Divergence

by Tony Ballantyne

  They all heard it at the same time. The flowers were humming.

  “Are they moving—?” began Saskia at the same time Maurice swore.

  “Oh, shit!” The flowers were accelerating. Sliding out of the dead zone. Into the region of gravity. Slowly at first, but with a sickening gathering of pace, the three spheres fell to the ground. As gravity was coming from six directions, they chose three different ways to fall. The three people on the platform watched three different spheres as they fell to three different floors, bounced, and then rolled to a halt.

  “What have you done?” whispered Saskia hoarsely.

  “It was a lure!” said Maurice. He bashed at his console, instructing the viewing platform to descend again. Judy was speaking in low tones, calm tones.

  “They wanted to draw us in. Like the Dark Seeds. They were getting our attention!”

  “What’s going on?” asked Saskia, eyes wide with fear. The three spheres lay in three directions: one on the ground below, one above, and one to the side of them. They had rolled onto their backs so they could at last see what was contained inside of them. From one sphere, a silver strand of metal pushed its way out into the hold. A silver spider emerged into the light, then quickly scuttled away. Then another. Then another.

  Silver spiders went scuttling in every direction.

  “Trojans!” croaked Maurice. “Those VNMs have tricked their way on board!”

  Each sphere contained three spiders. They split up, skittering from view as quickly as possible.

  Maurice slapped his forehead. “How stupid would you have to be to take an unknown self-replicator on your ship!” he shouted angrily. “They tricked us.”

  Judy stood in front of him and held his gaze. “Maurice,” she said in a calm voice. He glared at her. “Maurice,” she repeated, “calm youself. Center yourself. Activate the ship’s countermeasures.”

  “Countermeasures? What countermeasures? This is a fucking FE ship! What countermeasures, exactly, do you think we have on board? Photon-fucking-torpedoes?”

  The VNMs had vanished, Maurice could not see where. He spotted two black tiles pulled out from the pattern covering the six floors. The VNMs had found their way out of the hold. They could be replicating already, using the fabric of the Eva Rye to make copies of themselves.

  “Oh, hell,” said Saskia, holding herself, arms wrapped tightly around her body. “What’s going on? What are you going to do?”

  Judy closed her eyes for a moment, concentrating, and then she found her voice.

  “Both of you, relax,” she commanded. Despite themselves, Maurice and Saskia did so. Judy seemed to be growing in stature.

  She rounded on Maurice. “Now, Maurice, think. What can we do?”

  Maurice gazed into her big black eyes, their warmth heightened by contrast to her porcelain doll face and a sense of calm and control seeped through his body. Yes. Breathe deep. Yes. Stay calm and an answer would present itself. He blinked and allowed his mind to wander free. Yes. Breathe and calm. Breathe and calm. Now, what were they to do…?

  “I…I…I don’t know,” he stammered. “I don’t know! I can’t think of anything!” He felt the panic that Judy had just quelled rising once more inside him. “I really don’t know! The AIs usually handle this sort of thing. Transmit friendly protocols or reprogram the VNMs? Release counter VNMs?” His voice was hollow. “We haven’t got an AI on board. We haven’t got anything like that on board!”

  “Oh, hell!” breathed Saskia. “Look!”

  The crates stacked on the wall in front of them were starting to move, sliding in four directions.

  “The gravity is going! Those VNMs must be eating the generators in the walls.”

  There was a creaking noise and a stack of crates began to tilt. Crystals wrapped in foam sheeting began to tumble to the floor below.

  “It’s happening above us, too,” said Judy in composed tones. “Look, we’re back down now.” The viewing platform folded itself back into the floor. “Come on, out of here. Steadily. Calmly. Come on.”

  Craning their necks upwards, they followed Judy towards the door. Three crates fell to the floor behind them, one by one, in brilliant diamond showers of crystal shards. A hollow thud reverberated throughout the hold—resonating deep inside their stomachs.

  “Run,” said Saskia, pushing Maurice ahead. A rain of colored pebbles was falling with a lovely clattering noise.

  “Stay calm…” soothed Judy. There was another crash and a sound of tearing paper. Quickly they walked to the exit. Maurice unclenched his fists as they stepped out of the hold. A wave of green apples rolled past their feet as the door slid shut behind them.

  “Aleph!” Judy’s voice suddenly sounded muffled in the calm of the carpeted corridor. “Can you hear us?”

  “Yes, Aleph,” Saskia said. “Why didn’t I think of him? Aleph, do something to stop this!”

  Aleph’s voice spoke from Maurice’s console.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t think there is anything I can do. I’m a systems repair robot, not a counterincursion specialist. I suggest you get yourself into those active suits you had delivered as quickly as possible.”

  “Of course,” said Maurice, “the active suits!”

  Saskia’s eyes were wide. “The suits? Do you think that FE knew we would need them?”

  Aleph was still speaking. “…the outer hull of your ship is already disappearing. Do you want to see?”

  A viewing field sprang to life right in the middle of the corridor. The black-and-white checked teardrop of the Eva Rye appeared, an expanding cloud of silver VNMs clinging to its side.

  “Oh, hell,” whispered Saskia. “Maurice, what have you done? They’re eating up the hull. Look. You can almost see straight into the little hold!”

  As she spoke, the door to the little hold seemed to creak slightly and a pattern of black-and-white stripes came to life upon it, coming up into existence from nothing. Letters formed in the center. HULL INTEGRITY BREACHED. DO NOT ENTER.

  “Maurice, think!” said Judy. “There must be something we can do?”

  Maurice gave a shrug. He felt strangely calm, now that all of his decisions had been taken away.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I told you, I have no idea. I think we should get away from this corridor, however. Those VNMs could be through the door in no time.”

  “The active suits,” said Saskia. “Edward got them to stow themselves in the locker near the living area. Oh, hell. Edward.”

  “Yes, what about Edward and Miss Rose?” Judy asked quietly. Maurice and Saskia exchanged looks; they hadn’t been thinking about the other two.

  Maurice spoke up. “We should get the suits first, they’re closest. Then I’ll go to Edward’s room. You fetch Miss Rose, Judy.”

  They ran. On past the conference room, into the living area. Edward was there already, wringing his big hands together. A glass lay on its side by his feet, apple juice soaking into the dark carpet.

  “What’s happening, Judy?” he called out.

  “Don’t worry,” replied Judy. “We’re all going to put on active suits. Saskia, you come with me. Maurice, you stay here with Edward and help him.”

  “Active suits? But I thought they were dangerous!” Edward was now dancing back and forth. Judy had already opened the locker and taken out three suits. She passed one to Saskia.

  “You carry this. I might need help to dress Miss Rose.”

  Maurice pulled two more suits from the locker, their thin material sticky beneath his fingers.

  “You have to be completely naked under the suit,” explained Maurice. “It needs to interface with you totally. Don’t force it on: stroke it gently; let it get used to you.”

  Quickly he undressed. Edward did the same.

  Maurice’s suit was green. He fiddled with the neck, trying to get it to expand. It did so, but oh, so slowly. Edward watched him, and then did the same with his own yellow suit. There was a loud bang.

  “What’s that?”
called Edward, dropping the suit and clapping his hands to his head. “My ears hurt!”

  “Pressure doors,” said Maurice, feeling as if he had just drunk a liter of icy-cold water. What was going on? Only five minutes ago they had been watching the pretty orange flowers. Now the Eva Rye was disintegrating around them. It was too much to take in, in such a short time. Edward was standing fully naked, his hands still to his ears, his active suit lying in a sticky heap on the floor before him.

  “Get into your suit, Edward!” yelled Maurice.

  The neck on his own suit was expanding ever larger as he stroked it. Impatiently, he stabbed at his console and brought up another view of the ship.

  “Oh, shit!” he moaned. The entire rear of the Eva Rye had gone. The teardrop’s read end had ablated in a cloud of silver spiders that rained back down on the swollen front end of the ship, devouring the rest of the hull. He looked away from the console to see Edward still standing there, hands clasped to his ears. Maurice shouted at him, his voice cracking with fear. “Your suit, Edward!”

  Finally the big man began moving. He bent down and began to stroke the suit, opening its neck. Maurice turned back to his own active suit and saw that at last, it was big enough to step into. He pushed in one naked leg and then the other, the sticky, rubbery material fighting against him as he tried to pull it on. He forgot everything he had been told and began to jerk at the suit.

  “Stay calm, Maurice.” That was Edward speaking. He was looking earnestly across at Maurice as he slowly, methodically, pulled on his own suit. “You’re rushing it and it’s fighting back. Do it slowly, like you told me.”

  Maurice paused and took three slow breaths. He tried meanwhile not to look at the view of the Eva Rye floating over the dining table, the black-and-white pattern of its hull almost stripped clean by the devouring cloud. Many of the VNMs were now black-and-white themselves, dancing poisonously amongst the rest of the jostling silver crowd. That’s our ship turned traitor against itself. Don’t think about it! Another three breaths and he eased his left leg slowly forward, then, all of a sudden, the resistance was gone: the active suit was a part of his body, his foot and calf alive and tingling with a new awareness.

  “Thank you, Edward,” said Maurice. “Thank you. We can do this together, can’t we?” Edward gave him a big beam of delight.

  And then there was another bang, and black-and-white wasp-striped doors slammed over the entrances to the living area.

  Now Edward was panicking.

  “No!” called Maurice. “Remember what you said, Edward. Take it slowly. Keep it calm.”

  Edward paused, stopped thrashing. “Maurice?”

  “Yes, Edward.”

  “Let’s both take three breaths, and then we can pull on the suit bodies.”

  It was terrifying. At any moment, Maurice was expecting the walls to dissolve in a tangle of silver legs and for the atmosphere to boil away into space. Still, breathing slowly, they gently pulled the sticky material up their bodies and felt the sudden loss of resistance, the tingle and awakening that said the suits were correctly in place.

  “Now the arms,” said Maurice and Edward together. “Just a wriggle of the fingers. No need to panic.”

  There was a shout and a scream.

  “Miss Rose!” exclaimed Edward. He began to whimper. “Somebody has hurt her!”

  Another bang. Maurice turned off his console’s sound channel.

  “Easy. Pull the suit on slowly, Edward, then we can go looking for her.”

  Sobbing, Edward did as he was told.

  “Maurice, this is Aleph. I’m overriding your console to tell you that something has just appeared out here….”

  Miss Rose screamed again, her voice finding its way over the opened channel. Edward gave a shrill cry in return. Maurice slammed the lockout button on his console. He was shaking as well. What was wrong with Miss Rose? He had never heard anybody sound in such pain.

  “Edward, the arms! Pull up the gloves and slip in your hands….”

  Shaking, they both tried to force their hands into the sleeves, their flesh resisting, the stickiness gripping, and Miss Rose’s pain still echoing in their heads. And then Maurice felt a blessed relief and tingling. He was finally dressed. Quickly, he pulled the active suit’s hood over his head and turned to Edward.

  “I can’t do it, Maurice.”

  Tears splashed down Edward’s brown chest. The big man was tugging and tugging at the suit with one hand, burning his skin as he tried to force his other hand into the sleeve. There was another bang and the floor shook. Edward kept gasping and pulling.

  “Stop it! Stop it!” shouted Maurice, panicking himself. “Stop it!”

  Edward took hold of Maurice by the arms and began to squeeze. Maurice tried to break free, but he couldn’t. Strong as he was, Edward was stronger.

  “Edward, you’ve got to let go of me. I can’t help you if you hold my arms.”

  He looked at Edward, at his big brown chest and bare arms, at the silver tears streaming down his face.

  There was a rattling sensation. Then a flash of silver at the corner of Maurice’s vision.

  “Edward! They’re coming through the walls! Let go so that I can help you!”

  And then one of the walls dissolved in a flurry of silver legs.

  Maurice stood sobbing in the middle of the room, feeling Edward’s grip weakening. He had his eyes tightly closed; he couldn’t bring himself to look at Edward as he died. What had happened? In the space of a few minutes they had gone from everything to nothing. The ship had been eaten up. Edward was dying, Miss Rose was…what? What had happened to her?

  Edward’s grip finally loosened, and Maurice tried to open his eyes. He didn’t want to look. Okay, count to three and then…he opened his eyes.

  The living area remained untouched. The black carpet, the dining table, the neat stacks of black-and-white dishes in the kitchen were all unchanged. Even Edward’s glass, lying on the floor where he had dropped it.

  “What happened?” asked Edward, still standing before him, looking puzzled.

  Before he had time to think about it, Maurice helped Edward shrug his way into the arms of his active suit. Only when Edward had pulled the hood over his head did Maurice speak.

  “I don’t know what happened. Look over there.”

  They looked towards the wall where the VNMs had entered. There was a long empty corridor beyond that had not been there before. It led downwards.

  “What happened?” asked Edward. “What’s going on?”

  To Edward it was obvious what they had to do, so Maurice gave in and followed him down the corridor. There was nowhere else to go. Edward hated confusion, Maurice had noted. Whenever he was uncertain about what was going on, that was when he felt most ill at ease. When his choices were clear, he was happy. Edward felt that now their path was clear; they simply followed the seamless black corridor in front of them downwards.

  “I think I can see something,” Edward said boldly, and then he stumbled and began to fall forward. Maurice made a grab for him and felt a stomach-wrenching surge of nausea as the world tumbled around him, leaving him floating free in the long tunnel.

  “Help!” Edward called. “Maurice, help me.”

  Weightlessness made Maurice feel sick. He was gulping down the thick acid bile that threatened to rise up and fill the hood of his active suit.

  “Stay calm,” he gagged, then he clamped his mouth shut again and tried to overcome the nausea. A cool breath of scented air refreshed his face. The active suit was picking up on his distress. “The gravity’s gone,” he gasped. “We’ve left the zone of the Eva Rye.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “I don’t know, Edward.”

  He was tumbling head over heels now. Back in the direction from which they had come, he saw the tube contracting. The view of the living area vanished. A pattern of expanding dots flashed into life before his eyes, a projection from his active suit.

  “The Eva R
ye has gone,” said Maurice. “It’s been totally converted to VNMs.” He wiggled his fingers, tapping at an imaginary console. The active suit picked up the gestures and flashed up the information he had requested.

  “And all in just under eight minutes,” he said.

  They floated on through the black tube.

  “I can see a light up ahead,” said Edward.

  Maurice saw it too: a pale light, the color of snow in moonlight. For a moment he had a flash of something, a memory from his childhood, then it was gone.

  They floated on.

  “The tube’s getting bigger,” Edward said, and it began to widen like a trumpet’s bell, then they floated out into a vast space that froze the breath in their lungs. They were now apparently drifting upwards, rising from a hole in some vast plain. They looked down and saw white patterns of frost curling in flames of fern beneath them, incredibly complex shapes curling around themselves in recursive patterns, painting pictures of cold fire across the ground.

  “Where are we?” asked Edward.

  “I don’t know,” repeated Maurice.

  “It’s beautiful.”

  They rose higher and higher. Now they could make out distant walls and a wide ceiling above them, shining in the pale blue light that illuminated the arctic volume of emptiness around them.

  “I thought we were in space,” said Edward. “How can we be underground?”

  “I don’t think we’re underground,” said Maurice. He was trying to remember something he had read years ago: how you used an active suit. You reached out your hands like this, and you turned them like this and…

  Now he could feel the surface of the ice below. With the help of the suit’s augmented senses it was like he was running his hands along it. He could feel the cold metal that lay below the thin residue of frost, he could tap it and feel it ring hollowly through to the void beyond.

  “What is it?” asked Edward.

  Maurice was running his virtual hands along the distant floor; he was feeling the walls and ceiling, patting along them, sizing up the cavern.

  “We’re in a long, flattened cylinder made of metal. There is air in here, Earth atmosphere but a lot thinner. Too thin to breathe, and too cold. Moisture has settled on the walls and frozen there. Hold on, Edward. I’m calling up a picture of the shape of this cylinder.”