Moving Earth

by Dean C. Moore

  She could fill in the blanks for herself. She questioned forcing the matter with Solo even now. But he had a point. She didn’t need him or anyone else messing with her head. Too much was on her plate. Too much was on all their plates.

  She turned curtly and exited the chamber.

  She could feel his rainbow eyes boring into her back the whole time.

  So many questions she wanted to run by him. For starters, what the hell was a nest of Umbrage, formerly known as one of the Guardian races, doing in the Amazon rainforest on Earth? Did they go in for cosmic-scale geoengineering like the race that had placed the Star Gate? Or was the Umbrage’s way of meddling more like genetic uplifting of individual species?

  Were the Umbrage the ancient aliens doing what they could to raise man from the apes? Had they spawned the numerous ancient civilizations on Earth that had reached technological levels advanced enough to escape into the stars, only to have to flee into the stars to avoid an asteroid impact that reset the clock on Earth, forcing Solo and his kind to start again? Always rebuilding, always uplifting?

  Were the ones who had made the Star Gate… Were they another of the three Guardian species? Attending to the big picture of cosmic engineering while the Umbrage focused on the small print and maddening minutiae of such a project?

  She promised herself not to let him mess with her head, but he so clearly already was. Had she just received a spanking in there? To the effect of, “Let this be a lesson to you to never solicit information from me until I’m good and ready to give it to you.”

  She sighed. Lesson learned.

  SIXTY-FOUR

  ABOARD THE NAUTILUS

  Crumley strolled into Leon’s private chambers, and spied him in the rejuvenation tank, floating some feet beneath the surface of the breathable liquid. He’d been moved here from Solo’s suite because Solo was tired dodging the pilgrimage of visitors determined to speak to Leon as if some recently passed saint laid out for viewing. Leon’s own rejuvenation tank, not as sophisticated as Solo’s, usually kept where Solo’s tank now sat, had been stowed elsewhere for now. “Any more news from Sleeping Beauty?”

  “Nothing you want to hear,” Ajax whined, biting his nails and staring at the display that was broadcasting Leon’s latest SOSs from alternate timelines, from which there was similarly no escape from The Collectors. “Actually I come in here to see how bad things could really get to give me the nerve to get back onto a thunderbird. According to water-breathing Leon, this timeline is Shangri-La by comparison.”

  “That’s the attitude,” Crumley said slapping him on the shoulder.

  “Screw you for ignoring my sarcasm, and thereby my reason for existence.”

  Cronos came galloping in on a horse. It was bigger than a Clydesdale. And the spiral-shaped horn extending from its forehead shot lightning bolts, which it did as he brought the animal to a full stop. The stallion’s fur was a shiny blue-black. The lightning strike was absorbed by the Nautilus’s hull, which was quite good at absorbing enemy blasts, and converting the energy to its own use.

  Cronos carried a flaming crucifix in one hand, like a medieval knight carried a lance, held high. And he was dressed as a Knights Templar, replete with chain mail over which was a white smock emblazoned with a red cross.

  “What the hell are you up to?” Crumley demanded.

  “This is an incense stick,” Cronos explained, pointing to the cross. The smoke coming off of it was indeed throwing off one hell of a scent. “I’m galloping throughout the Nautilus, blessing the ship—in high Latin, of course. This is no time to go with second-class blessings.”

  “You’re mad,” Crumley said flatly.

  “Mother says since I’m aware that I’m mad, she’s not too worried, and that I can work out my PTSD how I like.”

  “Where did you get the horse?” Ajax asked.

  “Mother is taking advantage of this relative lull to catalogue all the worlds with high-level sentience in the Gypsy Galaxy. The people who breed these horses supply them to all sorts of civilizations. And they have quite a selection. They have a winged Pegasus that not only flies but that you can communicate with telepathically, oh, and it opens wormholes. It’s quite the warhorse, I hear. They have no shortage of warhorses for the soldiering classes.”

  “Why did you go with this one?” Ajax asked.

  “It can gallop forever without tiring. There is a world that uses them to light up their cities, and power their civilization. Typically, stationary Tesla-type coils capture energy out of the air. When the electrical storms aren’t enough to charge the towers, they use the horses. They run around the clock, firing lightning bolts to keep the entire planet humming.”

  Ajax fanned the air in front of his face as he started coughing from the burning incense.

  “Better get back to it,” Cronos said. “Figured this room needed more blessing than most.” He mumbled in high Latin and waved the cross about as he paraded through the suite. Finally, he settled down in one spot and glanced at Leon in the tank. “Poor bastard. I used to envy him, refusing to get out of the hot tub in the middle of a galactic war. But in The Collectors’ domain, the only thing worse than being awake through it is sleeping through it.”

  Cronos galloped his horse back out. Before the doors closed, they could see the animal trotting down the great hall wrapping around the central courtyard, where typically a tropical jungle resided. But in times of war, the supersentience germinating the nanite forest gobbled it back up again, and shifted into a shimmering light radiance that was the Mars war god.

  Crumley couldn’t help but notice that the Mars war god had powered on, meaning there was still more going on than met the eye. The Kang might no longer be the problem, and galaxies colliding might no longer be the problem, but something or someone remained a big enough challenge to intrigue the Mars war god out of its somnolescence. He’d have to look into that next.

  “What does Cronos mean the dreams are worse than being awake through all this?” Crumley asked Ajax.

  “I don’t know. Maybe he’s been watching more Leon-TV than most.” Staring at the screen, Ajax said, “This stuff has left me sleepless. I wake up shivering from my own nightmares.”

  Crumley frowned. He knew he was going to regret asking. “Show me.”

  “Oh, did I not tell you?” Ajax changed “the channel” on the monitor, switching to another wavelength that Leon had gotten onto at one point or another, meditating his way through altered states of consciousness in a concerted effort to open more doors to more worlds inside The Collectors’ domain, and possibly outside it.

  “Meet The Collectors’ idea of Valhalla,” Ajax said. “You don’t get to escape The Collectors’ Menagerie even in death. The ghouls continue to raise havoc where they can, whispering into ears, preying on peoples and civilizations more susceptible, namely the ones with a more developed sixth sense than the one we have. That is, until the ghostly apparitions can reincarnate in a new body when someone in their species, or some other species, has a child whose body they can possess. Some of these characters have been here so long, they’ve reincarnated into absolutely every lifeform in the Menagerie.”

  Crumley nodded. “We may be able to use that tidbit to our advantage. If Sonny can find a way to track those characters, the ones that have been reborn into every galactic civilization in the Menagerie, they would be analogous to our librarian nun and her encyclopedic knowledge of all lifeforms aboard this ship. It’s another way we can fast-track our way out of The Collectors’ grip if we can bleed them of enough intel.”

  Crumley approached the smart-screen desktop, hit some keys to forward the intel to Sonny. Sonny didn’t hesitate responding. He was communicating mindchip to mindchip. Crumley nodded as he visualized Sonny out in front of him as if he were standing in the room, owing to the mindchip messing with his mind to facilitate the exchange. Sonny’s own mindchip meant he’d processed the intel instantly. “I have people who can smell old souls like this,” Sonny said. “Our can
ine schnozzes have been recalibrated for different things over the years. Though Mother anticipated this particular need right out of the box. Leon—the awakened clones of him at any rate—” Sonny said, glancing at the Samadhi tank—“will be every bit as delighted as me at finding one more shortcut through the maze.” Sonny bleeped out.

  Ajax shivered violently. “Techa, it’s creepy just how normal and straight sounding that snake can come off when he wants to.”

  “You sound like you’ve had dealings with the man.”

  Ajax whistled. “Trust me, if anybody can get at everything those old souls know in a hurry, it’s Sonny,” Ajax said. “Sometimes I wake up from my nightmares thinking Sonny is torturing the information out of me, causing the psychotic breaks. Only to find out, no such luck.”

  “When have you seen him in action?” Crumley asked.

  Ajax scowled at him and gave him the evil eye at the same time. “Don’t you watch any Leon-TV?” Ajax changed the channel on “the TV” tuning in yet another wavelength that the Leon in the Samadhi tank had been able to isolate. Apparently Leon was keeping an eye on Sonny, not trusting him to live up to his end of things, realizing a natural foil to his plans when he saw one.

  Crumley finally pulled up a chair in surrender. “This one of the better channels?”

  “Oh yeah. This guy is every bit as smart as Leon, maybe smarter. And no scruples. I saw him choke one of his own dealers to death in a casino for getting the count wrong by a couple pennies. He must have been thinking that mistake, repeated over and over again by however many dealers, still adds up to a lot across the galaxy-wide casino system that he now runs.”

  “The man has a point.” Crumley craned his head both directions. “Any popcorn come with this movie?”

  “Dude, we’re aboard the Nautilus. Just make a wish and the atmospheric nanites will manifest it for you.”

  “Shit, I nearly forgot.” Crumley manifested a giant tub of buttered popcorn. Tasting a kernel, he said, “Best argument yet as to why centralized intelligence is not the way to go. Mother, outsourcing her lower order thinking to countless nanite hive minds throughout the ship… it’s heaven on earth, I tell you, if we can just get it to stop being hell on Earth for two seconds.”

  “Yeah, I used to blame that on the Kang,” Ajax said, raiding Crumley’s bucket of popcorn as he manifested a recliner for himself with which to enjoy the show. “Techa, those were the days, ha? When I could be so naïve as to think there was just one oppressive evil galactic-scale empire in our quadrant of the universe.”

  “Shush,” Crumley chastised him. “The show is beginning.”

  “You’re going to love this hook scene.”

  ***

  THE LUCKY STREAK

  A RECLAIMED DEAD ZONE SPACE STATION

  AND SONNY’S SHOWCASE CASINO

  Bella had been following the strange leopard-spotted woman for some distance through the casino. New humanoids no one had ever laid eyes on before were a common attraction at Sonny’s casinos, but this one was hardly being tracked for her exotic appeal.

  Leopard Lady kept disappearing and reappearing from view. Using the crowds artfully? Or some chameleon ability? If it weren’t for Bella’s sensitive nose and the rest of her lithe, wolfhound physique she’d never have been able to track the spotted lady through the throngs.

  For whatever reason, Leopard Lady was leaving the casino floor, heading toward the way station’s navigation center. She had to be up to no good.

  It was weird tracking someone that could so easily pass for one of their own kind. Sonny’s people, among Mother’s earliest genetic experiments, who also went by “the freaks” included any number of animal-human genetic interbreeding. But whoever this was, it wasn’t one of Sonny’s people.

  By the time Bella caught up with her again, it was too late.

  She’d done what she’d come to do.

  Steered the Lucky Streak straight into the path of a cloaked warbird.

  Bella couldn’t see the craft so much as smell it. Her nose had been genetically adapted to smell atomic and subatomic particles—like the kind a ship’s cloaking mechanism made, splitting atoms in order to scatter or absorb light.

  She started to bound after Leopard Lady, but it wasn’t necessary. Puma jumped the black spotted, muzzle-nosed woman from above.

  Puma looked just like her name suggested. She was pure Puma or mountain lion from the neck down. Her large human head had the gross outline of a Puma’s, but her canines were even longer, and her jaw crushing capacity even greater. Puma’s short head hair was consistent with a Puma’s scalp fur. Her extra-large yellow eyes looked as perplexed as Bella’s right now.

  “Take her to Sonny,” Bella shouted.

  Puma didn’t hesitate, bounding off with her prey, dragging Leopard Lady along the floor.

  Bella lingered to ascertain the nature of Leopard Lady’s tampering. Despite heading for the Navigations Bay, she had ended up somewhere else. Bella was beginning to think the misdirect was on purpose.

  She quickly bounded after Puma.

  The two of them arrived within seconds before Sonny.

  “What is this?” Sonny asked with his beguiling charm. “That’s no way to treat one of our own.”

  “She’s not one of ours,” Bella said dryly. Puma’s already big eyes widened further.

  Sonny flicked his fingers and an entourage of their own kind quickly surrounded him. “Noses to the ground, please,” Sonny commanded.

  “Saran,” one of Sonny’s people informed him after taking a sniff. “From one of the other galaxies in the Menagerie. A psychic race, extremely powerful, telekinetically as well.”

  Another sniff from one of the other dog-humans and… “I’ve never smelled psychic radiance this strong before,” said another of Sonny’s specialists. Sonny had the noses around him now to sniff out any subterfuge.

  Bella nodded to Puma, who bit down harder, her fangs already sinking through Leopard Lady’s skull. Leopard Lady screamed.

  “Talk,” Sonny said, “or Puma’s skull-crushing ability will cure your psychic abilities quickly enough.”

  “Show him!” Bella barked. “She’s steered the Lucky Streak straight toward a cloaked warbird. We’re coming into range of their weapons now.”

  With the truth already out, Leopard Lady furrowed her forehead and stripped the invisibility cloak from the warbird.

  Sonny’s dog people had a unique way of gasping that was on full display now, along with the various whimpering, whining, simpering sounds only dogs could make when they felt cowed.

  Sonny turned to the Blue.

  He needn’t have wasted his neck muscle energy.

  She had already jumped straight out the wraparound portal—giving a cinematic view of the stars, and the lovely supernova brought to life by the smart-glass’s digital color-enhancement—as if the metal-glass simply wasn’t there.

  Somehow the Blue had magnetized the surface of her body with her nanites. They weren’t like the nanites the Nautilus used to soup up her people, that is to say, tiny little robots. The Blues’ nanites were more like prions or enzymes, amino-acid chains that catalyzed phenomenally rapid changes inside her body.

  She flew toward that warbird’s hull faster than if she were wearing rocket boots.

  Sonny, broke from his abject wonder at both the Blue in action and the sight of the magnificent warbird—which, the instant the Blue made contact with the hull—threw up its “feathers,” like some exotic bird of paradise. Only that was shielding, making sure to concentrate the blast back at the Lucky Streak should the Blue strike a nerve.

  Sonny returned his eyes to Leopard Lady, shaking his head slowly, as he said, “Don’t do it. I wake up after a death fit to be tied. I, snake that I am, had the good sense to back up this station to the memory banks of a Planet Eater—which can reprint the entire station and everyone on it in less time than it takes that warbird’s explosion to finish shooting shrapnel to the edge of its blast radius.”
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br />   Puma bit down on Leopard Lady further to emphasize Sonny’s point for him. Leopard Lady screamed and writhed, her feet dangling off the floor as Puma stood on her two hind legs with Leopard Lady’s head in her mouth.

  The Leopard Lady, finished screaming, just smiled.

  “I promise you, the digitally reprinted version of you won’t like her fate any better,” Sonny said. “You know what I do to saboteurs who aren’t in my employ?”

  Leopard Lady’s face flashed with fear for the first time. Still, she held firm, clamping down on her jaw and projecting her most defiant look yet.

  Sonny returned his eyes to the viewport. He had time to see the Blue shaking her head slowly at him.

  In the Blue’s final act of defiance, she hiked along the warbird’s surface, jumped on the raised plumage, and bent it away from the Lucky Streak. But the warbird was too close and the blast too great.

  The only thing left standing after the explosion was the Blue, who, strictly speaking, looked as if she was swimming through space.

  She waited patiently for the Lucky Streak to be printed out from The Planet Eater world. Once that was accomplished it could teleport itself back to her location.

  It did so in a matter of minutes.

  Gerlari drifted through the portal—every cell in her body breaking their bonds with one another, weaponizing their surfaces to bore through the shield, leaving just enough nanites behind to repair the breach in the portal, before re-agglutinating her on the other side.

  She peeled back the throng to get to Sonny.

  More accurately speaking, everyone made way for her as she sauntered toward his bioprinter. He always had the bioprinter print him a new body, and not the Planet Eater, so he could use the calming settings on the bioprinter to dial his fury down a notch, uploaded as he would be with his memories up to the point of his death. He hadn’t had the foresight to use a bioprinter the first time he lost his life and the Lucky Streak to a planetary strike, playing an early round of When Galaxies Collide. The reborn him could scarcely get anything done for days, he was so furious.