Chindi к-3

by Джек Макдевитт

  “Cosmic Snoops,” said Nick, who’d been watching from the Memphis.

  Alyx switched on her wristlamp. “I don’t believe this is happening. We travel all over the Arm and find a few ruins, and the Noks, while these people have all this. George, we have to find out how this works and duplicate the record.”

  “Or make off with it,” Nick said.

  His chair shook.

  He looked at Alyx.

  “What was that?” she said.

  George took a deep breath.

  The room trembled again, a shudder, a spasm. As if something were happening deep in the ship.

  “SOMETHING’S GOING ON, Hutch.”

  A cloud of objects was expanding from the underside of the chindi. Bill locked in on one. It looked like a sack. It was generally shapeless, more or less rounded, a little wider at one end than at the other. It had no visible means of propulsion.

  “Where are they going?”

  Below, Autumn’s upper atmosphere was calm.

  “I’ve no idea. They’re all headed in different directions at the moment. I’ll track them and let you know when I have something.”

  George’s voice came in over the circuit. It was weak and far away. “—Are they getting ready to leave?” he asked.

  “I don’t think so,” said Hutch. “They’ve just ejected a bunch of sacks.”

  “Say again please.”

  “Sacks. Packages.”

  “Of what?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe you ought to get out of there. Just in case.”

  “Let’s not panic,” he said. “We just got set up over here. Keep an eye open. Let us know if you see anything else.”

  “HUTCH.” SYLVIA WAS so excited she could barely speak. “You’ll be interested in knowing that the Academy has had a breakthrough. We are now reading the transmissions on the star web. We’re getting pictures of previously unknown alien civilizations, we’ve got a black hole rolling through the atmosphere of Mendel 771, we’ve got a cluster of artificial bubble structures orbiting Shaula. It’s really incredible.” She brushed her hair back from her eyes and literally glowed. “We’ve unlocked the grail.”

  Well, the metaphor seemed strange, but that hardly mattered.

  “You’ve unlocked it,” she continued. “You and the Contact Society. Who would’ve thought? Pass my congratulations along to George.”

  ALYX SMILED AT him. He could almost read her mind. They’d been inside barely ten hours and, at the first suggestion of activity, they’d run like rabbits. No, they’d told Hutch, let’s not panic. Don’t pick us up. We’re just getting started. But nevertheless they’d left the VR chamber and hurried back down Barbara Street, toward the pocket dome. One of the wheeled robots had passed them, paying no attention, just rolling past as if they weren’t there. Tor wondered where it was going.

  Back at the dome, they’d refilled their air tanks, taken turns using the washroom, and waited for more signs that the chindi might be getting ready to leave. Hutch thought it was something else, a launch of some kind, but that was okay for her. She wasn’t going to get stranded if the damned thing took off. So they were ready to clear out at the first sign.

  After a while, they decided they were probably okay, and they’d relaxed a bit and had dinner.

  Tor was accustomed to the twenty-four-hour cycle on the Memphis, where the lights dimmed at night and brightened in the morning. In the chindi, of course, it was always dark. The light from the dome illuminated the outer chamber somewhat, but there were still gloomy recesses. The place felt remote, abandoned, spooky. He wondered whether he could capture the mood on canvas.

  That evening, they again took to the passageways. There were more empty chambers, of course, but increasingly they found displays, many with objects they readily recognized, weapons and furniture, tapestries and musical instruments, electronic equipment and sleeping gear. Two chambers contained libraries, one limited to scrolls, the other to chapbooks with brown pages rendered inflexible by the cold.

  Sometimes they saw broken shards and collapsed tables and shreds of clothing, carefully preserved in display cases that prevented an observer from getting too close to them. Lovingly preserved, one might almost think. At other times, the artifacts were new, as if they’d just been gathered from a shop, brought here, and put on display.

  One exhibition of absolutely unfathomable objects, which might have been a series of geometric puzzles, was enclosed by magnificent russet curtains that could have come directly from a well-appointed terrestrial dining room.

  Sometimes there were figures, presumably representing those from whose world the artifacts had been salvaged. They came in countless shapes and types, mammalian and avian and reptilian and others for which there was no category. Their aspects often suggested a kind of placidity and congeniality. A creature with a crocodilian skull and teeth seemed to possess the serenity of a Socrates. Others were majestic, still others terrifying. The most unsettling, for Tor, was a dark-eyed horror inhabiting what appeared to be a drawing room directly across from the chapbook library.

  They debated splitting up. There was too much to see and too little time to continue as they were. George suggested that the forty-eight-hour limit they’d imposed on themselves was unrealistic. That they had an obligation to stay longer, to survey the place as thoroughly as they could. After all, they really didn’t know the chindi was going to leave. It was possible it had been there for years.

  “It’s refueling,” said Alyx. “That tells me we don’t have forever.”

  Tor agreed. “If I thought we could do it,” he said, “I’d suggest sabotaging it. Prevent it from going anywhere. I hate to think of this thing getting away from us.”

  “But it won’t get away,” said Alyx. “Hutch says we can follow it. It’s not as if it’s going to go somewhere we can’t.”

  By then they were exhausted. They’d been awake more than thirty consecutive hours, and had gone through the night. It was late morning back on the Memphis. Tor suggested they quit for a few hours, return to the dome, and get some sleep.

  “Why don’t you two go back?” George suggested. “I’m not really tired yet.”

  “No,” said Alyx. “We all need a break. You get tired, you get careless.”

  AFTER A SECOND sleepless night, Hutch went up to the bridge, where Bill was still tracking the sacks. Not all of them, because they’d continued to disperse, and there were more than the sensors could handle. But the dozen they were monitoring were reaching the inner ring.

  “One of them,” Bill said, “is about to impact.” He put the image on-screen, a cluster of rocks and the sack. “Here’s the target,” Bill said. He highlighted it for her. “Predominantly iron and ice.” It was shaped like a potato. “Roughly thirty meters down the long axis. Maybe half as wide.”

  The sack glided through the rubble, skimmed past a boulder, and splashed against the target, dashing a gray-white smear across its surface.

  Hutch poured herself some coffee. “The rock will be orbiting out of view shortly,” said Bill. “Do you want to follow it?”

  “What about the other sacks?”

  “We’ll have another impact in six minutes.”

  “Okay, Bill,” she said. “Let’s just sit and watch. I want to stay close to the chindi.”

  Nick wandered in on his crutches. He seemed to be feeling better. The painkillers had rendered him unusually jovial, to the point where he’d been telling jokes about his profession. Talk to us and you’ll never need to talk to anyone else. You can rely on us, Hutch, to be with you until the end.

  She ached to have the landing party clear of the chindi. Professional researchers might be expected to take this sort of risk, but it was their business. George, Tor, and Alyx seemed like such innocents. “We’re going to lose them,” she told Nick.

  He smiled as if he had another funeral-director joke. But then he let it go.

  George was scheduled to come back to the Memphis in a few hours, but she knew it w
asn’t going to happen. It had been impossible to miss the enthusiasm in their voices when they reported the wonders of the chindi. And then the call came, the one she knew she was going to receive.

  “George on the circuit,” said Bill.

  Even Nick knew.

  “Hutch,” George said, “we keep finding stuff.” He went on to describe a dead city in the middle of a plain. “We don’t know what happened there. Broad boulevards, wide green parks, malls. Even a theatrical district. I’d say it was abandoned a few years before the pictures were taken. We figure there’s an explanation somewhere in the record, but we don’t know yet how to access it.” Pause. A guilty pause, she thought.

  “We’re trying to figure out how it works. We’d like to get copies of all this if we can.”

  “You’re running out of time,” said Hutch.

  “Yeah. Listen, I wanted to talk to you about that. We’ve been discussing it, and you said there should be some warning before this thing leaves. I mean, they’ll have to warm up their engines. Right? And there’s the funnel they use to bring up the ice crystals. They’ll want to recover that.”

  All old stuff. They’d been over it before.

  “What we want to do is to have you keep an eye open for us. If you see something happening, anything at all that suggests it’s getting ready to pull out, give us a holler. We figure we can be back at the exit hatch within an hour and a half at worst.”

  Hutch looked at Nick. Nick looked away.

  “You’re assuming the funnel’s not disposable.”

  “Yes. Well, anyhow, we’re going to hang on here for a bit. Hutch, I know how you feel about this, but this place. We can’t just walk away from it.”

  The sense of approaching disaster was thick. “Dammit, George, you’re going to hang on over there until the last minute, aren’t you? And then I’m supposed to come do a rescue.”

  “Hutch, I’m sorry you feel that way. But listen, there really should be time. As soon as there’s the slightest indication that they’re getting ready to pull out, we’ll come running.”

  “Yes. That’s real good. The first indication is probably going to be a change in velocity. They’re going to start braking or accelerating. Once that happens, it’s over.”

  “There’s another possibility. Something we haven’t considered.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “They know we’re aboard. I wonder if they’d really leave while we’re still here? This whole place seems designed for visitors.”

  “I think that’s a reach, George. If it were designed for visitors, it’d be a bit warmer, don’t you think?”

  “Hutch.” He sounded genuinely pained. “Please try to understand—”

  “How do the others feel?”

  There was a pause. Then Tor: “Hutch, he’s right. There’s just too much here.”

  And even Alyx: “The place feels safe. I think we’ll be okay.”

  “Do what you want,” she said. She severed the connection and glanced up at the Phillies picture. Her image knelt in the on-deck circle with the bats propped against her knee. Idiot, she thought, not sure whom she had in mind.

  Chapter 26

  No cloud above, no earth below—

  A universe of sky and snow.

  — JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER, SNOWBOUND, 1866

  NICK AND HUTCH were eating breakfast when Bill appeared on-screen. “I have something interesting for you,” he said. The display switched over to a picture of one of the bottles. Except that it had a curiously unfinished appearance. “This thing was a rock thirty hours ago.”

  “The sacks.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “They’re nanopackages.”

  “Yes.”

  “So the chindi manufactures bottles,” she said. “Why?”

  “Here’s another one.” It was fully formed. And as she watched it fired its thrusters and began to accelerate.

  “Where’s it going, Bill?”

  They watched it make a few more adjustments. Then: “It’s headed back to the chindi.”

  By midafternoon, it had arrived. Doors opened and it vanished inside. A short time later, a second vehicle approached. And a third.

  Hutch told George what was happening, that three bottles had gone inside, and he reported no evidence of any activity.

  They were just sitting down to dinner—chicken, peas, and pineapple—when the chindi launched a bottle. And then, in fairly quick succession, two more.

  “The same ones?” she asked Bill.

  “It’s impossible to be certain. But the interval between launches matches the interval between arrivals. It appears that the bottles are taken on board, treated in some way, probably fueled, possibly upgraded, and then disgorged.”

  “To do what?”

  “Yes. That is quite a good question, isn’t it?”

  “Can you tell where they’re going?”

  “They haven’t yet lifted out of orbit. When they do, I will try to make an estimate.”

  Bill was as good as his word. He was back by late evening. More bottles had been taken on board and launched. Yes, the interval had been the same: two hours and seventeen minutes in each case. The first three had all left orbit and were headed in three different directions. Where? Nowhere he could discern. “Most are remaining approximately in the plane of the solar system,” he said. “But there doesn’t really seem to be any conceivable destination.”

  “You’re looking inside the solar system.”

  “Of course.”

  “What about outside?”

  “There’s no point in it, Hutch. These vehicles are too small to be superluminals.”

  “The lander at the Retreat might be a superluminal.”

  “The lander at the Retreat is bigger. And in any case I have my doubts.”

  “Nevertheless, please assume the possibility and check for interstellar vectors.”

  “I am doing that now.”

  “What are you getting?”

  “Near misses.”

  “What?”

  “Near misses. All three seem to be headed for nearby stars. But in each case, the aim seems inaccurate. They’re going to miss. By a small margin, but they will miss.”

  “You mean they’re going to arrive in the boondocks of the system?”

  “Yes. By several hundred A.U.s.”

  THE CHINDI LAUNCHED more bottles, and after a few days, they had moved out beyond scanner range. Meantime, a steady stream of data was relayed from the chindi party to the Memphis. Hutch and Nick watched the images of glittering towers and carved stonework, of exotic harborworks, of dead cities, of dwellings perched on cliff tops and along glorious shorelines. They saw a temple half-sunk in the tides, and an obelisk still guarding a desert ruin.

  Occasionally there was something of more scientific interest: a planet-sized object that Bill thought looked like a particle; a star being gobbled down by a black hole; a pulsar rotating wildly on its axis thirty times a second.

  By far the majority of the chindi records dealt with civilizations, and of these the vast majority appeared dead. This was so consistently the case that it was easy to assume they were looking at an archeological mission that had occasionally strayed into other areas. The prevailing opinion at home held that civilizations, technological or not, were limited to a relatively brief lifetime. This view had risen from the fact that of the five known extraterrestrial civilizations (other than human), four appeared to have survived less than 10,000 years. And the fifth showed every inclination of blowing itself up in the near future.

  Alyx observed that, if they could figure out a way to determine the expanse of the network of which the chindi seemed to be the center, it might finally become possible to get a reasonable estimate of how numerous extant civilizations might be at any one time.

  Bill reported incoming from the Longworth.

  The big cargo vessel had closed to within a transmission time of eighteen minutes, one way. It was therefore possible to cond
uct a conversation of sorts, with responses staggered at better than half hour intervals. But it required packaging what one had to say, and avoiding the more frivolous parts of dialogue.

  Most of the Academy people Hutch ferried around the Arm were accomplished at their specialties, and they were usually more interested in their research than in boosting their egos. Her experience had taught her that people who insisted on having others recognize their outstanding qualities usually didn’t have any. They were inevitably failures or mediocrities.

  Maurice Mogambo was an exception. In his case, ego and talent both seemed monumental. Although his primary area of expertise was physics, he also enjoyed a reputation as a leading theorist on the evolution of civilizations. She’d once listened to him discuss the effects of lunar systems on cultural and intellectual development. He’d made his arguments with an extraordinary array of punch lines. He’d won his audience over, and they’d applauded enthusiastically at the end. She’d learned later that he had earned his way through university as a comedian in a local club.

  In person, though, one-on-one, he could be tiresome. He lectured rather than spoke. He expected to be treated with deference. And he inevitably conveyed the impression that he spoke from the mountain, and everyone else should listen closely. On the couple of occasions he had shown up on her passenger list, there’d been talk of murder among the other travelers before they got home. He was, in short, a joy to work with.

  Now he gazed out at her from the screen and smiled pleasantly. “Hutch,” he said, “tell me about the extraterrestrial vessel. And the Retreat. What is happening?”

  His image froze. Mogambo was not one to waste words.

  She talked briefly to George, explained that she could not simply refuse to cooperate. George grumbled and gave his blessing.

  She provided Mogambo with pictures of both the Retreat and the chindi. But she decided not to go into detail about what they’d found inside the giant ship. “Lots of corridors and chambers. Mostly empty. Some automated gear running around. And it looks as if there are a few artifacts on display.”