Had it failed? Had Ik's daughter-stones split for nothing?
Bandicut held his breath. Finally: "Ik? Do you feel anything?"
The Hraachee'an remained silent, but slowly lowered his arms. Something brightened below the bubble. Like an explosion, half masked by clouds. It darkened, then brightened again. This time it stayed bright.
And Bandicut felt something in a front corner of his mind. It was a tickle, mystifying and elusive, and then grew louder, echoing, until it seemed to shoot from one corner of his thoughts to another . . .
is
is
is
is
is
is
is
this
this
this
this
this
this
this
this
to
to
to speak
speak
speak
speak
speak-k-k-k
-k-k-k
-k-k-k
-k-k-k
-k-k-k-k-k
and then paused, as though trying to analyze what had just happened.
Bandicut sensed Ik standing more erect. The Hraachee'an had heard the voice, too. Softly, Bandicut called, "Ik, do you have contact? Should I shut up and stay out of the way?"
"Hrrrl, I can feel its presence. But it is not clear, I do not understand it. It senses me, senses all of us—but this is something you know how to do better than I."
That's what I was afraid of, Bandicut thought, gazing down into the ghostly fire.
/// I will do what I can to help. ///
/It's so alien—I don't know if I can—/
/// It's a machine, I think.
It reminds me a little of the robots. ///
/Is that good? What do the stones—/
/// They want you to try. ///
Bandicut caught his breath and spoke silently but forcefully: /We wish to communicate. Can you understand my words?/
His thoughts were interrupted by a stuttering . . .
cannot
cannot
cannot
cannot
follow your statements
what is good
what is biological
what is neurolink
what is afraid
A pale circlet of fire was rising toward them.
stones parse
robots parse
words parse
communicate parses
The circlet of light twisted oddly and vanished, as if into a strange phase shift.
"Napoleon!" Bandicut yelled. "Do you have contact?" Robots parse. /THESE TWO ARE ROBOTS. THEY CAN HELP COMMUNICATE./ "Napoleon!"
Bandicut glanced away from the Maw and saw that Napoleon's sensors were flicking madly from Bandicut to Ik to the silver-thread antenna to the silver starfish to the fire of the Maw, as though he could not find the right place to focus.
"Nappy! Coppy! Tell me what's happening! Report!"
He was answered with a loud tapping—Copernicus—and then that robot's voice, garbled as though speaking through water. "It is . . . a machine . . . disabled . . . attempting to regain . . . or reconstruct . . . its design capabilities . . ."
A concussion like a thunderclap knocked Bandicut to his knees. A halo of light surrounded the bubble, then began closing inward, giving Bandicut a moment of panic as it seemed to squeeze the bubble, as though to crush it. But instead of collapsing the bubble, the light drew inward through its walls, until Bandicut and all of his friends were floating in a sparkling glow. And then voices filled Bandicut's head, the inner voices of his friends, and he found himself struggling to connect voices with owners.
Antares: It is fearful . . . confused . . . we must not be fearful . . .
Trying to kill us, to destroy us—whispered Li-Jared.
Thing of terrible power, hrahh . . . but has a purpose. I can sense that much, cannot quite comprehend . . .
From another age, another place in space-time . . . displaced, lost . . . whispered the quarx in thought.
And L'Kell: What are they doing . . . they must do what is needed, and not think of me . . .
Bandicut struggled to force his own thoughts into clear channels, to separate them from his friends'. Maybe the thing out there could listen to all of them at once, but he couldn't. My name is John Bandicut, I am human, I am lost, as my companions are lost. Why do you do this, why do you cause such destruction, what is it you are trying to do—?
And suddenly he felt a strange curling of forces around him, responding to his effort to sort it all out, to focus inward on his thoughts. And he recognized the forces; he had felt them before, in another place . . . in a long tunnel stretching to infinity . . .
He had touched these forces, this thing, in the stardrive of the lander's ship.
And the thing touching him now remembered, too . . .
that which was injured
in distress
you took away
/Yes. Yes. A living being. Harding was his name. You helped me, or the other helped me . . ./
yes, now we begin to recognize you . . .
and these others . . . ?
/My friends. All. We work together. Trying to help. Please, what is the purpose of the eruptions—?/
broken, broken, trying to correct . . .
error in previous contact
trying to correct
correct
Error in previous contact? With him? With the Neri? The Astari? Or—
/// The Astari ship.
The Maw caused it to crash,
and it wants to correct for it! ///
Bandicut's head swam. /Is that what you mean? Is that the error? The crash of the starship, all those years ago?/
correct error . . .
boost it through
Dizzily, Bandicut tried to follow the sea of information that was coalescing around him. The connection with the stardrive had caused disaster . . . but he already knew that, it was why the Astari were on this world, why the wrecked ship was there . . .
For an instant he glimpsed the stardrive-room of the Astari ship around him, and he blinked and tried to clear his eyes. But it was not his eyes; what he was seeing was the distorted space-time field of the stardrive; it was bound to the Maw, their alterations of the continuum interlaced and entwined, coiled around each other like a tangle of serpents. And it was wrong, it was an error; and the Maw was trying to untangle, to unsnake itself, to correct the error. But how could it correct an error that had already caused the ship to crash?
There was no explanation now, there was only awareness. Awareness of someone else, someone not here, and yet so close it seemed he might touch the other . . . and voices, familiar and unfamiliar . . . Astari voices . . .
"Do not . . . we fear what is in that room."
"I fear it, too . . . but something is in there, I can feel it pulling, something that needs to speak—"
"Leader, wait—"
But it was too late; he was already inside, and the field was coiled around him, and there was no turning back . . . exactly as Bandicut had felt it once before . . . happening all over . . .
/// It's not you, John!
It's not your memory.
Someone is in the stardrive . . . right now . . . ///
/Yes?/ he whispered dizzily. /But who? Morado?/ Drawn in by his stones, Harding's stones? /Why would the Maw want—?/
/// It's the connection between them.
It's still trying to pull the Astari ship through.
It's not letting go. ///
/But I don't—/
The words were swept away by the coiling strains of the field, and it felt much worse than when he had been in the stardrive room himself. He was helpless now in the movement of information and memory. Memory . . .
His breath went out as he caught a piece of memory. But whose, the stardrive's? No, not the stardrive's, the Maw's . . .
It moved through the infinity of space like a panther through woods, like salmon returning from the sea, in search of the connection it had been established to make, in search of its home. It lived for, was created for movement through the light-years. But not its own movement, not once it had found its nesting place; no, it was made to move others.
It was a stargate, a stationary portal through space-time; and it had been given existence, life, so that it might move vessels through the infinite sea of the galaxy and beyond. As soon as it found the place where it was to take up its station . . .
/Given existence, life,/ thought Bandicut. /Is it from Shipworld, is this thing from Shipworld?/
He felt a shudder, and a reply, from Charlie or from the stones, he couldn't tell which. No, no . . . not from Shipworld, or its hidden masters. Not from the translators. Then from whom? That was what the translators had wanted to know, too. Who had the power to make such things and send them out into the galaxy?
*The Others . . . as we suspected, feared . . .*
The Others—?
And what had gone wrong?
*
A burst of imagery flooded the connection, touching Bandicut and Ik and Morado and all who bore stones of knowing:
Streaming through space, using transformational powers from its own space-time fields, caroming from star to star, drawing energy from the stars and leaving them lifeless in its wake, shrunken and cool. (Stars supporting life? Ik cried in silent horror.) Pressing onward, ever onward toward its assignment, snaking outward through the galaxy (not from Shipworld, from another direction, whispered the quarx) . . . until a stellar encounter that was somehow misread, miscalculated, too many unexpectedly chaotic variables. Instead of providing the needed measure of energy, the star flared up in a nova, engulfing the passing stargate and nearly destroying it . . .
Damaged but still determined, limping onward, it realized the impossibility of reaching its assigned station. And so, equipped with a certain measure of self-determination, it began searching, probing for an alternate site, examining the space-time fabric of the surrounding region in hopes of finding a spot that would allow it to perform useful, if altered, service.
/Then why did you—and how—?/
What happened next was jumbled in memory. There was a malfunction in approaching the selected region. Incorrect data? Broken sensors? Unclear. It focused on a planet (Why? An anchor point? A nest?) and bent space to make an attachment to the gravity well of the planet, intending to spiral in and slowly devour the planet's mass for energy . . .
Miscalculation . . . malfunction . . . errors multiplied in the orbit, until finally it made a botched forced landing, coiling space inward and materializing once in the atmosphere (killing my ancestors, whispered L'Kell) and once again deep in the crust beneath the sea . . .
And then endless reverberations, seismic shockwaves, and a window opening out through the crust into the deep-sea abyss, from the bottom of the world looking up . . .
Chapter 34
The Eternal Night
VOICES CLAMORED IN the connection like echoes in a canyon . . . robot, Hraachee'an, Thespi, Karellian, quarx, human . . .
Bandicut struggled to gather the images like butterflies into a net, trying to discover what lay beneath the memories, the who and the why. /You did not intend to destroy the civilization on the planet?/ he asked the stargate.
did
not
come
to
destroy . . . . .
no . . . . .
came
only
to
serve
/Nevertheless, you did destroy . . ./
Like a holo of an explosion in reverse, a million bits of memory coalesced into fragments of history . . .
—sailing proudly into the eternal night, one of a thousand such, dispersing into the galaxy, long before the failure that brought it to this place—
—struggling to function in spite of damage—
—trying and failing to stop earthquakes and violent atmospheric storms from destroying fragile constructions on the edges of the continents—
—a civilization dying—
—the stargate itself slowly dying—
—frantic attempts to restore itself, to feed matter through interspatial channels, to reestablish normal function, to correct error—
—and coiling its fields outward to connect with another intelligent machine passing close by, bringing in this first who might pass through and be boosted onward, as intended—
—error error—
—starship struggling to maintain its own course through the tortured paths of altered space-time, but caught helplessly in the web of this other thing . . . and finally brought planetward in a cataclysmic entry, grinding into the seafloor—
—while the two minds, struggling to comprehend each other, remained entangled, able neither to mesh nor to separate, and both of them slowly dying—
—but determined to send the starship on its way, to boost it as the stargate had been designed to do—
—trying to do its job—
—before death—
—to correct its error, terrible error—
—must correct—
—must correct—
*
The Maw was dying. And it was determined to do whatever it could to complete its unfinished task before its strength failed . . . sometime, perhaps, in the next several hundred years.
/You cannot change what has been done—/ Bandicut whispered.
Must
/—it can no longer fly—/
must fly
/—you have destroyed those lives, can only go on with what is—/
what lives?
what lives?
And a furious cry like a fist of darkness rising into the halo of light. "Our lives! Ours!"
who—?
"Our ship and lives that you destroyed—!"
The voice came from the twisted, tortuous connection with the shipwreck, and Li-Jared's voice rose to meet it with a sharp twang. /Morado! Can you hear me? I feel the stones; can you hear me? Why are you here?/
"Drew me, the stardrive called me . . . drew me through these stones, there is so much they know, so much . . ."
/Then you've heard, and you know—/
wait
do
not
know
the
meaning
In answer to the skittering cry, Bandicut called, /What meaning don't you understand?/
Lack of comprehension: lives.
/Life itself? Do you understand life?/
Describe life.
/Do you not know your own life—?/
Before he could say more, there came a howling wind of images from the stardrive, from Morado: Astari struggling to gain a foothold on a hostile seacoast, facing earthquake, unpredictable seas and storms, failing technologies, dangerous salvage operations in an ocean they didn't understand . . . and sea creatures who came and vanished . . . until alien stones flickered and blazed into union with Morado . . .
. . . as they had into the stargate itself . . .
these
stones
from
creators
like
mine
There was a flash of imagery, like a lightning bolt, too fast to frame and hold. A glimpse of a world . . . or a collection of worlds . . . a race of beings, the makers of the stargate . . . and a need, a responsibility . . . Bandicut couldn't focus; it was gone.
*Different,* answered the stones, someone's stones. And Bandicut realized there was something in the stones' voice that was ominous.
The stargate didn't seem to notice; but it understood something now that it hadn't. These entities were similar to its makers in one crucial respect: their machine intelligence. It understood the stones, and their connection to life, even if it didn't understand the life itself. But could it understand harm? Could it be persuaded to stop wh
at it was doing?
/// It believes, to correct its mistake, it needs to
send something winging into infinity. ///
/Send something winging into infinity—?/ Bandicut said, and then stopped, caught by a half-formed thought.
"Do you see now?" asked Napoleon, of the stargate. The robot was trying to explain something to the Maw, trying to explain that its corrective efforts were harming both organic and machine intelligences. "But there may be alternatives—"
The Maw rumbled through the sea, and then for a few frightening moments was utterly still. And in the dead silence, Bandicut faintly heard L'Kell's voice: "Motive power is gone. I cannot control our movement. We are descending, and will continue to descend until we strike bottom."
Bandicut shivered. How much farther down was the bottom? Or was there a bottom? He felt a sudden pang for L'Kell, who was protected only by the sub's pressure-hull; Bandicut, perhaps absurdly, felt safer in the star-spanner bubble.
The Maw suddenly spoke:
please
state
alternative
Bandicut's breath caught, as Napoleon spun out a suggested plan of action . . .
"The starship is no longer flight worthy. However—"
There was a sudden rush of emotion from Antares, or rather through her, focused by her. Puzzlement. Desperation. Need. Almost those things; not quite any of them. But it was the stargate's sensation, its near-desperation, as palpable as any emotion from a living, organic being.
Bandicut was so focused on it, he almost missed the final beat of Napoleon's proposal:
/—if you accept a substitute for the Astari ship, your chances of success will be greatly increased. We are flight worthy; you could boost us—/
What? Bandicut thought. And realized that this was precisely the thought that had almost crystallized in his mind earlier. Char had figured it out, and Napoleon. The stargate, more than anything else, was desperate to report a successful transport. Nothing else mattered except that act of completion of its mission . . . its purpose in being . . . before its own life came to an end.
/// It was programmed to cross the galaxy,
maybe more than the galaxy,
solely to do this thing and keep doing it.
And if it could do it just once,
and be able to report success,
even to itself . . . ///
Bandicut held his breath, waiting to see what it would say. And if it said yes, what then? Had they just volunteered to be flung somewhere across the galaxy again—only this time not under the control even of the Shipworld Masters, but of some completely different alien intelligence? /Going where?/ he whispered softly. It seemed like madness.
The Chaos Chronicles Page 103
