Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 169

by Neil Clarke

  “That’s mythology. Kids talk about it, but the adults know better.”

  “Some Adults talked; they always did.” She looked at him curiously. “And when we broke away, desperate and scared and bleeding, some of these entities came with us. Not invited; they simply slipped aboard.

  “One certainly came with you. Do you really not know that?”

  Koishi said nothing. He realized, with a thrill of alarm, that Something here would know if he was lying.

  “Of course,” she said, studying his expression. “You guessed, or were told.”

  And to his astonishment, she began to cry.

  “You’re still just a tool, one that knows a bit. But it doesn’t matter; They know what tool will suffice. We knew this day would come.”

  She pulled one foot loose from its adhesive strip, then grasped a handhold and hopped free of the other. In a flash she was through the opening to the platform below, where her spacesuit, unfolding itself like a flower, was drifting toward her.

  “I’m getting out of here. Want to see something? Then come on.”

  They left through a different airlock, which should not have surprised him: of course they would have a second exit. Up to the parabolic ceiling and into a shaft that ran straight toward the surface.

  The ascent was made in vacuum, which meant that Koishi only felt the cold when he touched a rung. Like Ming above him, whose boots were visible when he angled his helmet light upward, he kicked his way up, rising a surprising distance before the microgravity slowed him to a halt. With each kick, his sole felt a brief chill, a reminder of how cold the moons of Neptune really were.

  Meanwhile, they spoke to each other.

  “You disassembled your ship to build your shelter?”

  “We didn’t do it, but yes. Most of the EV-19 was converted into material for our living space and other things. The shell is suspended magnetically in a vacuum. More efficient simply to build above the surface, but of course we didn’t dare.”

  Koishi thought about this for a moment. “How many Beings were aboard your ship?”

  “Just one. I don’t know whether that was policy or happenstance. But there are more here now; the Beings have traveled, from—what did you call us? Mutineers?—from one Mutineer ship to another, multiplying and merging in ways that humans don’t understand.

  “We are scattered across Greater Neptune; I won’t tell you how far. And the Centaur doesn’t know where for sure, even if They can make good guesses. Most of the fleeing ships changed trajectories once Neptune blocked the Centaur’s view; by the time They launched surveillance satellites into the Centaur’s Trojan points, it was too late.”

  Koishi felt his head spinning. “So . . . ” he began uncertainly.

  “Hold on; we are nearing the surface.”

  Koishi focused his beam and saw Ming, hanging almost motionless, give a tiny kick to the nearest rung and recede upward at a much-diminished pace. She was pulling herself out slowly, lest—the image would have otherwise been risible—she kick too hard and fly into the sky.

  A few seconds later he saw her wriggle sideways and disappear, leaving the shaft’s opening a circle of deepest black. Carefully he followed, hand over hand. After a minute he poked his head through, to look upon the icescape of Thalassa. Already his gloves were feeling cool.

  Ming was busy with something in her hands. “So we’re going somewhere,” she said. “Ordinarily I would simply leap, a nice parabolic trajectory that would take a few minutes and land me within meters of our destination. But you don’t know how and I can’t calculate the force needed to take the both of us. So we are taking the train.”

  Koishi wasn’t sure he heard her right. He watched as she unfolded a metal sheet perhaps a meter squared. She set it down at knee level, where it slowly settled a few centimeters and then hovered. She stepped smartly onto it, steadying herself with a wave as it wobbled slightly.

  “Hop on,” she said.

  He took a hesitant step. The panel dipped beneath his boot, but she seized his forearm and he quickly got his other foot up. The platform swayed for a second, then began to move. Koishi had expected this and threw out his arms for balance as it slowly gained speed. He looked over the edge, but the superconducting cable was buried out of sight.

  “You rarely use this,” he ventured, “because the activated rail would appear to probes as a straight line pointing to your back door.”

  “Of course. But you’re here now, aren’t you?

  “The trip will take forty minutes. We can spend it in total silence if you like.”

  Koishi recognized a challenge. “You summoned me down here; I want to learn something. How have you spent the past two years?”

  She laughed. “Do you think the Cave built itself? Even with the tools we had, it was months before we were able to start drilling. And we burned energy much faster than the power sources could replace it, which meant that we had to take time out to build more. Even finding the safest location took weeks, not to mention seeking deposits of organics we could mine for material. All hidden from prying eyes.”

  “But you are not building now, right? So how do you spend your days?”

  He had half turned to see through her faceplate, where her gaze was fixed, unreadably, upon his.

  “You are wondering what three young people do living in a sealed cave? Without access to the games and chores you are given in the Centaur? That’s simple enough: we do what Alan was doing.”

  “‘Soaring.’”

  “We gave it that word early on, when we needed one. It’s what the Beings do: they study the universe, with every instrument available to them, plus the ones they are always devising. It is exhilarating beyond anything an unaugmented human brain can experience, save in delirium.”

  Koishi stared. “You have opened your minds to these Beings.”

  “We all have. The interaction is . . . I have never had to explain it to someone else. Your thoughts are deeper, clearer. You can hold more in your head at once, and all the irrational responses and judgments that people try—or don’t try—to free themselves from, they simply drop away.”

  “And this has left you—” He hesitated.

  “Something no longer human?” Her laugh sounded very human. “You react with ignorance and aversion, just as your brain evolved to do. I’ve still got my hominid brain, and find myself, at moments like this, more human than I like. But these Beings, as you put it, allow us to soar in their wake.

  “They are not terribly interested in people, but they accompanied us out here, and they helped keep us alive. Those who govern the Centaur don’t like or understand that. Why do you think they have come for us?”

  Koishi could think of no response to this. “And the other Holdouts elsewhere, are they also investigating the universe?”

  “You can ask them when you catch them,” she said crisply. “Which you—not you personally—will eventually do. Huaguo is just a stepping stone.”

  “The nearest rock,” he said, guessing at meaning.

  “At a temperature of fifty Kelvin, ice is like rock, so yes. The Holdouts—you probably really should call us something else—are scattered through the rings and on the moons, across two hundred million kilometers.

  “You will occupy our world, then hop over to Naiad as it swings past. Then Despina as well—both come within two thousand klicks at closest approach, a ridiculously small distance in Greater Neptune. What a staging point you have here! The Naiadae are probably already foreseeing a landing.”

  “So there are people on Naiad? The Naiadae?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “And that makes you Thalassians?”

  “We are the people of Mount Huaguo,” she said, angry. “Dead white Earthmen don’t get to name us.”

  “What happened to Jian Bai?” he asked suddenly. “Where is he?”

  Ming gestured dismissively. “He has his projects. And he isn’t happy that you’re here.”

  Koishi looked ac
ross the featureless landscape. It was almost impossible to establish any sense of scale, but he guessed that they were traveling perhaps twenty klicks an hour.

  He remembered to jump sideways, not up. He kicked backward as well, and the floating platform continued on, receding smoothly even as Ming turned, cursing.

  Of course he was now rising and could not afford the minutes it would take for him to settle back to the surface. He hurled his torch upward as hard as he could, and felt himself recoiling downward. When he touched the surface a second later, the lateral velocity sent him stumbling. He recovered his footing with difficulty and sent the barbs in his soles plunging into the ice.

  Ming had of course jumped off as well, and was moving swiftly toward him. By the time he had anchored his boots and finished reeling in his torch on its monofilament lead, she had planted herself in front of him.

  “You ridiculous fool. What, you feared an ambush? From where?”

  “Over the horizon, perhaps. Which is not far.”

  “You understand nothing, do you?”

  “Exactly. I understand far too little to—”

  The ground rumbled beneath their feet. Both of them looked down, but the vibrations subsided after just over a second. Koishi was confusedly reflecting that Thalassa was not seismically active when the truth hit him.

  “It’s the River Stone,” he said. It didn’t require a long blast to take off, not even to rise quickly. Either Polytropos was coming to look for him or—the thought was a sliver of ice to the heart—the Beings at whose contact the entity had fled had followed it to the ship and seized control.

  His suit had processing power enough to calculate the direction of the ship, and he turned toward it just in time to see a bright bead break over the horizon. Instantly, he saw that something was wrong. His helmet beam picked out the River Stone, still accelerating on a plume of heated ice particles: a spray of steam, white in the spotlight, turning at once into glistening snow. The ship had attained escape velocity almost upon liftoff and was still accelerating.

  “Your ship is leaving,” said Ming, for the moment as nonplussed as he. “For a second I thought it was going to come over and ‘save’ you.”

  Koishi was sending a message. “Polytropos! What is happening? Are you in control?” Long seconds passed, though it required only the first second’s silence for him to realize that he was not going to get a response. River Stone was now too distant for his beam to illuminate, visible only as a black speck moving against the face of Neptune.

  Koishi kept his voice steady. “I can guess what happened. Your Beings took over the ship and lit out.”

  “Or they attempted to wrest control from the Being onboard—don’t tell me there isn’t one—and it fled to escape the onslaught. Just as likely. Or—” She paused, and a long minute passed.

  “It’s not heading back to the Centaur,” said Koishi dully. His suit’s calculator told him that much.

  “Here’s a guess: it’s heading for Naiad, to gather what data it can before the Naiadae notice its approach and take cover.”

  As reasonable a guess as any other, save for the refusal to reply. “What were you going to show me?” he asked, in order to say something.

  “Before you hopped off? We call it the Crystal Palace. The railway goes straight there, but we usually travel by the tunnel, which cuts a chord straight through Huaguo. The entire facility is underground, hidden from the Centaur’s probing eyes.”

  Koishi was having trouble thinking straight. “So you were going to show me an expanse of bare ice, just so I could see how there was nothing visible?”

  “Yes. When I am out of communion with the Beings, as you call them, I am as proud and petty as any other human being. Also, I wanted you away from our house.”

  “Would you have then let me down some shaft to admire your project?”

  “I would have to ask Jian; that’s where he is.” She glanced at him and added, “He isn’t lying in wait.”

  “It hardly matters now.”

  “Just be quiet.” The bitterness in her voice took him aback. “You have won, whether you understand that or not. Your people will come for you in another ship. Perhaps they will scoop us up as well. Whatever they wanted—and it isn’t your little school project—they will get. Why are you so unhappy?”

  A second tremor shook the ice beneath them. Koishi was merely startled, but Ming, understanding, shrieked. The shuddering grew, and then grew loud: a deep rending groan conducted up through their boots. Ming turned to look back the way they had come, and Koishi’s gaze followed.

  Their helmet beams could illuminate nothing where there was only vacuum, but that ended quickly. An enormous plume rose above the horizon, glittering white. Steam spurted into space, froze at once into crystals that spread, still rising, like millions of tiny stars. The tremors were becoming more violent, enough that their suits were having trouble keeping the beams fixed on the towering cloud.

  And then it appeared: an enormous egg, jetting steam from a nozzle at its base, ascended slowly into the glittering cloud. It swiftly gained velocity, shrugging off the moonlet’s paltry attempts to retain it. Ming was rocking on her heels as she wailed, but Koishi followed the craft’s trajectory until it was so far overhead that he could not tip his helmet farther.

  “So Chang is onboard?” he asked after a moment.

  “They both are.” Ming was gulping and hiccupping, so that Koishi wasn’t sure he understood her. “As, I assume, are Tokoloshe and Susanoo—our names for Them,” she added.

  “Why would—”

  “I don’t know.” She was trying to gain composure enough to speak clearly. “All I know is they are gone. The departure notice, which was sent automatically, included a manifest.”

  They stood unmoving beneath the almost-black plain, feeling the occasional vibration as the shock waves bounced off some internal structure and echoed back.

  “That shell must be pretty thin for a spacecraft,” he observed after a moment.

  “It’s airtight, and the engines mounted fore and aft were enough to melt ice and launch. You don’t need much thrust to fly off.”

  “And the Beings are on board as well?”

  Ming sighed. “They come and go as they please, and it can be hard to know where they actually are. They are not digital structures that can be sent as strings of data: much of their substance does not exist in normal space, but there is always a part that occupies a physical matrix. I am sure they are now all gone—they would not allow themselves to be marooned here.”

  “Two on one ship, one on the other?”

  “Or all three on both. They are too strange for us to understand, but I know that they can join, like two blobs of mercury, to form a new entity. If they possess enough of whatever substance they require—and they don’t talk about this—they can probably divide themselves in two.

  “Care to ask your late shipmate?” she added. “I’m sure it can hear us.”

  It was hours later before he saw her again. Ming had leaped into the air without a word and vanished over the horizon, and a minute later the “train,” gliding smoothly over the ice, had returned to stop beside him. Koishi stepped on and it resumed its trip over the horizon.

  The terminus proved, as promised, to be a barren plain, and Koishi walked its length, gazing down, until he found the outlines of a hatch. He stamped on it, knock knock, and a moment later the square of ice rose and slid sideways, disclosing the entrance beneath.

  He dropped slowly down the shaft, bumping gently against one side as Thalassa slowly rotated, until he saw the bottom yawn below him and grabbed a rung. The last few meters he took hand over hand before touching an ice-cold floor.

  He stepped through an alcove into an enormous space, dark and utterly silent. With no air to diffuse his beam, the helmet light picked out only a small circle on an opposite wall, dozens of meters away. He played the beam across its slow curvature, guessing at the cavern’s extent.

  “It is more impr
essive when I light it up, but I don’t really feel like impressing you.”

  Koishi turned to see Ming standing halfway across the vast floor. Unless he directed the beam right into her face, he could not see her expression.

  “So what do we do now?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “We eat, drink, sleep. In this gravity, every surface is soft. Your masters will come for us long before our resources are exhausted. You will return in triumph, and I in chains: the first captured Holdout.”

  “I don’t feel especially triumphant.”

  “You were the bait that hid the hook. The fisherman doesn’t always get his bait back.”

  Koishi could guess at the meaning of that. “You will get to see your family again,” he said.

  “Please shut up. There are other chambers here; go explore them if you like.” And she walked away.

  After thinking a moment, Koishi adjusted his hand torch so that it cast a medium-strength beam in all directions, as though he were holding up a flaming brand. The Crystal Palace was a high-vaulted space, lined with galleries that apparently led off into further rooms. A miracle of low-gravity architecture, this inverted edifice—hewn of emptiness from the surrounding substance—must, even with cutting tools adapted from the ship’s engines and the calculations of a Being, have required months of labor.

  The floor was crisscrossed with strips of slightly adhesive material, which allowed one to walk almost normally. He followed one through an arched door into another space, a large low-ceilinged room like an abandoned banquet hall.

  “Any of you still here?”

  Silence, as he had expected.

  “You may still be here, of course. Can’t you leave copies of yourselves behind, lingering ghosts?”

  He ventured farther into the space. Why had they gone to such trouble? Koishi could imagine the Beings striding like gods through these halls, but he knew that was wrong: they were not like anything humans understood.

  “So did I do the right thing?” Did I do anything, he could not bring himself to ask. If there was a conflict beginning, the principals did not seem to be humans.