Heaven's War (4 page)

“Come on,” Zack said. He was going to follow it.

Harley snapped, “Why do we care? Let it eat the thing!”

“I want to know what that animal is,” Zack said. “And whether or not that melon is poisonous.” He headed off, showing more energy than Rachel had yet seen. She and the others followed, an increasing distance behind.

“Not to be argumentative,” Sasha said, “but that animal might be able to eat all kinds of things that would kill us.”

“Not if it’s a monkey,” Rachel said. She had spotted it again…the creature was perched atop a good-sized boulder near the Beehive entrance, banging the melon until it broke open.

“I don’t know if that’s a monkey,” Zack said. “Its skin looked too smooth…oh.”

Now they all had a good view of the creature on the rock, which was greedily stuffing melon guts into its monkey face.

“It’s a vervet monkey,” Sasha said. She turned to Rachel. “Good eyes.”

Rachel couldn’t have named the creature, but something about its head shape, hands, tail, and running posture had just said “monkey.”

“Don’t they have fur?” Harley said.

“It’s probably got fur under that harder second skin,” Zack said. “When things come out of the Beehive, that’s what they wear…at least a couple of layers, like diving suits.”

“How do we know it came from the Beehive?” Harley said.

Sasha pointed at relatively fresh tracks that led back into the Beehive. “Look for yourself.”

“Does that mean this little guy was resurrected?” Harley said.

“It might,” Zack said. He turned to Rachel. “Where on Earth are vervet monkeys found?”

Now she was embarrassed, because she didn’t know. But Sasha rescued her. “They’re found in the Far East, particularly India.”

Harley and Zack exchanged looks. “That sort of fits,” Zack said. He nodded to Camilla. “So far we’ve only seen humans being brought back, and every one of those had a direct personal link to one of the humans here.”

Harley snorted. “So, if I get this…we’re wondering which of the Bangalore people is hot for a monkey?”

Sasha slapped Harley on the shoulder. Meanwhile, Rachel was keeping an eye on the monkey…which was busy devouring the melon while staying vigilant.

Zack was heading deeper into the Beehive. “I wonder what else is in here?” Rachel found the whole place creepy in the extreme, but she wasn’t going to let her father out of her sight.

She followed. So did Camilla, closely, then Harley and Sasha.

The Beehive was dark, except for light from the large opening into the habitat itself, and from a weird glow emanating from the hexagonal things along the walls.

Camilla made a sound and clutched Rachel’s hand. “Daddy, what are these things?”

“We called them cells,” Zack said. “They’re some kind of incubators.”

“And Mom is one of these?”

Zack nodded. The whole idea made Rachel shudder. “You know, Daddy—”

She and the others heard another strange sound. But this wasn’t the screeching of a reborn vervet monkey…this was a pitiful yowl.

“God, there wouldn’t be a baby
here
?” Sasha said.

Harley rolled forward and around a corner. “No, I think we’ve got that covered elsewhere.” Rachel knew that the Bangalore object had brought a mother and newborn child to Keanu. “Zack!”

Zack had been searching down another alley in the Beehive. Now he ran to Harley. Rachel wasn’t in a hurry, however; she wasn’t sure she wanted to see what was making that awful sound.

It was coming from a cell a meter off the ground…there was light inside as well as the shadow of a creature—another animal, Rachel thought—thrashing in agony. “Let’s get it out of there,” Zack said, chipping away at the cell’s membrane with the shovel.

As soon as he’d created a tear, he and Sasha peeled back the membrane and reached inside.

They pulled out a
dog
.

Or what looked and sounded like a dog that had lost its master. The creature had a snout and four legs but was encased in the same leathery second skin as the monkey, coated in slime from the cell. Which the dog immediately showered on Rachel and the others as it thrashed and shook itself. With Sasha pinning the animal, Zack managed to peel the second skin away from its face.

Able to breathe and see, the animal calmed down. “Anybody here a dog person?” Zack said.

“I grew up with a border collie,” Sasha said. She was making soothing sounds as she gently peeled away more of the covering.

“I was actually wondering what breed this was.”

“Looks like a golden-Lab mix,” Harley said. “Not that I’m an expert.”

Just then the dog wrestled itself out of Zack and Sasha’s grasp and performed a violent shiver, obviously trying to free itself of what remained of the second skin.

“Poor thing,” Rachel said. Not that she was a dog fan.

“I wonder who this guy belongs to,” Sasha said.

The dog looked right at Rachel…tongue hanging out.
Here he comes,
she thought, ready to back away.

But the dog only took a step toward Rachel. And she couldn’t help reaching out to pat his head. The dog responded by licking her hand.

“Well,” Zack said, “we know who he belongs to for the
moment
.”

“Rachel, you ought to give your dog a name,” Harley said.

“He’s not my dog!” The only dog Rachel had ever liked had been in some old television show. “All right, call him ‘Cowboy.’”

Suddenly Cowboy barked. He had smelled or seen something off in the reaches of the Beehive.

Rachel and the others instinctively clustered together. “God, what now?” Sasha said.

Zack hefted the shovel just as another creature emerged from the shadows. Like Cowboy, this one was four-legged and of earthly design. “Is that a
cow
?” Rachel said.

Harley laughed out loud. “What do you suppose our barbecue-loving Texas friends are going to say to that?”

“Actually,” Sasha said, “I’ll be more interested in what our friends from Bangalore will say to what our Texas friends will say.”

Rachel thought that was pretty darn funny, but Zack only grunted.

There’s another thing we won’t have on Keanu,
she realized.

Fun.

Valya Makarova would remember several things about the trip from Earth to Keanu inside a giant bubble.

First there was the fear.
Can I breathe?
(Yes, as it turned out.)
Am I trapped?
(She remembered having nightmares about the sinking of the Russian submarine
Kursk
fifteen years back, and the horror of finding yourself in a cold dark tube from which there was no escape. And yes, she was trapped…but the bubble was translucent…and the temperatures stayed Bangalore-high.)

She noted that she was still holding on to her purse. It was a large black bag, a Hermès Birkin knockoff she had bought in Moscow, and filled with such necessities as her phone, makeup, bits of candy and tissues, and her growing collection of key cards and security passes. Her right arm was through the strap; the purse rode high on her shoulder.

Reassured by that, at least, she commenced a brief, urgent search for Dale Scott. They had been standing right next to each other in the shattered parking lot of the Bangalore Control Center when the looming bubble had expanded.

Tumbled upside down into darkness, she had lost sight of Dale in seconds…she wasn’t even sure whether he had been scooped up, or left behind, or, horrid thought, sliced in half.

What is happening?
She hadn’t been able to make a count, but it was obvious that something like a hundred people had been scooped up by this bubble…. As it rose into the sky, then beyond the sky into space, some floated in zero g, screaming, while others tried to swim. Several people collided, fighting like panicky drowners. One encounter was so violent it left a cloud of blood floating in air.

And with blood, there came the inevitable discharges of vomitus. At
least a third of the hundred people looked either green or pale, each suffering from motion sickness.

Some simply closed their eyes and attempted yoga positions, or sleep. After thrashing around and finding the actions useless—and exhausting—Valya had selected the last option, relaxing to the inevitable, folding her hands across her chest and finding that, after a while, she floated toward the bubble’s wall.

For a moment, she was afraid she might sail through it—or slam into it. Or be electrocuted at a touch.

Fortunately, none of that happened. She simply…bounced…and found herself gently but definitely sliding toward one end of the bubble along with several dozen others. (Just as many seemed to be sliding toward the other “pole.”) The object must be spinning, imparting some motion to its contents.

And now all Valya could do was take in the spectacle of a group of people floating inside a giant bubble, an image that looked as though it were more suited to some demented ride at an American amusement park.

For the longest time, the bubble was filled with screams, complaints, prayers in a polyglot stew of Hindi, Urdu, even Chinese, Portuguese, and Russian.

As for the other, nastier aspects of existence inside the bubble, Valya noted that, quite separate from the water and food dispensers, a different machine was sucking in the blood, urine, and other debris.

She found this reassuring. It told her that the builders of the bubble had deliberately collected them and, for whatever reasons, planned to support them.

Somewhat comforted, Valya had spent much of the next half day, in rotation, sleeping—the worst airplane sleep was better than the best she was able to get in the bubble—and then taking inventory of her purse (There seemed to be fewer items every time! Where had the roll of Dyno-Mints gone?) and speculating on who had grabbed them, why, and what for.

Mostly, however, what she remembered was feeling as though she were falling.

Intellectually, she knew it was no different from what cosmonauts had experienced for sixty years: zero g or microgravity or, yes, free fall.

But knowing that…even knowing that Dale, her most recent lover, had lived it…nothing had prepared her for the unsettling experience.

She passed the journey without significant interaction with her fellow voyagers. Yes, there was an occasional nod, a shared grimace. At one point, a sobbing young woman floated within reach and Valya grabbed her, saying soothing things in Hindi that she half-believed herself. “Don’t worry. We’re being taken somewhere. If they wanted us dead, they wouldn’t be giving us food and water.”