The Chaos Chronicles

by Jeffrey A. Carver

  Once he'd located the misplaced identifier—an empty storefront where he'd been looking for a crafts market—he began to find his way. There was the hotel ahead—one of hundreds in Atrium City. He rolled into the lobby, located a terminal, and called the room of the one he had come to see.

  A voice answered, indecipherably. He sent a text message, using an interlanguage which the shadow-people had provided: "My name is Copernicus. I am an inorganic servant and friend of the human, John Bandicut. Have I reached the one named Antares?"

  *

  She listened to the robot in disbelief. "Please repeat. You want what?" Antares leaned forward, staring at the wheeled norg, and wondered if she had been foolish to let it into her room. But she hadn't wanted to speak in a public place, so she'd taken the precaution of renting a pair of security-norgs from the hotel to guard her while it was here. Still. It unnerved her to hear this thing invite her to do exactly what she herself wished to do.

  "You are asked to go with the Maksu, to meet John Bandicut in the ice caverns," said the robot.

  It was altogether too strange. Who, in Shipworld, knew that she might be interested in meeting with John Bandicut? Her last message to the human had come back as undeliverable. "Who sent you?" she demanded, pushing her hair back from her eyes. "Bandie?"

  "Negative. I was sent by the shadow-people."

  She stared at it in puzzlement. "The shadow-people? Why do they want me to do this thing?"

  "It was stated that your empathic powers might be valuable. Beyond that, I do not know," said the norg, sensors glimmering. "I was merely asked to convey the message—and to accompany and assist you, if that is agreeable."

  "I see," said Antares.

  "There will be no charge for the services of the Maksu. That has been arranged by the shadow-people."

  Antares' knowing-stones buzzed, working hard to process the robot's words. They worked better in concert with another pair of stones; but in her conversation with Bandicut, her stones had been imprinted with enough of the human's language to serve. Still, she wished she could extract some empathic feeling from this conversation. "I must consider this request," she said finally, rising to take her leave of the norg. "May I give you an answer in a few minutes?"

  "Of course," said Copernicus. "But I emphasize—time may be growing short."

  Antares squinted at the robot. She gestured to the security-norgs to keep an eye on it while she retired to the next room. To think. And to pack a bag.

  *

  "It has begun," Napoleon said softly.

  "Mokin' foke," Bandicut whispered, watching through the magellan-fish's eye the advancing line of light and behind it the explosions, like distant fireworks, of atmospheric storage tanks.

  Ik was visible as a ghostly outline against the strange, watery space that was the inner world of the magellan-fish. When he spoke, his voice reverberated oddly. "Why does this structure's defensive system not work?"

  "And where are the shadow-people?" Bandicut tried to look around; the effort resulted in a strange twisting sensation, like some sort of mental gyroscopic effect.

  /// They've left us, I think. ///

  A ripple of affirmation passed through Bandicut's mind, and he knew that the magellan-fish was listening to them, and to their thoughts.

  "We are beyond their reach now," said Napoleon. "But according to their data, the tank farm is protected by an array of forcefield bubbles, intended to shield it from meteroid damage or external attack. However—"

  "Is it failing?" Li-Jared's gaze flared like blue fireflies in the darkness of the magellan-fish's eye.

  "The boojum has infected it, and disrupted the harmonic tuning. It is generating an altered resonance pattern through the forcefields. The waveforms of cohesion are beginning to combine destructively," the robot said.

  "I don't follow," Bandicut said.

  /// I think I do, ///

  said the quarx, riffling through his memories at blinding speed.

  /// Remember this picture? ///

  In his mind, Bandicut glimpsed an old, grainy flat-holo of a disaster recorded two centuries before he was born, but still shown in classrooms: a narrow road-bridge arching across a river chasm—not in stable tension, but heaving up and down like a gyrating strand of rope. The vehicles on it were bouncing and sliding like pitiful toys. Moments later, the bridge collapsed into the river below. /I remember that. Tacoma Narrows, right? The bridge hit a harmonic resonant frequency, then became chaotic and shook itself apart./

  /// Same principle here, I think. ///

  "You mean—"

  "It has subverted the defensive shield," Napoleon said. "Remember, it is a forcefield. Focused wrongly, its waveforms compress and stretch the tanks themselves—heating them, distorting their molecular structure. And finally destroying—"

  "—the very tanks it is supposed to protect!" Ik exclaimed.

  As they spoke, several more explosions flared at the edge of the tank farm.

  "We must intervene at once," said Napoleon.

  # IT IS TIME? #

  "Yes," answered the robot.

  /What the hell—?/ Bandicut felt a lurch in the pit of his stomach—not so much a feeling of movement, as of distortion. When he could focus again, he saw that he was now floating in the midst of the enormous tank farm. The magellan-fish? he thought dizzily. He howled in sudden pain as his left wrist vanished in a blaze of white light. An attack? He blinked, stunned to realize that it was the black translator-stone, the energy-transformer. The same stone, at Triton, had once turned him into a vision of a terrifying alien. "What's happening?" he cried.

  "Hraaaaaahhh!" he heard thinly. Ik was some distance away, floating just above the atmosphere tanks. From Ik's head came another blaze of light—Ik's translator-stone.

  Bwr'ang, he heard distantly. Beyond Ik, a third point of light marked Li-Jared's position.

  Napoleon's voice echoed in his ear. "You must use the stones. The magellan-fish will guide and coordinate."

  Bandicut felt a sudden pressure in his mind. It was the translator-stone, speaking.

  *Release control.*

  /What—?/

  *You must release control, if we are to help.*

  /But I don't know how—/

  /// Let it work, John.

  It knows what to do. ///

  Charlie's voice seemed strained, as though the stones were pushing the quarx aside to wield their power directly through Bandicut's mind and body.

  *Let go. Please.*

  /Okay—/ He concentrated . . . and wasn't quite sure how . . . but felt something within himself letting go, releasing a measure of control to the power in his wrists. The fire in the stone blazed forth into a miniature sun—only for an instant—then went dark.

  Gasping, he tried to peer through the spikes of afterimage in his eyes. He felt himself floating higher above the tanks; he could at last see what was happening.

  On the horizon a line of rippling blue fire was marching forward, swelling as it approached. Silent explosions filled the sky behind it, eruptions of much brighter light. Each explosion represented more atmospheric gas than he could imagine. Clouds were billowing behind the line of explosions, vital reserves blasting into space, turning to particles of snow as they dissipated.

  In the almost surreal silence, time seemed to hang suspended. How much of that gas could Shipworld lose before people started to die? How soon would the continent die? And how many explosions could the remaining tanks absorb before they all went up in a chain reaction? The stones were trying to stop it. But the wavefront was advancing fast.

  # YOU WILL MOVE WITH THE WAVES, AS THEY COME. #

  "How?" Bandicut whispered. The magellan-fish had translated them here, directly into the line of the approaching attack.

  Napoleon rasped, "We must interrupt the destructive wavefront—"

  "—or we'll be popcorn in about thirty seconds," Bandicut muttered, watching the brightening glow of the wave.

  "The stones will gen
erate cancelling waveforms. If the timing is precise, they should interrupt the chaotic progression, smooth the flow—"

  Bandicut stared at the advancing wave of destruction. "We don't have that kind of energy! Do we?"

  "The idea is not to pit strength against strength, but to turn the boojum's strength against itself. Timing is crucial. Prepare to move."

  # NOW. #

  Bandicut's questions were lost in a dizzying shift. When his vision cleared, he was hanging much closer to the oncoming deathwave, directly in front of it. He could just make out Ik and Li-Jared strung out in a line with him. /What are we doing? Charlie? Someone?/

  The boojum-wave looked like an approaching tsunami, swollen with fire instead of water. In moments it would overwhelm them. How long would bodies of flesh and blood last under that?

  They had maybe five seconds . . . four . . .

  His wrist blazed, and the flash of white light intersected with the boojum-wave, flaring outward as it struck. The boojum-wave dimmed almost imperceptibly, but kept coming.

  . . . two . . . one . . .

  With a lurching shift, Bandicut was elsewhere. Gasping, he struggled to focus. He was still among the tanks, the wavefront marching upon him, but it was a little farther away. His wrist blazed out again.

  /// John, it's working! ///

  /It is?/ he cried in disbelief.

  And that was when he felt it touch his mind.

  It.

  The boojum. A ripple of dark intelligence, a shudder of dread . . .

  He recognized it at once. How it had found him he didn't know. But it was in his thoughts, and it knew him. And it knew what he was doing. He felt its surprise—and its anger, not just that he was here opposing it, but that he was alive. The boojum had thought that it had gotten rid of him. It had thought that when organic life was dead, it stayed dead.

  /Charlie!/ he whispered—he could still move thoughts and words, but for how much longer?—he could feel its grip tightening. /It's here. Can you help me?/ He felt himself beginning to quake.

  There was no reply, but the quarx was scrambling to react. Something else was reacting, too—not Charlie and not the boojum. It was stirring in his mind, struggling. He cried out—then understood what it was, and why the boojum had not yet struck him down. It was the magellan-fish in his mind, and its strange power was contesting the boojum's. In touching the forcefield waveforms, the magellan-fish might have unwittingly provided entry for the boojum. But it had also risen to his defense.

  He felt the two forces locked in struggle like ancient warriors, with his mind the arena. He could not cry out. He could do nothing except . . . try not to die. He could only fight to keep his mind and his thoughts intact, to remember who he was, what he was . . . human.

  Where was Charlie? He couldn't call out to Charlie.

  The wave of destruction was sweeping toward him. His stone flared—it had its own mind, at least—and its flare hit the wave again, bleeding it of a little more of its power. But not nearly enough to save him when that wavefront hit.

  They had to move. But they couldn't, unless the magellan-fish moved them. And the magellan-fish was caught, locked in battle with the boojum.

  /// You . . . must . . . intervene. ///

  whispered a faraway voice.

  /Inter—/

  # HELP . . . #

  /—vene?/ It was becoming harder and harder to keep his own thoughts in motion. It was as though two enormous hands were locked together in his mind, gripping his own thoughts between them. How could he possibly . . . ?

  The wave was growing, coming closer.

  # SEE . . . CREATE . . . #

  He blinked, and something opened, a window or framing view that instantly changed his perception of the struggle. With a ripple of inner vision, he saw the two combatants in a new image. One of them was a silver, flashing shark speeding in tightening circles around its prey. The other was not one fish but a school of fish, all iridescent and neon colors, swarming in fantastic rippling waves through this very strange sea, this realm inside his mind, inside the magellan-fish's mind. Were these images real—or symbolic, like a neurolink sim? He sensed that they had the power to move and spin and strike out, to kill . . .

  /Charlie, how can I—?/

  /// Be . . . ready . . . ///

  The shark and the school were not two hands grappling in motionless paralysis, but two forces in swirling movement. The hunter was all deadly force, fast and powerful. The school had strength, too, in fluid movement—but it was being hemmed in by the ferocious speed of the shark. The school weaved and twisted, turning in upon itself—protecting Bandicut, but prevented from moving as it intended, prevented from transporting Bandicut and the others, and making the next move to halt the destruction of the tank farm.

  Bandicut blinked slowly, dazed thoughts caught in a circle.

  The shark's eyes shone, gloating, as it thwarted each effort of the school to escape its orbit. Its teeth flashed as it spun by the school, startling individual fish, snapping. It wasn't catching the fish, but it didn't have to; it only had to contain them until its violent work was done.

  # CREATE . . . #

  Yes; but how?

  /// Neuro . . . sim . . . ///

  He felt a charge of understanding. Create a new image? The images were symbolic, but if they were the focal point of power, he might be able to deflect or distract the boojum-shark. There was no time for elegance or thought; he strained to imagine this as a neurosim VR game, and he created his own image as a hard, bluntnosed fish, bristling with spines. Yes. Gathering strength and speed, he hurled himself at the shark.

  The boojum didn't see him coming. He rammed it from the side—and felt the impact as a physical slam. He spun away, gasping, but turned to come at the shark again. It had swung about hard, startled, recognizing the presence of a new foe. Now it recognized him—and charged in a sudden fury. Its teeth gaped wide, and he had an instant to remember how the boojum had almost killed him once before.

  He shuddered and twisted left and down, then up, right, and hooking into a dive. The shark swerved, following. It was faster but less maneuverable. He climbed sharply, presenting his spiny back to it—and it shot by him, snapping and just missing.

  He turned, as it circled. Behind the shark, the school flashed in a rapid curling arch, then passed overhead in a glorious wave of color—and the sea quivered, then changed. The water became bluer, and glowed with an intense blaze of sunlight. Bandicut was startled to realize that the light was coming from his left wrist, and from two other, more distant sources.

  At that moment the boojum-shark recognized its mistake. While it was distracted by the image of the virtual-Bandicut, the magellan-fish had moved them in real space. The stones were flaring now with their clearest shot yet against the destructive waveforms of the subverted forcefield.

  The boojum-shark shot toward the surface, Bandicut forgotten. Bandicut gazed up at the dancing overhead waves as the flash from the translator-stones hit the surface. A tremendous burst of wave-cancelling energy radiated outward. There was a perceptible darkening as the waveforms weakened. The water changed again, abruptly, as the magellan-fish moved them once more. The stones flared, hit the now-smoother surface, and the remaining waves collapsed to darkness. The shark hit the surface, too late to stop it, and vanished like a raindrop into water. KK-THOOOM! A shudder of helpless anger reverberated through the sea, then faded.

  Bandicut held his breath. The waves in the sim-sea were gone. The vision quivered; the sea turned a deeper blue, then black—and he found himself gazing at the tank farm, from overhead. The boojum's rippling surf of destruction had vanished completely—cancelled out by the bursts from the translator-stones, just like the waves in the sim-sea. The wake of damage it had left was bad enough: a wide swath of demolished tanks, and enormous clouds of cryogenic snow drifting into space. A lot of atmosphere had been lost. But far more had been saved. Probably three-fourths of the tank farm was intact. A blue glow began to rea
ppear around it—the defensive forcefield reenergizing. This time it looked stable.

  Was the boojum gone?

  /// I think so, ///

  the quarx said, emerging from wherever he'd been crouching. He sounded shaken.

  "The interference has ceased," called Napoleon, from somewhere.

  Ik called, "How was that—"

  "Bandie, did you do that?" Li-Jared interrupted. "I do not know quite why we are alive." Li-Jared was a tiny figure jetting across space toward him. "I saw something very strange, a few moments ago."

  "I guess I did some of it," Bandicut gasped. "But mostly it was the stones—and the magellan-fish. But where's the boojum now?" He felt something jangling in his mind, something nasty and dark, like the fading memory of a nightmare.

  # FLED. GOOD CREATING. WELL DONE. #

  The magellan-fish's voice boomed in Bandicut's thoughts. It was at first a welcome sound. But Bandicut felt an inner rumble—not a fading aftershock, but something else growing, as if the thundering voice had triggered an avalanche.

  Then the silent bomb went off.

  A black hole billowed open in him, and blackness came pouring out of it, into his mind, like a withering fire. It was unmistakably the boojum—or the boojum's work. A mine left to kill him? Out of the jaws of victory—?

  He clenched his eyes shut, unable to cry out.

  /// Let me take this one! ///

  Charlie cried, rising.

  /No—wait—/

  There was no stopping the quarx from leaping to his defense—and no stopping the ribbons of darkness that lashed up within his mind, springing in a tangle to catch the lifeforce of the quarx in a killing chokehold. The trap wrapped itself around Charlie and tightened—

  There was a shriek of agony, a piercing wail.

  —and shrank down to a pinpoint—and vanished.

  Bandicut screamed. /Charlie!/

  His thoughts rang in echoes.

  He gasped in shock and pain. It had happened so fast. The attack. The quarx had saved his life. But Charlie's own lifeforce had been uprooted, choked, and destroyed.