The Orphaned Worlds (21 page)
Is there ever?
he thought sardonically.
Certainly they were sufficient to send the partial-Intercessor flying apart. Still, there was the mystery of what the small elemental squid-creature said before it was assimilated by the large composite one –
they wanted to live!
But who were they?
‘I take your protracted silence to be an admission of guilt,’ said Reski. ‘Perhaps tinged with regret.’
‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘I was merely timing you to see how long you could last without launching another broadside of smugness.’
‘Your own time would be better employed in considering how to explain your shortcomings to the Construct …’
‘This acrimony serves no useful function,’ said the
Plausible Response
.
‘On the contrary,’ said the droid. ‘By using disparaging speech I am able to imprint on the Human mind a reflex against improper behaviour. A crude form of tutoring but it may turn out to be of benefit, to a Human at least …’
Before Robert could retort, the Ship cut in.
‘Ship-to-ship communication from the Godhead vessel, two-way stream,’ it said as a subframe opened on the bridge widescreen. In it was the pale shape of the Intercessor.
‘Emissary Horst,’ it said in a deep, rich male voice. ‘My thanks to you and your companions for being so patient. After much deliberation we find that your proposal has merit and therefore we are empowered to send you to the penultimate stage of your journey. It is an involuted continuum, impossible to enter without precise coordinates, which we are sending across now. When you arrive, you will be taken to a gate device that will enable you to immediately descend hundreds of tiers to the periphery of the Godhead’s abode. From there, Emissary Horst, you will have to travel alone.’
‘My thanks for your sagacity and foresight, Intercessor,’ said Robert, surprised in spite of himself. ‘I look forward to presenting our case to the Godhead in person.’
‘You may be assured of a welcome befitting the urgency of your mission. And now we must leave – goodbye, Emissary Horst.’
The Intercessor’s image vanished, replaced by a view of the flattened silver-green oval of the Godhead ship. At one of the narrow ends two odd fins emerged from the hull while various blisters appeared at the other. A moment later, with no sign of reaction thrust, it moved off, picked up speed and was gone in seconds.
‘Data object received,’ said the Ship. ‘Buffered analysis shows it to be a coordinate set in multi-parameter format, for a location on tier 165. Estimated journey time is variable, between eleven and twenty-seven hours.’
Robert nodded and glanced at Reski Emantes, who still hovered before the main bridge console. ‘So – you were saying.’
‘I fear you are too easily satisfied, Robert Horst,’ the droid said. ‘Their approval was too glib and was given too quickly. I think we should proceed with caution.’
As the droid floated away and out of the bridge, Robert could only shake his head. ‘Hmm, seems that my shortcomings have altered their character.’
‘It is possible that he was adversely affected by the missile attack,’ said the Ship. ‘On another matter, I think you should know that my probes recovered the body of the Rosa simulant. It is already being converted back into resource materials, but before it went to the tank I recovered a peculiar data fragment that had been etched into the backup crystal matrix. It is a four-second visual recording from after she unleashed her energy assault – I will display it for you.’
A subframe popped into the centre of the widescreen and Robert watched closely. First there was a shadowy, jerky view of the Legion Knight’s irregular underside, webbed with bright, crawling energy. Then the point of view – which he suddenly realised could only be Rosa’s – swung round to focus on a triangular hatch that gaped open less than two feet away. The energy discharge’s ice-blue radiance had penetrated the Knight’s vitals, revealing long shapes writhing within the hatch, smoky black snake forms. The recording cycled again and again but Robert was certain.
‘Have you seen these creatures before, Robert?’
He remembered the mad pursuit through the stone passages of the lithosphere of Abfagul in the company of the Reski droids, and the charge through the ancient storage vault beneath the Great Terrace. It was smokey black snakes like those which they had fled.
He nodded. ‘They come from the Abyss of hyperspace, and specialise in hunting sentient mechs,’ he said. ‘They’re called the vermax.’
After the disappearance of Theo and Malachi, after the discovery of the dead guards, and after hours and hours of fruitless searching, she wearily retired to the warmth of blankets beneath a lean-to in the crook of a midlevel branch, and slept. And sleeping, she dreamed.
Dreamed of relaxing on a leafy, cushioned platform amid the noon-bright foliage of Segrana’s upper canopy, lying stretched out and languorous in the hot sun. Insects buzzed and long-tailed hizio swooped and wheeled while up in the pure blue sky a ship was climbing, slowly receding into the uppermost heights of the atmosphere. Then her comfortable, cosy platform detached from its treetop and began to sink down through the leaves and branches. The humid air was alive with the forest’s animal life, and busy with people, Uvovo and Humans, happily working, travelling or just sitting together.
Greg smiled and waved to her from an open shelter littered with pots and figurines. Just below, his uncle Theo raised a hand in greeting then seized a heavy vine and swung off into the dimming greenness. In her dreaming descent she passed by Greg’s mother, who was engrossed in conversation with Listeners Weynl and Temas. The deeper into Segrana she went the gloomier it became and the sparser the population, then a figure drew near from below, Greg’s Uvovo friend Cheluvahar, who stood at the end of a broken branch, pointing downwards as he sombrely watched her pass.
Other less welcome images emerged from the suddenly claustrophobic shadows: Julia Bryce, her face blank, her eyes full of some other presence; the Hegemony ambassador, Utavess Kuros, his arms and legs replaced by black metal prostheses; numerous tall Brolturan soldiers; and crouching doglike on a thick bough were five Ezgara commandos, each gripping the bark with four arms, their faceless visors silently tracking her progress into the depths.
The sounds, metallic scrapes, faint scaly gleams off in the gloom, and from above a passing flash of brightness revealed her surroundings.
Machines clung to every branch, crawling, hanging, hooking around every trunk, machines of every size and shape, a waiting, glittering horde.
Beneath, the darkness congealed, cold and wet, black as ash. She came to rest at the foot of a black slope and it seemed as if Segrana had been reduced to blackened debris all around her, a desolation of charred forest. Up the slope was a low building. She climbed towards it, slipping in black, gritty mud, all the time aware of movement in the lightless wastes at her back. Clicks, clinks, low hums, the creak of steel. But before her a door began to open in the squat building, throwing a long wedge of golden light across the ruined ground, widening as she approached.
Be here
, said Segrana’s voice in her head
. Be here, be here, to speak, to speak, be here, be here
…
She hurried to the door and lunged into the drenching golden glow … and awoke to find herself lying in silver-blue radiance. A clear pale shaft of Darienlight had slipped through the high foliage to fall upon her resting place. She pushed herself into a sitting position, massaging aching temples, wondering why she had stirred out of sleep …
The dream! – she caught her breath as recollection of it rushed back, the descent, the enemy machines, the black burnt wastes, Segrana’s voice beckoning to her with an iron, unavoidable urgency,
be here, be here
…
Less than an hour later, riding a trictra and escorted by Listener Okass and six armed Benevolents, she was descending the last branchways and vine-weave curtains leading to the forest floor. Ulby roots and ineka beetles held back the blanketing gloom with their blue-green glows, their scattered scores of meagre luminosi-ties merging into a hazy ambient radiance. It was cold and dank but Catriona was well wrapped in a blanket and a shore-mother’s shawl decorated with small shells – she could hear them ticking quietly as her trictra lurched and swayed down the trunk of a pillar tree.
When she had told Listener Okass about her tree and described the low structure, he had nodded gravely, declaring that he knew the building’s whereabouts. And sure enough, there in the shadows below, crouching on a low hilltop and dwarfed by immense mossy trunks, was the place from her dream. Drawing closer, she could see where a huge tree had taken root near one corner and during many decades of growth had bored and wedged and pushed its way through the walls to the point where it now towered over a dilapidated roof corner and heaps of cracked, dislodged stones.
Catriona had her escort wait a short distance from the entrance while she picked her way across rocky ground made slippery by decaying mulch, the decomposing leafy debris from above. The entrance was a pillared portico, its ceiling and walls decorated with ulby roots. Past the door a low, short passage came to a T-junction, both arms leading round to the same place, a large chamber taking up most of the length of the building. Apart from a narrow walkway that ran round all four sides, the floor sloped steeply down into a pit from which a grey radiance leached. It made visible the half-demolished corner but Catriona’s attention was fixed on what lay below.
Algae streaks marked where water had trickled in. Mud lay in fan-shaped deposits from which a few pale, sickly plants sprouted, not tall enough to reach the rim of the large circular stone platform that covered most of the floor. Its surface was incised with dense, interlocking patterns, half-geometric, half-plantlike, their grooves the source of that eerie luminescence. As her eyes traced the convoluted lines, she recalled Theo’s description of the warpwell chamber that Greg and Chel had found beneath Giant’s Shoulder.
Be here, to speak
, Segrana had said in her dream, but with whom? Was this stone platform something similar to the warp-well? Were they connected in some fashion? Perhaps this was an ancient means for communicating with Segrana. Eager to know, she carefully descended a rank of narrow stone stairs and stepped out onto the platform.
The grey radiance immediately brightened. Some patterns gleamed like burning silver and curtains of light sprang up before her.
WHY ARE YOU HERE?
The voice filled the building and filled her head, resonating at low registers that made her skin tingle. She was astonished but felt no fear.
‘I answered the call of Segrana,’ she said calmly. ‘Why are
you
here?’
TO SPEAK WITH THE KEEPER OF SEGRANA, WITH YOU, MACREADIE.
‘Keeper?’ she said, recalling some references to the honorific in the tales of the War of the Long Night. ‘The Listeners here call me Pathmistress, which is one too many high-and-mighty titles, to be honest. What about you – what should I call you?’
I AM THE SENTINEL OF THE WARPWELL AT WAONWIR, WHICH HUMANS CALL GIANT’S SHOULDER. I AM HERE TO QUESTION YOU ABOUT ANOTHER HUMAN, A FEMALE CALLED JULIA BRYCE. SHE IS ONE OF THE HUMAN VARIANTS KNOWN AS ENHANCED, LIKE YOU …
‘Not like me,’ Cat said sharply. ‘My talents didn’t develop properly, so I didn’t get to become a full Enhanced, got it?’ She swallowed and glared at the shifting, shining veils. ‘So what’re ye interested in her for? I was told that she and some others were grabbed by that Earthsphere ship.’
That was another part of Theo’s tale that had amazed her, the determination of the intelligence chief Pyatkov in trying to keep Julia and her team out of Hegemony hands, only for them to end up on board the Earthsphere cruiser,
Heracles
.
AN ALLY OF MINE KNOWN AS THE CONSTRUCT HAS TOLD ME THAT FIVE HUMANS WERE SEEN IN THE COMPANY OF HURNEGUR AND JESHKRA, TWO NOTORIOUS INSURGENT LEADERS FROM THE YAMANON DOMAIN. BOTH LED REVOLTS AGAINST THE DOL-DAS OPPRESSORS AND THEN FOUGHT AGAINST HEGEMONY–EARTHSPHERE FORCES AFTER THE TYRANNY FELL. ALSO, BOTH HAVE RECENTLY CONVERTED TO THE SPIRAL PROPHECY, A NARROWLY INTERPRETED, HIGHLY MILITANT STRAND OF SAGERIST BELIEF.
Listening carefully, Cat frowned. ‘Why are you so sure that these five Humans were Julia Bryce and her people?’ She was going to say ‘friends’ but real friendship was never Julia’s style.
HUMANS ARE A RARE SIGHT FROM THE ARANJA TESH STATES COREWARD – THEY WOULD BE NOTICED. A DREDGE OF MAJOR MEDIA ARCHIVES TURNED UP A REPORT FROM BARAMU, AN OPENPORT ON THE BORDER OF BURANJ. FIVE HUMANS WERE SEEN BOARDING THE
QOL-VALISH
, A MULTI-CARGO HAULER BOUND FOR EARTHSPHERE, MORE THAN FOUR WEEKS AGO. ITS NEXT STOP WAS METRAJ BUT IT NEVER ARRIVED – ARMED HIJACKERS SEIZED CONTROL, LOOTED THE VALUABLES, KIDNAPPED THE FIVE HUMANS THEN LEFT THE SHIP DRIFTING IN INTERSTELLAR SPACE, ITS HYPERDRIVE WRECKED AND MOST OF THE CREW AND PASSENGERS DEAD.
A square frame emerged from the curtain of light, a picture coalescing from the haze to show seven humans getting into an open-top barge. Two were in uniform, Earthsphere navy she guessed, while the others wore civilian clothing. One, a woman, was turned toward the cam as she gazed down at the busy terminal – it was Julia.
‘That’s her,’ she said.
A second picture appeared alongside the first – in it, Julia and her team were standing in the lee of a transport of some kind, something with small oval portholes, stubby wings and a scoured, battered hull. A hulking Henkayan in grubby pale blue robes and meshcloth headgear was in front of Julia, talking to her; next to the Henkayan was a lanky Gomedran wearing a dark, close-fitting body suit. From the Humans’ body language Catriona knew that they were captives, and found herself feeling something like concern for them.
