Heaven's War (41 page)

Thank God he had the work. Having Nayar and the other leaders kissing his ass, having Daksha to boss around—priceless additions.

And not only were they making real progress in learning how to operate the Temple’s marvelous 3-D printing system, they were branching out into other areas. “These bugs,” as Daksha called them.

“What about them?” Jaidev said, snapping. He was midway through a tricky assembly sequence, hoping to replicate the functions if not the design of a Slate or cell phone battery, something that would have almost
as much value as food or water, and much like trying to rearrange a Rubik’s Cube blindfolded. In short, he was unhappy about the interruption.

“They’re intelligent, I think,” he said.

“They’re not much bigger than mold!”

“Intelligence is not related to physical size.”

“Let me know when you find an intelligent molecule.” He turned away. It was fun having a serf; less fun having to pretend to care what he had to say.

“Assemble a few molecules in the right sequence, and you have an entity capable of processing information and duplicating itself. Aren’t those the definitions of life?”

“Life, not intelligence. Can’t you be precise?”

“Whatever,” Daksha said, throwing up his hands. “They’re trying to communicate with us.”

“Fine,” Jaidev said. “I’ll allow the speculation; how do you know?”

And, to his surprise, Daksha related a whole series of not entirely unintelligent tests he had conducted on the Woggle-Bugs, from changing their environment (covering the habitat, for example) to bombarding them with sound at a variety of frequencies, and basic imagery.

“I got responses for almost half the methods.”

“Which actually undercuts your argument,” Jaidev said. “Couldn’t they just be responding autonomously? Like machines.”

“Look,” he said, clearly beginning to lose patience, “they actually rearranged themselves when I started putting pieces of paper up against the habitat walls. They put themselves in little fucking shapes! They were in the process of reproducing…I bet if you repeated the experiment, they’d line up like soldiers on parade!”

This was more interesting, possibly useful, and, theoretically, dangerous. “Good job,” Jaidev said, unable to stifle the compliment.

Which somehow caused Daksha to give him a hug. And for one horrible pair of seconds, Jaidev wondered if Daksha’s pre-Object hostility, not to mention the eager punch to his face, was the result of some complicated, sublimated, unhappy homoerotic attraction. Daksha to Jaidev.

He hoped not. Jaidev’s range of sexual partners was, as one of them
had once sneered, broad, but shallow; he was attracted to a certain physical type, and Daksha was pretty thoroughly not that.

The hug ended when Vikram Nayar passed through the work area, making his usual queen-of-England-style pause to ask after the latest developments (“How are we doing now, hmmm?”), which allowed Jaidev to say, “The Woggle-Bugs are communicating.”

“Who says?”

And here Jaidev made himself happy. “I do,” he said, and gave a quick recap of the information Daksha had just shared with him.

Nayar got as excited as Jaidev had ever seen him, telling Jaidev and Daksha to follow him downstairs—and not waiting for them.

“So now we’re even?” Daksha said. “You steal my idea, payment for punching you?”

“Not even close,” Jaidev said. “But it’s a start.”

Noisy in the Temple…why? Gabriel Jones wanted everyone to shut up;
can’t you see a man’s trying to sleep here?

He said something, grunted, maybe. Rolled over and felt better now. Really needed his rest, needed to be strong for tomorrow, for all the days to come.

Wondered how long he had been lying here…What time was it?

Not too long, he was sure. He’d been busy talking with Harley and Nayar and Weldon and the two Hindi guys and the Blaine woman…something about Wiggle-Bugs or Woggle-Things, whatever. There was one, now two, maybe four or sixteen or, hell, five hundred, some big number.

Trying to say something, supposedly. God damn, he wished they would move the Woggling Thing somewhere else…felt as though it were close enough to touch!

Those things
saying
something…what? How? They were bugs! Tiny little things you could squish if you wanted.

Maybe they rearranged themselves to spell out words! That was it! The Woggle-Bugs had spelled out
Help!
or
Let us out!
That was why everybody seemed to be in such an uproar.

That idea was so funny, he laughed out loud, though that hurt and made him cough.

“Gabriel, how are you doing, man?”

Who kept bothering him!?!
Oh, Harley. Good man. Suffered a lot. Got to be patient with Harley Drake.
“Resting.”

“Sit up so you can get something to eat and drink.”

“Not hungry.”

“I don’t care. Doctor’s orders.” All Gabriel saw was a wheel from Harley’s chair half a meter in front of his nose. Careful! Close enough to run over him! “Come on, help him sit up.”

Hands on him…he didn’t like that, struggled. “Hey!” he said.

Weldon and Sasha Blaine. Sasha put a cup to his lips, made him drink. Water. Gulped some, started choking. He tried to push her away, damn woman, bothering him like this.

Then she put a spoon to his mouth, something on that…tasty, like cold stew. Treating him like a baby, though. Wanted to tell them it wasn’t nice, he was a grown man with two doctorates and director of the Johnson Space Center! They all worked for him—!

“What can we do for him?” Weldon said.

“He’s sick, not deaf,” Harley said.

“Hiding a man’s physical condition is too old-school for these circumstances,” Weldon said. He turned to Gabriel. “You’re a grown-up, Gabe. You’re in bad shape, renal failure or close enough it doesn’t make any difference. Nayar and his team have just started to get the hang of programming items from the Temple. You’re drinking some water and eating some of the food. But it’s going to take time. You can’t just lie down and die; we won’t let you.”

He took the stew from Sasha, sat Indian style in front of Gabriel, and began feeding him rather more forcefully. Gabriel wanted to fight, but no strength! And…well, the food tasted good, best he’d had in the longest time! Maybe that was all he needed—a decent meal! None of this alien fruit stuff or leftover junk from a cooler!

“Mr. Drake!”

More noise suddenly, all around. Harley wrenched his chair away. Gabriel was too tired and too busy eating to pay much attention. Delegate! He’d learned that lesson. Can’t do everyone’s job. He was the director of the Johnson Space Center…he had a lot on his plate.
Bring me the big decisions—!

Then Shane Weldon stopped feeding him and said, “Holy shit…” He stood up.

Slumped over, unable to raise his head, it was tough to see, much less
understand what was going on. But Gabriel knew the voice of that Katrina kid, Xavier. He was all excited and upset about something.

And there was a woman crying. Gabriel heard the name
Chitran
. Indian name. Bangalores, yes, one of them. So what was the big deal?

Then Sasha Blaine was saying, quite loudly, “She was
dead
, Harley! Just yesterday!”

“Well, she’s back. We knew that was possible, didn’t we?”

“You’re pretty fucking casual about this—”

Weldon was still standing where he blocked Gabriel’s view. “She was killed, Harls. Murdered.”

“Okay, then, back from the dead, the perfect person to ask…who did it?”

Now it was Vikram Nayar’s voice, saying, “She said it was the girl. She said it was Camilla.”

Sasha said, “Oh, for God’s sake, she’s a nine-year-old girl. She’s probably still addled from whatever has happened to her—”

“Vikram,” Harley said, “get her to calm down.”

“She wants her
child
,” Nayar said. “And she wants us to punish Camilla.”

“Where is the baby?” Harley said. “Sasha—?”

“Sleeping with the Bangalores. I was just going to check on her—”

“Better get the baby.”

“Better find Camilla, too,” Weldon said.

“She shouldn’t be far,” Nayar said. “She’s been living right here with these bugs all afternoon.” He handed the food to Nayar and started for the opening.

“Wait a second,” Sasha said. “What are you going to do?”

“Bring her in for questioning, I guess.” Weldon turned to the others. “Right?” Then he was gone.

Sasha seemed upset. “Harley, is this spinning out of control?”

Harley laughed so loud it startled Gabriel. “When was it ever in control?”

Gabriel must have moaned, because suddenly Sasha knelt next to him. “What do we do about Gabriel?”

“Might as well let him rest.”

Gabriel rolled over and sighed. The woman was still crying about her baby. What was the passage from the Bible? “Rachel weeping for her children”? Gabriel felt that…weeping for Yvonne, for the stupid decisions he had made that cost her her life…had cost him his life.

More sleep.

“What are we expecting from this?” Dale Scott asked.

Makali and Zack and Dale and Valya had followed the Sentry farther into a Beehive chamber that was a good cousin to the one adjoining the human habitat.

Makali realized that she no longer found Scott’s comments irritating, likely because of fatigue, familiarity, and the realization that he was merely vocalizing her own thoughts. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I could use water, then food.”

Makali had wondered about that, too. The skinsuit had tended to that vital need but was no longer available. It wasn’t as though they could melt ice and snow from the Keanu exterior….

What was Zack’s plan? Did he have one? It seemed that ever since turning away from the sealed vesicle passage, they had been reacting or running, grasping the only option available: flee the croc, dive into the goo, head for the surface.

Head for Mt. St. Helens.

“How about safe passage into the Sentry habitat?” Zack said.

“You make that sound almost reasonable,” Dale said. “But it just makes me ask, and then what?”

Zack was slow in answering. Makali was quite sure that their commander had not reached an accommodation with Dale Scott and probably wished he had been left dead on the surface like Wade Williams. Finally he said, “If there are other Sentries, maybe they’ll know how to get us back to our habitat.”

“Or how to control the NEO,” Valya said. She had cheered up considerably since shedding the skinsuit and finding a purpose in establishing communication with the Sentry.

After several turns they saw branching passages that seemed decayed and otherwise disused, except for a central one.

As the Sentry slipped out of sight, Dale hurried to keep up.

Makali and the others heard what sounded like a yelp and a splash.

They came around the corner to a central chamber, clearly a collection of Beehive cells…and a floor that was half-ground and half-pool.

Dale Scott was rising from the pool, which seemed to be about a meter deep.

The Sentry was looking at him with what Makali hoped was curiosity.

“Well,” Dale said ruefully, “I found some water.”

It was obvious that the Sentry lived here; around the pool were pieces of what had to be furniture, including a table and a stool, both of them too large to be of use to humans. The facings of the cells had been stripped—there were objects or substances stored in several. One of the larger cells was clearly a sleep or rest chamber for the Sentry.

In one corner were piles of organic material…some looked like tubers, others like flattened fish or animals.

“Home sweet home,” Dale said. All the humans could do was stand and watch as the Sentry went about its business, pulling objects out of one chamber, transferring them to another. It found one device, roughly the size of a Slate, and held it up to its chest. Apparently satisfied with the data revealed—if that was what happened—the Sentry replaced the unit.

Then it turned to the pile of food and supplies in the corner. Kneeling, it carefully picked through the material, finding what it wanted—first, a flask that contained some kind of liquid, which it drank. (“I hope that’s water it might share,” Valya said.) Then, a silvery morsel that looked to Makali like a flattened eel; it used one of its good middle arms to smash the thing against the chamber wall.

“Savage,” said Dale, who had, with Zack’s help, emerged from his soaking and was standing there dripping. Fortunately the temperature was tolerable, even on the warm side. Dale would be uncomfortable until he dried off, but he wouldn’t be in danger of catching pneumonia, at least. As for other alien bugs, Makali couldn’t say.