Analog SFF, July-August 2006

by Dell Magazine Authors

  The lake bed boomed and a pillar of orange dust billowed roofward. Joshua ran to the edge. The cloud cleared, revealing ... a shallow crater.

  “It hardly made a dent!” Ann cried.

  “Joshua, that was it,” Lucas said. “I have one charge left."

  “Maybe,” Joshua thought aloud, “the charge will have more effect if we cover it with rocks and—"

  “One charge won't punch through two meters of steel!"

  “Joshua,” Ann said.

  The tall grass by the woods was shivering. Out marched a carpet of leaves, marigold-epaulettes dancing and banner-sticks waving. Chanted squeals echoed against the module wall.

  From Joshua's right to his left, the rats advanced in a semicircle that constricted around the humans standing at the centerpoint of its radius.

  Joshua raised his rifle, took aim, and fired. A rat leaped into the air and flopped. The humans spread rifle fire in a trisected pattern. Stampeding over the bloodied corpses of their stricken comrades, the rats retreated to the tall grass. But the grass continued to shiver.

  “They're not going away,” Joshua said.

  “I told you, they're territorial!” Ann said.

  “I think they've got us surrounded,” Lucas said.

  Suddenly the grass stilled. Then Joshua heard a loud squeal, followed by simultaneous clicks from everywhere in the grass before them.

  Black rain-in-reverse erupted from the grass.

  The dark speckles arched skyward and careened toward the humans. Joshua shielded with the carrybag and cringed. A hail of pebbles rapped against his helmet and arms and stung the ground.

  “Catapults!” Lucas cried. “How can they have catapults?"

  In a fleeting instant, Joshua pictured miniature medieval-style catapults mounted on tiny wheeled carts with windlasses no larger than sewing-machine spools, ropes as thin as thread. Rationality told him the “ratapults” could be no more than flexible sticks gouged into the ground and bent under the weight of a gangpile of rats. But all he saw, in a one-eighty panorama with his back to the lake bed and module wall, was furiously agitating tall grass.

  He heard a rat shriek. The grass clicked. Another storm of projectiles streaked toward the humans. Rocks and beetles and clumps of muck pelted their suits. Under cover of catapult fire, the rats charged. The humans retreated into the lake bed.

  They crowded side-to-side, scanning the lake's perimeter, which was then above eye level, and they waited for the rats to rush the edge. Conducting a mental inventory of their remaining ammo, Joshua wished he could trade his rifle for a chain saw.

  “More clever than intelligent!” Lucas mumbled. “So they can't compose a symphony at us!"

  Abruptly, a riot of squeals came from above.

  Joshua heard whinnying, then hoofbeats. A rat carcass tumbled onto the lake bed, flinging droplets of blood from its wounds. The humans climbed to the shoreline.

  The unicorn galloped across the clearing, stamping the tall grass, dipping its head and swinging its horn like a metronome set to allegro. Skewered rats flew outward in waves as the rest scrambled.

  In seconds, the rats vanished. Their squeals faded into the woods. The unicorn made prancing circles and snorted. Joshua and Ann helped Lucas onto the grass.

  Ann ran to Constance. “You saved us, sweetie! You're wonderful, you are!"

  Its neck enveloped in Ann's embrace, the creature grunted and bobbed its head, seemingly in agreement, giving Joshua the impression that modesty was a quality yet to be engineered into the Plantagenet Line. But there was no question, he admitted as he surveyed the piles of impaled and blood-soaked carcasses littering the field, that the battle had been well-fought.

  Lucas peeled a wrapper and held out a bar. “Babe, you deserve a hundred more for that!"

  While the unicorn nibbled, Joshua gently brushed his fingertips against its hide. It was trembling, and beneath the hairs he traced tiny scars.

  “She's fought quite a few battles,” he said.

  “We can't leave her here,” Ann said.

  “I know."

  Joshua gazed at the shallow crater in the lakebed. Lucas and Ann turned their attention from Constance and gave him what-do-we-do-now-captain looks.

  “Well,” he said. “We have to figure another way out."

  “Will the reactor melt a hole in the shell?” Lucas asked. “We could jump through that."

  “The heat and radiation would fry us before then. This whole asterie will be super-heated into vapor."

  Lucas scowled. “Didn't our client tell you this place was harmless?"

  “Toothless. Lucas, you want to try hacking into the system and overriding the self-destruct?"

  “Even if I had all my gear—well, I'll try."

  They started toward the lab. Ann's hand suddenly clutched Joshua's arm. She pointed to the trees. The bare branches drooped with squirming rats.

  The humans froze and watched.

  “Can they unlatch our helmets?” Lucas asked.

  Ann's reply was barely a whisper. “Wouldn't put it past them."

  Joshua heard a crack from the trees. Another crack, and dirt exploded by his boots. Something metallic and rodlike glinted in the branches. An end of the rod sparked, and something whizzed by his helmet—far faster than a catapulted pebble.

  “Get down!” he shouted.

  They dropped to the grass as gunfire erupted from several trees at once. Bullets whizzed overhead and ricocheted against the module wall. Hugging the ground, the humans crawled to the shoreline and rolled onto the lake bed, into concealment from the arboreal snipers.

  Ann whistled. “C'mon, Constance!"

  With a leaping glide, the unicorn landed onto the rusted bottom. A rain of pebbles clattered after. Red streaks on Constance's haunches revealed where the missiles had grazed. Ann stopped hyperventilating only after she assured herself there were no bullet wounds.

  “They must have broken into the armory,” Joshua said, catching his breath. “Now we know what caused the evacuation."

  “How can they know how to shoot?” Lucas asked.

  “They must have seen humans doing it,” Ann said. “They're very imit—"

  Another volley of bullets ricocheted against the module wall. Joshua examined the wall, surveying its entire length. It was a sheer plane of metal.

  “I don't see any exits,” he said.

  “The module walls have to be sealed for waterproofing,” Ann said. “They're different from the cargo walls."

  Lucas hefted his last charge. “You mean, they don't move around?"

  Lucas climbed to the wall with a haste that belied his body-to-fat ratio. He set the charge, retreated to the basin, blasted a hole. It remained unplugged. Through the jagged gap, they slipped out of the ecosystem module, into a cargo compartment. With some coaxing, Ann got the unicorn to follow.

  Joshua looked back. The clearing showed a carpet of leaves rolling toward the hole, guns and rifles riding atop the swellings.

  He checked his gyro compass and pointed right. “The hangar's this way."

  Ann petted and prodded the unicorn after them into the next room. Lucas ran to the next portal and yanked the handle. It refused to budge. He bored the lock mechanism with a number-three bit. He flung back the door and motioned.

  Joshua looked at his suit clock. They had nearly an hour left, but what of it? They would be chased by rats through the maze, never coming even close to the exit, even if the keeper were to leave all the portals unlocked. For it would rearrange the walls, and escape would always be impossible.

  If only, Joshua thought, he could make the keeper realize their lives were in imminent danger from—

  Joshua halted.

  Another idea had come. He didn't think it was a good idea. The risk, for one thing, was far worse than blasting through the lake bed. If he was wrong, the rats would not forgive....

  “Joshua—let's move!” Lucas shouted, waving toward the next portal. “Come on!"

  “No,�
� Joshua said. “Not that way.” He referenced the compass arrow and nodded toward the hangar. “This way."

  “We can't go that way!” Lucas shouted. “There's no portal! Now come on—they're right behind us!"

  “Exactly,” Joshua said. He drew himself up. “And we need to get them around us, also."

  Lucas's mouth went slack. “Are you crazy?"

  I wonder too, Joshua thought. “Lucas, we have to force the keeper to choose!"

  Pouring through the hole blasted from the module, the rats overflowed the previous room, abandoning their leaves as the camouflage was no longer of use. The humans took cover behind palleted cargo. The unicorn trembled and bucked, making threatening circles with her horn tip. Ann took a syringe from her med pack and jabbed the creature's flank. Constance calmed.

  The rats charged. Joshua squeezed his trigger. They returned fire.

  From overhead came skittering noises. A ceiling grid popped open, a rat head poked out. Joshua blasted it off its shoulders.

  “The ventilator shafts!” Lucas cried. “They can go anywhere in the maze!"

  “That's good,” Joshua said. But he had his doubts. If the keeper didn't split the fine hairs of philosophical reasoning the same way that he did—

  “Joshua,” the keeper's voice boomed from the ceiling grid. “You are being surrounded by creatures which I have determined are hostile to human life. You must move away. Please go through the portal on your right."

  “No, Keeper,” Joshua said.

  “Joshua, this is a matter of your personal safety. Please go through the portal on your right."

  Lucas stepped toward the portal. Joshua grabbed him.

  “No. Wait!"

  Through the portal on his right, he watched the floor vanish beneath the mass of rats dropping from the ventilator shaft. Ann raised her rifle barrel. Joshua pulled it down.

  “Let them come,” he said. “Please trust me on this!"

  Anxiety kept him from articulating, but in his mind, he visualized the situation. He thought of the hangar as being at the asterie's North Pole. To reach the hangar and safety, they needed to go north.

  Rats were coming from the portal in the south. Through ventilator shafts, the rats had filled the rooms above and west. East was the module. Below was two meters of steel.

  That left the humans only one way of escape from the rats. To the north—to the hangar.

  “Keeper,” Joshua said. “We're surrounded now, except for one room. You must open the wall to that room, or we will die. And you are responsible."

  “No, Joshua. You are responsible for placing yourself in jeopardy."

  “That was true, Keeper. However, now the situation is out of my control. Now you are responsible for whether we live or die."

  The keeper was silent. The machine that could perform complex arithmetic calculations in picoseconds took humanly measurable time to contemplate ethical equations.

  “Keeper,” Joshua said, above the rising clamor of the rats. “This has nothing to do with your self-destruct sequence. You cannot claim an exception to your ethical programming. Open the wall, or the rats will kill us—and you are responsible!"

  The keeper's programming instructed it to insert emotional intensity into its voice: “You must move, Joshua! You must move to another room!"

  The rooms on the other sides of the portals seethed shin-deep in rats. Surely the keeper saw! Joshua feared: could a machine experience denial?

  “It's too late for us to move anywhere without your help,” Joshua said. Then, for the sake of his listeners—including himself—he forced his voice calm: “You must help us, Keeper ... or cause us to die by your inaction."

  They waited. The rats howled. The room shook with the thrashing of the horde.

  Joshua heard a hum behind his back.

  The wall to asterie-north rose into the ceiling, revealing the one still-ratless adjoining room.

  “Joshua,” the keeper said. “Move into the room I have opened—now!"

  The humans backstepped northward. The rats surged after. Lucas raced for the next portal. But it faced westward and he caught himself and nodded at Joshua. They waited for the rats to catch up.

  “We have to do this one room at a time?” Ann asked. “All the way out?"

  The next northward wall opened. The humans stepped through.

  The rats quickened the pace, emboldened by each retreat and enraged by each wall-raising escape. The keeper waited too long, sometimes. Joshua poured his bullet clip into the horde, attempting to keep the fangs beyond glove-nipping distance.

  With somersaults and hops, the rats proved as adept as cinematic ninjas at evading Joshua's aim. They dodged the rifle snout and leaped onto his body. Their paws sought his external suit controls. They shut down his airflow fans. They ran his heater coils at full blast. They popped his ears with pressure charges. Worst of all, they scratched at the helmet locks.

  His ammunition clip emptied. Lucas's gun clicked. Then Ann's. Then the humans used their firearms as clubs.

  The keeper, finally recognizing their predicament, opened the remaining walls.

  * * * *

  With half an hour remaining until the point nine nine interval, they reached the end of the cargo spaces and entered the permanent decks of personnel quarters, and in the straight passages they shook the rats off their suits and outran the tiny legs of their pursuers. At last they reached the hangar.

  Joshua and Lucas cycled through the personnel airlock, unrolled and inflated the skiff's transport bubble. They pressed the seal against the transport docking mechanism. Ann swathed the horn tip inside bandages. With urging and shoving, a double-dosed Constance bemusedly trotted into the bubble.

  Then Ann stared toward the mouth of the hanger.

  “Joshua, why are there two skiffs?"

  When Joshua turned, there were not only two skiffs, but five men emerging from behind a fuel tank. One of the space suits was jet black with gold trim. Smiling through the face plate was the Lord of Scarborough.

  “Greetings, Captain Wang,” Emil Hamilton said. “All of you, drop your weapons. Bags too, please. Or would you rather we blow off your legs?"

  Under the aim of five automatic rifles, Joshua, Lucas, and Ann released their bags and empty weapons.

  “Prior to engaging your services,” Hamilton said, “I contracted a team of Nemesis Commando Robots. Top-of-the-line strategic-reasoning AIs—augmented with state-of-the-art armor and weaponry. They entered that airlock behind you weeks ago, and have failed to return or signal. Their loss cost me far more than thirty thousand credits. So, Captain, I'm interested in learning how you solved the keeper's maze."

  Joshua kept his eyes still, but took in the situation. In front of him, armed men blocked escape to Raven's skiff. Behind him, on the other side of the airlock ... yes. But he had to play for time ... to let one threat catch up to another.

  “Before I tell you anything,” Joshua said, “I'd like to know about your plans."

  Hamilton laughed. “I suppose I won't mind boasting."

  “The unicorn was just a cover to do business with Daedalus Genetics, right? You really wanted intellirats."

  “Very good."

  “But what do you want intellirats for?"

  “Surely that's obvious. I want them for what everyone else wants them for. As a weapon, to infest other people's asteries."

  “But why would an asterie developer want to damage asteries?"

  “Let me explain the process. It all has to do with Scarborough. Scarborough is a tourist attraction. When the tourists go home, they take the rats with them aboard their return shuttles. Unknowingly, of course. Then the rats infest the tourists’ home asteries. My consortium buys the infested asteries at depressed prices. Then we exterminate the rats, and sell the rat-free asteries at market prices. We make a considerable profit, and will be regarded as saviors of otherwise uninhabitable asteries."

  “So long as no one tells the secret."

  Hamilton smile
d thinly.

  Joshua glanced at his crew. Their eyes were wide, fixated on the gun barrels aimed at their chests.

  Joshua continued: “I don't see how you expect to get rid of the intellirats, when even Daedalus Genetics couldn't."

  “This asterie was overrun by an earlier, less controllable version of intellirats,” Hamilton replied. He gestured toward their carrybags. “Those particular embryos have been engineered to grow an organic antenna inside the skulls. The proper coded radio signal, at the correct frequency, and the rats die instantly, en masse."

  “But isn't there a problem getting them into other people's asteries in the first place? All the inspections, the detectors, the scanners—"

  “The rats are designed to survive briefly in vacuum—expanded lung capacity, pressure-barrier skin layers, even hibernation ability. Thus, they can ride on the outside of shuttles, and hop into asterie hangars after docking. And they can operate airlocks."

  “I'm sure. But then—"

  “Excuse me, Captain. You're not thinking of prolonging this until the reactor melts, are you?” A smirk blossomed on Hamilton's face. “And yes, the keeper was thoughtful enough to warn us about that."

  Joshua said nothing. Lucas growled at the ceiling camera: “Traitor!"

  Hamilton checked his watch. “We'll need to leave soon. So are you going to explain how you escaped the maze?"

  “Certainly,” Joshua said. “It was very simple. The crew helped us."

  Hamilton's smirk faded.

  “The—personnel? They've evacuated!"

  “Not all.” Joshua tilted his head toward the hangar ceiling camera, as if acknowledging an audience.

  As his men shifted footings, Hamilton glared at Joshua. “You're lying."

  “Look at the three of us. Not exactly paramilitary material, wouldn't you say? But your commando robots never came out, and we did. It's because we had help."

  Hamilton shouted at the camera: “My yacht has missiles! I'm warning you!"

  “You're not really sure this place is toothless, are you?” Joshua asked. “And your relationship with Daedalus Genetics hasn't been friendly, either. Not lately. Not since you've been boarding without permission."