Quofum

by Alan Dean Foster

  The confrontation or standoff or examination or however one chose to think of it (N’kosi considered all three and more) continued for several minutes, until the subject of the radiant inspection swallowed and said, as clearly and composedly as the situation and his emotions would allow, “Hello.”

  There was no reaction from the shimmering spheres. He repeated the salutation a little louder, also to no effect. Taking into consideration that an action should have an opposite if not necessary equal or even comprehensible reaction, he moved to his left with the intention of going around the purple sphere.

  It immediately slid sideways to block his path.

  This told the wary but fascinated scientist two things. First, the arrival of the spheres was not a coincidence but was directly related to and probably responsive to his presence, and second, hostility was not an initial reaction to his intrusion. His assumption was reconfirmed when he stepped back and attempted to advance in the other direction by going around the orange orb. Replicating the reaction of its darker companion, it too moved to block his path.

  He pondered the possibilities. Was there something nearby that was explicitly off-limits to intruders? Something a nonmachine was not supposed to see? Or by advancing this deep into the complex had he finally triggered some kind of automated response mechanism?

  Studying the spheres, he doubted that they possessed the equivalent of high intelligence. They were pure automatons, part and parcel of his immediate engineered surroundings. No effort was made on their part to communicate. They had materialized, confronted him, and blocked his advance, but without any attempt at explanation. He was not being questioned and they exhibited nothing in the way of curiosity or active sentience.

  Intelligent beings composed of pure energy had been mooted, of course, ever since the KK-drive had been developed and humankind had taken its first baby steps beyond the bounds of Earth. But no evidence for the actual existence of such creatures had ever been found.

  That did not mean, he reminded himself, that their existence was an impossibility. It was just that nothing he had seen thus far inclined him to place the twin spheres in that category. They were closer kin to the other astonishing mechanisms surrounding him than they were to cousin Joe.

  It was at the conclusion of this rumination that the orange sphere drifted forward and bumped him.

  Contact was soft and cushiony, as if he had been nudged with a thick pillow. There was not enough weight or force in it to push him backward. This being the case and curious to see what would happen next, N’kosi held his ground. When he did not move, the orange orb advanced a second time. Impact was as gentle as before, only this time it was accompanied by a blast of heat. Startled, N’kosi stumbled backward a couple of steps and hurriedly looked down at himself. It felt as if a flaming torch had been jabbed against his solar plexus. There was no sign any such burning had occurred. The top of his jumpsuit was not even scorched. When he cautiously patted the fabric with his fingers it was cool to the touch.

  Both spheres came toward him again. Indicating that he now understood their purpose and intent, he retreated several steps. When the orbs maintained their steady forward motion, he turned and started walking away from them. They followed, maintaining a constant distance behind him.

  He was within a couple of hundred meters of the tunnel entrance when he whirled sharply and tried an end run around the purple sphere. This time it did not move to block his path. Instead, a crackle of violet lightning burst from its interior to intersect his chosen route. The faint smell of ozone tickled N’kosi’s nostrils as he skidded to a halt and began to back up. Rapidly, this time.

  The resident instrumentation, it appeared, was losing patience with the intruder. He decided it would not be a good idea to try and repeat the previous maneuver. Earlier intimations of mechanical pacifism notwithstanding, next time the potent electric discharge might be directed through him instead of merely in front of him.

  By now he felt he had a pretty good handle on the events of the past hour. He had emerged from the tunnel to marvel at the seemingly interminable underground complex of connectors, links, energy beams, terminals, and Einstein knew what else. As long as he had remained within the tunnel his arrival had been ignored. Once he had stepped out into the room, which for all he knew and could tell or measure ran around the entire inside of the world, his presence had been noted. Appropriate automated apparatus had been dispatched to deal with him. That it had done so gently, if with increasing insistency, bespoke volumes for the conscientious nature of its builders. It would have been a simple matter to blast him to powder the instant he had set foot in the radiant white chamber.

  The purple and orange spheres were the highly advanced equivalent of a couple of brooms charged with sweeping out debris that might find its way in from the outside. That they could probably have killed him, if only by enveloping him and depriving him of air, was a realization he committed to memory as decisively as anything he had seen in the endless subterranean chamber. That they would kill him if he persisted in his attempts to bypass them was a hypothesis he had no intention of testing further.

  At least not by himself, equipped as he was with nothing more powerful than a pair of field sidearms.

  Quofum’s sun was just beginning to set when he emerged from the far end of the tunnel. He did not kiss the ground when he at last stepped from metal surface onto soil, but his respiration did slow. On the way out he had found himself looking back over his shoulder, half expecting to see a mass of purple or orange light coming up fast and angry behind him. The only danger the pair of patrolling orbs posed now, however, was to his imagination. The last he had seen of them showed their glowing forms receding in his wake as he had hurried away up the tunnel.

  Out of sight, out of mind, he told himself. Or in the case of the spheres, once he had left the underground expanse behind, he had passed beyond their programmed awareness.

  He reached his improvised beach camp before darkness could close in around him. There beneath the makeshift canopy of harvested native vegetation he replayed and studied the visuals and associated information his instruments had recorded. He had not dreamed it. It was all there: the perfectly smooth metal tunnel, the long walk in darkness, the resplendent and inexplicable underground chamber replete with incomprehensibly advanced technology engaged in unknown and possibly unknowable tasks, and the impassable spherical guardians. He replayed it as often in his mind as he did via the compact projector. Except for the spheres whose actions were not in question, he could not make sense of nor find reason or explanation for what he was viewing.

  What were all those thousands upon thousands of energy beams, connectors, tubes, and transits doing in the ground beneath them? What, if anything, were they doing to the surface of Quofum? If he could not get past the patrolling orbs, how could such questions be answered? One thing he knew for certain, and without having to ponder it at length. There was far, far too much here to be interpreted or understood by one individual. It needed, it demanded, the attention of a full complement of Commonwealth researchers. Of an entire department, if such could be transferred. With a softly voiced command he shut off the recorder’s projector.

  In lieu of such inaccessible resources he would have to rely in addition to himself on the intelligence, expertise, experience, and, yes, the imagination of one female human and one thranx xenologist.

  15

  N’kosi had hoped upon his return to find a reenergized Valnadireb hard at work within the camp’s laboratory complex. His mixed disappointment and concern at not encountering the thranx there was more than mitigated by the cheery salutation he did receive.

  “Iorana, Mosi.” Though she welcomed him with the ancient traditional greeting of her ancestral tribe, the smile that accompanied it struck him as more world-weary than content. He was not surprised. Quofum was a world that could be more than wearying, even for those who did not happen to be marooned on its chaotic, unnerving surface.

  “How w
as your field trip?” he asked her as he drew himself a glass of cold distilled water from the nearby dispenser.

  “Informative. Educational. Exciting at the beginning, exhilarating in the greater part, dispiriting at the end.” She shut off the scanner she had been studying. “I found two more sentient species and spent time among one of them. They’re as different from, say, the spikers and the fuzzies as we are from the stick-jellies. I also came across and recorded evidence of not one but two far more advanced civilizations, also different from anything we’ve so far encountered.”

  “Really?” He sipped from the glass. The cold liquid was rejuvenating. “How advanced?”

  She looked at him uncertainly. His tone hinted at something unspoken. “One inland. Overgrown by forest. Probably pre-steam but making progress in that direction. The other on a spit of subsided land but remarkably well preserved despite being completely submerged. Far more advanced than the other, possibly to the level of extraplanetary travel but likely pre-Amalgamation.”

  He nodded, took another swallow, said nothing. Her expression narrowed.

  “Pardon me, Mosi, I know we’re all getting a little bit jaded by new discoveries here, but don’t you find any of this the least little bit electrifying?”

  “‘Electrifying.’” Interesting corollary, he mused, remembering the purple bolt the amethyst-hued sphere had spat to block his path. “Yes, I suppose I do. Congratulations.”

  “Gee, thanks.” She made no attempt to mute the sarcasm in her tone. “And you’ve been doing what here while I was gone? I suppose you found a couple of lost civilizations, too?”

  “No.” He spoke quietly as he set the glass down on a nearby workbench. “Just one.”

  The matter-of-factness of his response took her aback, but only for a moment. “Well?” she prompted him impatiently when he did not continue. “What was yours like? Could it be a southern offshoot of one of the two I discovered?”

  “Somehow I don’t think so.” He ran one finger lazily around the interior rim of the empty glass, staring at the contents. “What I found lies underground. How far it reaches and how big it is I can’t say. The development extended beyond what the instruments I had with me could measure.”

  “Really?” In the scientific spirit of the moment her initial displeasure at having her own findings all but casually dismissed was set aside. “Estimated level of technological achievement?”

  Raising his gaze from the glass, he looked across at her. “Beyond assessment.”

  “Beyond…?” She gaped back at him. When she saw that he was neither drunk, joking, or under the influence of recreational pharmaceuticals, she pulled up a nearby chair and sat down. “What are you saying, Mosi? What exactly does that mean, ‘beyond assessment’? I don’t recall that being listed on the chart approved for determining the various levels of alien technosocial achievement.”

  He responded with a casual shrug and cryptic smile. “What I stumbled across, Tiare, is at least according to first impressions so far off the chart to which you are referring that a new one will be required to even begin to make sense of it.”

  She sat for a long moment, silent and thoughtful. Not unlike, he mused, much of the alien apparatus he had encountered at the terminus of the tunnel.

  “I’m not sure I believe what you’re telling me, Mosi,” she declared finally.

  Having anticipated this possible reaction, he nodded tiredly. “Come with me,” he told her, “and I’ll show you.”

  Later, after they had both watched the floating tridee presentation he had edited and put together in the course of half a day’s work, she looked over at him as the final projection winked out and stated simply, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have doubted you, Mosi.”

  He chuckled softly as he deactivated the projection unit. “Why not? I would have.”

  Leaning back in the lab chair, she put her hands behind her head and gazed contemplatively at the smooth pale curve of the ceiling. “Even more than who constructed it and how extensive it is, I find myself wondering what it’s all for.”

  N’kosi nodded agreement. “That’s why I didn’t take the scooter and try to penetrate farther. Not just because those sweeper spheres would probably have tried to stop me, but because I felt right away that I would be in over my head if I tried to make sense of it all without someone else present to criticize assumptions, make alternative suggestions, or evaluate my hypotheses.” Rising from his seat, he walked over to halt in front of her. “It was no place and no subject to try to define with hasty conjectures. I needed intellectual backup. I needed you and Val.”

  She nodded, then frowned. Sitting up straight, she looked around the room. “Speaking of Val…?”

  N’kosi sighed and gestured westward. “These days he spends more time outside the perimeter and in the forest than he does here in camp. One time while you were away I had to practically drag him back and delouse him. The thing of it is, he knows he’s spending too much time out there.” The xenologist licked his lips fretfully. “I really feel that if I didn’t keep after him and force him to check in regularly he would simply sit down on a log or one of those peculiar silicate growths and let the forest take him.”

  Haviti blinked at her counterpart. “‘Take him’?”

  “He’d become one with the woods, let himself be absorbed into it both physically and mentally. Of course, once he was absorbed physically that would be the end of him mentally. He keeps losing focus.”

  She rose from the chair. “Let’s have something to eat. Can’t think properly on an empty stomach. Maybe he’s just tired.”

  Falling in step beside her, N’kosi nodded agreement. “If anything will jolt him intellectually and wake him up, it will be this new discovery of mine. For one thing, it’s all underground.” Gleaming white teeth, half of them artificially regenerated, flashed a broad smile at her. “Being thranx, he should be delighted to go wandering around the place I found. Certainly he’ll be more comfortable down there than you or I. Who knows? Maybe he can even persuade the guardian orbs to let us probe deeper.” Leaving the laboratory module, they crossed through the entrance dome and entered the residence area.

  “Tell me, Mosi: what do you think it’s all for?” she asked him. “Surely you’ve given it some thought. The vast underground network, all those tubes and light-links and connectors? Even if you’ve been waiting for my opinion and Val’s you must have done some speculating by now.” Reaching out, she put a friendly hand on his shoulder. “I know you well enough to know that you couldn’t avoid doing so.”

  “Sure, I’ve given it some thought. Initially I assumed it was a habitat for yet another sentient Quofumian species, only one that was far in advance of anything we’ve yet encountered. But even though my progress was eventually halted by the spheres, I saw enough to soon realize that what I was looking at had nothing to do with tenancy. It was as if someone had built an enormous wired house and then removed the dwelling, leaving only the wiring behind.” He gazed off into the distance, remembering.

  “There were hundreds of kilometers of ‘wiring,’ probably thousands, but nothing for it to be wired to except more of itself. A rat’s nest without any rats.”

  She was a step ahead of him as they entered the dining area. “The vit you made showed hundreds of connections running from floor to ceiling, from subterranean sites toward the surface.” He nodded, and she concluded, “Maybe that’s what all that massive infrastructure is intended to link together.”

  N’kosi frowned. “The ground and the surface? Or something in the ground to something on the surface? To what end, Tiare?”

  She shrugged. “Who knows? If we’re going to find out we’re going to have to examine at least some of the instrumentation in detail. That’s if your colorful lightning-farting orbs will let us.” She glanced around the deserted dining area. “All of us.”

  He nodded understandingly. “You too hungry to go for a walk? If I just call, Val may not answer. It wouldn’t be the first time.”r />
  “Try,” she suggested. “If there’s no response we’ll take the hike you’re proposing and shepherd him back inside. He needs to see that vit you compiled.” She turned suddenly wistful. “Science Central needs to see that vit, and every xenologist in the Commonwealth, but that’s not likely to happen for a long time. If ever.”

  “All we can do is live for and focus on the here and now,” he reminded her. “The future is going to have to take care of itself.”

  A reluctant Valnadireb did not want to return to camp. Though he protested that he was only following through on a normal day’s fieldwork, N’kosi could see that the thranx was backsliding again. Just as he had told Haviti, it was plain that they could not leave him alone for several days at a time or their increasingly indolent colleague was likely to simply vanish into the forest, never to return. The next time he did so he might turn off or throw away his communit, making it impossible to find him.

  Thankfully and as his friends had hoped, the vit of the subterranean world N’kosi had found seemed to snap the thranx out of his lingering lethargy.

  “Unbelievable.” As the last glimmer of the hovering presentation faded into the air of the lab, Valnadireb slid off the lounge on which he had been lying. Multiple lenses fixed on N’kosi. “But what can be the purpose, the meaning of so much sophisticated infrastructure? And who built it?”

  “That’s what I am hoping the three of us, working together, can find out,” N’kosi told him. “We may have a more difficult time establishing the identity of the builders than the function of their instrumentation. While I was only allowed a little time for observation before I was eased out, I saw no signs of organic life. It may be that the builders are long gone and that the whole undertaking, whatever its intent, is entirely automated. Function, maintenance, upgrading, expansion—everything.”

  “Or,” proposed Haviti, “the builders themselves may simply be elsewhere. On another world of this system, a different stellar location, or no more than a hundred kilometers distant from the place where you gained entrance.”