She knew the incident all too well. She'd been there herself—in the vicinity, that is, though she'd had nothing to do with it. It came during a tour of the area, part of her ongoing, futile search for leads to any possible fellow Thespi exiles. Her search was interrupted by evacuation alarms sending hundreds or thousands of citizens into shelters. When she learned how close she'd come to disaster, she abandoned her fruitless search there and took the first transport north, to Atrium City, the closest thing she had to a home. And tried to put the whole thing out of her mind. Control demons scared her. She'd heard too many reports of their mischief lately. But now, it seemed, that event was following her, in the person of John Bandicut, almost-Thespi.
Keep a safe distance.
Good advice, she thought. But the truth was, she wanted to know more about this, this human. She rose again and began walking through the grottolike spaces of her quarters, in and out through the curved formations, past the small pool, pacing more like a first female in the height of courtship than a coolly reserved third female whose role was facilitation, not passion. It wasn't that she felt an attraction, but she certainly felt an intense curiosity.
And that, she knew, was dangerous. It was curiosity, of course, that had begun the chain of events that had almost cost her life, back on the Thespi homeworld. Curiosity about passions, about relationships forbidden to those of her caste. And yet . . . now, as then, her curiosity could not be denied.
She touched the knowing-stones in her throat, wondering what the risks might be. She closed her eyes, reaching out to brush the cool stone walls with her fingertips as she paced; and she thought, if this human John Bandicut tried to contact her, she ought to have made up her mind how to answer.
*
There was an annoying buzz in his ears as he ran, gasping for breath, lost. It was persistent, that buzz, but erratic in tone and volume. Bandicut finally realized what it sounded like: a mosquito-thing that had bitten him, a long time ago. It had taken something from him—information, or quantum stability, someone had said. It scared him to remember it.
He didn't remember much else. A fog shrouded his mind, one layer of obscurity folding into another, a maze with intangible walls, dissolving and reforming in incomprehensible patterns. He knew there had been an attack.
Someone trying to kill him.
And that was why he was running. There were aliens in pursuit—terrible, screeching beings brandishing long, thin, sparkling blades. Panting, he sprinted down one last stretch, then gasped, slowing to peer over his shoulder through blurred eyes. They were gone now; he'd outrun them.
It didn't mean he was safe, though. His comrades had all abandoned him, Charlie had abandoned him, his robots had abandoned him. All alone, he'd been making his way through a forest, dodging ogres and braving treacherous crossings over a bottomless valley. He didn't know where he was, but perhaps he could find shelter in a cave somewhere.
He felt a low barrier before him, smooth against his hands. He was standing near the edge of the precipice again. Dangerous; but better to know where the precipice was than to risk stumbling into it! He leaned over, peering into the shadowy depths of the canyon. He heard a distant cry, felt a rush of vertigo, and tottered back again to regain his balance.
Careful, careful. There could yet be aliens about, and some of them could control your mind, make you go over the edge without even knowing what you're doing.
Careful.
He took a deep breath and turned away from the canyon's edge. He limped into a gloomy opening and returned to the foreboding woods.
After some prowling, he came to a series of smaller openings in the dense growth, a sort of maze of shelters. Perhaps he could rest awhile in one of those. He squinted, trying to peer into the gloom. Yes, it was secluded in here, and empty. He went three steps further, then collapsed in a heap. Alive, but exhausted. And alone.
Or maybe not. He raised his head abruptly; he thought he saw a beast now, shambling about among the shadows. He swallowed back a rush of fear. But the beast, too, was settling down to rest, rasping to itself. He didn't know what kind of creature it was. It seemed interested in him, but appeared to intend him no harm. He decided to let it stay.
Yes, he'd let it stay . . . for a while . . .
And then his consciousness slipped away.
*
As he hurried with Li-Jared, Ik found his fears for their friend warring with his anxieties about the plans they had made with the Maksu. He worried that the boojum might attempt to interfere with their quest for the ice caverns. Why it would care, he wasn't sure; but he suspected it didn't want anyone acquiring knowledge about the metasystem, knowledge that might threaten its own plans. And if the boojum interfered, they could forget about help from the Maksu. Already terrified of the boojum, the Maksu seemed paralyzed by the thought of what it might do if aroused.
Not that Ik was eager to take it on himself. But if it came to that, how could he not do his part in the struggle, in the interests of the long view? And now, this—Bandicut's disappearance. What a pity if he were taken by the boojum, or dead! Bandicut not only seemed like the partner they had not known they were missing; he seemed someone who at least had the potential for taking the long view.
"This is a quicker way," Li-Jared said, grabbing Ik's arm and pointing toward a cluster of fastlifts.
Ik exhaled through his ears, bringing his thoughts back to the task at hand. "Should we? If the boojum is tracking us, it might not be wise to take a lift that is under iceline control."
"And if it is doing something to your friend, then every delay counts," the Karellian pointed out.
"Hrahh." Ik gestured and followed Li-Jared into the fastlift. Standing together in a bubble of light in a shaft, they streaked upward.
Ik blinked in the changing light, remembering the light of the hot blue sun of Hraachee'a. He missed it terribly. Blue stars, while achingly beautiful, did not live nearly as long as the slower-burning yellow stars that the majority of inhabited worlds circled. Ik's people had grown to maturity knowing that life, even on a planetary scale, was frightfully short. They had, of course, died when their sun blew—an experience that drove home to Ik the ephemerality of life, and reinforced in him a lifelong habit of taking the long view.
He wished he had more company in that respect.
The great open space of the atrium sprang into view as they rocketed out of the shaft. When the bubble let them out on level 104, Ik grunted in satisfaction.
"No boojum yet," Li-Jared noted.
"If we are fortunate, it has gone back into hiding. This way to one-six-seven-six." Ik pointed along the atrium balcony. They had to pass a crowd of serpentine beings coming the other way along the balcony. The serpents sprawled across most of the walkway, and they hissed and muttered, giving way with ill grace to the Hraachee'an and the Karellian. Ik was fuming by the time they were past the crowd.
"Easy, my friend," said Li-Jared. "I may have been hasty before. The Bandie has survived a great deal already. Let us trust him to survive this, too."
"The boojum becomes bolder, ever bolder," muttered Ik, lengthening his stride. "I wonder if there is anything in the iceline that can stop it anymore."
"Perhaps, perhaps not," said Li-Jared. "But let's not count our companion out just yet."
Ik glanced at Li-Jared, startled. Our companion? Perhaps being left alone to share a drink with Bandicut had done the moody Li-Jared some good. Until this, of course.
Ik glanced at the numbers on the passing openings and doorways. Their destination was a long way down.
*
The buzzing was what brought him back, not to full consciousness, but to a dreamy, eyes-closed half-awareness. After a moment, Bandicut realized that he was, after all, only remembering the buzz rather than hearing it; but the memory was powerful enough to make his mind reel. Buzzing. Silence-fugue. Boojum.
It had attacked him, tried to kill him. Only the eruption of silence-fugue had saved his life, by jamming the booju
m's deadly inputs in his brain.
He shivered, as the memory replayed in his mind.
Whatever else, he knew the touch of the boojum now. He didn't think he'd ever forget it, or fail to recognize it, no matter how it might try to disguise itself. He still didn't understand its nature, but he understood more than he had before.
But still, his mind was filled with questions, with thoughts of chaos.
Turbulence.
Nonlinearity.
He remembered Charlie-One and Charlie-Two deluging him with incomprehensible images of chaos calculations. Phase-space, attractors, strange attractors, meta-attractors: the medium in which chaos and order were drawn, one out of the other, like handkerchiefs from a magician's hat. The quarx's translator had treated such things as the stuff of ordinary life. Bandicut hadn't understood much of the imagery, just enough to know that the translator's knowledge of it had saved the lives of billions on Earth.
And then had caromed him like a pinball out of the galaxy—and landed him in Shipworld, a place that seemed awash in turbulence and chaos. And it seemed to want him to do something here. You are needed. But for what?
Chaos.
The boojum.
Li-Jared had implied that the boojum might have emerged from chaotic processes. Perhaps it had ridden in on the winds of space, an unwanted byproduct of the sifting of living beings into this world from elsewhere. Or perhaps it had arisen right here, spawned by turbulence in the very place where it lived now: the control system, the datanet, the iceline, perhaps even the Tree of Ice. Perhaps it was a once-benign entity that had mutated, turned destructive and cunning.
Whatever its origins, he knew it now to be a living contamination in the system, like a computer virus, maybe, but far more dangerous and pernicious. It was alive in every sense he could imagine. It thought. (He had felt it think.) It feared. It hated. It lusted. (For what? Chaos?) Did it reproduce?
Bandicut shuddered at the thought. He heard a clicking nearby, but it was receding into the distance. He tried to focus on it, but couldn't quite, though it was familiar.
He'd lost the thread of his thought. He groaned softly, and did not resist drifting back into the murk of unconsciousness.
*
The address turned out to be a dusty, disused-looking doorway. Ik peered in, found a wooden door ajar. He pushed it open cautiously. There was no sign of life inside.
Dust stirred and floated into view.
"Ik, use care." Li-Jared's voice was soft, penetrating, behind him.
"Hrrrm." Ik stepped through the doorway, keeping close to the wall, and willed his eyes to adjust quickly to the low light level. It was an empty room, apparently the front room of a cluster, perhaps an apartment space. There was nothing here but dustballs.
"This does not look promising," Li-Jared murmured.
Ik silently approached the next doorway. It appeared to lead to a back room or to a hallway. Ik was accustomed to exploring new places in Shipworld—it was practically a way of life now—but he wasn't used to sneaking. His hearing sharpened in the silence.
He found himself in a dim hallway, with four rooms on the left side. The electronic doors were turned off. He peered carefully into the first two rooms. Empty. The only light in each was the soft glow of a safety light. He heard a faint clicking. He turned quickly, saw Li-Jared's eyes narrow to bright slits. The clicking sound was familiar. "Who is there?" Ik rumbled.
He was answered by a faster clicking. It was coming from down the hall.
"Hwahh!" said Li-Jared, pointing.
A metal probe stuck out of the last doorway. A tiny camera eye glowed. Whirring, a metal robot stepped into the hallway. "Ik, sir! I am overjoyed to see you! Please hurry!"
"Napoleon! What has happened? Where is John Bandicut?"
"In here! In here!" the robot cried. "I am unable to help him, and there is no response to my emergency signal! I believe we are out of range of Triton control. Can you assist?"
"Rakh!" Ik cried, and hurried past the robot into the dusty room.
John Bandicut was crumpled motionless on the floor.
Chapter 17
Postfugue
VOICES INTRUDED ON his barely wakeful consciousness.
"John Bandicut! John Bandicut—do you have any awareness? Are you—" rasp "—injured? John Bandicut?"
Bwang bwang . . .
Click, rasp. "I register breath and pulse. John Bandicut, please respond. I am certain you are alive, Captain! Please respond!" A metal hand poked at him urgently.
The poking hurt.
Bandicut jerked and blinked his eyes open. He was in a dim place, staring up at a ceiling; at least, he thought it was a ceiling. A small light was shining in his eyes, and it seemed connected to the metal probe that was plucking at him. "Would you for Chrissake stop that?" he barked.
"Captain?" A strained metal voice.
He squinted. Several shapes were moving over him, and he couldn't quite make out any of them. But he knew one of them was Napoleon. He remembered a beast following him into the forest, and lying down nearby.
"What the hell?" he grunted. He waved Napoleon's light away irritably, and pushed himself up to a sitting position. His head throbbed.
"We hoped you would tell us what happened," said another voice. Li-Jared. He felt something else—Ik's hand on his shoulder, steadying him. He looked up at Ik and managed a wan smile.
He hadn't been abandoned, then. Of course not; that was the silence-fugue talking. And the fugue was gone, thank God. He still had a ringing in his ears, but he no longer feared pursuit by tall aliens.
He also no longer felt the presence of a quarx in his head. /Charlie? Are you there? Charlie?/ An icy chill ran up his spine. Had the boojum killed the quarx, then? He remembered at the end, when the boojum's grip had been throttling him, and the quarx had fallen abruptly silent. /Charlie!/
"John Bandicut, what happened? Were you . . . attacked?"
He nodded with difficulty. "Yes," he whispered. "It tried to strangle me."
"Hraah! Napoleon?"
"No! It was—" He swallowed, remembering the sensation of that angry and violent force within his own mind. "The boojum. In here," he croaked, tapping the side of his head. "Took control of my muscles." He put a hand to his throat.
Napoleon clicked in distress. "We were fearful for your safety, John Bandicut. Can you move?"
Bandicut grunted and staggered to his feet, with all three of the others trying to help him. He peered around the dismal place. "Dear God, how did I get here? Never mind. It was the damn silence-fugue."
"The what?" asked Li-Jared.
"Silence-fugue. I'll explain later." His mouth was dry, as he swallowed. "It kept the boojum from killing me. But it got Charlie." He pointed to his temple again.
Li-Jared was staring at him with those blazing, electric-blue eyes. Ik muttered softly; it was impossible to tell what he was thinking.
Bandicut sighed. "Can we go someplace else?" he asked hoarsely.
"Hraah, good idea."
*
Where Ik took them was to a hotel. He seemed to know what he was doing, and soon they were following a small, floating robot—an inorg, Ik had called it—down a corridor to the suite that the Hraachee'an had rented.
"It is satisfactory," Ik said to the inorg, dismissing it. "Well, my friends?" He gestured around the spacious sitting room. Though decorated in livid reds and oranges, it looked fairly comfortable, with the assortment of rigid and padded seating surfaces that Bandicut was coming to expect. Ik had declined to pay extra from their limited credit for a custom-decorated suite.
Bandicut sank into something like a sofa, with a sigh of relief. He looked around. There were three doorways leading to private rooms. Li-Jared was peering into the rooms, and made a bonging sound that seemed to indicate approval.
"I must say that I am looking forward to some rest," Ik said. "But perhaps we should first talk."
Bandicut realized that his head was far from clear. Nonetheless,
he agreed and sat forward to explain what had happened between him and the boojum. Ik and Li-Jared were deeply troubled by his story, though Ik pointed out one possible silver lining. If the iceline had cancelled Bandicut's registration, the boojum might think that it had succeeded in killing him—and would now leave him alone. Bandicut shrugged, thinking that he would rather have the quarx back and take his chances with the boojum. He turned the conversation to what Ik and Li-Jared had been doing. "What did you find out from the—" he searched his memory "—Maksu? And have you learned anything at all about Copernicus?" He glanced at Napoleon, who was hunkered down almost mournfully beside him.
"To the last, sadly no," Ik said. "But as for the Maksu . . ." He explained to Bandicut what had happened in the meeting—the exchange of Ik's and Li-Jared's knowledge of the boojum for the promise of a conducted trip to the ice caverns. "We hope," Ik concluded, "that you will wish to accompany us. But I would be—" rasp "—dishonest if I did not admit that there could be risk."
Bandicut stared at him, momentarily at a loss for words.
Li-Jared cocked his head, saying nothing.
"You need not decide now," Ik reassured him. "We are going to rest awhile before we contact the Maksu again." He snapped his rigid mouth shut in what looked like a frown. "But I must say that I would miss you if you did not join us."
Bandicut nodded. He certainly had no desire to give up the only friends he had in Shipworld. But neither did he want to rush off headlong into some new adventure that he didn't understand. He'd done enough of that for a lifetime.
He desperately missed the voice and counsel of the quarx.
Finally he said, "Thanks, Ik. I would . . . certainly miss you guys, too, if I didn't go with you." He glanced at Li-Jared; the Karellian's eyes pulsed. Bandicut cleared his throat, suddenly remembering Antares: Thespi third female, and closest thing to a human he'd seen on this crazy world. "Uh, look, though. I'd still like to try to make contact with that . . . person . . . before I think about leaving. At least find out who or what she is. And hell, I don't even know anything about this place. The hotel, the city. The continent, the whole damn world. Would you mind explaining some things to me?"
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