Parker Interstellar Travels 6: The Celaran Ruins (11 page)

He’s
young, but not as young as Caden and Siobhan. I don’t need to treat him like a
kid. Well, not much longer anyway.

The
next house looked empty. Jason shook his head. Imanol followed him in and they
gave it a personal look just to be thorough. There were no extra possessions
lying around. The inside was free of dust and smelled clean.

“What
could have been different about that last house?”

Imanol
shrugged. “Last ones out? Or maybe just the sloppiest ones. Or maybe they just
forgot to activate the cleaning service.”

They
walked back out onto the house platform that surrounded the white spire holding
up the house. As usual, several of the green vines had grown over the side of
the house and some anchored themselves on the house rail. Imanol walked up to
the rail to find a thick vine to exit onto.

“This
vine has some silver parasite plant or worm on it,” Jason said.

Imanol
checked the vine between them. “I see something on this side too,” Imanol said.
“Be careful. It’s moving! Damn creepy...”

Jason
pulled on a vine and leaned over the rail to follow the path of the silvery
vine below the platform. Then he bucked and released a strangled cry.

“What?!”
Imanol saw silver lines on Jason’s suited legs. He looked down at his own side
of the vine and realized the extra silver vine on his side was gone.

Jason
rolled off the platform and plunged. He struck one of the huge leaves, coming
to a halt, then started to slide off.

“Man
down!” Imanol transmitted across the common channel. He told his smart rope to
crawl out of his pack while he scanned the area with his laser. He told his
attendant and Jason’s to try and break Jason’s imminent fall. Imanol noticed
his attendant refused to move.

“What?”
he said out loud, staring at it. He looked down. The smart rope had not
responded, either. He looked over the rail. Jason was still about four meters
above the ground. He had slid halfway off the huge leaf but caught on the vine
that supported it.

His
suit will protect him from the fall. That thing, I don’t know.

“I
saw a silvery vine. Wrapped around regular vines. It’s done something to
Jason,” Imanol transmitted. He pulled out his laser pistol and took one second
to give it a target profile: Silvery tendrils.

Imanol
vaulted over the rail. He caught hold of a vine in his other hand and swung
clumsily, waiting for a target to present itself. He glimpsed a bulbous silver
mass pulsing behind two huge leaves and told his weapon to fire. It did not
respond. Imanol pulled the trigger manually. The laser blew through one, then
two bursts. Imanol missed his first shot since he had not been ready for manual
fire. His second shot hit. Smoke or steam sizzled up from the thing, then
Imanol lost sight of it.

“Stay
gone or I’ll fry your ass again,” Imanol called out. Jason hung limply nearby.
Thoughts raced through Imanol’s head.

Why
haven’t they responded to me? Nothing is hearing me. Are we being jammed?

Imanol
kept looking into the foliage around them as he made a medical query to Jason’s
suit. He got no response. Imanol ran a diagnostic on his own link and found the
problem: his connection capability was down.

Some
kind of a trap. We’re helpless.

Imanol
climbed closer to Jason. He had to be careful, because the way Jason lay across
the vine, if Imanol shook the area Jason would probably just slide and fall
farther. Imanol summoned his smart rope again. He stared up at the house
platform and saw nothing.

“Blood
and souls, how can I get anything done like this? Damn caveman style.”

Imanol
started to swing on the vine. He looked one last time for the silvery thing.
When he did not spot it, he holstered the weapon and used his other hand to
grab another vine. Slowly he maneuvered closer to Jason.

“Jason,
can you hear me?”

I
think he may be dead. Blood and souls!

Imanol
wrapped a thinner vine around his leg and drew his pistol again. He surveyed
his surroundings with his own eyes. He saw only static feeds from the
attendants. Something had changed with them. Even though they could not hear
his link, they had also stopped searching.

Imanol
put his pistol away a second time. Then he rearranged himself on the vines.

I
think I can just reach him...

Imanol
stretched forward. His hand was almost to Jason. He told his suit to expose his
hand, but it did not obey.

“Dammit!”
Imanol exclaimed in frustration.

I
can’t even get my suit to open up so I can see if he’s breathing.

Imanol
thought of stories from the frontier about people who had died when their suits
malfunctioned and would not regulate temperature or open for them. They had
overheated and died inside their suits. He told himself his manual suit release
was not damaged and would still work.

Imanol
noticed his attendants had started to move again. They positioned themselves
around Jason.

“Damn
right you stupid things! He’s in trouble.”

One
of the attendants slipped below the huge leaf and worked to stabilize it.
Imanol figured it was less likely Jason would slip the rest of the way down.
Imanol just waited, looking all around for the silver creature.

A
minute later, he finally received an update through his link. It had been
relayed through his attendant. The positions of the other team members appeared
in his PV map.

“I
see them,” Imanol said aloud. “They’re coming this way. Probably wondering why
the hell we aren’t answering them.”

Jason
did not react. Imanol tried Jason’s suit again. This time it responded with
data: Jason’s heart was beating. The tissue damage chart he saw open in his PV
showed that Jason had some internal burns along a route through his body.

“It
electrocuted you,” Imanol said. “Hang on Jason. If you can hear me, just hang
on.”

Imanol
told his smart rope to secure Jason and it finally responded.

“Imanol,
if you can hear me, I’ll be there in five,” Telisa said. Imanol saw from the
feed that she had moved way ahead of the others.

Of
course. Her enhanced Trilisk body. I had already forgotten.

His
smart rope wrapped itself around Jason’s waist. It was anchored above on the
house rail. Imanol gave the profile to the attendants and sent them on a patrol
of the perimeter. Imanol decided to just wait below the platform until help
arrived. He took his laser out and double-checked its target profile. He saw
that it would not fire at another team member, but would shoot at unknown
targets and it prioritized silvery tendrils. Imanol went into his Veer suit
controls and queried about electrical resistance. The suit’s operations manual
told him that he could dump a portion of the suit’s energy reserves as heat to
increase electrical protection by freeing up some storage to absorb the
offensive charge. He accepted some suggested settings. Hot air started to flow
over the surface of his skinsuit as it shed energy. Inside, the suit stayed
comfortable. Imanol noticed from his energy report that his suit had more
energy now than it had had when he left the ship.

What
the hell?

Imanol
heard a clang above. It was Telisa.

She
probably leaped some superhumanly huge distance and landed hard on the
platform.

“He’s
alive?” Telisa asked, though she probably already had the data.

“Yes.
It was some silver colored plant-thing. Round, almost our size, with long
silvery tendrils, at least four of them. My laser pistol drove it off.”

“So
it completed a circuit with his body. Probably fed from some internal chemical
battery.”

Telisa’s
smart rope secured Jason from above. Imanol did not care much about the details
at the moment. Jason was alive, and the silver thing had retreated when hit
with the laser. The rest of the team arrived by the time Telisa and Imanol had
hauled Jason back up to the platform. More attendants flew in with them and
started to patrol around the house in concentric orbits.

Cilreth
took a larger medical scanner out of her pack. She attached it to Jason.

Imanol
waited a long moment to hear the report. Cilreth shook her head.

“The
diagnosis is electrocution all right,” she said. “Some tissue burns inside his
leg... the suit saved his life.”

Jason
muttered something. Then he yelled out.

“We
got you. Don’t move,” Telisa commanded.

“We
couldn’t reach you guys. My link lost its ability to connect,” Imanol said.

“Electrical
attack and disabled links. Probably not a coincidence,” Telisa said. Imanol
nodded sheepishly. In the heat of the moment, he had not thought of that.

“My
link went out too,” Imanol said.

“And
you took a charge,” Telisa said.

“What?”
Imanol checked his suit. “Oh, right, I just noticed my reserve had filled up.”
The suit had not been able to report the occurrence to him when his link went
down. He checked the timestamps. They were both attacked at almost the same
second.

“It
didn’t fry your links. It would have to be some kind of EM field disturbance,”
Cilreth said. “I can’t explain it.”

“Did
the thing have any tools? Any signs of intelligence?” asked Telisa.

“Nothing
I saw. My impression is of a carnivorous animal or plant.”

“Other
than being silver did it look like a Blackvine?”

“No.
Not at all. This thing had a bloated body like a giant onion. No leaves or
anything that looked like leaves.”

Jason’s
eyes were open.

“Did
it... bite me? Try to eat me?” he asked weakly.

“I
don’t think it got to you, really,” Imanol said. He almost added something
heroic sounding about jumping over the rail after Jason, but decided not to say
anything.

“Imanol
burned it,” Telisa said. “He gave it something else to think about.”

Jason
nodded and propped himself up.

Imanol
flicked through some attendant feeds and saw a Blackvine.

“Blackvine!”
Imanol exclaimed.

“Ah
yes, we found that one. Appears to be friendly,” Siobhan said.

“Just
now? Is that a coincidence?” he asked reflexively.

“I
don’t know,” Telisa said.

Imanol
almost demanded why they had not told him. Had he been out of contact that
long? Then he remembered he had not reported what he found to them, either.

“We
found some tools. Celaran, presumably. Though I guess they could be Blackvine.”

“Where
are they?” Telisa asked eagerly.

“I
have a funny grasper tool in my pack. Or it’s a grabbing rope, or something. It
could even be a kid’s toy. We put a more dangerous looking artifact into a
scout and sent it back.”

“Siobhan?”
Telisa asked.

“We
didn’t find anything.”

Imanol
considered making a crack about the pair doing something other than searching,
but with Jason hurt even he did not feel like causing any more trouble.

“I
feel better now,” Jason croaked.

“Let’s
get him back and see what we’ve learned,” Telisa said. “We searched most of the
houses today for just a few clues.”

Jason
pulled himself up on the platform, leaning on the rail. He could not stand up
straight. His legs stayed slightly bent at the knees.

“The
suit may have made sure you’re not in pain, but that doesn’t mean you’re all
patched up,” Imanol said.

Jason
faltered.

“Take
it easy, Jason, let us help you,” Telisa ordered.  “Could there be
poison?” Telisa asked Cilreth.

“No,
it’s from the electrocution,” Cilreth said. “The scanner warned that there may
be some delayed symptoms. I think he’ll recover most of the way on his own. If
there’s remaining nerve damage we may need to get him back to the core worlds
to fix him up.”

“Dammit.
I bet the
Clacker
would be able to fix him up,” Telisa said.

Or
Shiny’s Trilisk AI.

“This
will be rough going with injured. We’ve all been climbing around like monkeys,”
Cilreth said.

“Caden,
keep watch for attackers. We know of at least two types now. Siobhan, go ahead
with him and plot an easy route back. Imanol, help Jason make his way.”

“And
the Blackvine?” Caden asked.

“Cilreth
and I will go back to the Blackvine and see if it wants to be our guest. As you
noticed, I left an attendant to keep track of it.”

“It’s
an intelligent being, so we should name it,” Cilreth said.

“Okay,
go ahead. Anyone but Imanol can name it,” Telisa said, smiling.

Oh,
I’ll name it, all right. How about Leafy, Destroyer of Worlds?

Cilreth
was silent for a moment. “Vine... Vincent. It’s Vincent.”

“Is
Old Leafy really coming back with us?” Imanol asked.

“We’ll
see. We have to let Jason rest, and see if we can find what attacked you. There’s
some chance it was a Celaran.”

Chapter 10

The
PIT team clustered around the ship’s mess. The ship was so small there was
barely room for the entire group. Even the Blackvine named Vincent had come
aboard, though no one could speak with it. Telisa stood in a doorway. Everyone
focused on her.

“Okay,
everyone. I gotta admit I’m getting impatient. What the hell does a Celaran
look like? Siobhan?”

Siobhan
looked surprised. “They look like bats. Think of that little robot you found as
a Celaroid. When it’s in flying form. Maybe their natural bodies can take
different forms too, so it’s all natural to them that everything should have a
bunch of functions.”

“Jason?”

Jason
looked like a squid before the propeller. His face compressed.

“They
look like those things outside,” Jason said slowly. “You know, those things
have those creepy fingers on each end. And I noticed today, all those racks on
the walls in the houses, they were almost always in pairs, facing across from
each other. About two meters apart. And we found the grasper tool. It looks
just like those things, except it’s round in the middle instead of flat. But
the three fingered hands are just too similar.”

“So
you’re saying... they hung there, one hand on each of those rails, slightly
sagging across the middle,” Telisa said.

“Yes.”

“I
also had the idea they look like those things out there, the eels,” Caden said
without waiting for Telisa to ask him. “In fact, the eels could be the Celaran
children. A seed ship came here, dropped some machines to make a colony, and
they hatched a bunch of those things, or birthed them, or whatever, from a big
gene bank like facties, but something went wrong. The computers failed to
educate them or something, so now there’s just a bunch of wild Celaran children
out there running through the woods.”

Siobhan
laughed. “Crazy,” she said, but she smiled.

Telisa
smiled. “I’m impressed! Interesting ideas there. Imanol, your turn.”

Imanol
shrugged. “Well, I would say the net creatures and the electrical things ate
them. But those things seem at home among these vines, meaning they come from
the Celaran’s home planet. The Celarans would not be surprised by them. So...
it was something else. A predator, or a disease, or our buddy Old Leafy.”

Telisa
checked in on the Blackvine from an attendant video feed. It was carefully
examining every bit of equipment in the bay. Telisa wondered what she would do
if it caused a disruption by stealing something, or taking apart a critical
piece of equipment.

“So
where are our alien bodies?” Telisa asked.

“This
is an advanced society. Either none of them died, or they had automated clean
up,” Imanol said.

“What
did they look like?” Telisa pressed.

“Well,
actually, you know what? I’m changing my mind on the fly. They brought those
predators from their home planet. So that means, to them, they’re not
dangerous? That could be a clue. Either the Celarans are naturally one step up
on the predator chain, or maybe they’re like plants and those predators don’t
hunt them at all. That kind of points toward the Blackvines being the Celarans
after all. Or maybe the silvery thing that attacked us. More like a plant to us
than an animal.”

“Cilreth
said they left, and they had adequate warning,” Telisa shared. “As for me, I
say they never arrived in numbers. There were only a very few, like the ones
who lived in the one house. The colored streamers could be children’s play
vines. I don’t know what they look like, except they’re about our size or
smaller. They have vision, because they have windows. I’m thinking they’re
jumpers or gliders, because of the doors and, well, they grew up among the
vines. So they have claws or grippers to manipulate things that came from hanging
on the vines. They don’t have jaws, because I think that food in the tower
building is for them, so I think they basically suck up nutrients.”

“You
pressed us: what do they look like?” Imanol said.

“Vampire
bats,” Telisa said. “Flying, vine-hanging, and fluid drinking.”

“The
grasper device?”

Telisa
was quiet for a moment.

“I
think those glider snakes are the Celaran’s dogs or cats. Domesticated
creatures they lived with turned feral. The doors keep them out though, so they
weren’t house creatures. The doors
recognize
those things and keep them
out. So they aren’t Celarans or Celaran children. So they could be like
creatures brought for food, or just things the Celarans liked.”

“Well
back home my door doesn’t let strangers in,” Jason said. “It only lets me in.”

“Well,
you and Core World Security, to be fair,” Imanol said.

“That
is strange, wouldn’t it be more logical to let in things you recognize and want
in, and keep everything else out? Why let unknown things like us in by
default?” asked Siobhan.

Telisa
nodded. “I don’t know. Aliens. Either the doors are malfunctioning, or it made
more sense to them to let anything in except known dangers?”

“Maybe
Old Leafy hacked them out of their own buildings,” Imanol said.

“Well
don’t despair, we still have the largest ruins site left to check out,” Cilreth
said. “And I’m not going to let the Blackvine hack this ship. Not that I
believe that’s what happened.”

“Let’s
ask Vincent what the Celarans looked like,” Jason said. “He might know.”

“Obvious
question: how?” Cilreth asked.

“Vincent
can see. So let’s use pictures,” Siobhan said. “We can create a picture of us
in one of the houses. And a picture of a Blackvine in one of the houses. We
could put a picture of various local creatures in there, too. If we can somehow
give him means to create a picture of his own, if he knows what they look like
he might well draw them in the house.”

“Primitive.
But it’s worth a shot,” Telisa said. “Once we make progress we can rig some way
to go high tech with it. We’re not able to speak with it at all so far, even
though Cilreth knows some of their over-the-wire protocols.”

“The
fact it moves when we’re there means it’s one of the insane ones,” Imanol
pointed out.

“Ah
yes. It is aware of us, and not terrified by our existence. Which is crazy for
a Blackvine, apparently,” Siobhan said.

“Yep,
he’s a brave one if he moves around Fast and Frightening here,” Imanol said.

Siobhan
made an obscene gesture.

“You
can teach Vincent that one first,” Imanol suggested.

“See
what you can do. I’ll be looking at our new toys,” Telisa said, heading for the
cargo bay. As she walked out, she opened a private link to Cilreth.

“Cilreth,”
Telisa said. Cilreth connected. “I wanted to talk about your reaction to the
attack.”

“I
know. I’ve been trying to think about how to make it up to you,” Cilreth said.

“Just
explain what happened.”

“The
emotion controller cycle ended a second before the attack. I had it on
because... I’ve been feeling some anxiety on the ground. I kept thinking about
that damn thing that almost killed me on Chigran Callnir Four.”

Of
course. I’m so stupid.

“When
that thing attacked us, suddenly I couldn’t handle the fear that came flooding
in. The suppressor somehow left me vulnerable. It took half a minute for me to
be able to handle strong emotion again, like whatever part of my mind that can
control emotion had completely relaxed. It was bad timing. I didn’t know it
could happen. I won’t use the controller on the ground again.”

“I
see. Live and learn.”

“No.
We could have died and not learned,” Cilreth said.

“I
know the lure of the suppressor. For different reasons. I won’t use it either.
If I can go without mine you can go without yours. Deal?”

“Yes.”

“Actually,
you should set it up for the panic trigger I mentioned. Then it turns on if you
really start to lose it.”

“Okay,
I will,” Cilreth said.

“I’ll
explain to the others what happened. That will help them to understand, so they
won’t doubt you.”

“Thanks.”

***

Jason
met Telisa in the bay as she pored over the alien cylinder.

“Quite
the toy you guys found out there,” Telisa said. “Though I just started looking
at it.”

Jason’s
leg twitched a bit. The pain was a distant ache now.

“That’s
why I’m here. How do you figure it out?” Jason said.

“Well,
we start with a few canned procedures, like an EM scanner, the spectrometers,
and simple visual analysis. After that, it’s a black art.”

“But
you have a lot of experience,” he said. “Teach me.”

“You
can watch. This is better done virtually. You should catch up on some training
I have later. I made a lot of virtual models I can give you for things to
practice on. You’ll kill yourself a few times.”

“So
this could definitely kill us,” Jason said. “It looks like a weapon.”

“It
does,” Telisa agreed. “Not sure yet.”

“Well
what isn’t it?” he asked.

Telisa
smiled. “It’s not a bomb. To many complex parts and no real chemical payload.
Well, I guess I should say it’s not a chemical bomb.”

Telisa
turned it over on the table. “It also does not appear to have any foldaway arms
or antennas or anything like that. As far as the outside structure, it’s pretty
much what you see is what you get. I thought at first it might be like the
little robots we found: able to radically change shape.”

“It
takes power right?”

“Yes.
There’s a cell in it that resembles the same technology as the batteries in the
houses.”

Telisa
sent Jason’s link a pointer to her model of the device. He started to explore
through its innards.

“The
hole is an important part of it. Something comes out of the aperture. Not air
or liquid, either, I think,” he said. “I don’t see any parts like bullets.”

“Which
leaves us with light, probably,” Telisa said. “But we should keep in mind maybe
it is supposed to
receive
something. We decided it was a weapon too
quickly.”

Jason
nodded.

“Did
you get a chance to follow up on those supervine clusters you and Imanol
found?”

“Yes,”
Jason said. “We did some revisiting of the orbital scans, and sent some
attendants. Though we see large vines sourced in the ground all around us, it
seems the largest, oldest, and longest vine networks start from these huge
husks. They are pretty evenly distributed across the planet. There’s one about
every 120 square kilometers.”

“Well
that just solidifies our theory that this place was Celaraformed. At this
point, I’m willing to accept that as fact,” Telisa said.

“It
sure seems like it. Which makes me wonder: what was here before that?”

“Exactly.
Did they destroy an ecosystem already present here? And did it have any
surprises for the Celarans?”

***

Huornillel
spotted an alien approaching at midday. It came through one of the square
tunnels and came upon Huornillel in the metal room. It seemed likely the
creature knew of her presence. It probably had a network of tools that let it
track the others. Most likely including the mysterious sphere which had
followed her since the aliens appeared.

Huornillel
wondered how the creatures could swarm around each other and get anything done.
Truly alien, they did not use any of the higher strategies of peer interaction:
They neither displayed hostile confrontation to elimination, nor mutual
avoidance, nor did they form dominance and avoidance pairs. Instead they
irrationally kept functioning together, suffering from the n-fold division of
resources available among them, essentially stifling all of them at once. They
were large, sentient creatures that operated on mass consumption and side by
side uncontrolled function, just like giant bacteria. It was hard to believe.
Together, they were doomed to be so much less than any one of them could be
individually given all the available resources.

How
could they evolve like this? Hrm. Only if the resources where they came from
were very high relative to their numbers. So they came from an unbelievably
rich planet, or their numbers are very low. I could be looking at their entire
race right here before me!

The
alien was once again closely focused on Huornillel. This had happened from time
to time since she had met them: they would stay close and look only at her with
those odd paired light sensors of theirs. Lensed sensors, even, like some of
the primitive crawling creatures of her own home planet. The poor things could
probably only focus on light coming from one distance at a time!

The
alien simultaneously sent bursts of electrostatic noise which Huornillel could
sense with her toolkit at the same time it changed some colors on a flat
surface. The alien began to emit patterns of basic mathematic principles.

I
have to destroy this thing
,
Huornillel thought.
Otherwise, my resources will be leeched and I will be crippled
as they are. These things will not flee or go dormant. Perhaps if I kill one,
the others will become avoidant.

The
thing persisted. It tried some more sequences. At the same time, Huornillel
heard the alien interact with its tools along narrow bands of electromagnetic
emissions. Huornillel felt far superior to the creatures. This one thought
Huornillel was just another tool to be programmed! These aliens had concluded
they had merely to send the proper codes and Huornillel would perform tasks for
them!

A
moment of inspiration flitted across Huornillel’s nervous system.

The
aliens think they can use these codes to control me. They have that thought for
a reason: this must work among themselves! They then assume it can work on me
too.