Iris

by William Barton

  "Jesus!" That from Sealock.

  "Yes," said Hu. "I see the infrastructure is too complex for our little 'net element. It seems to be a wingless lifting body something like ten kilometers long. A lot of mass here, disguised by the size of the empty internal cavity. That's why it wasn't apparent from the preliminary system scans. Though I suspected ..."

  "What did you suspect?" asked Ariane.

  "I suspected that some previously derived theories might have to be revised. That is all a scientist can do, in the end."

  "Yeah," said Krzakwa. "We could use some theories now." Ariane shrugged. "Some kind of landing craft? But what kind of atmosphere would you fly something this size in?"

  "Jupiter maybe. The sun's chromosphere?" said Tem. "How about Iris'?"

  "So? What next? It seems like we're stymied already," said Jana. Sealock looked up into the black circle of sky at the entry to the hole. "We've got a fair number of choices," he said. "We can play with it; we can fuck around looking for some kind of door, scrape the ice off bit by bit while we indulge in the happy explorer game, but ..." Hu turned and looked at him, a cold suspicion forming inside her. "But . . . what?"

  "Lots of things. Hell. Let's pull it right out of the ice. Why do you think we brought the ion drill?" There was a silence, and they all heard her gasp, "No!" She took a step forward, almost menacing.

  "You stupid bastard! Aello will tell us what we want to know about where this thing came from and when. If you give me a chance to—"

  "Maybe so," he said, "but time is not something we have in an abundant supply. Let's get out of here." Jana seemed to have frozen, contained by her visions and at the same time holding them all in.... Visions of fiery destruction.

  Polarisdrifted in a slow, elliptical orbit around Aello. Inside the crowded CM the four scientist-engineers sat arguing Krzakwa floated above his couch leafing through a hypothetical sheaf of options, a finger representing each one. "Look why don't we put it to a vote?" Jana Li Hu shook her head emphatically. "No," she said, "this is too important to be decided that way." There was a look of desperation on her face. "I don't think you people understand the magnitude of what you're suggesting. If you try to pull something that size out of the ice, you're going to chew up an entire quadrant . . . you'll ruin the whole moon!" She looked at their faces separately, seeking some form of recognition. "Don't you realize you'll be destroying something that's as important to the physical sciences as these putative 'aliens' are to biology?"

  Sealock reached up and began plugging leads into his head. "Jana—I don't know what you're really after, but that's the stupidest argument I've ever heard."

  Hu's anxious expression turned to a harsh glare. "Asshole," she said. "I suppose if this were the ruins of Troy you'd want to blow it up to see what's underneath. I'm arguing that we go about this in an ordered way, do a full reconnaissance down to meter resolution before we dig it out." Methol rested an intended calming hand on her forearm. "Jana. I think your principles are fine. But in this situation they're simply inappropriate. The finding of this Artifact could be the most important thing that's ever happened. We have to get it out of there."

  "And just how much of it do you think USEC will leave for us?" asked Sealock.

  "I still think we should put it to a vote," said Krzakwa .

  "No!"

  "Bullshit," said Sealock. "Why go on with this? We're ready now." They felt the hull begin to purr as the Magnaflux generator came to life, its wings of force acting like control moment gyros to turn the ship around its center of gravity. Slowly Polaris swung about, pointing its grid toward Aello. Brendanhad an exterior view, with a superimposed reticle imprinted on his vision, and he locked the ACS avionics on the targeted area of the small moon.

  Hu screamed, a tortured sound, deafening in the enclosed space, and launched herself at the man. Sealock caught her by the wrists and hurled her back down, where Methol tried to hold her in place. Krzakwa wedged his bulk between the seats, blocking entry to the upper half of the CM, simultaneously reaching up and affixing an induction lead to the back of his head, so his visual cortex could have access to the ship's optical system. This was something he wanted to see. "Ariane?"

  "It's OK. Pass me a lead."

  The twin H2/O2engines started with a muted roar, accelerating them toward the moon. When the ion drive came on they would be in perfect balance, thrusting in two opposing vectors that would cancel each other out.

  "Jana?"

  "God damn you all. No."

  Sealock lined up his sights on the Artifact and lit off the drill.

  Singing, high on the wire, the god stood athwart a velvet-dark sky, dust-mote stars swirling around the massive spires of his huge legs. A sparkle of fire raged through his golden hair and in his right hand he clutched a thunderbolt. The thing writhed in his grasp like a glowing snake, a living thing surrounded by a violet nimbus. He raised it high above his head, laughing in his awesome power, a peal of thunder that trailed off into the distance. His body began to throw off radiance, a bright corona that lit the skies all around with its lambent streamers. He cast the thunderbolt down on his little victim. It elongated from his hand, a broad band of coruscating fire, a maze of intertwining beams, and struck the surface of Aello all about the Artifact. There was an instant of dead stillness in which the ice seemed to grow transparent. In the slowed time of Comnet they could see the ship hanging there, nose down into the surface of a world, then the crust ofthe moon, the entire visible hemisphere, was riven by an array of cracks. There was an explosion.

  Aello was suddenly hidden by an expanding disk of blinding white mist, a shield that swallowed the power of the ion drill. It swelled until the wave front struck Polaris, rolling it out of its orbit. The beam winked out as Sealock shifted his attention to the matter of recontrol.

  He became the bird-king again, soaring on his broad wings in the winds of the storm, riding it out, waiting for the skies to clear. It was soon over. The debris from what they'd wrought fled away in an expanding, glittery shell and was gone. They could see Aello again.

  The little moon was eaten away, a great bite taken out of its surface, leaving a raw, gaping, steamy wound, the rest of its cryolith completely disrupted. In the center of this cavity the Artifact lay exposed, tumbling as it sank gently toward the center of its ancient home. It shone in the wan, distant sunlight, not like an ancient machine but like something fresh and new. Magical.

  Looking out through the ship's eyes, Temujin Krzakwa was silent. What they'd done was beyond simple blasphemy. He knew of no words possessing sufficient power.

  Brendan Sealock sighed, feeling his muscles slowly relax, his mind awash in a gentle afterglow, his heart slowing from its mad, orgasmic beat. A man didn't get to blow up many planets in his lifetime. Ariane Methol said, "Well, now. That was interesting. Let's get down there and see what we've found."

  Jana Li Hu said nothing.

  The alien Artifact settled faster than it should have in the negligible gravity of Aello. Perhaps this was because some final explosive force vector had given it an impulse toward the center of the ice moon rather than away. The tumbling motion stopped with a few glancing impacts on the frozen, shattered walls as it sank. It came to rest nose down in the deep cavity, its dorsal fin pointing at the black sky, and debris began to accrete all around it. Ultimately the ship, if such it was, would be buried once again. Polarisswung down from its orbit with a single phasingmaneuver and came to rest at its high gate point above the Artifact, hovering on an oxygen jet bled from the Hyloxso tanks. The crew looked down at it through the ship optics, silently examining their find in the harsh yet dim light of the sun. It was simple, almost featureless, a fat, wedge-shaped lifting body, with a tall stabilizer at the stern. There were two winglike control surfaces projecting upward at thirty-degree angles on either side. It appeared to be a soft, pale blue in color, though there were darker spots here and there. On the blunt stern there were five huge black circles, evidently the expansion nozzles
of rocket engines mounted in a trapezoidal array. It looked like a primitive human-technology spacecraft blown to unbelievable size. Sealock opened his eyes and glanced over at Krzakwa . "What do you suppose flew the damn thing, mile-high Watusi ?"

  The Selenite's teeth showed briefly, a weak sort of grin. "I guess we'd better go down and find out." Turning his attention back to the ship, Brendan said, "We'll be in for a lot of walking no matter where we land. It probably doesn't matter in this gravity."

  From the lower equipment bay, Ariane called up, "Why not land right on top of the thing? It's certainly big enough."

  Sealock nodded. "Why not? We couldn't ask for a flatter surface." He decreased the flow of gas from the engines and dropped Polaris slowly toward the broad back of the alien vessel. When they were down and the motor stopped, the ship stood canted at a twenty-degree angle. They started to slide, but a slight adjustment to the friction coefficient of the landing pads halted them. Krzakwasat up on his couch, eyes glassy with excitement. "Suit up. Let's see what we've got." The four of them stood outside the ship, back in their armored worksuits, on a smooth, tilted azure plain. In the distance they could see the three fins rising toward the black sky and beyond, very far away, the dark, crystalline horizon that hid the walls of the world-sized crater they'd made. The shrouded eye of Iris looked down on them in three-quartersphase, just above one horizon, and the sun, a fat spark, threw its wan light over the other.

  "Where do we begin?" mused Methol.

  "Maybe at the nearest dark spot," said Krzakwa . "They seem to be the only real features anywhere on the dorsal surface. There's one about three hundred meters, um, starboard of here." They'd landed just to port of the center line, where most of the Artifact's features seemed to be. When they set out for the thing, they ran into immediate difficulty. The surface of the vessel was so smooth and the gravity so low that it was difficult to push off in the long flat leaps of low-g movement, and even harder to come to a stop after landing. Raising the friction on the soles of their boots remedied this, but, since the em-embedding fields induced a corresponding field in the surface that did not immediately dissipate, they had a tendency to stick to the Artifact as they jumped. Any slight asymmetry in takeoff tended to throw them off course. Eventually they made it to the feature. The disk was just a region of somewhat darker blue, in no other way distinguished from the surrounding area. It was neither raised nor depressed, nor did it seem to have a different texture. "Well," said Krzakwa , "this is useless." He stepped forward onto it, but nothing happened. "I wonder what it's for?" The others joined him and they began walking around, staring at the circle. An analysis of the thing showed that it was simply a region of slightly enhanced titanium concentration. Sealock suddenly squatted near the center of the disk and said, "Maybe it's a giant 'O,' with very thick sides. Look." In front of him, at the circle's focus, was a small white spot, about two centimeters across. It, too, showed no relief.

  "Maybe that's just an artifact of whatever process they used to draw this design," said Methol. "The compass point," she laughed suddenly. "We're wasting our time here. Let's go back to the ship and break out the whole barrage of instruments." She and Krzakwa turned and started for Polaris, accompanied by Hu, who had been following them silently about, wrapped in whatever web of thoughts her mind was spinning.

  Sealock stood for a while longer, staring down at the white spot. He leaned forward and put his thumb over it, then straightened up. The little world about him remained inert. He muttered something, then put his foot over the mark and turned the sole's friction coefficient to maximum. He could feel his boot seem to cement itself to the surface of the Artifact. When he removed it again, the circular dot looked the same. Nothing happened. He thought he felt a slight current being applied to his skin, perhaps imagination and nothing more. Then he shouted.

  The others turned at the sound of his voice, which would have been deafening had the corn-circuits not compensated swiftly, and saw the blue disk being swiftly filled by a spreading pool of black. The edge of the hole seemed paper thin, adding to the impression of two-dimensionality. But there was certainly a third dimension here—Sealock hung poised in space for a moment, then, clasping his knees to his chest, he began to fall down into the darkness, drifting slowly in Aello's weak grasp. In a moment he was gone. They rushed wildly back to the edge of the portal and stood looking down into the nothingness below.

  "Brendan?"

  "I'm still here, Tem." His voice was crisp in their heads. "I'm standing on some kind of surface about four meters below you. I can see you outlined against the stars." He paused and they could sense his excitement through the telemetry circuits. "There's something very strange going on here."

  "What is it?"

  "Well . . . jump down and see. It might be best for you to experience it first hand. Just don't alter your optical settings."

  Krzakwaglanced at Methol and Hu, then shrugged and stepped over the edge. He fell very slowly, taking a long time to drop the four meters. As the darkness engulfed him, he said, "What am I supposed to be expecting?"

  "You'll see."

  "Should I try to land flat-footed?"

  "That'd be a good idea. Flex your knees a little."

  "Flex my ... In this gravity? Why?"

  "You'll see."

  Krzakwawas silent then, meditative, and prudently fell with his knees flexed. Suddenly his legs straightened out, as if something had grabbed him by the ankles and pulled. There was an instant of sudden acceleration and then his feet hammered into the floor. "What the fuck?" he muttered. Sealock laughed. "Pretty weird, huh? Now try lifting your foot up." The Selenite experimentally hefted his right leg. It came up hard, as if he were standing in a quite respectable inertial field, the closest thing to high gravity in his personal experience. Whatever was holding him abruptly let go, and his knee popped up with released muscular tension. He teetered, almost losing his balance. When he put his foot down the floor grabbed it again. "That's really odd. Some sort of em-field?"

  "I don't think so. I was playing some little games while I waited . . . there's a pretty strong gradient down here—like a gravitational field. I guess the region right against the floor has something like a 2-g density."

  "What're you telling me? You think the floor is coated with a monoparticular layer of neutronium ?" Sealock made his suit generate an image of Krzakwa against the darkness. "Some kind of neutron paint? No, I'm not saying anything. Just an observation."

  "How about another observation: why are we standing around in the dark? These suits have optical-scale enhancers...."

  Sealock grinned. "Turn yours on if you want. Maybe you should, so at least one of us can see. . . . But this ship is still turned on and its crew had to see by something. Odds are it was electromagnetic radiation."

  Krzakwakicked up the gain on his optical system until he could see by ambient light. "Almost useless. There's nothing in here." He looked around. "Quite a few dark spots on the walls. A few on the floor."

  "Airlock controls?"

  "Probably." He walked over to the wall, taking high steps the way he would in a shallow pool of water, and reached out.

  When his hand neared the wall the force grabbed it. " Hm. Interesting." He pulled one foot clear and stuck it on the wall, then followed it with the other. Suddenly his orientation was changed by ninety degrees. "That's a Useful trait for a spaceship to have."

  "Better than low-differential em."

  Krzakwasnickered. "Sure." He looked up at the still gaping door through the ceiling. Methol and Hu were bright mannequins to his enhanced vision. "I guess it's safe for us all to be in here at the same time. Come on." The two women came floating down. Ariane deliberately came down like a falling cat, landing full length on the floor and immersing herself in the field.

  "Oof," she grunted, "this is worse than Earth. Without the worksuit I'd be stuck here permanently." She found that she had to increase the power of her exoskeleton in order to get up again. Sealock started walking
blindly toward where he knew Methol was, stubbornly waiting for the ship to sense their presence and turn on a light. He was not long disappointed.

  "Hey, look out," shouted Tem, distracted from his thoughts, "you're about to step on a— ghaah!" He squeezed his eyes shut as a harsh, actinic violet light suddenly flared, quickly dimmed by the suit's internal protections. He turned down his scale enhancers and opened his eyes again. The chamber was flooded with a soft, blue-green light, like an undersea scene.

  "I guess I was right," said Sealock.

  "It's not coming from anywhere, Bren ," said Ariane.

  "Uh-huh. It just is, like the sticking field."

  Krzakwa'seyes still felt grainy. "Yeah. Well, I hate to say it, but so far these buttons, despite their apparently random distribution, are producing completely human results. It's a strong argument that form follows function. So far we have an airlock with a door button and a light switch." Hu came up to them now and, for the first time since the disruption of Aello, she spoke. "Since we've come this far, there's no point in being timid." She reached out and punched a gloved hand into one of the dark spots.

  "Hey!" said Krzakwa , but nothing happened. Hu punched the next spot in the row and the ceiling door suddenly irised shut and vanished without a trace.

  "Uh-oh." That was from Sealock. Hu snorted and hit the third spot. Again nothing happened. Methol stepped forward in alarm and said, "Really, Jana. I don't think you should be . . ." Hu punched the fourth spot and a section of floor under her feet vanished. She dropped through under what looked like a fairly high acceleration and was gone, her brief, chopped-off scream echoing in their heads.

  Back in the Illimitor World, Demogorgon and Vana lay naked together in the purple-cushioned rear section of his royal skimmer. They were drifting without power above the glittery azure waters of the Gevrainhal Sea, far to the northwest of Arhos, flowing with the wind beneath an almost featureless cornflower sky, tracking with the great red suns. The air was blood-warm above the equatorial ocean and fresh, clean sweat dappled the skins of their flawlessly imaginary bodies. Somewhere, in a hidden corner of her consciousness, Vana could imagine how this worked. There were many tricks to the Illimitor World program, enough alternate realities to satisfy the needs of many participants. If a hundred people submerged themselves here together, they would have a common experience, yes, but tailored to a hundred sets of needs. It would be the same but different. Here was a perfect world where everyone got not what he wanted but what he needed. Demogorgon had explained to her the mechanism for it all: a Tri-vesigesimalloop can make an almost infinite number of tracks from every decision point, with three layers of meaning derived from the twenty gradations of choice. The reality was that sex, like everything else, was better here than in the real world. There was no sick feeling, stemming from the initial sensations of desire: it just began. Instead of a gradual building to the trigger-spray release of an orgasm, it began full strength, one long flood of raw, elemental pleasure that ended only when the need for it was gone.