Rejoice, a Knife to the Heart

by Steven Erikson

  Wei grunted again. “Processing units. You see, though, that the object that impacted the circuit board dismembered the latex—this sensory membrane. Only now … do you see? These new … silvery threads?”

  The threads Wei spoke of were thin as strands of hair, and yet they formed patterns in their distribution.

  “They are not consistent with the original design,” Hong Li observed.

  “Precisely,” Wei agreed. “Two different technologies?” And then he was nodding, eyes bright. “This new manifestation, it is nanite-based, or so we believe. The underlying Grey technology is not. There are orders of magnitude between the two sets.”

  “Power?” Li asked.

  “Yes! Returning us to the command package—” He pointed the stylus at the cracked buttons still attached to the web that had been beneath the glass fascia. “Of course, we can only guess at specific functions, and the necessary sequences are entirely lost to us—but none of that may matter.”

  “What do you mean?” Shen asked.

  “We think, as with all the other chambers, any button will do.”

  The captain considered the notion for a moment, and then he reached out and pressed the nearest button.

  Behind him the hatch clunked loudly and then lifted clear, revealing a vertical tunnel.

  Shen held up one hand to halt the rush of personnel toward the hatch. “Remain where you are. We pause here. I need to speak to Command.”

  Frowning, Wei said, “Why, Captain? Were we not intending to explore the entire complex?”

  Shen nodded. “And we will. But this … new technology. This repairing of the mechanism.”

  “Our benefactors,” said Hong Li. “The ones who chased away the Greys. They are aiding us here.”

  Shen had reached the same conclusion. But it added a new complication to their mission, and though not likely one that would in any way alter their progress, Mission Control needed to be apprised of the development.

  “Ah,” murmured Lieutenant Hong Li, “I see. We may not be alone here.”

  “As a setting for First Contact,” Shen said, looking around, seeing the faces of the engineers, his soldiers, “is not this base ideal?” He met Hong Li’s gaze. “Close off this chamber and set a guard. No one approaches the hatch. I will confer with Mission Control on this unforeseen … possibility. For now—”

  His words fell away as a faint moaning cry drifted up from the hatchway’s gaping mouth. And then a wail, the words coming in a rush of some language Shen did not comprehend. Hand reaching toward the 9 mil at his hip, the captain slowly approached the hatch-way. “Did anyone understand that?”

  Behind him, Hong Li said, “It was English, sir.”

  Shen turned to frown at his lieutenant. “Are you certain?” Li nodded.

  “Well, what did it say?”

  “Sir, it said, ‘for the love of God someone help me’.”

  The floor below was visible at a depth of about ten meters. There were no ladder rungs or any other means of descent. Among the platoon’s gear were two sets of climbing harnesses and three pay-out spools. After a quick and somewhat terse dispatch back to Mission Control, Shen and his medic, Quang Feng, donned the harnesses. A spool was anchored to the rim of the hatch and Shen took the lead in descending to the level below.

  As soon as he edged out over the opening, however, he found himself flailing.

  Hong Li, crouched nearby, quickly pulled the captain clear. “Sir?”

  “No gravity!” Shen scrabbled at his harness and managed to unbuckle it. Kicking free of it he moved to the edge again and pushed his boots over, watching as they seemed to float. Gingerly, like a man settling into a hot bath, Shen worked his way out over the hole. Both hands still gripping the edge, he shifted until his boots were pointed downwards. Then he used his hands to softly propel himself down.

  He landed in an alcove and took hold of a nearby rail to keep from rebounding back upward. Facing him was a corridor, utterly dark beyond the light spilling down from directly above. As he straightened, reaching for the flashlight on his belt, the walls and ceiling suddenly lit up with a pale, pellucid glow, revealing the corridor’s full extent.

  It was long and curving. On the outside wall of the curve there were narrow doors for as far as he could see, each one spaced at an interval of a little less than three meters. The inside wall of the curve—which had held the alcove for the anti-gravity pad—was smooth and blank, like milky glass or coconut water. It was icy cold to the touch. The floor—

  Shen stepped back, drifting back upward in the column of zero-g.

  “Captain?”

  He looked up, and then said, “Quang and my scouts—all of you, come down. Have your cameras recording.” He edged back into the corridor.

  There was blood on the floor. Smears of it, crusted brown and sparkling with tiny ice crystals. A lot of blood, staining the floor for as far as he could see in both directions, some of the stains looking very old. In many of the smears he saw strange small, duck-like footprints. Here and there were frozen pieces of what looked like flesh.

  Quang arrived, stumbling out of the zero-g column. The breath hissed in a plume from the man as he saw the blood-stains.

  Since that first wail they had heard nothing and now the silence held a new flavor, poignant and grim. Mouth dry, Shen turned to watch the arrival of his two scouts. Motioning for quiet, he hand-signaled ten meters and then waved the first soldier down the corridor and the second soldier up the other way. With a gesture for Quang to stay a step behind him, the captain approached the nearest door.

  No latch or doorknob, but the panel could be pushed to one side.

  The chamber inside lit up.

  A raised platform dominated the room and on it was a naked body. Human, male, Caucasian, the pallid form frozen and dusted with frost. There were no immediate signs of the cause but the man was most definitely dead, the flesh bruised and mottled where it contacted the table-top.

  Quang slipped past Shen and began a closer examination. A moment later he waved Shen forward, and then pointed.

  There were holes in the side of the man’s head, each the circumference of a small Gold Panda coin. Neatly drilled and rimmed with old blood.

  And then, as Shen’s gaze tracked wherever Quang pointed, he saw more holes. In the side of the neck. To either side of the belly-button and down in the groin area. In the penis and the testicles. Each wound was accompanied by a small amount of spilled blood and other fluids.

  The frozen expression on the dead man’s face was a rictus of terror and pain, yet he was lying on the table without restraints.

  Shen backed away.

  Emerging into the corridor, he paused for a long moment, counting all the doors he could see along this side of the curved corridor. Thirty-three, until the curvature took the walls out of his range of vision. Unbidden, a shiver took him.

  A faint moan came from somewhere, possibly further up the corridor although it was difficult to be certain.

  The scout nearest the sound glanced back at Shen.

  He nodded, and then, as the scout hurried toward the next door, the captain and his medic followed.

  Liu Zhou sat beside a silent Xin Pang. All of the monitors on the wall before them were showing the same shaky feed from the shoulder-mounted camera of one of the scouts. Even with the slight lag, the immediacy of the live-feed was palpable, and more than once the Science Advisor brought his hands to his mouth as one mutilated body after another was discovered, each to a room, each left lying abandoned. In a number of chambers, the victim had been eviscerated, organs removed, the cavities gaping and black. Among the dead there were children, far too many children.

  Forty-seven rooms in all. Captain Shen and his team found the still living man in the fortieth chamber. The camera feed revealed him still on the operating table, but lying on his side and curled up into a foetal position. He had soiled himself and was shivering in the cold.

  Liu Zhou and China’s Leader watched as She
n’s medic approached, but it was Lieutenant Hong Li’s deep voice that came from the speakers.

  “You are safe, now,” he said in English.

  The stranger flinched and then curled further round to squint at the newcomers. He was Caucasian, rounded eyes staring out from within deep bruises, his lips cracked with dehydration, cheeks and chin covered in greying stubble.

  Hong Li joined the medic, while the scout with the camera moved to take a position in one corner of the room, so that the feed encompassed the entire scene. “We are a Chinese exploratory mission,” the lieutenant said. “The Greys are gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “Our medic wishes to examine you, so that we can make you feel better.”

  In the monitor room of the Leader’s residence, Liu Zhou was momentarily distracted by a buzzing cellphone on the table before them. But Xin Pang made no move toward it, eyes fixed on the scene being played out on the moon.

  “I want to go home,” the man suddenly sobbed, even as the medic helped him to sit up.

  “And where is that?” Hong Li asked.

  “F-Fairbanks, Alaska, USA. Three miles out of town, the Old Spruce back-road just past the … the …” and once again the man sobbed.

  Shen called the second scout close and muttered some commands, and the scout nodded and left the room. The captain now spoke to his lieutenant. “Tell him we’re bringing him some clothes, and the means to clean himself. Tell him—” and here Shen’s voice caught slightly, before he continued, “tell him it’s over.”

  Back on Earth, Xin Pang hissed as the cellphone began buzzing again. “Get that!” he snapped.

  Liu Zhou collected the phone and took the call. He listened for a moment at the frantic report coming through from Communications, and then ended the call and set the phone down. “Leader.”

  “What? What is it? Can you not see—”

  “Our feed from the moon is being seen worldwide.”

  This revelation snapped the Leader round. “What?”

  “Everywhere, sir. The world watches as we watch.”

  Xin Pang blinked, and then he pointed at the cellphone. “Get Mission Control. Pass a message to Captain Shen at once! He must be told that all security has been compromised. That he now stands before all of humanity. Quickly, before he does something to embarrass us!”

  Joey Sink had heard enough horror stories when serving in Afghanistan, of Americans taken prisoner by the Taliban. He now sat as close to blubbering as he’d ever been, watching the viral feed that had taken over the entire internet, showing the Chinese team as it proceeded, with infinite gentility, to do all it could with the broken man they had found.

  The trail of corpses that had come before this had arrived without audio, the camera shaky as its wielder flinched and trembled with what could have been horror or, just as likely, rage. It did not matter the color of the skin or the shape of the eyes; it did not matter where these people had originally come from. They were all human, and Joey could feel his own anger rattled awake over what had been done to them.

  Tony Newton. That was the man’s name. He didn’t know how long he had been there—he hadn’t even known he was on the moon. His memories were a mess. He’d come to alone, the door refusing to open. He’d slept once, maybe twice. He was hungry and cold, severely dehydrated and seemed to be suffering from some form of dysentery. He remembered the Greys, but not all that they had done to him.

  On Joey’s monitor a small window popped up from King Con. Anthony Newton had been reported missing in February, 2015. His ex-wife had insisted he wasn’t a man to wander off. She’d said he was too boring to do anything like that, especially in the middle of winter. There’d been no leads and the file had remained open.

  Joey wiped at his eyes. He realized that he’d left his camera on, but he suspected that no one was watching him in any case. The world’s attention was on Tony Newton and the solicitous medic in military uniform, and the officer standing a few paces back, who seemed to be on a radio of some sort. He saw the officer stiffen suddenly, and then step toward the one Chinese soldier who could speak English.

  Words were exchanged, too low to register, and then the soldier deliberately turned to face the lone camera. “There is more,” he said in English. “Four other corridors have been found. The survivors are seven, so far. Two are critical and may not survive. None of the survivors are children. At the moment, the number of confirmed dead is one hundred and thirty-six.” He paused, and then added, “On behalf of the People’s Republic of China, Captain Shen and the rest of us will do all we can to help the victims of this terrible … crime. You are welcome to continue to watch, but we ask that you respect the dignity of this man.” And he barked something in Chinese. The camera shifted its point of view, a gesture respecting Tony Newton’s modesty.

  Of all that Joey had seen thus far, it was this one small act that got the tears truly gushing from his eyes and had him scrabbling to disconnect the eye-cam on his monitor.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “What makes a better human being? Is it just a question of faster, stronger, smarter? But smarter in what way? Computationally? This idea of augmenting our species through technology, adding new RAM to the old hard-drive as it were, seems to miss the point. And that is that we can be better right now, without technology. Augmentation is pointless if we keep repeating the same old mistakes. And efficiency is not the same as better, not even close. You want to be a better human being? Start today.”

  SAMANTHA AUGUST

  “Why did you do that? No, never mind. I know why you did that.” Sam’s hand shook as she lit a cigarette and then rose from the chair to begin pacing. “I’m finally beginning to feel like a hostage. This ship is my cell—this room, in fact. All these screens showing our rapid descent into chaos, down there, everywhere.” She paused. “These damned clothes I’ve had to wear for weeks now, every damned day. I don’t care if you magically clean them every night. Tell me the time has come, Adam, before I start losing it for real up here.”

  “Soon, Samantha August. Your unique request is being expedited as quickly as safety allows. The corollary technologies are challenging, although I admit to some pleasure in meeting such challenges.”

  Her soul’s dark night still awaited the dawn. Her depression was deepening, and depression was not a trait she was in the habit of experiencing. Sadness and grief earned a good cry, and denying or suppressing the value of such feelings had always struck her as one of the more risible consequences of a repressed society. Tears were not cause for shame. They were, in fact, healthy and more to the point, necessary.

  But depression, arriving like an all-encompassing, smothering blanket of despair, was not a world she regularly inhabited. For perhaps the first time in her life, she had serious doubts about humanity, and whether or not it deserved any future at all.

  At this moment, however, all she could feel was anger. Was that a good sign?

  Arms crossed, she glanced at the screens. “Is this level of global outrage enough for you, Adam? We’re out for blood now. You know that, right? Out for blood, and yet not one of us can even so much as kick a television. That’s a powder keg you’ve just lit.”

  “The issue of national security was deemed an unnecessary complication.”

  “So you hijacked China’s live feed. This is one instance where a limited viewership—at least to begin with—might have been the wiser option.”

  “Why?”

  She took a drag and then gusted out the smoke, waving at the screens. “To prevent this. The people out on the streets, the marches, the demands that governments disclose everything they have on the Greys—and some of those governments are going to topple when everything finally comes out. Meaning even more chaos.”

  “Would the Chinese have released the feed, Samantha August?”

  She grunted. “Traditionally, probably not. But now, who knows? If they did, it would have been edited first—”

  “Thus inviting yet another level of
distrust and paranoia, with respect to all that was edited out. Accusations of complete fabrication would follow—”

  She pointed at one screen. “They already have. Claims that the whole scene was shot in some studio. On some things we’re a pretty skeptical lot. On others, of course, we’re as compliant as sheep.”

  “It has been my observation that, following the obvious conclusion that an alien presence had arrived—namely me—many UFO-conspiracy experts found themselves not only vindicated, but also elevated in social status. Particularly when the governments released what they knew about the long-term Grey predation of your species and their exploitation of lunar resources.”

  “Until we shook the tree a little bit harder and all the wing-nuts fell out.”

  “Nonetheless, Samantha, one would think that skepticism as a general attitude has lost some of its value.”

  She barked a bitter laugh. “Oh, Adam, you still have a lot to learn about humanity. Skeptics disproved just pick themselves back up, dust off, and find another target to habitually disabuse. Some might argue it’s healthy and rational. Some might even use it as a stick to beat up anti-intellectualism and anti-science, as if suspicion of government cover-ups was synonymous with Creationism. Of course, that tactic of equivalence is a common one among debunkers, which makes their position far less rational than they tell themselves.” She resumed her pacing since, all things considered, there wasn’t much else to do. “No, Adam. You just showed humanity that it’s a prey species. That’s one serious knock to our predatory pre-eminence.”

  “Your entertainment media exploits this notion—of human as prey—rather often.”

  “But we always win out in the end,” she retorted. “Besides, the most common prey story in films and television has to do with humans preying on humans. Have you noticed the spike in sales of First Person Shooter games? If we can’t do it for real, we’ll do it virtually. Now the Grey-modded versions are showing up and how’s that for perfect timing? You’ve got us on the war-path, Adam.”