The World Forgot (21 page)

“Concentrated pattern, Archer,” Byron says. “Let's try not to cave the whole tunnel in around us.”

I flinch at the sound of the weapons echoing through the corridor as Cole and Byron fire into the rock face, zigzagging their shots from the ceiling down to the floor. The rock crumbles away more and more rapidly, and after a few moments they stop firing to let the dust settle.

“Wow,” Chloe says as the results of their labor come into focus. “More rock. Great job, guys.”

“Wait,” I say. I step forward. It's true that the surface looks nearly identical to the rock that was just cleared away. But something seems . . . off. I place my hand on the surface. It's cool to the touch, but the longer my hand stays in place, the warmer the surface gets. I place my other hand on the rock, and suddenly a low humming begins to emanate from the rock.

“Incredible,” Byron says.

“Well, what do I do now?” I ask. “Say something in old Elvish?”

Where's Ducky when you need someone to laugh at your hilarious nerd jokes? Not a peep from these guys. Nothing.

But soon I've stopped caring that my humor goes unappreciated, because the rock begins to slide apart down a ­middle seam, and it becomes clear that it isn't a rock wall at all but a door. It parts all the way, revealing a large circular room crafted out of more red mineral, similar to the door. We step inside, our footsteps echoing in the empty space.

And then the wall/door slams shut behind us.

“Shit,” I say. I place both hands on the door again, but nothing. There's no visible seam to work either.

“So here we are, in a pitch-black cave, under Mars,” Chloe says. “Now what?”

As if in response to her question, the room springs to life. Lights flash along the sheer walls without any hint of a source. It appears as if the rock itself is illuminating the space. Along the curved walls, large sections begin to flicker with strange, scrolling symbols.

“Did I do that?” Chloe asks in a whisper.

Cole is more direct. “Hellllloooooo?” he calls loudly. “Who's there, please?”

I place a hand on his arm. “It's not a who,” I tell him, amazed. “It's a what.” I point at the scrolling imagery around us. “It's a screen. This is a computer.”

“Then what's that say?” Cole wonders, tracing a few of the gibberish symbols with his finger. “Is it Martian?”

“I don't think it's a language, per se,” I reply, slowly examining it. “It looks more like code.”

“Very astute, Earth child.”

The voice is so otherworldly that even Byron jumps at the sound. We all look around the room frantically but see no one.

“Who's there?” I ask, not even bothering to feel silly for pulling a Cole Archer.

“There is no one there, Earth child. It is simply me. The ‘computer,' as you put it. Here. Perhaps this will make for a more fluid exchange of data.”

The center of the ceiling begins to glow, and a cone of red light shoots down to the floor and begins spinning around. After a few moments the light takes shape as a tall, humanoid form, almost like a regular person but thinner, hairless, and with large, oblong black eyes.

“Greetings, travelers. You have come very far. I am Merv. How may I assist you?”

Chapter Thirteen

Wherein, If You Thought That There Was Nothing Further to Learn about Alien Life, You Would Be Wrong. Sooooooo Wrong.

“You seem confused by my appearance,”
Merv says as he looks at each of us in turn. Well, not looks, I guess—I'm assuming this room-slash-computer has camera sensors recording our every move, embedded somewhere unseen, along with the magically appearing monitors, but the holographic projection is doing a good imitation of “looking” with its massive dark eyes as it registers our movements.

“What's to be confused about?” I say. “You're a computer. This is what martians looked like. End of story.”

“Ah, yes, ‘martians.' Perhaps I should clarify—”

“I said
end of story
. There are too many different alien species to keep track of already. We're kind of on a tight schedule here, and I honestly don't care anymore. So, you're a martian. Let's move on.”

I don't know if holographic representations of AI can get offended, but apparently they can
look
offended. Merv's eyes widen in what I'm assuming is a martian expression of indignation.

“Very well,”
he says at last.
“Tell me, then. What is your purpose here?”

“Well, like you said, we're from Earth. But we're not all, strictly speaking, earthlings. This here”—I point at Byron—“is my grandfather. He's what's called an Almiri.”

Byron is staring, mouth agape, at Merv. “I've waited a very long time for this,” he tells the holograph earnestly.

“Accessing . . . ah. ‘
Almiri.
Long-range colony seed ship, planetary arrival 2656.8 cycles ago. You have taken the name of your vessel. When your kind arrived here, you called yourself Klahnia.”

“That's correct,” Byron replies. He seems pleased that Merv knows so much about his people.

“Why have you returned? Doing so violates our pact.”

“Pact?” Byron asks. “We come seeking help. Earth is under attack.”

“Activating external sensors . . . Accessing . . .”
Merv seems to stare blankly at the far wall for several moments.
“Yes, it appears that Earth is indeed under attack,”
he says as he refocuses on us.
“I am detecting three distinct engine signatures. Two are significantly more advanced than the other.”

“Those are our ships helping the humans,” Byron explains. “The aggressors call themselves Jin'Kai.”

“Analysis suggests they are Klahnia.”

“Yes,” Byron admits. “It's a long story.”

“Your female companion does not care for long stories.”

“And yet that's all I ever seem to get,” I mutter.

Merv turns back to me, his eyes rotating upward slightly.
“You are not Klahnia.”

“Good eye.”

“You are not human.”

“Two for two. Want to cash out now, or try for the Kia?”

“Your query does not compute. However, it appears hybridization was a success.”

That jolts all of us, even Cole, who has been way more focused on the flashing lights than the conversation with the sentient computer.

“You know about the hybrids?” I ask.

“Yes. Shall I explain? Or do you prefer again to rest on assumptions?”

“Explain away.”

“I could use pictures and small words if that would help.”

“When did
you
get so snarky?”

“I am programmed to adapt my interface to communicate more readily with the user.”

“Score one for the ancient computer guy,” Chloe mutters.

“Right,” I tell Merv. “So, speaking of adaptation?”

“The Klahnia ship
Almiri
arrived on Barsoom expecting to find a primitive peoples they could easily conquer and use for the purpose of procreating their species.”

“Conquer?” Byron starts. “We would never—”

“
There will be time for baseless indignation after I have completed my expository. To continue, the Klahnia did not find this to be the case. The society they intruded upon was a flourishing and advanced species, considerably more developed in many regards than themselves. The attempt to subjugate the native population was drawn-out, bloody, and fruitless.”

“So you guys defeated the Almiri?” I ask. Dreams of martian superweapons once again dance in my head. “Do you still have the weapons you used to beat them?”

“There are no large-scale weapon systems left operational on this planet. If this is what you came seeking, then may I suggest you . . . Accessing Earth cultural databases . . . ‘Go Fish.'”

Well, that's that, then. As nifty as this history lesson has been, it's all been for nothing. No martian weapons. No answer for the Jin'Kai fleet. No hope.

“Please do not exhibit an outwardly defeatist attitude. Your problems would not be solved by finding weapons here.”

“Is that a fact?” Chloe says. Merv considers her, his eyes rotating like when he was looking at me earlier.

“Our conflict with the Klahnia had no victor. Neither side had definitive technological superiority, at least where the arts of war were concerned. After a time neither side had the ability or desire to continue. A treaty was agreed upon, including several stipulations. First, that the Klahnia would depart, never to return. In exchange, we would provide them with an alternative home suitable to their needs.”

“Earth,” I say. “So if you got the Almiri to leave, why aren't there any martians running around? What happened?”

“The planet was determined unsuitable for the further development of the species, and so it was abandoned.”

“Where did they go?” Cole asks.

Look who just started paying attention.

“My programming does not include this information.”

My wheels are spinning. “But I thought there were only six species in the galaxy that the Klahnia could use as breeding hosts,” I say. “That was the whole point of the six colony ships, wasn't it, Byron?”

“That's what we've always believed,” Byron says.

“There are more than six galactic species compatible with the Klahnia's breeding requirements.”

“And humans just happened to be one of them, sitting right next door to you martian folks?”

“No.”

I scratch my head. Cole apparently feels head-scratchy too.

“Okay, I'm lost,” he says. “I know this comes as a shock.”

Merv's eyes twist in his head again, and suddenly one of the monitor displays pushes away from the wall and hovers in three dimensions in front of us. A stream of data scrolls over the screen, and maps that appear to be star charts arrange themselves around the edges of the text.

“My information banks contain the histories of 4,672 sentient species throughout the known universe. We have been observing and studying other worlds considerably longer than the Klahnia—or Almiri, as they now refer to themselves. Of these known species, one in ten exhibit the genetic markers that would make them suitable hosts for the parasitic breeding cycle of the Almiri.”

“You're saying there are more than four hundred species out there that they could be breeding with?” Chloe asks, sounding as incredulous as I feel. “Marsden doesn't know that. I'm sure none of the other Jin'Kai do either.”

“More than four hundred viable species, yes. However, there was never any intention of offering up another defenseless species to the fate the Klahnia had intended for us.”

“What do you call siccing them on the humans, then, huh?” I ask.

“Earthlings were chosen with a different purpose in mind.”

“And what purpose would that be?”

“The Klahnia were a brutal, violent, unpredictable race. They were also, colloquially speaking, not great planners. If they were to succeed in their goal of finding a suitable host species, because of the nature of their procreation cycle, they most likely would have exhausted their potential hosts within a few hundred years, thereby forcing themselves to move on to another planet, and then another, and another, leaving nothing but husks in their wake.”

“Sounds familiar,” Cole says.

“While not a perfect match for Klahnia breeding, humans
appeared”
—Merv emphasizes the word “appeared,” even raising his holographic eyebrows—
“on many levels to be exactly that. So much so that the Klahnia were fooled into believing humans could indeed be used to help spawn future generations of their species. However, given enough time, the dominant species' genetic traits would surely exert their will. And the strongest evolutionary trait in all the universe is the ability to adapt.”

“Hybrids,” I say. I feel like I've been struck by lightning, my body vibrating as the current runs across my skin. “You sent the Almiri to Earth because you knew that they'd start producing hybrid children. The mutation that produced the Enosi didn't come from the Almiri. It came from humans.”

“Yes,”
Merv says.
“The will to adapt and survive is stronger on Earth than on nearly any other planet recorded. If environmental factors threaten a species, that species simply adapts to the new variables to continue to thrive. Failure to do so leads to extinction.”

“But humans aren't stronger than the Almiri, or the Jin'Kai,” Chloe argues. “They're weaker, slower. They live a fraction as long.”

“And yet they survive. The enormous dinosaurs of Earth's past were more powerful than any other species within half a million light years. Yet when disaster struck the planet—literally—those who could not adapt perished. And what mighty animal took their place? The chicken. Do not mistake the strength of an individual as indicative of the strength of the species.”

Beside me Byron lets out a bemused chuckle. “
‘Veni, vidi, vici,'
” he says, shaking his head.

“Who's Vinny Vidivici?” Cole asks.

“It's Latin, dear boy, from one of our forbearers. ‘I came, I saw, I conquered.' It's all so terribly ironic now, isn't it? First we were gods. Then kings, emperors, conquerors. Then we discovered science, the arts, social justice. All the while, we thought we were influencing mankind. We thought ourselves their betters. But it was man who changed us.” Byron strikes a pose, one arm crooked, hand resting on his hip, while the other arm shoots out dramatically in front of him. “‘How happy is the blameless vestal's lot! The world forgetting, by the world forgot.' How cruel that this wondrous revelation comes to us at the twilight hour of our story.”

“Is he always like this?”

“As long as I've known him,” I tell Merv.

“What I don't understand,” Cole says, “is why our ancestors didn't just wipe humans out completely, the way they tried on Mars, the way the Jin'Kai have done over and over again?”

“For a time we kept watch. Envoys were sent periodically to make sure that your people upheld our agreement and followed the Code.”

“You wrote the Code?” Byron asks. He's surprised, sure, but almost giddy at the revelation. More fodder for the poem, I suspect. “All of our laws, all of our dearly held beliefs, found their origin here?”

“It was necessary to ensure that your kind did not over­populate too quickly. The mutation would need adequate time to spread organically through human-hybrid mating.”

“I don't think time is going to be a luxury afforded us by the Jin'Kai,” I say. “With their numbers they'll make the entire planet infertile within a single generation.”

“That is impossible. The mutation has already achieved biological dominance. The movement toward the new species is now inevitable. Human parents or Klahnia parents, the majority of births will be the same. Hybrid. The unification of all. It cannot be avoided.”
Merv pauses.
“It appears we have more visitors.”

“Visitors?” Cole asks. “Who?”

“Who do you think?” I reply, looking at the display. “Jin'Kai. Devastators. Three ships landed right outside.”

“The others will be sitting ducks out there!” Cole cries.

I examine the sensor readout—the martian systems turn out to be quite intuitive—but I can't seem to find our shuttle anywhere.

“Dad must have gotten the stealth shield activated,” I say.

Byron looks over my shoulder. “If the Devastators are scouring the area, it won't be long before they find the ship, stealth shield or not.”

“You're right,” I agree. “We've got to get them in here before the Jin'Kai discover them. Merv, open the doors so we can get our friends.”

“I'm afraid I cannot do that,”
Merv says.

“What? Why not?”

“The new arrivals appear to be very aggressive. My preservation protocols prohibit me from willfully allowing such forces access to my data banks.”

“My father's out there, you stupid holographic twit!” I yell. “And my best friend, and his girlfriend. And . . . a bunch of annoying cheerleaders. But they're people too, and if you think I'm going to let you—”

“I'm sorry. The entrance must remain sealed.”

I watch the display helplessly as the motion sensors pick up several signals spreading out in military formation outside the entrance to the terraforming station. The Devastators are dangerously close to where our ship is most likely sitting, cloaked. It's only a matter of time.

“I can't sit here and just watch,” I say.