by Tim Dennis
Myles made for the pilothouse, sidestepping Peto. Norte blocked him, Peto grabbed him from behind.
"We're continuing with the mission." Norte said. "Get him out of my sight. Upstairs. Tie him."
"With what?" Peto asked.
"Just go! I'll find something."
Peto dragged Myles up the stairs and flung him into Traveler's bedchamber. Norte tossed up some strips of ribbon, similar in texture to the delicate road bridges, but flexible. Peto used it to bind Myles's hands and feet, then to a door handle on the wall. "Stay." Peto said. "Stay!" He shut the door and went back downstairs.
27
Myles lay on the floor of Traveler's bedroom staring up at the ceiling, legs folded under, arms pulled behind, hands and feet tied together. He tested the ribbons.
Peto's had detention training. Hmm. Is that a crack? Or a cobweb?
Myles intensified his stare. The cobweb was unmoving, just a shadow where the ceiling changed height. He relaxed his arms and legs and tried to shift them into a more comfortable position.
Legong's first interaction with another planet is theft. The second is murder. What's next?
You.
What?
Myles's shoulders tightened, pulling the ribbon around his wrists tighter. Peto and Norte own conversation continued downstairs. Myles could hear, but not make out words.
Hate. Fear. Danger. Risk.
The slightest effort at listening brought instead a flood of emotions, slowly resolving into intentions.
They don't trust you.
They don't trust anyone.
But you stand in their way.
In the way of what?
You heard her in the elevator lobby. She wants Traveler. She said 'give me the ship or the man, I'll give you a nav device.'
So she has the ship. She doesn't need the man.
Yes. She has the ship.
She can fly it?
It responds to her wishes. She doesn't need you anymore. Six has Legong probes in Earth space. Krykowfert has a Rip open to Eden. Bento has Harry.
Myles took a deep breath and relaxed his muscles. His hips and shoulders stretched uncomfortably. The physical pain wiped away the truth, but only for a moment.
It doesn't matter if they don't need me. I don't need them. I can fly this ship. They can have their nav devices. I can return to Earth on my own. I can fly this ship.
"That's why you're a danger. That's why they need you out of the way." Pig stood in the doorway, peering into the hall, down the stairs.
Tensing his muscles helped his joints, but Myles couldn't sustain that forever. He rolled, finding a moment of relief lying face-down, leaving his arms and legs trussed up behind his back like a roasting chicken. He looked around the room for something sharp.
If I could just get these knots undone I could take control, go back to Central Command for Traveler. Leave Norte and Peto.
"To do what? Cut a swath of destruction across the planet?" Pig, agitated, paced back and forth in the room. Myles watched, wondering if he should ask Pig to untie him.
He's not real.
Then what use is he? I need help. I need to get out of here.
Surrendering to the situation, Myles relaxed. His shoulders and hips felt a little better, but the weight of his legs pulled at his arms and the cords cut into his wrists. Startled by a series of fizzles and pops in the air behind his back, Myles flipped on his side and looked up. Instead of Pig, five small spheres now hovered in the air above his head. About five centimeters in diameter, each with five long, spindly arms, they danced above him for three seconds, then dove at him. Myles rolled from side to side, dodging the things then pressed himself into the space beneath Traveler's bed. The five little balls each stood on their five little legs and crawled after him. They climbed up and over his torso, down into the space between his back and the wall. Myles flapped his body, smacking at the things with his tied up wrists and feet. He hit one square. It was hard, and bruised his hand, but it was off its feet. Two others grabbed his wrists tightly and Myles felt the warm vibrations of a Maker. He tried to roll away, but the things clung to him, knocking at his shins and ankles. Jerking his arms from behind his back Myles crawled across the floor, spun, back to the wall, arms held over his face and legs akimbo. The little spider-balls hopped into the air, hovered for the slightest of moments and popped out of existence. Myles let his arms down and stood, panting.
Pig stayed safely behind Myles as they crept down the stairs. From the mid-landing they could hear Norte, inside the pilothouse talking to Peto. The ship was airborne, heading north to the next target. It was another historic complex of structures, a thousand years younger than the one they left behind but still predating the diasporas.
"What do they hope to gain?" asked Pig.
Norte may be right. There's no evidence Earth knows we're here. Peto may even be right. This may not be an Earth ship at all, they may never have recovered from the diasporas.
"That makes them even more dangerous," said Pig.
I must stop them.
Myles was on the brink of rushing them in the pilothouse when he heard the voices.
"Damn it! I don't understand." Norte climbed out of the pilothouse, Myles slipped up around the bend in the stairs. "We're stopped dead."
"Maybe you're getting stressed," Peto asked, "like what happens to Myles."
Myles heard a smack and Peto shut up.
"OK." Norte said. "It's not a problem. We're only about a two hundred kilometers from the installation. I need a ground vehicle. I NEED A GROUND VEHICLE." Myles listened to Norte's breathing. Shallow and irregular, it slowed, deepened and fell silent. "I need a vehicle. Like the one we left behind. As close as possible, exactly like it. I don't have time to learn a new control system."
The breathing returned, deep, slow. Then footsteps. Norte was heading down, out of the ship. Myles and Pig listened. Peto's heavier footfalls followed her. Myles slipped down the stairs, followed closely by Pig. The living space was empty. He could no longer hear their voices. Myles dropped into the pilothouse and mimicked Norte's calm breathing. Soon the walls dissolved and he saw Norte, beside the ship, walking around an exact replica of the vehicle she'd left behind just an hour before. Peto came into view behind her, armed with his re-assembled pistol, an assault rifle Myles hadn't seen before, and a long, curved-bladed knife.
Stop.
Nothing happened.
STOP THEM.
Norte and Peto got into the car and Myles watched inertly as it drove slowly across a scrubby desert toward a road on the eastern horizon. He tried calming his breathing but felt overwhelmed by hate, not his own, but Norte's. Norte's hatred for him.
"You could stop them. Physically prevent them from reaching the Target." suggested Pig.
Yeah. Then I could talk sense to them.
"Sure. Yeah. That would work."
Norte was fast, but Myles was faster. He took the ship ahead, high above the lonely desert road. He was distracted only once, by an odd formation of glassy craters away to the south. The ship showed him this, and other features of the desert, as if it knew that even in this state, or perhaps especially in this state, Myles wanted more than anything to be elsewhere. But he felt a duty, a responsibility, and that overruled his restlessness.
At all times the ship kept an image of Norte's vehicle in the center of the view, showing around it a wider image of the landscape. As they traveled north he saw the lights of small settlement.
"Is that where they're going?" Pig asked.
Myles lowered the ship, keeping abreast of them, but far enough away to be out of sight.
"You're east of them," added Pig. "The sky is lightening.
Myles quickly shot over to the west, passing beyond the little city before stopping himself. No matter where he went, the ship kept track of the car. It passed straight through the town, continuing at shocking speed towards a range of mountains.
"It's there, on that flat-topped mountain."
&n
bsp; At their present rate Norte and Peto would reach the settlement in twenty minutes. A collection of dorms and laboratories, with other makeshift structures, filled with hikers and nature enthusiasts that would soon be waking. Myles knew without knowing how.
Why this place? thought Myles.
"It's an historic laboratory." answered Pig. "A place of weapons development, pre-diaspora. It's where the human race entered the atomic age. There'll be more than nav tools there."
Myles shot ahead of the car and settled onto the sandy soil where the road crossed a dry riverbed. Here the terrain dropped abruptly, the approaching road cut into it, sloping more gently like the river in the ravine on Eden. He dropped out of the hatch. Although desert and not grassland, the geography of the spot was much like the first place they'd visited on Eden.
Earth could use some terra-forming.
The dry riverbanks blocked the dim light from the distant city except for where the road poured out of its little gorge. Myles fished Peto's Maker from the ship. A bird, not quite as large as those in the jungle and nowhere near as colorful, perched on one of the struts holding the spherical ship off the sand. Myles paused, uncertain as to the creature's intentions. They looked at each other cautiously for a moment, and with each satisfied the other meant no harm, Myles set about mounting the Maker while the bird set about to watch.
Peto sat stiffly, both hands on the dashboard. "We're going too fast."
"Oh calm down. We've got to cover almost four hundred kilometers there and back, and we've got to do it before sunrise." Norte kept the vehicle hurtling along at over two hundred kilometers an hour.
They headed almost directly north, towards a flat-topped moutain. The desert to their left remained dark and featureless. To their right the occasional light appeared on the horizon. Directly ahead, silhouetted by a faint blue scintillating light, the road dipped to cross a dry riverbed.
"We're too late. The sun's coming up." Peto said.
"The sun would be yellow." Norte corrected. "Besides, that's north."
"It's the sea!" Peto excitedly sat up. "I read about it. They have tiny animals in the sea that glow when you disturb them!"
"We're a thousand kilometers from the nearest body of water, Peto."
The blue glow snapped off, leaving only the starlight. In an instant they were into the ravine. The road dropped away into its deepening rut and for a moment the vehicle lifted, almost coming off the ground. Peto felt the comforting floating sensation of a Legong Skimmer. Before them, at the spot where the road should have emerged from its little gorge; a wall, ten meters high, filling the cut from side to side.
A short plaintive squeal startled the bird as the impact moved the wall, still warm from the Makering, ever so slightly against Myles's back. There must have been a terrible noise, but Myles did not hear it. A moment later the rain came.
Most of the debris was tiny. Little pieces of metal, rubber and Peto bounced off the pavement in front of him. The bird darted into the melee, snatched a finger with its beak and back to shelter under the ship. The action distracted Myles, but he quickly turned away as, holding finger down with one claw, the bird picked off its fingernail.
Larger, heavier pieces came down next, falling before Myles in slow motion.
That looks important.
An exceptionally complex chunk of matter fell with enough force to bury itself partly in the road surface. Norte's head drifted down, slowly spinning, a look of bewilderment or deep inquiry on its face. It struck the heavy embedded object and bounced towards him, landing softly amongst the smaller bits and pieces, rolling until stopped by its pert little nose. The one eye Myles could see remained straight ahead, a distainful snub even now. He stared at her until the rain subsided.
Myles took a few steps away from the wall. He found the Maker lying on its side on the ground, the tripod beside it. One of its legs was bent. He set it up as best he could and adjusted it to run its previous job in reverse. The disk on its face emitted a blue haze and started to hum. Myles looked up into the sky. The moon lay far to the west, still a sliver.
It's so hot.
He searched the eastern horizon. The sky was lighter there, but as yet no sun. The Maker continued to hum. The wall began dissolving into a billion blue diamonds.
Blue diamonds?
Myles felt a little sick. The bile rose in this throat and his knees buckled.
Blue wall. Blue road? Blue sand?
Myles looked over to the ship. The bird, its prize picked clean, looked back. Both were blue. Myles lifted his left foot and tried to put it down again, a little further away from the Maker. It wavered, lifting higher instead of dropping until he was in danger of falling over backwards.
An expanding fog of scintillating multi-colored crystals had replaced the wall, clouding Myles's view in every direction. He lost control of both bladder and bowels and fell to the ground. Most of the fog remained over his head, but the blue haze extended across the full width of the roadway, from dirt to sky. Myles spun and wriggled, arms and legs flailing. His writhing eventually brought him close to the tripod and with luck one of his random, fit-driven twitches kicked it out from under the Maker. Shutting itself off as it hit the ground, the blue immediately disappeared. The airborne crystals grew a tiny bit more, then rained down onto the ground as the former wall precipitated out of the aether. The air cooled. Myles lay numbly, waiting for his senses to recover.
There should be a warning label or something.
Myles got to his knees and crawled down the road, away from the debris field. Feeling he'd made it to a safe distance, he turned and sat on his bruised and soiled ass.
The Maker had converted some of the wall back into silica, partially filling the voids on either side of road left by the original Makering. Most of the wall was left as a fine bismuth dust. The low angled moonlight made each crystal dance with color.
That'll look pretty when the sun comes up.
Despite the infill of dust the depression, crushed into the road surface by the wall, remained. Norte stared, colorful bismuth crystals decorating her hair. A princess in a fairy tale.
A few more minutes passed before Myles felt strong enough to get up. He gingerly picked his way through the debris and re-mounted the Maker. He flipped switches and twiddled knobs, but nothing happened.
Probably take that out of my pay.
Myles left it and wandered back to the ship.
28
Gabrile stood in the depression left in the road by Myles's wall. The pattern of car and people parts strewn across the terrain made for easy calculations. She nodded at Trendle, waiting a few yards outside the debris field, and a thousand tiny spheres descended around her.
The spheres hustled about, scurrying along the ground, using their five spindly legs as both supports and whiskers, sensing and testing this and that. Others shot through the air, dragging bits and pieces along behind them in gauzy blue hammocks. Gabrile closed her eyes for a moment, turned inward and listened to her heart beat. She tingled with adrenaline, arteries rigid, nerves firing madly. By the time she'd calmed herself the car and its occupants were mostly reassembled. A foot bounced past her, jerking along the uneven pavement behind the tiny Sputtie that dragged it. Much of Norte and Peto had been pulverized, but enough remained to create two recognizable forms in the front seat of the car. Norte's head, almost fully intact, floated behind the steering wheel, the chest that would have been below now a bag of shattered ribs and macerated flesh. Peto was less recognizable. As the last items scrambled into position the doors opened, letting the partial corpses out to stand beside the road.
"Should I move them into tanks?" Trendle asked.
The absurdity forced a smile onto Gabrile's face. She didn't respond. "Do they bury or burn?" She asked. "Or eat?"
"I don't know." Trendle answered.
A single Sputtie placed the last recoverable piece of car into place and buzzed away. Gabrile turned her face into the breeze and took a deep breath of hot de
sert air. "Put them in a stasis-box or something, for now." A couple dozen Sputties reappeared, clacking their legs nervously on the rough pavement. Several ran to the side of the road and began to dematerialize sand. "Use the car." Gabrile ordered. The ranks of little spheres reversed their course, left the sand alone and swarmed over Norte's car. As a group they created a blue haze and discrete sections of the metal vehicle dissolved, and, using the car not only for raw material but for inspiration as well, formed two coffin-shaped boxes, trimmed in leather and chrome, with a textured rubber strip running around their bottom edge. The corpses waited patiently for them to finish, then each climbed in, holding the edges with what was left of their hands and lifting their soggy legs one by one into the boxes. Trendle shot Gabrile a look of amused horror. Gabrile shrugged.
"Send them back to Entebbe. Oh, and make sure the road is repaired before we leave." She walked back along the lower edge of the escarpment to where a twenty-foot long, bulging silvery ellipse waited on edge. Like a giant muscle shell, a blue line of light rimmed the shape as if to split it in two. The tiny Sputties zigged and zagged around Trendle, allowing Gabrile to move away before refinishing the road. She waited in the silvery ship, leaving a five-foot diameter opening in the side for Trendle. The Sputties went about their task and Trendle climbed in beside her. She leaned over him and called out.
"Come."
The coffins lifted into the air, she sat back and allowed a blue glow to fill the opening in the side of the ship. The blue glow dissipated leaving a smooth, unbroken surface. The ship lifted into the air and, followed by the coffins, headed back to the bungalow by the lake.
29
Under the confused guidance of Myles's numbed mind Traveler's ship floated, hovered and shot back and forth across the skies of Earth. Myles stepped out of the bathroom, drip-drying on the landing between the bedrooms. The room Norte had chosen for her and Peto looked well lived-in, toiletries haphazardly arranged on the shelf next to the bunks, Her shirt from the day before hung on the back of the only chair. He lifted it off and held it to his face. The style was all business but the fabric was soft and warm, a little stretchy. He laid it back on the chair and turned away, listening to the blood pulse through his body. If Bento disapproved, she said nothing.
