Spheres of Influence-eARC (21 page)

She probably only sat there for a few moments, but to Ariane it felt like hours. Judging from the well-hidden tension in Laila’s face, it wasn’t a short wait for her, either.

“All right, Laila,” she said finally. “I’ll be just as honest, then. I owe you that.

“We don’t know if you’re yourself or not. You could be an agent of the Faith, or something else. Or you could be exactly who you always were. I think you’re a little changed—you don’t want to go back to who you were, with three AISages in your head, practically running your body while you studied. But honestly? First, I can’t
afford
to lose any of the people who’ve been here with me. Second, I really think you are you, or mostly you. Third…I can’t afford paranoia. If there is something not-you there, it’s never shown any sign of being anything other than helpful. Mandallon brought you back from what was basically brain-dead and gave you back to us, and I should be simply grateful for that. If the Faith did anything to you, well, they’ve already
got
all the information you have, and they haven’t shown any sign of it. So no matter what, I think you’re one of us, and you mean to
stay
one of us.

“So as of now, I’m going to assume you
are
the exact same Doctor Laila Canning who made that trip, and I will inform DuQuesne of this decision. I don’t have time for this kind of worry. If I’m giving Simon—with a lot more evidence of something funny going on—the benefit of the doubt, I have to give it to you. Especially,” she smiled, “since I’m asking
you
to give the same benefit to me.”

As with Simon, she saw tension seep away from Laila. “Thank you, Ariane,” she said. “I…did not want to leave here, but if I had to be always suspected—”

“I know. It’s over.” She reached out and gripped the other woman’s hand. “I’m sorry. Welcome back. Welcome
really
back.”

And Laila gripped back with a smile.

Chapter 24.

“I know it’s only thirty people, but that’s a hell of a crowd compared to
us
,” DuQuesne murmured. He glanced in the direction of the group that was waiting, mostly patiently, outside the entrance to the Guardhouse area, then looked back down at the cable he was rigging.
Going to need a lot more power here
.

Carl Edlund paused in the middle of fixing the last brace for the table. “I don’t think they even outnumber
you
,” he said.

“Ha. Unfortunately it’s not
that
kind of outnumbering.”

“Be grateful,” Tom Cussler said, waving the first people forward. “They
could
have sent a lot more through, but I’m guessing they’re screening the first set very carefully.”

“I guess. And it’s plain as day that we’ll be needing a lot more people for everything we want to do. Just wish I didn’t have to worry how many of them might be more on Naraj’s side than ours.”

“Well,
hey
there, DQ!” called a cheerful voice.

DuQuesne stood upright, startled, and looked down at a woman who looked to be in her mid-thirties, hair done in streaks like a box of neapolitan ice cream—brown, red, and white—with a dark tan and sharp hazel eyes. She had a large red duffle-bag slung over her shoulder and was gazing up at him with a broad grin.

“Tobin?
You
came to this madhouse?”

“DQ, once I heard you were involved, I had to come see what you’d gotten yourself into. After the Singularity project I’d thought the excitement was over, but judging from what I saw just on the way in, that was only a warm-up!”

“You know Doctor Tobin?” Cussler asked. “I’d heard of you by reputation, Doctor, but—”

“We worked together on the Singularity Power Project some years back,” DuQuesne said, still smiling.
Damn, this is something of a stroke of luck.
“Tom, Carl, and Steve, this is Doctor Molly Tobin, one of the best practical power engineering designers you’ll ever meet.”

“Another power engineer?” Steve said with some excitement. “Oh, that’s excellent! DuQuesne’s great, but he’s got so many other things on his plate that we have to practically beg him for help on this stuff.”

Tobin nodded, looking around, as Tom started getting information from the other two people he’d called up. “That’s DQ, all right; take on more work than any three other people and call it a good night’s work.”

“‘DQ’?” Carl repeated. “Never heard
that
one before.”

“And
only
Molly and about two other people
get
to call me that, so don’t start,” DuQuesne said in a half-serious warning tone. “What kind of equipment have you guys brought?”

“Couple more AIWish units and a whole bunch of key elements—the sort that’re harder to come by, not available in large quantities out on your upper Sphere, at least based on what you’ve sent us so far,” Molly answered promptly. “Efficient turbine designs and other components for various types of powerplants, of course, that can be coded direct to your AIWish. More power means getting more done, so we figured power engineering would be one of the key factors. Also brought a couple civil engineers, habitat analysis people, concept synthesizers, and so on.”

“That’s definitely going to help. A lot.” He glanced at the group more closely. “Most of ’em don’t look too shellshocked, either. Been picking fron the ones who don’t rely on their AISages, eh?”

“That was one of Ambassador Naraj’s directives, yes,” she agreed. “And based on what we knew, that made a lot of sense.”

He bent, finished locking down the cable. “You been briefed?”

“
Heavily
. Enough that I just about
believe
this crazy place really exists, now that I’m here.”

He grinned at her. “Oh, it’ll get harder to believe before it gets easier. Well, we’ve just finished the survey above our Sphere and we have no fewer than eight Sky Gates. Simon’s preparing to send probes through to see what’s on the other side—hopefully one of them goes to Nexus Arena.” He turned. “Follow me, Molly. The others have to go through all the rigmarole, but I know you, you know me, and I want you to see the problem you guys will have to tackle first.”

He led Molly up through the Inner Sphere to the elevator. “Get ready to meet the Arena.”

“I thought the
real
Arena we couldn’t go to yet. This Nexus Arena.”

“In a way, yeah…” The elevator door slid open, and they walked into the foyer towards the door to the Upper Sphere. “But this is still part of the Arena, and the important thing about now is that you’ve arrived at
night.
”

They stepped through the door…and Molly Tobin stopped dead.

Above the dark jungle, silhouetted against a distant horizon and spanning vision in all directions, was…

There still aren’t words,
DuQuesne thought.
Maybe my long-ago creator, that bombastic Doctor E.E. Smith, could have described it. But I can’t
.

The sky of the Arena glowed above the Sphere of Humanity; a shimmering of clouds in the indescribable distance, flickering and flashing with lightning strokes that branched and stretched not for instants but long, long seconds of seething electrical fire, blue-white and fire-orange and gleaming pearlescent white against blue-black; a deep ruddy glow was visible in another direction, and against it a dark, trailing line of clouds edged in rose and blood. Directly above, a roiling, majestic sea of deep violet and velvet and sparking, shimmering blue. It was the sky of storms the size of worlds and of lights that might come from another world, a moon’s distance away in that impossible airy gulf, and faint, barely-seen movement that might be creatures, living beings that dared to live and fight and die and perhaps even think, wonder, and love in the endless spaces between Spheres.

“Oh…my.” Molly said finally.

“Yeah, that’s about all you can say. Or something like that. Even more if you’re here in the daytime first; looks pretty much like some place on Earth then, with the Luminaire up. You have to squint pretty hard to make out anything funny in the sky in the daytime. So then the sun goes down…that’s when you suddenly
know
you ain’t in Kansas any more.”

“Or down the rabbit hole. This place seems just about that crazy.” She shook herself in a way that DuQuesne found amusingly familiar; most of the original visitors had done the same thing when recovering from a typical Arena shock. “So…besides that, what did you have for me?”

“Listen.”

She cocked her head, and even in the dim lighting he could see her sudden smile. “Oh, now,
that
is hopeful. A waterfall?”

“And a
big
one,” DuQuesne said with an answering smile. “We’ve diverted a tiny portion of it so far with what we could rig up, but I know you worked on studying hydro plants before. My best estimate on this fall is it’s close to two million liters a second.”

“That
is
pretty big,” she said. “I admit…I’m having trouble grasping this. We are on
top
of a spherical construct, right? What’s all this…world doing on top of it, if you know what I mean?”

“It’s made to be similar to our home environment—though
similar
does not mean
identical
, so get that through your head. Near as I can figure, there’s a couple thousand kilometers of rock under us which acts like the actual mantle of a planet. Plate tectonics, the whole nine yards. You’ve got some kind of oceans out there—Simon’s probes were able to return some images, and we’re finally getting some idea of what the top of the Sphere looks like. Within the gravity area there’s some convection and condensation—but we’re not even
close
to figuring out how all this interacts with the stuff outside the gravity field.”

He shook his head. “It’s enough to drive you nuts, I’ll tell you. But the long and the short is, we get weather like Earth, pretty close, you get night and day like Earth, there’s volcanoes and earthquakes and all the rest like Earth, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there weren’t seasons to the…North and South of us, where the Luminaire’s light will be more oblique; I’ll bet its path slowly goes North and South over the period of a year, just like the apparent position of the sun varies due to Earth’s axial tilt. We’re pretty much on the equator right here.” He paused. “The
effective
equator of the Upper Sphere, not the actual Sphere’s equator.
Damnation
. We’ll need yet
more
new vocabulary.”

They stopped at the edge of the ridge overlooking the swift-running river. “That
is
impressive,” Molly said finally. “So you want me to design a power plant to use…that?”

“Figure we could get a few gigawatts out of it, which would go a
long
way towards giving us some comfortable independence here. And if there’s one waterfall like this, I’m betting there’s plenty of opportunities for water-power here.”

She nodded. “I can imagine the largest possible water power generator, actually.”

“What do…oh.” He suddenly began to chuckle, then laughed loudly. “
Doctor
Tobin, you haven’t stopped thinking bigger, have you?”

“It just seemed obvious to me, Marc,” she said, grinning back. “Given the description, there’s a wall, an edge, somewhere around this Upper Sphere, the point where the gravity stops keeping things comfortably on the surface. Go knock a hole in it and let the entire ocean start draining out until you reach equilibrium. With a few billion liters of water a second, I’ll start giving you some
real
power!”

Chapter 25.

Ariane rose slowly to her feet, favoring her side. “Okay, I think I know when I’m beaten,” she said, bowing to her opponent, Orphan.

Wu Kung had been expecting her to yield earlier.
But she’s a real fighter,
he thought with admiration.
Won’t give up even in a play fight without showing what she’s got in guts.

Orphan leaned back on his tail with a buzzing chuckle. “Oh, now
that
I doubt in the extreme, Captain Austin. If you had the capacity to even
believe
you were beaten, how then could you have faced a Shadeweaver—and won?” He bowed to her. “Still, it is a wise tactician who recognizes they no longer
need
stay in the battle. And you did quite well.”

“You managed to hit him a few times,” DuQuesne said with a grin. “Take that as a compliment. Orphan’s
good
.”

“So I see. If I ever have to fight you for
real
, Orphan, you’ll pardon me if I cheat.”

The chuckle turned to a full, rich laugh—though still with that buzzing undertone. “Oh, Captain Austin, I would
expect
you to cheat. Of course,” he said, with a lean forward and tilt that somehow conveyed the impression of a roguish grin, “if ever I must fight any of you, rest assured I will cheat as well!”

“I sure don’t doubt
that,
” DuQuesne said.

Gabrielle checked the signals from Ariane’s medical nanos using a handheld scanner. “No serious damage, Arrie.”

“Of course not,” Wu said defensively, wondering if they thought he’d
let
her get hurt. “If I thought Orphan was actually going to
hurt
her—past a few broken bones or something like that—I’d have stopped him!”

“I’d much rather you stopped it
before
any bones got broken, thank you kindly,” Gabrielle said with a sigh. “But in this kind of sparring I suppose that’s a forlorn hope.”

Wu was going to protest that if you were going to let things like
that
stop you, you weren’t ready to learn serious fighting…but he remembered that a lot of other people didn’t think that way.

Ariane seated herself on one of the benches set around the large exercise and practice area that Steve had figured out how to create inside their Embassy. Wu looked around admiringly.
It’s not anywhere as big as what they showed me for some of the Great Factions, but it’s still a great sparring and exercise place!

Currently, the room was configured in something that more than hinted at some of the Arena’s combat challenge areas: different levels of the floor, upright and sideways obstacles like tree trunks and branches, irregular obstacles like rocks, and so on. In this first contest—which, Wu understood, was partly a way of strengthening ties with the Liberated—Ariane had tried to use her smaller size and maneuverability against Orphan, but he was lightning fast and very strong.
Fast and strong, and he hasn’t shown what he can do for real, not yet
.

“That was indeed a fine warmup,” Orphan said. “But you have been stretching yourself on the sidelines long enough, Doctor DuQuesne. Or perhaps you, Sun Wu Kung, would care to give me the instruction Dr. DuQuesne promised me?”

Wu grinned a fanged smile but didn’t take the bait. This part of the contest DuQuesne and he had talked out in detail. DuQuesne wasn’t going to push himself past the point Orphan had already seen, in the battle against Amas-Garao, so Wu could push past that point, up to roughly where he knew DuQuesne would be if he started to push himself, which would be somewhere around Tunuvun’s skill and strength. “I think DuQuesne wants to try you first.”

The door opened, and K—
no
, he reminded himself,
Oasis Abrams, have to remember who she’s pretending to be—
came in. “Sparring with aliens and no one invited
me
?”

Despite the lighthearted comment, Wu sensed unusual tension from her—and a whiff from DuQuesne, too. There was something going on there, but neither of them had said anything to him.
No one does if they think it will upset me. And that upsets me. But then, maybe that proves they’re right. If something upsets me not to know, maybe it would be even more upsetting if I knew…
He stopped there, realizing he was about to
really
get confused.

“Oasis!” Ariane said, obviously surprised. “Aren’t you—”

“Ambassador Ni Deng and Vantak are at the Arcade, meeting with some of the Blessed’s allies, and the ambassador said she didn’t need me.” She shrugged. “I suppose they
could
try something, but being too reluctant would probably be insulting too, so it’s her judgment call.” She grinned, and Wu could sense more honest relaxation. “And
this
looks a lot more fun than watching their discussions, anyway.”

Ariane nodded, smiling. “I suppose so. But if she’s making good progress—and Ambassador Naraj thinks she is—she could be helping get us a major support in our coming war. If we get
enough
support, the Molothos may even back down.”

“Yeah, good luck with that,” DuQuesne said. He rose to his feet. “Okay, Orphan, time for us to find out what you’ve
really
got.” Then he paused. “Unless
you
want first dibs, Oasis?”

“Hand to hand only?”

“Well, appendage to appendage,” Orphan said, wagging his tail obviously. “I have no intention of handicapping myself to that extent.”

“Oh, of course not.”

The redheaded woman faced off with the tall, massive green and black patterned Orphan. For a few moments, the two stood still, measuring each others’ stances. Then Orphan exploded into motion.

But Oasis was not there; she was
above
the two meters and more of alien, flipping effortlessly from projection to projection.

Orphan gave a surprised laugh and then bounded up in pursuit, his chitinous armor and leaping motion combining with his occasionally flaring wing-cases to give him the aspect of an immense locust.

The two figures came together in a looping motion, and suddenly the red-haired figure was plummeting downward, barely saving herself from impact with the ground; she leapt aside desperately as Orphan followed her.
But she should be doing a
lot
better than
that
! What…

Even as he thought that, he remembered.
She’s pretending to be human, ordinary human. Very good, very trained—better than Ariane—but not like she really is. So…

The end came quickly, as she evaded two ordinary strikes only to be caught by a brutal tail-strike. Gabrielle was sprinting quickly to Oasis’ side even as she came to rest. “Okay, that’s hard enough! Good
Lord
, do you people want to kill each other?”

But Oasis was slowly trying to get up already. “We’re…just doing some…friendly sparring,” she managed to say.

“Friendly…well, maybe, but that’s enough for you.”

“All right,” DuQuesne said, as Oasis sat down heavily on the bench next to Ariane, “
Now
it’s my turn.”

Orphan bowed to DuQuesne, and the two came directly at each other.

Wu laughed and clapped his hands.
This
was much more like it! For moments the two stood nearly toe-to-toe, blocking each other’s blows, evading strikes, delivering others of their own. Simultaneously a kick from a shining-black foot hammered home even as the strike of a massive fist smashed into a crested head, and both combatants staggered backwards, instantly coming back on guard. DuQuesne and Orphan circled each other, and then DuQuesne charged in, shrugging off a glancing blow but taking his opponent down with a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu grapple. The bodies slammed to the floor, DuQuesne on top and driving hard, trying to control Orphan, render him helpless.

But human martial arts were generally intended for human opponents, and Orphan’s flexible, sting-equipped tail made that approach far too dangerous. DuQuesne was kicked away, bleeding from his nose, but grinning a savage warrior’s grin. Orphan rolled to his feet, crouching now with tail raised like a scorpion’s, and he was giving a buzz of warlike amusement.

The two made several more passes; Orphan used a lightning-fast wing strike that took down DuQuesne like an axe, but couldn’t capitalize on it; DuQuesne caught Orphan off-guard and almost battered him to his knees, but instead got taken down himself; for a few seconds the two even locked arms in a contest of strength that seemed likely to go on for a long time.

Finally DuQuesne bowed out. “I think,” he said, breathing a little hard—
and exaggerating it, too,
Wu thought—“that we could go on doing that for quite a while. Now, like I promised—you get to try Wu.”

Wu stepped forward, knowing just by the other’s posture that he was having a hard time taking such a tiny opponent as seriously as he should…but he was going on guard anyway. “This looks like fun!” he said, and bowed to Orphan.

“We shall see,” Orphan said, and did a pushup-bow.

Wu waited for Orphan to get prepared.

Then he leaped up, grabbed one of the branchlike supports, and scrambled up and around as though he were back in the jungles of the Mountain. He heard Orphan already coming after him.
He’s moving in…coming from that direction…he’ll be arcing up, trying to get the height on me. Ha!

The green-black figure spun in from above, Orphan’s tail allowing him to grab and shift direction in motion while leaving arms and legs free. But Wu Kung ducked and ran right up Orphan’s back, caught the tail as it started to unwind, anchored himself with his
own
tail, and
pulled.

Caught in midair, with nothing to catch hold of, Orphan was slung up and over, somersaulting through space. He twisted, flared his wingcases to catch air and guide his fall, blunted the impact, but his posture now showed he had
full
respect for Wu’s abilities. “Well done!” Orphan shouted, even as he moved back in, this time more cautiously. “I should recall that you and I share certain anatomical advantages.”

“You should, because now is the time for us to see which of us is
better
! Let us not run and dance!”

“As you wish.”

Orphan dropped lightly to the ground and waited. Sun Wu Kung evaluated his position, landed several meters ahead, paused, and then met Orphan’s charge with his own.

A charge which he evaded at the last second, ducking aside and kicking Orphan just between the wingcases. The leader (and sole member) of the Liberated was smashed unceremoniously to the slightly-yielding floor, skidding and tumbling for a few meters before managing to turn the fall into a roll. Orphan was up almost immediately, but the turn was slightly…off, not quite as quick and precise as his prior moves.
Is he faking?…no, he is stunned for a moment.

Wu didn’t hesitate. He bounded in, blocked a kick, a tail strike, and one punch, got in a double-footed kick that sent Orphan staggering back—and made his wings flare.

There! From Ariane’s first encounter with the Blessed!

The pinkish tympani were exposed for that brief moment, and Wu delivered a lightning fast
slap
to each, one with each hand.

Orphan gave a coughing buzz of pain and collapsed. “Enough!”

Immediately Wu stepped back and bowed; a spatter of applause came from the watchers. Orphan slowly pulled himself to his feet, and did a push-bow to both Wu and DuQuesne. “I am…adequately instructed for my doubts, Doctor DuQuesne.” He turned to Wu. “You are truly a master of combat, Sun Wu Kung. I would venture to say you might match…or even slightly surpass…the best of the Arena’s warriors.” He looked at DuQuesne and Ariane. “I thank you for your trust in this.”

Ariane smiled. “I thought you would understand. Is it true?”

“That there are limits on how capable one might make oneself, using technological enhancement? Most certainly. But it is, admittedly, at least partially determined based on what you are to begin with. The Molothos and some others, such as the Daelmokhan, began their emergence into the Arena already extremely formidable, and thus their enhancements can reach somewhat greater levels. The Genasi, of course, are native to the Arena, so what rules THEY follow…is not yet entirely clear. What
is
clear is that your people obviously must have started from most formidable stock indeed, if this is the result.”

Orphan seemed now fully recovered.
He’s tough! Very good!
“I now regret, even more, not happening to be present for your impromptu challenge, Sun Wu Kung; that battle must have been magnificent, with you alongside one of the great Champions.”

Wu let himself smile broadly. “It was
fun
, yes. A
lot
of fun.”

The important thing—the real reason this sparring match had happened—seemed to have worked. DuQuesne had implied that Wu was better—but at the same time he really wanted both him and Wu to have some reserve, something no one knew about. So this battle was to convince Orphan that he knew what even DuQuesne and Wu Kung were capable of—and maybe get some information from him about how all these abilities worked compared to what you could do in the normal universe.
He sure seems to believe he’s seen the truth. Doesn’t smell terribly suspicious—no more than he was coming in, anyway.

The door suddenly burst open, and Simon Sandrisson stood there, white coat flowing down, with a smile on the face framed by brilliant white hair. “Ariane! DuQuesne!”

Ariane jumped slightly—the door had opened right next to her. “Simon? I thought you were—”

“On the Upper Sphere, yes, I was.” Wu heard the scientist’s breathing.
Boy, he was running fast!
“And I suppose I could have called, but…”

He drew himself up. “But this was something I wanted to tell you in person. We have a direct Sky Gate link to Nexus Arena!”