The Chaos Chronicles

by Jeffrey A. Carver

  "Who is?" Ik remarked. His eyes dropped to Bandicut's hands, and wrists. The translator-stones? Ik glanced at Li-Jared, who was staring in the other direction, but fingering his own top stone on his breastbone.

  "Is that it?" Bandicut asked incredulously. "The translator-stones?" He hadn't really noticed whether any of the aliens he had seen in Atrium City were equipped with stones; but maybe if stones had been in evidence, he would have noticed them.

  "Of course it's the stones. And what the stones imply." Li-Jared turned and leaned forward, but paused in thought before speaking again. "The boojum is attempting to take control of Shipworld, and it views organic life as a threat to its progress. It may already have penetrated the inner defenses of the Tree of Ice."

  "Hrrm, well, that could be true—"

  "And only someone on the outside can defeat it now. That is my belief," said Li-Jared.

  Ik's eyes sparkled with uncertainty, but he did not contradict the Karellian.

  "What you're saying," Bandicut said slowly, "is that we, because we have stones, are supposed to do what the Tree of Ice cannot?" He felt a chill as he stared at his friends.

  It was, perhaps, an unanswerable question. Li-Jared's fingers flicked upward in a shrug, and Ik merely cocked his head.

  Bandicut exhaled, closing his eyes, searching his memories of contact with the boojum, wondering what he was missing that could make sense of this. What had he felt in the boojum? Intelligence, will to dominate, malice. But why malice toward him? A grudge, because he had defeated the boojum once? Or was it simply that the translator-stones marked him as an enemy?

  Strange attractors.

  The phrase slipped into his thoughts, but he wasn't sure where it had come from. It seemed an appropriate literal description of the forces that had brought him together with this company; with the boojum. But he sensed that there was more to it.

  /// Chaos theory? ///

  He stared out the window, not answering. Chaos theory, yes: the images of phase-space, those weird transmogrifications of data that mapped turbulent systems, displaying patterns of stability and instability in unexpected ways. Those curious scribbled pictures that emerged in phase-space from common chaotic systems—butterflies and vortices and God knew what else—almost like bizarre gravitational orbits. Strange attractors in graphical form: loci of activity that represented "convergence" of forces here, and "bifurcation" of forces there.

  Charlie's voice brushed at the edges of his thoughts.

  /// There is something about the boojum

  that fits into those images. ///

  Undoubtedly the quarx was right. As he watched the farmlands spin by, he thought of the complex infrastructures that had to be maintained here, in this gargantuan spaceship orbiting the galaxy far from any sun. Air, water, nutrients, and energy to be endlessly recycled. Weather to be controlled in vast environments like these farmlands. Food supplies to be grown, synthesized, distributed. Transportation systems. Information and communication systems. Social structures. And virtually all of it subject to potential chaotic fluctuations, any one of which could be deadly. And somehow in that complexity, the boojum had arisen. Was it created by someone? Or did it owe its very existence to the turbulent forces of chaos?

  /Whoever gave us the translator-stones knew something like this might happen, didn't they?/ he thought suddenly, as the train snaked through a dense, purplish forest, and then in an eyeblink shot across a breathtaking river canyon.

  /// I must admit, I share your suspicions. ///

  Bandicut nodded to himself. /And I think maybe they knew that we'd all wind up together in this./ He thought of how he and his robots had been transported from wherever their spaceship was, practically into Ik's path. It had been inevitable that they would meet.

  Charlie didn't answer. But he seemed troubled.

  /Why, Charlie? Why?/

  *

  It was late afternoon by the local shifting of light, as Copernicus prepared for a final foray. It would be another half hour before the next streaktrain was scheduled to arrive down below, which was the earliest that he expected to see his friends. Nevertheless, he felt a need for vigilance against whomever else might be watching. It was vital that the drop be made in secrecy. Copernicus rolled out from under the low, bushy shrub and down a slope covered with dried conifer needles. Then he set out over hard flat ground toward the place where he would be making the drop.

  The instructions blazed in his memory-cache as a constant reminder: >> . . . timing and security essential . . . clear and present danger . . .>>

  >> Acknowledged. >>

  Acknowledged. What more could he have said? But even as he acted to carry out the instructions, he had so many more questions.

  Since passing by the small farming village, Copernicus had been making his way along the edge of an agricultural and wilderness district. He had found datanet terminals to be ubiquitous, even here in the wilderness; and with great care, he'd connected to the datanet and tracked the whereabouts of his comrades. He had decided that, until he knew more, he should remain alone and unobserved—avoiding population centers—while learning as much as he could about the nature of the boojum and those who were trying to stop it. He still had to learn which of those two categories Napoleon fell into.

  The whole process, of course, had been complicated by these mysterious voices in his mind. It had taken a while to ascertain that they were not the boojum's, but the shadow-people's. Apparently, while giving him a recharge and general upgrade, they had also given him a capacity for receiving their signals directly, by some mechanism unconnected to the iceline. If the presence of the voices was startling, the information they conveyed was positively unnerving. It was a steady flow of details on the probable intentions of the boojum, and its efforts to destabilize the iceline and the physical life-support systems that kept Shipworld functioning. Though Copernicus was no longer in the shadow-people's geographical territory, they clearly regarded him as an ally.

  Not that everything they told him, or asked of him, made sense. But from the beginning, he did his best to clarify . . .

  >> Please define request. Define context of information. >>

  At first he was uncertain whether they could hear him. But by and by an answer came.

  >> . . . request you convey information by secure means to John Bandicut and company . . . >>

  >> For what purpose? >>

  >> . . . we may require their help, most urgently . . . condition of Napoleon unknown, not responding to transmissions . . . do not approach them directly . . . do not entrust data to iceline . . . under no circumstance entrust the following data to iceline . . . >>

  And with that, he had been forced to reconsider his priorities. Foremost imperative: protect the safety and well-being of John Bandicut. But properly defined, did that mean he should subordinate the immediate welfare of the captain to that of Shipworld, the captain's home?

  Such thinking was not in his original programming. But extrapolation suggested that a danger to the environment was a danger to the captain himself. This was not just a logical proposition. Copernicus knew it on a deeper level. Further indication of turbulence: changes in awareness. Copernicus was growing. It was both a frightening and an exciting prospect.

  There were many things that Copernicus wanted to know, and for which he needed to talk to John Bandicut. But first he had to know that Napoleon was free of the boojum's control. Their last interaction had been terrifying—and he'd hardly displayed coolness under fire himself. He'd panicked—fearing contamination through Napoleon, fearing that if contaminated, he might himself turn on his friends. And what had he accomplished, except to isolate himself from everyone who mattered to him? Still . . . Napoleon was not now responding to the shadow-people, and they didn't know why. Before he could rejoin his friends, he needed to know that it was safe.

  And in the meantime, the shadow-people's requests grew more urgent.

  >> . . . imperative, imperative . . . attack may be imm
inent . . . details follow . . . urgently request assistance of John Bandicut and all who bear stones-of-voice-and-power . . . >>

  >> Contact made. Urgency conveyed. Proof of Napoleon pending . . . >>

  The details regarding the boojum were stored and organized. John Bandicut would make of them what he could. And by watching both Bandicut's reaction and Napoleon's, Copernicus would attempt to determine whether Napoleon was genuinely free.

  There would be no black-and-white, digitally clear answers. The initial observations gave him hope. He would have to judge his friends by their behavior, by their personalities. It might be all he would have to go on. Intuition, John Bandicut might have called it. He didn't know if he had much intuition; it wasn't something that robots were normally programmed to wield. But he had to try.

  He involuntarily tightened his grip on the captain's backpack, as he drove steadily across the field toward the rendezvous point.

  *

  "But they tried to save your world," Bandicut was saying, "and they failed?"

  Ik placed his fingertips together before answering. "Indeed. And I was brought here out of the fires of the cataclysm."

  "But why do they do these things? What's in it for them?" Bandicut was not ungrateful that Earth had suffered a kinder fate than Hraachee'a. But he didn't understand it.

  /// I have this memory

  of Charlie-One telling you of such things.

  Didn't he speak of many worlds being saved,

  some with his personal assistance? ///

  There was a tremor in the quarx's voice, as if he too were beginning to understand, for the first time in this life, what was in store for him and his future quarxly descendants.

  Bandicut hesitated, thinking that whatever happened to the quarx was likely to happen to him, too. /Yes. But I didn't understand it back then, either./ And back then, he had been in a state of shock at the very notion of having an alien intelligence in his mind. He hadn't always focused that well on the big picture.

  Li-Jared spoke. "I guess that there must be thousands of intelligent species on this world. Do you suppose all those races began their lives here?"

  Bandicut blinked. "Were they all brought here by . . . whoever controls the translators?"

  "I cannot say for certain," Li-Jared admitted. "I have personally encountered only a small fraction of them. And some cultures, at least, seem to have lost all memory of their origins. But I've spoken with a number who clearly recall in a historical, if not personal, sense, their peoples being transported here from other worlds."

  "You mean dying worlds?"

  Li-Jared hesitated. "Perhaps. In some cases, I believe so. In others, I am unsure. There is a problem, you understand, when one probes into these questions, of distinguishing legend and mythology from factual history." The Karellian's fingers drummed in little outward flicks against the window-bubble of the train.

  "In any case," Ik said, "it is my suspicion that we are here, in some sense, in payment for services rendered to our homeworlds. And for this we carry voice-stones to assist and guide us. I received mine shortly before my journey here. And Li-Jared likewise."

  /// I suspect he may be right. ///

  "You mean we've been sold as slaves?" Bandicut shivered. How much payment was a world worth?

  /// Not slaves, exactly, no.

  But we do seem to be expected to serve,

  in various ways.

  Or perhaps invited is a better word . . . ///

  /Invited?/ Bandicut stared blankly out the window for a moment, not believing it, thinking of endless servitude with his translator-stones as masters. It was not a happy thought.

  /// John, I don't think so.

  I believe that the stones are here

  on your sufferance. ///

  /My sufferance?/ He wondered if that really was true. If so, then he ought to be able to order them out, if he wanted to.

  /// Well, I suppose, but— ///

  /Stones,/ he thought, /let me see you prove that I'm free if I want to be./ Before he could reconsider, and lose his nerve, he held out his hands, palms up. /Leave my wrists./

  Charlie yelped in alarm.

  /// John, wait! ///

  He felt a sharp burning sensation in both wrists, and a moment of dizziness. When the dizziness passed, his eyes focused again as two baseball-sized globes of light shrank suddenly to lifeless pebbles in the palms of his hands. His hands shook, as he held them. "I'll be damned," he whispered.

  Ik and Li-Jared gaped at him in astonishment.

  "Haaii, hrrrakh-how-kodientakhh-rakhh—"

  "Braangg-b-dang-g'hung—"

  "I was just—just trying—I wanted to see—" he stammered, suddenly terrified that he had done something irreversible. He couldn't understand a word that Ik and Li-Jared were saying, and they probably couldn't understand him, either.

  /// John, this is scaring me.

  I think you've made your point.

  I also think we'd be lost without those stones. ///

  Bandicut swallowed. /Yeah. But I had to know, Charlie. I had to know./ He drew a deep breath, rolling the stones in his hands. /Okay, stones—if you can hear me—thank you, and you can go back now./ And then he held his breath.

  For a moment, nothing happened. Then the stones twinkled, first the white diamond in his right hand, then the black bit of coal in his left. Then his breath went out with a gasp as he felt something like a wave of electricity pass through him. The stones flared, and when the wave of dizziness passed, his wrists were stinging; but the stones were flickering again, beneath his skin.

  "Hraahh! John Bandicut, what was the meaning of that?"

  Bandicut took a moment to regain his equilibrium, then finally managed a half-smile. "Ah—sorry, I didn't mean to scare you guys. But I was testing something."

  Bwuh-hong. "Testing what?" Li-Jared's eyes had narrowed to fierce slits.

  "I wanted to see if the stones were my masters, or my servants."

  "Ahh, hrrrm," said Ik. "And were you satisfied with what you learned?"

  Bandicut shrugged. "Yeah, I guess so."

  Ik cocked his head. "We do have freedom to move and make our own choices, John Bandicut. Though I confess that we seem, Li-Jared and I, to find our way into the path of trouble more often than we would like."

  "Trouble, like the boojum?"

  "Yes." Ik glanced at Li-Jared, who was now staring moodily out the window, as if to avoid the conversation. "Like the boojum."

  Bandicut nodded slowly, as he felt the train begin to slow. And I have joined you, haven't I?

  *

  Copernicus rotated his arm joints to lift Bandicut's backpack. He placed it on top of a small outcropping of rock, flanked by trees, but not far from the streaktrain platform where his friends would be arriving. He hoped he had given Napoleon clear enough directions. The train was not yet in sight, but Copernicus was beginning to sense electromagnetic and acoustic pulses in the metal guide-band that snaked across the land below. The train would be here soon. He needed to leave his message and get out of sight.

  He could only hope that the boojum was not observing his actions. There was no reason to believe that it was. But the boojum seemed to have many unusual abilities.

  Copernicus's mechanical arms swiveled back and opened his top maintenance access port. He had just enough dexterity to locate and grasp a datachip in his memory section. Not just any datachip, but the one that he had erased and loaded with the contents of his message. He tugged the chip free, then held it up for inspection. It was a small, black sphere with shiny connector-bumps. It felt a little strange to be examining his own datachip, as though it were just some component off a shelf.

  It appeared undamaged. Copernicus cradled it with one manipulator, and used another hand to open John Bandicut's bag. He extracted the captain's pocket notepad and placed it carefully on top of the bag, and the datachip on top of the notepad. Then he backed away. He heard a low, distant hum. The streaktrain was just coming into view below
, through the trees, gliding along its silver ribbon. Copernicus rolled away quickly, aiming his cooling fan down over the dusty rock, to blow away his treadprints.

  Then he climbed the slope back to his spying place.

  *

  Disembarking, Bandicut felt as if they were stepping from civilization into a holo of the American Wild West. Beside the train track stood a station consisting of a boarding platform and a small shelter. There was nothing else to see but scrub, rocky slopes, and thin clusters of trees. The sky overhead was clear blue and seemingly infinite. As the streaktrain pulled away and vanished around a bend, the silence and emptiness seemed complete. Charlie-One would have loved it.

  Li-Jared peered around skeptically. "You say your robot knows where to go from here?"

  "That's what he said. Napoleon?"

  "Follow me," the robot chirped, and strolled across the train's guide-band, toward a wooded hill.

  Bandicut and the others exchanged surprised glances, then followed, stepping carefully over the gleaming ribbon of metal.

  /// I don't think it can electrocute you. ///

  /Can't you ever sound more certain about these things?/ He felt a tingle as his legs straddled the rail, and he practically hopped away. /Feels electrified to me!/

  /// Naturally.

  But the power's too weak to hurt you, unless you

  apply some sort of power-field gizmo to it. ///

  /Are you thinking this stuff up on the spot, or are you really remembering it?/

  /// It's not so much that I'm remembering

  the stuff

  as that I'm remembering how to summon it up

  from the stones. ///

  Bandicut grunted and strode up the slope after Napoleon.

  The robot appeared quite clear about where he was going, though there was no evidence of a trail up the hillside. Muttering something about a "coordinate grid," Napoleon chose a zigzag path, occasionally springing up onto rocks with his metal legs, but never tackling a steeper ascent than the others could handle. Bandicut was beginning to breathe hard when Napoleon called out, "Familiar object in sight!"

  He quickened his pace. "Coppy?"

  Napoleon reached the top of an outcropping. "Negative. Your personal bag."