KEANU-PEDIA BY PAV, ENTRY #6
THE PRISONER
For many cycles, the Prisoner’s only wish was to escape from its chamber, and to somehow shame its Connate. With the small aid of the Two Arms, that task had been accomplished.
But what shocking surprises awaited it! The changes in the habitat, the disappearance of its former allies!
The relentless pressure from the Two Arms to move, and to consider—much less act in support of—their petty goals.
The moment had been supremely disorienting, a reminder of the horror the Prisoner had felt when first locked away in the annex to the Beehive.
With no contact with its allies, hampered by these new companions, its only option now was to return to the original goal from many cycles back...the original mission that had been the cause of its downfall.
It seemed so far in the past—seven plus seven cycles—that the Prisoner and its Connate had plotted to turn the Small Ones’ powers against them, creating their own assemblies that would fight, then absorb the others, giving the People final control of all habitats and the warship itself!
But then...to be betrayed by one’s Connate! To have been forced to make the Small Ones his allies against the People!
Now the Prisoner’s mission was clear: Locate its former manufacturing gear, and help the allies to shame and destroy the Connate.
Then...deal with the allies.
Help the allies. Shame and destroy its Connate.
Then, apparently, die.
Unless it found something new to live for.
MAKALI
Makali Pillay had endured many shocks and surprises since being scooped up in the Bangalore vesicle. But nothing prepared her for the sight of a teary teenage American girl running toward them. What was Rachel Stewart doing here? The last she knew, Zack’s daughter was in the human habitat with 180-plus others!
And Pav was with her. And the Chinese spy, Zhao.
And the dog!
And a human woman she recognized as Yvonne Hall, the dead Destiny astronaut.
Followed by the Architect, and three giant jellyfish creatures.
It was good that she’d barely eaten or slept in the past forty hours. Emotional numbness and nearly paralyzing fatigue allowed her to be objective. This wasn’t happening to her, this was some kind of lucid dream, one in which she knew what was happening, but was powerless to change it.
She feared for Zack Stewart’s mental health. He had been reunited not only with his daughter—he hadn’t even known she was missing!—but with Yvonne Hall. He was openly weeping, visibly confused, thoroughly shaken.
She realized that she was crying, too.
And so was Dale Scott. To Makali’s astonishment, he slid an arm around her and pulled her close. She could feel him trembling. “God,” he said. “We’d better get it together.”
Makali agreed, because they weren’t the only actors on this stage.
The Skyphoi had surrounded Dash. The Sentry stood impassive, almost immobile, as the giant balloon creatures bumped and floated above him, their colors flickering through the visible spectrum in what had to be deliberate patterns. “What do you suppose they’re saying?” Makali said.
The three-way reunion between Zack and Rachel and Yvonne had settled down to the point where Makali felt she and Dale could join in. Rachel did the introductions, ending with the giant creature that could have knocked Dash the Sentry over: “This is the Architect.”
“You mean, an Architect,” Zack said.
“Aren’t they the same?” Rachel said. Zack’s tired nod confirmed it.
Makali noted the Destiny commander’s body language: tense and wary. He had one hand on Rachel’s shoulder, the other on Yvonne’s. Now he subtly pushed his former crew member forward. “Does he remember me?”
“Yes,” Yvonne said.
“And my wife?” Zack said.
“Yes.”
“Why did she die again? Can he answer that?”
“I can,” Yvonne said. “Because the stress of being reborn, becoming a Revenant, is so great that adult bodies often don’t last long. They are created to serve as bridges between two races...once communion and understanding is established, they begin to fail.” A look passed between Yvonne and Zack, who was about to offer consolation or commiseration, Makali felt. But Yvonne stopped him. “Information persists,” she said. “Take that for what it’s worth.... If you’re asking me, I don’t know that I’d want to go through this again.... Remember what I’m looking forward to: dying for the second time. It wasn’t that much fun the first time through.”
“It seems really mean,” Rachel said.
“Maybe,” Yvonne said. “But I don’t think they know. Or care.” She considered it further. “They’re really not like us.”
Makali looked at Dale, who simply stared at the hard-packed ground. She felt that she was eavesdropping on a moment of great intimacy, like a confession to a priest. Of course, there was no intimacy. There were other creatures and other activities all around them.
But the idea of confession suddenly caused her to wonder, perhaps stupidly, what a priest would make of this Revenant business, or how certain knowledge of life after death would affect religious thought—
At that moment the power died again, the thrum of the railcar—which Makali had been hearing without recognizing the source—died, and so did the lighting in the tunnel.
The only illumination was from the three Skyphoi, lit up like lanterns with their own power...and now showing impressive collections of internal organs.
Before Makali could make sense of what she was seeing, Dash joined them, the Sentry almost a ghostly voice in the dark. It said, “If my people emerge and find us, there will be casualties.” It wasn’t clear to Makali whether Dash was addressing the Architect or Zack.
“More casualties, you mean,” Dale said. “Who killed Valya?”
“The Skyphoi have a history of conflict,” the Sentry said.
“Not with us,” Dale said.
“The Skyphoi detected me,” Dash said, “and judged me to be hostile. You were with me.”
“There’s no point to a postmortem now,” Zack said. “The question remains: How do we get to the vesicle?” He turned to the Architect. “That’s the mission right now, isn’t it? For everyone? Get to the vesicle before these Reivers do?”
“And stop the Reiver infection,” Yvonne said.
Makali was torn between her professional desire to observe the Architect and these Skyphoi—and the by-now-familiar Sentry in its interactions with the other aliens—and to simply help Zack and get on with the work.
She wanted to go home. During their few free moments in the march across the blasted habitat, Zack had begun to enthuse about the possibilities. “You guys rode a vesicle here. There’s no reason we can’t ride a vesicle back to Earth.”
But that had been an hour ago, before Valya was killed. Before this...insane rendezvous.
The various parties quickly established that the vesicle pod was adjacent to, but on the other side of, the Skyphoi habitat. “Can we go through?” Zack asked.
“No,” Yvonne said, channeling the Architect. “Too dangerous for you.”
“How come these guys can come into our habitat, but we can’t handle theirs?” Dale said. “The atmospheres have to be pretty good matches.”
“There’s no surface,” Yvonne said.
“There’s got to be a surface of some kind!”
“I think what she means,” Zack said, “is that the Skyphoi are creatures of the air...their habitat is filled with oxygen and other elements, but is really a giant cylinder.”
“Imagine the human habitat with no floor,” Makali said.
“It would be like trying to walk across the Grand Canyon,” Yvonne said, speaking more for herself, Makali realized. “You could do it, but it would take you a long time. And the Skyphoi aren’t strong enough to carry you.
“We have to use the transports.” She nodded at the wait
ing railcar farther down the tunnel.
Now Zhao pointed to the Skyphoi. “It’s their habitat. Can they get there more quickly?”
“Of course,” Yvonne said. “But they will be unable to do much if they do reach the vesicle. The Reivers have already...evolved ways to kill the Skyphoi.”
Even now one of the Skyphoi, its color a sickly pink, had to slide back through the Membrane.
“Then what fucking use are they?” Dale Scott muttered. Makali thought she was the only one who heard him, but apparently the Architect had better ears than the humans.
“You should hope that you never need to know,” Yvonne said.
“Assuming we reach the vesicle in time,” Zack said, “we’re still facing these Reivers. We don’t even know what they look like, much less how to fight them.”
Zhao and Pav and Yvonne explained. The thought of microscopic nanotemplates was bad enough; Makali had spent much of her life in tropical or subtropical regions. The bugs in Houston annoyed her, especially when she stepped on them barefoot.
The idea of bugs that were not only intelligent as a group, but capable of assembling themselves into creatures on any scale...
“They’re vulnerable to heat,” Yvonne said. “And energy, though only in high, concentrated doses. The best weapon is speed. We have to beat them to the vesicle.”
With no further discussion, the group—including the Architect—turned as one and headed directly for the railcar. Only Dash seemed to lag, a fact Dale Scott commemorated by saying, “Move it or lose it, big boy.”
The Sentry gave no sign that it heard or understood.
Before they reached the railcar, Makali heard Rachel say to Zack, “Daddy, what if the power goes out while we’re on the way?”
Makali didn’t hear Zack’s answer. Was he still feeling like the glass was half full? She hoped so, for everyone’s sake.
Makali had judged the railcar to be far larger than needed, the size of a semitrailer. But with the entire group crammed into it—Zack holding Rachel by the hand, Zhao, Pav, the dog, Dale, and Makali, along with the Architect and the Sentry—Makali felt as though she were back in Bangalore, crammed into public transport.
It was an impression rather than a fact; the Architect placed itself at one end of the car, the humans clustered in the middle, while Dash the Sentry hunkered at the other end, its many arms busy with objects it was removing from its vest.
The first motion was a violent lurch. “Wow,” Zack said, “just like liftoff!”
Makali asked Zhao, “Is that normal?”
“No,” he said.
“Should I be worried?”
The Chinese spy smiled. “If it will make dying easier.”
Makali couldn’t help asking, “What makes this thing go? Is it electric?”
“Driven by super-dense mass,” Zhao said. “Cat’s-eyes, like really, really tiny marbles.”
“But electricity must drive them,” she said, happy to be thinking about alien transport technology rather than improbable and likely non-existent weapons.
“Yes,” Yvonne said, “the warship contains a network of power and fluid conduits.”
“Which means this whole system is subject to blackout?”
“There are backup systems,” Yvonne said, but only that much. Her sudden shifts between disinterest and engagement were starting to bother Makali.
“Well, that’s reassuring,” Makali said, unable to hide the sarcasm. She turned to Zhao. “Are you reassured?”
“I’m pondering the weapon we can use against the Reivers,” he said. “Along with wondering how they got to the NEO in the first place, and what they really want.”
Yvonne turned to them. “They came,” she said, with the familiar channeling-Keanu tone, “as unwanted passengers on an arriving spacecraft. Like mice on a sailing ship. We thought we had exterminated them,” she continued, totally given over to her avatar mode now. “But one race deliberately hid a colony, which then reestablished itself.”
Now she shuddered, and seemed to wake up. “What they want is to suck every one of us dry, take all our energy and life to make more of them. Apply that to maybe the entire galaxy. Their goal is to...transform everything into their kind of being or matter.”
Makali grinned at Zhao, who seemed stunned to disbelief. “So, what have you got? A paper clip in your pocket?” She nodded at Pav, who cradled a Slate in his lap. “We could boot that up and dazzle them with graphics or pound them with loud music.” She patted her pocket. “I’ve got a Tik-Talk. Maybe I could throw it at them—”
Yvonne sat up straight. “Use the Tik-Talk,” she said.
Zack heard her, too. “For what?”
“Contact with the habitat!” Rachel said.
“How would that even work?” Makali said.
Yvonne looked happy for the first time since Makali had met her. “Signals have a tough time going through habitats, but these tunnels not only conduct mass, they conduct energy and radiation—”
“Got it,” Makali said, thumbing the power button. She was pleased to note that the battery indicator was, appropriately, half full. Then she offered the Tik-Talk to Zack. “Your call, boss.”
“You go ahead.”
She needed no further encouragement. “Hello, Temple. Hello, Temple, this is Makali Pillay. Anybody home?”
They all waited. Thirty seconds passed. “For God’s sake, keep trying,” Dale said. “It’s standard operating procedure.”
“I’m hardly a standard operator,” she snapped. But she repeated the call.
Then waited. Still nothing.
“Are we sure it’s working?” Rachel said.
“You can hear the carrier wave,” Pav said. He slid forward, assuming a praying posture in front of Makali and the Tik-Talk. “Come on, somebody!”
“While this would be great,” Dale said, “it doesn’t change our situation.” He looked at Yvonne, then at Zack. “We’ve still got to get to the vesicle. The Temple people aren’t going to be able to help—”
“Hello!” A voice spoke from the Tik-Talk. “Who is this? Where are you?”
Harley Drake. Makali handed the Tik-Talk to Zack.
There wasn’t time for a long chat. And from what Makali heard about the situation in the human habitat, only a long chat would be sufficient to catch them up. The infestation was bad news, certainly. Camilla’s strange behavior—also bad.
But the wonderful things being whipped up by Nayar’s team in the Temple? Not only tools, but food, water, clothing, medical equipment?
Weapons?
Still, in spite of what Makali was hearing from Harley on the speaker, Dale’s point was sound: There wasn’t anything the Temple team could do to help them against the Reivers. Not yet, anyway.
She actually moved away. It was too painful to listen. She preferred instead to watch Yvonne and the Architect, both of them in silent communion for the entire conversation between Zack and Harley.
Then there was Dash the Sentry, alone with its alien thoughts. As she looked, something about the Sentry’s appearance troubled Makali.
Makali turned back to the conversation in time to hear Zhao say, “I don’t know how to fight the Reivers face-to-face, but I’ve been trained in asymmetric or cyberwar methods.”
She sat down next to Dale, who had been paying closer attention. “What is he talking about?”
“A weapon to use against the Reivers.”
“Oh, really?”
“If you have a life form that is pure information, the weapon to use is—”
“A lie?” Makali said.
“Well, corrupt information. Or corrupt information that keeps on corrupting.”
“What does that mean in practical terms?”
“Damned if I know,” Dale said. “But I think we’re into biological warfare. Bug on bug, something that will turn their strengths against them.”
She let her head loll back. Among the many drawbacks of living on adrenaline for forty hours straight was the n
eed to sit down and effectively shut down more often and more completely. She felt that now...a bone-deep weariness that made her question every decision, every hope.
Nothing looked good right now. “I was just thinking,” she said to Dale, on the chance that stirring herself for a new conversation would restart her motor. “Why were the Skyphoi in the dead habitat to begin with?”
“What do you mean?”
“Were they there to help Dash, or catch him?”
“I assume it was to help him...they were vectored there by whatever voices they hear.”
“But what if they were trying to catch Dash instead? Or even kill him?”
“Well, okay, but they haven’t said anything—”
“They can’t say shit that we understand! Maybe all those freaky colors have been the Skyphoi saying, ‘The Sentry is a murderer!’”
She suddenly turned to look at Dash again.
There was an item on the Sentry’s left lower arm. That was what she had been recording without actually seeing.
It looked like a piece of fabric.
“You’ve seen how difficult it is to communicate from one habitat to another, or from one race to another! And their Revenant or communicator is dead.”
“I think you’ve gone without food or sleep for too long.”
She nudged Dale. “Okay, check out the Sentry’s arm. Any idea what that is?”
Dale stiffened. “It’s from Valya’s bag,” he said.
“Ask yourself what he’s doing with it.”
“I don’t have to,” he said. “The Skyphoi didn’t kill Valya—fucking Dash did!”
Dale was already in motion. Makali put her hand on his arm. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Good question.” That was Zack Stewart from across the railcar. He had handed the Tik-Talk off to Zhao and had been watching Makali and Dale.
Makali saw no way to tell Zack of their suspicions without alerting Dash, who remained busy and apparently oblivious four meters away.
Not secretly, of course. But who needed secrets? “We were just talking some Earth history.”
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