Ascending

by James Alan Gardner

  “Bloody hell,” Festina whispered. “Very neat…and despicable.” She gave my shoulder a squeeze. “If all this is true…”

  I waited to hear how she would finish the sentence. But what could she say? If all this is true, poor Oar, poor you! It is too bad you face a malfunctioning brain because your creators wanted you lovable but helpless. We too find you lovable, and are charmed by your naïve innocence; we will be very most sad when you finally fall to the ground and do not get up.

  In the end, all Festina could do was give my shoulder another squeeze.

  My Vow

  I looked around at my companions—their somber faces, their eyes shifting away from me as if I were already some walking dead umushu whose gaze they could not meet—and for one brief moment, I nearly lost heart. These were my only friends in the universe, and they believed I was doomed: a wind-up toy to amuse foul aliens, and now I was running down. They thought of me as a frivolous child who did not understand the world, a person who had not grown up and could not grow up. For one brief moment, a great sorrow washed over my soul, as I feared they were correct.

  Perhaps I was not a glorious heroine, destined for grandeur.

  Perhaps I was just a silly girl-child who had filled her own head with nonsense—deluded herself into thinking she was special.

  For I had to admit, my brain was getting Tired. It had been that way for the past four years. Recent events had temporarily stirred me from my stupor…but over and over again, I had almost slipped back to nothingness. How long before I reached the point of no return?

  If the Pollisand was telling the truth, I could still be cured—provided I embraced his cause to “wipe the Shaddill off the face of the galaxy.” When he first made his proposition, I had glibly answered, Yes, I shall help; but I had understood so little of who and what the Shaddill were. Even now…even now, there were only conjectures. I did not know. But if all those conjectures were correct…

  …I wished to do more than just punch the Shaddill in the nose. I wished to keep punching and punching until they said they were sorry, and even then, I did not think I would stop. I truly wished to hurt them, not because I wanted to win favor with the Pollisand, but because it was what such villains deserved.

  After all, working with the Pollisand might not save me—why should I trust an alien to keep his word? The universe was full of betrayal. And what would it mean to be cured? Who would I become? A tedious plodding grown-up? A stodgy sighing person who did not fall down from Tiredness but who went around three-quarters Tired all day, pretending that because her feet were moving, her brain must still be alive?

  Nimbus suggested I must become adult or become nothing; I did not know which option I feared more. But whatever happened to me, I swore I would not succumb to oblivion until I had made the Shaddill regret what they had done.

  That was my vow. That was what I solemnly promised to the universe: to every glass elder lying comatose in a tower, to my original flesh-and-blood ancestors, and even to alien races like the foolish Cashlings whose brains were crumbling wrecks. Somehow, I thought, this must all be avenged.

  Therefore, in my most secret inner soul, I swore a terrible oath to do so.

  “Come now,” I said to my friends, “we are wasting time, and perhaps I have little time left. Let us perform at least one great deed in our lives before we vanish forever.”

  I did not wait for them to answer—I strode down the dirt-caked tunnel, trusting that somehow I would find the Shaddill. My friends hesitated a moment, then followed close behind me.

  24

  WHEREIN I EXPLORE THE ENEMY’S LAIR

  In The Tunnels

  The entire stick-ship seemed filled with tunnels: some narrow with little head-room, some wide and reaching up into darkness. Darkness was indeed the most salient feature of these tunnels; there were occasional lights—dim orangey plates the size of my palm, set into the wall at waist level—but I counted a full twenty-two paces from one plate to the next, and considering the lights were scarcely as bright as a single candle, they did not provide substantive illumination. Their sole function must have been to prevent one from getting lost in total blackness.

  Festina still had her glow-wand, but she used it sparingly: she only activated it when we came to an intersection. Since the floor was dirt, one could see which tunnels were more frequently used than others—the ones where the soil was tamped down more solidly, with the occasional discernible footprint. (The footprints were always from human boots, their tread identical to those worn by the robot admirals.) We always chose to follow the direction of greatest traffic, on the theory that this was most likely to lead us to Shaddill.13

  Of course, the stick-ship did not merely consist of earth-lined tunnels—there were also multitudinous rooms opening off the tunnels. Many of these rooms did not have doors, just open entranceways…but the rooms were even darker than the tunnels, so peeking inside only showed bulks of anonymous machinery enclosed in metal shells. From time to time, we saw robots scurrying in the darkness, things that were no more than wheeled boxes with arms sprouting out of their tops. The robots took no notice of us; they were too busy with their programmed tasks to worry their mechanical brains about strangers.

  As for the rooms with closed doors, we did not attempt to open them. I had no time to waste on side trips, since I did not know how much longer my brain would stay active. Besides, as Festina pointed out, doors are often closed to protect passers-by from dangerous things on the other side, whether those things were wild beasts, aggressive nano, or machines that produced incinerative quantities of heat. (Nimbus assured us he was keeping watch for high concentrations of nano; according to him, there were light sprinklings everywhere we went, but the nanites showed no more interest in us than the boxy robots.)

  Minutes slipped by and still we did not see anything that might have been a living Shaddill. Of course, the stick-ship was huge; there might be millions of Shaddill in some other part of the craft, a residential section that was kept separate from the place where they imprisoned captives. But as time went on with no sightings, I wondered where the great poop-heads were. Was the entire stick-ship run by robots and nanites? Did the machines need no supervision at all? And if the ship could run itself, what about other Shaddill projects?

  I knew the Shaddill had changed Melaquin from whatever it once was into a near-duplicate of Earth, with terrestrial weather and plants and animals…not to mention all the cities built underground and at the bottom of lakes. Was it possible such construction had been accomplished entirely by unsupervised machines? Perhaps so—aliens of advanced technical abilities might do everything with machines instead of physical labor. For all I knew, there might only be a handful of Shaddill left in the universe; they languidly gave a command, then years of work (including planning, design, and terraforming) were carried out by mechanical servants.

  And if that were possible…why did there have to be living Shaddill at all? Suppose the old race, Las Fuentes, had created this stick-ship and programmed it to operate on its own. The living Fuentes then turned themselves to jelly, leaving the ship to work unattended.

  It would be very most irksome if we reached the stick-ship’s control center, only to find it filled with more bulks of anonymous machinery: artificial intelligences running the whole show. One cannot punch a computer in the nose.

  On the other hand, one can kick loose a computer’s metal housing and rip out its wires, dancing upon its circuit boards and smashing anything that says FRAGILE, DO NOT STOMP. Even better, the League of Peoples would not consider me a bad person for doing so—if the League dealt with computers on a regular basis, they probably felt the urge to dance on circuit boards themselves. Perhaps they would appear before me in a pillar of fire and say, “Oar, most good and faithful servant, you have done exactly what we would have done ourselves, if only we had feet.” It would turn out the League people were giant space butterflies; they would give me a medal for heroic achievement, then seat me upon
their backs and we would ride off for Glorious Adventures on the far side of the galaxy.

  That is what was going through my head when I saw the Pollisand.

  In Good Paintings, The Eyes Follow You; In Stick-Ships, You Follow The Eyes

  We had come to a T junction and Festina was examining the dirt on the floor, trying to determine which way was used more often. Both left and right were quite trampled, indicating we had finally reached a major thoroughfare. While the others busied themselves debating which direction looked better, I kept watch for hostile elements…which is how I caught sight of familiar red eyes glowing in the darkness to my right.

  The Pollisand was so far off in the shadows, I could not make out his body; but his eyes were unmistakable. They glowed for the briefest of moments, just long enough for me to recognize them. Then they winked out as if they had never been there.

  “This way,” I said, pointing in the direction of the eyes. “That is the proper route.”

  Festina looked up as if waiting for an explanation. I did not think she would be happy to learn I had seen the Pollisand again—Festina believed he was a Creature Of Ill Omen, and perhaps she would insist on going exactly the opposite way. Therefore, I said nothing. Eventually, she shrugged and muttered, “Why not? Right looks as good as left.”

  So we moved in the direction I had seen the glowing eyes. I kept close watch on the ground as we walked, hoping to observe deep footprints from a rhinolike beast…but I saw nothing except packed-down soil. Perhaps all I had seen was an illusion inserted into my brain. Still, we pressed along the tunnel until we came to another intersection; and once again, I caught a fleeting glimpse of eyes down one of the passages.

  “This way now,” I said pointing.

  Of course, it was not so easy as that—Festina wished to examine the ground, and we had to pause as Aarhus made grooves to mark our way back. In the end, however, Festina agreed the direction I indicated was as good a choice as any, and we proceeded accordingly.

  Several minutes passed in that manner. None of the others noticed the glowing eyes: they were only visible to me. Nevertheless, at each junction, the Pollisand marked a reasonable way forward, so the others were willing to follow my lead.

  Once or twice, Festina peered at me with suspicion—she obviously wondered why I had started to make snap judgments at each cross-tunnel. By now, however, she must have become accustomed to me behaving in a manner too deep for humans to understand; and as my Faithful Sidekick, she chose not to question my will. She simply made sure the sergeant continued to mark our way back, and little by little she took less time to examine the ground before declaring, “Let us do as Oar says.”

  Therefore, we made swifter progress, though we were now in a part of the ship where the ground was exceedingly well trodden. In spots, the dirt had worn away entirely, revealing solid flooring beneath. Festina said all these floors were made from steel-plast, a material found in human star-ships as well—which made sense, considering the Shaddill had taught humans how to make starships in the first place. One wondered what other features the stick-ship possessed in common with a vessel like Royal Hemlock…and we soon discovered such a feature, as a door we were approaching swished open automatically at our approach.

  Doors had opened for us in this fashion several times on the Hemlock; however, this was the first such occurrence on the stick-ship, and Festina halted our march immediately. More precisely, since I was walking in front, she grabbed me by the collar of my jacket and yanked me back sharply.

  I turned with a reproachful look and was about to tell her she should not handle me with such brusqueness…but she threw her hand over my mouth before I could speak a word. Apparently, she did not want any lurking Shaddill to hear us talking. When she was certain our companions would also keep quiet, she motioned us to stay where we were, then crept forward stealthily toward the open door.

  She stood just outside the door for a tediously long time, holding her breath and listening for any sort of noise from the inner room. The rest of us listened too—Uclod and Lajoolie rolled back the coverings of their spherelike ears, exposing raw eardrums to the world. Perhaps this made their hearing even keener than mine; at any rate, Festina must have believed they had the best ears among us, for she turned to them and mouthed the word, “Anything?” Both Divians shook their heads. Festina shrugged, clenched her stun-pistol in both hands, and hurled herself forward into the room.

  Nothing happened. No shots, no shouts, no scuffles. After some tense moments, Festina reappeared in the doorway and waved us forward.

  The Milk Of A Million Mothers

  By normal standards, the light in the room was dim: just-after-sundown twilight like the hangar where we first landed. After the darkness of the tunnels, however, the soft dusky glow seemed pleasantly welcoming.

  It was bright enough to show that the room was empty…which is to say, there were no robots or Shaddill or bulky machines. Instead, three mini-chili trees grew in a widely spaced triangle, their trunks arrow-straight and their branches heavy with yellow fruit. Nothing else sprouted from the surrounding soil—no bushes or undergrowth, not a single blade of grass—but in the center of the triangle formed by the trees stood a fountain carved from gray stone.

  We had all seen such a fountain before—in the pictures Festina showed of her world, Agua. This was unmistakably a creation of Las Fuentes.

  The fountain was simple: a low bowl-shaped basin ten paces across with a knee-high wall surrounding it, and a single unadorned pillar rising from the center. The pillar stood a little higher than my head; it had three spouts just down from its top, each oriented toward one of the mini-chili trees. At the moment, however, the spouts were not spouting. Indeed, the entire fountain was bone-dry, as if it had not operated in ages. It sat in stony silence—a silence that was somehow more intense because it ought to have been broken by the cheerful gushing of water.

  “Okay,” Uclod said softly, “this clinches it. The Shaddill are Las Fuentes.”

  It seemed appropriate to talk in near-whispers. We had stopped just inside the door, none of us ready to venture farther. “Admiral,” Aarhus murmured, “those fountains on Las Fuentes planets—did any of them work?”

  Festina shook her head. “By the time humans arrived, they’d been sitting idle for thousands of years—gummed up with dirt and mold. A lot were completely buried under normal soil accumulation; they were only found because they sat in the middle of those huge craters and archaeologists knew where to dig.”

  “But did the fountains have pipes? And water sources?”

  “They had pipes, but they didn’t actually draw from the surrounding water table; the water came from big sealed reservoir drums buried under the ground.” Festina shrugged. “Using a self-contained water source might have been a religious thing—maybe the water in the fountain had to be specially blessed by priests, and Las Fuentes didn’t want their holy water mixing with unsanctified stuff from local rivers. For that matter, the reservoir drums and the fountains may not have contained normal H2O. The fountains could have held a sacred drug used in worship ceremonies…or blood from animal sacrifices…or milk ritually obtained from a million mothers…and before you ask, no, we don’t know if Las Fuentes actually produced milk, I just made that up as an example.”

  Example or not, it was something that caught my attention. I should very much like to see a fountain that sprayed milk or blood. Perhaps the fountain before us had an ON

  switch. At the very least, it might contain crusty stains one could pick off with one’s fingernail and stare at with haughty disapproval. I moved toward the triangle of trees…then found myself jerked back again as Festina once more grabbed my jacket.

  “No,” she said with quiet urgency, “it might be a trap. The door to this room opened as we approached, unlike every other door we’ve passed. That’s way too convenient.”

  “Don’t be so grim, missy,” Uclod told her. “There’s nobody here, right? And if this fountain is a Sh
addill shrine, maybe the door always opens automatically as a sign of welcome. ‘Come in, whoever you are, sit down and pray.’”

  Festina did not look convinced…and it dawned on me she might be correct in saying the door did not open by accident. The Pollisand’s eyes had led us here; perhaps the Pollisand himself had arranged for the door to open because there was something we ought to discover. “I do not think there is danger,” I told Festina. “If this is a holy place, surely it is the last location the Shaddill would set a trap. An attack on us might damage the fountain.”

  “Unless,” said Aarhus, “they’re the sort who think shrines look holier when splashed with the blood of enemies.”

  “Oh, you’re a barrel of laughs,” Uclod muttered.

  Yet Another Thing That Might Be Wrong With My Brain

  “If I can make a suggestion…” Nimbus said.

  We all turned toward the cloud man. In the dim light, he had been so nearly invisible it was easy to forget he was there. “If you think it’s important, I could send some of my components over to the fountain. It’s unlikely the ship would notice a few stray cells drifting through the air…and I could do a quick chemical analysis on any residue in the basin.”

  “That is excellent,” I said. “It could provide us with important information.”

  “Why?” Festina asked. “Why do we care what the Shad-dill put in their fountains? Why should it matter if the stuff is water, blood, or fucking sangria?” She stared at me most piercingly. “You’ve got some idea in your head, Oar; I can tell. That’s scary enough on its own, considering what your ideas can be like. But with you being a Shaddill creation, I also worry the bastards might be influencing you somehow. Beaming notions straight into your cerebral cortex. They could have built your brain with receptors that would let them control you when it became necessary.”