Skye Object 3270a (8 page)

D
uring the final five hundred meters of the descent, the elevator car slowed to a crawl, so that it felt as if they were floating down among the trees that clothed the steep sides of a bowl-shaped valley. The elevator terminus was a circular black platform that filled the valley floor, rising thirty meters above the nearest trees. A U-shaped bay formed an opening on one side of the platform. The car descended into it, coming to rest between the wings of the building.

Skye stood up slowly, gazing out the window in amazement. An empty road ran out from the terminal building. It was flanked on either side by two meters of neat lawn, but all signs of civilization ended there. Beyond the manicured grass the forest rose far overhead, a green wall of ancient, crowding trees, their massive branches reaching over the broad roadway to catch what light they could. Skye had never imagined that trees could truly grow so big. She'd seen forests in virtual reality sims, but she had never understood quite so clearly that such giants could be real.

“Buyu, this is so slick.” She reached down to scoop up Ord. “Come on, come on. I want to get outside.”

They embarked onto a wide pavilion, where three explorers in mud-brown skin suits like Buyu's were greeting the incoming tour groups. Most of the groups were being sent up to the roof, where aircraft waited to take them to the two small coastal settlements. As they set off for the escalators, each group was joined by a small, glassy, humanlike figure less than a meter high. These were the wardens. Like Ord, they were biogel robots, but the wardens looked as if they were made of dark green glass, fashioned to resemble some lithe human child, though their faces looked only half-formed. For centuries, wardens had been used to explore the planet's surface. Now they watched over tour groups, monitoring their actions and immediately reporting any violation of the rules.

Skye smiled at a line of five wardens waiting with machine patience at the edge of the pavilion. Let the little spies accompany someone else! Buyu was a trained explorer, and he was all the escort they would need. She boosted Ord up to her shoulder.

“Buyu Mkolu!”

Skye turned to see one of the three resident explorers waving a friendly greeting. She was a tall, muscular woman, with dark blue hair the color of deep water. As she strolled across the pavilion to meet them, it was easy to see by her bearing that she was very real. “Welcome back, Buyu.”

Buyu looked shocked to see her. “Hello, Sensei Matilé.” He raised his hand to touch palms with her, yet he did not seem able to meet her gaze. He looked very nervous—as if guilt were knocking behind his eyes, trying to get out. Sweat glistened on his cheeks and Skye felt sure it wasn't caused by the steamy tropical air.

Apparently, Matilé too, noticed his distress. Her eyes narrowed as she examined him. “Are you all right?”

“Oh. Sooth.” Buyu took a deep breath, then managed to grin his big, sloppy Buyu-grin. Skye sighed in heartfelt relief. Maybe he wouldn't give them away after all?

Buyu told Sensei Matilé, “This is the first time my friends have been down.”

He introduced them, and a few pleasantries were exchanged. Then Matilé said, “You'll have to take a warden with you today.”

Again, Buyu lost his composure. “What? Why? Sensei, I've finished my training. I've been cleared for day tours—”

Matilé raised her hand. “Buyu, I know. It's just that everyone must be escorted today. An acid dragon has been seen hunting south of the valley. We don't want to lose anyone. The warden will guide you if the dragon moves into your area. It's policy. You know.”

“But—”

But it would be impossible to secretly sample a communion mound if a warden accompanied them. Still, there was no point in getting involved in a useless argument they could not win. It would only draw suspicion. So Skye put her hand on Buyu's arm. “Don't worry about it,” she said softly. “We've all had babysitters before.” They would simply have to find a way around the warden.

Buyu gave her a strange look, as if he knew there was some hidden plan behind her words, but couldn't fathom what it might be. Skye only wished she knew.

“Skye's right,” Devi said. “What's another babysitter? We're only raw ados after all.”

Matilé smiled, but it was a cold expression. Devi's sarcasm had obviously annoyed her. “Have fun, then. And I promise, you'll hardly see the warden—unless something goes wrong.” She said this last in a harsher tone, so that Skye felt sure she suspected them of something unsavory.

What did Sensei Matilé remember of being an ado? If she were like most real people she would remember it badly, as if being an ado was all about raw passions and bad judgment. The term
dumb ado
wasn't so much an insult as a description of expected behavior. And if ados really did act stupid from time to time, that proved the rule, didn't it?

They set out on foot along the road. One tour group had gone south, straight into the forest. To look for the acid dragon, perhaps? The rest had flown down to the coastal settlements. So the four of them were alone—except for the warden, of course.

The little green-glass humanoid spy followed them as they left the terminal building. Skye saw it for only a few seconds before it disappeared among the trees, its surface transforming into a collage of green-brown shadows that let it blend into the vegetation. Ord's tentacle
tap-tapped
at her throat. “Skye is angry,” it whispered. “Why?”

“I'm okay.”

No one else said anything.

They hiked half a kilometer, and still no one talked.

Skye stroked Ord's long tentacle, thinking,
What a miserable bunch we are
. Zia was plodding along, gazing at her feet, her brow wrinkled with worry. Devi glared at nothing, still quietly furious. Buyu trudged in silence, a distraught expression on his face.

Buyu had a right to worry. He was risking more than anyone else by being here. If they were caught violating rules, it was Buyu who would be held responsible. He might be suspended forever from the explorer corps.

As Skye thought about this, she almost turned back . . . until she remembered,
this isn
'
t about me
. They were here to find a cure for Compassion, not for her sake, but for the other children from her great ship, lost somewhere in the void in lifeboats of their own.

If it was only about me, Skye thought, I would check into the monkey house right now.

Well. If they had to be here, if it was the only thing to do, then they might as well make the most of it. Right?

She grinned mischievously. In the middle of the roadway she stopped to draw in a deep breath of forest air, filling herself with the scents of humus, sunlight, and unseen flowers. Then she let it all out again in a long, drawn-out whoop that echoed off the valley walls, “
Yee-oww!
”

Ord startled, slipping halfway down her back. Buyu jumped so hard he almost fell down. Devi spun around as if the acid dragon were charging him from behind. Zia looked like she'd been frozen. One glance at their shocked faces and Skye started laughing so hard her belly hurt. “You . . . all,” she stammered, gasping for air, “are the most . . . depressing lot of ados I have ever run with. Look at this beautiful world! This is the first time we've ever been on any world . . . except for Buyu of course . . . but you all haven't even looked at it yet! Open your eyes. Open your lungs! Stop moping, because if you think that warden's going to slow us down, you don't know me at all.”

“It occurs to me,” Devi said, “that I really don't know you at all.”

She winked at him, as Ord climbed back up on her shoulder, and tapped at her neck. “Something to look forward to, then.”

“This is serious, Skye.”

“Sooth. But we haven't been defeated yet . . . unless you all have changed your minds?”

That drew a chorus of denials.

“Skye's right,” Zia said. “We're giving up too easily. There's got to be a way to lose our warden.”

Buyu shook his head. “I don't know how.”

“Could we split up?” Skye asked.

“I'd be suspended for it,” Buyu said. “And the warden would only summon another.”

Zia gazed anxiously into the forest on the southern side of the road, where the warden had disappeared. “Should we be talking about this?”

“It's probably okay,” Devi said. “The wardens usually run themselves, though it is possible that some bored handler in the city could be monitoring what it sees and hears.”

“We should be careful,” Buyu said. “Did you see Sensei Matilé? She knew something was up.”

Skye hit Buyu with a wicked smile. “Buyu, just for a minute, pretend you were Sensei Matilé, and you saw two nervous-looking ado boys with two nervous-looking ado girls, heading off for a day alone in the wilderness, and, my my!, how upset they are at having a warden along
watching
them. If you were as real as Sensei Matilé, what would you think?”

There was silence for several seconds, and then Devi and Zia erupted in laughter, while Buyu flushed red up to his ears. It took him a few minutes before he could manage any response at all, and even then it was only to point out, “That still doesn't solve our problem.”

“I'm thinking about it,” Skye said. “Give me time.”

After that, they talked and laughed on the long hike out of the valley. When they reached the crest of the ridge, they paused for a few minutes to look back at the huge black terminal building, and the massive gray pillar of the elevator column rising up into the sky like a giant shaft driven through the world's heart. Skye squinted, but she could not make out the bulge of Silk 300 kilometers overhead.

“So which way from here?” Zia asked, gesturing with a juice bottle that she had scavenged from Buyu's pack. The road ended at the ridgetop. It had been built by Silk's original people a long time ago, and it never had been put to formal use. Modern Silkens traveled either by air or on foot, to cause the least disturbance to the biosphere.

“The acid dragon is supposed to be south,” Buyu said. “So let's head the other way, up into the mountains. There's a stream just over this ridge. We can follow it up. There are pools and waterfalls all the way. Lots of opportunity there.”

Skye smiled at his choice of words. No one had dared to say “communion mound” since last night.

A stir of camouflaged motion caught her eye. She stared at the brush, and after several seconds she was able to pick out the concealed shape of the warden. So their babysitter remained close by. “Maybe if we go south,” she growled, “we could get the acid dragon to eat our friend.”

Buyu followed her gaze. “You don't want that. If the acid dragon got the warden, it's sure we'd be its next bite. Those things are bad news . . . and I haven't updated my personal file in a long time.”

Skye frowned at this reminder. A personal file was a formal record of the precise physical structure of a human being, exact down to the individual links between brain cells, where memory was recorded. If something happened to them here in the Well, they could each be rebuilt by a fleet of resurrection Makers working from the pattern in their personal file . . . but like Buyu, Skye hadn't updated hers in ages. The person recorded in her file was a naíve thirteen year old.
How could I have overlooked something so obvious?

“I did mine last night,” Zia admitted guiltily.

Skye laughed. “At least one of us has some brains.”

Devi was gazing up into the mountains. “You're pretty smart yourself, Skye.”

She glanced up the slope. These mountains guarded the coast of the southern continent. They were heavily eroded, with steep valleys gouged between knife-edge ridges. Rain forest grew all the way to the summit, where fluffy white clouds were beginning to gather. She looked back at Devi. He was watching her with a half-smile on his face and a thoughtful look in his eyes that she could not resist. Hands on her hips, she demanded to know, “What are you thinking?”

His smile widened. “Let's just do what Buyu says. Follow the stream. See what we can find.”

They saw their first communion mound on the way down to the stream. It sprouted from the ground at the base of a fallen tree. It didn't look like much, just a knob of upthrust soil, thigh-high and maybe two meters across. Its surface resembled matted mud with a green algae sheen. Skye and Zia rushed toward it, but Buyu held out his hands, blocking the way. “We're not supposed to get within five meters,” he said softly. The warden was a shimmer of motion in the shrubbery. “There are lots of mounds,” he added, almost in a whisper.

Skye nodded and moved back half a step. “What are communion mounds?” she asked. “What do you know about them?”

He shrugged. “Nobody knows much. They're some kind of Chenzeme biotech, but their original purpose has probably been changed by the Well governors. They keep track of information, especially if it has to do with humans. The strangest thing about them is that they've only existed for a few hundred years, only since the original builders of Silk died . . . of . . .” His voice trailed off in guilty silence.

“Of plague,” Skye finished for him, as she stroked one of Ord's tentacles. “It wasn't a Chenzeme plague, though. The people of Old Silk didn't understand the Well's microscopic governors. They released a destructive Maker . . . and the governors fought back.”

“Sooth.”

She smiled at him. “Buyu, don't look so worried. Please. You're scaring me.”

“It's just that . . . anything could be in the mounds. Good things, bad things. It's why they're off-limits.”

“Listen,” Devi interrupted. “You can hear the stream.”

They followed the noise down to the bottom of a shallow gulch, where the stream splashed and chattered through a channel of polished rock and smooth boulders. The water was a beautiful, dilute emerald green, and thicker than normal water should be. Zia had been studying planetary biology for several months. She dipped her hands into it and explained, “It's full of long, complex molecules that carry information in chemical form. Think of it as a library belonging to the Well's governors. You can drink it”— she lifted a handful of the green water to her lips to prove it was so—“and it won't harm you, though some say it will record everything about you.”

“So who needs a personal file?” Skye joked.

“Anybody who wants to find their file again,” Zia said, without a hint of her usual good humor.

Trees growing on the gully walls leaned over the stream, casting cool shadows that pressed against the water, smoothing its surface so that the pebbles and the tiny aquatic creatures that foraged on the bottom could be easily seen. Where the stream flowed into sunlight, the water glittered with bright, dancing reflections.

The first waterfall they came to boiled noisily over a broad, curved ledge only a meter high. A quiet pool fanned out from the base of the little fall; bubbles skated over its calm surface. The pool looked to be maybe two and a half meters deep. Skye could see through the green water, all the way to the boulder-strewn bottom.

Devi and Buyu were walking ahead, discussing biology and predators and annoying little wardens as they looked for a dry path around the side of the waterfall. Skye touched Zia's elbow. “Hey, ado. Let's swim.”

Zia looked at her, wide-eyed. “You're kidding.”

“Be safe, Skye,” Ord said. “Check water first.” It lowered itself from her shoulder to the sun-warmed rocks. Then it scuttled to the edge of the water, dipping its tentacles into the pool.

Skye and Zia crouched beside it. “Clean?” Skye asked.

“There are many life forms, but they are not immediately hazardous—”

“Immediately?” Zia asked nervously.

“Zia Adovna,” Skye whispered. “You jump like a maniac off the elevator column. You can't be afraid to go for a little swim.”

Zia stared at the water. “I'm not afraid.”

Devi and Buyu had reached the top of the waterfall. Buyu had gone on ahead, but Devi was looking back at them curiously. Skye put on her sweetest smile. “Zia, this is your last warning. I'm going to dive on three. One, two—”

Zia sprang first, diving into the quiet water, sending a green fountain bubbling into the morning air. Skye followed a second later, knifing beneath the surface, feeling the icy shock of the water against her face. Then she burst to the surface in the middle of the pool with a whoop that echoed off the gully walls.

Zia was already stroking for the little waterfall. Skye raced after her. They glided under the falling water, letting the cold stream pound against their backs. Kheth glinted through the trees, turning the falling drops diamond bright. She could see Ord following after them, a shimmering golden shape just beneath the surface, its tentacles whipping behind it like a long, sinuous tail.

“Skye!” Devi yelled from somewhere overhead, his voice almost lost within the noise of rushing water. “Get serious. You're just wasting time!”

“Be an ado, ado,” she yelled back. “And stop worrying so much. I am not going to die.”

She crouched on a shelf of submerged rock, just under the fall. How strange—the way the water rippled, it looked as if the boulders on the bottom were moving. Skye watched the effect for several seconds, until she realized it wasn't an illusion. Several large, submerged boulders
were
moving. They were slowly crawling away from the waterfall. “Zia . . . ?”

“I see it, ado. Maybe we should rejoin the boys?”

Skye stood up, craning to get a better view of the bottom. The boulder beneath her feet was slick and soft with a layer of brown algae. “But what is it?”

“I don't know. I've only studied the planet from a microbiologist's point of view. If it's big enough to see with the unaided eye, I don't know anything about it.”

Skye felt a lurch under her feet. She struggled to keep her balance on the slick, algae-covered boulder. Or was it a boulder?

Zia had felt the movement too. “What say we get out of here?”

“Swimming?” Skye asked uncertainly.

Zia looked over her shoulder, where a line of exposed rock broke the smooth curtain of the waterfall. “I'm climbing.”

The boulder under Skye's feet shifted again. Then something soft and strong caught her ankle. It felt like a huge, powerful hand. Panic kicked in. With a yelp, she brought her other foot down hard against the thing that held her. Apparently it didn't like that at all, because it let go. In fact, it shoved her hard. She lost her balance and plunged into the pool. With her eyes open, she spun around, and through the clear green water she watched the boulder glide away across the bottom.

She kicked hard, and shot to the surface, spluttering. Then she swam furiously for the waterfall. Zia was already clambering over the top. Skye got a hand on a slippery outcropping of rock just above the level of the pool. (This time, she made sure it was rock.) She climbed onto it, while the waterfall splashed around her. Then she looked back.

One of the “boulders” had glided into the shallow water on the farside of the pool. As she watched, it broke the surface. It did not look so much like a rock anymore. It glistened with a warm, brown, velvety texture—and it was big. Perhaps a meter high and a meter across. As it emerged from the water its surface split open, revealing folds of bright pink tissue . . . and a second later it let loose a horrible screech that sent a hundred hidden flyers leaping from the trees into the air. Skye scrambled over the little waterfall in a panic, hardly conscious of the treacherous nature of the slippery rock, or what would happen if she fell.

She rolled out over the top, into a three inch deep flow of water that swept across a shelf of grey rock. Devi and Buyu were laughing themselves silly, while Zia was sitting on the rocky bank, looking embarrassed and beaten. Down in the pond, three other boulders had poked their mouths above the surface, to raise their own ear-splitting cries of indignation. “What is that?” Skye snapped.

Devi only laughed harder. Buyu tried to catch his breath long enough to say. “Hungry rocks. They eat small water life. They may actually farm some of the more common species, but they definitely don't like anything else hunting in their home pond.”

“It grabbed my foot!” Skye told him. “It tried to pull me under.”

“It can't pull, Skye,” Buyu said. “It doesn't have the necessary joints or muscles—”

“Like you know!” She climbed to her feet. “I felt it.”

“Hey,” Devi said. “Buyu's just telling you the way it is. The hungry rock probably thought your foot was its usual prey. Its about at the upper size limit, wouldn't you say, Buyu? If the rock didn't realize your foot was attached to a much larger body—”

Skye's eyes went wide in shock. “Ord!” she yelled. “Where did Ord go?”

She scrambled back to the edge of the waterfall along with Zia and Devi. They peered over the edge. Ord was nowhere to be seen.

Skye's hands closed into helpless fists. “Oh no,” she whispered. “Ord would be prey-size, wouldn't it?”

“
Gutter dogs
,” Devi muttered. “We're helpless without Ord.”

Just then a stream of bubbles shot from the top of one of the hungry rocks that had remained underwater. A foul odor—worse than a gutter doggie's dump tunnel—burst onto the air. Then through the green water, Skye saw the rock's mouth open. A huge golden bubble erupted from it like a silent burp. It rose to the surface where it burst open, releasing a horrible scent-bomb of bad odor. Zia shrieked. Devi groaned. Skye felt her stomach churning . . . but there was Ord! It swam calmly toward the waterfall, propelled by the lash of its long tentacles.

“Ord!” Skye shouted. She climbed back down the waterfall, holding out a hand to the little robot. It swung its tentacle forward and caught her wrist. She hefted it up, laughing. “You scared me, you dumb little thing.”

“Good Skye,” it whispered. “Too cold for swimming, yes Skye?”

She laughed in giddy relief as she swung Ord up to the top of the fall. “You know, you may be right.”