Well of Furies Page 5

  But then the robot reared up, and suddenly it looked more like a praying mantis. The changed appearance, faintly sinister, reminded Tarkos that this might well be the threat for which Preeajitala had prepared him.

  Ki’Ki’Tilish pointed to the robot. “This is Tiklik’al’Takas. In our native speech, Tiklik’al’Takas means ‘fortieth probe to the dark planets.’ Tiklik’al’Takas was the probe that brought us the dreadful information about the sunless planet we seek. It is an expert on wandering planets. We rebuilt it with legs, and removed its engines, so that it might accompany this one. It too is prepared to die.”

  “Welcome,” Tarkos said to the robot. He bowed slightly. “I am pleased you are with us. May I call you Tiklik?”

  “I will answer to Tiklik,” the robot said, in a low pitch, well within human hearing, and using intonations more human than Kirt. For a robot built to study wandering planets, that was smart, Tarkos thought: it knows the human hearing range, our natural volumes and tones. But his next thought was more disconcerting: why would an astronomical probe know about human hearing range?

  The illusion of dapper civility evaporated as the robot added, “Your carbon came from a class G star. It is old and stable. You also have interesting quantities of phosphorus and manganese. You shall serve well on your world when you die and decompose.”

  Tarkos stared. After a moment, Ki’Ki’Tilish said, “You must understand that Tiklik’al’Takas was not developed in social intercourse, among Galactic citizens. You must treat it as a child.”

  Easier said than done, Tarkos thought. He had no idea how one treated Kirt children. “What is a Kirt child like?” he asked Ki’Ki’Tilish.

  “As larvae, we drift without purpose on the dark ocean currents while sentience emerges. It seems to us that the tides are thoughts.”

  “Woah,” Tarkos said quietly in English. “What a day.” Then he added in Galactic, “Please, come. I will show you the ship.”

  “Please do so,” Ki’Ki’Tilish said. “I want to see the place where we shall perish in flame.”

  Tarkos sighed. “Come now,” he said, feeling exasperated. This might be a respected scientist of an ancient and beloved race, the first race to contact the Earth, but he was a Harmonizer, and had earned a little respect. He felt a sudden temptation to tell them something of the history of his three years together with Bria. They had fought smugglers of protected life forms, saved an endangered intelligent species so that it could find sanctuary in the Galactic Alliance, ousted illegal settlements on dangerous and proscribed worlds, fought deathcommandos while falling into gas giants, protected an unaligned world from a plague spreading out of the Lost Zone, and more. Much more. He had been proud of their record. Even if it were not unusual, it was the record of a Predator, and that meant something. But he settled for saying, “Bria and I have been on many very dangerous missions, and have come through each alive. I will protect you both and ensure your safety. You need not despair.”

  The Kirt crossed its front two legs. Tarkos recognized the gesture: it meant apology. “Harmonizer, this one does not doubt you or your race,” the Kirt clicked at him. Tarkos was glad he kept his phonetic translation implants on all the time now. The Kirt Galactic sounded like a completely different language, with all the vowels disappearing into a stream of clicking consonants. “Nor does this one despair. This one speaks of probabilities.” She gestured again at the robot. “Tiklik’al’Takas was created during the greatest age of Kirt artificial intelligence, before many decided such minds were dangerous to us—before the worst years of the war against the machines of the Lost Zone. This one appeals to its wisdom and its disinterested perspective. Tiklik’al’Takas, are we not doomed?”

  “It is certain that all Kirt must die,” the robot said. “Most die slow, painful deaths. So also is it for humans, most probably. You are both doomed because of the grossly inadequate copy quality of your deoxyribonucleic acid strings.” The robot leaned slightly toward Tarkos. The twin lenses of its eyes extruded at him. “I could sample your genome, and identify the copy errors, to confirm your decay rate and your coming death.”

  “Uh, no thanks,” Tarkos said. “No thanks at all. But I spoke of our mission.”

  “If the mission succeeds the Ulltrians will pursue you,” the robot offered, leaning back. “They will likely destroy all of your cognitive functions, if not all of your biological functions, when we encounter them. This would be their most effective strategy to continue the confusion over whether they still survive. Thus your inevitable death is likely to be accelerated.”

  “They have to get past Bria first,” Tarkos said. Then he added in English, “OK. Cheery bunch.”

  He gestured down the white hall behind them. “Come along. I’ll see if I can’t keep you both alive long enough to get a tour of the ship.”

  “That is certainly probable,” the robot said. “We will likely survive through that.”

  “Your optimism is oppressive,” the Kirt said to the robot. “It is a burden, Tiklik’al’Takas.” But she followed as Tarkos led the way around the ship’s one hall. He finished the tour by returning to the door to their cabin.

  “Tarkos,” Bria hissed from the ships comms, her voice coming over the shipwide speakers.

  “Yes, Commander,” Tarkos answered.

  “Drop dock. Prepare ship insertion.”

  “On my way,” he answered, already interfacing with ship systems. He bowed to the Kirt and robot. “We’ll be in microgravity in a few minutes. It should not last long, but please be prepared.”

  “Now our death journey commences,” the Kirt clicked softly. “Now we hurry to meet the destroyers of worlds.”

  CHAPTER 4

  From the co-pilot chair on the bridge, Tarkos sent the command to disengage the dock from the Savannah Runner. The starsleeve fell away, no longer accelerating. Tarkos took a deep breath, forcing himself to think of the sensation of microgravity as floating rather than as falling. He turned up the bridge’s ventilation system till cold air blew on his face, to help with the nausea. In a moment the disorientation passed, and he turned his attention back to the controls.

  The cruiser pinged the ship, and then Bria took command remotely, slaving the starsleeve controls as she slipped the crafts together into clasp. Tarkos reviewed the systems without interfering. In a few minutes, a deep shudder spread through the starsleeve, and then his implants signaled the meshing of controls: the cruiser was bound to the starship. A cascade of messages fell through his visual field as each system interlocked in turn.

  “Begin acceleration,” Bria radioed to him, returning control to the bridge of the starsleeve. “Half gravity.”

  Tarkos picked a trajectory out of the plane of the Qualihout system, and put the ship under thrust at half a Sussurat gravity, about 0.6 e-gees. He sank into his seat.

  He unstrapped and walked back to the cruiser dock, which lay directly behind the bridge. Twin doors slid open to reveal a room with a sloping ceiling and an airlock door in the floor. This airlock door parted, and beneath it the ceiling hatch of the cruiser irised open. A stair extruded from the side of the dock, and slipped down into the cruiser’s bright interior.

  “I’m glad we’re finally underway,” Tarkos said, as Bria started up the steps.

  Bria did not answer him. She would know Tarkos wanted to eat and change clothes and sleep, but Bria would want to rise out of the Qualihout system and enter hyperspace before they did anything else. Bria saw food as something to be put off indefinitely, and then eaten in huge quantities; she saw sleep as something to catch in short but frequent snatches when possible. In neither case did she show much sympathy for Tarkos’s natural rhythms.

  He started to tell the commander, “I’ve plotted a trajectory and….” But then, as Bria neared the top of the steps, he saw that something black pulsed on his partner’s back. Tarkos stared, mouth open. Bria pushed past him, and then she reached over her shoulder and pulled the black slug off her back. She pressed it onto Ta
rkos’s chest. It stuck to his dress uniform with a squelching sound.

  “Ew!” he grunted, holding his arms out to his side because he didn’t want to touch the slimy wet being. He tottered a moment, adjusting to the surprisingly heavy weight, and knotted his lips together in disgust. He still wore his dress uniform, and the woven fibers stopped nothing: a slimy dampness sank into his clothes till it touched his skin. The black form, heavy and wet, extruded two eyes on stalks and waved them before Tarkos’s face. He pulled his head back, trying to focus on the eyes, but the two eyestalks only moved forward, crowding his vision.

  “What—?” he started.

  “Take OnUnAn representative Gowgoroup to quarters,” Bria grunted. She stamped off to the captain’s seat.

  Tarkos felt the damp of the organism spread across his dress uniform as the thick mucus clotted on the material. It took all his willpower to stand still and—holding his arms out sideways to avoid the temptation to push the slug off his chest—to mutter, “I am Harmonizer Amir Tarkos. Welcome aboard.”

  The slug worked its vertical mouth, as if preparing to speak, but then it merely exhaled, blowing across Tarkos’s face a breath that had a pungent wet-dog smell. Tarkos’s eyes watered from the acidic fumes.

  From below a slurping cough sounded. Blinking tears, Tarkos looked down into the cruiser. A cluster of other glistening OnUnAn members climbed up the stairs, close together in a writhing heap that looked to Tarkos like a pile of beagle-sized slugs. They left a trail of slime on the steps as they ascended. The small cleaning robots of the cruiser moved busily along the deck in the background, cleaning slime off the floor.

  Tarkos stared. This was the first time he’d seen one of the colony beings. He waited, paralyzed, arms awkwardly out to his side, as the rest of the organism worked its way up the stair and onto the bridge. He stepped back, and the slugs pressed together into a single heap before him.

  “Honor,” one of the slugs said, in Galactic. It was the largest of the slugs, and rode near the top of the heap. Its consonants sounded like wet slaps. “Honor, honor, honor,” echoed several other of the slugs.

  “Uh,” Tarkos hesitated. He was afraid to bow, lest the slug on his chest fall off. He ended up curtsying awkwardly, and then grimaced at his stupidity.

  Then one of the slugs, darker and smaller than the others, and near the base of the heap, shouted, “Horrible, horrible, human, disgusting race, dangerous, dry footed, eyes fixed together pointing only one way, it will kill us….”

  Tarkos stared, uncertain how to respond. When the slugs said nothing more, he asked, “Uh, may I show the way to your quarters? Please follow me.”

  He walked the short distance to the prepared room. The slugs followed him, moving more quickly than he expected. When he stopped before the door, the slugs again piled together, all but the dark slug that still clung to his chest. Tarkos pressed the door, and it slid open, letting out again the sickly smell of the atmosphere within.

  Gowgoroup fell apart, into separate slugs. They divided into two groups and slithered past Tarkos on each side, saying nothing, and going as far around him as the path to the door allowed. When they were inside, the largest slug turned, its pale skin folding as it bent to look back at him, eye stalks waving.

  “Now release my traveler.” The slug said. It said this the way a human might say, let go of my hand.

  “Uh, your, uh….”

  The slug looked at him, waving its eye stalks impatiently, and pointed both of its small arms at his chest.

  Tarkos tried to pull at the slug on his chest, but it clung firmly and his hands slipped off its wet, leathery skin. He didn’t want to squeeze it hard in order to get a grip. It seemed so fragile. “Your traveler? This part of yourself? How do I best, uh, give you back this, uh, part of yourself, this traveler?”

  “Change orientation to increase proximity to lowest surface,” the slug said.

  Oh, please, no, Tarkos thought. It wants me to lie down. What a day. Day? Was it a day? Or have I been awake for a week, moving from ship to ship, meeting to meeting, hungry and tired the whole time, never getting a breath of decent air, and suffering insult after insult?

  He sighed, exhausted and impatient, and just did it. He lay on the floor, in the slime trails of the OnUnAn. The slug on his chest slowly slid off, leaving a trail across his arm as it slipped through the door.

  “You can contact me for anything you need,” Tarkos said, standing. “Just ask the ship to call me.”

  “Leave me here,” the slug said. “I will not need you. Don’t leave your foot trail in here, human. Don’t bend your eyes around my door. I claim this space as OnUnAn representative territory.”

  “Uh, yes, Gowgoroup,” he said.

  “Repel the autonomous construction!” one of the warrior slugs gurgled.

  “The, uh…” Tarkos began. But then he realized it must mean the Kirt AI. “Tiklik’al’Takas does not have access to your rooms,” he said.

  “My cargo waits in the cruiser,” the lead slug said. “Send it.”

  Tarkos took a step back. The other traveller slug slipped forward then. It lifted the front of its body. Tarkos thought he recognized it: the smallest of Gowgoroup’s parts, and the slug that had denounced him before. The slug held its eyes only half extended. As the door started to slip closed, it spat on Tarkos. A wet gob of slime tumbled through the closing crack of the door, and hit his uniform just above his knee. Reflexively, Tarkos jerked back and brought his hands forward. The door closed.

  A cleaning robot rolled forward, and began to scrub off the floor the slime trails left by Gowgoroup. Tarkos sighed. He was tempted to lay down again, and let the cleaning robot just climb right over him, scrubbing as it went.

  _____

  Bria activated the warning chime, just seconds before she increased acceleration to a Sussurat gee. Tarkos wobbled a second, feet well apart, until the increase in acceleration completed. Then he stamped off to the bridge. As he dropped into the copilot chair, he said, “Charming entity, that Gowgoroup. Thanks for letting me show it around the ship.”

  Bria huffed. Tarkos knew the drill: she would put up with a joke or with sarcasm, even though she lacked any sense of humor. But Bria expected him to focus when they plotted trajectories. He followed her lead and re-plotted their path out of the plane of the Qualihout system, to lift them free of the gravity wells so they could shift out of real space.

  Course set in, he turned in the seat and faced Bria.

  “OK, we have to get on our way. I know. And then I have to wash this slime off and I have to eat and I have to sleep. But first: why did Preeajitala say that—”

  But Bria got up and walked off the bridge. Tarkos stared after her, mouth open in disbelief. “Wait!” Tarkos called as the bridge door slid open.

  Bria did not wait. She lumbered through the bridge door, the one that led to the hall with her quarters. Her nails scratched audibly at the metal. Then the door closed. Tarkos stared at the blank metal.

  “What the hell was that?” he asked aloud, in English.

  When he turned back to the controls, the ship, on autopilot, dove into hyperspace. Stars smeared across their wake.

  _____

  All probability drives, which were the only known FTL engine used in the Galactic Alliance, worked on the same principle. A ship reached a velocity a few percent of c—the speed of light—and then engaged the probability flanges. With each pulse of the improbability field, the ship became likely to reappear a short distance ahead of itself, assuming it already had a velocity, and assuming it were near no significant gravity well. The asymmetric shape of the ship was a necessity of probability drives: symmetries were probable alternative configurations for a ship. Not a few prototype probability drive ships, Galactic engineers reported, had appeared at the end of the journey switched from left to right, or top to bottom, or even (for a spherical design) front to back. A powerful probability engine—like the one of the starsleeve—cycled at 50 megatransitions, with a ran
ge of probable leap of about a kilometer. Thus, in a second the ship could move 50,000,000 kilometers. The virtual space that the ship passed through—or virtually passed through—had been dubbed by humans “hyperspace.” This was as good a translation as any for the uncomfortably-long Galactic term which, translated literally to English, would be something like nonspatial-virtual-manifold-with-distorted-timelike-characteristics.

  Time dilation leakage meant that ship time on this journey would be less than ten percent of time passage at the origin. The roughly four months of travel time would pass in the equivalent of twelve Earth days ship time. Tarkos divided this time between the bridge, the galley, and his cabin. Since the Kirt and OnUnAn both preferred to stay in their rooms, and Bria never left the bridge or her quarters, Tarkos found himself mostly alone. When he retreated to his room, he sat at the desk flipping through data screens. He studied works in the ship’s library on the history of the Ulltrian war—several of them dreary Galactic epic poems, read in a drone by the echoing triple voice of a Thrumpit, and accompanied by stunning and horrifying movies of worlds being destroyed. The stories slowly began to unnerve him.

  Sitting alone, with the lights dimmed, and no sound except the slight thrum of the engines, Tarkos began to worry. Earth remained unaligned, but terrestrial governments were proceeding quickly toward a decision to join the Galactic Alliance. If there were a war, that would be enough to drag Earth into it. But how would his own primitive planet fare against inconceivable weapons wielded by relentless suicidal warriors? And these historical records he reviewed were filled with accounts of the savage way Ulltrians tore apart and reconstructed the brains of their enemies, to make undetectable spies that prepared the way for invasion. Tarkos began to see Earth in every burning planet that the historical records showed. He imagined Africa, Europe, North America on fire, the atmosphere flaming away; or India, Russia, or Australia hammered with alien micro-organisms that, once in place, could never be evicted and would corrupt the Earth forever. The sleep he had longed to catch up on now became troubled with nightmares. Worse, Tarkos was one of those sentients that found the probability drive affected his dreams, making them shockingly vivid while at the same time bizarre. He awoke at the end of every sleep shift covered with sweat, a dream of California or Palestine aflame still echoing in his mind.