Six bobbed his head up and down. "Everyone! Even Hiroto! Like a puzzle!"
The blood ebbed from Art's face. His stomach lurched. What had they done? "So they revived everyone on board? Did you see it?"
"I read the feeds. They treated Hiroto for a long time."
Art trembled. "What did they do with Hiroto, Six?"
"They cut out his cancer."
Art stared at his companion. If they had found the core of Hiroto's brain, the uncorrupted flesh he had been born with all those hundreds of years ago, they could have surgically implanted it in a human host. A body. But whose? "Six, what did they do with Hiroto's brain?"
"They put it in Hiroto's body."
"Yes, but whose body? Whose was it before?"
"They grew one, from Hiroto's DNA. I was with him until my power module ran down and they dumped me here. He smiled a lot."
Hiroto resurrected and cured. Of course he smiled a lot. "Where are the others? And why am I kept here alone?"
"Unknown."
CHAPTER 23
Art and Six were allowed to roam between this dim, conical cell and Art's concrete enclosure with its glimpse of a sliver of alien sky. The temperature remained constant. Each morning, fresh fruit and vegetables arrived in a metal bowl on the food platform; he could drink freely from the water that dribbled down the inclined wall. It was cold and clean. It was a planet of a similar size to Earth - Art's body felt the same weight, a single G of gravity pulled on his limbs, so this was a reasonable assumption to make - and the days were sixty nine hours long, according to Six's clock. So it rotated more slowly than Earth. Beyond these basic calculations he knew nothing of his location. But there were stars in the sky. They were not in the Drop Off. Their hibernation had been long. Perhaps as long as five million years. Hadn't Yan Deuter said that alien remains had been found on Ibo? And then a craft had been spotted by Six deep in the Drop Off, something capable of faster than light travel, according to Halliday's ship's instruments. Was it possible they were evidence of whoever held them captive here? Had they been tracked, all these millions of years?
CHAPTER 24
Art woke slowly on his bed of straw. He eased himself up into a sitting position and reached over to Six, to switch him on. His fingers ached with each movement. Arthritis had set in five or six years ago. His knees were okay, but his hips took an hour or so in the morning to loosen up. His beard was down to his knees, a long, silvery tangle. His hair was nearly as long, and thinning rapidly on top. The fruit and vegetable ration still arrived via the rising platform each morning, but now it was helpfully served mashed up. He used his fingers to scoop it into his largely toothless mouth. Whatever other privations he suffered in his enclosure, the food was not one of them. It was always fresh and plentiful and varied. He suspected it was also drugged, or laced with medicine, for he rarely suffered with any illness. It appeared only his arthritis was beyond their knowledge.
He and Six, according to Six's internal clock, had been held in captivity now for forty-two years. Above, the sky rarely changed. The clouds passed every day, sometimes faster, sometimes slower, sometimes thicker, sometimes thinner. He came to think of them as clouds of dough, the way they pulled apart and re-formed, thick and sticky.
It was only now, as they entered their forty-third year in the enclosure, that Art grew fearful. Six's power module, the last of his three modules, was going into the red. In a military unit, with a nuclear pile, Six could have gone on a thousand years, but they did not have this luxury. He had been meticulous in preserving Six's power. He went for five years with Six switched to hibernation mode, but it had driven him nearly to insanity, being so utterly alone. Now he switched him on for and hour after he woke up, and for another hour before he went to sleep. They talked, played verbal games, remembered the past. They had seen no one and nothing in forty-three years.
"Six, you never saw who captured us?"
"I was deactivated the same moment they came on board. An EMP pulse, most likely."
"We need to contact them. Your power is running out."
"I can go into stasis."
"I know, but even that will run out eventually."
"Stasis power is currently twelve years."
Art stood up on his straw bed and walked out to his feeding bowl. "Thing is, Six, I like your company. I'd like to have you on for a couple of hours a day, and at that rate, well...
"I have two weeks of power left at current usage. You won't let me die, will you, Art?"
Art forced a smile. "I need you with me, Six. We need to attract their attention."
He considered his words a moment. It was obvious. His food had been drugged for decades. Only now, with the imminent deactivation of his only companion, had his true thoughts forced their way through.
"We have to get through the gate."
Six knew what he meant. The square opening with the horizontal bars opposite the den, with its mysterious, curving path.
Art hit his head with his fists. He had been in a dream world. All thoughts of escape, of communication with his captors, had been dulled by a fug of pharmaceuticals beyond his comprehension. He had been happy to spend his days roaming his paddock, playing on the climbing frame, swinging on his rope. He had delighted in spending his evenings playing word games with Six and reliving the past. It was a kind of dementia, a mental auto-pilot. And suddenly it was gone. He had forged a new neural pathway with the simple desire to keep Six alive. It was the one thing his captors could not provide. This thought wrenched him out of his torpor, like a mental bomb going off inside his head, destroying all the established structures of his imprisonment.
He rose to his full height and stood firmly on two legs. For many years now he had been scrabbling around on all fours, reverting to his ape heritage, ready to pick up sustenance from the ground. His hips flared with pain, but the pain was good, and bright, and spoke to him. I am a man, and I will be free!
"Six, we need to open the gate."
They went over to it immediately. The bars were slim, but inflexible, They examined it, and the surroundings.
Art stopped, and rubbed his hand over his face. At the top of the gate was a simple sliding catch, something beyond the intelligence of herd animals, but not primates. Had it been in an aquarium, he guessed it would not have even been beyond the skills of an octopus to unlock. Had he really been here forty years without ever examining this gate?
He slid the catch open and pulled the gate aside. It squealed on rusty hinges. He and Six crept down the gently curving concrete slope.
The path, with its low ceiling, helixed down on itself only once and then went straight. It was an oval passage, illuminated by a ghostly blue light. The concrete, or more likely a limescale deposit, gave way, metre by metre, to an organic structure, lined by the little starfish feet he had seen in the chasm beneath his den.
Tears coursed down his face as he walked, hobbling, down the passageway with Six rattling ahead of him. He had wasted so much time. Were there any people left alive from Halliday's starship? He wanted to be at home, but he did not know any more where his home was. Imo was gone, Earth was a fantasy from the past. Where did he belong?
Six began climbing a ramp. Art followed, hairy, naked and numbed with regret. The ramp levelled out. Ahead was a livid, scar-like sphincter, deep red and aquamarine blue. It opened as they approached, dripping moisture that echoed noisily in the passageway. Art winced as daylight spilled into the space, magenta, hot and humid. Some things flew across the sky ahead, ovoid bodies beneath helical wings that spun like helicopter rotors. They sang like rubbed wine glasses.
They emerged onto a paved arena on a low hill. It overlooked a city buried in a jungle. A wide plaza stood before them, made of something that looked like fish scales. It shone beneath the reddish sun in the sky. And what a sun! It filled the southern sky, huge and benign, a red dwarf star close to the planet, but cool enough to allow life to evolve.
Art came close to Six and leant on his shou
lder. It was definitely a city, but looked more like a coral reef. There were high towers, with hard walls, but there were no straight lines here. The towers were bulbous, malformed, with feelers that snaked out of orofices he would have called windows. He watched as a feeler snatched at one of the flying things that passed nearby and greedily took it back to its hole. Surrounding the towers was a forest of moving vegetation, pink, purple and deep red, all alive. It would eat them up if they ventured any further.
But then he saw they could go no further. There was a fence around the plaza, high, with slim, gently curved supports and something like wire between them. It was their outside exercise area, the public part of their enclosure.
Still they saw no one. They went up to the fence. The wires were long, gummy strands, like spider silk. Beyond the fence was a walkway that curled away from them in both directions. A public pavement from which visitors to the zoo could look at the exhibits. Art turned to look at his enclosure. It, too, was coral-like, hunched and domed. He could see his domed skylights at the top. He sat down by the fence, his hips aching, and stared blankly at his surroundings, overwhelmed and feeling agoraphobic after so many years in his den. He noticed that tears were falling down his face. He was succumbing once again to the drugs in his food.
"Six. Six, you have to cut the wires."
Six turned immediately and slotted a wire into a pincer attachment mounted on his wrist beneath his primary gripping implement. The wire kinked under the pressure, but did not break. Six sought out another wire, but he was stuck to the first. He reached out his other arm to free himself, and that stuck too. He put his rig into reverse, but the wires held him fast. Art rushed to his side, but hesitated. A kind of stringy glue was oozing from the wires. "I am trapped," said Six, twisting experimentally. "I require cutting tools."
Art grabbed hold of the robot from behind. "Pull, Six! Pull hard!" He planted his feet firmly and pulled back with all his strength as Six's rubber treads spun in reverse, roaring against the scaled floor. It was no use. Art noticed the vibrations they made during their struggles passed swiftly along the wires. They bobbed even now, when he and Six were still. "Six," he said, "you know what a spider is, don't you?"
"I have seen the relevant archives."
"Well, many spiders make webs to catch flies, and when flies struggle they make vibrations in the web, alerting the spider to their presence. Just like these wires."
"We have been captured by spiders?"
"That remains to be seen. But perhaps someone will come. Perhaps someone has felt the vibrations."
"Perhaps we will be eaten."
A shiver ran through Art. Anything was possible. "If someone comes, I will try to get them to take us to Halliday's ship. We can recharge you. We have to recharge you."
They waited for an hour or so. No one came. The vegetation waved, the polyp-like tentacles flashed out of their holes from time to time to pluck flying things from the air, and the slow-moving sun burned high above them.
Art made Six vibrate the wires some more. They undulated all the way around the enclosure. Art watched them until they fell still again.
After a few more hours, he felt hungry. He resisted for as long as he was able, for he feared his meal would render him stupid again. But he feared also his meal would not be there, or his way back would be blocked. He hesitated another hour, but his hunger only grew. Finally, he approached the closed sphincter. It opened meekly before him and he scurried down the tunnel to the gate, which was still open. To his relief, there upon the raised dais, was the metal bowl with his dinner. And something new. A large metal cup. He had never had a cup. He drank from the water that flowed down the wall with his mouth or his hands. But now he had a cup. Did someone know he was outside? He took the meal and the cup, and filled the cup with water. After a long drink, he filled it again, and took both bowls out to the plaza. Six was still stuck to the wires.
He ordered Six to shut down and sat next to him to eat his meal. He probed his food with his fingers first, naively hoping he would find half-crushed tablets or unusual discoloured areas, but found nothing. So he ate it all and washed it down with the water from his cup.
Another eight months passed. Four months in, a period of storms began. He knew something was coming because the flying things disappeared one day, and an oppressive, still heat fell upon the city. There followed three months of daily rain storms, and once, disastrously, a storm of such magnitude, with falling hail stones the size of tennis balls, that Six was damaged. A block of ice slammed into the housing over his treads, and bent the alloy onto the treads themselves, trapping them. Despite all his efforts, he was not strong enough to free them.
So he lived his life half in and half out of his den. He retreated indoors when the rain came, but he was fearful of leaving Six alone, in case he was removed in his absence. He dragged straw up from his den and made a bed near the sphincter door, but not too near. It was alive and made noises in the night and dripped moisture on the floor that would often wake him, or wet his bedding.
Finally the storms passed, and the flying things returned. The coral-like buildings subtly changed their colour, almost like leaves changing with the seasons. Six remained shut down and trapped against the fence, rust building on his metal body, water slowly seeping into his circuitry.
And then, one day, mid-way through the planet's slow dawn, Art awoke to find Six free and a section of wire, between the nearest two fence posts, gone. He struggled over to the robot and switched him on.
"Six, answer me! Six!"
Six shuffled forward and back, but one track was immobilised and he turned a tight circle. "Systems online. I require an engineer. Immobilised."
"I know, Six. A hail stone nearly took you out. I can't move the cover, it's all smashed in. Can you reach it, do a battlefield repair?"
"Require upgrade to U/40 rig."
"Me too. Can you reach it?"
"Hydraulic power insufficient."
"What if we work together?"
"Proceed."
Six pistoned out his arm on the damaged side and extended it to reach and grab the edge of the track cover. Art leant in close to him and put his foot on the track and his fingers underneath the bent alloy. "On three, Six. One, two, three!"
Art felt Six's alloy rig flex with the torque from his hydraulics as the alloy cover dug into his straining fingers. With a squealing noise, the cover bent back into shape and Six vented his hydraulics with a hiss.
The hiss was answered by a high warble like nothing they had heard before.
Art jerked upright to see a large, semi-transparent torus, on edge, like a soft wheel, move slowly along the walkway towards them. Art felt all his strength vacate his limbs as his stomach lurched with deep fear. He shook from head to toe. Something was coming. Shamefully, but instinctively, he moved his naked body behind Six to shield himself.
The question of how humankind would react to first contact with an intelligent, alien species has been asked many times over the millennia. The answer, based on first contact between diverse human civilisations, is bleak. The Conquistadors in South America brought superior fire-power and disease; in North America, the result was similar, but drawn out over five hundred years. In Australia, the natives were first hunted as animals, their humanity unrecognised, before being consigned to the margins of society. And in lands where no human had trod, there followed swift extinctions of local fauna: On Mauritius, the trusting Dodo eliminated in seventy years, The Great Auk in three hundred years. Death followed first contact. Or failing that, slavery, as the superior culture overwhelmed the inferior.
The quivering torus stopped a little way away. Art could see a dark speck inside the opaque structure. It moved down within the apparatus, like something caught in mucus, and then disappeared from view.
In the still, red dawn, Art heard only his rapid breathing. Six remained still, but he could hear his optics zooming in and focusing.
"Six," he whispered, "Don't move. Don't spe
ak."
From around the far side of the torus vehicle emerged something around eight feet tall. Art's immediate impression was of a tall, dark purple coloured Christmas tree. It was roughly conical, with no indication of arms, legs or head. Its body was covered in soft, rubbery, fringed layers that shifted rhythmically as it walked. The dark purple body merged into a large, lighter protuberance at the base, the colour of an earthworm, full of thick muscle, that propelled it along on a single, undulating pseudo pod foot. He could see no eyes, or mouth.
The creature perambulated to the edge of the fence where the wire was broken, and bent its body to look at the fence posts there. Then it drew nearer to them. It made a low, gobbling sound, and seemed to hesitate.
He had to act. He had to save Six. He wanted to run and hide, but instead he spoke. "We need help. Can you help us?" His voice was thin and scratchy.
The creature stood erect, as if surprised. Art, against his better instincts, stepped out from behind Six and raised a hand to indicate his presence. The creature moved slowly forward; a rolling, dipping motion as the single foot undulated beneath it. It stopped in front of Six, quivering.
Art raised his hand again. "We need to get to the spaceship. Can you take us there? Or can you take us to see the others like us?"
It made a low, murmuring sound. Art felt his ears pop as a localised change in air pressure took place. Something pushed Six back, away from the fence. Art scurried away from the reversing robot.
The creature whooped and hooted. The sound appeared to come out of the top of its head. He saw fine filaments there vibrating in time with the noise.
The wires, seemingly alive, flailed about their slim pillars and snaked across the opening, before pulling tight once more. The fence was secure. Art and Six were again trapped.
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