Event Horizon (Hellgate) (106 page)

“So, maybe it’s tending an old folks’ home, or an asylum for the deranged, the senile of the species.” Vidal speculated, “while the rest of them left?”

“Data transmission has commenced,” Lai’a reported. “Estimate 20 minutes to complete transfer of the Zunshu database. Doctor Sherratt, your party may return to the boarding tube. The gundrone can protect the cabling, disconnect and follow in due course.”

“Sure?” Dario hissed. “Be sure, Lai’a – we might not be able to come back!”

“I can detect no suspicious activity of life forms or mechanisms within five kilometers of your position,” Lai’a assured him. “There is no activity in the outer system. All defense zones have returned to dormancy. You are at liberty to leave the computer core.” It paused and then asked reflectively, “Would you care to investigate curious sensory data? A 240 meter detour from your return path would afford an invaluable vidfeed for future analysis.”

They were already moving. “How ‘curious’?” Vidal wanted to know.

“Anomalous life signatures,” Lai’a seemed to hesitate. “Life signs that are not
quite
consistent with life signs.”

Travers groaned. “Goddamn – this place is enough to send you stark, raving mad.”

“Alien,” Jazinsky said succinctly.

“There’s an old saying,” Rusch said in amused tones. “What came you to the wilderness to see, a man clothed in fine raiment?”

“I came to this particular wilderness,” Shapiro said acidly as they made their way back through the corkscrew passage, “to meet my enemy face to face, like honorable
life forms
, and talk my way to an armistice. Speaking of talking, Lai’a – have you found any point of reference allowing translation of the spoken language … and I know that’s the wrong term!”

“Not yet, General, but the references will be in the computer core. Allow time for data transfer; also, allow time for analysis. I will inform you, the moment I have sufficient basis to construct a translation algorithm. At that time, you may reasonably open a dialog with the Zunshu.”

“All right.” Shapiro was between Travers and Marin as they reached the top, or end, of the passage. “I’ll … cultivate patience.”

“Turn right,” Lai’a told them, “Follow the gallery to the end and take the third ‘door,’ at 15 meters above deck level. It opens into a series of bubble-like vessels, each larger than the last. Your destination is the final vessel, which is also the largest, with a diameter of 80 meters.”

“Any Zunshu between us and this vessel?” Travers had resisted the impulse to bring his weapons alive, but Marin knew he must be itching to do so.

“Several Zunshu,” Lai’a reported, “hiding in passages on all sides. If they behave in a manner consistent with all others we have seen, they will withdraw as you approach.”

“If –?” Vidal echoed.

“One must allow for individual aberration.” Mark was the first to step through a series of tall, arching columns, and he murmured in reaction as he made his way into what Lai’a had termed a ‘gallery.’

The compartment was long and narrow, dimly lit, and the few bioluminescent light sources were concentrated around great sweeping abstractions of color and form. Some hugged a wall, others protruded in shapes, structures, that
almost
made sense to human eyes, but not quite. The forms might have been art, Marin thought, but if they were, they depicted concepts so alien, they were as meaningless as the ideograms of a foreign culture.

The third ‘door’ yawned, four meters wide and 20 above what Marin had come to think of as the floor, though that floor rippled like frozen waves and sloped up into one of the gallery’s five corners, and down into two others. Nothing about the geometry was Euclidean, familiar, comfortable. The whole party rose into the doorway in a tight knot, with gundrones before and after; and ahead them was the first of the bubble-like vessels.

Shapes drifted in the shadows. Marin saw fluttering colors, almost kaleidoscopic, purple, green, red, gold. Doorways opened in the top of the bubbles, and in the floor, and the cold blue-green light glittered in the multiple, blinking eyes. Scores of creatures watched, but none moved out to stop the intruders.

The fourth chamber was the last. It was enormous, and the first of all chambers they had visited to be utterly dark. On the edge of it they stopped, and floodlights flicked on, sending dazzling beams shafting through liquid so pure, so still, it might have been air. Nothing had moved in this vessel for so long, every particle had settled, and Marin’s sensors registered the temperature inside as
cold
.

But the chamber was almost filled with objects, perfect spheroids, white, featureless, each smaller than a man’s clenched fist, and they must have numbered in the millions. The floodlights played over them as sensors collected data in scan after scan, and Marin felt his skin prickle.

It was Jazinsky who said – hushed, harsh – “Take a word of advice, guys. Stay out of there. Do
not
go inside.”

“Dangerous?” Travers asked tersely. “They don’t read like weapons, but damnit, nothing in this place makes sense. They could be mines.”

“Not weapons,” Jazinsky murmured. “I think … shit, Neil, I think you’re in their nursery.”

“What – eggs?” Mark’s voice was sharp. “A nest?”

And Rusch: “Angle your floods, Mark, Harrison, your eleven o’clock.”

Multiple light beams shafted that way and, high above, recessed into the dome-shaped ceiling, was another doorway, wide, dark, filled with innumerable fluttering, effervescing Zunshu, with their anxious gestures and flashes of brilliant color in the rippling side flanges.

“
Don’t
go inside,” Jazinsky repeated. “Even the most timid creature will protect its young. Put them to the test, guys, and you’ll be shooting your way out.”

“Not the best way to begin negotiations toward an armistice,” Shapiro said acerbically. “Lai’a, this explains your anomalous readings. Life signs, but not life … eggs. They’re not
quite
alive, not yet.”

“And cold,” Marin added. On an impulse he suggested, “Lai’a, take readings of the water here.”

A moment for the scan and analysis, and Lai’a told him, “The water here is almost pure. Levels of minerals, including sodium, are so low, a Resalq or human could ingest it without sickness. At this temperature, and in this chemistry, it appears the embryos will not develop. A small percentage of them are dead; analysis of decomposition suggests this chamber has lain undisturbed for several centuries, possibly very much longer.”

“Damn.” Marin stepped back, and back again. “Stasis, is it? They deposit the eggs in dark, cold, pure water, and they just … wait?”

“Wait for the conditions that trigger growth.” Mark moved out and away. “Lai’a, is this the only chamber on the platform with these anomalous readings?”

“No, Doctor. I have detected eight more.” Lai’a paused. “Data transfer will be complete in ten minutes. Data collected from the nest, or nursery, is adequate. Be aware, individual Zunshu have begun to encroach on your position. I recommend you withdraw.”

“We’re leaving,” Shapiro agreed, already moving. “We can be back at the boarding tube in five minutes.”

“Time permits,” Lai’a offered, “for a second diversion, if you would care to investigate an energy signature 200 meters directly below you.”

“If the Zunshu will permit it,” Vidal said sharply. “They’re still
encroaching
on us? You want weapons cleared and primed?”

“The Zunshu are withdrawing,” Lai’a said levelly. “They perceived only a threat to their nest. There is no further activity in your area, and nothing between you and the energy signature.”

“All right, since we’re here.” Mark’s floodlights closed on one of several ‘doors’ set into the floor. “Which way down – and does it go all the way through?”

“Take the first, the closest,” Lai’a told him. “It forms a helix, with exits on all sides, at all levels. It appears to be a major thoroughfare, and will take you to the chamber where sensors on the gundrones have detected the energy signature. Light levels are adequate in the upper part of the passage, but fall to near darkness close to the end.”

“Life forms down there?” Travers asked.

“No Zunshu. Schools of tiny creatures living in beds of plants resembling feathered kelp. I can detect no threat.”

“But you didn’t detect this energy signature,” Mark said sharply. “It was a gundrone that detected it. Explain.”

“The energy signature is extremely faint,” Lai’a said simply. “Life forms are readily detected by thermal traces. The source of the energy signature has none.”

They had dropped in through the ‘door’ with apparent mass set high, and they went down fast. Marin used his hands to push off from the walls as the passage coiled through the helix Lai’a had promised, and his floods intensified as he dropped into dimness, and then darkness. The liquid here was warm, and so dense with nutrients and microorganisms, it seemed a thin fog gathered as he dropped out into a bell-shaped chamber.

His boots touched down into a soft ooze, and he found himself knee-deep in rippling stems from which feather-like veins waved in eddies raised by the intrusion. Minute creatures scurried away from the lights – he glimpsed shells, pincers, feelers, tentacles, fins, all the functional and familiar mechanisms of life and locomotion, hunting and feeding, arranged in forms that would have made him blink two hours ago.

“The energy signature is 30 meters to your left,” Lai’a was saying.

“What
kind
of signature?” Vidal demanded. “Damnit, Lai’a, this level’s filthy – the cleaners don’t seem to get in here!”

“Several parts of the structure have fallen into such ruin,” Lai’a agreed. “Some of it is in disuse; much is neglected. I am detecting machinery behind the walls, under the floors, most of which is either dormant or defective. Power levels across the whole structure are uniformly low.”

“It’s decaying,” Shapiro said quietly. “There’s a small population, vast ‘nests,’ and the hardware is … dilapidated.”

“That’s putting it mildly,” Mark mused. “Data transfer, Lai’a?”

“Four minutes to completion,” Lai’a reported. “Captain Vaurien’s hepatic and renal values have normalized. Brain chemistry is satisfactory. Cardiac and pulmonary function are recovering. Neural grafting and bone welds are excellent; edema has been resolved. All nano are deactivating at this time. Transfusions are complete; IV and pure oxygen feed continue. Nerves to the surgical sites have been severed to curtail post-operative pain. Captain Vaurien is under nominal anaesthesia.”

The AI was still speaking as Marin and Travers followed the lead gundrone around the curve in the chamber, and Marin might have felt his jaw drop. The particulate haze was dense, interrupting the lights, but what they saw was obvious enough. Ooze, slime and plant material had drifted deeply around the spheres set into the end of the compartment, but he knew at once what he was looking at.

“Stasis chambers,” Dario whispered.

“Functional – and I’m counting five of them.” Mark ventured closer and laid one armored hand on the surface of the nearest. He gave a low groan, and Marin knew what he must be thinking.

“The crew of the
Ebrezjim
,” Travers began. “The ones who made it out – they reported being held in stasis, not in cells. You think …?”

“A number of our people could still be inside?” Mark’s voice was hoarse. “Oh, it’s possible. It’s very possible.” He shook himself. “It’s just as possible these are stores of perishable food, time sensitive apparatus, patients waiting for critical treatment.” He withdrew the glove and looked back at Dario and Midani. “We can’t know without opening them, and we can’t open them – not now, not here. We managed to open the chamber on Kjorin, because we convinced it to open itself! We don’t have any key or code to open these –”

“The code should be in the computer core,” Dario rasped. “Lai’a!”

“Data transfer is complete,” Lai’a said at once. “The gundrone is on its way to rendezvous with you. The vessel containing the computer core is resealed; I have re-enabled the AI, though available power levels are too low for it to come online for 115 minutes.”