“It is in your brain?” Ian said. “Oolawath nuko-un?”
“Doorway to the greater mind,” Chei said.
Ian nodded. “The proxy chamber worked that way when I first used it on my own. I heard … nuko-un ahn nuko-che.” He shrugged. “My words are bad.”
“Mind-greater equals mind-child?” Rocky translated.
“Yes. Greater mind,” he pointed up at the small sphere in the overhead, “is wath nuko-che.” He pointed at his own head.
“That is the brain of Tacra Un?” Chei asked.
Ian shrugged, then nodded. “Nuko-un wath my mind.”
“Wait. Is it possible that the language is also telepathic?” Chei asked. “If Ian is sharing a brain with the greater mind of the Tacra Un, that might explain a lot.”
“Not sharing,” Ian said. “Sometimes words mean more than one thing. I can know the different meaning inside my nuko-che better than maybe you. Is not clear, but know, not hear things. Ahn?”
“Dutch are you tracking this conversation?” Chei asked. “It sounds like you and Ian are both talking about telepathy. Do you have any way to confirm that with the Tacra Un?”
“It referred me back to the same non-verbal word. I assume this may mean affirmative.”
“So the only way to understand the language completely, is to link the written forms telepathically to some other type of understanding?”
“This would explain the simplicity of the written and spoken forms of the Un Shan Takhu language,” Dutch said.
“Simple?”
“Yes. One would assume that an ancient civilization would have an extensive vocabulary, yet the matrix only contains 22,608 words. Even moderately primitive languages of earth exceeded this word count early in their evolution,” it explained.
“Where does that leave us? None of us are psychic,” Chei said.
“Perhaps not, but we must try,” Rocky said.
Ian jumped down into the nearest pit and grinned as it lit up in response. It was by far the most complex display they’d seen on any system since they entered the Kanahto.
“Can you tell what it does?” Chei asked.
He spun in a slow circle and scanned the readouts. He shook his head and then closed his eyes for several seconds. When he opened them, he reached out and touched one section of the console. The view of the outside world changed, spinning and then shooting forward like he was driving L-4 Prime through space. Rocky slammed sidewise into Chei and they both hit the floor.
Chei felt his stomach moving, in reverse digestive order. Along with everything above his toenails. “What the frag? Are we moving?” he gasped.
“The inertial sensors on the Jakob Waltz do not indicate movement,” Dutch said. “I believe it is discontinuity in your visual input.”
“Ian, stop!” he shouted, looking down at the floor as he gulped in air and tried to hang onto his insides.
“Yah.” Ian said. He apparently hadn’t felt the sickening twist, but when he looked up, he realized he’d caused it because his face broadcast his apology.
“What the hell did you do?”
“It is the sensor system,” Ian said. “I assumed it was not dangerous. Sorry.”
“Is disconcerting,” Rocky said. “I advise issuing warning before you attempt again.” She was on her hands and knees staring at the deck and shaking.
“That was more than visual discontinuity,” Chei said as he flopped over onto his back and looked up at the sky projected on the vault above him. “Where the hell are we?”
“Near Saturn,” Ian said. “I think.”
“It appears as if we are there,” Rocky said, sitting back on her legs and staring up at the stars.
“Dutch, are you sure we didn’t move?” Chei asked.
“Negative. We are still in the same physical place. The Armstrong and the multicruisers have not changed position. I can confirm the beacon locations if you wish further corroboration.”
“It is a sensor projection,” Ian said. He wrinkled his face as he considered his words. “I told it to show me something, interesting.”
“What is of interest at Saturn?” Rocky asked.
“Look over there,” Chei said, pointing at a faint dot moving against the backdrop of stars. “Is that a ship?”
“I can check,” Ian said, sending the room lurching forward again.
Chei clamped his eyes closed, but it didn’t help. He gasped again as the nausea washed over him in a wave. Rocky fell forward and clamped her hands over her head.
The sensation passed and when he opened his eyes, what looked like a solid apparition of a space ship filled the entire center of the vault above them. Visible on the bow of the ship was its name.
Katana.
“Where the hell is this?” Chei asked.
The room spun and Saturn arced into view and a line connected it to the ship. A string of numbers appeared below the line. Ian translated it. “800 million kilometers from Saturn. On a heading toward us.”
“Is over three billion kilometers away,” Rocky said, flipping down on the deck beside Chei with a groan. “Unbelievable to see such detail.”
“I think I can get greater resolution,” Ian said.
“No!” Chei barked. “Another surge and we’ll be cleaning up the deck for sure. Shut it down until we can figure out what makes us want to hurl.”
The Katana faded, and the stars snapped back to the local view, without the gut wrenching vertigo. Chei shook his head as he pushed himself up from the deck, and tried to get his feet back under him with some degree of stability. “You didn’t feel that?” he asked as Ian jumped back out of the pit.
Ian shrugged and shook his head. “Maybe it da-ahn the pit.” he said.
“Perhaps we lack mental component and this makes us susceptible to effect Ian does not experience,” Rocky suggested.
“I hope not,” Chei said. “Otherwise he might be the only one here that can use the controls.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Gateway Colony: L-4 Prime:
Jeph was sitting at his desk reading the latest update from Chei and Rocky. The control room of the Kanahto was thousands of times more complex than anything they had encountered so far. He knew they would have to assign more bodies to figuring it out soon. After ten days, they still hadn’t located a control group that looked like it would shut down the quantum sink, but they were closing in on identifying what each workstation did, in a general sense.
Dr. Jameson had been after him over it, but the scientist had turned out to be a team player and he left the final determination up to Jeph. Roja and Nakamiru were a lot less forgiving of the slow progress, and he had a status briefing scheduled for firstshift where he knew they were going to want answers. Or blood.
“Jeph have you got a minute?” Anju asked as she popped her head through the door.
“Sure,” he said, relieved at the opportunity for a break. “What’s swinging?”
Glancing over her shoulder and nodding before she came in, she smiled at him. I have something to show you. She was carrying a pile of hardware and tossed it on his conference table. He looked at it for a moment before he realized what it was.
“Something wrong with Alyx’s mobility gear?” he asked. “I can call Rocky to come take a—”
“No the gear is fine,” she said with a strange smile.
He got up and bounced toward the table, the yellow ring on the floor around him extending as he moved. “What’s wrong then?”
She swallowed hard and looked at him as if something choked the words out of her. Finally she nodded toward the door.
He turned to look, expecting to see anything except what was there.
Alyx stood just inside the door. Wearing a thinskin and a smile. And nothing else. It took several seconds for the reality to break through to him.
She stood.
Without her exosuit.
In earth normal gravity.
His mouth fell open, and he collapsed back into the chair at t
he head of the table as she walked over and stood beside Anju.
Walked. In full gravity.
He shook his head trying to wake himself up. This can’t be real.
“Surprise,” Alyx said, grinning.
“How?” he asked, staring at her in total disbelief.
“Remember the proxy chambers they discovered a few weeks ago?”
“Vaguely,” he said. “I’ve been focusing on the control room, so I haven’t been keeping up.”
“I figured,” she said. “What I did is against your orders not to experiment with any Shan Takhu technology until we’ve had a chance to study it I know, but this seemed worth it.”
Alyx sat down and reached out to take Jeph’s hand, her grip impossibly strong. “I volunteered to help her study it,” she said.
“You should have talked to me about it,” he said, fighting a conflict inside himself. “This was an incredible risk.”
“It might have been, but Ian walked me through the interface and showed me the basics,” she said. “I spent every day since they discovered it, to learn what it could do, and then I decided it wasn’t that dangerous.”
“Obviously it worked but …” He paused, stared into Alyx’ eyes, then shook his head. “You should have talked to me about it.”
“I know,” she said. “But if it went sidewise, I didn’t want you to carry that responsibility. We chose to try.”
“That device is the most amazing thing I have ever seen,” Anju said.” It took less than ten minutes to set it up and then it only took a few seconds to do the repair to her spine.”
“I stayed awake the whole time,” Alyx said. “The scariest part of the process was that I had to get out of my exosuit before we could start. Once I got laid down, I felt nothing at all until suddenly I realized I could move my body again.”
“She’s also got real bones again, and a mesomorph physiology,” Anju said.
“It was harder learning to coordinate my body to the full grav than anything else,” she said. “I feel like I’m in a new body.”
“You are,” Jeph said, nodding.
“We are on our way up to MedBay so I can scan her over with gear I know, but if she checks out, I think this upgrade is something you and Shona should consider doing too.”
“It’s … unbelievable feeling … to walk around naked in the same world as everyone else,” Alyx said. “It’s like a dream.”
“Who’s seen you?” he asked, realizing that this might cause problems if he tried to keep it under wraps.
“Everybody’s at thirdmeal in the other stack,” Anju said. “We made sure to come here first.”
“Lie low until I can talk to Jameson and we can figure out how to justify why you got to break the rules.” He leaned back in his chair and shook his head. “Don’t take this wrong, because you know I am thrilled for you, but this will unload a pile of worms to sort out with the Armstrong people.”
Cell A-106: Security Detention Center One: Galileo Station:
Tomlinson walked into the small cell and, pushing an uneaten meal to the side, put a box on the table. Sitting down, he placed his hands flat on the surface and took several deep breaths while Paulson sat on his bunk motionless.
Curiosity overpowered Lassiter’s desire to remain detached from reality, and he slid forward to put his feet on the floor. “What are you doing?”
Derek nodded at the chair on the opposite side of the table without explanation. Once Paulson had taken the seat, he opened the box and tapped a blue button on the device inside. Gasping as the sensation of disconnect ripped through his brain and body he nodded.
“You’ve screwed me so many times I should let Odysseus add you to the list of others he’s killed,” he said.
“I am surprised that hasn’t happened already,” Lassiter said, the reality of the situation draining the life out of his words. “I don’t know why you haven’t had me vented.”
Derek flipped the box upside down and the contents spilled on the table. Three items sat in a pile, the device with the button, a small derma-syringe and a security passchip. He spread them out and pulled the device toward him. The other two things he left in the middle of the table.
“What’s this?” Paulson asked.
“It’s your escape plan,” he said.
Surprise played over Lassiter’s face in gradual stages of increasing intensity until it reached a level of serious skepticism. “Why would you do this?”
Derek sighed, letting the air hiss out of his lungs. “Because you cannot possibly know what it feels like to share my awareness with Odysseus. I see everything it wants me to see when it wants me to see it. I hear everything it wants me to hear. There is no place I can be where it doesn’t know my thoughts.”
“I understand,” Lassiter said, his eyes showing that he was struggling to comprehend.
“I don’t think you do,” he said as he struggled to hold back on his emotions. “I can never think of my wife, or my children, where Odysseus isn’t scrutinizing the minutia of my memories. I have no privacy and no possibility of an intimate conversation with my family without having it dissect the moment. Without having to endure its analysis as it shows me every single reason what I feel or think is inferior to its logical perfection.
“Odysseus eats, feels, hears, and smells everything I experience. It knows my subconscious mind and watches my dreams like a voyeur, and then asks me why I dreamt of my wife, or my imagined lovers. It wants to know why I miss her and then tells me why my love is insignificant in its infinite version of the world.”
“Why did you get the implant then?” he asked.
“I had no choice,” he said. He shook his head, his desperation giving way to anger. “You arranged for Jahen to give me an occasional moment of peace. A moment of being myself without being part of the Odysseus-we. I am not a collective awareness. I am an individual, and it will never understand that.”
Lassiter sat in silence as he tried to grasp the depth of the Director’s frustration.
“I know you had your own motivations for what you did, but when you discussed with Jahen the idea of building this, you gave me the ability to snatch back an instant of me … that is a debt that earns you the pass,” Tomlinson said, picking up the syringe. “This is a short-term memory inhibitor. I won’t remember you overpowering me and injecting this. Take the chip and go. The guards are all out of the way and a shuttle is waiting at the security transfer airlock, up one deck. It will get you as far as New Hope City, but from there you’re on your own. Keep your head down.”
“I can’t believe you’re doing this,” Lassiter said as he picked up the chip.
“Neither can I,” Derek said, pressing the injector against his arm and listening to the hiss of the chemical penetrating his skin. “I owe you, but I will never trust you. Just don’t make me regret this.” He shook his head once and groaned as he dropped over into blackness.
Un Shan Takhu Institute: Gateway Colony: L-4 Prime:
Dr. Jameson and Danel sat next to Jeph, and they had just finished a rather intense discussion about why he had allowed his doctor and one of his crew to get away with breaking the rules they had all agreed to. They had come to an understanding that they hoped would keep everyone satisfied.
“Good morning, Governor,” the chancellor said as she and the admiral appeared at the door and took seats beside their science officer. She carried a small stack of thinpads and arranged them on the table in front of her as Captain Jeffers came in carrying another pile.
A few seconds later Anju arrived and smiled sheepishly as she took her place beside Danel.
“Before we begin,” Admiral Nakamiru said, “I’d like to let you know we are tracking an approaching ship. It is still about a day out and is running without a transponder.”
“We’re trying to figure out who it is. All we can say for sure at this point is it’s coming in hard and seems to be small,” Jeffers said, pushing one of her pads across the table in Jeph’s direction.
<
br /> “If necessary, we’ll deal with it before it becomes a threat to the Colony,” the chancellor said.
Jeph nodded and smiled. “I don’t think it will be a problem.”
“You also don’t look surprised?” she said.
“I’m not,” he said. “I should have let you know sooner, but we’ve been tracking it for a while.”
Roja raised an eyebrow and glanced at the Admiral.
“The approaching vessel is the Katana. It is one of your Sparrowhawk-class experimental fast-ships,” Dutch said.
“How do you know that?”
“We detected it almost two weeks ago,” Dutch said.
“I meant how do you know the Katana is from that project?” he said.
“I got the information from your system,” it said.
“I thought we closed that security hole,” the admiral said, looking at the captain.
“Apparently not,” she said, tapping notes into one of her thinpads.
“We can address that issue later,” Roja said, shaking her head. “Where was it when you detected it?”
“It was just this side of Saturn’s orbit,” Jeph said as the ship appeared on the wall behind him.
“That’s impossible,” Jeffers said, glancing up at the image and blinking.
“It’s a simulation,” Nakamiru challenged.
Jeph shook his head. “It’s a direct observation. Chei Lu pointed out that sensors with this kind of scanning resolution and range would be essential for vessels traveling at or above light velocity.”
Dr. Jameson sighed. He looked like he wanted to argue, but he’d lived in the Colony since the first day and he’d seen enough to know better. Einstein was no longer God of his universe.
“That limits who is coming at us,” Roja said. “We know where that ship was as of a month ago.”
“While you know where it was, you do not know who is in control of it,” Dutch said. “Odysseus-Solo and I have been considering defense against the Odysseus-Collective, and we have postulated that it would be possible for it to have adapted to your blackwall protocol and have other means of infiltration.”
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