The Rogue World

by Matthew J. Kirby

  “You’re not in a position to make demands.” Hobbes walked toward the door.

  “Yes, I am.” Eleanor got to her feet. “If you want my help, I need to know you’ll keep your end of the bargain. I need to know they’re safe.”

  “I would also point out,” Watkins said, “that the connection with the alien ship will require tremendous concentration. That may not be possible if Eleanor is distracted by worry for her family.”

  Hobbes reached the door and then turned around to face them. “Not both of them,” he said. “Pick one. Your mom or your uncle. The other stays here.”

  Eleanor shook her head. “They both come or—”

  “One,” Hobbes said. “Or none. I need my own assurances.”

  Eleanor knew he ultimately held the power, and if he wanted to he could keep both her mom and Uncle Jack at gunpoint. But she had managed to negotiate something out of him. And one was better than none.

  “I want my mom,” she said, a little surprised at the swiftness of her choice. But with his injury, Uncle Jack needed to rest, and his cot in the cell would probably be the best place for that.

  Hobbes nodded. “I’ll go get her.” Then he opened the office door, and two armed soldiers marched in. “Take Eleanor and Watkins to the convoy. I’ll meet you there.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Eleanor looked at Watkins. He proceeded through the doorway with his hands clasped behind his back, a mild smile on his face, as if nothing had changed since he’d walked in. But something had changed, and Eleanor was confused by it.

  The soldier nearest her gave her a little nudge, and she moved forward, following Watkins through the door, and on her way back through the tent, she tried again to catch a glimpse of anything useful on the computer monitors and screens.

  “Keep moving,” the soldier behind her said.

  She turned to give him a scowl, and didn’t change her pace at all. When they exited, the two guards directed them toward a large break in the tents where numerous vehicles waited, arranged in a double column. The forward trucks had large guns mounted on them, followed by several armored vans, with a few six-wheeled tank-like vehicles at the rear. The soldiers with Eleanor and Watkins loaded them into one of the vans by themselves, but left the doors open and stood guard.

  “It seems we’re finding our way to the alien ship,” Watkins said. “One way or another.”

  “I’d rather the other way,” Eleanor said.

  She didn’t know how to talk about what had just happened, or even if she should. Hobbes was probably right, and Watkins wouldn’t even know how.

  “I have a theory,” Watkins said.

  “About what?”

  He flicked his eyes toward the guards and lowered his voice. “What’s really going on here.”

  Eleanor leaned in close. “What?”

  “I have heard rumors of a second version of the Preservation Protocol—a plan B, to be used in the event that our attempts to draw energy from the Concentrators failed.”

  “What did it say?”

  “I was never involved with it, as the G.E.T.’s responsibility was only plan A. But the rumors—”

  Hobbes appeared from behind the van, and Watkins leaned away from Eleanor. Then Eleanor’s mom appeared, and Hobbes helped her climb into the same row as Eleanor and Watkins, a slightly confused and worried look on her face.

  “There,” he said. “As promised. And Jack will remain here.”

  Eleanor didn’t need the reminder.

  “We’ll move out shortly,” Hobbes said, and walked away, though the same two guards remained.

  “Are you really going to do this?” her mom asked.

  “I thought you wanted me to cooperate,” Eleanor said.

  “But why did you change your mind?”

  “The same reason you turned us in.”

  Her mom showed a moment’s confusion across her wrinkled brow, but then seemed to realize what Eleanor meant. “I’m sorry.”

  “He’s safe now,” Eleanor said. “But I’m sure he wasn’t happy about being left behind just now.”

  “Not at all,” her mom said. “I’m surprised you didn’t hear him shouting from here.”

  “He is fortunate to have two people care about him as much as you do,” Watkins said. “That is what this is all about, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Eleanor said.

  The front doors opened, and Hobbes climbed into the front passenger seat, while another soldier got behind the wheel and turned the key. Eleanor looked outside and saw the rest of the vehicles filling up with additional soldiers and support staff. Hobbes spoke into a handheld radio.

  “All clear back here. Let’s move out.”

  The head of the column leaped forward, and row by row, each segment followed until Eleanor’s van roared ahead. They moved through the encampment at high speed and drove through the perimeter gate without slowing, merging into single file as they streamed into the narrow English road.

  “How far away is it?” Watkins asked.

  “Five miles,” Hobbes said. “You two ready to do your thing?”

  “We’re still not even sure what our thing is,” Eleanor said. “We’ve never attempted anything like what you’re asking. We’ve never tried to directly communicate with the intelligence.”

  “You’ll have time to figure it out,” Hobbes said. “We have a secondary installation at the site. You three will stay there. Get the feel of things. We want to get this right.”

  “What if we can’t?” Eleanor asked.

  Hobbes shook his head. “Not an option.”

  “What do you mean?” Eleanor said. “That’s not—”

  “If I may,” Watkins said. “Hobbes, you are accustomed to throwing yourself against a problem until it gives way. But brute force will not work here. We are doing a job you cannot do and don’t understand, so you feel disadvantaged. But blindly throwing your weight around, making demands, isn’t going to produce results. It will simply make this more difficult than it already is.”

  Hobbes craned his neck and looked back at Watkins, then Eleanor. “You’ll figure something out, Watkins. You always do.”

  Eleanor stared at him until he turned back around.

  They drove through some of the same countryside Eleanor had crossed on foot before heading a few miles into new territory. They had to be getting close to the site. Eleanor had worked to keep the ship’s intelligence out of her head, but as they drew closer to it, she became aware of its shadow growing in the corners of her mind. She remembered it strangling her thoughts, choking the life out of her. Cold dread reached down her back at the thought of confronting it again, and if she allowed herself to think of the rogue planet beyond it, her dread became terror.

  Hobbes pointed toward the horizon ahead of them. “The ship will come into view in a moment.”

  Eleanor watched for it, her stomach as tight as her fists as they followed the contours of the land, rising up and down, and then rounded a bend.

  And then she saw it.

  “Good Lord,” Watkins whispered.

  It was even larger than Eleanor had imagined it, the size of a small skyscraper, or perhaps even bigger than that. It was hard to tell. Her mind found it difficult to hold the black ship in one thought. Dozens, perhaps hundreds of spiny legs protruded from its central mass, all bent at impossible angles. Some of them had clawed deep into the ground. It reminded Eleanor of the pictures of invasive cancer cells she’d seen in biology class. Everything about it screamed into her eyes that it was wrong, and it should not be there. She felt the visceral need to run from it, to be as far away from it as she possibly could be, as if her prehistoric ancestors cried out in warning from somewhere deep inside her.

  “You’re shaking,” Eleanor’s mom said, putting her arm around her.

  Eleanor looked down at her body, her hands. She hadn’t realized she was shaking, but she couldn’t stop.

  “You get used to it,” Hobbes said.

  “You get used to
that ship?” Watkins asked.

  Hobbes seemed to be reconsidering. “Well, somewhat.”

  As they drove closer to it, the ship loomed larger, its legs stretching up and over them, bringing them into its shadow. It wasn’t until they had reached the UN station near the ship that she even noticed the Stonehenge monument at its feet. Next to the alien spacecraft, the megaliths appeared small, the achievement of their prehistoric architects nothing more than that of children playing with blocks.

  “The stones are an average of thirteen feet tall and weigh twenty-five tons,” Hobbes said, following Eleanor’s gaze.

  She looked again, scaling up. “The ship is a dozen times the size of those stones.”

  “Sometimes it looks even taller,” Hobbes said. “Come on, let’s show you around.”

  Eleanor was the last to get out of the van, and she did so very slowly, without taking her eyes from the ship. Even more than the Concentrators, this alien presence filled her with disquiet, and not simply because of its size. Eleanor felt an aggression and contempt radiating from it that had nothing to do with the intelligence lurking inside. The ship itself seemed to challenge the worth of the human species simply by its being there.

  The sight of it stole away what little confidence Eleanor had felt. They wouldn’t be confronting the intelligence out in the open this time. They would be attacking its fortress.

  “Come,” Hobbes said. “Let me show you around.”

  The UN facility they had come from held a fraction of the tents that made up its larger counterpart here in the shadow of the alien ship. Those that Eleanor could see into seemed to be entirely filled with scientific equipment. Beyond the tents there were floodlights waiting for darkness to shine. There were also a dozen or more tanks, their gun barrels aimed up at the ship.

  Eleanor’s mom gestured toward them. “I thought you were trying not to provoke the aliens.”

  “We haven’t blown it up yet, have we?” Hobbes said.

  “Assuming you could,” Watkins added.

  Hobbes scoffed at that, and then said, “Your sleeping quarters are this way.”

  He walked off, and as Eleanor went to follow him, her mom touched her arm. “You’ve been very quiet.”

  Eleanor glanced up at the ship, and then quickly away. “I’m fine.”

  “I try not to look at it,” her mom said. “If I stare for too long, it’s like my mind gets stuck trying to figure it out. Is it organic? Inorganic? Is it insect? Aquatic? It defies categorization.”

  “It’s . . . none of that.”

  “It reminds me of what philosophers have said about gazing into the abyss.”

  “Dr. Perry,” Hobbes said. “Eleanor. This way.”

  Eleanor turned toward him where he waited with Watkins, and then the four of them continued their tour of the facility. Aside from the tanks, the soldiers had very little presence here. It seemed all the personnel belonged to some branch of science or government. When they reached their tent, Eleanor expected to find another cage, but there wasn’t one. Just the cots and sleeping bags, but there were a lot of them. It seemed they would be sharing the space with others.

  “Now that you’ve seen some of the operation,” Hobbes said, “let’s move closer to the ship. I’d like your assessment.”

  “Can it wait?” Eleanor’s mom said. Eleanor could tell that her mother knew the alien ship was affecting her, working its way into her mind. “You should give her some time to adjust.”

  Eleanor wondered where that show of concern had been back in Cairo. She didn’t need her mom to look out for her anymore, after everything Eleanor had done on her own.

  “I don’t have that time to give her,” Hobbes said.

  “What good will it do if she’s overwhelmed?” her mom asked.

  “It’s okay,” Eleanor said. “I’m ready.”

  “So am I,” Watkins said. “Lead the way, Hobbes.”

  They left the sleeping quarters behind and walked away from the encampment, passed the ring of tanks, toward Stonehenge, which stood a few hundred meters away. As they walked, Eleanor kept her eyes on the ground and shored up her mental defenses, trying to keep her mind contained so she didn’t alert the ship’s intelligence.

  They passed the first of the alien legs where it stabbed deep into the ground, thick as a lamppost. It reminded Eleanor of the Concentrator’s trunk, and the closer they got to the ship, the more of them there were, creating a forest. Then they crossed the low remnant of a raised earthen ring that encircled the monument, before finally approaching the towering stones. Above Stonehenge, the ship had already swallowed them into its presence.

  Hobbes pulled a handheld sensor out of one of his pockets. “The ambient temperature around the ship is always five degrees warmer than it is back in the camp.”

  “It’s the earth’s telluric energy.” Watkins laid a hand on one of the megaliths. “The ship must be drawing it up through its legs, just as the Concentrators did.”

  Eleanor added, “I bet that’s also how it plugged into the network of ley lines and took control.” Somehow the ship’s intelligence had traveled along those lines, or at least used them to communicate with the World Tree.

  Eleanor turned her attention to Stonehenge. The earth here almost vibrated with current. The monument’s prehistoric builders had placed it over a nexus of ley lines, which Eleanor could only assume must have been intentional. Perhaps these massive stones had somehow interacted with the ley lines, a kind of primitive energy control center, just as the ancient Egyptians had harnessed their own Concentrator’s power.

  “Impressive, isn’t it?” Watkins said. “How they cut these stones, brought them here, and stood them up.”

  “Very impressive,” Eleanor’s mother said.

  It was hard for Eleanor to get too excited about it with the ship bearing down on her.

  “I’m going to check things out,” she said.

  Watkins stepped toward her. “I’ll come with you.”

  “Be careful, sweetie,” her mother said.

  Eleanor turned toward her. “Maybe it would be better if you stayed here.”

  Her mother opened her mouth as if to say something, but then just nodded. It wasn’t that Eleanor thought there would be any imminent danger. She simply found her mother’s worry irritating, the wrong concern at the wrong time, and she didn’t need to be told to be careful every two minutes. Eleanor turned to Hobbes. “It would be better if you stayed over here, too.”

  “Not a chance,” he said, marching right past Eleanor and Watkins toward the ship.

  Watkins shrugged and followed after him, and so did Eleanor after exchanging another glance with her mom. They exited Stonehenge on the far side, and approached a side of the ship devoid of legs, where there appeared to be a kind of portal near the ground. It reminded Eleanor of the mouth of an octopus in the middle of its tentacles.

  Watkins rubbed his chin. “This appears as if it might be a hatch.”

  “That’s what we assumed,” Hobbes said. “But there doesn’t seem to be any way to open it.”

  Eleanor studied its size and shape: an oval three times as tall as Hobbes. She wondered if that’s how large the beings who had built the ship were. Next to the hatch, she spotted a console panel similar to those the Concentrators each had. That would be a potential point of connection with the ship’s intelligence, when they felt ready to attempt it. But before they did anything, she wanted to have a thorough look at it.

  “I’m going to walk around,” she said, leaving the hatch behind.

  Watkins and Hobbes fell in beside her, and they traveled a wide path around the ship, mapping the dozens of legs digging into the ground, trying to gain a better understanding of the ship’s elusive geometry. The trip around it took quite some time, and its legs appeared to have pulled its belly tight against the ground, as if a precaution against removal. When they reached the hatch where they had started, Eleanor turned and peered into the megaliths of Stonehenge, and saw her mother si
tting on one of the fallen stones.

  “What do you think?” Hobbes asked.

  “This is quite unlike the Concentrators,” Watkins said. “It has a different character. A different purpose.”

  “What would you guess its purpose to be?” Hobbes asked.

  “I don’t think we can even imagine what its purpose is,” Eleanor said. “I think you would have to have the mind of an alien to really understand it.”

  Hobbes folded his arms. “Can you connect with it?”

  Eleanor looked at the console beside the hatch. The hardware was there. The question was whether she and Watkins would be strong enough. But even if they were, she wasn’t sure yet whether she wanted to just open it up for Hobbes. She had to figure out if she could destroy the intelligence first.

  “I think we should wait until we’re rested,” Watkins said. “The process is extremely taxing, and we may only get one chance at it.”

  Hobbes didn’t like that answer, and his heavy scowl showed it. “Tomorrow morning, then. This is your only chance.”

  CHAPTER

  22

  HOBBES GAVE ELEANOR AND WATKINS NO OPPORTUNITY to confer privately after that. He stayed by their side for the rest of that afternoon and evening as they did some more exploring of Stonehenge and ate another meal of field rations, and then Eleanor, her mom, and Watkins went to bed in a tent full of strangers. But the strangers didn’t bother Eleanor.

  It was the alien ship that kept her awake.

  Every time she closed her eyes, she saw it, and even when her eyes were open, its presence never left her mind, nothing between her and it but a thin stretch of canvas. She could almost sense something reaching for her, crawling along the currents in the ground beneath her cot. If she remained alert, she would be able to fight it off. If she fell asleep, she would be vulnerable.

  But she could not stay awake forever.

  Eleanor stood at the base of what appeared to be a mountain, but it wasn’t made of rock and earth. Endless nested ducts and pipes seemed to twist and writhe across its steep and angular facets liked exposed muscle. It rose to the height of a true mountain—a black, pyramidal massif that dominated the horizon, and something called to Eleanor from its summit, where she saw a distant green light. She would have to climb to find out what waited for her up there, but as she stepped toward it, she heard a noise behind her, a kind of metallic whine.