Divergence hu-1

by Charles Sheffield

  So it was panic button off, observation hat on. What else could be said about their surroundings?

  Many of the partitions slanted up all the way from floor to glowing ceiling. With their help she could judge the height of the chamber. It was high — maybe sixty meters. Nothing human needed that much space; but it was consistent with the enormous chambers found on other Builder artifacts.

  She stepped to one wall and examined the material. Close up, it displayed a fine, grainy structure like baked brick. From the appearance it seemed brittle, as though one sharp blow would shatter it, but she knew from experience with Builder materials that that was an illusion. The structure would possess a material strength beyond anything else in the spiral arm. Left to stand for a million years in a corrosive atmosphere of oxygen, chlorine, or fluorine, it would not crumble. Bathed in boiling acids for centuries, it would not dissolve. Darya had no idea how long this chamber had been unoccupied, but the surfaces should have been as dust-free as if they were polished daily. And they were not. There was dust everywhere.

  Maintenance on Glister was sloppily done, if it was done at all.

  Darya took the knife from her suit belt and jabbed at the gray wall. The tip was a single crystal of dislocation-free carbon-iridium, the hardest and sharpest material that human technology could create. And yet the blade did not make even a nick. She moved to one of the tight-drawn nets and tried to cut through a thin strand. She could see no mark when she was done. Even the thinnest web would be an impossible barrier to anything that could not, like the cloud, dissolve to small individual components. It was hard to believe that the dust all around them had come from gradual flaking away from the walls. There had to be some other source. Somewhere on Glister there had to be other materials, not built to Builder standards of near-infinite permanence.

  Hans Rebka had been waiting impatiently as she chipped at the wall and sawed at the net. “It’ll take you a long time to cut your way out like that,” he said. “Come on. We have to keep moving.”

  He did not say what Darya had already thought. The air here might be breathable — though why, and how? There was nothing to create or maintain an atmosphere acceptable to humans — but beyond air, they needed other things to stay alive. Twelve hours had passed since their last meal, and although she was too nervous to feel hungry, Darya’s throat was painfully dry.

  They walked on, side by side, taking any floor-level connection between chambers and slowly descending through a long succession of sloping corridors. At last they came to a room containing the first sign of working equipment inside Glister — a massive cylinder that began to hum as they approached. It took in air and blew it out through a series of small vents. Rebka placed his hand and then his face close to one of the apertures.

  “It’s an air unit,” he said. “And I think we just started it going. Somehow it reacted to our presence. Here’s something for you to think about: If units like this maintain a breathable atmosphere inside Glister, what does it outside?”

  “Probably nothing. There’s nothing up there to do anything, no machinery at all. The surface must be permeable, at least sometimes and somewhere. That’s how we were carried in here. Right through the floor.”

  “So all we have to do is work out a way to make the ceilings permeable again, and out we go. Of course, we need a way to jump straight up about a hundred meters.” He stared upward. “The hell with it. I’d still like to know how the unit knew the atmosphere is good enough for both humans and Hymenopts.”

  “Right. Or what kind of atmosphere Glister had, before the Have-It-All arrived. Why would it need one, until we got here? Maybe it didn’t have one at all.”

  Rebka gave her a startled glance. “Now that’s what I call real custom service. Air designed to order. Now you’re making me nervous.”

  They walked on past the air unit and half a dozen other constructs whose purpose Darya could only guess at. She itched to stay and examine them, but Hans was urging her forward.

  The eighth device was a waist-high cylinder with a surface like a honeycomb, riddled with hexagonal openings each big enough to accommodate a human fist. The outside of the panel was cold and beaded with drops of moisture. Rebka touched one, sniffed his finger, and touched it to his lips.

  “Water. Drinkable, I think, but it tastes flat.”

  Darya followed his example. “Distilled. It’s a hundred percent pure, with no salts and minerals. You’re just not used to clean water. You can drink it.”

  “Just now I’ll drink anything. But we won’t get much from panel condensation.” He peered into one of the openings. “I’m going to try something. Don’t stand too close.”

  “Hans!”

  But already he was reaching his arm deep into the aperture. He drew out a cupped handful of water and took a cautious sip. “It’s all right. Come and take some. At least we won’t die of thirst.

  “And following up on your earlier line of thought,” he added as they reached in to fill the bottles attached to their suits, “I wonder what liquid that was producing a week ago. Ethanol? Hydrochloric acid?”

  “Or liquid methane. What do you think the temperature was on the surface of Glister, when Gargantua was a long way from Mandel?”

  They moved on, to reach a point where the uniform curvature of the convex floor was broken by a descending ramp. Rebka stood on the brink and stared down.

  “That’s pretty steep. Looks slick, too. More like a chute than a corridor, and I can’t see the bottom. Once we go down there, I’m not sure we’ll be able to climb back up.”

  “We need food. We can’t get back to the surface, and we can’t stay here forever.”

  “Agreed.” He sat down on the edge. “I’m going to slide. Wait until I call back and tell you it’s all right.”

  “No!” Darya was surprised at the strength of her own reaction. She came forward and sat next to him. “You’re not leaving me up here by myself. If you go, I go.”

  “Then hold tight.” They eased side by side over the edge.

  The chute was less steep than it looked. After a sheer start it curved into a gentle spiral. They skidded down and soon reached terminal velocity of no more than a fast walking pace. As they descended, the light changed. The cold orange that mimicked Gargantua’s reflected glow was replaced by a bright yellow-white that came from ahead of them and reflected from the smooth walls of the chute. Finally the gradient became so shallow that they could no longer slide forward.

  Rebka stood up. “The free ride’s over. I wonder what this was intended for originally. Unless you think it wasn’t here, either, until we came along and needed it.”

  They had emerged to stand at the edge of a domed chamber, a giant’s serving dish fifty meters across. The floor ahead formed a shallow bowl, gently sloping all the way into the center, and above them stood an arched ceiling in the form of a perfect hemisphere. Hans and Darya stared around the chamber, adjusting to the white dazzle. To eyes accustomed for the last few hours to cold hues and dusty slate-gray, the new environment was sheer brilliance. The circular floor of the room was marked off like an archery target, in bright concentric rings of different colors. From the boundaries of those gaudy rings rose hemispheres, faintly visible, forming a nested set. Corridor entrances, or perhaps the delivery points of chutes like the one that they had just descended, stood at intervals around the outer perimeter of the chamber. A single dazzling globe at the room’s apex provided illumination.

  And in the middle of the chamber, at the central depression directly below the light…

  Darya gasped. “Look, Hans. It’s them!”

  The smallest translucent dome stood around the bright blue bull’s-eye of the innermost ring. At its center was a raised dais, a meter and a half tall; upon that, facing outward, stood a dozen transparent structures like great glass seats.

  Side by side in two of those seats, held by some invisible support, sat Louis Nenda and Atvar H’sial.

  Darya began to move forward, but she
was restrained by Hans Rebka’s hand on her arm.

  “This is the time to be most careful. I think they’re both unconscious. Look at them closely.”

  Darya stood and stared. Between them and the central dais rose the half-dozen translucent nested hemispheres. They interfered with her view of Nenda and Atvar H’sial, but Darya could still see enough detail to prompt new questions.

  Louis Nenda’s overall appearance was at first sight no different from the last time she had seen him. The arms of the short, swarthy body rippled with muscle, and the shirt was wide open at the neck to show a powerful and thickly haired chest.

  Or was that hair? It looked wrong, discolored and uneven. She turned to Rebka.

  “His chest—”

  “I see it.” Hans Rebka was blinking and squinting, having the same problem with perspective as Darya. The hemisphere introduced a subtle distortion to the scene. “It’s all covered with moles and pockmarks. Did you ever see his bare chest before?”

  “No. He always kept it covered.”

  “Then I don’t think it’s a recent change. I bet he was like that when he arrived on Opal.”

  “But what is it?”

  “A Zardalu-technology augment. The first records on Nenda when he requested access to Opal said he was augmented, but they didn’t say how. Now we know. Those nodules and pits are pheromone generators and receptors. It’s a rare and expensive operation — and it’s painful, like all the Zardalu augments. But that’s how he could work directly with Atvar H’sial. They can talk to each other, without needing J’merlia.” Rebka studied the other man for a few seconds longer. “My guess is that he’s physically unchanged, and just unconscious. It’s a lot harder to tell about Atvar H’sial. What do you think?”

  Darya moved her attention to the Cecropian. She had spent more time with Atvar H’sial, so her estimate of condition ought to be better. Except that the Cecropians were so alien, in every respect…

  Even seated, with her six jointed legs tucked away underneath her, Atvar H’sial towered over the Karelian human Louis Nenda. A dark-red, segmented underside was surmounted by a short neck with scarlet-and-white ruffles, and above that stood a white, eyeless head. The thin proboscis that grew from the middle of the face could reach out and serve as a delicate sense organ, but at the moment it was curled down to tuck neatly away in a pouch on the bottom of the pleated chin.

  Neither the Cecropian nor the Karelian human had the empty look of death. But was Atvar H’sial conscious?

  “Atvar H’sial!” Darya called as loudly as she could.

  If the alien was at all aware of her surroundings, that should produce a response. Originating on the clouded planet of a red dwarf star, the Cecropians had never developed sight. Instead they “saw” by echolocation, sending high-frequency sonic pulses from the pleated resonator in the chin. They received and interpreted incoming signals through yellow open horns set in the middle of the broad head. As one result Cecropians had incredibly sensitive hearing, all through and far beyond the human frequency range.

  “H’sial! Atvar H’sial!” Darya shouted again.

  There was no reaction. The yellow horns did not turn in her direction, and the pair of fernlike antennas above them, disproportionately long even for that great body, remained furled. With hearing usurped for vision, Cecropians “spoke” to each other chemically, with a full and rich language, through the emission and receipt of pheromones. The unfurled antennas could detect and identify single molecules of many thousands of different airborne odors. If Atvar H’sial were conscious, those delicate two-meter-long fans would surely have stretched out, sniffing the air, seeking pheromones from the source of the sound.

  “She’s unconscious, too. I feel sure of it.” Darya was moving forward to the place where the outermost ring of color began on the floor. Before she reached the edge of that first annulus of vivid yellow, Hans Rebka again restrained her.

  “We don’t know why they are unconscious. It looks safe enough in there, but it may not be. You stay here, and I’ll go in.”

  “No.” Darya moved more quickly down the slope of the shallow bowl. “Why you again? It’s time we started sharing the risks.”

  “I have more experience.”

  “Fine. That means you’ll know how to get me out of trouble if I need you. I’ll go in just a little way.” Darya was already stepping gingerly through the haze of the first hemisphere. She put her feet down carefully, feeling the ground ahead.

  “All right, I’m through that one.” She turned to look at Hans. He did not seem any different. She did not feel it. “No problem so far. Didn’t notice anything, no resistance to motion. I’m going to cross the yellow zone.”

  She stared ahead. Yellow to green to purple. Five paces for each — it should be easy. Halfway between the second and third hemispheres she paused, confused for a moment about what she was doing.

  “Are you all right?” She heard his call from behind her.

  She turned. “Sure. I’m going to… the center.”

  And then she paused, oddly uncertain of her goal. She found it necessary to look around her before she knew what was happening.

  There, in the middle, where Atvar H’sial and Louis Nenda are sitting, she reminded herself. In the chairs.

  “I’m halfway there,” she called. “Nearly done the green. Next stop, purple.”

  She was moving again. Bright lights, bright colors. Yellow to green to purple to red to blue. Five zones. Not following the usual order, though, red to orange to yellow to green to… the order in — what’s that thing called? Hard to remember. The rainbow. Yeah, that’s it.

  These colors are not like the colors in the… whatever. Damn it, I’ve lost the word again. Keep moving. Only two more to go, and I’ll reach what’s-their-names. Yellow to green to purple to red… to — what was the name of that color — to yellow to… green…

  Darya’s eyes were wide open. She was lying on a hard, flat surface, staring up at a domed blue ceiling. Hans Rebka was bending over her, his face sweaty and pale.

  She sat up slowly. In front of her was the great chamber, with its circular rings of color. At the center stood the dais with its two silent forms.

  “What am I doing lying here? And why are you letting me sleep? We won’t be able to help those two if we spend time loafing around.”

  “Are you all right?” At her impatient nod Hans said, “Take your time. Tell me the very last thing that you remember.”

  “Why, I was saying that I wanted to go into the rings, to bring Louis Nenda and Atvar H’sial out, and you were trying to talk me out of it. And then I was all ready to put my foot—” she was suddenly puzzled. “I was at the edge of the yellow ring, and now we’re ten steps outside it. What happened, did I pass out?”

  “More than that.” His face was anxious. “Don’t you remember crossing the yellow ring, and then the green one, and starting in on the purple one?”

  “I didn’t. I couldn’t have. I only started out a minute ago. I just put my foot onto the yellow zone, and then—” She stared at him. “Are you telling me…”

  “You said it a minute ago. You passed out. But not here.” He pointed. “Way over there. You were halfway to the dais when your voice went all confused and dreamy, then you sat down on the floor. And then you lay down and stopped talking. That was three hours ago, not one minute. You were unconscious in there for nearly all that time.”

  “And you came in after me? That was crazy. You could have passed out, too.”

  “I didn’t go all the way in. I didn’t dare. I’ve seen something like this before — and you’ve written about it in your artifact catalog. It was your suggestion that this is a Builder artifact that told me what the problem had to be.”

  “Unconsciousness? That’s not a Builder effect.”

  “Not unconsciousness. Memory loss. It’s the same thing that happens to people who try to explore Paradox, except that what it does there is far worse. You only lost a few hours. They come out w
ith their memories wiped clean. I’ve seen victims who tried to enter and came out more helpless than newborn babies.”

  Excitement replaced alarm. Darya had studied the artifacts since childhood, but until Summertide she had seen only Sentinel firsthand. “You’re saying that there’s a Lotus field inside those hemispheres. That’s absolutely fascinating.”

  She could see from Rebka’s look that the word was not one he would have chosen. She hurried on. “But if it is a Lotus field, however were you able to get me out? If it affected me like that, it would do the same to you.”

  “It would have. It did, a little bit. You were all right in the yellow ring, you still knew what you were doing, so I was willing to risk that much. I went that far. But the field would have caught me, too, if I’d gone all the way in to get you. Then we’d have lain there helpless until we starved to death, or somebody else came along to kill us or get us out.”

  “But you got me out.”

  “I did. But I didn’t go in for you. I stood in the yellow zone and I hauled you out from there, like a hooked fish. Why do you think you were in so long? I had to find something to use as a grapple. It wasn’t easy. It took me hours to find something I could use, then another hour to fish for you.”

  Darya turned to face the center of the chamber. “Atvar H’sial and Louis Nenda are right in the middle of it. Do you think their memories are wiped clean?”

  “I can’t say, but if this is anything like Paradox the field may affect the approach route and not the middle. They could be fine — or they could be wiped. We won’t know until we get them out.”

  “Can you do for them what you did for me — haul them clear?”