PART SEVEN: THE DRUANII BASE
CHAPTER 22
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Cordez was bound for the fringes of the galaxy, and he was going there pretty much alone.
He wished he could have taken Fedic with him, or Cagill, or Asura, or Finch and some of the Prometheus heads. Even one or two of the Regents he had come to trust. But the Druanii had been very clear, he was to come alone.
He’d protested that one man couldn’t run a star ship, and they had said he could take one more person, as a combination of pilot and navs officer. He had chosen Geelong.
Cordez didn’t think the limitation on numbers was a matter of security, just the isolation the Druanii preferred. As if two minds in the same room was already a crowd for them.
The Druanii had made contact with him in a way that was different to what they usually did. Rather than using the Orion as interpreters, and a visual system of contact, Cordez had been subject to a voice speaking out of thin air.
He had been alone in his home office, and he’d been startled by the animated voice that darted from point to point about him. It was as if an invisible monkey, with the power of speech, had been jumping and climbing on supports he couldn’t see.
The Druanii had not wanted to use the Orion as translators this time, and Cordez understood why. The Invardii had the coordinates of their planet now, and any activity that didn’t fit in with the Orion ‘neutral’ status would cause major problems. That still left Cordez with a question. Who was the fidgety little fellow he had spoken to, and what did he or she look like?
Geelong informed him they were now passing the orbits of the outer planets, and the Javelin would soon leave the Solar System. Cordez flicked his eyes upward to the overhead screen.
He liked to remind himself of the gray nothingness of stardrive. There were barely detectable eddies in the nothingness, and the flickering shapes that formed behind his eyes helped his thinking processes. He blinked in surprise, and then stood up in disbelief, as the overhead screen came alive. Shimmering bands of light chased each other across the screen. They came and went in ever-changing shades of impossible colors.
Geelong swore, and ran diagnostics from the navs systems. When that didn’t show anything unusual he asked the ship’s central intelligence to suggest reasons for the extraordinary colors.
The CI came back with an answer immediately.
“Quantum breakdown effects,” it said, speaking in a warm, rich voice that was a little too regular to be Human. “Supporting evidence: engine efficiency now approaching 200%, sub space communications no longer operative, wavelength shift noted and postulated as quantum physics breakdown at extreme speeds greater than light.”
“Godsdammit!” said Geelong, checking the engine efficiency. “The engines are running way, way above maximum. We must be traveling at . . .” His voice trailed off as he saw the readout. “We shouldn’t be alive,” he said, at last.
Cordez sat back in his chair. He figured it had to be the Druanii, and he guessed it was a way for them to speed things up when time was of the essence. There was probably an Invardii force on its way to the Orion planet right now, and he hoped the Alliance force could get there in time. The war was hotting up, and the Druanii were stepping in to help where they could.
When he had reassured Geelong that they were, probably, going to live through this sudden increase in speed, he wondered how long it would be before the Javelin arrived at the destination the Druanii had chosen. He managed to figure out what the increase in their speed was – close to 100 times the normal speed – but it was almost a day later when the ship re-entered normal space, and the Druanii relinquished control of the stardrive engines.
Geelong joined Cordez in front of the large overhead screen as the Javelin came out of stardrive. The multicolored hues indicating their enormous speed began to break up on the screen. The quantum effects were replaced by a black, empty sea of nothing.
“Are you sure it’s working?” said Cordez, looking at the flat, colorless screen.
Geelong ran some tests. “Everything checks out,” he said eventually. “There’s even a background reading of around three degrees Kelvin – residual energy from the Big Bang.”
Cordez froze as he realized what must be happening. “Throw the rear view up on the screen,” he said softly.
The screen was instantly full of stars. The thickest part of the galaxy, visible as The Milky Way from Earth, had vanished – receded into immeasurable distance – and it was clear they were outside the galaxy itself.
“How far have we come,” breathed Geelong, unable to take it all in.
“A very, very long way,” said Cordez softly, “and we had better hope the Druanii intend to send us back the same way. It would take forever otherwise.”
“We’re moving,” said Geelong, and the stars began to wheel to one side. He rushed back to the navs console, and tried to get a reference system established using the stars as a starting point.
“Localized movement only, maybe one-tenth the speed of light, heading for . . . here,” he said, and threw the coordinates up on the overhead screen, magnifying them as he went.
“Can you believe that,” said Cordez as a massive structure, hanging in space, grew until it filled the center of the screen.
“I thought the Druanii were solitary creatures,” said Geelong, and Cordez nodded slowly.
“So that’s all . . ,” began Geelong, “. . . for just one being,” finished Cordez.
They looked at each other.
“Remember how big they are,” said Cordez, recalling Andre’s diagrams with a tiny Human figure underneath a picture of a huge, dragon-like creature Andre had found in the Rothii archive.
“Even so,” said Geelong.
The vast structure spread across the screen as the Javelin approached it. Geelong cut back the magnification several times. Then, at last, the alien colossus filled the screen, and they were right alongside it.
“We’re being scanned,” said Geelong. He paused. “That’s odd, the frequency is similar to very fast thought waves. Super Alpha, around 300 cycles a second.”
Cordez winced. “Whatever it is, it’s not doing my head any good. Can you feel that?”
Geelong looked up. Then his eyes glazed over, and he was transformed. He seemed lost in a dream world.
Cordez’ own painful reveries started to pass, and eventually he looked across at his pilot, and called his name. Geelong was deep in his own thoughts. On the third or fourth summons, he started to respond.
“It’s leaving us,” he said, with a sense of longing. “It’s going back to the dreamtime.”
When he was back to his usual self, Cordez got him to describe what he was talking about.
“The place we came from,” said the pilot haltingly. There weren’t really any words for it. “The place we go to.”
He waved his hands, as if words alone could not communicate what he was trying to say. “The patterns that create the world, the place where thought arises.”
Cordez realized Geelong was talking about something transcendental, beyond the everyday.
“The dreamtime is still strong in Australia,” said the aboriginal pilot, at last. “For those who choose that path. The immense spaces, the lost horizons, the timelessness. It’s still there. We can live within it if we try.”
Cordez nodded. He thought he understood what Geelong was trying to say, more or less.
His own experience had been more personal, more a sense of loss, of missing his mentor Ebert – long dead – and a haunting suggestion Asura might vanish out of the world, taking much of the joy of being alive with her.
Cordez realized they had been scanned by a very powerful mind, possibly one augmented by technology, and it had scanned them down to their essential thoughts and being.
Then the side of the structure opened before the Javelin, and they were drawn inside a huge loading bay. When the doors closed, they were in complete darkness. The instruments sho
wed the bay had a breathable atmosphere, but they exited the Javelin in life support suits anyway. Something made Cordez turn the suit’s lights off, and Geelong followed.
As their eyes adjusted they could see tiny points of light, eerie fireflies that darted and looped in the gloom. One of them fluttered nearer, and then flew straight into Geelong’s glove, and out the other side. He pulled his hand away in surprise. The fireflies were nothing more than images, an electronic presence in the blackness.
“We’re not supposed to see our way by them, are we?” said Geelong, with a little of his trademark humor.
“No,” said Cordez, “but I think we’re supposed to go this way.”
He pointed toward a pair of lines that had just appeared on the floor, creating a lane that skirted around the Javelin and disappeared into the gloom. The lines were easy enough to follow, but he turned on his suit’s lights anyway.
Geelong shrugged, a gesture largely lost in his bulky life support suit, and followed Cordez across the floor. His boots hit silently, suggesting a composite, or even living, material.
Cordez was deep in thought. This was all based on trust, he reflected. Trust that together the Alliance and the Druanii could do something about an encroaching civilization that had no respect for others, one that thought it was normal to take what it wanted without remorse.
Awareness must pass through the same stages everywhere in the universe, he realized. There was a time before awareness of self, then a time of greed and selfishness, and then, hopefully, a time of respect and compassion. Humans weren’t that good at getting past the ego stage, he mused, but the Invardii seemed to have got stuck there!
CHAPTER 23
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The walk into the gloomy cargo bay dragged on. To Cordez it was like walking across a vast stage into the wings, except for the complete absence of echoes.
“Is the atmosphere for us, or does our Druanii friend breath oxygen like we do?” said Geelong at last, to break the silence.
“Unlikely,” said Cordez. “That they breath like us that is. It’s too inefficient. Only the Rothii stayed reasonably true to their original DNA, the other two races used whatever technology enhanced their abilities.”
Geelong was silent at that. It jarred with his inner sense of how all things were ultimately connected.
Then the two of them came to a cubicle set in a wall.
“Airlock,” said Cordez. “The ship won’t be flooded with an atmosphere just for us. We’ll be shepherded to where they want us to go – sorry, where he or she wants us to go – a section at a time. Then the atmosphere will be moved ahead for us to use again.
“The Druanii have already said how much of a problem it is for them to do miracles for us, so I guess they don’t have inexhaustible resources.”
Geelong nodded. This trip was already the most bizarre of the Druanii-related adventures he’d been on. At first they had been exciting, but now it was getting to be a bit much to take in, and he was glad Cordez was here to make the decisions.
The other side of the airlock turned out to be a bubble with a flat floor. When they were safely through the airlock, and inside the bubble, they felt it begin to move.
“Must be a big ship,” said Cordez. “Corridors don’t do it for the Druanii.”
The bubble stopped at another airlock, and on the other side of that one was the legendary creature they had come to see.
It was floating in front of a set of 3D animations that blinked in and out of existence as they were required. While they were in existence they re-sized themselves and amalgamated at breath-taking speed. Behind the animations bands of marching images flashed across a luminous wall as fast as the Human eye could follow.
The images on the wall faded away. Then the 3D animations slowed, and hung motionless in space. The enormous dragon shape turned its head and surveyed Cordez and Geelong with unblinking eyes. They were soft pools of eyes, without pupils, and they looked into them as if the Druanii were scrutinizing their souls.
The two men were standing on something like a mezzanine floor, a giant shelf along one side of the cavernous space, and Cordez walked out to the edge of it. From there he could look directly into the enormous face of the Druanii. It was surrounded by defensive plates that ended in lethal spikes. The vast body undulated away to his left.
His contemplation of the giant creature before him was broken by the sound of nails clattering across the floor. He turned to see a number of part-Lemur, part-Cappuchin monkey life forms making their way along the mezzanine floor toward him. They were large and small, and Cordez guessed it was a family group. The oldest male, taller than the others and sporting patches of white in the mane about its face, came on ahead of the rest.
“Welcome to my master’s house,” it said briskly, in a clipped, high-pitched voice.
Cordez bowed, in a formal, very South American manner. “Tell your master we are pleased, and excited, to be here. We are also very grateful for everything the Druanii have done for us.”
“My master can understand what you are thinking,” said the hybrid creation. “I am here only to voice my master’s thoughts.”
So it was the Druanii that had scanned them in the cargo bay, thought Cordez. What it must be like to have a mind like that. It was a very powerful tool, artificially enhanced or not.
“To answer your questions,” continued the creature, “my master created us to act as translators for this meeting. We are of the same genetic lineage as yourselves, though deliberately not as advanced, and my master thought that might be comforting to you.
“We are a family group to meet each other’s social needs. Unnecessary cruelty breaks ethical laws for all creatures, yes?”
Cordez replied that yes, it most certainly did. He found it a little disconcerting that he had only to wonder something about these creatures, and the Druanii answered his unspoken thoughts.
“We are not, actually, conscious in any way you would recognize,” the large male continued. “To create souls is morally fraught, to say the least. This is a difficult one, do you not agree?”
Cordez was amused. Since Humanity had never had the capacity to create souls, it was not a question he had ever considered. Apparently, it was a very real dilemma for the Druanii.
When he did not immediately answer, the creature hurried on.
“The atmosphere in this chamber is quite breathable for your species, and your present appearance is disconcerting to myself and my family. Would it be possible for you to remove your life support equipment?”
Cordez looked at Geelong, who nodded his agreement. They clambered out of their suits, and tentatively sniffed the air about them. A smile broke out on Geelong’s features. “Spring in the mountains, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Druanii is glad you approve,” said the large male. The other creatures in the small group did not seem to share in the burden of translating the Druanii’s thoughts, and were more concerned with grooming each other. They seemed to be limited to such instinctive activities. The one Cordez now thought of as ‘the translator’ took the hand of one of the smallest ones, and led it over to Cordez.
It sniffed at his clothing, and pulled back its nose in distaste. Cordez smiled, and after its initial reaction it scampered up his outstretched arm and settled on his shoulder, leaning against the side of his head. Warm, soft fingers began to scratch at a tiny scrap of wax in his outer ear.
“Why do Druanii live alone?” said Cordez, keen to understand the many mysteries that surrounded the Druanii.
“Druanii do not live alone,” said the translator, evidently puzzled by the question.
“There are more Druanii in this place?” said Cordez, now just as puzzled.
“Ah, not so,” said the translator, as the Druanii understood the question at last. “Druanii are one in heart, one in mind, one in thought. Though vast distances separate them, Druanii are never alone.”
As if to demonstrate the point, the huge dragon head in fron
t of them turned back to one of the animations that hung in front of it. The animation spun and jumped, shapes and colors flitting across its surface. The Druanii was apparently communicating with one of its own, somewhere in the vastness of space.
As it did this, Cordez held his hands to his temples, dislodging his little passenger, and began to shake his head. It was hard to describe the discomfort he felt.
“You are not well?” inquired the translator, concerned for its guest.
When Cordez described the hundreds of tiny needles inside his head, and the sensation of falling that accompanied it, the Druanii turned to look at him.
“Extraordinary,” said the translator, coming closer and looking into Cordez’ eyes. It studied something there for a moment, and Cordez felt gentle fingers probe inside his mind.
“You have something like Druanii mind, just the beginning of it. Druanii share thoughts and feelings across the galaxy. You have something similar . . . a connection to events happening elsewhere, a little foreknowledge perhaps?”
Cordez straightened up with a look of wonder on his face, and the odd sensations disappeared as the animation in front of the Druanii became still again.
It made sense. It all, suddenly, made absolute sense.
He had been too lucky, too often, in his life, and he had always wondered why. He was plugged in to the greatest information web in the Solar System, and in the Alliance. It was a nexus of information and political binding that kept him up to date, in depth, everywhere at once. But that didn’t explain his extraordinary hit rate, his ‘informed guesses’ that were nearly always right on the button.
It had bugged him. Even he could see he couldn’t take all the credit, though he knew how good he was at collecting information and finding meaning in it.
He was finally able to acknowledged that there was some ‘magic’ in the matter. He was a ‘Curacanto’, a spirit doctor as his ancestors had sometimes been called, with a knowledge of things it was impossible to know.
Invardii Box Set 2 Page 52