The Unearthing (39 page)

“I’m sorry,” He sobbed, “I’m so sorry.”

“What was going on?” she asked, “What was it? James…it’s okay.” And despite meaning it, what he said next still shocked her, still made feel her unclean, made it anything
but
okay:

“I was trying…” he sobbed, “I was trying to fuck death away.”

♦♦♦

When Jude arrived at the docking station, he’d actually seen Ashe cut through the open door at the far end. As the door from his own tram car cracked and slid open Jude charged after him. The hallway beyond was much like any other hallway in the Ship: golden, blue-banned and lit by orbs that turned the ceiling transparent, like obsidian. This hallway branched off in four different directions and had many closed doors lining the passage. No sign of Ashe, but this close behind the manic preacher that it wouldn’t matter. Jude slipped on his scope and activated the thermograph. The thermal representation of the floor clearly showed footstep heat traces; barely visible, but clear enough for Jude to pursue. Jude followed as far as he could, but soon enough the footsteps faded altogether. He scouted through the corridors looking for Ashe, listening for footfalls. There was no sign of his quarry and all the doors along the hallway were sealed. As Jude came to the far end of the corridor he found a bank of lifts. They opened readily. Jude was convinced that Ashe hadn’t been able to make it this far. Rounding another corridor, he chose a new branch in hopes that it would lead him to Ashe. Then he realized that he’d not put down a transmitter since pursuing Ashe down the tram tunnel.

“Shit.” The hallways all looked so much alike and the alien text apparently posted as directional signs were all illegible. He was lost. Jude’s sense of direction was good but not so good that he could navigate by sense alone down here. Jude refused to surrender to panic. He calmed himself and began making a slow, steady route through the level he was on, hoping that he would eventually reach the tram. He hadn’t realized how large this level was, or how many different branching corridors the edifice had. Sooner or later he was sure that he’d make a circuit of the level, even if it was several kilometres large. He’d once marched a hundred klicks with no rations no water and no stims through dense jungle. The flat, air-conditioned corridors of the Ship were no match for that.

Jude paused during his hike to take a sip of water from his pack; he pulled a mouthful up the straw and it was drained. He felt the water bag woven into his backpack collapse under vacuum. He had been lost in the Ship chasing Gabriel Ashe for two days, according to his chronometer. He still had a week’s supply of liquid rations to fall back on, but they weren’t good for hydration. A complex soup of proteins and nutrients designed to keep his body going for twenty-four hours at a time, there wasn’t enough liquid content in them to keep a body going that long. He guessed the dehydration would get bad by the second day; if Jude was lucky, he’d be able to push on another two days after that. Jude had already reserved one round of ammo; he had no hope of finding his way out of the bowels of the Ship; he was lost down here. When the time came, he’d take himself off the board. Jude only hoped he got to the bastard who’d killed him. He wanted the satisfaction of killing Gabriel Ashe, himself.

He didn’t understand how Ashe had kept going, this long. The man didn’t have the training – or the stims and supplements that Jude had. Jude had nearly caught him twice and he had winged him the last time; he’d followed the blood trail for half a day. And yet, Gabriel Ashe had neither slowed nor faltered. Jude had been so close; close enough to know Ashe neither had food nor water with him. So how was he able to keep going, and how had he so successfully evaded Jude for so long?

Jude tensed, bringing his weapon up. A door at the far end of the corridor suddenly dropped open. He approached cautiously. There was movement inside, but the chamber beyond was too dark for him to see properly from the outside. Jude lowered the display boom over his left eye, switching it to enhance the view within. A Human figure moved to the back of the room. Jude crouched and charged in. It never occurred to him that, as he had been following Gabriel Ashe, that he had been leading Jude somewhere. The door sealed shut behind him and Isaac Jude found too late that this was a trap. Gabriel Ashe was ready and waiting for him. There was no mistaking the device strapped around Ashe’s chest, or that it was already primed for detonation.

FOURTEEN

A NEW LIGHT

The sunny day and cool, crisp air belied the sullen and sombre mood inside the walls of Vatican City. Rome had been the scene of one of The United Trinity Observants’ deadliest attacks. The Vatican Council on the Ship was not going well. The doubts James Johnson, in his existential crisis in Los Angeles had expressed to Allison McQuire were the same doubts Catholics around the world were expressing to their Clergymen and what some members of the Clergy themselves were expressing to their brethren. “Trust in God” could only take someone so far.

Many people died during the Night of Blood attack in Rome. Many of those killed had sought shelter within the walls of Rome’s many churches, only to die within walls of failed sanctuary.
Where was God in this madness
?
Why had this happened
? Those and a thousand other questions plagued the man sitting in the ancient chair overlooking a private garden in the middle of the Vatican. Pope Simon Peter sat in silence within the guarded walls of his inner sanctum. The only other person in the room was his oldest friend in the Church, his closest advisor, a friend from the Pontiff’s first days in the Seminary.

“I’m afraid I may have brought the Church to ruin,” The Pope said, in the heavy silence. The events of the last few days had added new lines of worry and stress to the aging Black man’s wizened features.

“No, that’s ridiculous!” Vincenzo Cardinal Carielli protested, “We are in a period of crisis right now but it’s hardly you that’s to blame.”

“Vatican IV has raised more questions and found more doubt than it has answered,” The Pontiff said, “Had I not called for this council, things might be very different.” The Cardinal shook his head. His friend wanted to believe he had erred, that he had done wrong; the job of convincing him otherwise would be difficult.

“How many people looked to you, to the Church for guidance after the Ship unearthed itself?” Carielli asked, “Had you not called for a council to deal with the issue of the Ship the leadership of the Church would have seemed vacant.”

“But we are no closer to answering the questions of our faithful than we were when the Ship was unearthed. There is a crisis of Faith brewing because of the Ship and what it represents! Some even question whether or not life evolved on this world independently or not.”

“Of course it didn’t arise independently on Earth,” The Cardinal replied, “All life comes from God and that is how that question should be answered!” The Pontiff waived his hand dismissively.

“That isn’t what they want to know,” the Pontiff replied, “And you know that as well as I do.”

“Questions of science are not our domain. Questions of Faith are. Whether God grew us here or seeded the world through the Ship makes no difference to me,” The Cardinal said, “Nor should it make any difference to them.”

“It makes a difference when you consider that God revealed His love for Mankind to us through His Son,” The Pontiff countered, “How then did He reveal Himself and His love to these Aliens? That is what people are asking. That is what I cannot answer. Given the slaughter of innocents perpetrated by The United Trinity Observants people wonder if God truly intends the Ship to have a message for us.”

“Of course it does,” The Cardinal replied, “But there have always been those who would strive to make us deaf to the Word of the Lord and the Devil’s pawns they are, all of them.”

“I agree. But I have failed to teach the Faithful this. They will not understand when I tell them so.”

“You committed no sin, my old friend.”

“But still I have failed.”

“To do what? To stop Gabriel Ashe?”

“No. To stop the crisis in the Faith,” Simon Peter replied, agitated, “What
is
our place in God’s plan if we are not His sole creation? How was God’s message delivered to the other worlds out there? Are Humans His true Chosen People or is all life, all intelligence numbered among His Chosen?”

“That we cannot know,” the Cardinal said, “How can we when we are not from those worlds? How can we when we cannot even hope to understand the fullness of God’s Mystery as it concerns Mankind?”

The Pontiff nodded.

“This council is getting us nowhere,” He said, rising, “We cannot understand the Lord’s message, if there is indeed one, while sitting here discussing the Ship in a committee. It is clear to me that I must go to Geneva and petition the World Council for access to the Ship.”

♦♦♦

The storm was a threatening band of dark grey on the horizon to the northeast when Bloom took her jog around the Ship. It was such a chilly morning that she hadn’t stripped off her warm-up suit before her run. From where she was it looked like the storm was half a continent away. The morning was otherwise promising to become another bright and sunny New Mexican day.

By late morning the wind had picked up and the storm was blowing in. The wind suddenly died around One PM and the clouds crested to a halt, darkening the sky to a dusky gloom. The storm broke while Bloom was having a late lunch with Major Benedict and the senior members of the Ship Survey Expedition. They were sitting by the bay window of the Officer’s Mess, overlooking the Ship.

“Look at that,” Doctor Kodo said, looking up from his cheeseburger platter. The rain was coming down in sheets and the Ship could only be seen because of the blue glow pulsing from the many trenches that crisscrossed its hull. They could see daylight through the rain, on the far side of the Ship.

“Yeah,” Peter remarked. Above the bay windows, shutters allowing fresh air were open and the room began cooling perceptively. As one of the mess hall workers moved to shutter them closed, Bloom held him off.

“Easy there, Private,” She said, “The breeze is nice. Let’s enjoy the cool air, while we can.”

“Yes ma’am,” The Private said, returning to other duties. They sat watching the rain. Then, they watched a large flash of lightning strike the Pyramid. Seconds later the concussion of thunder made itself known. And then as the rain slackened a bit the lightning storm began. The largest metallic object in the area was the Ship and with all the energy it produced to power itself it was a natural attractor. The view of the Ship never seemed to get old, Bloom observed, and when it started to seem commonplace, something else about it would surprise you. The thunderstorm overhead reflected a new, violent beauty back at them: Hundreds of lightning strikes were seared the Ship, doing nothing to the colossus other than showcase it in brief; staccato flares of light casting strange shadows across its even stranger surface. The spectacle was hypnotic and could even boast its own soundtrack: Even over the din of the wind and rain and thunder, the Shipsong could be heard, once more seeming to make the noise of the storm part of its own symphony without once ever changing its alien harmonics or its surreal rhythms. When the storm abated, the meeting resumed. They’d paused for over an hour to watch.

“Okay,” Bloom said, “Show’s over. Let’s get back on track; time for departmental updates, such that they are.”

As she finished speaking, Bloom gestured to one of the mess clerks for a large pot of coffee. While they waited, Kodo spoke:

“Doctor Cole and I have gotten in touch with some people we know,” He said, “Microbiologists, biochemists and geneticists; we’ve sent them all cell samples. When they get them they’re going to start running different experiments. Among other things we’re hoping to clone the cells.”

“To what end?” Bloom asked.

“We might have a better understanding of the cells themselves if we can watch them grow,” Cole replied as more coffee arrived. The members of the SSE began preparing their coffees.

“Other than that, we’re taking a closer look at the extra chromosomes found in the samples,” Kodo said, “With most life on Earth we’d see between twenty and fifty chromosome pairs, depending on the type of life form. Humans have forty-six chromosomes. The cells from the Ship have eighty-nine; assuming that they are indeed even chromosomes.” He glanced at Doctor Cole, who referred to her console.

“The chromosome-like structures we’ve observed are quite unusual,” Cole said, “Given firstly that there are an odd number of base pairs. Secondly, they don’t quite behave the way we would expect chromosomes to behave in a normal cell. Finally, the structures are lacking the equivalent of telomeres; objects on the ends of chromosomes that gradually shorten as cells divide, regulating cell growth.”

“You left out the fact that eighty-nine is a prime number,” Andrews interjected.

“In chromosomes,” Cole continued, ignoring the mathematician. “The telomeres also serve the function of controlling the rate of cellular reproduction, to a certain extent. Without them, cells divide uncontrolled. Cancer, for example, occurs partially because cells mutate and develop without telomeres. Then there are other components, similar to structures in plant cells and yet serving no function we can identify. The mechanics of these cells are completely unlike anything we’ve seen here on Earth.” She’d finished speaking and sipped at her coffee. Bloom turned to Aiziz and Andrews.

“We’re working with Peter right now,” Aiziz reported, “On determining what we’ll need to generate a high-speed translation software once we’ve mastered the basics of Shiplanguage.”