Just then Zack’s rounded, skinsuited head rose above the open hatch. “Come out here. We found something.”
“So did we.” He told Zack about the cabinets and the possible blood.
“Yeah. I think you need to exit, now.”
Head bowed, Wade Williams was carefully searching an area directly in front of the Brahma nose, moving deliberately. He reminded Makali of a beachcomber using a metal detector to search for coins.
“So, what do you have?” Scott said.
“Tracks,” Williams said. Zack had told the others about the possible “incursion” into the Brahma cockpit. Zack’s description made her think of a black bear attack on a campsite.
In the glare, with the diminished acuity of the skinsuit “eyes,” the tracks weren’t easy to see, but they were unmistakably present: a series of long scrapes on the thin layer of ice and snow. Each one was half a meter long. “Bipedal, I judge,” Williams said. As a sci-fi writer, he was in heaven. “And a big fella.”
He was following them away from Brahma, to where the ice and snow-covered regolith gave away, again, to the white plates. “They’re hard to see on the white stuff,” he said, “but still present.”
Scott was still examining the most visible tracks. “I’m not sure it’s just one creature,” he said. “There’s a scattering of other markings, too.”
“Two sets?” Valya said. She sounded alarmed.
Zack walked over for a second look. “Well, we know that at least two nonhuman life forms exist on Keanu—the Architects and the Sentries. Who’s to say there couldn’t be others?”
“Who’s to say this is two different creatures?” Williams said. “Maybe it’s just your Architect.”
“I hope so,” Zack said. “I’ve got unfinished business with that guy.”
“So let’s find him,” Makali said. “Follow him.”
She pointed straight ahead.
“Where?” Valya said.
“Mt. St. Helens,” she told her. “The next vent.”
“How far is it?” Williams said.
“Check me on this, Zack, but ten, maybe fifteen kilometers.”
Zack had frozen into apparent immobility. He knew what Makali was proposing. “At least.”
“A bit of a hike,” Williams said. “Of course, we still don’t have any way back into our habitat, and don’t know how long these suits are good for—”
“This is officially fucking crazy!” Scott said. Perhaps he was being protective of Valya, or maybe he was just using common sense. “I agree that going back through the Beehive seems not too promising, but I have a hard time believing that the next best option is to hike overland to some other vent. Suppose it gives us access to another habitat—suppose that habitat is filled with the creatures that ransacked Brahma! How is that good?”
“There are no good options,” Zack said. “So we make the best of what we’ve got.”
“Which is?”
He pointed at the plates on the surface leading in the general direction of Mt. St. Helens Vent. “Follow the blinding white road.”
GABRIEL
“It’s kidney failure,” he said.
It was the first time he had uttered those words to anyone. Not to his chief of staff at JSC, not to his girlfriend or his mother.
Certainly not his daughter.
No one.
The diagnosis was recent, of course. The definitive word had been delivered to him at Baylor only, what, less than a month ago?
“How advanced?” Harley Drake said. The HB mayor had found him slumped against a rock a kilometer from the Temple, in the direction of the opposite wall, beyond Lake Ganges.
How had he gotten there? Jones wasn’t sure.
“Far enough. Stage four, they call it. I’ve got elevated creatine levels, family history of diabetes and high blood pressure.
“You were on dialysis?”
“Just started! My third session was scheduled for the day we got scooped.” He smiled. “I guess I don’t need to tell you about shitty luck.”
“No, got that covered, thanks. What would make you feel better?”
“Got any calcitriol?” That was one of the medications he’d been given, a hormone. He was so new to suffering from chronic kidney disease that he had yet to really read up on his condition and treatment. No time.
“I’ll check on the top shelf, but meanwhile try this.” Jones had noticed a beer bottle in Harley’s lap but had been too tired and distracted to ask why.
“A Miller Genuine Draft is supposed to help me how?”
“Oh for fuck’s sake, Gabe. It’s not beer. One of Nayar’s guys has learned to play the Temple food controls like a virtuoso. He’s pumped out an amazing variety of foodstuffs, so far. It’s a little like playing Battleship—he’s just adjusting one parameter one way, a couple of others a different direction. And out comes nasty food, and finally this. Go ahead, take a drink. I did.”
Jones sipped from the bottle. “Tastes like cold coffee!”
“We think it is cold coffee.”
His head hurt, and not just from his physical condition. “This is all too magical for me. How is that possible?”
“We’re doing nothing but speculating, but I keep going back to what Zack knows, what we’ve established so far. The Architects were able to pull a human consciousness out of space and attach it to a rebuilt body that seems to have been identical to the original. That shows not only that they are aware of and able to detect and manipulate a whole class of information we know nothing about, but they can search it, re-form it into something useful.”
“Turn that information into a program, you mean—”
“Then use their molecular machines or gray goo or whatever it is to duplicate the original item.
“My point is, if their machines can do people—”
“—Dead people.”
“Yeah, even better. If the Architects have machines that can find and capture whatever it is that makes up a human soul and regenerate that person, they can certainly scan a dozen or ten dozen human beings and generate the right atmosphere or a properly sized table.” He pointed to the beer bottle. “A cup of Starbucks ought to be pretty basic. Come to think of it, I’m going to get Jaidev and his guys working on cups, plates, and flatware. That beer bottle is one of the better containers we have.”
Gabe had grown quite interested in Camilla’s activities, but he’d needed Sasha Blaine to translate and couldn’t find her, either.
Then, feeling tired, he had just sat down to rest....
It was a good thing he hadn’t been elected mayor. For the first two days, from the scoop to maybe two hours past the landing—to the point where the Chinese man had killed Bynum—he had fancied himself a modern-day Moses.
Yeah, he was Moses, all right. Not the Moses who brought the Israelites to the Promised Land but died without reaching it himself.
He was the Moses who was lucky to get the Israelites across the Red Sea, where they then face forty years of wandering and uncertainty.
He felt weak again.
“Hey, Gabe,” Harley said. “Drink up. We don’t think it’ll hurt you. Jaidev’s been guzzling the stuff for the past two hours and he seems to be happier than any of us.”
“It seems like a waste of resources.” But he drank. It was cold and thick and tasted coffeelike, not that he was a judge. Nevertheless, out of thirst or desperation, he drained the bottle. As Harley was saying, “We have a lot of resources. We’ve just started learning how to make use of them.”
“Fine, I’ll concede that you can feed and maybe clothe people; that that’s what the Architects had in mind when they brought us here. But I don’t see medicines; I don’t see a hospital. Hell, Harley, we don’t even have a doctor in the house!” He belched loudly, and so strongly that he thought the Temple coffee was coming back up.
But no, he was safe. All he did was spark amused laughter from Harley Drake. “Come on, Gabe, allow yourself to hope! If, in the space of a day, we c
an get the Temple to turn out food, water, furniture, and what appears to be cappuccino...who’s to say that in a week’s time we can’t be replicating a dialysis machine?”
“I find that preposterous.”
“Okay, a month. Two months.”
“I won’t last that long.”
“Stranger things have happened, my friend. Or haven’t you noticed?”
Gabriel stood. He was feeling better. Maybe that damned drink from the Temple was worthwhile—
No, idiot. All it was was fluid that filled the hollow in your stomach for a few moments. It’s fooling your body into thinking it’s worthwhile.
You were a dead man the moment the Object scooped you up.
“Any word on Rachel? Or Zack?”
“Nada. I sent Zhao after Rachel.”
“Was that wise?”
“It’s not as though he’s going to run off,” Harley said. “And Rachel’s a smart kid. She’ll turn up.”
For the past minute, Gabriel had thought he was hearing singing but blamed it on his illness, as if tinnitus were something else he would have to endure as he fell apart.
Now it was unmistakable. Somebody was singing—
Camilla walked around the rock, a smile on her face, unself-consciously presenting what sounded like a nursery rhyme, but in Portuguese.
The only odd thing—
“What happened to your arm, sweetheart?” God, he had fallen back into the parental voice. His staff used to tease him, saying that he used it with department heads who were being especially stubborn.
She didn’t resist as Gabriel took her left arm and gently turned it, noting that the girl seemed hot, almost feverish.
Harley rolled closer. “Yikes,” he said, softly, not wanting to alarm the girl.
She had a palm-sized carbuncle on her upper arm that had split and now oozed a glistening liquid. Not blood, not pus.
But clearly nothing good.
“Let’s take her to Sasha.”
“Wait—” Gabriel realized that the girl was holding something in her hand. “What have you got there?” He squeezed her hand and gently tried to turn it. Camilla didn’t resist; she opened her hand, revealing a bug of some kind.
It was squarish, almost freakishly so...and brightly colored: yellow, blue, red, none of them natural to his eye. “What is this little thing?” he said.
“Don’t ask me,” Harley said. “I’m good as far as mosquitoes, bees, and spiders, and that’s it.”
“Well, I know a bit about the insect world, and I can’t place this.”
“How are you on insects found in India?”
Harley had a point. “About as good as you on insects in general. Someone at the Temple will recognize it.”
“Unless it’s native to Keanu.”
“We haven’t seen anything like that yet.”
Gabriel smiled at Camilla and let her close her hand on the bug again. Continuing her song, she bowed her head, then resumed her journey. “Looks like a Woggle-Bug,” Harley said. “It’s actually kind of cute.”
“Okay, what’s a Woggle-Bug?”
“From Frank Baum, the guy who wrote the Oz books.”
“Ah, fictional.”
“Yeah, sorry. I know more fictional bugs than I do real-life insects.”
He maneuvered his wheelchair around to follow Camilla. Gabriel got in position to push.
He was feeling better. He wondered how long it would last.
Part Five
Hello, my darling niece!
Camilla, this is your uncle, Lucas. I am safe at home with your loving mother, my sister, all your family...all of them so interested in the magic that brought you back to me, to all of us, however distantly and briefly.
We are following your journey into deeper space with hope and love and prayers for your safety.
We think of you every day, every moment...praising God for allowing you a second chance at life, and trying to understand his purpose in giving you that chance on Keanu.
BROADCAST FROM KOROLEV MISSION CONTROL TO KEANU BY LUCAS MUNARETTO
SEPTEMBER 4, 2019
My favorite video game was Satan War, where you got to shoot your way out of the deepest part of hell while crossing rivers of fire and oceans of shit and fields of spikes.
All the while being chased by demons and hoping you could get to heaven.
So far my life in Keanu has been a lot like Satan War, only WITHOUT THE POWER UPGRADES AND WEAPONS AND THE GOAL OF HEAVEN.
KEANU-PEDIA BY PAV, ENTRY #4
THE PRISONER
Struck by the long-finned creature, the Prisoner did not lose consciousness, but it was stunned, almost paralyzed.
The strange creature continued to approach, perhaps to conduct an examination. Which worked to the Prisoner’s advantage; it would conduct its own examination of its assailant.
The Prisoner realized its assailant was smaller and, most unusually, not wearing any kind of garment to protect it against open space. When the assailant spread itself, it revealed many fins—arms, nonaquatic beings called them.
For a moment, the Prisoner thought it one of the broken vessel’s crew.
But now the Prisoner recognized this creature. It didn’t belong here any more than the Prisoner did. The Prisoner knew, of course, that its people were not the only residents of the warship. There were others, some of them quite dangerous. The Prisoner had never met any of these others, of course, dangerous or not. But it had been warned since youth about one in particular:
This type, a Tall Fins.
The Prisoner was never quite sure what was so fearsome about the Tall Fins. They were relatively small, for one thing. They did not appear to possess the traits of an intelligent race—no clothing, no tools, no transport vessels.
No communications. There was no chance the two could strike a truce. So went the stories. Yet apparently wherever the Tall Fins went, other creatures died.
However, this was not the Tall Fins’s environment. It was forced to scramble along the sharply angled walls of the interior, which took time and allowed the Prisoner to recover and pry a metal rod from the vessel’s interior—
A quick swipe of the rod sent the Tall Fins flying into a wall.
The Tall Fins seemed momentarily stunned. Brandishing the metal rod, the Prisoner maneuvered blindly toward the vessel’s hatchway, knowing an exit was going to be difficult because of the small dimensions of the opening.
The Prisoner considered the next move. The Tall Fins did not appear to be strong enough to engage in a duel of metal rods. But what other weapons did it have? Poisons? The warship’s builders had stocked the resident environment with a menace long extinct on the home world: a round floating creature that defended itself with a shower of needles—
Shifting within its protective suit of skin, the Prisoner brandished the rod. The Tall Fins reacted, retreating. In the combat games of youth, the Prisoner had learned to feint with the major arm, then shift the weapon to a lesser arm for the killing blow.
But the wound in its back! Much worse than the Prisoner had believed. It felt pinned, almost helpless. The only option was to wait for the Tall Fins to come close enough to strike—
To the Prisoner’s surprise, however, the Tall Fins skittered away, toward the opening, then out. For a moment, the Prisoner feared that the creature meant to seal the opening, locking it in.
But fractions of a cycle passed...and the opening remained clear.
The Prisoner knew that the garment would eventually seal itself around the wound, but the shard...the Prisoner bent forward—some pain, though bearable.
But no freedom. Every place it went, it seemed, the Prisoner was fated to be constrained.
The only option was to rock from side to side, resulting in substantially more pain, and the fear that the garment’s seal would tear.
With a crack the Prisoner could feel in its dorsal side, the shard separated.
Freedom! The garment remained sealed...but the shard remained.<
br />
The pain was comparable to dividing...only it promised to last far, far longer.
And might kill the Prisoner before it could return to the relative safety of its cell.
In agony, the Prisoner began the slow, unpleasant process of squeezing through the opening.
A long, painful walk lay ahead.
ZHAO
“This is really starting to freak me out,” Rachel announced.
She and Pav and Zhao had walked, by Zhao’s estimate, half a kilometer down the lightless shaft. Discovering that the Indian boy carried a Slate, Zhao invented a game: Every two hundred paces, which had to be counted by Rachel, then Pav in turn, the trio would stop and flash the Slate’s light.
They had accomplished five such illuminations, none of which revealed anything different, just a smooth, rocky floor and walls that curved enough to confirm that they were in a cylinder.
Zhao was growing a bit unsettled himself, given the bizarre circumstances...being essentially walled into the tunnel by a nine-year-old girl...theoretically chasing a dog—a reborn dog, let’s not forget—with limited resources, to wit: a Slate, a bottle of water, and a candy bar he had bartered from Xavier Toutant.
All in the company of the only two teenagers in the population, both of them children of the Destiny or Brahma astronauts.
Looking at it from Pav’s point of view, or Rachel’s, the situation was even more unsettling, given that they knew him as either a spy or a killer.
Rachel said, “Shouldn’t we be finding a cross-tunnel or some other way out by now?”
“In a human-built mine on Earth, yes,” Zhao said. “But I don’t think we can expect anything here.”
“Well,” Pav said, “Keanu is what, a hundred kilometers across? If we’re walking in a straight line, eventually we’ll get to the other side.”
Zhao forced a smile, even though he knew the teens couldn’t see it. Stay in character, he thought. Follow your training. He didn’t feel the need to point out that while this shaft seemed straight, it likely wasn’t...that it would not be a vector through the sphere that was Keanu, but could just as easily be an arc, curving and curving....
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