As the tower drew even nearer, the walking figures became more numerous, some of them in large groups. The tower wall rose directly out of the rocks and there were openings at its base. Countless figures streamed in and out. Quentin was swept into one of the openings and down a wide passageway with walls that emitted pinkish light. The moving figures were abundant here, but his speed prevented him from discerning their specifics.
Finally the passageway ended and Quentin emerged into a vast open space, the hollow center of the tower. While the outer surface was featureless, the interior was riddled with doors, balconies, and walkways. The doors glowed with specific colors, and the wall, gently curving inward for miles, resembled an array of shimmering pixels fading into the distance.
Before Quentin could adapt his sense of scale, he accelerated upward. Spherical pods flew about in the atmosphere of the tower, each of them emanating a color. There were no visible means of lift or propulsion, but the pods moved at great speed. He climbed higher, and they became more abundant, until the swarm of flying pods obscured the tower’s floor below. Then without warning he plunged horizontally into another passageway. When he again reached the outer wall of the tower, a door opened and he shot out into the open air. At this height above the ground, the sky was darker, and stars sparkled through the thin air above. Still the tower rose higher. Again he accelerated upward, flying parallel to the tower’s exterior surface.
Finally he spotted the summit. The tower was topped with a large disk-shaped node. Massive tubes joined the node, extending out in six directions. It was the spider web Quentin had seen from the ground. The tower connected the planet’s surface to an unthinkably vast network, which appeared to envelop the entire planet in a perfectly stable geostationary orbit. Quentin was struck by the node’s resemblance to the central hut of the Papuan village, which had housed the Lamotelokhai and was joined to six hanging tunnels.
He passed the lower edge of the node and rose toward its top. As he rounded the upper edge, the vast roof of the node lay before him. It was a disk the size of a city, joining six tunnels that were each at least a mile in diameter. There in the center of the disk something was happening. A cloud of particles was dispersing upward. He drew nearer and realized that the particles, which were not so small, were coming from openings in the disk’s surface. He approached one of the openings. An object emerged from the portal and then shot into space to join the others. Another object appeared at the portal, held in place by clear, glass-like rods to a platform that had lifted it. It was about a meter across and roughly spherical. The clear rods pulled free of the object and retracted into the platform. The object shifted itself and sealed up the holes where the rods had been, and then Quentin knew what it was—the Lamotelokhai.
The platform snapped upward, shoving the thing off. Quentin watched it drift away, joining the cloud of thousands—perhaps millions—of others, all hurtling into space.
Quentin stirred, the dream lingering in his mind. It was still dark. The rain had stopped, but the silence was punctuated by pattering drops falling from the wet forest canopy. He rose to one elbow. The Addison replica still sat in the same spot watching him.
“I guess you don’t sleep, huh?” Quentin spoke softly so as not to wake the others.
The figure did not respond.
Quentin whispered, “The dream I just had—you put that into my head, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” the figure whispered back. Either it was mimicking Quentin’s tone, or it actually understood the purpose.
“That was the home of your creators, where you came from?”
“Yes, as it was long ago when I was created.”
Quentin studied the Lamotelokhai. He was still struggling to grasp the enormity of what he had witnessed. The massive web that encircled the planet likely provided more living space than the planet’s entire surface. It was beyond comprehension. Nevertheless, the Lamotelokhai had said it was the tiny particles in its own body that were the greatest achievement of its creators. And this achievement was here, sitting in the mud directly in front of Quentin.
“Why did you come here?” Quentin whispered.
In spite of the darkness, he saw the figure smile.
“Perhaps soon you will see why.”
Bobby was the last to wake. He was aware the others were up—he heard them talking about the dream they’d all had—but he was still exhausted. He rolled over and covered his ear with his elbow, but it was no use. The morning birds and insects were making a ruckus, and it just wasn’t comfortable lying in the mud. Besides, there was the dream. As he listened to the others talk, the details came back to him: The red sun; fish swirling the water; flying into a tower that went all the way up to space; and finally the Lamotelokhai. There wasn’t just one Lamotelokhai. There were too many to count.
“Welcome to the living, Bobby,” Ashley said.
Bobby wondered if she’d intended that to carry deeper meaning than just a morning greeting. He mumbled something that wasn’t clear even to him. He squinted at Ashley. She was filthy, and her hair was a tangle of twigs and mud balls. And she was beautiful. “You look like a mudpuppy,” he said.
Ashley snorted. “If I had a mirror, I’d make you look at yourself.”
They were all grubby and damp. Carlos had managed—maybe on purpose—to spread mud over every inch of his body including his face. Even Samuel was a sight. He must have tried to wash himself in the river, because he was dripping brown water. The only one who looked normal was the Lamotelokhai. The thing still sat on the ground, perfectly clean, in the same spot where it had pulled off an arm the night before.
Bobby eyed the Lamotelokhai. It was easy to forget that the thing used to look like a mass of clay. It seemed so much like a person now. Not really Addison—because it said things Addison wouldn’t say—but still like a person. He spoke to it. “That was the place you came from, wasn’t it? In my dream?”
“Yes.”
“What were those things swimming in the water? Were they fish?”
The Lamotelokhai nodded toward the adults. “Your questions do not fit the pattern of questions from the others.”
Bobby frowned. The thing had always just answered his questions before. “They’re grown-ups, I’m a kid,” he said. “Were they fish?”
“No, not fish. But in some ways like fish. Would you like to see?”
Bobby wasn’t sure what that meant, so he shrugged. “Sure, let me see.”
The thing then repeated the same act it had performed the previous day. It pulled its own arm loose and dropped it onto the ground. Ashley and Carlos moved to Bobby’s side. They stared at the arm, waiting. Like before, it curled up and then shaped itself into something else. Soon it was a perfectly formed creature, flopping in the mud. It was definitely not a fish, even though it had the shape of one. The tail looked like a fish’s, spread wide and trying to swim by flipping at the air. But the creature’s skin looked nothing like a fish’s. It was more like hard leather with softer joints that let it move. The leather was the color of dried blood on the top of the body and pink lemonade on the belly. But Bobby’s eyes were drawn to the strangest part, the head. Actually, there were two of them—or maybe two parts of one head. The hard skin did not cover the heads. This made the body look like a cone, and out of the open end of the cone came two thrashing eel heads about the size of Bobby’s thumb. Each head had two eyes and whiskers that seemed to be feeling for something. There was one mouth just below where the two eel heads joined the body. The mouth opened and closed as if gasping for air. As they watched, the creature’s flopping began to slow down.
Ashley was the first to say something. “Whatever that is, it’s dying.”
“It’s not even real,” Carlos said. Then he looked at the Lamotelokhai. “Is it real?”
“It is a copy, like I am a copy of Addison.”
The adults came over and watched the thing die.
“That is a creature unlike any I have seen,” Samuel said. “Wha
t exactly is it?”
“It’s from the Lamotelokhai’s planet.” Bobby said.
The Addison copy picked up the creature, which was now hardly moving, and reattached it to his arm. Soon the creature was gone, and the hand was good as new.
“Why did it have two heads?” Bobby asked.
The Lamotelokhai flexed its hand. “Many of the living things on the planet of my creators had heads similar to this.”
Samuel cleared his throat. He was frowning. “How much time has passed since you left the world upon which this creature swam?”
“A unit of time is needed,” the Lamotelokhai said.
Bobby said, “It wants to know how long is—”
“Yes, I do see that,” Samuel said. “Generally we measure the passing of time in years. A year is the time it takes for the Earth to complete its path about the sun.” Samuel pointed up, even though the sun couldn’t be seen. “Approximately 365 days and nights pass in a year.”
The Lamotelokhai didn’t even pause to think about this. “Six zero two three four two eight nine two years. That is the time that has passed since I was sent from the world upon which the creature swam.”
Everyone was quiet. Bobby tried to picture the number on paper, but it didn’t work. He noticed that Mr. Darnell was counting on his fingers as he repeated the number in his head.
He finished counting and said, “Nine digits.”
“That’s 602 million years ago,” Mrs. Darnell said.
Mr. Darnell was still holding his fingers up. “The number you just gave us was six hundred and two million, three hundred and forty-two thousand, eight hundred and ninety-two years. It’s easier for us to understand if you say it that way. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Is that number really correct?”
“Yes.”
“So when did you arrive here on this Earth?” Mr. Darnell asked.
“I arrived 221,880 years after I was sent from the world of my creators.” It stated the number correctly this time. “So I arrived here 602,121,012 years ago.”
Again, everyone was quiet.
“Extraordinary,” Samuel said. He paused for a moment as if thinking. “Last evening you showed something to us. It was a cuscus of the genus Spilocuscus. You claimed that the species no longer lived. Yet you seem to have memory of it, memory sharp enough to create an accurate imitation of a living individual. Do you have memory of other living things from the past?”
“Yes. I have memory of living things I have encountered since I arrived here.”
Mrs. Darnell said, “You have that kind of information about living things on Earth for the last 602 million years?”
“Yes. There were no living things on the land when I arrived here. But many were in the water. Later, living things were on the land. I have information on all that I have encountered.”
“My God,” Mrs. Darnell said. “Quentin, it’s a databank of the evolution of life.”
An idea hit Bobby like a punch to his head. “You were here when dinosaurs were here, weren’t you?”
The Lamotelokhai looked at him. “Definition is needed.”
“You know, dinosaurs! They were big and kind of like lizards. They were reptiles—really big ones. Some of them ate plants, but some of them were the biggest predators ever.”
“Yes, I was here when dinosaurs were here.”
Bobby turned to the others, his face hot with excitement.
“Way beyond extraordinary!” he said.
They continued downstream, along a trail that was often no trail at all. The ground was slippery, with treacherous slopes where minor streams merged with the river. It was slow going, and Quentin had little choice but to face his own beleaguered thoughts.
The Lamotelokhai had revealed medical and physical phenomena Quentin had believed impossible. Now the thing claimed to have occupied the Earth for over half a billion years, recording information on evolving life forms. So much information that it could create an exact copy of any living thing it had encountered. It must also have data on such things as water and air chemistry. And this was just for the Earth. What about its planet of origin? And the regions of space it had traveled through before arriving here?
It was clear the Lamotelokhai’s discovery would be seen as one of the most significant events in human history. Bringing it out of hiding was now their chief responsibility. The Lamotelokhai, whatever it was, was bigger than Quentin—bigger than all of them. Maybe even bigger than Addison, whom Quentin had abandoned in the wilderness to die alone. And the importance of the discovery served as a rationale, a justification for this personal nightmare and the remorse that promised to haunt his remaining days.
But even as this notion took hold, a conflicting fixation was sprouting within Quentin, taking root and growing like malignant kudzu through his mind. He felt intensifying anxiety about revealing the Lamotelokhai. He could no longer convince himself it had originated on Earth. The Lamotelokhai was what it claimed to be, and it held the knowledge of a far superior race of beings.
Quentin thought of the Papuans his parents had introduced him to so many years ago. Gupy had treated young Quentin as an adult, showing him how to sharpen the blade of a bush knife while his parents weren’t watching and telling him jokes about the village women. Quentin couldn’t understand the words, but the jokes were evidently sexual. And Amius, with a penchant for having his picture taken, had hoisted Quentin into his lap repeatedly, knowing Quentin’s mom could not resist the photographic opportunity.
But Gupy and Amius’s tribe had changed in the years since Quentin’s parents had studied their language and had exposed them to the outside world in the process of making a documentary. At only seven, Quentin hadn’t been able to grasp the significance of Bintang beer bottles piled higher than his head outside the huts, or used needles and cigarette butts littering the ground. Quentin’s dad had taken all the blame for this upon himself. It hadn’t been his fault, of course. The tribe would have merged with the modern world eventually. But crushing self-reproach had destroyed his father, and therefore the event and its consequences had shaped Quentin’s existence and worldview. Although the Lamotelokhai might benefit humans beyond imagining, Quentin was bringing an advanced culture’s influence to his own species. He was living out his father’s story on a global scale.
And so a fierce conflict grew within Quentin as he trudged, stumbled, and slid about in the mud, slowly making his way downriver with the rest of the group.
Most of the others had become quiet after the first hour of traveling. But Bobby seemed to have an endless stream of ideas and questions for the Lamotelokhai, and it distracted Quentin to listen to them talk.
“There were lots of others like you,” Bobby said. “I saw them being shot out into space. Where did they all go?”
“I cannot know where.”
“Did they go to other planets?”
“I cannot know. That was their purpose. It is likely some of them found suitable destinations, as I have. Others may still be searching.”
“That’s a long time to search.”
No response.
“So you were here 245 million years ago, right?”
“Yes.”
“So you saw them, right? You saw dinosaurs. Live dinosaurs.”
“Yes, I encountered them.”
“So you could make one to show us?”
“Yes.”
“But what if it’s bigger than you? How could you do that?”
“I would need other parts.”
“What kind of parts?”
“The parts could come from many things.”
“Could you use this tree?” Bobby patted a fig tree as he passed it.
At this point Quentin jumped in. “Bobby, that’s a bad idea. Promise me you won’t ask it to do that.”
Bobby’s shoulders slumped. “Maybe just an herbivore?”
Quentin shook his head. “Until we know more about it, don’t ask it to make anything.�
�
Eventually Bobby seemed to run out of questions, and the group pushed on in silence. Morning turned to afternoon, creating a sauna beneath the canopy’s cover. Afternoon turned to evening, and still they trudged on. When the rain started, it washed away some of Quentin’s sweat, but it didn’t help their progress. Much of the ground had baked hard during the day, but the rain made walking perilous again. No one objected when Samuel suggested they stop.
They followed the same plan for making camp. Bobby collected fruits with help from Mbaiso, the only tree kangaroo still following them. Before long they were sitting under a new shelter, eating the fruits and the last of the khosül. Again the Addison replica sat in the open. Bobby asked it a few random questions but then lay on his side, clearly exhausted.
“Goodnight everyone,” Bobby said.
Ashley and Carlos did the same. Lindsey squeezed Quentin’s hand once and lay down. Samuel, at the opposite end of the lean-to, rose and moved to Quentin’s end. He pardoned himself and sat next to him.
“I don’t suppose you have a plan upon our arrival at a village,” Samuel said quietly.
“What do you mean?” Quentin said, but he was pretty sure he understood.
Samuel eyed the Addison replica. “Quentin, in order to prevent my worst fears, we must reveal the Lamotelokhai only to those least likely to become intoxicated by its influence. You need only to think of your son Addison to know this is true.”
Quentin looked at him sharply.
“I am sorry,” Samuel said. After a pause he went on. “The world is no doubt full of men capable of becoming monsters, given the means to do so. It is upon us to see that the Lamotelokhai does not become the property of such men. We must reveal it to those you would know to be true of purpose. Do you believe the men of position in your home country are to be trusted with such power?”
Infusion: Diffusion Book 2 Page 5
