She squinted across the distance. Shandra was right. She could see a dark opening in the cavern wall and above it several more. And maybe a balcony or two? At this distance it was hard to tell what it was, but it was something. “Sounds good to me. How do we get there?”
“There are pathways through the jungle, but we might be better off making our way around the perimeter.” Eddy pointed. “Less chance that we run into anyone, and more cover.”
Andy nodded, slipping the knife back into its sheath.
Stairs led down from the tunnel to the floor of the cavern below. They were exposed to view, but if they slipped off the side, they could drop to the jungle about two meters below the tunnel mouth, hopefully unnoticed. “How close are we to nightfall?”
Eddy pointed. “I’d say pretty close.” As one, all the workers they could see had set down their tools and were making their way back to a cluster of huts near the center of the cavern.
Not a word was spoken between them. They walked in silence, side by side, until they reached the huts. Each one entered a separate hut, and then the strange little world under the mountain was completely still.
“This place is kinda freaking me out,” Shandra said softly, reaching out to clasp Andy’s hand.
“Yeah, me too.” Nightfall came, plunging the cavern into darkness as the wave passed through the plants that lit the space.
“Damn.” Andy had gotten used to the coming of night in the bigger world above, but under the mountain, it had a kind of frightening finality.
It wasn’t completely dark, though. A row of lanterns lit the main street that ran through the cavern, and some plants still glowed—red ferns in many of the trees gave off a pale pink glow, and night ivy shone silver on the walls of many of the huts.
“We should go find one of those people.”
Andy looked at Eddy’s silhouette in the darkness. “What?”
“The zombies. Maybe we can snap one of them out of whatever is making them… like that.”
“What if they sound the alarm?” Andy wasn’t sure about this plan, but then again, she didn’t really have anything better to offer.
“How else are we going to find out what’s going on here? I don’t like it either, but we have to do something.” Eddy turned to look at her. “Plus there’s three of us. We can always knock them out if things go off the rails.”
Andy could barely make out his features.
“He’s right. We need to do something, and the darkness will make it a lot easier than the morning light.” Shandra squeezed her hand.
Andy tried to ignore the shiver that touch sent through her. “Okay.” She put her free hand on the ground below her, palm down, searching for a connection, a spark of recognition. Still nothing. “I’d feel a lot better if I could connect to the world mind.”
“I know.” Eddy understood better than most, having spent so much time with her. “So?”
“I’m game if you two are.” She glanced across the cavern in darkness. “Whoever runs this place probably lives up there, in the caverns.”
Eddy nodded. “Let’s see if we can get in and out before they know we’re here.”
Chapter Eight: Xanadu
ANA CHECKED her stats. “Five minutes to first landing.”
Devon nodded inside his suit. “No pressure, right?”
Ana laughed. “A little pressure, maybe. But you’ll be great. We practiced this a hundred times on Forever, remember?” She liked this guy. He was easy to work with.
“Yeah, but that didn’t involve a space suit, a tumbling asteroid, and live explosives.”
“You okay?” She tried to use her most soothing voice.
“I’ll manage. I still don’t know why you picked me for this.” He was shaking.
“Because you have steady hands. And a steady mind.” Ana nudged the shuttle closer to the asteroid, adjusting course so the little ship would come down flat at the first diversion point.
They’d christened the little shuttle Puddle Hopper, or Hopper, for short.
Watching it roll by as she synched Hopper’s motion, she couldn’t help but remember that wild ride down to Ariadne that had started off this whole mad adventure. That voyage, some forty years before, had changed her life in such a fundamental way that she didn’t even recognize her younger self.
That flight, from the deteriorating Dressler down to the asteroid’s surface, had been much hairier than this one. Here she had direct control of the shuttle’s attitude jets, along with the capability to instantly recalculate vectors and force an angle of approach with each minute change. She was, in some ways, a calculus goddess.
Ana grinned at the image. Nothing like taking oneself too seriously. The universe was always ready to knock a person down a peg.
The organic fuel they’d engineered to fill the shuttle tanks seemed to be doing the job. The three shuttles from Transfer Station had been mothballed after the mad dash to evacuate the station six years before, and they’d been all but out of fuel after the overstuffed runs they’d made to get everyone out before the station blew.
“Three minutes.” She nudged Hopper a little closer, taking into account a spur of rock that could smash the ship to pieces if she wasn’t careful.
Devon was a good kid. Aaron had recommended him when she’d asked for a volunteer to help her with this mission. “How’s Rafe?”
Devon’s shaking subsided a little. “He’s good. He’s a bit nervous for me—”
“I’ll take good care of you. If I had hands….”
He laughed. “Hands are overrated.”
“Says the man with two of them. Two minutes.” Hopper drifted closer to the asteroid. “But don’t worry. It’s a simple process. You’ve done it in the practice runs a hundred times. Just take the charge out onto the surface of Isis. It will flash slower and slower until you find the right spot. Then set it down, and it will lock onto the asteroid magnetically.”
“Yeah. Easy as pie.” He shook his head. “What if it goes off when I put it down?”
“Then you won’t have anything to worry about, will you?” she said dryly.
Devon looked up at the camera, a deep frown creasing his face. “Very funny.”
“Seriously, the charges can’t go off until I trigger them.” They were another thing she’d been working on these last few months with Keera.
“Easy for you to say. This thing blows, and you’re still safe back home.”
“Fair point.” She tried to make her voice sound comforting. It wasn’t a part of her normal skillset. “Really, you’ll be fine. We’ll do the first one, and you’ll see how easy it is.”
“Fine.”
“One minute.”
Devon nodded without words and unlatched his seat belt, spinning around in the weightless environment to make his way to the hatch. Each of the seats had one of the charges strapped in, deadly passengers on a one-way trip.
The first landing spot was directly below them now, and Ana had matched the spin of the huge chunk of rock and gas and ice. She nudged Hopper downward.
“Landing in ten, nine, eight….”
“Yeah, I got it.” Devon had freed up the first charge, and he waited, braced against the back of one of the seats.
The shuttle settled down roughly on the asteroid surface, throwing Devon on his ass. “Hey!”
“Sorry about that. I’ll do better next time.” She didn’t tell him it had been intentional, to shake him out of his headspace.
“Save it. I gotta get this thing placed.” He punched the release. The air evacuated into the holding tanks, and the shuttle door opened.
He clambered to the ground, held the charge up, and then started off to put it where it needed to be.
You’re still safe back home.
Forever was their home now. At some point, it had gone from being something new and amazing and alien to the place where they belonged, out in the blackness of the void. A little piece of Earth they were carrying to the stars.
A
na would never get to walk on the soil of an alien world. Her corporeal days were long behind her. She would never know the feeling of an alien sun on her skin or the smell of the air on a new world.
She had been given far more than she had asked for in this life, far more than she’d ever dared to hope.
Somehow that was enough.
COLIN WENT along the tunnel as quickly as he could manage.
It was dark and claustrophobic, even for someone used to the tight confines of a spaceship. He wondered if this was how Ana had felt all those years before. There were no side tunnels and nothing other than patches of glowing moss to relieve the monotonous sameness of the way before him.
On the other hand, it would be hard to get lost.
The mountains were hollow. Who knew?
Actually, the world mind must know. She had built them, after all. There must be many secrets she kept, out of necessity or simply because she had such a vast store of information.
In any case, he would be glad to breathe fresh air again, to look into the wide sky. The liminal sky.
It was a concept he’d played around with over the years. Liminal was one of those strange little words he’d run across once, and it had intrigued him enough to want to look it up. It had two primary meanings—a transitional stage of something, and being at or on both sides of a threshold.
They were certainly on the threshold of history, living in a place the likes of which mankind had never conceived, outside the pages of science fiction. It was also a time of great danger for the species, a moment when the story of mankind had squeezed down from the vastness of the Earth to a relative handful of souls in this generation ship. And maybe the other two ships, if they’d been lucky.
He wondered if anyone had survived on Luna Base or, God help them, on the blasted surface of the Earth itself.
He didn’t remember it having taken so long to get to that strange cavern on the way in.
What the hell was that back there, anyway? He was uneasy leaving Andy and the others behind, but they were right. Someone had to get the word to Aaron and the folks in Micavery. They had no real organized police force or military, but maybe it was time to create one.
Colin almost fell when he finally reached the edge of the tunnel, it was so abrupt. He found his footing and looked around at the cavern where they’d first entered the mountain.
He tapped his loop. There was still no signal.
Undeterred, he stepped outside into the fresh air.
God this feels good. He drew in a deep lungful of the clean air and tried his loop again. “Good evening, Colin.” That voice had accompanied him through the last thirty-five or forty years of his life, first as the ship-mind on the Dressler and now as the world mind for this grand venture.
“Hi, Lex. I need to speak with Aaron. You, Jackson, and Ana should be a part of this too.”
There was a long pause.
“Lex?”
“Ana, Jackson, and Aaron are unavailable at the moment.”
“What the hell?”
“Ana is busy with preparations for Rendezvous with 42 Iris.”
“Ah, that makes sense. And the others?”
“Jackson disappeared after Glory’s ceremony.” She sounded uncharacteristically sad.
He’d heard from Aaron about the debate—whether to allow Glory to become a part of the world mind. For his own part, he was ready to go into the great beyond when his time came, but the fight had all but torn poor Aaron apart. “And Aaron?”
“He went to find Jackson.”
Now that was news. “Went where?”
“I don’t know. We thought we would explore Jackson’s virtual worlds. Maybe Aaron would have a better sense of where his father might have hidden himself. But then Aaron vanished too—”
“Vanished? How?” This was getting into stranger and stranger territory. “He’s gone missing?”
“Not exactly. His body is still in Micavery. But his virtual self… we think he went into Jackson’s memories.”
“You think?”
“It’s the only thing that makes sense. He and Jackson are still here. But we can’t reach them.”
“What happens if Aaron can’t find his way out?”
Another long silence. “I don’t know,” Lex admitted at last.
Damn. “Get me Keera.”
“One moment.”
Colin shook his head. What had Aaron been thinking? And where the hell was Jackson?
“Hello? Colin?”
“Yes, it’s me. Lex’s here too. She was just filling me in on the harebrained thing Aaron is doing.”
“Have you heard from him? He was supposed to come out of it for dinner. That was an hour ago. I’m starting to get worried.”
“He’s fine,” he lied smoothly. “Look, he’s going after his father, and that’s just taking longer than he planned.”
“That’s good.” Her relief flooded through the connection between them. “When will he be back?”
“We don’t know yet. But I’m with Andy. I’ll let her know too.”
“Okay.”
“Not so fast. We have a problem.” He relayed what had happened that afternoon to both of them, ending with the strange scene in the cavern.
“That explains the Ghosts,” Keera said when he was done.
“Some of them, anyway. Lex, do you know anything about this place under the mountain?”
“Not really. I know those places exist, of course, but I didn’t know anyone was living there. They’re waste-processing facilities.”
“You mean stomachs?”
“If that metaphor helps, yes. Someone must have found a way to draw out the digestive fluid from one of them.” He could almost hear her frown. “That’s odd. There’s an unusual resource draw in that part of the world, but it didn’t trigger any alarms. It’s almost as if my senses are deadened there.”
“That’s what Andy said. Like something had cut that part of Forever off from the rest of the world.” He stared up through the darkness at the silver light of the spindle. He missed the stars.
“Let me see what else I can find out,” Lex’s voice growled. “Now that I’m aware of it, it’s really annoying.”
“Like having something stuck between your teeth.”
“What?” Lex sounded perplexed. “Oh. I see. Yes. Like that.”
He had to remind himself Lex wasn’t human. “Andy thinks there’s someone else on Forever who can manipulate things the way she can.”
“Aaron always thought that one of the refugees had inserted the virus that killed Ronan and destroyed Transfer Station,” Keera told him.
“Could whoever it is be a danger to you, Lex?”
“Possibly. You should proceed with caution, but in all haste,” Lex said. “Whoever it is could cause a lot of damage if we don’t contain them. I’ll try to break through the bubble.”
“Keera, can you roust up a security force and send them my way? Lex can give you the location.”
“I’ll see what we can do.” Her voice sounded strained over the connection.
“Don’t worry about Aaron. He can take care of himself.”
“I know.” She sighed. “I just wish he’d be a little more careful.”
Colin laughed. “You knew what you were getting into when you married him. He’ll come back to us. I’m going in. When your people get here, send them after us.”
“Will do.”
He cut the connection and took one last look at the beautiful liminal sky above him.
Then he shrugged and went back inside the cavern. Hopefully Andy and crew hadn’t gotten themselves in any trouble.
“I THOUGHT you’d already left.” Aaron’s mother was frowning at him.
“Left for what?” He looked around. The duffel bag was sitting by the front door. The house was just as he’d remembered it—simple and clean. The warm artificial wood floors gleamed with polish. The walls glowed with radiant paint, the soft shade of gold his mother had chosen when he a
nd Jayson had gone with her to the hardware store. And she wore the same floral-print dress he remembered from the day he’d left.
“Don’t give me that. I know you’re hell-bent on going to find out what happened to your father.” She took his hand and pulled him down to sit on the couch. “And I know I can’t stop you. Much as I wish I could.”
Aaron was suffering from an intense feeling of déjà vu. He remembered this scene, exactly as it was playing out here. His father had been long dead by then.
Was this his own memory?
“I have to find him.” The same words, separated by twenty-six years but as true today as they were then. Maybe… maybe she could help him now. “Where did Dad love to go more than anywhere else?”
She placed her hands in her lap, squeezing them nervously. “I don’t know what you mean.”
He’d gone off script. Maybe that made her nervous. Nevertheless, he pushed on. “Where were you happiest together?”
She looked away, as if seeing it in the distance. “There’s a little park not far from here, along the banks of the Red River.” She got up and made her way to the fireplace mantel. She picked up a photograph in a wooden frame and brought it over to him. “It used to be a golf course, back in the day. Now it’s a wild park. Your father liked to take me there when we first came down to Earth. We would walk along the path that fronted the riverbank and try to imagine what the world had been like when it was new.”
Aaron took the photo. It showed the two of them on a bench with a bunch of greenery behind them. The sky was a deep blue, without a single cloud. They looked so young. “I think he took me there once, when he was home for a few weeks.”
She sat down next to him. “Are you sure you have to go?”
Aaron closed his eyes. He wanted to tell her no. Tell her that he had all the time in the world to spend with her. That he would never leave her side again. She was alive here, as alive as he was.
It wasn’t real. But did that matter?
He pulled her close. “I love you, Mamma,” he whispered, aware of the tears that ran down his cheeks. He looked around at the house, blurry through his wet eyes, and wished he could turn back time.
The Rising Tide Page 8
