Now Nayar approached. He looked as unhappy at Sasha.
“She says she was kneeling by the water, washing a shirt, when she got pushed down from behind. The assailant was on top of her, her hands around her throat. She fought, realized that the hands were small—”
“And so didn’t get away because?” Weldon said.
“She got hit with a rock.”
“Thrown or held in the same small hand?” Harley said.
“Yes. She was stunned, fell into the water, and died there.”
“Still from the broken neck?” Harley said.
“She’s not really sure,” Sasha said. “And I wish you guys would cut her a little slack. She was killed. God only knows what it’s like to go through that Revenant process. I mean, she’s still not quite right.”
“The language barrier isn’t helping,” Nayar said.
“She doesn’t speak Hindi?”
“Yes, but it’s not her first language. She grew up with Urdu, and none of us are good at it.”
“I thought the two languages were kissin’ cousins,” Harley said. At least, that was what he’d heard in the past few days.
“At a higher social level,” Nayar said. “In the technical world, or the political.” He frowned. “Chitran was a maid.”
“There are almost certainly native speakers in the rest of the Bangalore population,” Sasha said.
“Then we should get one of them to speak with her, stat,” Weldon said.
“We won’t learn much more,” Nayar said. “But conversation might be...more productive.” He was looking past Harley.
“Vikram, are you satisfied with her, uh, testimony?”
“Yes. Implausible as it might sound...I believe her.”
“A nine-year-old girl, yay high,” Weldon said, holding his hand out not much above his waist, “takes out a grown woman.”
“Come on, Shane!” Sasha said. “Chitran barely comes up to my shoulder. She’s weak, she’s distracted—”
“And children can be savage,” Nayar said.
“Especially children who are Revenants?” Harley said. He hadn’t permitted himself to class the reborn humans as Something Other Than...but the sample was small: a bit of anecdotal evidence about Megan Stewart and even less about Pogo Downey; Chitran, who wasn’t proving to be especially useful yet...and Camilla, largely untested or examined. “Where did she get to?”
No one had seen her for hours. “We’re looking,” Weldon said.
“Sure you don’t want some burly men to help with the fugitive?” Sasha said, not hiding the sarcasm.
“Anyone who wants to help is welcome,” Weldon said, his tone even.
“Before you go,” Nayar said, “one thing, and I don’t know if it’s significant.” He seemed reluctant to say it aloud. Finally: “It goes to this language issue. Chitran is not saying ‘Camilla killed me.’ It turns out that what’s she’s saying is, ‘Camilla killed us.’”
“Does it make a difference?” Weldon said.
“Well, yes,” Sasha said. “Remember what’s in Chitran’s head right now...images and terms from the Architect. That could be a warning...that Camilla’s actions were aimed at everyone.”
“And possibly not just humans,” Nayar said. “Perhaps every living thing on Keanu.”
He knew he was growing petulant—understandable, given the fatigue and the stress. A good leader doesn’t allow that, he told himself.
And answered himself: Who said you were a good leader?
Well, at the moment, through no fault of his own, Harley Drake was the best leader the HBs had. And he needed to act the part even though he didn’t feel the part. It had worked for presidents and prime ministers...why not him?
He said as much to Nayar, when the Bangalore leader caught up to him. “Sorry I was so short.”
“I hadn’t noticed,” Nayar said. “I am more concerned about the Temple.” Oh, what now? Harley thought. “Did you happen to look at the Woggle-Bug terrarium before you left for the lake?”
“I might have, but something is telling me I didn’t really.”
“You know that our single bug turned into two, and later four and eight.”
“Ah, no, I got as far as two.” Harley looked at Nayar, trying to determine just how worried he was. It was so difficult for him to read the Indian engineer’s expressions and manner. Christ, no wonder we keep having problems with an alien environment and its inhabitants—we can barely understand people from a different continent!
“Oh, it’s much worse now. Given a geometric progression every hour, it might be several hundred or a thousand...not that they are truly individuals.”
“How the hell are they doing it? What are they using for food or fuel or extra mass?”
“It appears they are eating the terrarium itself, or possibly the flooring underneath it.”
“Okay, I need to take a look at this, then.”
They were still two hundred meters from the Temple. As Harley had expected, and hoped, the population was quieting down for the “evening.” Rhythm and regular schedules—astronauts required those for productive work in space. Hell, for productive work at home! If only the damn habitat would accommodate them...this permanent twilight was tiring everyone out.
Not that that was the only reason. “Vikram, earlier you were talking about the Woggle-Bugs communicating. I never heard how.”
“Jaidev discovered that the first pair, even the first four, seemed to be arranging themselves in obvious patterns. Things that had a mathematical element. It was as if the creature or creatures were searching for some shape we would recognize, then respond to.”
“Well, obviously you’ve recognized something. Did you make any kind of response?”
“I was not part of the team.”
They reached the Temple. The first thing Harley saw was that the ground floor was almost deserted. Several Houston types were clustered in the far corner, talking or sharing meager food.
Then Harley saw Gabriel Jones, curled up asleep on the floor...he hoped.
Only then did he see the terrarium—“Oh, shit.”
It had been tipped over. The composite shell was still intact, but the thing was now wide open. And a smear of Woggle-Bugs stretched from the former spot on the floor—which had been eaten away as if by termites—right out the front, where it spread and appeared to seep into the ground.
And no one seemed to be paying attention! “Vikram!”
“I know, I know.” The Bangalore leader was looking over Harley’s shoulder. Now he began shouting orders in Hindi. “Get Jaidev down here now!”
“What will Jaidev do?” Harley said. “For that matter, what do we do?”
“We treat this as a chemical spill,” Nayar said.
“In spite of the apparent intelligence of these creatures...”
“Yes! I’m afraid if, unchecked, they’ll overrun the habitat in a week!”
Harley agreed completely. He just wanted to know that Nayar was on board for an extermination.
Jaidev and his fellow magicians arrived from the upper levels, skidding to a halt like cartoon characters when they saw the upended terrarium. Harley noted that Xavier Toutant was with them. “How did this happen?” Jaidev said. “I was down here half an hour ago and it was fine!”
“How many bugs were there then?” Harley asked.
“Too many. I had the feeling they were going to overrun their habitat in a few days. But not this!”
Xavier said, “You don’t suppose they did this themselves?”
“No,” Nayar said, and Jaidev nodded in agreement. “Not unless someone suspended the laws of physics for these bugs. They have insufficient mass to gain leverage.” He turned to Harley.
“Someone tipped this over.”
“Who would be fucking stupid enough to do that?” Xavier said.
Harley didn’t have to think long. “Camilla,” he said. “This is probably what Chitran’s message was when she said that this girl was killing all of us
.” He was growing numb from the repeated blows to his perceptions and well-being. Spilled Woggle-Bugs = my death? Impossible.
Yet...possibly not. “Okay,” he said, “even if it’s too late, we need to clean this up. Good-bye, bugs. Do we have anything?”
“Too bad we don’t have the RV,” Jaidev said. “We could drain gasoline from its tanks, douse the creatures, and burn them.”
“Do we know for sure that we don’t?” Weldon had the inventory of gear from both groups. Harley looked at Nayar. “We should find out what we have in the way of weapons.”
“We can probably synthesize something, too,” Nayar said. “Poisons, other chemicals.”
Jaidev rubbed his face. He had not slept for two days, Harley realized. Now he was being asked not only to keep performing his Keanu Temple magic, but to do so for the group’s survival. “We’ll get to work.”
“Thank you,” Harley said. “Meanwhile, Shane Weldon is out there somewhere, looking for Camilla. Xavier, can you find him for me?”
Xavier nodded and took off without a word.
“Okay, everyone,” Harley said. “You have your orders.”
Within moments he was alone, watching the spreading stain of the Woggle-Bug infection.
Before long, Sasha joined him in his vigil. “What in God’s name—?” He explained what had happened. “Should you be sitting this close? What if they’re infectious?”
“Then they got me an hour ago. Can’t infect me twice, can they?”
“How should I know?” she said. She sat down next to him.
“Well,” Harley said, “if they can infect me, they can infect you. Shouldn’t you be getting some food or sleep?”
“Doesn’t seem right, with you sitting up like this.”
“You aren’t going to try to talk me into going to bed?”
“I’ve learned one thing, Harley, and that’s not to try to talk you into things.”
“You really do know me, darling,” he said. His tone was sarcastic, but he realized he had let down his guard.
And so did Sasha Blaine. She touched his shoulder. “Our timing really sort of sucks, doesn’t it? It would have been fun to, you know, meet normally.”
“Yeah. But on the bright side, we’ve packed a whole lifetime of adventure into a week and a couple of days.”
“There’s that,” she said. “You know, in spite of that cynical, bitter exterior, you are pretty much a glass-is-half-full guy.”
He laughed. “Not exactly. Do you want to know what kind of things go through my head at a time like this?”
“Do I?”
He pointed to the growing smear of multiplying Woggle-Bugs. “If we manage to kill every one of those things,” he said, unable to keep from smiling, “do they all come back as Revenants? I’m hoping that there’s some sort of personality threshold the Woggle-Bugs don’t reach. Maybe they’re all one big entity...when a few of them die, it’s like, I don’t know, skin cells that flake off a human.” Keep trying, he thought. Eventually you’ll convince yourself—
Xavier Toutant appeared in the entrance. Seeing Harley with Sasha, he marched directly toward them. “Xavier, you look like a man with a message,” Harley said. In fact, he looked worn out and troubled.
“Mr. Weldon’s on his way back. Said to alert you.”
Oh, shit, he’s got Camilla. Harley immediately pictured the unpleasant scene in which he ruthlessly interrogated a nine-year-old girl.
But when Weldon arrived, he didn’t have Camilla. He was escorting a naked adult male who was moaning, weeping, and wheezing, an unholy trinity of unattractive activities.
It was Brent Bynum.
DALE
Building a raft—that worked fine. They wound up using one entire side of the shed, which was large enough to easily hold the four humans. Removed from the structure, the material proved to be light, like balsa. “I think it’ll float,” Zack said, in that bright, chirpy way that made Dale Scott want to drown him.
“Fine,” Dale said, wondering why it was his job to keep the group focused on operational details. Probably because he had been an engineer and a fighter pilot—an operational type—while Zack and Makali and even Valya were academics. “How do we get this thing moving across the water?”
“Paddles?” Makali said. She had already been at work, stripping several long, narrow pieces of material from the shed. She began searching for some kind of thin, flat flap that could be attached to the base of the paddle.
They settled on one of the leftover tiles for the shed, attaching it with cable. Which worked for one sweep before separating.
“That ain’t good.”
Even Makali, usually so sure of herself, looked worried. “Zack, what are we going to do?”
Zack turned to the Sentry. “Do you see what we’re planning?”
“Yes,” the alien said through its translator. “You wish to construct a platform to allow you to float.”
“Correct. But we lack propulsion for the, uh, platform.”
“Obviously.”
“Can you provide it?”
“I don’t fucking believe this—” Dale said, but Valya shushed him again.
“Easily,” Dash said. “I’ve been ready to do so for an entire cycle.”
Which was how the four humans wound up floating on a thin slab of Sentry shedding across the vast, unpleasant sea of the habitat...propelled by Dash.
Now Dale Scott dozed and remembered his Navy days, not that you ever felt much in the way of gentle ocean swells on the carrier Ronald Reagan. (If you could feel a ship that size rolling on the water, it was time to be worried.) But Dale had spent some time in smaller boats. The motion was soothing; it made him reflective. He touched his Hulk medallion, finding reassurance in its presence.
He thought about these Sentry creatures and how they had wound up with a colony on Keanu. They’d developed spaceflight; the abandoned vehicle on the surface proved that. Quite an achievement for folks that seemed to spend most of their time in the water.
(And swam so strongly and gently. Dash had submerged himself behind the raft and proceeded to nudge it forward with each long, regular stroke. Dale had amused himself by counting to ten between nudges.)
Had they ever found spaceflight to be more practical and useful than humans had? Hard to tell; all Dale Scott knew was that NASA’s Destiny and Venture program was hanging by a thread the day Keanu was discovered in the sky. The space agency had managed to pull off a pair of lunar landings, creating a brief buzz of public interest that lasted about a month, and soon subsided into boredom if not outright hostility over the expense (large) compared to the return (zero).
Zack’s mission, redirected to Keanu instead of the Moon, would have likely been the last. There was hardware in the pipeline for two more, but the budget cutters were sharpening their little blades. The Coalition program, Brahma, might have been able to mount a second landing mission in five or six years, depending on a variety of factors.
No human had yet to devise a good rationale for these programs behind prestige, “science,” and the nebulous idea that watching an astronaut bouncing across the lunar surface was somehow going to encourage kids to sign up for calculus...so they could build another limited vehicle to allow another group of astronauts to bounce, and so on. Dale had found that argument the weakest of the three.
Had the Keanu mission changed all that? Humans now knew they weren’t alone in the universe...better yet, from a motivational standpoint, humans also knew that the other beings in the universe could show up on their front door and behave quite badly.
Yeah, it was going to be raining money on the big aerospace companies...and Dale Scott wasn’t going to be able to run around with his own bucket.
If he didn’t already despise Zack Stewart for destroying his astronaut career, the fact that his actions had cost him the chance to make a fortune would have put him at the top of Dale’s shit list.
He regarded the ragged, stubbly man in the soiled long johns, curl
ed up in the center of the raft, his back to Valya—who had her own place on Dale’s shit list.
Makali had stayed awake, content to fiddle with the black box she had liberated from Brahma. She had asked Dale a technical question once—“Do I need an external device to play this back?”—and he had told her no, that the unit was designed all-in-one, a recorder with sound, video, data, and playback.
He had then offered a helpful comment about which screws to loosen first, only to be ignored. So he had redirected his gaze...noting that, thanks to Dash’s unwavering nudges, they seemed to have made good progress, crossing more than half of the distance from Beehive Beach—itself located about a third of the distance from the “north” end of the Sentry habitat—to the “south,” where, Dash assured them, there was an exit.
Dale hoped so. The roiling mist allowed only brief glimpses of this far shore. It could be hiding other Sentries.
By now the raft had floated past half a dozen “islands,” though some of these pieces of land were actually peninsulas connected to a hard, dry surface that actually rimmed the habitat. (“We could have walked to the south end,” Dale heard himself saying to Stewart. And being ignored again. Well, to be fair, they hadn’t realized the habitat had a land border...and the raft was likely a quicker method.)
On those islands...some vegetation, of course, none of it familiar. And ancient-looking structures, most of them rounded rather than rectangular. Many of them had docks that extended over the water.
One interesting absence...no boats. Of course, if you were big and lived in the water...why would you need a boat? Dale wondered just how long the Sentries had been captive here on Keanu. Hundreds of years, maybe. Could humans survive that? Would they have to?
Just then a creature of some kind breached far behind them...it was purplish, smooth, so large it was impossible to see more than a flank covered with tinier wriggling creatures, like krill.
The startling sight made Makali flinch so abruptly she caused the raft to rock. “Careful!” he told her. He looked back at the creature, but it had sunk out of sight.
Their actions caused a piece of the raft to detach, which was bad enough, but the stray third of a plank also attracted a small flying fish that shot out of the water, then disappeared before Dale could fully register its looks.
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