The Chaos Chronicles

by Jeffrey A. Carver

  It took an eternity to get a third of the way down the ladder. He paused, clinging dizzily to the protrusions. It took all his strength just to hang on. He had about ten meters yet to go. He heard another rumble below. He kept moving, trying not to look.

  /// I think you'd better look. ///

  /Uh?/ He peered down into the bottomless plasma tube—and hugged the rungs in terror. The spiral of plasma energy was blazing even brighter, and spitting off thunderbolts into the walls of the tube. And way down in the shaft, far below the spiraling gas, a bright ball of fire was roiling upward. As Bandicut watched, the ball reached the plasma spiral, and with an eruption of energy, they billowed up the shaft together like magma up a volcano.

  "Mokin' foke!" he whispered. He had maybe ten seconds before that plasma fire would blaze out of the shaft and envelope them all. He drew an acrid breath. /Charlie, can you help me jump straight?/

  /// ??? ///

  /I've got to hit that platform. Now./ Without waiting for an answer, he leaped out from the ladder, turning in midair. For a second that seemed like an hour, he fell toward the control platform, toward the fire . . .

  He hit the platform with a bone-shuddering impact, collapsing at the knees. He grabbed the control pedestal for support. It seemed to squirm and writhe in his grip, but it kept him from falling. It burned where his wrists touched it, but he couldn't let go, because something bloomed into his mind with showering drops of light, and a gridwork of lines filled with floating icons, and underlying that, a fireball of plasma billowing up like a piece of a living sun.

  And something in him translated his cry, /STOP IT! STOP IT! SHUT IT OFF!/

  And he felt an echoing wave roll out through the control grid:

  **Override emergency! Quench and seal!**

  And the writhing piece of sun below him flickered and darkened, and something slammed with near-earthquake violence, and he gasped against the control pedestal, shutting his eyes; and when he opened them again and looked down, there was only a wall of darkness below.

  Chapter 10

  Hroom

  /GOD DAMN,/ HE whispered, his heart pounding. /Are we safe now?/ He felt the quarx trying to answer, but there was interference. He was still linked to the control unit. He tried to disengage . . . and could not.

  He felt a shiver of fresh fear. /Let go of me, damn it!/ he whispered, trying to jerk free. He felt a tug from something, which he could not quite identify. But it was aware of him, and aware of what he had just done. He felt a brief flicker of anger—rage, almost—but it winked out an instant later, and he felt an entirely different sensation: coldly unemotional control modulation. Then the system's hold on him was gone, and he was free. He straightened up from the pedestal, bewildered.

  /// Don't engage it again! ///

  /I'm not about to,/ he whispered, as the adrenaline began to drain away. /What just happened?/

  Charlie answered as though he had witnessed a miracle.

  /// I think we were all

  very, very lucky. ///

  Bandicut stepped back from the control pedestal, trying to get his breath back. /Yeah. But did you feel what I just felt, in the controls? I thought this thing was supposed to be an isolated unit./

  /// Not entirely, I guess.

  But it did seem to have

  emergency interrupt priority. ///

  /Uh-huh./ Bandicut drew a deep breath and looked around. His knees throbbed from the jump, and his jaw ached where it had slammed against the control pedestal. But he was alive. Below the platform, he could see flames and smoke, but also clouds of vapor that looked like flames being extinguished.

  Whrrreeeek-whooooo!

  He turned and spied, across the emptiness where the shaft had been, a cluster of shadow-people streaming along a walkway toward another control unit. He thought he recognized the foreman-shadow, waving frantically, whooping. Bandicut waved back, wondering what the creature was saying. /I guess they're okay. I guess we're all—/ and he suddenly remembered /—Ik!/ He searched the darkness overhead. He couldn't find his friend in the jumble of shadows. "IIIKK!" he shouted.

  After a moment he heard a faint cry: "Hraaahh!" He finally spotted Ik dangling from the broken catwalk.

  /Christ, Charlie, we've got to get back up there!/ He took a step, and staggered as a blaze of pain went up his right leg. He must have torn something in his knee.

  /// I'll do what I can to inhibit the pain.

  Later, we'll work on healing. ///

  Charlie was already damping nerve impulses. He felt numbness spread up his thighs.

  /Okay, enough. I've got to be able to feel them move./ Taking hold of a rung-protrusion, he began the laborious climb back up the ladder. He was terrified that Ik would fall before he could get there. He was about halfway up when he heard, faintly, "Thank you, Copernicus."

  Copernicus? Bandicut squinted up, but couldn't locate his friend. "IK! Are you—?"

  His last words were drowned out by a distant grinding and arcing, and what sounded like a blast of steam. Then he heard, "I am safe now, thank you. John Bandicut, are you all right?"

  He flushed with dizziness as he clung to the ladder. "Uh—yeah! I'm okay!" he gasped. It was doubtful that Ik could have heard him. He resumed his painful climb.

  As he neared the top of the ladder, he saw Ik standing above him, rope in hand. He climbed the last few rungs, finally accepting Ik's help as he struggled over the difficult threshold from the ladder to the walkway. He rose to face his friend. "You got back!"

  "With the help of your robot. I would have fallen if it had not pulled me back in. We must return to free it!" Ik swept his arm in a joyful arc. "John Bandicut—you did this?" he cried in seeming disbelief. "You saved our lives! And you saved all this—" he swept his arm over the factory floor "—from destruction!"

  Bandicut gulped a tremulous sigh. "I guess so, yeah. But it was the stones, really." He rubbed his wrists, which were still stinging from the contact with the controls.

  "Hrrrrm." Ik's eyes glinted with inner light.

  /// The stones translated.

  But you had the capacity to make the contact.

  It was your command that stopped it. ///

  /Okay, whatever./ Bandicut shrugged and gestured to Ik. "I guess we'd better get going back." He almost added, to safety, but somehow that would have seemed preposterous. They still had a long, perilous walk ahead of them.

  "Copernicus is waiting for us," Ik agreed, and they began the climb back up the spindly ramps.

  *

  First they heard a whirring, like fans starting up. Then lights started coming on: position markers, like tiny colored stars in the firmament; then bright spotlights scattered widely; and finally great overhead floodlights filling the cavernous space. Bandicut paused, squinting, trying in vain to take in the breadth of the factory space. Even illuminated, it was an impossible sight. He peered along the length of the great central structure, the "star-spanner," Charlie had called it. It looked like . . . he couldn't say what, exactly. Maybe some sort of monstrous particle accelerator. It seemed to stretch into—not quite infinity, surely—but it didn't seem to end, either. It extended almost to the limit of sight, before dwindling sharply in a way that defied normal perspective. It hurt his eyes a little to look at it.

  /// It's a star-spanner, all right, ///

  Charlie said, with some satisfaction.

  "A remarkable structure," Ik said, behind him. "It is only partially finished, I believe."

  "Star-spanner," Bandicut muttered. "What does it do?"

  "It spans the stars, I believe."

  Bandicut squinted back at him, but Ik urged him onward with a gesture.

  They found Copernicus stuck near the place where he'd rescued Ik. His bent sensor-array rotated toward them as they approached. He was wedged into an opening between two support beams, where he had apparently braced himself while extending a long, telescoping manipulator-arm to the section of walkway which hung like a broken appendage. Copernic
us had pulled the broken segment in, and was holding it secure against the support structure. Napoleon and Bandicut's backpack were lying nearby.

  "Coppy! Are you all right?"

  Copernicus drumtapped. "Cap'n, I am pleased to see you safe and well. I'm afraid I am immobile, however."

  "We'll get you out, don't worry. Ik tells me you saved his neck! Well done, old buddy!"

  "I merely secured the structure so that he could climb free. It seemed the best course of action."

  "Indeed," said Ik, behind Bandicut. "I am in your debt, Copernicus."

  Tap tap.

  "Can you let go of that thing now, Coppy?"

  The robot released the walkway section and it swung free with a clang, and a rhythmic squeak. Copernicus turned his wheels in an effort to move, but they merely skidded on the metal surface.

  "Wait." Ik positioned himself against a support strut, then applied leverage against the robot's body. Copernicus rocked, his motors whining. Bandicut edged around to the other side. Together they finally pried the robot free, with an ear-piercing, metallic scrape.

  Copernicus backed to a place of relative safety. "Thank you, Cap'ns. May I ask—has the emergency passed?"

  "We think so." Bandicut peered down. The plasma tube remained sealed off, and he saw no flames or electrical arcs. He wondered if the plasma tube had been the energy source for the star-spanner; then he shrugged, glad it wasn't his job to worry about such things.

  "Let us return to the platform, shall we?" Ik said, placing Napoleon onto Copernicus' back.

  *

  They had not gone more than a dozen meters along the catwalk before they were stopped by a WHOOOP! WHOOOP! WHOOOP! reverberating around them. A swath of sparkling light swept down from the ceiling toward them. Dancing in the light were half a dozen shadow-people. "What in the world?" Bandicut asked wonderingly.

  The light enveloped them in its shimmering glow. Ho-huueeeeee! cried a shadow overhead. ". . . come . . ."

  Before he could reply, Bandicut felt a curious lightness and realized that he was already airborne, floating up the shaft of light, the shadow-people fluttering before him. Moments later, the light faded, and they were standing on the platform from which they had begun their mad rescue effort—how long ago? Less than an hour, surely.

  Ik said something he didn't catch. A large number of the shadow-people were gathered, and the foreman-shadow was at their front, fluttering and bowing. At least, that was how Bandicut interpreted the waving movements of the foreman-shadow's upper body and head—like a slender tree whipping back and forth in a gusting wind.

  Hreee-kuuu . . . hreeee-kuuuuuu . . . whooeeeee . . .

  Bandicut stood in baffled silence as the shadow-people played a mournful string concert before them, his thoughts reverberating with fragments of translation. ". . . Tragedy . . . boojum . . . (bad bad) . . . factory safe . . . your help . . . boojum gone for now . . ." Bandicut exchanged silent glances with Ik, wondering if this was a thank-you or a lecture. He could see the star-spanner better from here. It looked a little like a stupendously long series of generators and coils in an endless train, or possibly the longest crankshaft in the universe. He suddenly felt very tired, and realized that he was teetering on the edge of helpless laughter, or maybe silence-fugue.

  /// Hang on, I'll do what I can. ///

  /Please,/ he whispered, stifling a snort of laughter. Mercifully, he felt the urge subside as his thoughts began to clear.

  /// I believe, ///

  the quarx remarked,

  /// they seem to understand now

  —the shadow-people—

  that we were opposing the boojum.

  I believe you have earned

  their honor. ///

  Bandicut blinked, not sure what to say.

  "Hraahhh!" said Ik. He turned to Bandicut. "It seems that they wish to take us to a place of safety and rest. By chasing the boojum away, you appear to have freed certain transport systems, as well."

  Bandicut glanced to make sure that Copernicus was still with them, glanced to make sure that he was really here. He was starting to feel like a hallucination. "Well," he said. "Okay, I guess. I'm ready for some rest."

  Ik said something to the shadow-people, and the sparkling light appeared around them again. Something like a blazing ring-shaped halo passed over them from front to back, dazzling Bandicut. When he could see again, they were standing in another place altogether, hazy orange and pink. He couldn't quite focus on it. "Ik—"

  "Holding—" rasp "—transition area."

  "Oh—"

  After a long breath, and another flashing halo, a large, low-ceilinged room materialized around him. He looked around in amazement. It looked like a lounge, with soft lighting and irregularly shaped tables scattered thoughout a space that was broken up by waist-high partitions. He felt a sudden cascade of associations, and his knees almost buckled under him. The place reminded him of the rec room back on Triton—and he suddenly, breathlessly, imagined Julie Stone walking into the room, her blue eyes shining and her smile inviting him to a game of EineySteiney pool. And then they would retire to . . . oh, Julie . . .

  He shuddered with a rush of grief and loneliness.

  /// This is a difficult memory for you? ///

  Difficult? He wanted to laugh and cry both. Difficult?

  /// Would you like me to

  block it? ///

  /No!/ he almost shouted aloud.

  /// I'm sorry, I— ///

  He closed his eyes for three heartbeats. /Never mind. It's all right. Yes, it's difficult—and no, I don't want it blocked. I loved her, Charlie—as much as you can love someone you've only known for a few days. It felt like much more./

  The quarx's tone was almost wistful.

  /// Love?

  Is this, perhaps, something I could

  ask you about later? ///

  He sighed. /Later. Yes./ He blinked his eyes open. They were all here: Ik, the two robots, the shadow-people. And now he saw other figures farther away in the room. Not shadow-people, not humans, not Hraachee'ans. They were too far away to see very well; but some were tall and some short, some were splayed out like starfish, and some appeared to twitter in the air like the shadow-people, except that they were more light than shadow. "Ik?" he whispered. "What is this place? Who are all those people?"

  Ik rubbed his chest. "I believe this may be where the shadow-people—" rasp "—reenergize and sustain their—" rasp "—presence here." Ik pointed to their left, and Bandicut saw shadow-people swarming like bees around a place where the wall seemed to dissolve into an area of darkness a few meters across. It wasn't a static darkness; it seemed to swirl and fluctuate, with little flickering shots of light, and as he stared at it he thought it actually seemed a kind of tunnel. He thought he saw a couple of the shadow-people flit into it and vanish.

  /// That's it.

  They're translating from one fractional dimension

  to another. ///

  /Mm?/

  /// They don't live in this continuum

  without interruption.

  They shift away, to rest. ///

  Bandicut found the sight hard on his eyes. /I hope they don't want us to shift away with them./

  /// We'll find out. Look. ///

  Bandicut saw the foreman-shadow fluttering toward them. Whreep-a-whrreeep! He felt a vague rustling in his mind as the translator attempted to sort that out. What emerged seemed to be an invitation: ". . . rest . . . restore . . . speak to us . . . help to understand . . ." But he had a feeling that the foreman-shadow had said considerably more than that.

  "Uh, thanks," he murmured, glancing to see what Ik was making of this. The Hraachee'an had his head cocked, and was studying the foreman-shadow, who now seemed to be waving a triangular hand in the direction of the dimensional-tunnel-thing. /Oh, great./

  /// Hold on.

  I'm not sure it's what you think.

  I believe he's offering to

  update your translator. ///r />
  /Huh?/

  /// Linguistically.

  It might make conversation easier if you

  gave it a try. ///

  Bandicut frowned, as he felt Charlie nudging him toward the cluster of shadow-people. Ik was moving that way, and he supposed if Ik could do it . . . The foreman-shadow continued making wheeping sounds, and he felt a sense of ". . . a little closer . . ." and, following Ik's example, he stood just outside the edge of the twisting, shadowy disturbance, and he nervously stretched out his fingers toward it. And he felt—practically nothing, just a light buzz in his wrists.

  Whreeep-whreeep! ". . . understand us better . . . our words clearer . . . ?"

  /// Ahh. ///

  Peering at the foreman-shadow, Bandicut thought he could see something new, a tiny spark of light, within it.

  /// Answer him, ///

  Charlie suggested.

  "Oh, um—yes," Bandicut croaked. "I think so."

  "Yes, indeed," echoed Ik.

  The foreman-shadow fluttered and whooped. ". . . we are pleased . . . pleased . . ." Wheeek! ". . . regret the recent confusion . . . grateful for your help . . . would you like refreshment and restoration . . . ?"

  "Um—yes, please," Bandicut whispered, and Ik rumbled assent.

  The foreman-shadow gestured, fluttering, and led them away from the dimensional device and over to a set of . . . lounge chairs, which Bandicut was fairly sure had not been there a few minutes ago. Wheeee. ". . . fill your thoughts with your needs and wishes . . ."

  Dizzily, Bandicut sank into a wonderfully padded chair. With almost dreamlike urgency, he found himself imagining a cool beer, and some fried potatoes, and fish and vegetables . . . and it didn't take long before he started imagining someone to share it with, and then his mind filled with thoughts of Julie Stone. Only this time it wasn't the heartache of the loss that he felt, but warmth and desire . . . .