Neptune Crossing (The Chaos Chronicles)

by Jeffrey A. Carver

  With the neuro, he would already have had the answers pouring directly into his thoughts. But in the silence, he could not ask the questions merely by thinking them. Blinking his eyes open, he squinted at the tiny red numbers glowing in the corner of his faceplate. Either his eyes were watering or the numbers themselves were swimming; he couldn't read a thing. He tried to speak his questions, but all that came out of his throat was a thin, desperate rasp.

  He struggled not to panic. He drew several deep breaths.

  He knew this much: he could have been unconscious for as little as a few seconds, or as long as a few hours. But given the absence of warning flashers in his visor, he figured that at worst he had another forty-five minutes, and at best several hours more—assuming that he hadn't broken anything mechanical in his fall. That was a risky assumption, of course, considering that he had plowed his way to a landing, ending up flat on his back.

  Flat on his back...

  Covering up his exhaust ports.

  Christ—all this time he'd been lying here, his heat exhaust had been slowly melting into the ice, embedding him!

  No time to panic! he thought. No time to panic. He tried to think calmly. There were no datanet voices to help him; he would have to find his own answers.

  Think, damn you.

  The silence in his head echoed like a tomb. But in his ears, he heard the sound of his suit ventilator. He wasn't entirely alone. He cleared his throat carefully and tried his voice again. "Hello!" he grunted. "Suit control."

  Beep.

  "Thank God," he whispered. "Suit control—what are my power reserves?"

  Beep. "Forty-two percent," chirped the suit.

  He cleared his throat again. Could have been better, could have been worse. He had a couple of hours left. A couple of hours to get free, call for help, be rescued. "Suit control—transmit." He heard the click of the comm switch and drew a tight breath. "Base Camp, Echo Unit. Base Camp, Echo Unit. Do you read?" He listened to the hiss of static; he swallowed with difficulty. "Base camp? Bandicut. Can you hear me? Anyone?"

  He exhaled, and tried hard not to be upset. It would have been miraculous for any signal to have gotten out of this deep cavern, especially with his antenna buried in the ice under his back. Nevertheless, it frightened him not to get a response. He felt himself starting to hyperventilate, and he fought to control his breathing—slow and shallow. He took a sip of water from his feeder tube, then spoke again. "Mayday, Mayday, Mayday! This is Unit Echo. Bandicut. I've fallen through ice and am trapped underground. My location—" he struggled to remember "—two klicks east of position Wendy. Does anyone hear me?"

  The only answer was a hiss of static.

  He scissored his legs again, trying to roll; then he scissored the other way. He rocked just enough to give him some hope. Probably there was some melted ice directly beneath his heat exhaust. But even a few centimeters out from it, the nitrogen was almost certainly refrozen, binding him in place. If only there were some way of melting it again...but he was as helpless as a turtle on its back, kicking and thrashing. He had hands and tools, all of which were useless to him. His mind spun, ratcheting in the silent emptiness. What would the voices of the datanet have said to him?

  What could this lone, struggling mind come up with?

  Suddenly he blinked furiously. Perhaps there was a way.

  "Suit control," he murmured. "Raise internal temperature to maximum." He waited, holding his breath. An instant later, he felt heat pouring in around his torso, then his extremities. He waited for the heat to taper off. It seemed to take forever; sweat ran into his eyes, and he felt like a fool cooking in a sauna. He began moving his arms and legs in fast chops, adding body heat. Finally he heard a beep, and the influx of heat stopped.

  "Suit control," he grunted, "reduce internal temperature to minimum. Fast." He felt a change in the suit's mechanical hum, and drew a sharp, painful breath as a blast of icy air flashed down his front. Within seconds, he was shuddering, his teeth chattering. He counted to three—then began scissoring his legs violently from side to side. Something creaked, and he felt a breath of hope. He wasn't free yet, but his suit was pumping all that excess heat out through the port beneath his back, and he could feel the ice melting.

  He hoped he wasn't just melting himself in deeper.

  He kept rolling, heedless of his bruises. Something kept catching, keeping him from going all the way over. The icy blast was tapering off; he had only seconds before it would all refreeze. He swung his left leg over hard, and dug his right elbow down sharply and levered himself up with the last of his strength. Something broke free, and he lurched, and suddenly was partway up, supported on his right elbow. Before he could fall backward again, he pitched himself forward to his hands and knees. He was free.

  "S-suit c-control," he gasped. "Temperature...n-normal! Fast!" Heat poured back into the suit, sending new shudders down his spine.

  For a moment he didn't even try to move. Then, as he caught his breath he struggled to his feet, supporting himself on an outcropping of ice. The low gravity helped, but he was fighting dizziness as much as weight. When he felt steadier, he told his suit to turn on his helmet lamp, and he played it over the cavern walls.

  He nearly threw up at the sight of the walls spinning through the spotlight. He lowered the beam hastily and found that the movement stopped, closer to him. The spinning occurred only beyond a certain radius, about four meters from where he stood. Though he was sure that it must be only a visual illusion, he knew he had to keep from looking at it. He stared at the ground instead. In his headlight beam, the ice under his feet appeared solid and stable. Thank God. He turned around slowly to see what was behind him. He raised his gaze cautiously.

  His headlight flashed crazily among some darkened ice formations—and his breath went out with a shuddering gasp, as he saw it. It. A machine of some sort.

  A machine made by no one human.

  Bandicut blinked hard and felt an almost overpowering urge to rub his eyes behind his visor. The artifact, a few meters from his outstretched hand, seemed to be squirming in his headlight beam. It seemed to consist of a great many spheres, some jet black and some iridescent, intersecting like clusters of soap bubbles. They were moving and sinking through one another, disappearing and reemerging in different positions, at various rates of speed. Beneath their mirror sheens, the spheres appeared to be spinning. The assemblage was about as tall as he was, standing on the ice floor, balanced on a single spinning bubble. It was strangely hard to focus his eyes upon.

  It looked almost...alive.

  In the silence of his mind, one word reverberated in his thoughts. Alien. And he knew, despite the violence of the silence-fugue that had brought him to this place, that the fugue had passed, and that this object, and its alienness, were no hallucination of the fugue-state.

  It hurt his eyes to stare at it. He glanced away, and that was when he realized that it was at the center of the visual disturbance that made the cavern seem to spin. He clutched again at the ice outcropping, fiercely trying to suppress a new wave of dizziness.

  It was at that moment that he felt something new pass through the silence—a whisper of something in his mind. He felt it for just a moment, then it was gone. A tingle ran up his spine, and for an instant it reawakened the blinding headache that he'd felt at the end of his fugue episode. But the tingle ended in a quick shiver, and the headache was gone as suddenly as it had appeared.

  But the inner awareness was not.

  He didn't know whether this object was alive or not, but one thing he did know—he felt it in his bones, like a creeping chill that had nothing to do with temperature.

  He was not alone in this cavern.

  Chapter 2

  The Quarx

  He couldn't tell if the feeling came directly from the object or not. Something made him feel that he was being watched from behind. He turned partway around, but saw nothing except the spinning ice walls and their rocky protrusions. He shuffled awkw
ardly back around to stare at the alien object, and shivered.

  This time the feeling came purely from within. He felt as if something had blown open in his mind, like a shutter in a strong wind. The wind was sighing through his head now, rustling his inner order like so many fluttering leaves. It reminded him of the feeling of silence-fugue, but this was different. This was something from the outside touching him—and yet touching him within, intimately and profoundly. He had a feeling of a great door swinging silently open somewhere in his mind, and slamming shut again behind him as he passed over some invisible threshold.

  He let out a startled breath. The curious inner feeling faded away, and was replaced by cold, outward reality. He was trapped in an underground cavern, with no idea how to get out. And he was standing in front of...the discovery of the century. An alien machine! It was what the Neptune/Triton explorers had looked for in vain, for years—an intact, and possibly functioning, artifact of the long-vanished alien race, the slag of whose technology laced the crust of this moon. This could be a discovery beyond price or measure, a discovery that could make him famous, possibly even rich. A discovery that could redeem him for his idiocy in falling into this cavern in the first place.

  If, that is, he lived to tell anyone about it.

  He was breathing fast again, thinking about it, wondering what knowledge was contained in that machine, what history, what capabilities. What power. And even, perhaps...what consciousness. Though he no longer felt the tangible sensation, an awareness that he was not alone continued to bubble inside him. He exhaled, flexing his hands in his gloves, trying to relax, trying to maintain an edge of alertness.

  He was keenly aware that this machine, whatever its purpose or nature, could well be dangerous—despite the fact that it undoubtedly had been here for millennia. He had to assume that it was dangerous. He was in enough peril already, trapped here underground, without compounding his danger by triggering some ancient defense mechanism. Unless, of course, he already had triggered it.

  He tried to think.

  First: don't move any closer until you know what you're doing. Your antenna's free of the ice. Call for help again. Don't try to handle this alone.

  Of course, he was still deep underground, and for that matter he might well have broken his antenna in his fall. But there was only one way to find out. "Suit," he said. "Comm—"

  Before he could finish saying "on," he felt a sharp poke in the center of his forehead. It was followed immediately by a startling sensation, almost like being connected to a datanet... in a flickering, tenuous way, as if a single, remote voice had caught him in midaction, and out of the vast darkness had whispered, Don't.

  What the hell? he thought. Was he hallucinating again?

  Or...

  Had this thing just spoken to him?

  He shivered with a sudden chill, and stared at the object with a mixture of fear and fascination. Had it just told him not to call for help?

  "Is that it?" He spoke aloud, his voice reverberating in his helmet. "Are you telling me not to call?" There was no answer.

  If he didn't call, he could be stuck here forever. Survive first, ask questions later.

  "Suit," he muttered again, a little more determinedly. "Comm on, trans—"

  NO.

  The jab was sharper this time. He tried to keep speaking anyway, to overcome the resistance—and found that he couldn't. He could exhale and inhale, but was mute, as if stricken by a physical impediment. His breath hissed loudly in his helmet as he struggled to regain his voice.

  "What do you want?" he thought—and heard his voice again, croaking the words aloud. Startled, he continued, "Are you keeping me here for some reason?"

  There was no audible answer. But he had a strong sense that there was an answer, just as he had a sense that he was not alone here. "Can you talk?" he asked.

  Silence.

  He sighed and turned, playing his headlight around the cavern. The light danced back from the blue, translucent ice, glimmering as though it were alive. As the beam strayed outward, it picked up the spinning effect again. Clearly this machine was doing something, and whatever the hell it was, he would probably be smart to get out of its physical sphere of influence, and then worry about communicating with it afterward. Or better yet, let someone else worry about it.

  He felt a vaguely disquieting sense of disapproval, but no physical resistance, as he took a few unsteady steps away from the device. He approached the boundary where the spinning seemed to begin, and found he had trouble focusing his eyes. He hesitated, then stepped forward. A wave of nausea flushed through him. He staggered, fell—and as he fell, a strange twisting force seized him, spun him, and set him gently down on his hands and knees.

  Struggling for breath, he looked up and realized that he was facing the alien device again. Gasping, he got back to his feet. Had that really happened? Or had he just been amazingly clumsy?

  "Mind if I try again?" he muttered. This time, as he approached the boundary, he closed his eyes to slits—hoping to avoid dizziness. He felt himself falling, and twisting, and landed on his hands and knees again, lightheaded and indignant, facing the machine. He rose, panting, squinting at the object. It showed no reaction. He swept the area again with his light. There had to be some way to get away from it. Everywhere he swung the beam, cavern walls gleamed back at him, moving by in carousel fashion. He turned back to the alien device and hissed, "What do you want with me? Am I your prisoner?"

  Not prisoner, he thought. Guest.

  Where had that thought come from? Stunned, he walked toward the artifact. "Can you talk?" The thing squirmed, black and iridescent in his helmet light. "Can you talk...in my thoughts?" he asked. There was no response. But he felt certain that it was aware of him. Perhaps it would react if he touched it.

  Perhaps it would kill him if he touched it.

  Perhaps he could find something to throw at it. That ought to get its attention.

  Glancing around, he found a loose chunk of ice, and with a gentle underhand toss, lobbed it toward the machine. It sparkled as it passed through his headlight beam, then dropped toward one of the black globes—and would have hit it, except that it vanished in midair. No flash, no sound. It was just there, then gone.

  He decided that it was a good thing that he hadn't touched the machine. On the other hand, he had to get through to it somehow. He picked up another small piece of ice and lobbed it like the first one, this time toward one of the iridescent sections. He missed the machine altogether. One last try: a chunk of ice twirled and tumbled in an arc toward one of the iridescent bubbles...and turned to glittering dust before being sucked into the sphere like an indrawn breath.

  He waited for something more to happen. Nothing did.

  "All right," he muttered. "I guess you don't want to talk."

  The wind rose again in his thoughts and whispered: We're learning. We want to talk.

  He swallowed nervously, fear clamping around his throat. Was that his imagination? He didn't think so. Please, he thought, let me get out of this alive. I will never never let the fugue carry me away like that again! Just let me get out alive.

  We want you to stay alive, he heard the wind say.

  He choked, and instinctively reached out with his mind to catch the wind, to make the connection hold, to make it real, like the datanet—and at that moment something erupted from within, not in audible words, but in thoughts that seemed to turn into words:

  /// Help me—I'm trying— ///

  "Jesus!" he cried, grabbing the sides of his helmet. "Who is it? Who is this?"

  /// I am— ///

  whispered the voice from within.

  "What?" he croaked. "You are what? The machine? The alien? Is that you talking to me?"

  There was a short silence, and a sense of puzzlement. Then:

  /// Alien...? ///

  "Yes!" he hissed. "Alien. Jesus Christ—what's happening to me?"

  /// It's...already...happened. ///

  Alrea
dy happened? he thought dumbly. He barked, not quite cursing, "You're that thing. What are you? What are you here for?"

  /// I am...quarx. ///

  "Uh—?"

  The words were starting to form more clearly in his thoughts:

  /// I am trying...

  to talk with you. ///

  "Well, I—I can't stay here much longer. Can you understand that? I need to get back to the surface. I'll come back later. To talk. I only have enough power—"

  /// I know, ///

  whispered the voice.

  /// I can...help. ///

  "What? How?" Bandicut was panting. He was hyperventilating again; he had to slow down. God, it was terrifying, and yet...exhilarating! A living alien, talking to him, as if through a neuro! He wondered if he could talk back to it the way he could the datanet. /Can you...hear me when I do this?/ he thought, forming the words in his mind with careful deliberation.

  /// Yes.

  I've been hearing you...all along.

  It's talking that's...difficult. ///

  He blinked. /How do you talk to me...from way over there? Do you use some kind of...transmitter...that reaches directly into my brain?/

  The answering thought seemed startled.

  /// "Over there?"

  I'm not, I'm right here. ///

  He swallowed. /Where?/

  /// In your mind. ///

  Well, yes, he thought. But...

  And then he understood what it was saying to him. /Do you mean...are you saying...in my.../

  /// Yes. ///

  He froze, trying not to jump to conclusions. /You don't mean in my actual...brain, do you? You don't mean you're actually in my head, do you? Not just connecting, but—?/

  /// Living there?

  Yes.

  Not physically, as you think of it, but...

  close enough... ///

  Bandicut was suddenly dizzy, too dizzy to hear the voice complete its thought. Not physically, he thought. And suddenly he knew. It had taken him a while to catch on, but now he understood...oh yes, it was like the neurolink, and yes, he was connected; it was like having a memory-resident program alive in his skull, only it was an alien mem-res. Not physically there, maybe, but...an alien voice in his head. It was different from the neuro, and yet strangely familiar at the same time.