Eventually someone had lured the animal away. But now he was on the prowl again....
As Rachel emerged from the new forest, she felt her side beginning to ache. So she stopped. The far wall, the one that was opposite the Temple, still lay at least a kilometer or more away. Between the new forest and the wall was a series of gentle hills made of rounded rocks.
Rachel plopped down behind the nearest one and opened Pav’s Slate.
For a moment, she felt bad about that. Not for the invasion of privacy—anyone near Rachel’s age assumed that every computer or Tik-Talk or Slate was hackable, that any images, music, or data stored there was certain to be seen by someone else, eventually.
What bothered her was wasting energy. She promised to only peek for a minute...and started clicking on the desktop.
Which was an immediate disappointment. She realized it was all schoolwork or music—an amazing amount of music, and many of the names unknown to Rachel—and, yes, the predictable private folder under a stupid cover name. “‘Physics stuff,’ Pav? Really?”
“Actually, my porn is in the file labeled ‘Porn,’” Pav said.
It was her turn to be startled. “How long have you been there?”
“Five seconds.” He was still panting, in fact. “See anything you like?”
“Well, no, not in your ‘Hot Euro Bodies.’ None of them are real, by the way.”
“Okay, but not relevant.”
The dog barked again. “Is he coming after us?” Pav asked.
“He’s a Lab or a retriever,” Rachel said. She recognized only half a dozen dog breeds, but Labs and retrievers were among them. “They’re herders. Maybe he thinks we’re cows.”
Pav sat down next to her. “Let me,” he said. Rachel allowed him to take the Slate back. “Were you there for the launch?”
“What launch? Oh, my dad’s. Yeah.” Two years ago, the last time Rachel had gone to Florida and the Cape for Zack Stewart’s first attempt at a Destiny mission, her mother had been killed. This time, Zack had encouraged her, and had arranged for Amy Meyer and her family to go along. So, dutifully, she had stood at the press dome three miles from Pad 39A as Zack’s Saturn had lifted off. The launch excitement lasted ten minutes; the rest of the day had meant driving, parking, walking, unparking, and driving back to the motel in horrible heat and humidity. None of this had done anything to improve Rachel’s attitude toward Florida and rocket launches.
“I couldn’t go to my dad’s.”
“Why not?”
“It was in French Guiana. The European Space Agency owns it and they really aren’t set up for many visitors. And the Coalition was worried that if something went wrong, they’d have to deal with a few thousand witnesses.”
“Well, nothing went wrong—”
“Then, you mean.”
“Yeah.” Pav showed her the Brahma launch...the massive Ariane 6 rocket rising on a fountain of steam, then arcing over the Atlantic.
“Wait!” Rachel said. “What was that?”
“What?”
She took the Slate and clicked on the pad, freezing the footage and opening another window, where Pav had called up another view of the Brahma event from MSNBC. She froze that image...which showed her mother Megan’s publicity portrait.
“Oh,” Pav said, seeing the same image. “I guess they were doing some kind of recap....”
Rachel resized the image so it filled the screen. There was Megan Doyle Stewart, probably from four years ago, when she finally broke down and got new images made. Brunette, brown-eyed, unable to appear serious even when it would be a good idea—
It was the same woman she had seen most recently on images downlinked to Houston from Keanu. The same woman whose horribly mutilated body she had just helped bury.
She couldn’t see it. Her eyes were filled with tears.
“Hey,” Pav said, “let’s just...save on the batteries.” He gently took the Slate back and closed the windows—
—just as Cowboy trotted past.
The dog veered away from his path, which seemed to be taking him toward the near wall, just long enough to pant and sniff them. Then he continued on his canine journey.
“Where do you suppose he’s going?” Pav said.
“We should probably get him...”
“Are we responsible now?”
“I think we’re responsible for everyone and everything now.” She got up. “Besides, if we don’t chase the dog, we’ll have to go back to the Temple, and they’ll put us to work at something crappy.”
“You make an excellent point.”
Cowboy was easy to follow...his tracks were visible on the smooth dirt surface. And whenever they lost sight of him in the rocks, they would hear him yap. “Do you suppose he’s chasing something?” Pav said.
“I hope not,” Rachel said.
Pav laughed. “Another excellent point.”
“Eventually he’s going to run out of room, though.” They were close to the wall now. It rose above her, like one of those giant office towers in downtown Houston, only rocky and sandy rather than shiny glass. Stopping, she let her head tilt back and saw that the wall began curving toward the ceiling, which made her feel light and dizzy—
Not far away, Cowboy started barking furiously.
Pav slipped one of his tattooed forearms around her. To her surprise, she rather liked it.
“It’s creepy to know that we’re living in a giant tube.”
“Hey, if you think about it, we were living on the surface of a big ball of rock. How was that better? Come on.”
Cowboy’s barking had grown irregular but was enough to let them know where he was...to their left, down-habitat, and right against the wall.
Here stood a collection of rocks and weirdly shaped structures that reminded Rachel of cave stalagmites. Their surface was studded with tiny crystals of some kind, like mica or fool’s gold. And they all seemed fresh, somehow. Moist.
The dog had gone silent.
“Where did he go?” Rachel said. Then she called, “Cowboy!”
“Who knows? He came out of nowhere, right? Maybe he went back.”
“No, he was chasing something. And if he went back, we would have seen him.”
Pav was in the lead, and suddenly he stopped. “What’s the matter now?” Rachel said.
“What if he’s found something we don’t want to find?”
“Like what? An alien?”
“High on my list.”
“I hope so. I have a lot of questions for the first alien I meet.” And she slipped past him.
Around the last cluster of rocks, almost hidden in shadows, they found Cowboy on his hind legs, pawing at the wall.
And the wall was pulsing and flowing.
“Holy shit.”
There was a slit of some kind, as if the wall were either creating an opening or closing one. Cowboy kept leaping into the slit. With every movement, the pulsing stopped for a few seconds. “Whatever’s going on,” Rachel said, “it looks as though he’s interrupting it.”
She stepped forward, but slowly and carefully. As she got closer to the dog, she began to smell something—an odor that blended swamp with diesel exhaust. It wasn’t unpleasant, but she wouldn’t want a bottle of it, either.
“Here, Cowboy...come here...”
The dog stopped moving long enough to glance back at Rachel and Pav. Then he turned away and dove right through the opening.
“Well, shit,” Rachel said.
“What do we do now?”
Rachel wasn’t sure. “Look,” she said, “my father is all freaked out because there doesn’t seem to be a way out of the habitat....” She was already edging toward the opening.
“Are you out of your mind?”
“Probably, but...it’s solidified.” The opening had developed edges that gave off wisps of steam, like a lava flow that hits cold seawater.
“Which is good for us how?”
She was within a meter.
“What do you see inside?”
“Not much,” she said. It appeared that the ground surface continued into the opening. “It’s dark.”
“Oh.” Suddenly Pav was past her, raising the Slate and clicking on its flashlight.
The light didn’t do much, but it showed a foggy tunnel that descended gently for a few meters, then seemed to turn to their left. “Cowboy!” Rachel called.
“I don’t see or hear him.” He turned to face her. “What do you want to do?”
“The dog is important, I think. And so is this tunnel thingie. Let’s just...”
“Okay.”
He took her hand, which Rachel found she liked, and both stepped and stepped again. Half a head taller, Pav had to stoop to get through. “How far do you want to go?” he asked.
“Two meters.”
“Why two meters.”
“I don’t know. ’Cause I can jump two meters, okay?” She was finding Pav a tad pedantic. “Cowboy!” she yelled.
“Now, that was weird,” Pav said. “There was no echo.”
True; something had struck Rachel as wrong, but she had not realized there was no echo. “What do you suppose that means?”
“Either this passage is kind of small, or the walls are coated with some material that absorbs sound.”
She kept going forward, half-step by half-step.
Pav was playing the Slate light up, down, and sideways. Up showed a low ceiling with the same texture—smooth dirt and rock—as the floor. The walls were different, however. They looked...moist, like the opening, now a full two meters behind them.
Just then the dog barked. “He’s not far,” Pav said, “not if we can hear him.”
“What do you think?” Rachel said. “Good for another two meters?”
“Sure,” he said, slipping the Slate back to his belt and taking her hand again.
They stepped forward confidently—
—and fell into darkness.
XAVIER
“You don’t look so good, mister.”
Xavier Toutant found Gabriel Jones flat on his back behind a rock, out of sight of the Temple or, indeed, anyone.
Xavier had just returned from one of several trips to the rubbish heap, a newly designated area near the down-habitat latrine that now served as the resting place for any garbage.
Not that there was much. Manufactured items brought from Earth were the closest thing the combined HBs had to money; no one would be throwing even a milk carton away. Hell, cut off the top of a milk carton and you’ve got a pot or a cup!
But there were rinds and leaves and stray bits of vegetation that needed to be collected and removed from the eating area up against the Temple’s south wall, and without hearing any discussion, or seeing anyone doing the work, Xavier had started the cleanup. It wasn’t that he was especially tidy by nature; his room back in La Porte never passed one of Momma’s infrequent inspections. But he was clean.
And he knew from experience that you didn’t want trash around when you were dealing with food. Bad enough that there were no tables, no pots and pans, no fire, no utensils. This was seriously stone age, except that, from what Xavier knew, even stone-age people had fire.
Mr. Jones opened his eyes. “Hey, brother,” he said. His voice was weak.
“This ain’t the best place to be resting.”
Xavier offered his hand and helped Jones up. “I didn’t plan to rest,” Jones said. He looked ashamed.
“Well, we’re all so tired and strung out that I’m surprised we aren’t trippin’ over bodies.”
Jones smiled now and seemed to be stronger. “You got that right. Xavier, right?”
“Right, Dr. Jones.” He and Jones had been introduced at least twice before, but Xavier was used to the fact that it seemed to take a while before he got really noticed.
“Gabriel.” The two of them resumed Xavier’s journey back toward the Temple. “You’ve been doing a hell of a lot of work around here,” Jones said. “Don’t think no one’s noticed.”
Xavier thought that was nice, if funny, given that Jones barely remembered his name. “Things gotta be done.”
“That’s right.” He nodded toward the Temple, which rose in front of them, fifty meters away. “Like figuring out how to work this thing.”
“Is that what you’re doing?” Xavier wondered what Jones and the other NASA guys, including the new mayor, were actually up to. It had seemed that they spent most of their time shaking their heads and complaining to each other.
Jones must have sensed his contempt. Now apparently fully recovered, he smiled, took Xavier by the shoulder, and said, “Come see.”
Like most of the Houston-Bangalores, Xavier had been inside the Temple, but only as far as its massive ground floor. The scale of things—everything seemed to be twice as high as needed, including the ceiling—unnerved him. But it also had benefits; the high ceiling and open side let in enough light to let the ground floor serve as a shelter.
Not that the HBs needed it, yet. There had been no rain. There was light, but no harsh sunlight. No wind. The temperature had not changed in any way that Xavier could determine. It was all very...well, Momma would have called it the Garden of Eden.
Xavier knew better, of course.
He followed Jones to where most of the members of the new HB Council were clustered. Weldon was one. So was Harley Drake. Vikram Nayar. The pretty tall girl, Sasha. “There you are,” Weldon said to Jones. He glanced at Xavier, as if to say, What the hell are you doing here? But only for a moment.
“What are we up to?” Jones said.
“Based on what we see and think we understand from looking at the exterior, we’ve got three stories of structure,” Sasha said. “And those stories are double height.”
“So...close to thirty meters high?” Jones said.
“Right.” Sasha was moving around the floor, pointing up, then to the corners. “That’s in one dimension. This chamber here is twenty meters by fifteen. But the outer perimeter is twenty by twenty.”
“So we’ve got a hidden chamber on this ground floor?” Jones looked at Xavier, as if to say, Someone’s got to state the obvious.
“And two double-sized floors of possible chambers above us.”
Nayar said. “But how did they access them? There are no stairs, no elevators.”
“These Architects build ramps,” Weldon said. “At least, they did in the vents outside.”
“Zack said the Architect guy was big, on the order of twice human height,” Sasha said. “I don’t know, maybe they just...climbed up?” She smiled awkwardly, knowing it wasn’t the best suggestion.
Harley said, “Maybe this is easier for me because I’m closer, but look at the floor.”
To Xavier it appeared as if a third of the floor had been scraped. “Well,” Jones said, “were they moving something? A piece of equipment, maybe?”
“They could have been peeling off a layer,” Nayar said.
“Something moved across this floor,” Harley said.
Xavier squatted down and touched the scraped area. He could feel tiny grooves. He looked at the near wall. “I think it was the wall,” he said. He walked over to it...something about the combination of the position and the grooves on the floor convinced Xavier that that was what had happened. “They moved it,” he said.
“Maybe,” Jones said. “Why?”
“To give us room?” Harley said.
As the great minds debated this, Xavier followed the wall to where it joined the adjacent one. This wall was also featureless...except for one object up high, as much as four meters. It was a round plate probably a third of a meter across, slightly darker than the dun-colored wall.
“What do you suppose that is?” Xavier said.
Jones was with him now. Xavier was aware of the man’s heavy breathing; shit, he was one sick dude. “Some kind of sensor, maybe?”
Xavier looked around. Between Jones, on the verge of another collapse, and Harley in his wheelchair, it was hardly an able-bodied group. But between We
ldon, Nayar, and Sasha Blaine—
“I need you guys to boost me up there,” Xavier said.
Fortunately, there was limited discussion. Jones did point out, “We’re dealing with a lot less gravity, folks.” He showed his spirit by steadying Xavier as he raised his foot to step into Sasha Blaine’s clenched hands. Sasha and Jones boosted him onto Weldon’s shoulders.
Xavier told Weldon to take him right up to the adjoining wall. Steadying himself with his hands, he carefully pulled himself up. Finally he was standing...still a good half-meter short of the plate.
“Do you see anything?” Jones asked.
“Get ready,” Xavier told Weldon. “I’m gonna—” Jump was the word he didn’t say. He popped up and slapped the plate with his hand.
Weldon went tottering backward, and Xavier scraped against the wall as he hit the floor. But Jones had been right about the low gravity. He had almost felt as though he were flying...and the fall took twice as long, giving him sufficient time to tuck and roll.
Nevertheless, the floor was hard. As the others complained about the silliness of his actions, Xavier lay on his back, looking up at the plate—
Which had changed color, from a dull purple to a brighter shade. “Anyone feel that?” Sasha Blaine said, alarmed.
Xavier had; a pulse had just rippled across the floor.
“Everybody out!” Jones was saying, because the ripple was clearly a signal that something was about to happen to the Temple.
First the wall began to move back to its prior position...
And the ceiling began to drop. “Move, move!” Weldon shouted. “It’s going to squash us!”
Xavier stood his ground for several moments, fascinated by the relative smoothness of the operation. There was no horrific grinding, no screech of stone or metal or whatever it was being wrenched from place to place. Just a slow, relentless glide. He could see a fluid of some kind forming at the top, bottom, and side edges of every moving slab, as if the elements were self-lubricating.
The fluid had a funny but familiar smell, too, almost like the pawpaws—
But then Sasha Blaine tugged his shirt and pulled him away.
He joined the others just outside the big opening. A larger crowd had formed, too, mostly Bangalores. Like those who had fled the Temple, all of them stared in openmouthed amazement as they watched the interior of the Temple rearrange itself. “Should we move farther back?” Nayar said.
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