Necropath (40 page)

He crossed to an empty packing crate and pushed it aside, knelt and hauled up the inspection cover. The worn rungs of a metal ladder fell away in the gloomy perspective of the narrow shaft, illuminated every five metres by an orange light of low wattage. He sat on the edge of the shaft, lowered himself into the confines and began the long descent.

The repetitive, mechanical motion of stepping down time after time, of watching his hands move from rung to rung, was both physically and mentally tiring. Every ten minutes he stopped to rest, peering down beyond his heels at the seemingly never-ending drop. He moved slowly past the levels, the mind-hum of the inhabitants waxing and waning as he went.

The muscles of his calves and thighs spasmed with pain. He stopped suddenly, peering up into the receding shaft: he thought he’d heard something high overhead, but dismissed the idea.

He flexed his legs, took a breath, and began his descent once more, increasing his pace. He wanted to get the job over with, return to the upper-deck and resume something resembling a normal life.

He considered the Vaith. He recalled Essex’s memory of it: a shelled thing with tentacles, like some kind of monster squid or crustacean. Yet to Commander Sinton the Vaith had appeared as a shimmering force of energy, a bold and upright biped sheathed in a coruscating armature of electric blue and silver highlights. Vaughan wondered how it might manifest itself to him.

He looked down beyond his heels and was surprised to see, in the dwindling distance, a pool of light that marked the end of the shaft. He reached it within minutes and found himself on a narrow catwalk between two great curving sheets of riveted steel, like the interior of some impossibly narrow and ludicrously long submarine. At fifty-metre intervals, glow-tubes provided meagre illumination. He paused beneath the mouth of the shaft, listening. He thought he’d heard, again, a sound from up above, but when he peered back up the shaft he saw nothing but the ladder and the lights receding into the blur of the distant, circular vanishing point. He slipped his augmentation-pin into his skull console and scanned, but caught nothing. He told himself that he was being paranoid; if he listened carefully he could make out all manner of creakings and twangings as the metal of the Station expanded and contracted.

He checked Sinton’s memory of the route, then began walking east. After the strain of taking the weight of his body on his ankles and wrists, this stretch of the trek was a relief. He judged that he was in the vicinity of Level Fourteen, with just two more levels to go before he reached Level Twelve-b, the narrow, interstitial deck which years ago had been the upper-deck. He considered the bustling activity that had once swarmed across the long built-over deck, now deserted and dusty like some forgotten ghost town. It was an appropriate place of concealment for the human-eating alien.

At intervals along the catwalk he passed sturdy iron columns. He counted ten of them, then came to the column daubed innocently enough with a splash of red paint, marking the next point of descent. In the column was a rectangular hatch. He opened it and was about to step inside when a sound—a footfall?—echoed along the corridor. He stopped, one leg inside the column, and stared back along the way he had come. It was deserted, quiet. He scanned again. The mind-noise from the citizens of the closest level filled his head, but there was no single mind-signature in the immediate vicinity. He waited a minute, but heard, saw, and sensed nothing. He climbed into the column and resumed the descent.

In the depths of Sinton’s dying mind he had accessed memories of where the other Vaith were located. Sinton had not known their specific whereabouts, but Vaughan had read that one was in New York and the other in Madrid. Sinton and his cell on the Station had organised the transportation of three Vaith from Verkerk’s World to Bengal Station, and then the passage of two others to Europe and America. After that, Disciples in Madrid and New York had taken responsibility for the concealment of their gods. The other three, each on a far-flung colony world, Sinton had known nothing about.

The column ended and gave on to another enclosed catwalk. He was almost there. He walked along the corridor for fifty metres and paused, looking for the inspection cover in the grid-metal before him. He found it, indistinct in the shadows between the irregular lighting. He knelt and hauled open the trap door. A ladder dropped into a dark pit he knew to be the interstice between Levels Twelve and Thirteen. He lowered himself down the ladder, then paused and looked around. The only illumination came from above, a hazy cone of light picking him out like a theatre spotlight, and from a tiny arc light in the far distance.

Using the arc light as a reference point, like a sailor in ancient times navigating by the pole star, Vaughan headed towards a point five degrees to the right of the light. The air this deep in the Station was saturated with humidity, a barely breathable mix of grease and dust. Aware that his every step echoed in the cavernous chamber, he made his way across the uneven deck, stepping over raised flanges in the deck, once or twice almost tripping. The arc light was deceptively distant; he had been walking for five minutes and still it seemed no nearer.

As he approached his destination, it occurred to him for the first time what failure here might mean, not only to himself, but to the innocent victims of the Vaith both on the Station and elsewhere. He was the only person aware of what was happening with the aliens and their Disciples. Perhaps he should have left notification of, his findings with someone in authority before setting out, or perhaps personally told someone in power what was going on. But the fact was that he could not bring himself to trust anyone in power: he knew, through Sinton, the identities of the other Disciples in Sinton’s cell—but what if more than one cell existed on the Station?

According to what Sinton knew, the chamber containing the Vaith was fashioned to be undetectable, cleverly constructed between bulkheads like some optical illusion made physical, and sealed with a concealed combination lock.

To this point, Vaughan had not given much thought to the possibility that the Vaith might possess the means to defend itself, or to attack. He had thought of it as an inert, indolent beast, reliant upon the work of its mind-drugged human Disciples to ensure its macabre feasting.

Only now, as he approached the arc light, did he begin to doubt himself.

Ahead, he made out the bulkhead, apparently marking the extent of the chamber. Only when he approached the base flange of the wall did he see the evidence of the black paint daubed over the rivets to disguise their recent installation. The entire wall of metal had been erected ten metres in front of the original bulkhead, creating a cavity behind which the creature dwelled.

Vaughan scanned, and the distant minds above and below sprang into his awareness. He did his best to edit them from his consciousness. He concentrated, scanning beyond the bulkhead for the signature of Disciples left to guard the Vaith. He sensed nothing.

He opened his backpack and pulled out the grenades one by one and slipped them into his pockets.

He approached the bulkhead. He could see no entrance hatch. He looked into Sinton’s memories again and made out a seam of metal that ran down the bulkhead from top to bottom; halfway down, the case of an old fire alarm concealed the lock. He stepped forward and opened the cover to reveal a keypad of numerals. He typed in the combination and stood back.

A rectangular section of the wall, edged in what looked like rust to conceal the join, swung back into the chamber. He stepped into the darkness, reached to his left, and found the switch on the inside of the wall. Electric blue light filled the chamber, dazzling him.

He stooped, peered through the hatch. He knew what to expect from Sinton’s memory, but the reality was even more impressive. He was standing on the threshold of what appeared to be a cathedral.

Wiping the sweat from his palms, and using his jacket to dry the grenade he carried, he moved further into the chamber. He stared about him in wonder at the transformation from the darkness outside to this light-filled place of worship.

It was laid out in the archetype of classic ecclesiastical design; pews were ranked on either side of a central aisle, and on each flanking wall was a series of imitation stained-glass windows showing scenes of Verkerk’s World: on one side, views of the mountains, the Falls, the sea; and on the other, interior scenes of the Geiger Caves.

Ahead, above the altar, was the most impressive graphic of all. Vaughan found himself walking down the aisle like a supplicant. The icon, an idealised representation of Elly Jenson, the Chosen One, stared down at him with the wide and innocent eyes of a martyr, her full lips parted as if in benediction.

Only then did Vaughan remember why he was here. He turned his attention to what stood beneath the graphic of the Chosen One. Behind the altar was the container, twenty metres long, four wide, and four again high—a great oval etched in a pattern of whorls and curlicues.

He was hit then by the force of the alien mind. He felt the rush of euphoria, realised that the Vaith was using his psi-ability to contact him. He experienced the desire to join the One that he had first experienced in the Holosseum, the overwhelming urge, both physical and mental, to rush forward and become united with that which he knew he had been seeking all his life.

He stepped forward, and it was as if by doing so he had impelled his movement with momentum, so that he could not stop now, but must continue to advance, seeking union with the force that called.

At the same time, he was aware of the danger. He knew that in an instant he could stop himself from being dragged to his death: all he had to do was remove the pin from his skull console and the call would cease... and yet he did not do so because he was curious, fascinated by the nature of the beast that was drawing him ever closer.

He stopped himself, bracing his arms against a pew, staring at the etched, oval casing that contained the Vaith. He sent out a probe, scanning.

He felt himself diving through the bizarre layers of alien consciousness. He encountered emotions that had no equivalent, and others that did, a strange and piquant joy—a combination of the celebration of life and at the same time the knowledge that all life must end—a rage, an anger so fierce that he was repulsed, stunned. He came upon memories, visual images of a hundred, a thousand, differing landscapes and tried to understand the importance of these myriad landscapes to the Vaith.

And then the alien spoke to him, or rather did not speak but utilised his mind in such a way as to organise thoughts and images to make it seem to Vaughan that it was speaking.

You do not believe, and yet you of the many who have come to me, you in the very core of your soul, wish to believe.

Vaughan responded with thoughts of his own, screaming:
No! That’s not true! I know the truth, and the truth is oblivion, not the false promise you would wish us to accept.

Come, come... Your life is one of torment, Vaughan—or should that be Lepage? You are torn asunder within, riven by the tragedy of past events, so that even you do not know your true identity...

He thought:
I am Vaughan! Lepage is dead, no more, gone!

You wish him gone. You cannot live with the thought of his deeds. You have been trying to atone for them ever since—

He thought-screamed at the alien:
I will kill you!

The Vaith responded with something very much like a good-humoured chuckle.
But you cannot do that, Vaughan-Lepage. You cannot kill us. We are indestructible...

What are you?

I am but one of a much greater whole.

You are a monster, a devouring, evil—

Because we take sustenance from those we consider inferior to ourselves? But Vaughan-Lepage, do you not do the same? Humanity devours lower life forms without a qualm. We Vaith do the very same... and give you much, much more in return.

You could restrict yourself to the animals you once lured on Verkerk’s World, without resorting to devouring intelligent beings—

Vaughan-Lepage, we do not merely take humans for the physical sustenance that they provide. We are an inquisitive species. We absorb the pure food of the mind, we feed on
knowledge.
Why else do you think we came to Earth? Your culture fascinates us; we sampled something of it on Verkerk’s World, but the inhabitants there were a simple and unsophisticated people; we craved a greater understanding of your race.