“Which are completely theoretical,” Harley said.
As always, Weldon spoke to the practical matter. “Well, they’re here now. Can they be killed?”
“Since you think she knows, ask her!” Bynum pointed to Camilla.
“Hey, listen,” Sasha said, “we have a limited ability to communicate with this girl. I mean, I don’t give a shit if what you say is filling her head.... If she can’t tell us in our limited German, it’s useless. Second, she’s nine years old. She’s been through an incredible trauma—”
“I have some idea what it’s like,” Bynum said.
“You were an adult,” Sasha said. “And you woke up in a world where you already had some idea what had happened to you, where people spoke your language—” For a moment, Gabriel thought that the tall redhead was going to punch the newly reborn White House man.
But, Revenant or not, Brent Bynum still possessed the ability to read a situation, then adapt. “You’re right,” he said. “I apologize. I just...have this information boiling inside me. It’s like I have to tell you and right now, or I’ll just explode. And you’re supposed to act on it, too.”
“We are acting,” Weldon said. “In a few minutes, we’re going to eradicate those bugs,” he said, pointing out the front of the Temple. “Then we’ll get to dealing with the, ah, what did you call them? Larger aggregates?”
Harley turned to Nayar and Gabriel. “Could you gentlemen find out where our weapons program is?”
They headed for the ramp.
Gabriel Jones didn’t believe in magic. ESP, Tarot, or his particular bugaboo—astrology—none of those subjects had ever impressed him as worth a moment’s thought.
Not that he didn’t appreciate wonder, not that, in spite of a hard-won stone-cold atheism, he didn’t subscribe to the biblical preaching that there are “many mansions,” that there were things human beings did not know or understand about the universe—and maybe never would.
The real problem was that all these systems seemed too easy. Think it, do it. Turn over the right card and you know the future. Speak a few words and a woman falls in love with you.
Really? How? With no cost? No use of energy?
Nevertheless, like anyone who was fascinated by the universe as it existed, who had watched Star Trek, he had an appreciation for Arthur C. Clarke’s statement that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
By that standard, after a few hours’ exposure to the wonders of the Temple, Gabriel Jones was now an official believer in magic.
Just a few hours ago, he had been so out of it—so close to death—that he had no memory of how he had moved from his lonely corner of the first floor of the Temple to this third-story marvel...what now looked like a state-of-the-art chemical laboratory.
“We carried you,” Vikram Nayar told him.
He returned to wakefulness there, lying on a composite slab of some kind, one plasticlike tube sucking blood out of him, another feeding it back in, Jaidev Mahabala perched on the stool.
“Don’t tell me Bangalore had this stashed away,” he said, happy to be able to offer a lame but spirited joke.
Jaidev was the engineer in charge, busy continuing his exploration of the various panels. He took Gabriel’s remark seriously. “Of course not. The Temple system constructed it. And if you look closely, you’ll realize it looks nothing like a dialysis machine. But it does seem to be making you better, correct?”
“Feels good, I’ll say that.” Gabriel had had only a handful of encounters with such machines, so he had no real idea of what older or foreign models might look like. And in truth, most of this one was hidden inside the “cabinets.”
Nevertheless, with every few heartbeats, or more likely, every few cubic centimeters of cleansed blood, Gabriel could feel his strength returning. “With all the things the group needs, this really wasn’t a priority—”
“In one sense,” said one of Jaidev’s colleagues, “this was a good test, to see if we could progress beyond the replication of food, water, and basic tools to more complex items.”
“I’m glad you did.”
Jaidev shook his head as he continued to uncover various screens on the panel, and screens within them. He reminded Gabriel of a teenage boy scope-locked on a video game. “First, you’re going to need this again. Second, we could reprogram the machine into something entirely different.” The engineer rapped his knuckle on the countertop. “Everything apparently starts as plasm. And with the proper commands, it can be reshaped into extremely complex devices.”
“I wonder what goodies you can make that we don’t know about,” Gabriel said, suddenly seeing possibilities. “Okay, it’s 3-D printing to the nth degree. I just don’t really understand it—”
Jaidev smiled. “When we first got here, we found walls, surfaces, blank panels. We simply started touching them to see what would happen. We got light. We got...these command panels.”
The second engineer chimed in with enthusiasm. “They don’t have words, but they have symbols and figures.”
“The Architects seem to organize data and functions from the top down...from simple to less simple to complex.”
“It’s quite a leap from a Crock-Pot to even a coffeemaker.”
“Remember,” Jaidev said, “this habitat was designed to adapt to whatever beings enter it. Something is scanning us for body mass, temperature, chemical composition, then rearranging everything, from soil to air to plants and structures, to match those needs. So the system is preloaded for human beings. It was really just waiting for us to—”
“—to start touching things.”
“Still,” Gabriel said. He obviously had the evidence sticking into his arm, but he was curious as to how passionate, and informed, Jaidev was on this subject. He was, after all, the human race’s only expert on Keanu design and fabrication.
The other, older engineer—Daksha was his name—was, if possible, even more enthusiastic. “Look, Dr. Jones, we had no ability to design a dialysis machine. We simply entered commands in the medical area of the panels...essentially telling the system, do things that people here need. The system recognized your problem and adapted. We have other devices here now, too, and we don’t really know what they’re for, or for whom!”
“Sounds like ESP,” Gabriel said.
“We don’t understand what part of the electromagnetic spectrum they’re using,” Jaidev said.
“—Or even if it’s electromagnetic.”
“I think we’ve already seen that the Architects have access to...information in states that we do not.” He smiled. “But, truly, it was almost like typing two letters on your computer, and having it finish the word for you.”
Scratch that disdain for ESP or telepathy.
“Remind me, I have something to show you,” Nayar said, the moment their feet hit the ramp.
“What is it?”
“I’m not sure yet, but—”
They were already emerging on the second floor, where they found Jaidev and Daksha as busy as fry cooks in a fast-food joint. They were checking on various assistants who came down from the floor above carrying containers and what looked to Gabriel like pesticide sprayers. Weapons for use against the Reivers.
Then they sent them below.
“How’s it coming along?” Gabriel said, one of those fatuous-but-necessary phrases people in his job had to use.
“We’ll know soon,” Jaidev said. “Meanwhile, let me show you this.”
He motioned Nayar and Gabriel to a panel. “We’ve located some kind of system status repository. It appears we have access to a multidimensional map of Keanu and its interior showing various tunnels and passages and what appears to be a transport system...” As Jaidev spoke and touched, Gabriel watched the screens. Yes, the roundish thing that was Keanu...honeycombed with cylindrical structures radiating from a cylindrical central core. There were eight of them, and Gabriel didn’t need Bynum or Jaidev to tell them these were the habitats.
Toward the bottom of that core, a spherical chamber...all of them connected by a network of lines and links that reminded Gabriel of a 3-D spiderweb.
Off to one side, near the surface of Keanu, was another chamber...smaller than the habitats or that core, oddly shaped, its purpose even less clear than that of the other structures.
Being tactile engineers, of course, Jaidev and Daksha kept changing the screens. The global map was replaced by close-in images, individual tunnels, different habitats (what had to be the human one flashed by), other hollow places.
Then an exterior showing Keanu moving in a cloud of some kind of particles or gas, like a multi-lobed comet. The cloud was so pervasive and tenuous, it was difficult to determine where it ended and empty space began.
“Is there an exterior that shows Earth?” Gabriel said. How far had they come in a week? How fast was Keanu going? How much acceleration? They likely weren’t as far as the orbit of Mars—
“We assume so,” Daksha said. “But we haven’t found the space-tracking area yet.”
“Anything is better than what we had,” Gabriel said. “Means we don’t have to depend on Brent Bynum.”
“I don’t know,” Jaidev said. “It was Bynum who pointed us to this area, including the medical section.”
Which was the main reason Gabriel kept his mouth shut when Bynum began to be annoying: He owed the man his life.
“Speaking of the Reivers,” Nayar said, “Bynum helped us understand some of the information the database has on these things.” He nodded to Jaidev.
“It’s almost as if they are the perfect evolutionary response to the conditions of the universe,” Jaidev said, unable to hide the excitement in his voice. “They can be micro- or macrobeings. They assemble into aggregates that allow them to scale up to any mass required. And all because they are pure processors, taking in energy, using it.”
“They are essentially information,” Daksha said.
Just then Xavier Toutant rushed up the ramp. He was out of breath and his face was sweaty, as if he’d just made a long run.
“We tried all the poisons,” he said. “Both chemicals. We tried fire.”
“Slow down,” Nayar said.
“Some of the stuff just rolled off them. We were the only ones getting poisoned!”
“What do you mean?” Jaidev said. He took the news personally. Like a good general, Gabriel thought.
“It was like pouring gasoline on a fire.... There were more bugs afterward than when we started!”
Nayar was holding up his hand. “Nothing has worked, is that what you’re saying?”
“That’s impossible!” Jaidev said. He headed for the ramp, as if determined to check out this ridiculous story for himself.
Nayar said, “If he says our weapons failed, they failed! The intelligent option is to find better ones.”
“And quickly,” Gabriel added. He smiled. “How do you kill...what did you say the Reivers were? ‘Pure information’? How do you kill that?”
“With different information,” Jaidev said, almost grumbling. But Daksha touched him on the arm, as if to say, Let’s think about this.
The two immediately moved off to confer.
“I have a lot of confidence in your team, Vikram.”
“I hope it’s not misplaced.”
“They’ve worked wonders so far,” he said, his tone far lighter than his mood. “As we were coming up here, you said you had something important to show me?”
Nayar immediately walked up to the panel showing the Keanu schematic. He tapped on the screen, zooming in for a closer view of one of the passages between two habitats.
There were five indicators in the passage, all clumped together, four small and one large.
“We’ve located Rachel, Pav, and Zhao,” Vikram Nayar announced. “At least, we’re fairly sure this is them. We have some ability to roll back the image, and were able to walk these indicators back through that habitat”—he pointed at the one invaded by Reivers—“then back, back, back to what appears to be ours.”
He traced his finger through a series of turns and twists that covered a third of the distance across the NEO.
“Wow. They’ve gone a long way,” Gabriel said. “How did you hear from them? Direct voice?”
“Close-up imagery.”
“Security camera?”
“A system that compares to our security cameras the way this”—Nayar pointed to the cabinets and their mysterious readouts and equipment—“compares to a nineteenth-century factory.”
“Can’t wait to talk to them. I hope they’re safe.”
“It appears so,” Nayar said, “to the extent that any of us are safe.” Having grown more at home with the displays—or tired of Jaidev’s super-fast changes, like a deranged husband with a TV remote—Nayar began to manipulate the images on the screen, bringing up a new version of the Keanu interior.
As Nayar’s finger slid over the various habitats, each exploded into a larger view that showed hundreds, likely thousands of small indicators, most of them in motion.
“Notice this discoloration? You saw it in tunnels and habitats.”
There were smears of a different color through one entire habitat, effectively eliminating any individual Markers, at spots in several others, and through a good percentage of the tunnel and passage network.
“Alien graffiti.”
“Reiver infection,” Nayar said. “It’s not just their presence. It’s interference. We’re suffering from it, too. We lost all data for several minutes. And the interruptions are coming more frequently.”
“Well, we know we have to eradicate them. That’s what we’re doing, right?” Gabriel tried to sound cheery; it was one of the handiest items in his managerial toolbox. But he felt sick, because he knew that scrubbing the bugs from the human habitat was a small step.
“They seem to be on the march,” Nayar said, “the infection spreading toward one particular zone.”
“It’s not a habitat?”
“It’s got a different shape, and it’s closer to the surface. We just don’t know.”
“But you figure it can’t be good.”
“There’s another thrust toward the core,” Nayar said. “Which we know to be the power sources.”
“Okay, sum up for me, in case I have to explain it to Drake and Weldon—”
“The Reivers are close to taking over the entire NEO.”
Gabriel closed his eyes. None of this was exactly a surprise—the moment he had seen the Reiver infection on the Keanu map he had realized it was a serious problem. It was still troubling to hear it stated.
Then he looked at the indicators. “Why are there five? It was only Rachel, Taj’s boy, and Zhao who went out.”
Jaidev and Daksha returned and heard Gabriel’s question. As if testing his knowledge, Nayar said, “One of them appears to be nonhuman,” he said, indicating the various colors and displays. “Body temperature, size, mass, even speed of movement—”
“—The kinds of data Keanu routinely collects on every being here,” Jaidev added.
“—are all different.”
“Okay, then, there’s one alien and four humans. Who’s the fourth?”
“Uh, the message,” Jaidev said, “indicated it was your daughter, Yvonne.”
DALE
“Double back,” Zack told them.
They had just snaked their way through the collection of rounded structures that Dale Scott immediately thought of as Crapville, right to the point where they could see Dash ahead of them...and a clear Beehive-like opening in front of him.
Zack, Makali, and Dale. No Valya.
“God, she was right behind me,” Makali said.
“Good, then she won’t be far.”
He didn’t wait or issue orders, but simply shot back the way he had come, taking the left of a pair of routes. Makali looked at Dale. “You and he were both ahead of me on that path. If he’s taking the left, we should take the right.” There were
really only two pathways through the rubble of Crapville.
The last thing Dale Scott wanted to do was to lose sight of the Sentry and turn away from the possible exit. He could feel himself on the verge of passing out, knowing that if he did, it would be the end.
But, fine, one more try.
He followed Makali through the debris, unable to see much. The flare of the pursuing Sentries had died out, leaving the humans to stumble around in the darkness like children in an unlit basement.
He wondered briefly how close the pursuers were. And if they caught the humans, what would they do? And what difference would it make?
“Dale!” Makali was somewhere in front of him, huffing and puffing. “Two paths again...go right, hear me?”
“Right, got it!”
A shadow passed over him, something silent, swift. Looking up, he saw what appeared to be a red balloon—not a Sentry in some kind of aircraft, thank God. The object disappeared from sight quickly, which was fine for Dale. He needed to watch his footing.
The right path suddenly appeared as a slightly less dark area in front of Dale. It was so clogged with debris that he had to drop to hands and knees to crawl over it...he immediately knew that, in her present condition, Valya had never reached it.
Which didn’t mean, of course, that she wasn’t still in front of him.
He slid down the far side of the mound of debris and almost pitched forward onto his face. He was walking on something slippery...fresh fluid of some kind.
He smelled something new, fresh, and nasty, too.
Oh shit! Around the nearest turn was a body, human, literally cut in two from top to bottom. One half had been scattered—Dale had been walking on the remains—while the other lay in a crumpled, bloody heap.
Valya.
“Over here!” Dale said. It started as a shout but ended as a sob. Oh fuck. He took a breath, steadied himself against the nearest wall. “I...found...her!”
Yes, they had been poisoned, suffering from who knew what kind of oxygen deprivation and nasty trace element overload, all of it contributing to evil thoughts.
But Dale Scott had never wanted to see Valya truly dead. She was a friend—had been his lover—was part of the team!
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