End of the Circle

by Jack McKinney

  For that, they needed clones, warriors, the irresistible power of Robotechnology, but above all, they needed the secrets that had died with Zor. So they took to space again, feeding on bitterness and resentment of the universe. They were the unseen watchers of the Sentinels’ struggles against the Invid, the hidden monitors of the conflict that had nearly consumed the Local Group like a black hole.

  They looked for their advantage at every turn, but events defied them. Then the Invid transubstantiation swept away their last hoarded reserve of Protoculture like a whirlwind. Growing weaker, sickened like addicts gone cold turkey, they seemed wraithlike themselves. The Elders clung to life single-mindedly, feeding on their own rapacity—the stark craving to rule. They became their own worst tormentors.

  Finally, as they spied on the drama played out around Haydon IV and Ranaath’s Star, they felt the last of their life forces ebbing.

  They had no idea how the planet had assumed its shape, or kept it, without the forces of gravity deforming and distorting it. The very idea of two half spheres the size of the opened Haydon IV was untenable by any physics the Elders knew.

  But that was something for the lower orders—Scientist triumvirates and the like—to wonder about. The task of Masters was to rule.

  Nimuul, the First among them, could barely lift his chin from his breast as he sat sprawled in his thronelike chair. Still, when he managed to bring his head up a bit, his face wore the furious, blazing glare that was the Elders’ only expression. It was an ax-keen, hawk-nosed face with sharp, angular cheekbones under which were scarlike creases of skin suggestive of tribal scars. His pate was bare, but fine, straight blue hair growing from the sides and back of his head fell to his shoulders.

  Nimuul’s fight to shape words was even harder than his effort to raise his head, but he chose the spoken word over thought-speech because only a trickle of their mental power remained. “We … must … reveal ourselves. To the … Awareness.”

  Hepsis, of the silver hair, stirred on his high-backed chair. His nailless, gracile fingers trembled feebly on its arm. But after a grunt he, too, brought forth sound. “No! The … risk …”

  The third, Fallagar, was the most weakened by the prolonged ordeal. It seemed he could feel death before him, ready to blow his mind and personality away to nonexistence like a puff of dust. His terror gave him the strength to shape words aloud. “Our last chance.”

  He radiated waves of impotent rage and fear that even a nonsensitive could have felt. There was no telling what the Awareness of the planet would do in its battered, virus-altered state once they dropped their mental shields and revealed their presence—supposing that they could rouse it from its slumber. But there were no other options.

  They were agreed. They dropped their shields warily, each making sure neither of the others betrayed him, left him exposed while ducking back behind psi-cover. With a heightened sense, they perceived the Awareness, hanging not far off in space, as a cold moonlet of mental energy.

  Even at the zenith of their power the Elders had forborne to probe or seek to alter the Awareness of Haydon IV. They were averse to risk to themselves; the Awareness was tractable and presented no apparent threat. But always, in the recesses of their inner thought, Nimuul, Hepsis, and Fallagar had harbored misgivings about the titanic mindforce residing in the core of the artificial planet.

  Certainly it had no reason to take pity on them; quite the reverse.

  But Nimuul managed, “Let me … speak for us.”

  Where once it had shone forth like a nova, the triumvirate mental force of the Elders was a wan beam, like a ray from a dim nebula. But it carried Nimuul’s message: We are the last of the Robotech Masters. We can lead you to new Protoculture!

  With that, all three slumped, spent, in their chairs. Their breathing slowed, began rattling.

  But within Haydon IV, something quickened.

  The message activated a deeply nested subroutine, which enabled a function that had been totally inert, and so was missed, during Louie Nichols’s epic cyber-burn. Mechamorphosis had always been a cardinal trait of Robotechnology, a reflection of Protoculture.

  Cyber-systems could mechamorphose, too.

  Deep in Haydon IV, new data highways shifted into existence, circumventing the blockages on the old. What pure information had done, physical change undid, at least in part. New topographic features—mountainous ones—grew out of reshuffled components.

  The Awareness roused itself, took stock of the situation, acted. Control and other systems on the Elders’ ship came to full available power. Its attitude thrusters fired, and it began a full-boost approach to Haydon IV even while its three occupants felt life slipping away.

  The planet shifted massively as the Awareness ignored all the frightened queries from its inhabitants. The surviving Haydonites drew back, afraid to interfere.

  Even as the ship closed on Haydon IV, a Brobdingnagian alloy tentacle took shape out of shifting machinery to emerge from one of the shot-up factory tubes. The Awareness guided the ship into the grasp of a specially fashioned claw. It was enfolded, and the enclosure was pressurized.

  The lock cycled open in response to the Awareness’s unspoken command. Remote units swarmed in around the Elders, propping them up on their thrones, inserting tubes, sensors, actuators. In seconds the Elders were encased in life support systems, their vital signs increasing.

  The Awareness saw at once that the triumvirate could not be kept alive that way for very long. It stepped up its efforts to revive them.

  From a hidden storage nook deep, deep in its internal reaches, the planet fetched forth a half dozen or so eggplant-purple cylinders, round-bottomed and quiveringly gelid. They were the last of the particular manifestation of the fruit of the Flower of Life that the Invid Regent had grown in his hive on Haydon IV. That had been back during his occupation of the planet—before the Sentinels had unseated him in a cataclysmic battle—and now these few specimens were all that remained.

  There was no Protoculture in them as such, true, but there was some vestige of the Flower’s essence and substances akin to the ones on which the Elders fed. In moments, fluids drawn from the fruit were flowing into the bodies of the three.

  They began to regain consciousness. The Awareness knew that this emergency measure would not sustain them for long; it introduced stimulants, heedless of the shock to their systems, and waited—anxiously—for some sign of life.

  Nimuul’s eyes blinked open. He did not feel well—indeed, he felt a bizarre disorientation—but he knew death had retreated, at least for the moment. He saw at once what had happened.

  I will not deal with you, Nimuul mind-spoke to the Awareness. I will bargain with your master only.

  By then Hepsis and Fallagar were awake, too, and the triumvirate integrated itself once more, still weak but less so than it had been in a long time.

  We will speak only with Haydon.

  There was a moment of utter silence all around them, through the ship and the life support systemry, in the air, and seemingly through the artificial planet itself. Then the Elders felt vibrations—physical, psychic, extradimensional—and Haydon IV began to move again.

  The Haydonites saw, heard, and sensed the changes all around them. They began to assemble in designated places and make ready in answer to the instructions of the Awareness. The planet shifted and reconformed in its most important mechamorphosis.

  The Elders, encased on their thrones, found themselves no longer in their ship; it had been dismantled around them. The Protoculture cap was whisked away, straight up into the air, by some outsize waldo apparatus they glimpsed only for an instant.

  The thrones were set in a line, facing the same way, on a circular platform containing the equipment that ran and controlled their life support. That disc sat in turn, now, in the middle of one of the Haydonite transport devices—what the humans had dubbed “flying carpets.”

  The claw must have drawn them back to the surface of Haydon IV itself. At lea
st they found themselves atop a high tower, seemingly a mile and more in the air. How the planet retained its atmosphere and kept from freezing, they did not know. Below them the landscape heaved and crept, glittered and digested itself.

  The carpet lifted off the tower and flew out over mechamorphosing terrain. The Elders, hair whipping in the wind, were held immobile by the life supports grappled in place. They could see other carpets, huge ones laden with thousands of Haydonites, converging.

  Beams of light began to break from cracks in Haydon IV’s surface, as if the Robotech landscape were a cracking coat of paint on a light bulb. There were deep reverberations from the planet’s core. For the first time since their transmogrification to Elders, the three knew another emotion besides anger, fear, and the lust to conquer and rule. Even in them, spirits hollowed by centuries of slavery to the Protoculture, there was awe at the magnitude of what was taking place below.

  Something climbed into prominence on the horizon—immense even at that distance and altitude. It had a curve to it, suggesting a cyclopean dome even bigger than the hives of the Invid. But the curve swept in, too, as if it were a sphere.

  There were more flying carpets, the whole of the remaining Haydonite race coming together to watch their world carry out the purpose for which it had been given form so long ago. The Elders’ carpet went into a descent, angling down toward the curve in the planet’s surface.

  It was not a dome but rather the open end of a curved, circular tube, as if an unimaginable horn of plenty had wound its way up from the heart of the world. There was an impenetrable darkness within it.

  The Elders’ carpet continued to descend while the carpets of the Haydonites ranked themselves in rows all around the gargantuan aperture below like angels assembling for a heavenly choir. The Elders strained against their confinement uselessly, then gave it up.

  Their carpet was the only one to descend to the surface of the planet. It came to a stop before the yawning opening, but there was no telling how far; the scale of things threw off any normal sense of perspective.

  A long silent moment went by, except for the wind fluttering the Robotech Masters’ hair. Then, at the same instant, a light appeared far down the conduit from some source beyond its curve, and the Haydonites took up a single piercing, tentative note, a mental moan of ecstasy and holy dread.

  The light grew brighter, and the note louder. Then all at once brilliance leapt forth from the maw of the great conduit, and the Haydonites’ note became a full-throated telepathic cry. It was well that the Elders were connected and cathetered; they lost control of their bodily functions.

  The light and sound grew until the planet shook. The winds tore across the Robotech plain, yet the Haydonites’ carpets somehow held position.

  And, deep in the soul of the light, something moved.

  It came toward them slowly, unhurriedly—regally. Nimuul, Hepsis, and Fallagar, held fast, eyes threatening to start from their heads, watched spellbound.

  The Haydonites’ chorus swelled as if it would fill the universe as Haydon emerged from a sleep of eons.

  “You can’t be serious,” Exedore said, though he had known Cabell long enough to be aware that no other possibility existed.

  “See for yourself,” the sage challenged, presenting the data caps with a flourish. “I’ve included the mathematics.”

  Ever since the two had returned to Tiresia, they had been busy around the clock, analyzing and collating their observations from events at Ranaath’s Star. Now Exedore fed the caps into a projector; it took only a cursory scan to show that Cabell was right, at least in terms of the implications. The sphere ship’s plunge into the black hole had revealed a new mathematical world, and one particular subfunction stood out glaringly.

  I don’t know why we didn’t see this before, Exedore thought, a sure sign that the function he was looking at was valid.

  Exedore looked back to Cabell but pointed to the equation in question. “This implies … Anti-Protoculture!”

  Cabell was nodding almost tiredly. “You’re correct, dear fellow; we should have realized it long ago. It’s almost as if we’d been blinded to this side of the mathematics.”

  Of course it was old hat, scientifically, that each particle had its mirror image—an antiparticle carrying an opposite electrical charge—and that pairs would annihilate each other in a supreme release of energy whenever they encountered each other. But no one had ever supposed the yin/yang symmetry extended to this: a shadowy counterpart force to Protoculture itself, one whose first glimmerings implied apocalyptic mutual destruction should the two ever be brought together.

  Exedore drew a breath and grabbed a calculator. “I suppose we’d better get to it, my friend. There is much to learn and not very long to do it.”

  Cabell was still nodding. “We must penetrate this frightening new secret before anyone else does.”

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-THREE

  I figured maybe the SDFs needed some new kind of unit patch—say, a spacefold drive with a red diagonal through it.

  Jack Baker, Upwardly Mobile

  Once, darting down into a danger zone in her powered armor like a giant Robotech hornet, Kazianna Hesh would have felt the urge to howl a Zentraedi battle cry.

  Foeman, prepare to die! The Quadranos come!

  But not here, not today—if “today” meant anything in what the humans were calling newspace. She wasn’t free to throw her life away in splendid battle anymore, had obligations and priorities above even military glory—a child to protect.

  Thus, she was a hundred times more dangerous than the Kazianna of old.

  With the fifteen Zentraedi mecha behind her, there was an even division of eight powered armor suits and eight Battlepods. Eight males, eight females; even Exedore could not say why the suit-configuration mecha responded so much better to women, the pods to men. It was simply so. They descended in frontal-assault formation to the planet that had appeared from nowhere.

  The humans and some of the others might rhapsodize over the place and its forests and seas, but it was just another alien world to her, with none of the perilous grandeur of Fantoma or the austere dignity of Tirol. Perhaps there was something in newspace that liked the giants less than it did the rest.

  If so, let that something beware; its foe was Kazianna Hesh, mate of mighty Breetai and mother of his son.

  The Zentraedi squadron homed in on Rick Hunter’s beacon, and Kazianna established contact over his tactical freq. At his direction, the giants dropped in for a landing on and around the high ground where the first party’s Battloids had posted a guard.

  Groundside, Kazianna and her spitfires remained sealed in their suits, but the pods opened to permit debarkation of the Sentinels’ personnel: Baldan, Kami and Learna, Lron and Crysta, and several of the Praxian Amazons. None of them seemed any the worse for the ride.

  Kazianna had taken a shine to the warrior women, had found a spiritual kinship with them, as soon as she met them. Indeed, the former Quadranos and the Praxians had done a little comradely drinking in SDF-3’s split-level rec club.

  Now, though, the Praxians were distraught, almost unsoldierly. Kazianna supposed it was understandable what with Gnea, their leader and one of the great heroines of the war, missing. When one was spoiling for a fight, it always made discipline secondary. No doubt they would settle down as soon as blood began to flow.

  Now the only problem was to find someone to fight.

  Down below, at the level of Kazianna’s lower shins, Rick Hunter was finding out just how determined the Praxian furies could get.

  “As you were!” He bellowed it with veins standing out in his temple and neck; it finally shut them up. “I didn’t bring you down here so you could go charging off in all directions and end up missing, too! You’re here to observe and advise, and anybody who can’t follow orders is going back upstairs in a pod!”

  That quieted them. Brudda, their section leader, drew a deep breath and saluted. “Understo
od, sir. We place ourselves at your command.”

  Rick forced himself to calm down, too. “Thank you. Lron, Baldan; over here, please.” There was no point going over the whole business twice. “Kazianna, let me know if you can’t hear me.”

  Zentraedi and Sentinels gathered before him; Jack, Karen, and the rest of the remaining recon party formed a semicircle behind. The mecha, weapons ready, took up a circle around the group, keeping watch in all directions.

  “You know the main facts.” Rick pointed out the route his recon party had followed. “We were advancing through a densely wooded area about a mile and one-half along that valley, with Sergeant Dante on point. Gnea moved up to walk the slack position, some six yards or so behind him.

  “As we entered an open grassy area, both the sergeant and Gnea were enveloped by what appeared to be a somewhat different version of the luminous phenomena that—”

  Jeez. Been talking bureaucratese in the TIC too long. Rick!

  He started in again. “From what we could see, this hailstorm of light swirled down on them, and we lost them from sight. At the same time, sensors picked up an enormous life reading, but there were no large organisms in sight.

  “The light was gone in a couple of seconds, and so were Angie and Gnea. We searched the area—no trapdoors, camouflaged openings, or other clues. We even blew open the ground and lasered down nearby trees; they were solid.

  “I’m splitting you into search units. Battlepods and Quadranos will deploy on the ground; Battloids will fly recon and cover. I’m hoping the Garudans’ extended senses, the Karbarrans’ hunting and tracking skills, or the Praxians’ scouting procedures turn up something we missed.”

  He looked to Baldan. “And I was thinking—maybe if there’s some equivalent of the Crystal Highways here …”

  Baldan nodded his gleaming head. “I’ll do what I can do, Admiral.”

  Rick began calling off assignments. The mixed contingents sorted themselves out to move back into the target zone.

  “Aw, sca-rew!”

  Angelo Dante knelt with the stock of his rifle pressed to his cheek, swinging the muzzle this way and that in the milk-white mist. Not that there were any targets around; it was just something to do while he tried to sort things out. “Not again,” he grated.