Jonomy closed his eyes, entered deep symbiosis with the network. Ericho spun back to the suited figure who now stood motionless.
“Alexei, see if you can–”
The trainee lunged forward, his arms thrashing wildly, his helmeted head jerking back and forth.
“I’m not doing this!” he cried out. “The suit’s moving on its own!”
Ericho had never heard of a link behaving in such a way. The crazed movements reminded him of old videos of people with severe spasms from damaged central nervous systems, back before medicine had cured cerebral palsy and its brethren.
“Try your sight typer,” Rigel ordered. “Red-yellow-red, the emergency override.”
Even as Rigel spoke, the helmet began violently jerking back and forth.
“No good,” Alexei said, his voice rising in pitch, on the verge of panic. “My head’s moving too fast. Can’t focus…”
“We need to get him out of there,” Rigel said, motioning to Ericho and June.
The three of them moved toward Alexei, trying to avoid his wildly gyrating arms.
“Pin his wrists,” Rigel instructed. “I’ll get the helmet off.”
Alexei swung his right arm at them. Ericho jerked back just in time. The blow missed his jaw but slammed June in the chest. She tumbled backward with a squeal of pain and crashed to the deck.
Rigel grabbed the errant arm, pinned it behind the link’s back. Ericho managed to do the same with the other arm. But the appendages seemed to have a life of their own, twisting and fighting against the restraint.
“I’m not doing this!” Alexei screamed. “It’s not me.”
“Gotta stop you anyway,” Rigel said. “This is gonna hurt!”
Rigel landed a brutal kick to the link’s left knee. Alexei grunted in agony as his leg went out from under him. He crumbled to the deck, taking all three of them down.
But somehow the suit righted itself, even with Ericho and Rigel still hanging on. Alexei whirled toward the center of the bridge and into the HOD. Multi-hued streamers erupted from the holographic sphere as their bodies passed through the display.
“Enough!” Rigel hollered.
He grabbed the suit by the back of the neck in a horsecollar grip and yanked violently. Alexei slammed the floor with a resounding crack followed by a sharp cry of pain.
Rigel straddled the suit, his full weight on Alexei’s chest. He pinned the trainee’s wrists against the deck.
“Get his goddamn helmet off!”
Ericho knelt on one side of Alexei’s head. June, recovered from her spill, rushed to the other side. Together they tried opening the clamshell. But the link fought their efforts, whip-lashing with such speed that Alexei’s head became a blur of movement as it bashed against the deck.
The captain finally was able to grab an override switch. The front and back halves of the clamshell parted. He tore the headpiece from Alexei’s head. The primary control circuitry was located within. The moment he got it off the rest of the suit went dead.
But not the helmet. It rolled eerily across the deck, servo motors still in the throes of the malfunction. The clamshell halves snapped open and shut like some bizarre mechanical mouth gasping for air.
Rigel grabbed the hinged halves, ripped them apart in a cascade of sparks. He smashed the two pieces against the deck until they stopped quivering then stomped on them for good measure.
Ericho and June turned their attention to Alexei. His eyes were closed. Nose, mouth and tear ducts leaked blood.
“Hemorrhaging from burst capillaries,” June said, easing her fingers beneath the back of Alexei’s head, where the suit had pounded him against the deck. When she withdrew her hand it was soaked red.
Gingerly, they removed the rest of the suit.
“Careful,” June warned. “Don’t move him any more than you have to.” She whipped her attention to Jonomy. “We need an autobed up here.”
“MED has already been informed.”
June dabbed at Alexei’s bloody face with a cloth while they waited. A minute later, the autobed wheeled itself onto the bridge. Two of the bed’s sextet of mech appendages cradled Alexei to limit further injury. The remaining four arms extended to their full lengths, slithered under his legs, spine and neck, and gently lifted him onto the mattress.
Jonomy emerged from his communion with the network. Ericho sat, nursing a sore elbow cracked against the deck during the struggle. June sprinted out the door behind the autobed.
“What in the hell is going on!” Rigel yelled in frustration.
Jonomy remained calm. “The CYB malfunction exhibited the same parameters as the trouble in the natatorium. I attempted to create another feedback loop to make the network aware of the problem. However, that effort failed. The Alchemon maintains that the link incident was a human malfunction. It points to Alexei as the source of the trouble. EPS agrees and gives a ninety-eight percent probability that Alexei suffered a breakdown that caused him to input irrational commands.”
“That’s the most dumbass thing I’ve ever heard!”
“I am only reporting the ship’s conclusion. I am not necessarily in agreement.”
He gestured to the HOD, which now imaged an external camera view. In the distance was the link robot, motionless relative to the ship.
“The Alchemon’s weak geonic field offset its inertia. It is not drifting any farther out.”
“How do we bring it back?” Ericho asked. Considering they’d already lost the first robot, Ericho didn’t like the idea of losing the second one. Then again, if linking was no longer reliable…
“PAQ suggests sending a lander out for it.”
“Do you agree?”
“PAQ’s conclusion is partially based on a financial calculus, the cost of losing another expensive unit.”
“Screw those goddamn Pannis bookkeepers,” Rigel growled.
“Is that a yes or a no?” Ericho demanded.
“There is also the matter of the mystery ship, which could pose unknown threats to a recovery mission. Therefore, I find myself opposing the recommendations. For the time being we should abandon the robot. It likely will remain within our geonic field for a time, providing the possibility of recapturing it later.”
Jonomy disagreeing with advice from the Alchemon was a rare event. But Ericho was in accord.
“What about remaining options for vacuuming the containment?” he asked.
“We could utilize a pup. That is still problematic, of course, and would require modifications to its programming to enable a complex external assignment. At this juncture, the most practical method would be a human EVA.”
“Let’s do it,” Rigel snarled. “We need to stop fucking around and purge that son of a bitch.”
Ericho hesitated. Considering everything that had gone wrong so far, he didn’t relish sending anyone outside to blow the containment hatch. Assuming Baby Blue was responsible for the malfunctions, there was no telling what threats it might use against humans who ventured onto the hull.
“I’m not ruling it out,” he said. “But first things first. Rigel, see if you can figure out what went wrong with the suit. Maybe there’s a way to safeguard the system against external tampering.”
The tech officer snatched up the helmet pieces, slung the heavy garment over his shoulder and stormed off the bridge.
“I’m going down to have a talk with LeaMarsa,” Ericho said.
Somehow, she was the key to what was happening to them. But as he headed for the port storage pod, he found himself overwhelmed by a deranged anger directed at the science rep.
And if Hardy gives me any trouble, I’ll purge his ass out the nearest airlock!
CHAPTER 19
LeaMarsa repressed a shiver. Hardy’s makeshift lab was cold. Storage pods, rarely occupied by humans, had minimal heating systems.
The science rep had reworked part of the space into a work area using flex walls and lume-encrusted ceiling panels. A haphazard array of research gear had been s
crounged from other parts of the ship.
“Are you ready?” he asked.
His voice came through speakers in the isolator hood LeaMarsa wore. It resembled a giant potato studded with antennas, parabolic dishes and signal deflectors. Hoods shielded wearers from a wide range of the electromagnetic spectrum, in theory heightening psionic sensitivity by blotting out sight and hearing, as well as radio and other frequencies swirling in a starship’s techno-rich environment.
She’d donned hoods at the Jamal Labs but had never experienced any measurable level of telepathic enhancement. Still, seclusion from the outside world was her default setting. And nothing bad had ever happened to her while wearing a hood.
“Clear your mind,” Hardy ordered. “Try imagining yourself in a comfortable environment with no distractions or worries.”
The request seemed ludicrous in light of recent events. Still, she’d learned a few techniques at Jamal, and focused on slowing her breathing and heart rate.
“I’m getting good readings,” Hardy said. “Now, plant an image of Baby Blue in your mind.”
Using the video she’d seen of the newborn creature taken by the link robot, she formed a mental picture. An instant later she blacked out and was again transported into neurospace. Many more of those ominous clusters had appeared since her previous visit; vast arenas of the starfield seemed polluted by their presence. Dread washed over her as she contemplated what that might mean – or what it had meant or might portend.
“Sentinel Obey. Coalesce and Target. Implement Synchronicity.”
The voice wasn’t strained this time and no longer seemed as if it emanated from a great distance. Instead, it resonated through LeaMarsa with sublime clarity. She realized that the inscrutable phrases weren’t nonsensical flotsam or some side effect of neurospace.
They’re a set of instructions.
But instructions to do what?
Neurospace vanished, replaced by a strange vision in which she was a participant. She sensed that the vision was also courtesy of the phantom woman.
LeaMarsa stood on a riverbank, her bare toes touching warm pebbles at the water’s edge. It wasn’t Earth. The sky was the color of weathered ivory and peppered with delicate silvery clouds. She had a feeling that this alien world no longer existed, that she was seeing it in some distant past.
The river’s far shore rose steeply into a mountain range covered in ground-hugging crimson foliage. Beyond the mountains, a cluster of ultra-thin buildings pierced the clouds. None of the skyscrapers were vertical; each ascended at a slight angle. She sensed that the slantings were deliberate, an esthetic choice. The vista brought to mind a tightly packed bundle of pick-up sticks held upright in preparation for release into a random scatter.
As she admired the city’s delicate beauty, it came under attack. Some invisible force shattered the off-kilter skyscrapers, crumbled them into fountains of dust. In a matter of seconds, nothing of the city remained visible above the mountains.
The middle of the river grew agitated. A vessel reminiscent of a circular raft, maybe five meters in diameter, ascended from beneath the waters. It was topped by a shimmering translucent hemisphere, a shield of some sort that enabled it to function as a submarine.
A dozen humanoid creatures stood on the raft. Tall and lean, they had bluish skin, long gray hair and elongated faces. Other than lacking that additional sensory organ between mouths and noses, they appeared to be adult versions of the same species from which Baby Blue originated. A mix of males and females, they were garbed from the waist down in brightly colored garments that resembled culottes.
Whatever invisible force had destroyed the city was now attacking the humanoids. LeaMarsa was close enough to see them being consumed by some form of fire that illogically seemed both cold and hot. In moments, all that remained of them were charred stalks, icicles of flame dripping from their scorched flesh.
Somehow, she knew that Baby Blue was the invisible attacker, and that it had destroyed their civilization. June’s nightmare suggested Earth would suffer a similar fate. This vision from long ago was a preview of what it had in store for humanity.
“The creature is called the Diar-Fahn, the doom that we brought upon ourselves.”
Whatever limitations had hindered the phantom woman’s conversational ability had been overcome. Perhaps the isolator hood was responsible, enabling straightforward communication. Whatever the case, the words flowed through LeaMarsa with clarity and purpose.
“Who are you?” she whispered.
“I am Nanamistyne of the Avrit-Ah-Tay. I am the jailer.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The Diar-Fahn was an experiment in genetic engineering. It was created for a benign purpose, to access a sub-nanoscale domain we had discovered, a compacted dimension, an essential element of spacetime.”
“Neurospace.”
LeaMarsa sensed the phantom woman acknowledging her conclusion.
“Like humans and all other intelligent species, we of the Avrit-Ah-Tay possess a tripartite consciousness based on the sequential evolutionary development of the physical, emotional and intellectual components of the brain. Neurospace contains an analogue of every such intelligence – every organic tripartite consciousness alive in the universe. It is the heartland of superluminal interaction, the source of what you refer to as psionic abilities.
“Yet no intelligence with which we were familiar could gain full conscious access to neurospace. Our tripartite selves are only able to catch glimpses of its true nature. In our hubris, hoping to overcome that deficiency, we reengineered our DNA to create an entity possessing a fourth level of consciousness. We nurtured this entity until we felt it had the maturity to carry out its purpose, to directly access and interact with neurospace.”
A sigh of regret seemed to emanate from the phantom woman. LeaMarsa experienced it as a breeze tainted by anguish.
She recalled June mentioning Lieutenant Donner’s final words. The Quad awakens. He’d obviously been referring to the same entity, a creature who, like her, was able to access neurospace. The similarity between them was troubling. Were she and the Diar-Fahn alike in other, more disturbing ways?
“But the Diar-Fahn possessed a fatal flaw. Or perhaps the very structure of neurospace altered its fundamental constitution. We don’t know the reasons, only the end result. The Diar-Fahn stopped functioning according to the tenets of tripartite consciousness and became the prototype of a fundamentally different species, one possessing a quadpartite consciousness. Shorn of empathy, it began perceiving all forms of tripartite intelligence as enemies to be destroyed.”
“It attacked you,” LeaMarsa concluded.
“Us and other civilizations, within the familiar universe and within that compacted dimension. Full access to neurospace had endowed it with mighty powers, even a kind of immortality. Our species was nearly overwhelmed before we found a means to trap and imprison its physical essence on the world you call Sycamore, which also neutralized its powers in neurospace.”
“Until humans found it and set it free,” LeaMarsa whispered, stunned by the revelations. She was about to ask what the three cryptic phrases meant when loud angry voices penetrated the shielding of her isolator hood, wrenching awareness back into the chilly environs of the port storage pod. She whipped off the hood to find Hardy and Ericho standing face-to-face, raw with anger as they engaged in a shouting match.
“You do not lock out a crewdoc!” the captain hollered. “June’s medical authority overrides your experiments. Get that through your idiot brain once and for all!”
“And does a crewdoc’s authority include vegetating LeaMarsa?” Hardy challenged.
“What are you talking about?” LeaMarsa demanded.
Hardy spun toward her with annoyance, as if regarding her as an interloper. He aimed a quivering finger at Ericho.
“Our captain ordered June – his partner, I might add – to vegetate you.”
“That’s a lie. I gave no such orde
r.”
“June Courthouse administered a powerful soporific. The moment you donned the hood, my scanners picked up Loopaline B4 in your system. You were given a high dose, far more than required for Quiets transit. The only use for the drug at those levels is to vegetate humans.”
LeaMarsa turned to Ericho. “Is that true?”
“June was worried about the effect you’ve been having on the rest of us. So yes, she tried dosing you with loopy.”
Hardy smirked in triumph. “His admission gives you grounds for a lawsuit, not to mention opening him up to charges of flagrant criminality.”
“That’s nonsense.”
“Is it, captain? A Corporeal court may see things differently.”
The argument is irrelevant. We’re not going to make it back to a Corporeal courtroom.
“Put the hood back on,” Hardy instructed. “The captain is leaving. And we shall continue with our experiments.”
“No.”
The science rep grimaced. “LeaMarsa, I’ve been most lenient with you throughout this expedition. I have graciously accepted your various refusals to cooperate and have bent over backward to accommodate you. However, my patience is wearing thin. I insist that you prioritize the scientific parameters of our mission and get over your self-centered attitude.”
As he continued ranting about her deficiencies, LeaMarsa perceived Hardy Waskov as he truly was, a man totally unaware of the great depths surrounding him. He stood on the edge of a gaping abyss, secured by what he believed were safety lines – facts and figures, logical interpretations of data, rational experiments. But all that merely deluded him into thinking he was on a safe perch. He remained blind to his own precarious reality.
And in a wider sense, Hardy might be considered the quintessence of humanity in general, with its overreliance on the intellect for perceiving the world. Such perception increasingly seemed limiting to her. She suspected that the true nature of the universe lay beyond cognitive understanding – the highest manifestation of tripartite beings – and was comprehensible only from within the realm of quadpartite consciousness.
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