There were even blasts of suddenly cold, then hot air. At one point Zhao could have sworn that he smelled bacon frying.
Each environmental shift was accompanied by not-so-distant torrents of profanity in American English and Hindi from the floor above.
Zhao was trying to concoct a reason for going upstairs when Harley Drake wheeled in from the outside. (He had been one of the original “explorers” of the upper floors but had been called away an hour ago on some strangely urgent matter. Gabriel Jones had gone with him.)
Now he was here, alone; his companion, the large American scientist Sasha Blaine, was not with him. Drake pushed himself to the ramp...attempted to climb the slope by sheer muscle, and failed. He tried again with the chair’s motor, and that, too, was inadequate.
Then he looked at Zhao. “Could you push me up there?”
“No problem.” No problem at all!
The upstairs was a disappointment—not for lack of wonders. It was filled with strange shapes and structures, including an object that had to be a table (rectangular, perhaps a meter wide by two long, and three centimeters thick) made of the same substance that made up everything “artificial” in the habitat, from Temple walls to...well, what looked like appliances or electronic gear on this floor.
There were even three stools...crude and basic, more like dumbbells laid on their sides. But the right height.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” Harley said.
“Someone is looking out for us, it seems.”
Nayar and Weldon, accompanied by a woman from the Houston group, were busy touching various surfaces on a control panel. Nayar was using a pen and the margins of a magazine to record positions and results: which lights went on or off or changed color, which temperature changes were triggered. “Goddammit,” Weldon said, “I wish we had a few pieces of clean paper so we could write this stuff down.”
“Is there any logic to it?” Drake asked. “I did some cockpit design for Destiny; we kept falling back on grouping systems.”
“Sadly, no,” said Nayar. “Of course, we’ve just begun our survey. For every panel or button we’ve found to be active in some way, there are two that are inert.”
“So far, you mean,” Drake said.
“Noted,” Weldon said. “Besides, we’ve got three upper floors to go through.” He indicated the “counters” and “consoles.” “They’re all packed with stuff like this.”
“Do you suppose any of it links to guidance, navigation, or propulsion systems?” Zhao said. He hadn’t exactly intended to speak up, finding fly-on-the-wall mode to be useful. But he had not given up on the idea of returning to Earth. He completely approved of Zack Stewart’s mission to examine the vesicles and learn whether they were useful, and he was all in favor of finding some way to control Keanu itself.
Besides...he had worked with Nayar and the ISRO team. It would not surprise them to hear from him.
Weldon was another matter, however. He looked at Zhao with irritation. Nevertheless, all he said was, “We haven’t forgotten—”
A pair of Indian engineers, one slim and Zhao’s age, the other fat and older, came down from the floor above. As if presenting a gift to a feudal lord, one of the men carried an object that looked like a super-sized candy bar...only blue.
He gently set it on the table. “We believe this is nutritious,” he said. Jaidev, Zhao remembered; that was his name. He was deadly serious, but not a bad engineer.
Drake, whose nose was close to the table already, leaned over and sniffed at it. “Doesn’t smell bad.”
The second engineer—Daksha—was openly enthusiastic. “In texture and aroma it reminded me of military food. Meals Ready to Eat.”
“Where did you get it?” Nayar said.
Jaidev turned to his compatriot. “Directly above. We were testing buttons and revealed a cabinet with a faucet.”
“Did it work?”
Jaidev frowned. “While we were trying, one of the machines activated, and this popped out.”
Weldon was clearly skeptical. “Blue food?”
“Whatever,” Drake said. “There it is. What do we do with it?”
“Someone probably has to taste it,” Zhao said. And before anyone could protest, he picked up the bar and bit into it.
The engineer had been right; the texture was much like that of an energy bar. The taste was undefined; nutty. As he chewed, Zhao said, “This is one of the things prisoners are for, isn’t it?”
“Nobody likes an asshole,” Drake said. “Even a brave one.”
“Think of all the time I’ve saved you, searching for a volunteer.”
Nayar was all business. He would have suggested Zhao as the test subject. “Well?”
Zhao was considering that exact question. His stomach was quite empty; what little food he’d had for the past four days had been unfamiliar, close to inedible. So initial conditions were challenging.
Yet, for the first minute or two...the blue bar rested happily inside him.
Then—
“Excuse me—”
He ran as fast as he could down the ramp and out the front of the Temple, where he vomited in front of Gabriel Jones and Sasha Blaine.
Weldon had followed him, less out of concern, Zhao felt, than out of curiosity.
Fortunately, it was only a single episode. Unlike the many times he had suffered food poisoning—another affliction he associated with warm climates—Zhao felt fine again, and quickly.
Weldon was busy explaining the experiment to Jones and to Sasha Blaine, who was cradling the sleeping baby in her arms.
Which led Zhao to his second great observation of the day: Something bad had happened in the general direction of Lake Ganges. A drowning? Zhao couldn’t be sure, but it was clear from the tones and body language that someone had died.
Two deaths now. If this trend continued, in three months they would all be dead. Of course, that was pessimistic; things rarely progressed on such straight lines.
Still, it wasn’t promising—
Jones was louder now. “Have we heard from Zack?”
Weldon said, “Harley got a squawk from Dale about half an hour ago, something about watching out for more animals from the Beehive.”
“It just gets better and better,” Jones said.
Harley Drake and Vikram Nayar had emerged from the Temple, Nayar pushing. The blue food bar lay in Drake’s lap.
“You’ve recovered,” Drake said.
“What are you going to do with that?” Zhao said.
“Throw it in the garbage, I guess.”
“Let me try it again.”
“Are you just a glutton for punishment?”
The same thought occurred to Zhao. “I’ve eaten nothing but crap for four days. I’d have probably thrown up anything new.”
Drake was reluctant, but Weldon saw the wisdom of another taste test. “If he’s right, we gain a lot,” he said. He didn’t add, nor did he need to, that if Zhao was wrong, he wouldn’t miss him. He smiled. “Bon appétit.” And handed him the bar.
Zhao took another bite roughly the same size as before. He used every trick of feedback and disassociation he knew—and his training in Guoanbu had equipped him with many such techniques—to suppress the urge to vomit.
He found, however, that he didn’t need them. As he had suspected on his first test, his discomfort was temporary. Jaidev and his friend had been correct; this object was edible.
“So far, so good,” he announced. “Whether it provides real nutrition or energy—”
“Yeah, yeah,” Weldon said. “We won’t know for a while yet.” He turned back to the other members of the council. “Meanwhile, we’ve got work to do.” And he led Jones and Nayar back toward the Temple.
Harley Drake remained behind, however. He handed Zhao the rest of the bar. “If you can stand it, you might as well finish it. Even if you ate a Power Bar, you wouldn’t get much benefit from a single bite.”
Zhao accepted it. Then Sasha said, “Harley, have
you seen Rachel lately? Or Pav?”
“Not for a couple of hours.” He looked alarmed and guilty. “Have you?”
“Last I saw, she was at the lake. But she isn’t there now, and no one seems to know where she went.”
“Shit,” Drake said.
To Zhao, he seemed genuinely distressed. “I’ll go take a look,” he said. The offer was partly an attempt to get away from the Temple, but real nevertheless; he was stuck with these people. Their plights and problems were his.
“Are you just in a mood to volunteer?”
“Everyone has a job but me.” Zhao tapped his stomach. “While we’re waiting to see if I die or not, let me find Rachel.” He smiled. “Tracking people is one of my skills.”
Drake didn’t hesitate. “Go. And when you find her, feel free to subject her to intense criticism.”
Sasha slapped him on the shoulder, but Zhao sensed that Drake wasn’t kidding.
The last person he saw, glancing back at the Temple, was the little Brazilian girl, Camilla, watching him go.
PAV
The landing had been surprisingly gentle. For that matter, the fall had been surprisingly slow...a moment of sick panic—I’m falling!—followed by the drop into darkness, with enough time to wonder what lay below. And what had happened to the walls.
When he was nine years old, Pav had fallen off a slide and broken his right wrist. This felt the same, but took ten times longer.
At least nothing appeared to be broken.
He was on his side at what could easily be described as the bottom of a well. It was dark enough. The only light came from the slitlike opening, which appeared to be ten meters up.
“Rachel?”
“Right here,” she said, very close by. “I thought you were going to land on me.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
He felt a hand on his hip that slid onto his butt. “Careful,” he said. “This isn’t the time or place.”
“God, be serious.”
Well, he usually was. But for the past few days, he had felt the urge to at least pretend to be like a movie hero...quipping to hide his terror. If he hadn’t already found Rachel immature and irritating, her lack of understanding would have done the trick.
He rolled onto hands and knees. The ground here was harder and more rocklike than that of the habitat. As he got up, he bumped into Rachel, doing the same. “Thank God for low gravity,” she said.
“How much room do we have here?” He stretched out his arms.
“A lot,” Rachel said. He could hear her walking around.
“Don’t go too far.”
“Where’s your Slate? Let’s get some light and see if there’s a way to climb out of here or call for help.”
Pav realized that he had been holding the unit when he fell. “Shit.” He got to his knees and began feeling around for it. So did Rachel.
“It can’t be far....” In fact, it was only a meter away. “Well, got part of it,” he said. “The back broke off and the battery must have fallen out.”
Then Rachel pressed both items into his hand. Pav went to work reassembling the Slate. “By the way,” he said, “I’m pretty sure there’s a way out of here.”
“Really? Do we just sprout wings and fly?”
“Not up,” he said. “Sideways.”
“Don’t get your hopes up—”
“Rachel,” he said, “Where did the dog go?” And he clicked the last pieces of the Slate into place.
“Fine,” she said, unwilling to admit error. “Give us some light.”
There wasn’t much, but there was enough to show that they were in a good-sized tunnel. “He could have gone one of two different directions.”
“What do you want to do? Split up and find him?”
“Are you insane? We are not splitting up!” she said. “Call my father.”
He showed her the Slate display. “No link.”
Rachel walked away from him. “Cowboy!” she shouted. “Now, that was really weird,” she said.
Pav had noticed it, too. “No echo.”
“Let’s find the way out of here,” she said.
“You don’t want to sit tight and wait?”
“Who’s going to be looking for us?”
“I don’t know. But if we wait, we could hear somebody calling from up there.”
“Really? I just shouted for the dog and I felt like I had a pillow over my head. I don’t think sound carries in here.”
“Well, we can’t climb back up, and we’ve got two choices. Which one?” He aimed the light at the ground. “It’s not like we can follow the dog, ’cause there ain’t no tracks.”
Rachel turned around and around until she faced Pav and the opening behind him. “Okay, this is the direction of the Temple. When we...buried my mom, we went...that way.” She raised her right hand. “That was down-habitat, my dad said. And where he had seen a passage and another big habitat.”
“Down-habitat it is,” he said. “Uh, we should probably turn off the light, if we can. Save the batteries.”
Rachel slumped. “Yeah, good idea.”
He killed the light. “Our eyes will adjust.”
“You hope.”
VALYA
For Valya Makarova, diving into the reincarnation pod and surrendering to it was ten times worse than being sucked into the Bangalore Object.
She had had no time to think or comprehend what was happening. Aided by Zack Stewart, she had clutched her purse and plunged into the hideous yellow light of the pod.
She had easily pushed through its interior wall and fallen into a much larger chamber beyond that. Or so it seemed; it was entirely dark. She was suspended like an insect in a medium but could not touch sides, floor, or ceiling.
As she thrashed about, she bumped into something, or someone.
Within moments she felt a thick coating covering her ragged clothes and the purse against her middle. It reminded her of a mud bath at a spa, a luxury she had experienced exactly once in her life, but all-encompassing.
And invasive, too. The wrap invaded her armpits and her vagina and anus as well as eyes, nose, and mouth. For several agonizing seconds she was convinced she was drowning. But the fabric quickly liquefied, and if it got into her lungs it either dissolved or got absorbed.
Either way, she was still breathing and, though her vision was clouded, still able to see—
—and beginning to see light, and other shapes that were human.
She found that if she moved her arms and legs, she could swim, after a fashion, though it was also likely that the fluid around her was dissolving or changing.
She took her first big breath and found it welcome and easy, even though she was now securely enclosed in a full-body cocoon.
The fluid that had filled the chamber around her began to transform, turning first to Membrane-style bubbles, then to powder, which quickly began to wisp away, blown across her legs by either convection or the air leak.
She was sitting on the floor with three other encased humans. “Dale!” she screamed, as loud as she could. (Which turned out to be loud only in her ears. It was like trying to shout underwater.)
He must have heard something, however, since the figure nearest turned toward her, nodding vigorously and making flapping gestures with his skin-coated hands. He clambered to his feet...a bit unsteadily...then reached for her.
Meanwhile a third figure—Zack?—was helping the fourth, likely Williams.
“Valya, can you hear me?” Dale said.
She could, to her surprise, though it wasn’t exactly hearing with ears. The “sound” seemed to originate in the bones behind her ears, likely some kind of inductance. “Yes.”
“How do you feel?”
“Like a sausage.”
The wind was whipping the powder around. The four rips in the inner wall seemed to have grown. “I hope there’s some mechanism that seals it off,” Valya said.
Then, from an entirely unex
pected direction (Dale was to her right, with Zack and Williams beyond him), a hand landed on Valya’s shoulder.
Makali. In her suit, she had poked through the chamber’s outer wall. “We’ve got to get away from here,” she said.
It was like escaping from a collapsing circus tent. The outer wall of the annex turned out to be more like fabric than a harder, plasticlike substance. Makali’s in-and-outs had created an opening that was tearing apart under the assault of the now-massive air leakage.
One by one, they exited into a dark, rocky chamber that reminded Valya of a modern-day mine shaft: wide, twice as tall as a human, clearly carved out of rock.
There was a bright patch a hundred or more meters farther down the shaft. The eyes of Valya’s skinsuit adjusted for the transition from dark to bright and back without the telltale green tinge of night-vision goggles, which surprised Valya more than she’d expected. Well, the Architects were thousands of years more advanced technically—as if the reborn animals and skinsuits weren’t sufficient examples. But those were, frankly, magical.
Having a great low-light vision system...that was something she could more readily appreciate.
The others were performing the same skinsuit familiarization. “I guess that’s Keanu day,” Makali said. “The sun is shining down to the base of Vesuvius Vent.”
Zack stood silently, regarding the scene. Valya realized that this was the route he had taken a week in the past. Finally he spoke. “How are you all doing?”
There was a flurry of grumbled assents. “Everyone breathing without difficulty?”
“I lost my glasses,” Williams said.
“How well can you see?” Valya really wanted to know, because she was finding that the skinsuit enhanced her abilities.
“Much better, actually. Whatever this suit is, it has a vision correction.”
Zack said, “At the moment, I’m really curious about where oxygen and water come from, and where does the heat go?” Zack was pointing at the bulges around the hips of Makali’s suit. “These seem to contain life support equipment.”
“Like what grew inside the vesicles,” Makali said.
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