by Greg Bear
Lanier stammered something unintelligible, then coughed at a catch in his throat. His neck hair bristled. “Jesus,” he said into his hand. “What’s going on here?”
“I’ve traveled a good distance in space and time,” the man said. “I have a very strange story to tell.”
“Are you a ghost?” That was an old, useless thing to ask; he did not mean “ghost” in the Hexamon sense. His face flushed.
“No. You shook my hand. I’m solid flesh, mortal…in a fashion.”
“How did you come back?”
“Not by the shortest route.” He grinned hesitantly and set his stick down in the grass beside Lanier’s boulder, then sat. Mirsky—if indeed it was Mirsky, something Lanier was not willing to concede—looked across the valley with its movements of sheep and cloud shadows, and said again,
“I must speak to Korzenowski and Olmy. Can you take me to them?”
“Why not just go directly?” Lanier asked. “You’ve made it this far. Why come back here?”
“Because I think in some respects, you are even more important to me than they are. We must all meet and talk. How long since you last spoke with them?”
“Years,” Lanier admitted.
“There is a crisis coming in the government.” Mirsky glanced up at Lanier, face calm, serious. “The Way is going to be opened again.”
Lanier didn’t react. He had heard rumors, but nothing more. Still, he had isolated himself from Hexamon politics.
“That’s ridiculous,” he said.
“No, it is not, actually,” Mirsky replied matter-of-factly. “Either physically or politically. It is like a drug, that kind of technology, that kind of power. Even the pure of heart cannot hold their convictions forever. Will you arrange a meeting?”
Lanier’s shoulders slumped. He felt defeated, too weak to muster up the proper words and defend his sanity. “I have a radio, a communicator, in my house,” he said, “down in the valley.” He straightened his back. “You’ll have to prove you are who you say you are.”
“I understand,” Mirsky said.
6
Thistledown
Olmy sat before a personal quarters library terminal in Alexandria, the second chamber city, in a district not yet repopulated. He had installed the terminal just a jew days before, in the apartment where he had spent his later childhood—and where Korzenowski’s unassembled partials had been hidden, all that had been left of the Engineer after his assassination centuries before. Olmy had located those partials as a boy, and had later been responsible for reassembling and reincarnating Korzenowski, with the help of Patricia Vasquez.
In this obscure location, on a supposedly untraceable private terminal, Olmy received a message from an old acquaintance. The picts, loosely translated, read:
“Have something for you. Crucial to your work.”
The message was completed by coordinates for an abandoned station in the fifth chamber and a time for meeting—“Alone,” the picts strongly implied. It was signed with the chop of Feor Mar Kellen.
Mar Kellen was an old soldier and gate police comrade, about Olmy’s age. He had been born during the later Jart Wars, the biggest push against the Way’s invaders before the Sundering, when the Jarts had been repelled beyond two ex nine—two billion kilometers down the Way. Those wars had lasted forty years and had scoured hundreds of thousands of kilometers of the Way. The territory gained had been fortified and gates had been opened to uninhabited worlds ripe for mining. These worlds had supplied the raw materials for the early Axis City, and then had supplied the atmosphere and soil which covered much of the Way’s surface.
Those years had been horrible and glorious, years of death and annealing; the Hexamon had emerged from them stronger, ready to command the paths between gates, attracting patrons and partners from inhabited worlds accessed through those same gates. In some instances, the Hexamon had assumed trade abandoned by the Jarts; in this way it had established strong mercantile bonds with the enigmatic Talsit. It was the Talsit who had told them the name of their enemies, as closely as it could be translated into human speech.
The Jarts had not been defeated, of course; merely pushed far down the Way, and kept there by a series of powerful fortresses.
Mar Kellen had survived the last twenty years of the wars, and had then served in the fortresses beyond 1.9 ex nine. Even those frontier outposts had not challenged him enough. He had joined the gate police, and there had met Olmy.
They hadn’t seen each other for centuries. Olmy was surprised to learn Mar Kellen was on Thistledown; he would have thought him the type to join the Geshels in their push down the Way.
Clandestine arrangements irritated him; he had long since ceased to enjoy intrigue, especially when it was unavoidable…. But Mar Kellen had suggested he had something Olmy could not ignore; and whatever his old friend’s peculiarities, he had never been deceitful.
The fifth was Thistledown’s gloomiest chamber, a kind of vast cellar. Many train lines passed through on their way to the sixth and (at one time) seventh chambers, but only one still stopped there, and that infrequently, by special request. There were few restrictions on travel to the only unoccupied chamber in the Thistledown, and each month a few hardy mountain climbers and river rafters visited the grim, cloud-shrouded landscape of raw asteroid mineral, sculpted by centuries of mining into fantastic gray and black and orange peaks and abysses. The excess waters of Thistledown ran red there, thick with rust and other dissolved minerals, not recommended for drinking without having chelation implants to handle the metal content.
The fifth chamber on average was only forty kilometers wide. At the beginning of Thistledown’s journey, it had been thirty-eight kilometers wide; the removed material had been used for construction and to replenish volatiles lost through the inevitable leaks in the asteroid’s recycling systems. Nobody lived there on a permanent basis; it was patrolled only by remotes.
Olmy took the empty train from the fourth chamber, sitting with arms folded as the black kilometers of asteroid wall between the chambers flowed smoothly by.
Mar Kellen’s message had been so unexpected that he did not even try to guess where this would all lead.
Assuming nothing, Olmy wasted little thought on what lay ahead and instead re-explored what little Talsit cultural information had been acquired and stored in the libraries of the Axis City and Thistledown. He had been over this material frequently, and was now methodically churning it over again, hoping to answer a few intractable questions.
The short journey gave him little time, however, and he watched the tunnel walls give way to a wild, improbable relief of thick black clouds broken by shafts of silver tubelight, racing between sawteeth of somber red and green and gray-blue. The train had emerged from the exit of the curved tunnel at a cant, with windows on the right side pointing up at almost thirty degrees.
He had always found a grim emotional solace in these barren regions.
The train slowed and moved along its three cradling rails to a small cupola-covered station nestled between two rugged walls of dull, oily-looking nickel and red iron. Rain splattered the stone platform beyond the cupola. Not far away came the roar of a tumult of water seeking one of the broad brown lakes that dotted the chamber.
Mar Kellen waited for him inside the small deserted terminal, sitting on a stone bench that seemed more suited to resting machinery than humans. Thunder growled outside, a sound Olmy had seldom heard in Thistledown; but then, he had seldom had time to visit the fifth chamber, where thunder was common. Mar Kellen lifted two antiquated umbrellas in greeting. He projected a series of biographical picts at Olmy, with sub-signs to indicate degrees of truthfulness and where it might, and might not, be polite to inquire more. Inquiries seemed to be generally discouraged. Olmy did likewise, though with even more equivocation and brevity. The rest of the conversation used both speech and picting.
“I’ve followed your career, Ser Olmy, as much as was made public. You’re an illustrious fell
ow and a credit to the Naderites.”
“Thank you. I’m sorry to say I’ve lost track of you, Ser Mar Kellen.”
“Glad to hear it, myself. I made it my duty to be as obscure as possible without downloading into city memory and going rogue.” He picted an image of himself as a free-spirited rogue, crudely sketched, suggesting he might not be terribly successful. They both laughed, although Olmy’s humor was more forced.
“I hoped you didn’t learn too much about me.” Olmy countered.
“No. Your career was obscure, as well. But parts have become history. And I’ve learned, perhaps impolitely, of your current interest.”
“Oh?”
“You seem to believe we’ll be confronting non-humans again soon. Perhaps even Jarts.”
Olmy said nothing, his lips pressed into a wry smile. His private researches had been surprisingly public, it seemed; at least for those who thought it worthwhile to know. Mar Kellen’s obscurity became more understandable; this man had not downloaded, but he was a rare phenomenon—a corporeal rogue. Olmy picted a yellow half-circle indicating interest and full attention.
“I’ve come across something you might find useful. A holdover from centuries past. Rather like the Engineer’s record.”
“Here?” Olmy asked.
The old soldier nodded solemnly. “Do we have an arrangement, should you be interested? I assure you, you will be.”
“I’m not a wealthy man. Not even a particulary powerful man.”
“I understand, Ser Olmy, but you still have the support of the Hexamon. You could provide me with all I require in the way of access and privileges, since I’m hardly a fool for Earth’s gold.”
Olmy examined the man and closely analyzed his picting style. Mar Kellen was sincere, not bluffing, as far as Olmy could tell.
“I’m retired,” Olmy said. “My influence isn’t nearly as great as it used to be. Within the limits of my present status…”
“Sufficient status to procure my needs.”
“If you truly have something I can use, agreed.”
Mar Kellen’s abrupt broad smile was wicked. “Agreed. Come with me.” He handed Olmy an umbrella and showed him how to spread it wide. “This belonged to my Beni. You’ll need it. Shields our tired old bones.”
Olmy held the umbrella over his head and followed Mar Kellen on a narrow trail away from the station. The trail had been cut into a slope of rock and wound through a gorge above a steady red rush of water. Here, tubelight barely filtered through clouds and rain. The landscape was lost in a shadow almost as deep as Earth night. Mar Kellen brought out a light and showed Olmy the way up an incline. The beam caught a hole in the rock. “It’s warm and bright beyond that doorway. Come. Just a few more minutes.” They had been hiking for half an hour.
“I found this while investigating resources for the Thistle-down repopulation project,” Mar Kellen said. “Routine work for a gentleman of leisure. It had been erased from all resource maps but one, and that one must have been an oversight…. It didn’t seem important to the project, so I didn’t tell anybody. But I mentioned it to my Beni, and she—she was my mate,” he confided suddenly, pausing on the incline to look over his shoulder at Olmy. “Only thirty. Born since the Sundering. Imagine, an old war horse finding a young lady…truly a lady. Old Naderite family. But she had adventure in her blood. She far outstripped me for enthusiasm. She wanted to explore. So we explored. We came here, and found—”
He took a spry leap up into the cavity. Olmy followed, more gracefully but with less drama. A smooth black wall at the rear of the cavity reflected a meager dot from the light. Mar Kellen slammed his hand against a smooth black wall with painful force, face locked in a momentary grimace. “When we found it, it looked just like this. I knew the look. A security wall. Then I became enthusiastic. Nothing like a code to crack! Not easy, though. I had to crack thirty different coded blocks, using analysis invented only in the last century. Math has become my hag, Olmy.” He stroked the blackness, looking between it and Olmy. “But it’s a hag I’ve mastered. Once upon a time, this place was very secure…”
He picted a quick flash of symbols and the black wall brightened to gray then simply vanished. Beyond was a well-lit tunnel.
“Once inside, I suspected there were many lethal security measures. We looked for them, and found them—more than I would have thought necessary to guard anything. Most had reached their mandated limits of five centuries and had automatically deactivated. Obviously, nobody knew about it—not even presidents. Or so I assume. I may be wrong there.” Again, the wicked smile.
They approached the wide, half-circle archway entrance. A mechanical voice of ancient style—at least as old as similar voices in Alexandria—requested their identity.
Mar Kellen announced a series of numbers and displayed his palm to an ancient ID panel near the opaqued doors. “I’ve recoded with my own patterns,” he told Olmy. The doors cleared and opened slowly. Within, a bare, stripped-down reception area waited in semi-darkness. Mar Kellen beckoned Olmy through, and took him down a hallway to a small room, also lacking furniture or decor pictors.
Mar Kellen stood in the middle of the room’s blank white walls, shadowless, hands folded in front of him. Olmy stayed in the doorway. “This room is the gateway to a very great secret,” Mar Kellen said. “Of no practical use to anybody…not now. But once, it must have been very useful indeed. Maybe it was used, and none of us heard about it. Maybe it was considered too dangerous. Come in, come in.”
With Olmy standing beside him, Mar Kellen lifted one hand, extended one finger, and pointed it at the floor. “Down, please.” The floor vanished. The room was a lift shaft. They dropped quickly, without sensation, into darkness. Every few seconds, a thin illuminated red line marking some unknown depth passed. This went on for several minutes.
Olmy had never heard of inhabited tunnels extending more than two kilometers into the asteroid. They must have descended at least twice that far.
“More and more interesting, hm?” Mar Kellen said. “Buried very deeply, very securely. What could it be?”
“How far down?” Olmy asked.
“Six kilometers into the asteroid wall,” Mar Kellen answered. “The lower levels have their own power grid. It doesn’t show up on any chamber accounts.”
“It’s an illegal data dump,” Olmy guessed. He had heard of such things, super-secure dumps used by police and politicians who in centuries past had feared falling out of favor with the Hexamon. But he had never actually seen one.
“Almost correct, Ser Olmy, but not illegal—extra-legal. The lawmakers had this built. Can the lawmakers do anything illegal, strictly speaking?”
Olmy didn’t answer. It was a truism, even in the highly ethical world of Hexamon politics, that no governing system could survive a totally rigorous enforcement of its own laws.
A white square rose beneath them to become the floor again. A door opened, and Mar Kellen led him down a short hall into a dim cubical cell, barely three meters on a side.
“This is the memory access terminal,” Mar Kellen said, sitting on a curved metal stool before a broad featureless steel panel mounted at stomach level in one wall. “I played with it…and I found something horrible.”
He touched the panel and faint round lights appeared in two places. “Access, general key-code. I am Davina Taur Ingel.”
That name would have belonged to an ancestor, probably female, of the former Infinite Hexamon presiding minister, Ilyin Taur Ingel. Mar Kellen handled the board as if he had had some practice.
“This was the tough part. The security systems have deactivated, but there were access mazes in place beyond them, built into the memory structure. They were very careful, our mysterious extra-legal people. If there had been no mazes, I might have given this to you, for free, just one old friend passing something useful to another. But I wasn’t alone when I made this discovery. I had Beni with me…”
Olmy detected a sharp rise in Mar Kellen’s emot
ions. The old soldier was experiencing grief, anger, and finally a grim kind of triumph. Mar Kellen was sincere, but was he sane?
He motioned for Olmy to step forward and place his hand on the panel, below a green light.
“Don’t worry, just keep your personal barriers ready. You can handle it. I barely managed, but it caught us by surprise.”
Mar Kellen said, “Access occupant, guest of Ingel.”
Olmy’s head jerked back and all his muscles locked. He was getting impulses from something within the panel, something not used to a human body. He saw snatches of visuals, more than just distorted; almost incomprehensible. And he heard a voice far more alien than that of a Frant…or even a Talsit messenger.
>> Time concern. Duty concern. Inactive unknown time. <<
Olmy jerked back his hand with considerable effort.
Mar Kellen’s features had contorted into a rictus of enthusiasm. The old soldier was sincere, but he was also irresponsible. He had been shocked by his experience here, perhaps even emotionally damaged, and yet had managed to almost completely conceal his condition from Olmy until now. Mar Kellen laughed and sucked in his breath to regain composure. “It killed Beni. After we riddled the maze. It distorted all her neural paths, even reached into her implant memories and scrambled them. There wasn’t anything left to download into city memory, but her body was perfectly intact, alive. I killed what was left of her and disposed of it myself. That’s why I have to charge you.” His face was blank and pale. “For her loss. For her pain. What do you think they stored in here?”
“I don’t know,” Olmy confessed.
“I have a good theory. If I’m right—” He stuck his chin out and grinned his wicked grin. “—They must have captured it a long time ago. They must have downloaded its personality or whatever the equivalent is, in secret, in this clandestine memory store…And then they abandoned it. It waited all these centuries, dormant, for Beni and me to stumble across it. You believe we’ll face Jarts again, am I right? What would the mentality of a captured Jart be worth to the Hexamon if that happens, heh?”
