He chose a spot where the tunnel entered a complex knot of passages, and made his camp for the night. There was water, trickling along the floor of one of the passageways, and that would be fine once he had purified it. He also wanted to keep the tunnel he had entered from at his back, which would help him make sense of the tangle of passages in the morning. Not that he would know it was morning this far underground.
As he drifted off to sleep, on a sandy bed scooped out to fit under him, with his pack as a pillow, he decided he must be close to the data base by now. He would have to look for a way up to the surface soon, but that could wait until morning. It was the last thing he remembered before he nodded off.
The soft beeping of his proximity alarm brought Fedic awake instantly.
He saw at once that less than an hour had passed, and whatever had set off the alarm was on the other side of the knot of passages, and coming his way.
A few moments later a soft, yellow light preceded an undulating mountain of flesh around a corner, and across to Fedic’s campsite. The floating light source stopped directly over the place where he had slept, and the amorphous mass that followed wheezed to a halt. Of Fedic there was no sign.
The visitor lifted a long fleshy protuberance from among its many folds, not unlike an arm, and poked around among Fedic’s equipment. Every movement seemed to bring on a fresh bout of wheezing.
When it came upon the proximity sensor, lying on the sand, it held an instrument of its own above it for some time, then snorted, and settled down to wait.
realizing the situation was at a standoff, Fedic moved slowly out of one of the side passages, his hands out in front of him, empty, with the fingers splayed open. He walked toward the bulky shape and stopped, waiting.
There was a full minute’s silence, with the two life forms regarding each other intently. As if making up its mind, the visitor turned – the light source whipping around to be in front of it again – and made its way back the way it had come. When Fedic didn’t follow, it stopped, and pointed along the passageway ahead of it with what appeared to be its arm.
Fedic considered this, then stowed his equipment and got ready to travel again. The strange creature moved off, the same undulating method carrying it along at a moderate walking pace.
Fedic fell in behind it, and switched his optics headset to normal vision. He left the proximity sensor on, unable to hear anything much over the labored breathing of his rather large companion.
Its body was more or less gray, flecked here and there with patches of light green. It must have been unaccustomed to exercise, and its skin was coated with a thin slime. The smell of it was completely alien to Fedic, and somewhat unpleasant.
It was not long before Fedic began to think the creature in front of him had, most unusually, eyes in the back of its head. Riding atop the constantly changing mass of it was a more pronounced part that could perhaps be called a head.
This was circled by a brown band that seemed to be the site for its sense organs. A pair of eyes regarded Fedic imperturbably as its body trundled relentlessly forward. Since it had brown pupils in the middle of brown irises, surrounded by brown skin, it was hard to tell what it was looking at.
If it was looking at him, he thought abruptly, then how could it see where it was going? The answer to his question came later, as they turned off the main path into a machined gallery that climbed steadily upward. That was when he saw a matching pair of eyes looking forward.
CHAPTER 26
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At the top of the machined gallery the strange creature led Fedic into a large storeroom, for want of a better word. There were countless piles of stuff everywhere, sorted into groups of similar items, and a wall of electronics along one side. The roof overhead was sturdily made, with massive reinforcing piers running along its length. Fedic guessed the storeroom was directly under the data base.
His companion produced one of the fleshy protuberances from within its many folds, and pointed to a pile of material in one corner. Then it began searching for something amid debris scattered on a low bench. It was using at least three of its rope-like arms.
Fedic approached the material in the corner cautiously, prodding it with a metal rod he found on the floor. Much of the soft material had stains on it, which Fedic guessed bemusedly came from the skin of his host.
In the end he decided the material in the corner was intended to be a place where he could sit. It appeared his large, amorphous companion was trying to make him comfortable.
Fedic looked at the electronics along the wall, and was surprised at the way it had been cobbled together out of disparate parts. It looked like a compilation from many different civilizations, and even different ages. The early ones were chunky, and the newer ones streamlined and small.
He decided to call the creature ‘The Collector,’ as much because it had collected himself as the fact the storeroom was a hoarder’s paradise. His new friend came back from the low bench with something resembling a skull cap. It must have been trying to find something that would fit on Fedic's head.
Fedic took the headpiece and looked at the attached neural network. That, he was pretty sure, was an early attempt at a linguist earpiece. Except it wasn’t an earpiece and he wouldn’t hear spoken words when he put it on.
Earth technology had abandoned the concept of reading the mind directly, because the results varied so much from person to person, but this was one of them. Still, if there was going to be just The Collector and himself, it might work. The only question was how much he trusted this strange alien life form?
It wasn’t as if he had a choice. He had left his own linguist earpieces and the processor to drive them back on the Lucky Streak. He had been going spying, not expecting a social occasion.
Apart from which there was no evidence of an ear that could take an earpiece on The Collector, or even confirmation it used the sense of hearing at all.
Resignedly, Fedic fitted the skull cap to his head. Experiments with this sort of system had shown they needed a lot of fine tuning, which was always unpleasant. Fedic sighed. He was too curious about The Collector to stop now, and more importantly, The Collector had local knowledge. If there was a way into the data base above them, this undulating mound of flesh would know where it was.
Fedic adjusted the neural network on his head. Some of the points weren’t making good contact with his scalp, so he wrapped a piece of his clothing turban-like around his head. The tail from the neural net snaked across the floor, and into the bank of electronics along the wall. The Collector moved some of the dials – it seemed to have extremely fine motor control of its boneless ‘arms’ – and Fedic felt the neural net come alive.
He knew what was coming. The worst of it would be the uncomfortable feeling as the meaning of his words was scrambled by the net. He tried to relax. With an effort he stopped the flow of thoughts in his mind, and felt his body begin to wind down. Tension released itself as flutterings between his heart and stomach.
The neural net began to whisper things to him, and ghostly images formed in front of his eyes. He forced himself to keep his eyes open, and focused them on the far end of The Collector’s storeroom. He knew it would be best if he tried to dissociate himself from what was going on.
Words and images began to ‘find’ each other in the murk of his verbal and visual centers. Then the process began to speed up. Fedic risked a glance at The Collector, and wasn’t surprised to find it was jerking spasmodically as it clasped a much larger neural net like a cape around what seemed to be its head. The process wasn’t pleasant for it, either.
Fedic felt a spasm of pain, and focused on the far end of the storeroom once again.
The images were a blur now, and the whispering voices were talking at a speed he couldn’t follow. He hung on doggedly, looking at his armband after a long while and seeing an hour had passed. When the process became too much he closed his eyes, and his consciousness retreated to a meditation point he had built
into his mind years before.
He could maintain a sense of normalcy while his consciousness rested there until his body was capable of action once again. It was also a way to conserve his energy. He lost track of how long he was in that isolated place.
Then the room was suddenly quiet, as if a crowd of people had fallen silent. There was a multi-colored pattern, something like a sunset, hanging before his eyelids, but at least it wasn’t moving any more. He cautiously opened his eyes.
The Collector was stretching itself. At least that’s what it looked like, some sort of attempt to ‘get the kinks out’. Fedic gingerly poked at the neural net on his head. There was no response, so he unwound the clothing from his head and lifted the net off. His mouth felt unnaturally dry.
“I hope it worked, after all that effort,” he said thickly. The words buzzed, as if there were echoes in the storeroom, and other voices were talking over his.
The Collector surveyed him gravely. “I think so,” it said at last.
Fedic smiled. He didn’t know where The Collector took in its food, but its mechanism for producing sound was an entirely different system.
It seemed to boom its ‘voice’ straight out from a resonating cavity under the sensory terminal he now thought of as its head. Fedic could feel his brain translating the meaning of the words in a newly-trained part of his mind. From there the meaning of the words went to the area that normally recognized input from his ears.
The process seemed to be working.
“Are there others like you on this planet?” asked Fedic. He was intrigued because his sensors hadn’t reported any significant life forms on the surface, and no active technology outside the cities.
“I don’t know,” said The Collector slowly. “We are a solitary people. I haven’t seen another of my race in, mmm, a hundred or more of this planet’s years.”
Fedic was startled by the revelation.
“Perhaps you could tell me more about your people,” he began, hesitantly. “If you don’t mind discussing them with me.”
The Collector seemed, somehow, surprised.
“What is there to talk about? We like the cool places, the places under the ground. We live alone, each of us with a lot of distance from our neighbors.”
The Collector became almost conspiratorial.
“The Caerbrindii say they were the first. Or they did say that when they were here. But they weren’t the first. We were here before them – and now we are here after them.
“These days, no one comes to the old cities but those horrible orange things, and thank the Spirit of the Living Ground that’s hardly ever.”
Fedic tried to make sense of what he was hearing. The Collector and its type must be extremely long lived, and they must have a tremendous oral tradition of stories that had been handed down over thousands of years. He also realized The Collector didn’t know the Caerbrindii had developed into three new species.
He looked around the storeroom and saw the wall of electronic equipment again. He asked The Collector where it got its understanding of machines from.
“The Caerbrindii used us as memory banks, and as calculators – of a sort – in the early days,” it said. “I think they changed us in some way, perhaps enhanced our abilities. I know our memories of using technology start at the same time as our memories of the Caerbrindii.”
Fedic nodded, then wondered if moving his head had any meaning for The Collector.
“I understand,” he added, to be clear, then moved on to another question. “If you live alone for so much of your life, how do your people reproduce themselves?”
The Collector seemed equally surprised by this question. It hesitated, and various ripples rolled through the rotund pillows of its flesh, ending as some of the many arms lifted and dropped, not unlike a human shrug.
“The same way all life does,” it said, uncertainly.
Fedic explained the two forms of the Human species, and the process of combining cell DNA leading to variation in reproduction.
The Collector was silent for a very long time.
“So many,” it said at last. “So many of you. And always together. Mmm. Doesn’t it drive you insane?”
Fedic was about to say yes, it often felt that way, when he realized The Collector wasn’t asking about a simple thing like happiness. The Collectors were all hermits on a scale he couldn’t imagine. Even Fedic’s presence could be making his companion uneasy.
“We developed in a different way to your people,” he said. “The universe is a big place, and there are many types of awareness.”
He wasn’t sure the Collector understood him. It would pay to be more literal, he thought, to make his explanations more concrete.
“There are not, mmm, more of your people in the mountains?” said The Collector, and the patches of light green on its body deepened in color. Fedic took this to be an alarm signal.
“No, no one else,” he reassured it. “I came to this planet alone.”
Then a thought struck him. Cordez had talked about the translators, the Orion, who explained the wishes of the Druanii, who had no linear language. The Collector’s speech pattern, these pauses and the musical note that accompanied them, were typical of the Orion.
“You are not related to the people called Orion?” he hazarded.
The Collector appeared, as before, to be surprised by the question.
“Orion is just a story,” it said. “A story of the old times. There has been nothing to support this story in, mmm, thousands upon thousands of years on this planet.”
It seemed to be putting its thoughts in order, and Fedic settled back to wait.
“Some of us,” it said, “the Old Ones who were here when the Caerbrindii came to dominate this planet, eventually went out among the stars with them.
“Then war and division broke out among the Caerbrindii, and the Old Ones who were with them wanted to start a new life, on a new planet among the stars. News came to us that they had learned how to live on the surface of a hot, dry planet.
It was a place with few of the underground spaces we Old Ones cherish. The Old Ones chose a new name for themselves, and called themselves after the stars where they had settled. Orion.
“Then we heard nothing more about them. It has been, mmmm, seventeen birthings since our race memory records any news of them.”
CHAPTER 27
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Fedic found this revelation fascinating. The Orion had probably developed from creatures like The Collector. Then he remembered his original question – how did The Collector and its like reproduce themselves.
“What is involved in a birthing?” he asked. “And how many of this planet’s years would you count between birthings?”
The Collector considered this.
“We do not need to share this DNA you mention for variation in our offspring,” it said. “Perhaps our DNA is more flexible. Each of us deposits hundreds of tiny life pods – mmm, your word ‘egg’ is not right – in secret underground places, and our young develop in those places.
“Once they are mobile they instinctively band together for protection. They are very fast in their early years, and very dangerous.”
The Collector’s ample bulk waved left and right for a moment.
“Not like us Old Ones,” it said, and Fedic wondered if it was laughing. Even mild exercise seemed to cause The Collector to sweat.
“Communication is instinctive in the first days,” it said, “passed on by touching together sensitive plates on their heads, and what one learns, all learn.
“There are still losses among them due to accidents and, mmm, predators, and then further losses when the time comes to fight among themselves for territory. Those that survive become Old Ones, with a large territory of their own.”
Fedic was intrigued. This was a different developmental path to anything he had come across, and he had visited many planets.
“And how long does it take from the birthing to becoming an Old O
ne?” he prompted.
The Collector seemed to be thinking.
“A good figure is about 320 of the years of this planet,” he decided. Fedic translated that as close to 400 Earth years.
“But an Old One is not able to start a birthing process until almost 900 years,” added The Collector. A minimum of a thousand years between generations, thought Fedic, and 17 birthings meant 17,000 years since The Collectors on Mentuk had heard news of the Orion.
“How did you come to collect so much technology,” said Fedic, waving his hand toward the bank of electronics along the wall beside him. It was an assumption on his part. The Collector did not seem to have the means of building such things itself.
The Collector subsided into a lower, wider mound on the floor. Either it was getting tired, or changing its body shape helped its thinking processes.
“Old Ones live underground, and the flat land where the old cities were built is a good place for the weather to wear away tunnels. Old Ones often choose sites like this, under the old buildings of the Caerbrindii.
“The buildings are protected, by electronic alarms, and by, mmm, sentinels. Small, fast machines that have weapons built into them. But the Old Ones have all the time in the world. There is always a way.”
Yes, thought Fedic, he knew about the sentinels. He’d picked up the mobile units from space, and thought they were electronic hounds of some sort. The data base above them, however, had showed no signs of such protection.
“Did your electronic equipment come from the data base, the building above us?” he asked.
“Perhaps, perhaps not,” said The Collector evasively, and Fedic was puzzled by its sudden reluctance to answer openly. If it didn’t want to talk about the data base, it wouldn’t want to show him a way in. Was he going to be stopped at this point, just when he’d found the help he needed?
Invardii Box Set 2 Page 16
