by Barry Kirwan
Rashid locked his gaze on the mirror for a moment, and then turned his back on them to pour some tea for Blake.
"So," Blake said, "what exactly did it communicate to you? From what I’ve seen, it comes from another planet that was attacked by these beasts. What else?" He understood enough about nodes from one of his nephews’ brief experiences to know that the images must already be fading in her mind. The intensity of nodal communication – basically direct-to-brain communication, by-passing the senses – offered perfect clarity at the time, but then ebbed rapidly, like waves lapping over dry sand. He had to get as much as possible from Kat while it was fresh.
She took a deep breath. "Their planet – there’s almost no audible language, so I don’t know its name – was culled by the Q’Roth – the beasts as you called them, locusts as I did. It happened almost a millennium ago. The Q’Roth are nomadic. They travel to distant worlds outside the Grid." Kat held up her hand to stall a question from Blake, and he decided to let it pass, noting a new confidence, an intensity in her that hadn’t been there before.
"They feed on other civilizations. They send advance scouts to select and cultivate candidate worlds – some to harvest, others to breed. Their life cycle is around a thousand years. They feed once a millennium in our terms, then they travel and explore new worlds for five centuries, and at last they finally breed. Shortly afterwards almost all of them die, leaving guardians to watch over the eggs for a further five centuries. When the eggs hatch, they need to feed. But they don’t eat flesh. What they need is to extract the life force, the bio-electricity, whatever you want to call it – the psychic energy out of living things. The more sophisticated, the more nourishing. Intelligent races, artistic ones, violent ones, it doesn’t matter – it’s the emotional and intellectual complexity they crave. It matures them, very rapidly, apparently. They need beings like… us." Kat stopped and stared downwards.
Blake knew the reality of it all was only now catching up with Kat. That was partly why nodes had been banned three years earlier, and surgically removed from anyone who had one. They allowed direct communication, whether from phones, computers or vids, to the mind. The attraction had been immediate, but very quickly had come the brain damage cases, the psychoses, the addictions, and the associated "detachment" murders, caused by a temporary suppression of emotional connection. A mother who interrupted her son in the middle of a node experience, might find herself being calmly strangled by him, while he was meanwhile enjoying a node-based vid or porn scene, or even exploring h-mails. The more the nodes were used, the more the user became detached from emotions and reality. Nodal schizophrenia, he recalled.
He hadn’t told the other crew members about it because the node had been rendered dormant. She’d suffered an astro-surfing accident that led to a steel plate being inserted in her brain only a week after the node was implanted. The node had unexpectedly bonded with the plate, and couldn’t be removed without killing her. He’d have to keep an eye on her from now on. He remembered he’d been given special suppressive medication for Kat, just in case, by a Chorazin agent the day before take-off. The agent had never said what it did exactly. Blake didn’t trust Chorazin, and had tossed it into a micro-furnace on Zeus I, right before departure.
He cut to the chase. ‘Kat, where are they in their cycle?’
She sighed. "I’m afraid they’re going to hatch soon, Sir. Then they’ll need to feed almost straight away."
"So, where are their ships? We could use the ND to take out a few."
"This is indeed the part that I have not understood," Rashid interjected, passing Blake his cup. "At first I was afraid that humanity would come here, and be fed upon. But then, I reasoned, it would simply take too long. It would be at least fifty years, shuttling people here in large transports of a few hundred at a time, if we could manage it at all, before we have an established community here."
Blake nodded. Parts of the puzzle were missing. He stared at Kat, whose eyes were clamped shut, clearly trying to remember.
"This was the hardest part of the communication – because of course the mirror hasn’t travelled to Earth. It followed the Q’Roth in a lone ship when they came here, waiting. It’s the last of his kind, I think. Its master severed their bond and ordered it to follow the Q’Roth, not for revenge, but to look for opportunities to help others in the future avoid the same calamity. But it thinks – if that’s the right word – that this time the Q’Roth are using a different strategy. Humanity will come to Eden, and in very large numbers, large enough for a preliminary feed. Then the Q’Roth will travel to Earth, enhanced and better able to fight, for the main feed."
"But where are these ships?" Blake asked, anger stoking up inside him: he needed a target to strike. "And who on Earth would be dumb enough to come here to…" Then he thought he almost understood. "Kat. You said cultivate. You said they sent advanced scouts to cultivate other planets. What did you mean?"
Rashid leant forward. But Kat’s face became confused, distressed, no longer able to recall the shared nodal vision. Her lips moved but no sound came out. She hung her head. Blake recognized the rapid post-nodal depression symptoms. He laid a hand on her shoulder. "It’s okay, Kat. Relax for now."
Exhausted by the experience, she lay back down, and quickly fell asleep.
The mirror sprang to life again. Blake and Rashid observed ten minutes of images, and diagrams. They appeared alien, but had an odd familiarity to Blake. At one stage he recognized the molecule plutonium and a fission reaction. There were also helical structures that could be alien DNA. Then it showed the ND device, sitting outside. Rashid stood up, agitated. Blake thought about it. It had not shown ships. It could not show Earth, since it had not been there. But it had shown clues, the missing links he hoped would enable Rashid to make the connection, while for him it hovered tantalizingly on the tip of his mental tongue.
"Rashid?"
Rashid tried to pace, but there was no room in this small cabin. He sat down again, his fingers agitated. "It is showing us, albeit in an alien tongue, schematics for the neutralino detonator, and also long range communications and surveillance concepts. It also showed more advanced technologies, nuclear weapons, and I believe I even saw the molecular structure for the nanovirus fractal genome that led to the banning of nanotechnology thirty years ago. It is trying to answer your question about cultivation, based on what it has gleaned from your colleague." His eyes blazed somewhere between excitement and shock at the revelation.
"In short, I believe it is saying that the Q’Roth, now that I know their name, have been seeding ideas into humanity, particularly over the last hundred years, guiding us to end up here. I have always marveled at the fortuitous discoveries that befell us recently. We find Eden, and then discover a miraculous new propulsion approach to bring it within reach. And yet other technological marvels – especially nuclear weapons, genetic engineering and nanotech, have become closed-off avenues, illegal or unable to attract research funding. In short, we have been channeled down a narrow scientific and technological tunnel that steers us to one place – Eden."
Blake felt like he’d just joined a chess match to find his opponent was one move from check mate. He suddenly remembered the red flare. "Rashid – we have to get back to my ship."
Rashid peered behind the curtain, and shook his head. "We must wait until morning. To go out at night will be too dangerous, and Earth needs us alive, to warn them. They must not come here."
Blake remained overwhelmed by the implications – that aliens had influenced human progress. He wondered if they had caused the last war; helped invent the atom bomb even. And then there was the War itself – as an army Commander he’d harbored the conviction more than once that it would go global, irrevocably destroying infrastructure that would plunge humanity into post-civilized chaos, famine, and disease, with massive loss of life. Each time, the leaders, or some battle or event somewhere had pulled them back from the brink. For the first time he wondered if it had all been c
arefully moderated. A hundred ideas threatened to overload his brain. He banged his fist hard on the small table, upsetting the two tea cups, splashing hot tea onto the floor.
He stood up. "You’re right. We sleep here." He looked down at Kat’s unconscious frame. "I’ll take first watch, you sleep now. First thing in the morning we’re taking your comms system apart, Rashid, and it’s coming back to our ship." He half-expected some kind of argument, but Rashid nodded his assent.
"I am joining you. If your comrades have indeed been attacked, you may need an extra pair of hands."
Blake cast him a hard look. He went to the hatch, and then turned around. "All right. But let’s get one thing straight. You don’t ever point a gun at me again unless you mean to fire it."
Without waiting for an answer, he stormed outside and yanked the hatch closed behind him. He knew his anger at Rashid was misplaced, but without warning, everything he believed in was in danger. He’d gone from elation at finding Eden, to realizing it was a malicious trap. He’d always fought for justice, and now he found himself, and humanity, in a much larger universe where the rule of the jungle applied.
He sat on the step and stared at the stars. Since a kid, they had been his constant companion, first his fantasy playground, and then his actual territory since graduating as an astronaut twenty years ago. Yet now he pondered how many of these twinkling lights harboured terrible enemies.
Here he was, his first night on another planet, under different stars, after three months of arduous travel. He scanned the sky, and tried to locate the constellation that shrouded Earth, but he couldn’t find it, and was too tired to search for long. Instead of jubilation at being there, finally on Eden, he felt the sky and the weight of Earth’s survival pressing down on him.
He recalled his wife saying he had such broad, strong shoulders that he could carry the world on them, and that someday he would. The thought of her drew a smile across his lips. "Well, we made it, Glenda. Not exactly textbook Eden, though." He resolved himself. He’d find a way, first to warn Earth, and then to do battle with these creatures.
The hatch opened and the mirror emerged. It paused briefly in front of him. He bristled, then barked at it, "Go check my men!" As an afterthought, he added, "Please. You’re here to help us apparently."
The mirror’s face flickered purple then became translucent, so all Blake could see was its outline, and through it the silhouettes of dunes and the stars. It drifted out into the desert night and was gone.
Blake sat alone for four hours, thinking about it all, but as usual, thinking late at night when tired got him nowhere. It would have to wait till morning. Rashid came out, looking like hell. He obviously hadn’t slept a wink.
"My shift, Sir."
Blake’s earlier anger had long since drained into the desert sand; he’d never been able to be cross with anyone for any length of time. Rising a little creakily, he nodded to Rashid, and went inside. He’d been getting cold in any case. He lay down on the still-warm cot of Rashid, seeing Kat had been made comfortable and remained fast asleep. He looked up to the ceiling, and for the first time noticed the artistry of the stars painted on the ceiling, recognizing Orion as it would be seen from Earth, and other constellations, and wondered if Rashid had done it all from memory.
He tried counting the stars to fall asleep, but it didn’t work. He couldn’t sleep because he still had no target, nothing to fight. And then it came to him – he’d been so focused on the ships, a typical military target, that he’d forgotten the other obvious target. The eggs – he had to find the eggs, and destroy them. He recalled that Q’Roth guardians watched over them. Fine – he’d find out what they were really made of.
While running through combat scenarios, he finally fell asleep.
***
Zack watched Pierre dive just as the creature reared up behind him, its forelegs raised high. Smoke and flames erupted on its chest as the missile struck home. The creature staggered back but stayed upright, just as the second volley punched it off its feet amidst an explosion of white-hot flame. It disappeared behind the cloudburst of fire. Pierre crawled a few meters away, struggled to his feet and ran again, straight towards the ship. Zack watched, counting. All he could see now was Pierre and a column of curdling smoke behind him. He waited to see if the alien burst through the fire curtain, but nothing happened. Still he held the weapon, counting. He set the charge to detonate automatically at two hundred meters, and when he got to a count of twelve, he fired it ten degrees up into the air, then unshouldered the heavy weapon, letting it slump to the ground.
Although Pierre was out of blast range, the shock wave still knocked him off his feet, and pushed Zack backwards so that he stumbled on his gel-cast leg. As he was trying to stand up again, Pierre arrived, panting, and helped him up. Zack noticed Pierre’s face streaked with smoke and sweat, his hair matted, singed at the back.
‘Thanks… Zack. I… really… owe you one.’
Zack grimaced with the leg-pain. "More than one. Fetch me another pack of armored heads, and we’ll go see what’s left of that motherfucker."
When they arrived at the site where Zack had hit it, they couldn’t find the creature anywhere. They searched for half an hour. All they found were a few splotches and one small puddle of a thick blue-black oily liquid. Pierre took a sample. Zack surveyed the area.
"That’s one tough SOB."
"If we can make it bleed, then we can kill it."
Zack pointed to the small plastic packet in Pierre’s hands. "How’d you know that isn’t just monster poop you’ve got there?"
"Then at least we got its attention."
Zack laughed, and nodded to the ship. "It’s getting dark – I reckon it’ll come around quickly here. Let’s get back and seal up for the night."
Pierre picked up his own rifle.
"What about the Skipper and Kat? Do you think they saw the flare?"
Zack’s face darkened. He kicked at a rock with his good foot. "I’m betting they did, but they must have their hands full."
"Should we go look for them in the morning?"
Zack shook his head. "We have to stay with the ship. If we leave it, I have a bad feeling it won’t be here when we get back."
***
Later that night, far away on the hilltop near where Pierre had first seen the Q’Roth, the mirror stood guard over the Ulysses Lander. It had never known emotions, but just once, briefly, its translucent face showed its master, with a body coloring that signified approval. After all this time, it was finally doing what its master had asked of it. And then it showed a Q’Roth dying – their one fatality during the assault on the mirror’s home planet, when a power plant exploded. The scene of the dying Q’Roth replayed a dozen times on the mirror’s surface before it became once again translucent and calm. The mirrors’ masters had been true pacifists, and had never programmed the emotion of revenge. But the mirror had been inside Kat’s mind. It didn’t fully understand primitive emotions – like anger – but it was a quick study.
Chapter 28
Tarpit
Micah ground his knuckles against puffy eyelids. He’d been working on the data cube for four hours straight, borrowing the newly-installed mil hardware. Initially he’d focused on the thirty minutes when the ghoster had awoken. There were no video images, just telemetry and voice comms, but it had been like listening to a museum-style radio show. He’d been surprised how much scarier it was not seeing any images. Just hearing the tension in Kat’s voice, contrasted with Blake’s raw control, Zack’s bravado and gung-ho swearing, and Pierre’s clinical matter-of-factness laced with fear – he felt like he knew them. But the ghoster’s screaming – he’d instinctively yanked his earphones out when he had first heard it.
The suppressed transmission had been confusing at the end, but it seemed that shortly before Kat tripped the comms virus, they killed the ghoster and the ND was still intact. Micah had pinpointed the time when Rudi had made the switch from real to synthetic IVS-supp
lied data feed, about two months into the trip. Very slick, he had to admit.
For the last hour he’d been looking at the end of the data cube’s storage. Luckily, after Ulysses had stopped transmitting. IVS had let it run and record anyway, in case it came back on-line. There was noise, just the electromagnetic radiation that’s ever-present in space. He’d always mocked the idea of silent space – silent to human ears of course, but on the "star waves," as he liked to call them, it was a cacophony of signals from stellar bodies and pulsars – a cosmic Babel.
He searched for Kat’s simulacrum, hoping it had been smart enough – and fast enough – to anticipate the Trojan Warp virus. The Alicians – he presumed they had installed the virus – had focused on human detection and response time. This meant that they could put in a more robust virus that chewed up software and really made it irreparable, but this took time. The simulacrum would only have had a couple of seconds, but it was intelligent and worked in micro-seconds. All Micah needed was a keystone – a password – a translation device to unlock the hidden data.
The door opened, and Louise strode in, her usual sleek black top and skirt, but her hair was down today. He wished it wasn’t. Since the previous evening with Antonia – even though she didn’t want him – he felt he couldn’t handle Louise anymore.
"Ah, you’re out now," she said.
He cast her a puzzled look.
"You were under before – that machine totally engrosses you, doesn’t it?"
"Immerses. We get immersed in it," he said, a little testy.
"Does it increase your grumpiness, too? Maybe you need some discipline, Micah?" She walked right up and leaned over him. "Maybe I should spank you over your desk?" Her glossed pink lips stretched into a smile.
