Krillaz

by Morris Kenyon

  #89044-B's eyes glowed a brilliant kyanite. "That is correct. No wormhole technology."

  Sometimes, Da Xiora wondered about the machine-man's alleged lack of humour.

  The trio rounded a low spur of the hills. The vale opened up into a wide plain, the blue-green grass shading away to blue-grey towards the horizon. Far above, the blue-giant sun burned hotly. Out of the shadow of the hills, the temperature soared so Da Xiora adjusted the thermostat on her environmental suit.

  At the far end of the vale stood the anomaly. Even with their enhanced eyes, neither hi-man could make out anything beyond a brilliant white glare.

  "Can you tell what it is?" Teofila Marilia asked #89044-B.

  Unusually, there was a long pause as #89044-B processed the information. Eventually the robot spoke. Its voice was not as melodious as before. "I can make out ascending motion but that is all."

  "Useless piece of scrap metal," Da Xiora muttered under her breath.

  "Come on and let's check it out," the Quarto-Capitao said.

  "That's what we've come for," Da Xiora muttered again.

  In line abreast, keeping some distance between them, the trio advanced on the abnormality.

  "Anything?" Teofila Marilia said. Da Xiora detected worry in her voice.

  "My sensors do not detect any unusual radiation patterns or anything dangerous. However, I cannot observe anything further at this point."

  "Let me know when you can."

  "Affirmative, Quarto-Capitao."

  Once again, Da Xiora wondered whether the machine-man felt more emotion than it admitted. It wouldn't be the first robot to have feelings but most robots felt it beneath their dignity to admit to it.

  Spreading out in a skirmish line as they were trained and keeping all their senses on highest alert the trio advanced. None had drawn weapons and none felt any threat or danger, just a sense of strangeness, that this singularity was something outside of their experience. Even #89044-B kept silence.

  They trod over the short blue-green lawn beneath the cyan sky towards the white glare. Glancing down, Da Xiora saw that despite the brilliance the team cast no shadows. However, it was only when they were within ten metres that the team saw the anomaly more clearly. She stopped. A millisecond later, so did the others.

  Through the glare Da Xiora made out a flight of stairs fifty metres wide. They lead upwards for maybe one hundred metres, disappearing into the whitest, hottest part of the brightness. The stairs were filled with hi-manoid people facing upwards all of them seemingly static except the harshness of the glare made the figures shimmer as with motion. Or were they all moving, but so rapidly that the eye mistook their motion for stillness? Even with her enhanced eyes, Da Xiora couldn't tell. She had never come across anything like it. Never, not in all the systems she had visited.

  The people were as strange as the staircase. They were all tall, taller than Da Xiora although nowhere near #89044-B's height. The people wore long, floor length robes of many hues, although mostly shades of turquoises or blue-greens. The robes hid their arms and legs giving them a slender conical look. They were completely hairless and their skins were a delicate turquoise-grey.

  "What are they doing? Why are they just standing there?" Teofila Marilia asked.

  Da Xiora was at a loss. She had no idea. She glanced over at #89044-B but the robot stood still, its eyes glowing far brighter than she'd ever seen them before as even its incredible computing power was stretched to the limit.

  There was an aura of incredible power in the air, a feeling similar to static electricity, every ion particle charged with electricity as if waiting for one spark to discharge the entire amount in a massive outrush of energy. It felt like an lightning storm was about to erupt. Yet the sky was a clear blue, the blue sun the only object in sight.

  Da Xiora felt strange as the unseen powers penetrated her lightweight environmental suit. Subtly, she adjusted the suit's setting to maximum resistance but it had no effect. Her leader, the Quarto-Capitao, seemed overawed while the robot seemed lost in its own circuits. Glad that her memory was all backed up, Da Xiora took a few paces forward. The air felt thicker, glutinous, filled with electricity and other unknown energies. Sounds far beyond her hearing filled Da Xiora's ears with unnameable and unknowable melodies.

  One final step took Da Xiora to the foot of the stairs. Up close, the people seemed solid yet translucent, real yet unreal, here in the moment yet not here but far away. She shook her head, trying to clear it of these eerie, unwanted images. It felt like her eyes and ears and mind could take no more, that she was operating on the extremes of her senses and any further input would cause her to implode, collapsing in on herself.

  Yet Da Xiora forced herself onwards through the heavy air. She placed one foot onto the lowest step. A thrill of power bypassed her suit's resistance, surging through her body and she felt herself impelled onwards and upwards. With difficulty, she resisted that overwhelming impulse and stood on the lowest step. Hesitantly, she placed one hand on the nearest figure.

  The person – and for some reason Da Xiora thought it was male – turned and looked at her. It was slightly taller than most of the others. It opened its cerulean teardrop eyes a fraction wider.

  "What's going on? Why are you on these stairs?" Da Xiora said.

  The figure spoke. Not with its mouth which was a mere slit in its oval face but with its mind. True telepathy. Extremely rare but not unheard of, but Da Xiora had never come across that psionic power with such clarity before.

  "We are advancing," the person said. Its mental voice was calm and tranquil, penetrating through the heavy air and cutting through her confusion.

  "Advancing? Why, what's up at the top?"

  "The start, the end, and everything in between."

  Questions flooded Da Xiora's brain. More than she could think of or ask at once.

  "I don't understand," she said simply.

  The person looked at Da Xiora. It seemed to her that the other took in everything all at once understanding her in all her entirety, that she was laid out to the alien's scrutiny.

  "We live sideways in time. You, and nearly everyone else lives lineally. You are born, grow and live your lives ageing all the time until eventually your bodies die. However, we live sideways. We are born, live and die all in the same instant. Yet we live almost eternally, enjoying rich and complex lives, experiencing emotions you cannot begin to understand."

  "Sideways?"

  "We came into being shortly after the start of this universe. As we are so different from other life forms, some of us believe that our people originally came from a different, earlier universe. However, that has not been proved."

  "But you are talking to me now. We are holding a conversation – that takes time," Da Xiora said.

  The alien nodded its head. "That is true. But while we are communicating, I am experiencing the agony of my birth, all the joys of my life and every moment up to my death all at the same time."

  The alien turned away and focussed its gaze upwards to the white-hot glow masking the top of the stairs. Instantly, like the others, the figure seemed to waver in the light and the telepathic link broke leaving Da Xiora alone.

  Something wasn't right here. Da Xiora realised she had one question to which she needed the answer. Gently, she stretched out her arm and touched the strange figure. The telepathic link snapped back, and the figure turned its deep cerulean eyes back onto Da Xiora.

  "I need to know. Earlier, you said you could foresee your own death. How do you die? And why don't you do something to stop it?"

  The creature turned its gaze upwards over the heads of the other aliens towards the brilliance at the top of the stairs. Da Xiora squinted but could make nothing out.

  "We all die in the light. In one burst of brilliant bright light," it said.

  "When?"

  "When it happens. That is when we all enter another realm far beyond this. However, we live so much before then." The creature's thin lips curled upwards
in an approximation of a smile as it relived its memories or experienced its life still to come.

  This was too strange for Da Xiora. "Do you join Sol Invicta – I mean do you believe in an afterlife?"

  The alien looked at her. Through the telepathic mind link Da Xiora felt sorrow as well as a rush of emotions she could not comprehend.

  "No – but we go some place; or some when else."

  The alien closed his eyes and once again the connection broke. Despite touching the alien a second time, nothing happened. Evidently, the creature was wrapped in its own life, her intrusion no more than a pin-prick in its existence.

  Slowly, Da Xiora stepped off the staircase and rejoined her companions. "Let's go back," she said.

  Teofila Marilia looked at her. "That was quick. You were up there for less than a second. And you looked so strange up there."

  The two hi-mans turned from the strange staircase and walked away across the blue-green lawn.

  "Are you coming?" Teofila Marilia called back at #89044-B who hadn't moved. There was no reply. "Or are you still data gathering? You should have everything you need by now."

  "Useless tin can," Da Xiora muttered.

  There was still no response from #89044-B. The robot stood facing away from the hi-mans, seemingly fixated on the stairs.

  Muttering to herself, Da Xiora turned back. She clapped the robot on its back as if it was a fellow hi-man. Nothing happened. Usually, the robot would face her, its eyes flashing blue. Da Xiora stepped around to its front. The robot didn't move so much as the tiniest fraction of a millimetre. However its eyes were flashing faster than Da Xiora had ever seen as its artificial brain processed more information than even that marvel of engineering was designed for.

  "Come on – we've got enough," Da Xiora told it. But she might was well have saved her breath. The robot stood like a rock. The only part showing any sign of life were those blue kyanite eyes.

  Da Xiora cursed under her breath. "I've seen this before, but I thought they'd ironed out this problem on the #8 series. These robots can't handle an over-large amount of data all in one go. They go into some sort of continuous loop." She knew that it was what was on those steps that had blown the robot's mental circuits. She wasn't surprised as she'd experienced only the tiniest fraction of that anomaly's weirdness and that was too much for her. What the robot's greater intelligence made of it frightened her.

  There was nothing for it. "Do you know the reboot pass code?" she asked her Quarto-Capitao. There was a slight delay as Teofila Marilia obtained the access codes from the Reliquias da Santo Duarte IX. Then she too approached #89044-B and stated the codes in a clear voice. There was no response. #89044-B's eyes carried on flashing just as rapidly as before. The Quarto-Capitao spoke them again.

  While they waited for the codes to take effect Da Xiora looked again at the figures crowding the staircase all the way up to the white glare at the summit. Still, yet seemingly full of motion. She shook her head. No, she had never seen anything like this on her travels. She looked back just as Teofila Marilia shook her head. "No. It's not rebooting."

  "Leave it then. It's only a machine," Da Xiora suggested.

  "I don't want to leave him – it – behind," the Quarto-Capitao said. Da Xiora knew that the young woman was worried that leaving behind an expensive piece of equipment would reflect badly on her leadership abilities.

  "Don't worry – it's better that we get back safely to the Reliquias. You can order a landing party to recover the robot after we return."

  Teofila Marilia nodded but got onto the communications link and referred the matter upwards to her Demi-Capitao. "Yes, they said to leave #89044-B. They'll send another shuttle later." She sounded worried as she didn't want any black mark against her name. Da Xiora didn't say anything. She wasn't about to tell the Quarto-Capitao that there would be no second shuttle for #89044-B.

  In silence, the two hi-mans walked back across the vale and then through the low hills to the shuttle. At the turn in the valley, both took one last look at the strangeness behind them before Da Xiora took Teofila Marilia's arm and guided her away.

  The shuttle stood where it had landed. Its graceful lines pointed up to the skies making it a thing of beauty. As they approached, its ramp automatically lowered revealing its brightly lit loading bay. After the strangeness of the anomaly, the familiar interior reassured them. Back to a sane, orderly technological universe. They settled into their acceleration couches and a few minutes later, the shuttle lifted up on its anti-gravity units and, gathering speed, shot up into the blue void, the sky darkening from cyan through to midnight and eventually to the utter blackness of outer space.

  Then the shuttle swung around the planet, out of its shadow and into the full glare of the O type giant before docking with the Reliquias da Santo Duarte IX itself.

  Both stepped through the decontamination airlocks and while Quarto-Capitao Teofila Marilia reported the loss of #89044-B, Da Xiora mentally composed her own report to the Archprelate. She knew what action the Archprelate would want her to take. That wasn't the question – the only difficulty was how to explain this abomination in a way the Archprelate would understand. Up in her office she reviewed the video footage as well as other data gathered from the sensors. That would give her enough backup.

  Changing into her robes of office, Da Xiora took the transferrer to the bridge where she spoke to the Capitao. She didn't even need to invoke the authority of the Archprelate back in Diamantina. Once she had made the Capitao aware of the nature of this anomaly, the Capitao – a true believer in Sol Invicta – was as eager as Da Xiora herself to eradicate this abhorrence, this foulness... this blasphemy from the universe.

  Together with the bridge crew, both watched the screens as three Ottumwa-4 torpedoes launched from their tubes and streaked towards the planet's blue-green surface. The missiles looped around in one complete orbit and then impacted on the site of the anomaly. The surface glowed white as rock liquefied, hotter than the surface of the blue-giant sun itself. On the next pass, the Reliquias's sensor array showed that the anomaly had been eradicated.

  However, back in her office Da Xiora briefly wondered if that alien knew that she would be the cause of their deaths. Yes, it almost certainly did. But had their spirits gone on? That she would never know.

  THE END.