“What can you tell me about the star gate?” Leon asked eventually, to prime the pump of the White Indian’s mind, to help him overcome his own resistance to what he was seeing in his head.
The White Indian’s eyes went wide as soon as the Nautilus managed to convey what “star gate” meant exactly. “I whittled away at the bone to get it to fit that one specific notch. Without it, all your other measures to secure safe passage through the gate will fail. It is charged with chi energy from our world. The only ones meant to pass through that gate are the ones from worlds that were cultivated by the farmers that plowed the field of stars with the star gates. They do much more than what you have already discovered. They are somehow able to affect stars and worlds around them for great distances, subtly influencing the space-time of neighboring galaxies. It has the intelligence to identify life capable of being uplifted on distant worlds.” The transmission kept stuttering at words like “space-time” and “galaxies” and “uplift” as both sides fought past the limits of the language translation software. “We owe our very existence to that particular star gate. If you check the other engravings you will see that they are all empty of keys. Each world seeded by that star gate was supposed to present its own key to pass. But they never evolved to where they could identify its use, either destroyed from within or from without. It is why we are alone in the heavens in the proximity of this star gate.”
Leon wondered if he could fill in the blanks for himself. “You’re talking about the Singularity Wave.” It had long been theorized that few civilizations would make it across the barrier from a pre-singularity civilization to a post-singularity civilization. Their conscious minds wouldn’t be evolved enough to handle the empowerment such emerging technologies offered. It had also been hypothesized that any civilization to reach Singularity State first, might well want to ensure that no other civilization did, for such a civilization would be the only true threat to them. Hence the Indian’s remark, “fell either from within or without.”
Once the White Indian understood the term “Singularity Wave” with a little prodding from the Nautilus’s translation engines—she was no doubt evolving her understanding of the language as the native talked, improving with her capacity to communicate abstract notions exponentially—the White Indian nodded. His face looked all the more grave. “You must understand that the gate has the ability to restore all those lost civilizations to the point where they were erased from space and time. But the proper keys must first be fitted to the slots. It tracks everything that happens in its domain.”
Leon sighed. He was sensing the need for yet another cloned version of Natty, Laney, Omega and Alpha force, and of course, the Nautilus and the rest of the crew. Those were a lot of worlds to bring back from the brink, going by the number of carvings on the gate. To say nothing of the mystery of why the star gate itself had allowed for this stipulation—that only with the keys could the ancient civilizations be restored. He’d take the subject of creating one more cloned team for such a mission up with Natty when a moment of opportunity arose.
“We will add retrieving those artifacts to our list of things to do,” Leon said, trying to not sound too put out by the whole affair. It was certainly an honorable task, undoing the work of self-serving bastards working at various cosmic scales. “You understand the nature of our current quest?” Leon asked.
The White Indian took some time formulating his response. Leon didn’t think it was on account of the language translation software. He wasn’t sure of the full nature of his quest either. And if he wasn’t…
Finally, as if reading his mind, the strange aborigine said, “I cannot understand the full nature of your quest. Neither can you at this stage of the game. I’m afraid we are all allowed to see only so much of what’s ahead of us. The torch we each carry only shines so far. It requires walking further into the darkness to perceive more.”
Leon grunted. This guy definitely had lived long enough to understand some fundamentals of the human condition, even if the star gate continued to haunt him, as it had come to haunt Leon.
The White Indian heard a disturbance in the forest. His head turned to it so he could aim an ear in the direction of the sound. “Your other-self approaches with questions of his own,” the aborigine said. “You have many selves and have learned to be in many places at once. I, too, can do this, at times, when the chi flows through this power spot at high tide. Your methods are different, but I am pleased you use your gifts to the same ends. Perhaps we will meet in person out in space, my friend, at the next high tide.” With that, the native turned and disappeared into the forest, headed toward the other Leon.
The Nautilus maintained the visual and audio link just long enough for Leon to catch a glimpse of his other self—one of his clones. It sent a chill up Leon’s back.
And then the transmission cut out.
Leon left the bone where it was. It was a reminder of how the smallest detail could have the greatest significance. And he headed toward the sliding doors. He needed to know how far along the others were with their end of things. Passing through that star gate was going to mean a lot of projects coming to fruition at the same time, the culmination of numerous scientific investigations. A moment of cosmic significance no less rare and less unlikely than the firing of those five blue pulsar suns that it would take to activate the gate. The coordinated pulsar firing was yet another puzzle piece to the mystery of how to pass through the gate of which Natty was likely unaware. It might well be time for another one of their late-night sit-downs. But first Leon needed to know how the others were doing in case he needed to redeploy assets to shore up one or more of the teams that was lagging behind.
As he slipped past the sliding doors, he hiked toward Solo, Cassandra, Natty, Laney, and their new master-at-arms, the Nun, planning to visit with each in turn—each one of them holding a key puzzle piece that would be required to set into position in order to pass through that gate. Leon would review the footage on the key players in preparation for seeing past any subterfuge in regards to the questions he was about to put to them. With this much riding on a smoothly coordinated assault on that star gate, people tended to distort the truth even without trying. The pressures on them caused them to exaggerate how far along they were with their progress for fear of letting down the team, hoping to pull a rabbit out of the hat at the last minute rather than lose face.
Such face-saving ploys could be the death of them all.
TWENTY-THREE
ABOARD THE NAUTILUS
“Leon!” The voice came at him like a sonic blast, and just like a sonic blast it knocked him off his feet, sending him against the viewport lining the perimeter of the ship. Mercifully it was made of a metallic glass that took insults rather well, or he’d be drifting out in the void of space right now.
He righted himself and thwacked the side of his head to get the ringing out of his ears. He’d heard DeWitt’s wife, Corin, use that very same voice to summon her ten-year-old, Ivan, a.k.a. Thor the thunder god. Not surprisingly, Ivan preferred to be addressed by Thor. He wasn’t the least fazed when realizing Thor was a far better name for a dog. Evidently, Corin had learned to turn her voice into an acoustic weapon via superior command of the Nautilus’s atmospheric nanites than he had.
“I’m so glad I’m single,” Leon muttered, heading to Corin’s suite.
“Tell me about it,” Cassandra said, passing him in the hall. “You need me to kill her for you, I’ll make sure it’s long and painful.”
“What’s got her goose cooked?”
“That walking biohazard she calls a child was thrown on ice by his frog doll, no doubt to save me from throwing both of them out the nearest airlock.” Cassandra hadn’t slowed her determined strut past him the entire time, just raised her voice to cross the growing chasm of space between them.
“Techa, save me!” Leon was already on the run to Corin. “Honest to God, I’m thinking of recalling all of my clones to this timeline just to give me room t
o think.”
En route to Corin’s family chambers, he noticed that the newborns were using far more efficient modes of transport. When the newly minted humanoids wanted to get somewhere they just tapped the Nautilus insignia on their one-piece flexible body armor to have the Nautilus beam them to the desired location. Some, the ones able to stay relaxed and centered enough, and so able to maintain two-way communication with the Nautilus, simply materialized to their next location by thinking about it. Others, had opted, much as Leon had, for a more visceral form of transport. One crewmate whizzed by him on a crotch rocket, the motorcycle going at nearly blur speeds, dodging the ones walking to their destinations until it accidentally collided with the purplish-grey humanoid Leon had encountered earlier. The guy held the dimly conscious humanoid up off the ground in one hand, both of them eying the shattered motorcycle that had literally exploded into component parts upon making contact with the one performing the levitation trick. “I assume you did not mean to initiate combat?” the purple-grey asked. The one he was holding up off the ground assured him, no, by shaking all three of his green heads. He set Trifecta down and continued on his way. Trifecta sighed relief and then groaned upon taking a second look at his motorcycle.
Leon noticed air bikes, Jetson-cartoon-like air taxis that carried anywhere from two to four, and of course the dragons also being used for transport. Some of the uplifted Nomads from the prior Sentient Serpents mission were getting into the act as their taxi drivers fired canons mounted on the dinosaurs’ backs to jettison the balls for them to chase in the direction the passengers wanted to go. The passengers were riding in the “back seat” saddles strapped to the same Nomad as the taxi driver. The passengers hopped off en route to the creature catching the ball, or waited until the cannon was fired again to get to their ultimate destination.
Leon arrested his jog. “Maybe out of respect for Corin, if nothing else, Leon.” He tapped his insignia and transported to her suite. Maybe if he had a little less resistance to facing her right now, he could have established the link with the Nautilus on his own as he customarily did.
He’d no sooner beamed into Corin and DeWitt’s private suite than she was pointing at her son, frozen in a display case. She was cursing, or perhaps ranting in Mandarin.
“I didn’t know you spoke Mandarin.”
“The Nautilus is bleeping out what I’m saying to something more age-appropriate for my kid, you…” The rest of her spiel to him was similarly overwritten in Mandarin, courtesy of the Nautilus using the nanites infesting Corin’s body to conspire against her son.
Leon tried to ignore her hysterics as he focused on the kid. He needed to stay calm enough to figure out what was going on, and why the Nautilus hadn’t thawed him out at the same time she had all the others.
He put his hand up to the glass and closed his eyes to see if he could psych out what was going on. This was a hell of a time to try and enter an altered state, but he was trained to bring his A-game under pressure, which was more than he could say for Corin.
He opened his eyes finally and sighed. “Calm down, Corin, for your son’s sake.”
She was still screaming at him in Mandarin, but detected something in Leon’s voice that quieted her quickly enough. “Your son was killed after mixing it up with a humanoid on this ship who’s an actual alien not of the Nautilus’s creation. The nanites inside him are too advanced for his own nanites to fight off. The Nautilus refuses to devote the mind power to solving the problem for you because she has her hands full with a crew full of people Laney and Natty are trying to get ready to pass through the star gate.”
She glared at him with a disbelieving face before the ranting started all over again. Leon held up his hand arrestingly and for some reason she desisted. “You’re a bioengineer, as I recall,” Leon said. “What’s more, your specialty is imparting superhero abilities that can be sold at any Starbucks, the nanite hypodermic served up with the cup of coffee.”
“What are you getting at?”
“Possibly I surmised wrong, and the real reason the Nautilus won’t intervene in your son’s fate is that you hold one of the keys to getting through the star gate. Laney may be the reigning queen of bioengineering on Earth, but her expertise is broad-based and not nearly as focused as yours. Are you aware of what she and Natty are up to?”
“Yes, but my son is my sole interest here. I have no desire to partake in the rest of the drama unfolding about me. I have my ironing to do, and the sheets need washing, and as for the vacuuming…”
Leon restrained a smile. “Don’t give me that look,” she said. “I know I’m a sorry 1950s stereotype of a housewife, but it’s how I struggle through.”
“I told you before we left earth that you needed a better coping mechanism. And helping your son to fulfill his superhero fantasies may well help us all to survive what’s on the other side of that gate. As of now I’m drafting you into action. If you don’t—”
She held up her arm in a halting gesture. “Fine. You win. You’re right. Who am I kidding? My son wants what he wants, and there’s no reason to think that he’ll turn out any differently than his father. My one hope is to make him more idiot-proof so he can survive his own stupidity. And that will take my genetic prowess and then some.”
“It wouldn’t hurt to consider the greater good while you’re at it.”
“Screw the greater good. The universe is always falling apart. It’ll do that with or without you.”
“Ouch. It’ll take my ego months to recover from that one.” Leon kept his face neutral so she really couldn’t read his true reaction.
The bubble burst on the last of her tension and she laughed and cried at the same time, and hugged Leon. When she released him, she said, “Where is my husband anyway?”
“He and the rest of Omega Force and Alpha Unit are still on the planet’s surface, relationship building. Ostensibly they’re blowing off steam with the locals, but the real mission is dual-focused and includes helping the long-lived humanoids down there recall more of their past-life memories. We suspect there are more answers to be had that will bear on surviving what’s on the other side of the gate, if they don’t bear directly on getting through it.”
She snorted, then shook her head slowly, her pensive face replacing the mask she was wearing of the “I’ll kill him” face. Her eyes had gotten glassy, and her breathing had finally settled into something more rhythmic.
Leon looked about her suite. It wasn’t exactly a live-work space. It looked more like a typical home in the burbs. “I gather I will have to procure you a lab.”
“No, no,” she finally said, resting her hands on her hips and coming out of her reveries. The apartment started morphing into a lab right before his eyes, as the current furnishings rotated out of sight and other ones rotated in. “For the sake of my kid I put aside my workaholic ways, or at least channeled them into playing housewife. Now it looks like my workaholism is the only thing likely to keep him alive.”
She went to one of her workstations, and picked up a pencil and started scribbling in the language of organic chemistry. Leon took one last look at the cryogenically frozen kid lit up in his display case, still the brightest source of illumination in the room, and exited Corin’s lab.
The lingering concerns he carried with him out the sliding doors? While Leon had embraced Natty’s “fourth brain” concept—of employing all of his assets in this complex eco-system of humanoids, robots, and supersentient AIs—he still hadn’t thought to include Corin. And it had only now dawned on him how vital a role she played. If he didn’t get this recipe right, didn’t make full use of this ecosystem of bioengineered lifeforms—there would be no getting through the star gate. And even if he did, would they still have enough mind power to do it? The civilization that had designed and built the star gate was so far beyond even what Natty and his father had been able to procure with the Nautilus. Maybe they should all stop worshipping Techa as the goddess of a tech-dominated universe and start worsh
ipping Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. The very real possibility was that it was already game over and the only thing powering him forward was sheer denial.
TWENTY-FOUR
THE NOUVEAU-VIKING PLANET, ERESDRA
Crumley was wrestling Asger in the open pit usually reserved for the fire. But the body heat the two men were throwing off with their exertions was a good enough replacement. The crowd was also being warmed by the grog being passed around that Crumley had whipped up for them. The laughter and excitement and adrenaline spikes associated with the possible outcome of the fight contributed to the last of the thermal effects.
Cronos was walking the circle of spectators from ringside saying, “Okay, come on, everyone, what’ll you bet?” It was a cashless society so the locals had to think long and hard of a bet worthy of placing, and what they considered they could lose at no small sacrifice to themselves. The other Nouveau Vikings in the circle acted as the truthsayers if anyone of their kind attempted to bet something they knew to be worthless, either to the tribe or the individual in question, thus ensuring Cronos wasn’t getting hoodwinked.
Crumley was putting up a hell of a fight, being the far superior wrestler, but Asger and his people were all but unbreakable. It was hard to square off with people who broke boulders against their heads and kicked or punched them into rubble as a way of staying strong enough for the hunt. Asger kept getting up after each throw like a crash dummy with unbreakable zeal, even as Crumley showed signs of tiring.
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