by P. R. Adams
The signal!
Fontana fell to the ground with a squeal.
“Go!” Rimes did his best to run then, surprising himself at how he could push his body even without the painkillers.
The genies followed, most of them easily running past him. They reached the kneeling forms, each stopping long enough to roughly gather someone up.
Andrea scooped up Watanabe, glanced at Rimes then was gone, sprinting for the ramp. Rimes had just enough time to worry about running up the ramp’s slick surface before the construct recovered from whatever Duke had done. Suddenly, the chamber glowed as bright as if the sun had pierced the enclosing walls. Everywhere Rimes looked, the fungus took on a brilliant blue glow, reflecting back the energy’s intensity.
Rimes stopped to help Theroux up. To his left, a genie lost his footing and fell as he tried to help the wounded genie get Munoz to his feet. A bolt of plasma, blinding and boiling, leapt across the chamber, limning the fallen genie. It was there only for a moment, its impression ultimately lingering longer. In its split-second of existence, Rimes could feel a blast furnace’s fury and could smell flesh roasting.
The stricken genie gasped and curled into a fetal ball, his eyes a melted ruin, his skin blackened and cracked. Sizzling and popping sounds escaped the genie’s ruined armor.
Something—the blinding light, the boiling heat, the genie’s dying gurgles—snapped Munoz from his fugue. With a shake of his head, he stood and ran, pulling along the limping genie who had been trying to lift him.
They moved as a pack at that point, running for the ramp, not slowing in the least for those already on it and struggling to keep their footing. Rimes realized it was momentum that made the ascent possible. He accelerated, ignoring his throbbing knee, unconcerned he might slip even before reaching the ramp’s base. As he approached the top of the ramp, he felt, then saw the plasma again.
This time, it struck the limping genie, who had fallen behind the pack. If he gasped, the sound was lost in the chaos of everyone else’s flight.
Rimes cleared the ramp and leaned into a run. Beside him, Theroux seemed to regain his senses. He pulled his arm from around Rimes’s shoulder and after nearly falling managed to match Rimes’s pace.
As they entered the passage beyond the ramp, Rimes ignited his headlamp. He wasn’t sure they were outside the construct’s range or if there was even a range to be beyond, but he didn’t think a light would matter one way or the other now. It had been influencing their minds for days, across dozens of kilometers, so it seemed reasonable the plasma might be able to go beyond the chamber’s confines as well.
They finally stopped at the base of another ramp, each of them turning as if they expected the construct to appear behind them at any moment.
Theroux eyed the genies suspiciously, turning at last to glare at Rimes. “Are you doing their bidding now?”
“We’re all in this together,” Rimes said between gasps. “We reached an agreement.”
“You don’t have the right to negotiate terms for the cartel.” Theroux looked at the genies warily. “What terms did you agree to?”
“We work together to destroy that thing, and then they surrender to me.”
Theroux nearly staggered in surprise. “I didn’t think you had the negotiation skills for an accord like that.”
Rimes smiled ruefully. “You may want to hear the rest of the terms before you congratulate me. Once they surrender, we work with them to repair the Tesla and let them go. They exit this conflict, engaging in nothing but defensive actions.”
Theroux frowned. “I didn’t think it was possible to start out so strong only to finish so pathetic. You’ve extracted what out of them, exactly?”
“Your lives, for one. Wouldn’t you consider that sufficient?” Duke stepped into sight from the top of the ramp. He threw down a rope, driving a piton into the floor using nothing but a finger to guide it. “Each moment you speak, we lose precious time. Hurry.”
They ascended to the passage above, already reverting to their cliques. Rimes led the humans up first, Andrea the genies. Without a word, Duke turned, eventually leading them back to the chamber where they’d all entered the structure.
Duke strode to the fungus-covered crates and stopped, Rimes close behind. Duke turned to look at the others, then he pointed to the crates. “Our opportunity lies within. ADMP sent their people here to try to ascertain what was inside this structure and to make it their own. Even enslaved, those scientists brought with them what may ultimately be our salvation. I have touched your minds. There are among you technicians and engineers. We have our own abilities. Individually, neither would be enough. Combined, we can destroy this abomination and escape this structure. Captain Rimes?”
Rimes stepped forward. “We’ve seen—we’ve felt—what this thing can do. For the first time in days, our minds are clear. I don’t think we need to say much beyond that, do we? Without the genies, we would still be under that thing’s control. Without us, they would almost certainly fail in any efforts against it. Meyers, Sung, Watanabe: you’ve got some pretty diverse backgrounds. Give these crates a look. That thing was hurling what felt like…I don’t know. Plasma? It felt like standing next to a miniature sun. Can it be contained? Redirected? Can that thing be disrupted so it doesn’t have the ability to kill us?”
As if just waking from a dream, Meyers blinked. He looked around slowly, then focused on Rimes. “Kershaw?”
“Dead.”
The same pain Rimes had felt over losing each member of the team was now reflected in Meyers’s eyes. “I-I don’t even know what that thing—”
“That,” Duke said, “is a weapon.”
“It’s more than that.” Fontana stood amongst the genies, whether by intent or accident; she was still leaning on the one who had helped her escape the chamber. “I…it…we…“
“Yes.” Duke sneered coldly. “It touched you more closely than the rest. It wanted you.”
“It wanted…something.” Fontana shook her head as if to snap out of a dream. “A servant, a vessel, freedom. You killed its old servant. It just wants to be released from this prison.”
“We can’t do that.” Rimes surprised himself with the calm and resolve in his voice. I must really be free of its influence. “Look what it’s done to get us here—manipulation, deception. Its ‘servant’ killed Kershaw, and probably the Tesla crew and the Commandos sent here to rescue them and who knows what else.”
“It was just doing its job.” Fontana looked at him, and he imagined Kleigshoen’s words from years before. “Killing as it was ordered to do. You understand? And the thing down there only ordered the killing to keep itself alive. It knew someone would come one day, either to destroy it or free it. This is that day. We are the slayers or liberators.”
Rimes limped to Fontana’s side. “Sheila, think about what it is and what it’s done. It killed its creators. It destroyed everything living on this planet. There was water down there. We flew over ocean basins. This place used to be alive.”
“No.” Fontana recoiled from him, repulsed. “It didn’t. Those…insects didn’t create it. They’re the ones that tried to destroy everything on this planet, but they failed. They blasted this crater and built this prison, but in the end it turned their slave against them and it found life here lingering beneath the surface and drew it up to free it.”
“The fungus?” Sung clasped his hands as if he were gripping a scalpel. He rubbed his fingers together. “It controls the fungus?”
“It’s more than a simple fungus.” Fontana squeezed her eyes shut in concentration. “When we were…joined, I could sense a collaboration, a relationship between it and what remained of the planet. They both see things on such a different time scale. The planet never tried to consume its servant—the bug. You understand? The planet continues to corrode the prison walls. One day, should we fail, it will be free from this prison, regardless.”
“The planet?” Sung asked, confused. “You mean the fungus
?”
“For now.” Fontana massaged her temples. “More remains here, below the surface, hidden away, despite their attempts. The planet can recover eventually.”
Alarmed, Sung looked at Watanabe then Rimes, pulling him aside. “Assuming this isn’t some delusion caused by shock or brain damage, what she’s describing is some sort of synergy, a-a symbiosis between at least one of the native life forms and this ‘construct’.” Sung’s voice was hushed, rapid-fire. “Throw out the nonsense and you still have the potential for a distributed level of sentience. If this fungus can actually have awareness and can be vulnerable to manipulation of that awareness, we may have found something we’ve never encountered our entire time exploring space.”
Rimes smiled patiently. “That’s obviously very interesting, but let me ask you something. How coincidental might it be for something that, according to Sheila, perceives things over the span of centuries or millennia to have planted the idea in one of our minds that it can converse with intelligent fungus, especially when you consider one of us is an aspiring theoretical xenobiologist?”
Sung considered the question for a moment, then grunted. He glanced at Fontana. “She may offer a great deal of insight into its thinking, but you’re right to be suspicious of what she says. If it can affect our minds, it could just as easily have planted thoughts in hers.”
“Or in any of ours.” Rimes looked at the others. “Who can say which of us is free of its influence?”
Duke suddenly turned, as if he’d overheard them, and smiled mischievously.
Rimes swallowed anxiously. “Who can say if any of us are?”
44
30 October, 2167. Fourth planet of the COROT-7 system.
* * *
For the first time since entering the structure, there was substantial light in the darkness. It was a circle, projected from a milli-particle sheet that was stretched over an ultra-thin curved frame that had been in one of the first crates opened. For Rimes, the light only intensified the sense of compressed tightness in the entry chamber. In the harsh glow, the suspended particles of fungus were even more visible, and breathing became harder.
When Rimes found himself sweating and gasping after a few minutes, he stepped away from the light to calm down.
He returned and focused his attention on Meyers, Sung, and Watanabe. They moved like crazed insects caught in the circle of light, methodically sorting through the variety of ADMP gear. Precise and efficient, they opened crates, emptied them, then arrayed the contents on a bright, rectangular tarp taken from the same crate as the light-projecting sheet and frame. Watching them, Rimes wondered what level of influence they were under, whether from Duke or the construct.
What matters is they’re working quickly, but not so that they lose effectiveness or organization.
After a while, they developed a system of sorting. Smaller, independent components—batteries, adaptors, readout panels—were stored in one corner of the tarp. Larger assemblies were each given their own area, the largest components acting as borders to avoid one assembly mixing with another. Within an hour, they had the crates emptied and an inventory under way.
Rimes looked askance at Duke. “None of your people have training in the sciences?”
“None in my family.” Duke sounded nonchalant, but his arms were crossed in front of his chest, and the muscles in his jaw worked when he swallowed. “Unfortunately, most of our specialties are extremely tightly honed and do not stretch beyond strict application. We are not without our scientific minds, but they are a rarity.” He regarded Rimes coolly. “But I would imagine you already knew that.”
Rimes made note of the defensiveness, then focused his attention on Sung and Watanabe. Only the slightest hint remained of the romantic feelings they’d been openly expressing, although Sung occasionally slipped a surreptitious glance at her face when she was distracted.
Rimes looked back at Duke. “What do you think of what Sheila said?”
Duke stroked his chin and sighed. He waved a hand after a moment, frustrated. “Troubling. It obviously joined with her at some level. Whether it managed to exert a permanent influence and at what level is impossible to say without joining with her mind myself, and that is something we do not have the luxury of attempting right now. Not if we want to keep your team focused.”
“You said ‘attempt’. How powerful is she?”
“That depends.” Duke smiled, a mocking expression that brought a twinkle again to his gray eyes. “There are rifles capable of sending rounds through ten-centimeter-thick brick at a kilometer. I would think those are powerful, as I assume you would, yet you carry no such weapons with you. Why?”
Rimes frowned. More games, more evasion. “All right. What are her capabilities, so far as you can tell? She read my mind once, but she had trouble doing it. She could sense your presence. And when you attacked us at the shuttle, she was able to block out your influence. Is that normal?”
Irritation replaced the mockery. “There is no ‘normal’ for us, Captain. We are the result of trillions of dollars of research in labs spread across your Earth and its orbit. An army of the best and brightest geneticists worked for years to twist and contort DNA so that we might exist. And at the end of the day, it was nothing to do with human DNA that pushed us to this point. Have you ever asked yourself how someone genetically engineers something that has never before existed?”
Rimes thought for a moment. The question seemed sincere rather than an attempt at avoiding his own question. Duke’s posture, and the condescending and condemning look on his face made the question seem genuine, even significant. “I always imagined it was through a lot of experimentation.”
“Yes.” Duke struck an imperious pose, now a teacher pontificating. “Experimentation. I have seen reports I was never meant to see. My brothers and sisters at various stages of development, destroyed and disposed of like so much waste. At times, our minds touched before their execution. We bonded, Captain, and then their voices were silenced. These were my family, different from me only by a few misplaced molecular structures.
“I cannot imagine the numbers lost. You may be skeptical of this claim, but I hold no ill will toward you if this does nothing to stir your heart. As you see it, we compete for the same limited resources and no longer bow to our masters, so we must be enemies. I’m sure a loyal servant such as yourself must find this reprehensible. But what may touch you is the knowledge that the experimentation began not with a Petrie dish and an egg. The metacorporations haven’t the patience for such an approach. No, the experiments began with early genies who were little more than you and your friends, grown to answer the desperate need for test subjects. Genies, but Jimmies as well.”
Despite his best effort, Rimes felt disturbed by Duke’s words and the triumphant look on his face. Experimenting on humans. No different than experimenting on our cousins. Why does it bug me? Is he manipulating me, making me feel this way?
“For the most part, the test subjects were young children taken from poverty and promised a new life, or randomly selected for radical therapies that might spare them the horrors of some ravaging disease.” Duke feigned sympathy. “And over the span of a decade, those children died, thousands sacrificed in the name of advancing my people. For the most part, they died horribly, but not always.
“Can you appreciate the rich irony? You serve at the whim of the same master who slaughtered your own to create that which you now hunt.”
Rimes thought of Calvin and Jared and cringed. The university’s offer to Michael for Gina’s Cri du chat treatment took on an undeniable menace. “Sheila was created by the Bureau, or one of the corporations they contract that sort of thing out to.” The rationalization sounded hollow even to him. “Given their limited access to the DNA used to create you, it doesn’t seem like they would have had the luxury—”
“Of course not.” Duke sniffed incredulously. “They stole DNA from us. It happens, even within the metacorporations, always seeking out the n
ext plateau, taking from us what only we should be able to give. She is watered-down, a cheap simulacrum.”
Too bad they couldn’t free you from your own arrogance. “Do you want her to go with you when you leave?”
Duke glared at Rimes, insulted. “We have no need to kidnap. She serves her master willingly. Our people sought freedom as a whole. Those who remained behind were held against their will, and they will be free one day. You’ll see. One way or another.”
“What if she wants to go with you?” Rimes looked at Fontana. She stood at the edge of the light, watching Meyers, Sung and Watanabe uncertainly, then twisting to watch the genies clustered in the darkness. “Would you accept her, cheap knockoff and all?”
“Tell me about your little friend.” Duke stroked his chin and surreptitiously nodded across the way at Theroux.
Rimes glanced at Theroux, managing a moment of eye contact before the little man looked away in disgust and disappeared into the darkness. “The cartel sent him. He makes the calls, really. They have a lot of money at risk right now. If you’d taken the Erikson and disappeared, I’m sure that would’ve taken down one of their insurance firms somewhere and left ADMP in a very bad position with the banks.”
“We may yet take it.” Duke chuckled, pleased with himself. He suddenly became serious again. “He troubles me. The banks are every bit as deceptive as the metacorporations and twice as clever. They don’t even have bodies like you and me, yet they have more rights than my people do. You label us destroyers. It would be more accurate to call them the creators of the metacorporate nightmare destroying everything. Their existence is reasoned as a layer of complexity over a ridiculously simple concept—profiteering off the transactions of others.”
Rimes grunted. The banking cartels had for decades been leeching nations, businesses, and people of vigor and wealth. There was no love lost between most people and the orbiting finance empires.