The Gambit with Perfection (The Phantom of the Earth Book 2) (22 page)

“So be it,” Brody said, “we’ll risk exposure, and we won’t leave without Nero. He wouldn’t leave us, dead or alive.”

Verena nodded. She tied her long hair into a bun, threw on a supply pack, and handed one to Brody. He opened the hatch in the hull’s rear. Vigna’s air, cooler and fresher than any Beimeni river or lake, struck Brody, tangling his damp hair. He and Verena walked upside down on the outside of the hull, trusting the magnetic boots to protect them from Vigna’s gravity. He grabbed hold of one of the many vines that held the
Cassiopeia
in midair. It was about the width of a transhuman, with tough fibrous skin and little give. He wrapped his arms and feet around it, turned himself right side up, and climbed down to the tree trunk, where he implanted his shuriken
.
Verena followed and they began their painstaking descent.

Later on, Verena called down to him, “How much farther?”

“Less than a hundred meters,” he said.

In the time it took for them to reach the ground, some clouds broke apart, allowing aquamarine and scarlet rays to break through. Vigna’s three stars weren’t as bright as Brody expected. The white star was setting in the east, the orange star hung above it in the eastern sky, and the blue star trailed in the western sky, partially obscured by oblong wintergreen tree leaves.

“This way,” Brody said. He unsheathed his diamond sword and cut through plants of various hues, many as tall as he. Amphibians twice the size of tenehounds slithered over nearby stones, their golden eyes opening and closing with dark shudders.

They’re afraid of us
, he thought
.
As soon as they perked their heads, they’d disappear into the brush.

Brody pushed aside an orange leaf four times the length of his body.

Verena slipped through, pulse gun at the ready.

“We’re clear,” she said.

He rotated around her, and on they went through the jungle. Brody connected to the ZPF.
Nero, where are you?
He also searched for the Lorum, for the signals he’d heard in the ansible, all those years ago, but all he heard were the
twick, twick, twick
sounds of what he presumed were Vignan insects and small animals.

Verena used her sword to cut through the brush.

There was no sign that Nero survived the drop or that the Lorum objected to their presence.

What’s it waiting for?
Brody wondered.

Now new sounds, a
pripit, pripit, pripit
and
iria, iria, iria
emanated everywhere it seemed and reminded Brody of his surface excursions to lands near Earth’s equator, with the difference that these noises sounded … timed, as if the fauna and perhaps the flora communicated in ways he didn’t yet understand. He should be able to hear conscious beings in the ZPF, yet he couldn’t discern a disturbance here. Was Vignan life formed in a different manner, one not connected to the ZPF?

Shadows stole over him and Verena.

A flock of flying creatures gusted overhead, whipping wind through the leaves and trees. Their wingspans stretched many meters, and their orange and yellow claws were as large as Brody’s head. Their dark green eyes searched and searched. Verena aimed her pulse gun upon her forearm.

“Wait!” Brody said. She breathed heavily, and he knew she was using her extended consciousness to target them. “They’re not acting like predators.”

“How would you know a predator on Vigna?”

“
Listen.
” The birds sang as a chorus with highs and lows and all the tones between, as if they were a Beimenian orchestra.

And Brody
could
feel them in the ZPF, their energy flowing from the sky to the ground and over him. “Stand down,” he said, “they’re not a threat.”

Verena lowered her weapon. “They’re …
spectacular
.”

The birds continued onward, splitting the shards of light that broke through holes in the colorful cloud layers.

“Do you think the Lorum would harm Nero?” Verena said.

“I don’t know. Antosha told me that he believed it evolved differently than humans. Where our species formed from Earth’s life elements, the Lorum evolved … in stranger ways, from different elements, in a manner he and I were only beginning to learn when …”

“He lost his mind.”

Part of Brody wished Antosha still conducted Reassortment research, for he’d learned more about Reassortment and Regenesis during those years than at any time before or since. Verena had warned him about Antosha’s experiments with the ZPF, the ways he was using the quantum field to enhance the transhuman genome—the side effects of Antosha’s work, the delusions, murders, suicides, manipulations—Brody hadn’t listened to her. He’d only found out the full extent of Antosha’s crimes during Chief Justice Carmen’s hearings.

“Did you hear that?” Verena put her hand in front of Brody and scanned the forest. “Over there.” She nodded.

Brody extended his consciousness and calculated distances between the trees, the geometric leaves that looked electrified, and a narrow stream.

“Something’s here,” Verena said.

“Where?”

“Again, did you hear him?”

Brody didn’t hear anything except for the chirps and rustle of unseen wildlife.

“Nero?” she said. “Brody, I see him! I see him!” She flew through the brush, out of Brody’s sight.

“Wait, Verena!” He sprinted after her, but when he orbited the tree trunk, she wasn’t there. “Verena?” He peered at the vines, the sky, the leaves, the amphibians that scurried into streams and slithered up trees. “Verena!” He rummaged through the moss and lichen and leaves and cleared the wildlife with his sword.

Then he heard a voice.

“Brody.”

He heard his name, called quickly as if from the trees. He sheathed his sword and grasped his pulse gun. “Verena?” he said, though he suspected the voice wasn’t hers. Sparkles of light materialized near a distant tree trunk. “This cannot be,” Brody said, for the Gemini formed, one by one, ethereal and unreal, all 346 Gemini created in Brody’s likeness over the years for clinical trials in treatments to thwart Reassortment: the Gemini on whom Brody’s treatments failed.

He stepped back. The Gemini spread out and dashed throughout the jungle, blending with the tree trunks, which turned bright blue, blending with the sky and starlight.

“Brody.”

The protohumans surrounded him, and one of them spoke to him, loud and unafraid and
alive.
Brody darted between the plants and tripped over one of the amphibians. The animal turned around and opened its mouth and bared its countless sharp blue teeth. Then it sprinted into the colorful flora.

“This isn’t real,” Brody said, holding his arms to the sky. “You aren’t here!”

“You’re a failure.”

The Gemini spoke in unison.

“Failure!”

One of the Gemini emerged from behind a tree, and Brody ran to it, but after he swung around the trunk, he saw nothing but bright light.

He breathed in the mossy, humid, herbal air.

“Failure!”

Another Gemini poked out its head, and Brody ran to it, but again, nothing there.

“Failure!”

From behind the trees emerged 346 faces that looked almost like Brody’s.

“
Failure!
” they said and disappeared.

He sprinted to a clearing and dropped to his knees. “I did all that I could to save you!” Or was it to save humanity? Or was it to save himself? He covered his face and noted a glow from his eyes illuminating his hands.
Something’s using the ZPF against us
.

He stood. “Where’s Verena!” He turned. “Where’s Nero!”

The Gemini materialized from behind the trees, one after another, leisurely surrounding Brody. They locked arms, rotating and swaying, and one of them chanted something incomprehensible before they swarmed him, lifted him above their heads, and passed him along their train. He writhed.
I won’t give in
, he sent,
if anything happens to my team, I’ll hold the Lorum accountable!

The protohumans didn’t listen. Blue sapphire sparks burst around him, and an ivory fur hide materialized in which the Gemini wrapped him and carried him toward the aqua river. The Gemini threw him far from shore, and the current dragged him, down, down, down. Organisms no longer or wider than a benari coin, streaked with white phosphorescent light that looked electric, swam over and around the fur, his synsuit, his face, neck, and hair.

He escaped the fur, broke through the surface, and gasped. He twisted and turned. Both shores were distant, and the current was strong, rolling over stones with waves as tall as he. He steadied himself on his back and crossed his arms and bobbed in the water as it took him downstream. The light emitted from the organisms obscured his view at times, but it didn’t harm or discomfort him. The water was as warm as Vigna’s jungle. The harder he pushed his legs, the more, it seemed, the river fought against him. When he relaxed, it carried him along.

The crystalline cliffs neared, and Brody grabbed on to a stone that jutted from the water. He gasped. The waves gushed against him with increasing force until he lost his grip and spun over the top of the river and tumbled down the falls.

The first level dropped several meters. Brody landed on his elbow, protected by the water and his synsuit. He kicked up through bubbles, seaweed, and vines and thrust himself up for air.

The clouds reformed within the temperature inversion below, and he couldn’t see the next rim. How far would he fall? He grabbed hold of vines outgrown from the cliffs, but with the water’s insistent current and his lack of grip, he tumbled onward, through the clouds, to the next level.

He splashed and bobbed into a basin along the cliff side, its edge lined with a substance that reminded him of Earth’s stromatolite formations, outgrowths upon stone synthesized by bacteria. He lunged out of the water for another gulp of Vigna’s tangy air until it pushed him under again and down the alabaster falls. All he heard was the crashing and rushing of water as it took him through another layer of colorful clouds broken here and there by scarlet and magenta rays.

He fell through the fog and into a sea colored with many shades of violet, red, and green, which provided more light here than Vigna’s three stars. Mist in the distance. He turned and gazed up at the falls behind him. Brody contemplated what led him here, for he knew the Gemini couldn’t have thrown him in the river. They couldn’t be on Vigna, could they?
Of course not
, he thought
. It’s the Lorum, using some other life form on this planet for its will. Or were
they
the Lorum?

He sensed uneasiness in the ZPF, an energy signature similar to what he’d felt in the shuttle with the pulsar, and during the descent to Vigna, but less concentrated, unsure, as if the Lorum feared him and his team more than they feared it.

He searched his memories of Candor Chasma, of his and Antosha’s sessions beneath the terradome on Mars. They stood on terraformed soil as two beads in the universe.
What did the Lorum tell him?
Brody knew there was
something
, some revelation that excited Antosha, who was convinced he understood the transmissions where no one else did. But Brody’s memories blurred from those years. It had been better to block them out than reconcile them, perhaps.

“Your actions led to the most underground deaths in the RDD in the Age of Masimovian,” Chief Justice Carmen had ruled at one of Antosha’s hearings. “You will never again set foot in the Beimeni zone of the underground.”

Brody shook off thoughts of the dead scientists and Antosha. He rubbed his face.
What did the Lorum tell Antosha?
Brody thought
. What did Antosha assure me?
Or was it something left unsaid he should remember? He waded through the water to the basin’s edge and climbed out. The land here wasn’t filled with the overgrowth he’d encountered above. His breath puffed in clouds. The air, while humid, was much cooler than near the shuttle.

Was his mind affected by Vigna’s atmosphere, its high oxygen concentration and low pressure? The first symptoms of oxygen toxicity included chest pain, Brody knew, but he felt better than he had in decades, with enough energy to take on all the Reassortment organisms in Earth’s atmosphere himself. Brody again sought the ZPF but couldn’t connect. Were the Lorum blocking him? Why?
Nero … Verena, where are you?
He projected his mind into the world as he had infinite times before, though he suspected he spoke only to himself.

A path of dark stone shards led to the left. Brody didn’t want to find out what lay in that direction. He moved the opposite way and reached for his sword, but it was no longer sheathed across his back. His supply pack had also been dislodged during his trip down the falls. With no water, no food, no weapons, no team, he sat on a boulder. When did his eternal life fall apart? Was it when he took over for Jeremiah Selendia as Supreme Scientist of Regenesis? Or when he purchased Antosha Zereoue at the Harpoon Auction?

My ascent didn’t cause this
, Brody thought,
and neither did Heywood, an obvious catspaw
—
but for whom did Heywood act and to what end?