Quofum

by Alan Dean Foster

  “They’re herding us,” Haviti mumbled unhappily as she sat down on the narrow path that ran straight as an arrow between clusters and ranks of gleaming, incomprehensible instrumentation. “Forcing us farther and farther away from the exit.”

  Plumping his daypack into a pillow, N’kosi stretched out on the floor nearby. “It’s too early to be jumping to those kinds of conclusions. We’ve only been here for part of a day. It’s light but it’s late. Let’s try to get some sleep.” He squinted at the omnipresent luminosity that filled every square meter of the never-ending underground space. “Put a collection cloth or something over your eyes and try to turn off your thoughts.” He forced a smile. “At least the noise won’t keep us awake.”

  “Tch! lk,” Valnadireb concurred. “It has been an eventful day. We have accomplished much, learned much. The mind needs rest as well as the body. When we reawaken we can turn our renewed energy to devising a means of circumventing our persistent escort.”

  Haviti was certain she would not be able to fall asleep under such conditions and such stress. Her fatigued body was equally certain she would have no trouble doing so. Somewhere between the two extremes of certainty, truth emerged, so that she eventually did fall asleep but tossed and turned while doing so. The hard, unyielding floor was probably as responsible for her uneasy slumber as was any mental distress.

  When they awoke, almost simultaneously, the six spheres were still there. Hovering, Haviti saw, and watching, she was sure.

  Wordlessly, the three scientists sat and consumed a quick breakfast, thankful for the technology that made self-heating food and self-cooling drink easy and portable. The meal concluded, they rose to resume their research. This time, instead of advancing deeper into the underground complex, they restricted their studies to their immediate surroundings. The last thing they wanted was to be pushed farther into the facility so that they ran the risk of not being able to find their way back. The locator signals from both N’kosi’s temporary camp and the skimmer had been lost, though whether this was due to direct interference by the guardian spheres or the insulating properties of the complex itself, they could not say. It was vital they travel no farther from the metal-lined tunnel than they already had.

  Thankfully, the attendant orbs showed no inclination to force them deeper into the underground world. They were not being “herded,” then, despite Haviti’s oversensitive remark of the previous day. They were simply not being allowed to leave—yet. N’kosi remained hopeful.

  The seriousness of their situation did not begin to really hit home until days later, when they started to run out of food. Despite the low humidity within the complex, drink remained available via the emergency portable condenser N’kosi had brought with him. But unlike water, they could not conjure sustenance out of thin air.

  Already weakened from having spent the preceding day on reduced rations, Haviti chose a moment when she thought the spheres were at their least attentive to try and dash around the attentive semicircle of hovering incandescent globes. She might as well have tried to outrun a beam of light. As soon as she broke in the direction of the tunnel one of the purple globes darted sideways to block her path. Anger and frustration contributed to poor decision-making. This time she did not brush the sphere but ran straight into it.

  The fiery shock of contact knocked her to the floor.

  As she lay there on her back, crying, Valnadireb crouched at her side while a concerned N’kosi helped her to sit up.

  “We’re not going to get out of here,” she sobbed softly. “Never. They’re not going to let us go. Whatever ‘they’ are.”

  Fumbling within his pack, N’kosi pulled out a square of absorptive synthetic and handed it to her. She used it to give her eyes and nose a couple of desultory wipes.

  As a species, Valnadireb’s kind were no more fatalistic than humans. But he had started to prepare himself.

  “It is a possibility we must face.” Looking up, he shifted his gaze from his colleague to the hovering spheres. “If only we could establish some kind of contact, explain that we can’t survive on air alone and that we have to be allowed to leave. We could even take them with us as insurance against our return.”

  If by voicing his anxious thoughts out loud the thranx hoped he might inspire some reaction in the glowing orbs he was mistaken. More than ever, their utter nonresponse to what amounted to a desperate plea confirmed their nonsentient status.

  After a while N’kosi and Valnadireb helped Haviti to her feet. They suggested finishing the last study they had begun. She waved them off, no longer interested. In her own mind she and her companions, her friends and colleagues, were already dead.

  Several days later they nearly were—the key descriptive being “nearly.”

  One by one each of them lay down and stretched out on the smooth, porcelain-white floor, ostensibly to rest. Haviti and N’kosi on their sides, Valnadireb on his abdomen. Nothing was said, no words were spoken. None were necessary. As xenologists whose general specialty was biology, albeit alien biology, they each knew full well when their own bodies were failing. Eyes were closed. Breathing grew shallow.

  For a long while nothing happened. The only sound in that part of the whole unimaginably vast underground complex was the increasingly feeble breathing of the three offworld visitors.

  Then the glowing, gently pulsing spheres began to move.

  When Haviti woke up the first thing she wanted to do was scream. Only when she realized that the hundreds of hair-thin tubes and lightwire filaments running in and out of various parts of her naked body were causing her no pain was she able to stifle the rising panic that threatened to overwhelm her. And there was a second factor that served to mitigate the initially horrifying sight.

  She felt wonderful.

  In fact, she felt better than she had in weeks. Gone not only was the gnawing hunger that had overcome her and rendered her unconscious, so too was the despair and the stress of fearing she would never again see the light of day. As she sat up she realized that might still be the case, but somehow it no longer bothered her nearly as much.

  A sharp stridulation nearby announced Valnadireb’s awakening. The noise stopped as he stilled his wing cases and glanced around. Looking at her colleague, Haviti was able to see how precisely his body had been penetrated and pierced by the multitude of fixed lines and beams of coherent light. There was no bleeding, no seepage of bodily fluids. Peering down at herself, she could see no marks or scars, no signs of alien surgery. Tentatively, she reached down and pulled ever so gently at one of the hair-thin cables that protruded from her stomach. She felt only the mildest of tugging sensations, less than if she had pulled on and popped the knuckle of one finger. Bravely, she pulled harder on the strand. It would not come loose and the mild discomfort did not intensify.

  She tried to grab one of the lightwires. As her hand passed through the pale yellow beam, she experienced a slight tingling sensation in her clutching fingers. At the same time, nausea flared in her gut. Hastily, she drew her hand back. Both the tingling and the nausea went away.

  Filaments disappeared into her belly and chest, her back and legs, arms and feet. Several sprouted from opposite sides of her neck. Her head was unadorned, a fact for which she was unreasonably grateful. After all, with the rest of her body exhaustively and apparently irreversibly entangled, what mattered another line or two running from her skull? But she was thankful for the omission nonetheless. She thought she might try to stand up.

  She was shocked when the exertion proved almost effortless. The hundreds of lightwires and lines and cables helped her up. With the intention of seeing how well her nutrition-starved muscles were working, she took a little jump. A small gasp escaped her lips as she rose all the way to the ceiling before dropping back to the floor. Her bare feet made contact with the slick, lustrous surface as lightly as if she had been no more than a feather.

  Possibly it was at that point that she first became fully conscious of her nakedness. Or perhap
s it was immediately thereafter, when a voice complimented her on the comely and effortless leap.

  “Nicely done.”

  Looking to her right she saw Moselstrom N’kosi standing in front of the row of ovoids that were the last component of the underground complex she and her companions had been investigating. Though he was equally naked she neither blinked nor turned away. As a general rule scientists did not suffer from nudity phobias. Valnadireb, of course, never wore anything more than utility belt and packs.

  “You look better without clothes,” N’kosi added. Mastery of scientific detachment notwithstanding, Haviti felt herself blushing slightly. But then, why shouldn’t Mosi be direct? They had nearly died of starvation only to find themselves revived and—and what? Bound, experimented upon, entwined with strange devices? What had happened to them? What had been done to them?

  Valnadireb ambled toward her. Cables and lines followed him, trailing behind. Studying them, she found herself wondering how much range of movement she and her companions would be allowed. Keeping his truhands folded in front of him, the thranx gestured with both foothands.

  “We have been given new life by these machines.” With a truhand he gently lifted one of the thin lines running from his thorax. “I think there is no question but that they have provided us with sustenance, adequate hydration, and quite possibly a good deal more.”

  N’kosi proceeded to duplicate Haviti’s ten-meter vertical jump. “I don’t think you’ll get much argument on that, Val,” he murmured when his feet hit the floor. The xenologist looked down at himself. “I’m assuming that our clothing was in the way of the procedures that were performed.” One hand tugged on a metallic thread that emerged from the vicinity of his spleen. “I’m starting to think that the alterations, adjustments, and modifications necessary to save us are more than temporary.”

  Haviti pursed her lips. “I don’t understand. Why bother with us? Why interfere? Why not just let us die? We’re intruders in this place.” She turned a slow circle. The lines and cables running from her body adjusted themselves to turn with her. “The guardian spheres are gone, but we’re still here.”

  Valnadireb speculated aloud. “Perhaps we are no longer perceived as a potential problem.”

  “We’ll only find the answer if we look for it.” Starting forward, N’kosi resumed walking deeper into the complex. No pulsating radiant orbs materialized to guide his path. Looking back at his friends, he smiled.

  “Come on. If we’re lucky, maybe we’ll get to see what’s on the other side of the proverbial mountain.”

  The guardian spheres never showed themselves again.

  By that afternoon one of the questions that had been burning at Haviti had been unambiguously answered. No matter how far they walked there always seemed to be enough cable and line length to allow them ample range of movement. Whether these were the original threadlike connections or whether they were being passed from one link to another, she could not tell. Looking back, the slender filaments always appeared seamless and unbroken.

  Having been stripped of their chronometers and gear and in the absence of daylight, they were unable to tell with certainty how much time passed, but it was agreed among the three of them that the better part of a day had gone by when they finally chose to call a halt.

  “Notice anything?” N’kosi was grinning over his tangle of threads.

  Haviti and Valnadireb exchanged a glance. It was the thranx who replied, gesturing surprise as he did so. “I am not hungry or thirsty. I have not felt any such urges since I awakened.”

  A look of amazement came over Haviti’s features. “Neither have I.” She looked down at her elaborately wired self. “I don’t know how or with what, but we’re being fed.”

  “And kept healthy,” N’kosi surmised. “And who knows what else?”

  “But to what purpose?” Valnadireb marveled at the alien life-support system with which he had been involuntarily integrated.

  N’kosi’s smile faded. “I don’t know. Maybe we’ve been prepared to be the human equivalent of lab rats and are to be subjected to study by an as yet unknown sentience—Quofumian, cybernetic, or otherwise. Maybe keeping us alive is nothing more than untainted automated altruism.” Lifting his gaze, he nodded at the way forward. “Maybe if we just keep going, we’ll find out.”

  Haviti would have shuddered at several of the prospects her friend’s conjectures called to mind, only—she felt too good. Was whatever intelligence that was sustaining (she refused to think “maintaining”) them supplying their bodies with more than just nourishment? A steady injection of synthesized endorphins would go a long way toward explaining her persistent sense of extreme well-being. But how would an alien intelligence, artificial or otherwise, know about human endocrinology? For that matter, how did it know what kind of nutrients they needed and in what quantity to supply them? It was clear she and her friends were dealing with a biotechnology knowledge base that was easily the equal of the astounding physical engineering they had already encountered. Where did it come from? Had it originated on Quofum, or elsewhere? And most important of all…

  What did it want from them?

  For days, then weeks, they explored the endless underground complex. Freely and without hindrance, the hundreds of lines and cables and lightwires somehow roamed freely with them. Haviti counted two hundred forty-three entering or emerging from her own body. In the course of their wandering they stood on the edges of immense chambers crowded with incomprehensibly advanced machinery and tried to puzzle out their purpose. Once, they found themselves wading waist-deep through a shallow lake of considerable extent. A simple check revealed that the liquid was not water but a soupy brew of glutinous proteins and other organic matter existing in a continual state of disintegrating and recombining. The tepid fluid had no effect, detrimental or otherwise, on their respective tangles of manifold connectors.

  Later (weeks later, months later—Haviti could no longer tell) they found themselves standing on the rim of an enormous open space, an artificial underground valley crisscrossed with horizontal tubes and conduits some of which exceeded in diameter that of the average starship. A multitude of brilliantly refulgent geometric shapes darted and flashed throughout the colossal chamber, efficiently executing tasks whose purpose was as unknown as the mechanisms they serviced. Standing on the barrier-free edge looking out over incomprehensible vastness, Haviti found that she was still capable of being staggered by the scale of the subterranean alien technology.

  Out of the corner of her left eye she saw N’kosi take a long stride forward and deliberately step off into emptiness.

  “No!” She and Valnadireb rushed toward him, but they were already too late. Then they both stopped, and stared.

  Pivoting gracefully in midair, a smiling N’kosi looked back at them. “Since nothing we have experienced or seen so far leads me to believe that our own personal life-sustaining apparatus is anything less than flawless, I thought I would push the limits a little to see what, if any, restrictions there might be.” Turning, he resumed his stroll out into emptiness, capably supported and held aloft by the hundreds of wires and cables that pierced his still human body.

  “Come back here!” an anxious Haviti yelled. Taking his time, a sauntering N’kosi transcribed a gradual circle before returning to the solid footing of the overlook.

  “Don’t do that anymore,” she growled at him. “No more radical experiments—at least, not without mutual discussion beforehand.”

  “Why bother?” Grinning at her, he reached down to grab a handful of the lines running into his body and lift them slightly. “If there was a sudden and unexpected alien equipment failure while I was walking on air, I’d be the only one to suffer the consequences.” His grin faded and his tone turned abruptly and unexpectedly serious. “Would you miss me, Tiare?”

  Valnadireb had come close. “We would both miss you, Mosi. As I would miss Haviti, and as I suspect she would miss me.” Pivoting on four trulegs, the thranx xeno
logist gestured to indicate the immensity of the chamber spread out before them. “I cannot vouch for your emotions or feelings on the matter, but I believe that I am still thranx enough to know that I would not want to wander onward and onward through this place—alone.”

  Nothing more was said about N’kosi’s stroll through emptiness, but he did not do it again.

  The weeks rolled into months, the months into years, and the years into time without end. They never grew hungry or thirsty, they never felt ill or fell sick.

  Throughout it all they did not, as Valnadireb remarked on a day like the one that had gone just before and would with absolute certainty be just like the one that would arrive tomorrow, age.

  With time to travel and explore and in the absence of noticeable fatigue, they covered great distances on foot. In the course of their travels they were never able to determine whether the linkages that kept them nourished and healthy and young constantly renewed themselves or were extensions that by now must have been hundreds of kilometers long. It did not matter. There was so much to see, so much to try and absorb, that they never grew bored. Lonely, yes. Homesick, occasionally. But never bored.

  There seemed no end to the extraordinary subterranean technological fantasy. For all they knew it might run all the way around the inner rim of the entire planet. The location of the metal shaft that had provided access to the surface had long since been forgotten. They encountered drifting blobs of purposeful energy the size of cities, found their way around or through ranks of conduits large enough to channel small seas, and crossed artificial gorges that consisted of hundreds of levels whose foundations lay beyond their range of vision. And still they never saw another guardian orb.