Prisoner 52 (19 page)

There was a low hum and a faint light shone from somewhere behind him, stretching high up into the shadows of the ceiling. He turned about to see the dull radiance of the terminal bank at which Tezac stood and the image that was upon all of them. He approached one of those near to the end on the right and saw in digital replica the symbol of the Cosmordium. Below it read: 'Unspecified technical malfunction detected...repaired; System reboot...successful; Pontifex-Cosmordia credentials...requested; Pontifex-Cosmordia credentials...missing; Please rectify'.

"I can't say it wasn't expected." Leargam said and leaned upon the console before him, looked over at Tezac. "Work like this is bound to be fruitless."

"Pontifex-Cosmordia," Tezac said to himself and returned the old man's look. "Someone who wouldn't leave his life's work on a Ministry whim."

"Who in all the Hells life's work would be on this dump of a planet?"

"It
‘s Outerverse," Tezac said to the skeleton that sat beside him and commenced to search its person. "Almost into the Gulf. In their day this place was as far as it got. To one of them, that's something."

"I just can't figure what would be here to study." Leargam said and made his way back over to him. "Space is space is space."

              "Well if he has what we need to get into those," Tezac said and nodded at the terminals as he rifled through the corpse's pockets. "We'll find out what he was looking for."

             
"There's something in his hand." The old man said and leaned over to unclench the skeletal fingers that were frozen into place around it with frost and long death and so broke them off. "Oops."

"What is it?" Tezac said as the old man turned it over in his hands.

"Some kind of storage device." He said. "Is there a port for it?"

"There's plenty." He said and gestured to the array of them upon and beneath the terminals.

Leargam went to them each in turn, but the cartridge would fit to none of the many as he shuffled and bent down the line of consoles. It was not until he came to that which lay at the center, elevated above the rest and larger, that it matched to a slot. He placed it into the mouth there, stylized with the golden scrawl of the universe, but it would not give. Leargam tested the different angles and facings and jostled it and finally thrust it down into the opening with some force, producing the scrape of ice and things meant for another but long apart. A new string of characters appeared on all the screens that the codes had been processed and accepted and the image that had been displayed on them all was replaced with the interface local to each of their functions.

"Look for something that says satellite uplink." Tezac said. "There ought to be a whole station for it."

They had only just begun the search when a blue light filtered down from what looked to be a pair of projector bulbs in their old facsimilies, high up and far from another on the circular wall behind the consoles. The projection they contrived to produce wavered and split into scattered light particles until finally solidifying into the shape of a man who wore the selfsame vestments as him who lay dead before the terminal bank.

"Welcome." He said from the wide space before the railing, disturbing none of the debris there as he paced as he had in life. "Whoever you are."

"Who are you?" Tezac said.

"I am Krimsuleinus, Pontifex of this station." He went on as though he had not spoken, but had answered him all the same. "But that doesn't matter. This will likely be the last and only mention of my name in public record."

They stepped forward to study his lined, haggard face as he stared off at where he had in life guessed his audience to be standing, beside the consoles. The widow's peak of his hair reminded Tezac of a hawk and indeed he seemed on the whole a bird of prey. He kept his hands clasped behind him, his chin down and leaning forward as if to face some grim threat.

"I don't know what year this will be found." He went on. "So I suppose I should tell you that it is, today, the 6th day of the 13th month in the Core-standard count. The year: 11337."

They gave one another a look.

"This recording is older than I am." Leargam said. "Older than this colony."

"After the Second Reclamation."

"It is likely common knowledge by your time that the Collegia have been subsumed into the Hieraccies, and all future research will be conducted under the auspices of the Citadel. I do not know why this has happened. Or why now. But only that it has happened." He said and smoothed his hair back before returning his hand to its place behind him. "I suppose it matters as much to you as my name. All that should matter to you is, well, the reason for which you are hearing my words now. We've found something. On the orbital telescope. Far out beyond the edge of known space. At least, as it is known to us today."

"Still known." Leargam said and Tezac scoffed.

"Neither can I tell you how we picked it up on our scans." The hologram continued. "Except to say that it showed on none of them. It was a blank spot in space. No radiation, no radio waves, nothing. And increasing rapidly. We've gotten word that they're coming for us today, to shut down the outpost. The others I've allowed to leave, but I won't be going. I felt I
had to stay behind and record this so no one will know of its existence. The Ermordus Death Squad won't pay any attention. But whoever is orchestrating this might want to know from my team if there was anything I'd left out in my final report. They would come back to get it, and I can't allow that. So. These are my final words. What help they can be to you is beyond me. If you are even a research team and will understand any of this. But someone has to know. Whatever this is, it isn't natural – and that makes it dangerous; natural things can be understood. Its coordinates will have changed by the time this message is retrieved but I can assure you it won't be hard to find. Use the uplink station, there." It said and pointed to one of the terminals to its left, their right. "And see for yourself. Please, do whatever you can. Pontifex-Cosmordia Krimsuleinus, signing off. Maxim Astromo."

With that the hologram flickered into nothingness and left the space it had occupied as dark as the graveyard it had become. They turned about on the remains that still sat and forever in the chair there and looked upon it as though it were some droll joke played upon them. But there was no punchline, no pinch to wake from the dream. It was the world still in which they lived and the one that their fathers had made.

They went to the master console again and Tezac guided one of the chairs over to him with the Manifold's pneumatic grapnel and sat down in it. He engaged the observation protocols and re-established the link between satellite and ground station by powering up the beacon again after years in silence and dormancy – and in which he took a special pride. As if by reawakening the lone outpost from its slumber, he could reawaken the dreams of Man in that day. But it was not so, and soon he fell to the technical formalities that remained and wheeled over to the station that the Pontifex had indicated to be the telescope's viewing platform.

The gulf of space flowed outward before him on the monitor and the portion of it last peered into still lay in view. He took some moments to grasp the system and found it not unlike those he ahd used at countless probe stations across the
Eradicator-Fleets. He made several scans of the areas at which it was then pointed and those listed in its directory taken previously. This done, he transferred them to the analysis console immediately beside him and viewed them first in the stereoscopic spectrum and then through all the filters the program could otherwise muster.

"Anything?" Leargam said as he looked on, dumbfounded.

"We have a problem." Tezac said. "Or we're going to have one."

"He said there was only one. There's only supposed to be one."

"There's a lot more than one. Some bigger than others. Dark spots on every damned scan." He said as he scrolled through them all, in every overlay. "It's like there's nothing there anymore. Like it's been eaten up."

"But what are they?"

"The only man who could tell you is right here." He said and jabbed a thumb towards the skeleton beside them without looking up from the terminal.

"What are you looking for now?"

"What we came here to look for."

"The sun'll be up in an hour or two. We don't have time for the drive back hardly."

"You have to see it." Tezac said as he played across the manual keys of the console, navigating the interface in the old way. "You have to see it, or you won't believe me."

"I believe you. Now let's go." The old man said and glanced across the shadows of the ceiling as if they had then come to life in loneliness, and now sought his company in lue of his departure.

"What's with you?" He said and pivoted round in the chair to face him. "Don't tell me you're afraid now, after we came all this way."

"You're gods
damned right I'm afraid. This isn't none of my business. I don't – I don't want to know. I was quit being afraid all the time when I come out to this planet. I'm twice as quit now. Afraid," Leargam said. "Anybody'd look at that and be afraid."

"Well you should be." Tezac said and stood.
"I've seen it; it made me see. And now it's your turn because I know that look. And I know I'm not. Maybe about a lot of other things, but not this."

Leargam stood still for a long time and held the kid's glare. The light of the monitors streamed around his shoulders from behind him and that of the moon
s and stars that pierced the veil of wind, ice and snow beyond the dome. They cut a massive figure of this man, that breathed heavy and sweated for all the chill that had sunk into his bones – and for the first time the old man found himself afraid of more than only ghosts told of to him.

"What if you are?" He said softly.

"You'd have looked already if you thought I was."

Leargam fell silent and looked to the terminal he was to sit at and then back to Tezac. Outside the winds blew in a brief, sudden moan and fell back into the dull rush of their sound. It felt to him as though it were the last place in a land of ruins, that he couldn't stay but could go nowhere else. The point had to be met and at last, could not be striven away from; else he must go back to that half-life that he had long sought to escape, in which there is only enough knowing that happiness can no longer be found in perfect solitude and throughout the fear of knowing it all persists.

He inclined his head towards it without taking his eyes from his friend and then said, "Is it on there?"

"It is." Tezac said. "Through the pinpoint reticle."

"Alright," The old man said and moved for the console of the orbital telescope, as though the words had released him from a spell of statues.

He sat down at it with his hands in his lap and sighed at its screen, an unruly boy made to sit in idlenes. He glanced back at Tezac and shook his head
and leaned down to the upraised googles of the specific-viewing station.

Leargam cried out in one long and gibbering howl that continued on and on in the hidden timbre of the universe itself and kicked out at the terminal before him in a fit. The chair went out from under him and he fell to the floor, clawing at his eyes. As though they were the nesteggs of all the torments life had visited upon him and that if he could only be rid of them, it would be over.

Tezac was upon him no sooner than he had met the ground. But blood ran from where it welled within the eyepits that his friend tore at with his own nails. Skin clung in strips to where it had been shaved away from cheek and lid. His own hands fidgeted in the air above Leargam, who rolled and curled at turns as though he were being struck from all over. They would not obey him; his jaw hung open and his eyes wandered. There was too much of blood, too much of screams. The storm and the cold and the darkness. It all came upon him and at once and he knew not what could be done.

He snatched the old man up by the wrists, but he wrestled and howled at him in some motley of malformed insanity. He fell to biting at Tezac's fingers, but sank no further than the armor that covered them. He made a terrible weeping that contained somewhere in it the sounds of pleading. Tezac let go of the one hand and it tried in vain to let loose the other. He clenched and unclenched his fist
between their faces and debated with himself. Then he jabbed Leargam between the eyes sharply, stiffly. He slowed for a moment and then went limp in his arms.

Tezac scooped him into his arms and then onto his shoulder. He went to the railing and, gripping it with his free hand, bounded over it and onto the level below. The ice crunched beneath his boots and he felt the steel flooring give and he was off. The storm welcomed him and he looked about in his madness for the HEV and made a running leap onto its ladder once he had found it through the flurries. Atop it now, he slipped down into the pilot's womb only long enough to open the passenger compartment and then ejected
again to place Leargam inside. He had mounted to the roof again, the old man secured and yet unconscious, when he looked back to the outpost and so leapt down to the ice.

Tezac sprinted back through the blast doors and listened for the whine of the servo-motors to propel himself to the second level.
He went across the floor of the second level only so far as it took to reach and withdraw the access cartridge of the Pontifex roughly from its port. Having it, he hurdled clear of the railing and thus left the place behind in as much hurry as he had come back to it. He boarded again the HEV outside and made no allowance for any cares but the man beside him, somewhere beyond the womb's walls. Not even those of the planet and its titanic desolation, which seemed then to follow him as he traversed its glacial and rocky surface. Mutilated by the elements and echoing its misery within him. As if auguring a mirror that trapped the man who looked into it.