel that?”

  Geelong looked up. Then his eyes glazed over, and he was transformed. He seemed lost in a dream world.

  Cordez’ own painful reveries started to pass, and eventually he looked across at his pilot, and called his name. Geelong was deep in his own thoughts. On the third or fourth summons, he started to respond.

  “It’s leaving us,” he said, with a sense of longing. “It’s going back to the dreamtime.”

  When he was back to his usual self, Cordez got him to describe what he was talking about.

  “The place we came from,” said the pilot haltingly. There weren’t really any words for it. “The place we go to.”

  He waved his hands, as if words alone could not communicate what he was trying to say. “The patterns that create the world, the place where thought arises.”

  Cordez realized Geelong was talking about something transcendental, beyond the everyday.

  “The dreamtime is still strong in Australia,” said the aboriginal pilot, at last. “For those who choose that path. The immense spaces, the lost horizons, the timelessness. It’s still there. We can live within it if we try.”

  Cordez nodded. He thought he understood what Geelong was trying to say, more or less.

  His own experience had been more personal, more a sense of loss, of missing his mentor Ebert – long dead – and a haunting suggestion Asura might vanish out of the world, taking much of the joy of being alive with her.

  Cordez realized they had been scanned by a very powerful mind, possibly one augmented by technology, and it had scanned them down to their essential thoughts and being.

  Then the side of the structure opened before the Javelin, and they were drawn inside a huge loading bay. When the doors closed, they were in complete darkness. The instruments showed the bay had a breathable atmosphere, but they exited the Javelin in life support suits anyway. Something made Cordez turn the suit’s lights off, and Geelong followed.

  As their eyes adjusted they could see tiny points of light, eerie fireflies that darted and looped in the gloom. One of them fluttered nearer, and then flew straight into Geelong’s glove, and out the other side. He pulled his hand away in surprise. The fireflies were nothing more than images, an electronic presence in the blackness.

  “We’re not supposed to see our way by them, are we?” said Geelong, with a little of his trademark humor.

  “No,” said Cordez, “but I think we’re supposed to go this way.”

  He pointed toward a pair of lines that had just appeared on the floor, creating a lane that skirted around the Javelin and disappeared into the gloom. The lines were easy enough to follow, but he turned on his suit’s lights anyway.

  Geelong shrugged, a gesture largely lost in his bulky life support suit, and followed Cordez across the floor. His boots hit silently, suggesting a composite, or even living, material.

  Cordez was deep in thought. This was all based on trust, he reflected. Trust that together the Alliance and the Druanii could do something about an encroaching civilization that had no respect for others, one that thought it was normal to take what it wanted without remorse.

  Awareness must pass through the same stages everywhere in the universe, he realized. There was a time before awareness of self, then a time of greed and selfishness, and then, hopefully, a time of respect and compassion. Humans weren’t that good at getting past the ego stage, he mused, but the Invardii seemed to have got stuck there!

  CHAPTER 23

  ________________

  The walk into the gloomy cargo bay dragged on. To Cordez it was like walking across a vast stage into the wings, except for the complete absence of echoes.

  “Is the atmosphere for us, or does our Druanii friend breath oxygen like we do?” said Geelong at last, to break the silence.

  “Unlikely,” said Cordez. “That they breath like us that is. It’s too inefficient. Only the Rothii stayed reasonably true to their original DNA, the other two races used whatever technology enhanced their abilities.”

  Geelong was silent at that. It jarred with his inner sense of how all things were ultimately connected.

  Then the two of them came to a cubicle set in a wall.

  “Airlock,” said Cordez. “The ship won’t be flooded with an atmosphere just for us. We’ll be shepherded to where they want us to go – sorry, where he or she wants us to go – a section at a time. Then the atmosphere will be moved ahead for us to use again.

  “The Druanii have already said how much of a problem it is for them to do miracles for us, so I guess they don’t have inexhaustible resources.”

  Geelong nodded. This trip was already the most bizarre of the Druanii-related adventures he’d been on. At first they had been exciting, but now it was getting to be a bit much to take in, and he was glad Cordez was here to make the decisions.

  The other side of the airlock turned out to be a bubble with a flat floor. When they were safely through the airlock, and inside the bubble, they felt it begin to move.

  “Must be a big ship,” said Cordez. “Corridors don’t do it for the Druanii.”

  The bubble stopped at another airlock, and on the other side of that one was the legendary creature they had come to see.

  It was floating in front of a set of 3D animations that blinked in and out of existence as they were required. While they were in existence they re-sized themselves and amalgamated at breath-taking speed. Behind the animations bands of marching images flashed across a luminous wall as fast as the Human eye could follow.

  The images on the wall faded away. Then the 3D animations slowed, and hung motionless in space. The enormous dragon shape turned its head and surveyed Cordez and Geelong with unblinking eyes. They were soft pools of eyes, without
pupils, and they looked into them as if the Druanii were scrutinizing their souls.

  The two men were standing on something like a mezzanine floor, a giant shelf along one side of the cavernous space, and Cordez walked out to the edge of it. From there he could look directly into the enormous face of the Druanii. It was surrounded by defensive plates that ended in lethal spikes. The vast body undulated away to his left.

  His contemplation of the giant creature before him was broken by the sound of nails clattering across the floor. He turned to see a number of part-Lemur, part-Cappuchin monkey life forms making their way along the mezzanine floor toward him. They were large and small, and Cordez guessed it was a family group. The oldest male, taller than the others and sporting patches of white in the mane about its face, came on ahead of the rest.

  “Welcome to my master’s house,” it said briskly, in a clipped, high-pitched voice.

  Cordez bowed, in a formal, very South American manner. “Tell your master we are pleased, and excited, to be here. We are also very grateful for everything the Druanii have done for us.”

  “My master can understand what you are thinking,” said the hybrid creation. “I am here only to voice my master’s thoughts.”

  So it was the Druanii that had scanned them in the cargo bay, thought Cordez. What it must be like to have a mind like that. It was a very powerful tool, artificially enhanced or not.

  “To answer your questions,” continued the creature, “my master created us to act as translators for this meeting. We are of the same genetic lineage as yourselves, though deliberately not as advanced, and my master thought that might be comforting to you.

  “We are a family group to meet each other’s social needs. Unnecessary cruelty breaks ethical laws for all creatures, yes?”

  Cordez replied that yes, it most certainly did. He found it a little disconcerting that he had only to wonder something about these creatures, and the Druanii answered his unspoken thoughts.

  “We are not, actually, conscious in any way you would recognize,” the large male continued. “To create souls is morally fraught, to say the least. This is a difficult one, do you not agree?”

  Cordez was amused. Since Humanity had never had the capacity to create souls, it was not a question he had ever considered. Apparently, it was a very real dilemma for the Druanii.

  When he did not immediately answer, the creature hurried on.

  “The atmosphere in this chamber is quite breathable for your species, and your present appearance is disconcerting to myself and my family. Would it be possible for you to remove your life support equipment?”

  Cordez looked at Geelong, who nodded his agreement. They clambered out of their suits, and tentatively sniffed the air about them. A smile broke out on Geelong’s features. “Spring in the mountains, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “Druanii is glad you approve,” said the large male. The other creatures in the small group did not seem to share in the burden of translating the Druanii’s thoughts, and were more concerned with grooming each other. They seemed to be limited to such instinctive activities. The one Cordez now thought of as ‘the translator’ took the hand of one of the smallest ones, and led it over to Cordez.

  It sniffed at his clothing, and pulled back its nose in distaste. Cordez smiled, and after its initial reaction it scampered up his outstretched arm and settled on his shoulder, leaning against the side of his head. Warm, soft fingers began to scratch at a tiny scrap of wax in his outer ear.

  “Why do Druanii live alone?” said Cordez, keen to understand the many mysteries that surrounded the Druanii.

  “Druanii do not live alone,” said the translator, evidently puzzled by the question.

  “There are more Druanii in this place?” said Cordez, now just as puzzled.

  “Ah, not so,” said the translator, as the Druanii understood the question at last. “Druanii are one in heart, one in mind, one in thought. Though vast distances separate them, Druanii are never alone.”

  As if to demonstrate the point, the huge dragon head in front of them turned back to one of the animations that hung in front of it. The animation spun and jumped, shapes and colors flitting across its surface. The Druanii was apparently communicating with one of its own, somewhere in the vastness of space.

  As it did this, Cordez held his hands to his temples, dislodging his little passenger, and began to shake his head. It was hard to describe the discomfort he felt.

  “You are not well?” inquired the translator, concerned for its guest.

  When Cordez described the hundreds of tiny needles inside his head, and the sensation of falling that accompanied it, the Druanii turned to look at him.

  “Extraordinary,” said the translator, coming closer and looking into Cordez’ eyes. It studied something there for a moment, and Cordez felt gentle fingers probe inside his mind.

  “You have something like Druanii mind, just the beginning of it. Druanii share thoughts and feelings across the galaxy. You have something similar . . . a connection to events happening elsewhere, a little foreknowledge perhaps?”

  Cordez straightened up with a look of wonder on his face, and the odd sensations disappeared as the animation in front of the Druanii became still again.

  It made sense. It all, suddenly, made absolute sense.

  He had been too lucky, too often, in his life, and he had always wondered why. He was plugged in to the greatest information web in the Solar System, and in the Alliance. It was a nexus of information and political binding that kept him up to date, in depth, everywhere at once. But that didn’t explain his extraordinary hit rate, his ‘informed guesses’ that were nearly always right on the button.

  It had bugged him. Even he could see he couldn’t take all the credit, though he knew how good he was at collecting information and finding meaning in it.

  He was finally able to acknowledged that there was some ‘magic’ in the matter. He was a ‘Curacanto’, a spirit doctor as his ancestors had sometimes been called, with a knowledge of things it was impossible to know.

  Oddly, he felt relieved. It was an explanation of sorts.

  Now that the Druanii understood the discomfort he felt when it conversed with its fellows, it shut down the animations in front of it. The translator explained it could shut itself out of the Druanii mind web if it concentrated on something else strongly enough.

  It inquired whether, if Cordez felt he had recovered enough, he would he be willing to continue the conversation with his host?

  Cordez was only too eager to ask more questions. He started with his observation that the Druanii seemed technologically ahead of the Invardii and the Rothii.

  The Druanii agreed. “Pursuit of philosophical thought opens ways into nature of the universe,” explained the monkey-like translator, sitting on its haunches between Cordez and Geelong, and coming up to their waists. The smallest member of its family, which Cordez had dislodged off his shoulder, had now taken up position in Geelong’s arms, where it was nodding off as he rocked it gently.

  “However, Druanii have no need of social closeness, or political organization,” continued the huge, dragon-like creature. “They do not, therefore, breed for emotional and industrial needs.

  “Druanii have accelerated creation of new individuals. This is in response to Invardii colonization outside the core of the galaxy, and the rapid growth of the Alliance in the Spiral Arm. However, members of the Druanii still only number in the thousands.

  “Resources take time to accumulate, and process of creation is slow. Despite more advanced technology, one individual can only overcome so many enemies in a time of conflict,” it finished.

  Cordez was intrigued to learn that the Druanii had accelerated the creation of new individuals. From what the research team had discovered in the archives, the Druanii were now so hybridized, and shot through with advanced technologies, that a natural birth was impossible for them.

  Essentially the Druanii were trying to tell him that in a knock down, dra
g ‘em out fight, the Druanii wouldn’t be able to field large numbers.

  “Druanii have a number of planetary systems as protectorates,” continued the translator. “Most of them have volunteered to help in any way they can. Some have technologies that might be of use, but few would survive for long against Invardii or Buccra.”

  Cordez was moved that the protectorates should offer to help, particularly when it was against forces so superior to them. He agreed that the Druanii should only accept help from those who stood a chance in a battle against the Invardii city, and the forces that would be defending it.

  Then the discussion became a little more technical.

  “Buccra have ways to overcome Javelin shields,” said Cordez, “and Buccra warships regenerate faster than Alliance forces can destroy them.

  “Invardii shields have adapted to every weapon we have tried on them. Valkrethi can still destroy Invardii ships, but we have lost five Valkrethi so far, and there are only so many of them.”

  The translator smiled, an odd grimace that suggested the Druanii behind it was attempting a Human expression. “We have been thinking about that, and we have some answers. How quickly can you modify your Javelins?”

  “Depends,” said Cordez. “What did you have in mind?”

  The discussion on how they might work together to improve the Alliance chances began in earnest.

  CHAPTER 24

  ________________

  The boardroom at Prometheus was packed. Every departmental head was there, accompanied by their most creative thinkers, Human and Mersa. The immense interest in Cordez’ meeting with the Druanii had many more following the meeting as it was relayed from the boardroom.

  Representatives of EarthGov had insisted on being present, though the Regents had been content to gather at Victor Emen’s headquarters in Krakov to watch proceedings from there. A nervous Battrod was present in the boardroom, representing the Hud pilots and his home planet. Cordez had also arranged for subspace feeds to the Sumerian and K'Sarth planets.